by David Fuller
“So maybe he’s not coming back?”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Know where he lives?”
“Nobody knows. But if he’s not here, he’s probably spreading cheer in the big city. I’d check the newspapers and magazines.”
“Anarchist press?”
“Heavens no, they washed their hands of him long ago. Try The Masses, they’re the biggest socialist magazine. Socialists are more tolerant, and he’s always looking for someone to convert.”
“Thus the name Prophet.”
“And the fact that so far I think he’s been spectacularly unsuccessful.”
“Thus the ironic name Prophet. You know his real name?”
“The odd thing is, I do. He took a liking to me, but I’m one of those females who happens to have arms, legs, feet, hands, and hair. He had a moment of weakness when he said he was Jonah Calvin.”
“Jonah the Prophet.”
“Oh. That’s right. Missed that entirely. My boss also thinks I’m too dense. Could be right.” She thought for a moment. “I was also a little dense, since I guess I found Prophet attractive for about a minute and a half.”
“Not bad looking?”
“Actually, he looks like a squirrel, but looks don’t matter if you have a brilliant mind. Or I thought he had a brilliant mind. He would say profound things that I’m ashamed to say I thought were original.” She covered her face with her hand, still embarrassed at having been fooled. “Until one day he said something I recognized and realized he was passing off other people’s ideas as his own.”
Longbaugh was fascinated. “Like what, for instance?”
“Oh, let’s see: ‘Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.’ I liked that, that was pretty good.”
“But you caught him—”
“—when he said something I recognized, yes. ‘Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of shoes’—wait, no—‘In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot maker.’ I always liked that quote, we all have contradictions, even when we believe in something, and I just so happened to know it was Mikhail Bakunin, and not Jonah Calvin. I looked through my Bakunin and found out Prophet had shamelessly lifted every smart thing he said.”
Longbaugh had never thought about men seducing women with ideas and words, particularly political words.
“So, who’s Bakunin?”
“Once a cattle baron, always a cattle baron. Bakunin was one of the early anarchists.”
Here was a world as different to him as the city had been on that first day when he had stepped off the train. “Well, miss, that’s very enlightening, thank you. I must admit, I enjoyed talking to you.”
“You never said why you wanted him.”
“Indian land.”
A commotion by the door caused him to turn, and a man came in who could only have been Big Bill Haywood, wearing his Big Bill Stetson and offering his Big Bill handshake to men who buzzed to him like bees to pollen, tripping over boxes and chairs to grasp that hand. Longbaugh backed up to look him over. He is large and impressive, thought Longbaugh, very impressive, but I’m faster, and then he thought, Damn you, Butch! I do have pride.
He sat back to consider the man. After a few minutes, he had a sense of him. Men and women were drawn to his bigger-than-life qualities, his size, his voice. Haywood knew that, and humbled himself, understanding that people could be overwhelmed. He was a born storyteller. His everyday conversation had a natural flow, a beginning, a middle, and an end, which drew people to him and made them want to listen. Longbaugh realized he was drawn to him as well, but reminded himself that he was not here for Big Bill Haywood, he was here to find a squirrelly anarchist that even his brethren disliked.
He may not have known how he felt about the silk workers’ strike or the Wobblies, but he was beginning to know why so many workers bought into it.
On the way back into the city, he reread the letter where Mabel the anarchist had thought Prophet would make a darling companion for Etta. Mabel was amused that the self-professed extremist radical Prophet had lost his heart to a woman who was so conventional. Longbaugh was amused as well, to think of Etta as conventional. While Etta did not trust Mabel the anarchist, she knew Prophet offered an option if she got into trouble, as he inhabited sketchier neighborhoods, hiding out and moving often. She knew she could handle him, and if she needed to disappear in a hurry, here was a quick way out of Moretti’s reach. Prophet’s instability could work to Etta’s advantage, as his movements appeared random, unpredictable.
A cab let Longbaugh off on Nassau Street, at the offices of the magazine The Masses. He was surprised to find himself standing in front of a closed and empty office. He stood at the window, trying to peer in, when a fellow pushing a knife-sharpening cart stopped.
“They moved a couple days ago,” said the knife sharpener.
“What, the whole magazine?”
“Few blocks. Other side of Trinity Church, Greenwich Street. Ninety-one.”
He walked.
While walking, he skimmed one of her letters, slowing on a paragraph about Hightower. She had met him through Moretti, and knew he had been searching for her. She disliked him and found that in his case, she was unable to disguise it. He remembered Hightower saying he wished she could at least have pretended to charm him. Something about seeing the same moment from both sides made Longbaugh smile. He put the letters in his pocket as he came to the address.
