by Donis Casey
“Lots of business tonight,” Dave noted.
“Lottery coming up. I expect they’ll all be back Friday night, celebrating that they didn’t get called or that they did, one or the other. We’ll probably be hopping all week.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She cast him a curious glance. “What about you, Dave? Did you register? Am I going to have to find me somebody else to chuck out the drunks if your number comes up?”
Dave’s expression didn’t change as he continued to stare out into the night. “No, ma’am, I didn’t have to register. I’m too old by a year.”
Rose seriously doubted that, but as long as she wasn’t going to have to roust up another bouncer his lie was fine with her. But before she could comment, Dave nodded toward the lane. “Look who’s come around, Miz Rose.”
Rose heaved a sigh. It was Emmanuel Clover. The little fusspot had shown up at her door at least once a week ever since he was named to the Council of Defense. He walked to the bottom of the steps but stopped when he caught sight of her.
“May I speak to you in private, Mrs. Lovelock?” he opened.
Rose didn’t move. It suited her to look down on him. “Mr. Clover, why do you keep wasting your time?”
Clover took off his hat. “I’ll keep appealing to your patriotism until my last breath, Mrs. Lovelock. Please, please do not ruin these poor boys who may shortly give their all for their country. Especially not now, just before their numbers are called…”
She didn’t let him finish. “These poor boys, as you call them, are already pretty dang ruined without any help from me, Mr. Clover. Let them have their fun. They’ll be facedown in the mud for their country soon enough.”
Clover was not deterred. Rose was not surprised. Clover had not been deterred for months. “We can’t afford to send diseased soldiers into the fray, Mrs. Lovelock. What if they don’t have the strength to stand up to those monsters who want to kill us all?” His pitch rose a note or two.
Rose’s eyes widened. This was a new argument, and an insulting one, at that. “Are you saying my ladies are diseased?”
Clover’s tone was pleading. “How can they not be? This evil practice is death to women and men alike. How can we meet the challenge if we cannot keep American womanhood pure and our boys away from temptation?”
Dave clinched his fists. “You want me to send him packing, Miz Rose?”
Rose shook her head in aggravation. The pathetic part of it was that Clover was so sincere in his concern for the welfare of not just the johns, but the hookers as well.
Before she could unleash Dave, Clover pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it at her. “Mrs. Lovelock, did you know that the House of Representatives has recently passed a bill…” He began to read. “…to study and investigate the cause, treatment and prevention of venereal diseases, and to control and prevent the spread of these diseases?”
Oh, this was too much. “Toss him into the street on his butt, Dave.”
Dave started down the steps and Clover started backing up. However, he didn’t stop talking. “When the Senate passes this act into law, it’ll give the government the power to quarantine any woman suspected of having venereal disease. You and all your women will have to undergo a medical test to determine if you are diseased….”
Dave reached for him and he didn’t have time to expound further.
“I’ll be back,” he called, from his seat in the middle of the dirt road.
“I know you will,” Rose called back.
“It’s my duty as a member of the Council of Defense to see that we all uphold this country’s moral stance.” Clover dusted off the seat of his pants, picked up his hat, and strode off into the dark with as much dignity as he could come up with.
Dave looked concerned when he rejoined her on the porch. “You ’spect he’s telling the truth? You ’spect we might end up getting shut down, Miz Rose?”
Rose tried not to appear worried, but Clover’s information had chilled her. “Nothing surprises me anymore, Dave. But it ain’t happening tonight so I don’t aim to fret over it.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Yesterday marked a golden date on the calendar; a date when the law-abiding people of the community…rose in their mighty wrath and drove from their midst the ‘Wobbly.’ As a house cleaning makes for better conditions in the home, so does it in the city, and the returning Bisbbites, yesterday noon, sniffed the air with a keen realization that their hope had been realized.
The ‘Wobblie’ is no more.”
—Bisbee Daily Review,
Bisbee, Arizona, July 13, 1917
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. The cattle car was packed with humanity, pressing him into the corner. He was thirsty. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t speak. The floor of the car was covered with cow manure. The smell of shit and urine and flop sweat and terror was overwhelming. Don’t lose consciousness, for God’s sake. Don’t faint. They’re all looking at you. They’re all looking to you to know how to behave, what to do.
Tell them that if we die, we die for something. Do no violence, no matter what indignities they heap upon us. No matter how much you want to retaliate. To smash those vigilantes into the dust. To kill that sadistic bastard in the bowler hat…
Rob jerked upright, gasping for air. It took him a moment to orient himself, to remember where he was. He was safe.
He glanced over at his nephew in the other bed, relieved to see that his nightmare hadn’t disturbed the young man. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the end of the sheet and swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed.
It was a hot night, noisy with insects. The apron-curtains stirred in the slight breeze. Rob leaned forward and perched his elbows on his knees. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how tired he was. How many times had he thought that he was going to end up shot or beaten to death or dangling at the end of a rope? How many times had he been jailed or run out of town? He should be used to it by now. The thought caused him to chuckle.
He still believed. His religion was a living wage, an eight-hour day, safe working conditions. But after Bisbee he realized that if he kept it up, without a doubt he was going to end up dead. He sighed. Maybe he’d just get tarred and feathered.
He wasn’t going to sleep again anytime soon. He stood up and reached for his trousers.
Gee Dub stirred and sat up. “What’s up, Uncle Robin?” His voice was hoarse with sleep. “What time is it?”
“It’s late, slim. Go back to sleep.” Rob pulled on a shirt and fished his tobacco pouch out of his pocket. He began rolling a cigarette, eyeing his nephew’s dark form, still sitting up, watching. He was going to have to come up with an explanation. “After that fine supper your mama fixed us, I’m too full to sleep. I’m feeling in need of some air.”
“Want me to come with you?”
Rob shook out his match. “No, thanks, I’ll try not to get lost. I won’t be gone long. It’s been a while since I was able to enjoy a quiet night on my own. I’ll try not to wake you when I come in.”
Chapter Nineteen
“…few people yet understand the real nature
of the enemy and the real danger to America.”
—Oklahoma Council of Defense, 1917
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning and Scott Tucker, town sheriff of Boynton, Oklahoma, was exhausted. There were only a few details left to be worked out with his deputy, Trenton Calder, on the logistics of getting the draft numbers from the Western Union office to the Masonic Hall in a discreet and orderly manner, and Scott was longing for his pillow.
He would be relieved beyond understanding when Friday’s Liberty Sing and draft lottery were finished, but as it was, there was no end of preparations to make. Feelings had been running high on both sides about this draft ever since Congress had instated it, and if the town could get through the d
ay without a riot or a brawl, Scott had promised providence that he would become a religious man. He had already deputized eight or ten likely fellows to help keep the crowds in order at the Liberty Sing. Though he never picked exactly the same deputies twice, he did always pick men he trusted, which usually meant his own relatives.
“How many folks know when the wire is supposed to come through?” Trent asked him.
“Most, I imagine. It’ll take a long while to get all the numbers drawn in Muskogee, and then for the reporter to get the wire sent. If the news comes in before nine o’clock, I’ll be surprised. Probably a lot of families will have already gone home, especially if they don’t have any close kin who registered. I hope it’ll be a skimpy crowd at the hall when the list is posted.”
Billy Claude Walker burst in through the front door, putting an abrupt end to their conversation.
“Fight! Fight!” he yelled. Billy Claude’s staggering gait suggested that he had had more than a few.
Scott and Trent leaped to their feet and grabbed for their gun belts. “Where? The pool hall?”
“Over to Rose’s! Hurry up! It’s some fellow named Pip and Win Avey. The fellow’s got a razor! I reckon there’s like to be a killing!”
Rose’s. Scott’s heart sank when he heard that. Scott had run the girls in a couple of times, whenever the neighbors complained of the traffic or the church ladies got on their high horses, but mostly Rose ran a tight ship, keeping the noise and mayhem to a minimum. Scott didn’t bother her if she was discreet. And most of the time she was discreet. Many people in town didn’t even know there was a bawdy house at the end of Kenetick Street.
Since the house of ill repute was only a few blocks away, the two lawmen took out on foot. Billy Claude had a good head start on them, but being fifteen years younger, Trent outpaced him easily. Being thirty years older than his deputy, Scott brought up the rear.
Trent got to Rose’s just as the fight spilled out into the street. Pip’s razor had done its job, for Win’s clothes were shredded and his arms were slashed. The bloody wounds just seemed to have made him mad, though, for he was chasing Pip all around the yard with an ax handle in his hands, bellowing with rage. Several working women were standing on the porch, taunting and generally doing nothing to help the situation. The yard was full of amused bystanders. One fellow in a bowler hat, standing by the lane, was practically doubled over with mirth.
By the time Scott arrived, Trent had pulled out his Colt and ordered the two to drop their weapons and reach for the sky. Scott jerked the razor out of the young stranger’s hand and cuffed him.
One of Win’s pals, Victor Hayes, suddenly decided to take his friend’s side in the fray and smacked Trent in the jaw. Trent went down, and Victor and Win fled into the night.
Pip began to struggle, but Scott had had enough foolishness to last him, so he parted the man’s hair with the butt of his .45 and went over to check on his deputy.
Trent was sitting on the ground, rubbing his jaw, with two or three solicitous ladies of the night bent over him. He looked up at Scott, sheepish. “Sorry, Boss.”
“Never mind.” He straightened and cast a look around for Rose. He saw her kneeling on the porch, leaning over her bouncer, who was out cold. “Dave all right?” Scott called.
“I reckon he’ll be okay,” she said. “No thanks to Avey. I’ve told him a dozen he ain’t welcome. But he marched up here with a bunch of his cronies, bold as brass, and started a fight, so I told Dave to toss him out. He aimed to split Dave’s skull with that ax handle. Then that boy took it upon himself to even the odds.” Her tone was sullen. “I hate that Win Avey.”
“You want me to fetch Doc Perry for Dave?”
Rose shook her head. “We’ll take care of him.” Dave was clutching his sore head and moaning.
Scott rather liked Rose Lovelock, if that was really her name. She was a middle-aged woman, still attractive if somewhat faded. What little he knew of her life story was both interesting and depressing.“Do you want to press charges?”
Rose did not look happy, but she shook her head again.
Scott nodded. Having your clientele arrested for battery was not good for business. “I’m taking this one in for disturbing the peace. I’ll go out to Win’s house in the morning and arrest him.” he said. “I reckon you’re closed until further notice, Rose.”
Rose straightened with indignation. “Me and the girls got to make a living, Scott.”
“Sorry. After this it’s best y’all lay low for a while. Now, I have to run this yahoo in.”
As soon as they were gone, Rose turned toward Dutch Leonard, standing behind her on the porch, half-clad, with his arm around a soiled dove. “I warned you to keep your pals in line, Dutch. Find your other sidekick and get out. And don’t come back.”
Chapter Twenty
“For the total abolition of the crime, disease, and death-producing practice of rent, interest, and profit-taking as iniquities that…are now being imposed upon the working class of the world.”
—Manifesto of the Working Class Union
When they arrived at the jailhouse, Scott flung the brawler into a cell without ceremony.
“What’s your name? I don’t know you.” Scott tried not to sound as homicidal as he felt.
The man was blue-eyed, ill-shaven and shaggy-haired, dressed in worn overalls and a patched shirt. A tenant farmer, Scott decided. The toe was out of one of his boots. Scott wondered how he had managed to afford a night at Rose’s. Now that he could see the man in the light, Scott decided that he was younger than he had first thought. The man lowered himself gingerly onto a cot and fingered the knot on his head before he mumbled. “Pip James. It was that other fellow’s fault.”
“It always is. What was the ruckus about?”
Pip’s lip curled. “We had a difference of opinion concerning the war, and then when the big colored fellow tried to throw him out, the jackass beaned him with his own axe handle.”
“Well, I hope you learned to keep your opinions to yourself. Win is Secret Service and mighty eager to report contrary ideology. Somebody said you’re from Oktaha. Are you in town to hear whether your number gets drawn on Friday?”
Pip looked up at Scott from under his eyebrows and said nothing for so long that Scott began to get a very bad feeling.
“Did you register, boy? Tell me the truth, now.”
Pip’s nostrils flared. “I ain’t volunteering to die for this illegal war.”
A draft resister. Scott leaned his head against the bars. He was not wild about the idea of the draft himself. One of his four sons and his deputy, whom he loved like a son, had registered and would learn their fate on Friday. But his personal feelings had no weight here. He made no attempt to talk his prisoner into enlisting to avoid jail time. He could tell by the fire in Pip’s eyes that it would do no good. “I’d have let you out tomorrow for rioting, but now I’ve got to send you to Muskogee for resisting the draft. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know it.”
“Are you Working Class Union?” Scott asked the question, though he dreaded hearing the answer. The Working Class Union had started out a few years ago as an affiliate of the I.W.W., but since most of its members were tenant farmers and not wage earners, the W.C.U. had gone off on its own. The Industrial Workers of the World were unbending in their beliefs, but the W.C.U. was downright radical. Not that they didn’t have plenty of cause. Tenant farmers were often little more than serfs and indentured servants with no hope of improving their lot. Their demand for an end to rent and the charging of interest on loans was too extreme for even Scott’s easygoing philosophy of live and let live. In other parts of the state, some of the more hot-blooded members of the brotherhood had taken to night-riding and vandalism, even bank robbery.
Pip didn’t answer, which was answer enough for Scott. “How many of you are there? I won’t stand
for no trouble, you hear me?”
“I’m not here to make trouble, Mister. We…I just come to town to meet with somebody. I don’t aim to be any trouble, I promise.”
“Well, if it’s your plan not to make trouble, you’ve already done a real bad job of it. You’d better hope your socialist pals don’t come by for a visit or make themselves known to me at all, because I’ll arrest them faster than you can blink twice. Now sit down and shut up. I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
When he finally made it home, Scott’s wife, Hattie, met him at the door with a mug of hot tea. “I warmed you up some stew,” she said. “You shouldn’t go to bed on an empty stomach. Go wash up…I declare! You’ve got blood all over your sleeve! What happened tonight?”
“Me and Trent had to break up a fight. I think we’ve got a bunch of anti-draft yahoos in town, honey. I’ve got one of them in jail, but I’m too tired to shake him down tonight. I don’t know if they’re planning something on Friday or not. He’ll lie to me, anyway. Win Avey was the other combatant, but he got away. Probably ran back to his shack. I’ll try to pick him up in the morning. Him and his Secret Service friends have lethal objections to draft-dodgers. I’m going to have to deputize half the men in town for the durn Liberty Sing next week. I wish they’d just call it off and let everybody get his draft notice in the mail like God intended.” Scott shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Hattie, sometimes I despair of humankind.”
***
The moon was down. It was early in the morning, but no light had yet appeared on the horizon. The night was dark and still uncomfortably hot. The last dim yellow light disappeared from Rose’s back window, but Nick did not move. He was in no hurry. Endless patience was one of the requirements for his line of work. He’d wait however long it took before he made contact.
He had been recognized, but he wasn’t yet sure that his services were required. He had only caught a scent of lingering fury. A whiff of desire for something evil. He didn’t know if what he was smelling was desire for revenge, a vendetta, jealousy, or simply a need to make a statement. It didn’t matter why. Someone wanted to deal death, and that was enough for him.