The new offices of The Masses were light and bright, full of energy and conviction, as well as the mess and general confusion caused by the move. Crates were stacked, waiting to be unpacked, but the staff worked around them, apparently determined to publish their magazine on time. Longbaugh was able to stand in the midst of the disorganization without being questioned as to his intentions or identity. One floppy fellow, an editor of some sort with a rag doll mop of hair and one shirttail out, was attempting to exhort his troops. He was not doing well.
“People, there’s an Isadora Duncan rumor that she’s leaving France. Anyone?”
He was also not good at intimidation. Too likable.
“A rumor that she’s moving back to the United States. Of America. Is someone on that story? I need someone to bring me that story.”
In a moment of perception, Longbaugh was able to pick out the covert Pinkerton agent. As he watched him, he realized the agent was too obvious. Then he realized that everyone there already knew he was undercover and a Pinkerton. He wondered if that was to draw the attention away from the real undercover Pinkerton. He looked again. That might have been anyone.
He left the offices and located a bakery, purchasing a combination of pastries and doughnuts that they boxed for him. He returned to the offices and laid out the sweets. In short order, writers and editors came to him. Flies to sweet, he thought.
As a man with a handlebar mustache took a pastry, Longbaugh said, “Seen Prophet today?”
“Thank the Lord, no. He’ll be along, though.”
As a man with a limp chose a doughnut: “Someone said Prophet’s coming by today.”
“He thinks we’ll take some piece he wrote.”
“That bad?”
“Unreadable.”
“What’s he look like?”
“And you would be?”
“The one who paid for the doughnut you’re eating.”
The limper tossed the doughnut in the trash.
He leaned back to wait for someone more congenial to indulge his sweet tooth. He unfolded a letter.
Etta was forthright about her life and its dangers. She was writing the kinds of things he had never known her to share in the past, either in person or in the letters she had sent to him in prison. Perhaps now that she thought he would never get to se
e the letters, she was more comfortable expressing herself. Or she was changed by her journey and looked forward to sharing her new self. Or perhaps this was an act of valediction, a final accounting of the true nature of her flight. In the end, reading her honest words, he decided she was confiding in the man she hoped he would be.
The floppy literary editor with his hanging shirttail rambled over to gaze longingly at a pastry. He finally plucked it and became the first of the magazine’s staff to acknowledge the benefactor and offer thanks. Longbaugh put Etta’s letter aside and they slipped into conversation. Among other things, he learned that Prophet was small and had scary eyes. Longbaugh indicated the man across the room who had just come in. “Anything like him?”
The floppy literary editor turned. “Oh boy, just exactly like him.” He shrank, biting furtively into his pastry with his head down, as if that would keep Prophet from noticing him.
Prophet was indeed small, and while the woman in Paterson had said squirrelly, looking at his ears, Longbaugh imagined another animal. His oversized coat, however, did look as if a squirrel was wearing a beaver’s pelt. Longbaugh mused that he must be roasting on this warm day. His hair was light and sheared short, uneven enough to suggest he had cut it himself. Had he let it grow, his large ears sticking out from his head might not have seemed so pronounced. Then he saw Prophet’s eyes. They were pressed down into hard, small, startlingly blue circles. Prophet put a soft white hand into a coarse pocket and brought forth a sheet of paper folded into eighths. He unfolded his work—Longbaugh saw cramped writing that covered the page like ants on a honey spill—and tried to give it to the man Longbaugh had earlier pegged as the editor in charge.
The editor, tall and handsome and possibly thirty, with wonderful hair and strong lips, brought his palms up by his shoulders. Longbaugh had seen train passengers do that, rather than raising them overhead. Prophet attempted to push the paper into the editor’s chest, as if it might be absorbed there to be accepted, appreciated, approved, and adored. The editor shook his head slowly, palms now flat against his chest, and Longbaugh saw Prophet frustrated.
Longbaugh was quick to dislike the anarchist. He knew he should stay neutral, and Etta had described him with empathy. But Longbaugh felt no need to extend her charity. On the other hand, it was bad policy to prejudge the man, as he needed information, and an adversarial attitude was not the way to get it. If he wasn’t careful, he was likely to underestimate him and miss something.
Harsh sunlight reflected off a window across the street and silhouetted Prophet, turning his large ears translucent. The image was so comical that Longbaugh suddenly understood Prophet’s entire life, the teasing, bullying, and humiliation, the forced isolation until he actively chose isolation, cropping his hair defiantly, and Longbaugh thought to himself, He’s an anarchist because of his ears. Prophet peeled his paper off the editor’s chest and refolded it with his white hands. He surveyed the room to see who had witnessed his disgrace. Everyone had looked away, not wanting to be the next target. Everyone but him. Prophet’s eyes found Longbaugh, and read his disapproval. Prophet pushed his way past the editor in charge and was out the door so quickly that Longbaugh was momentarily frozen. He followed, onto the sidewalk, watching the fleeing coat flap like a cape. He ran after him. Prophet looked back, saw him coming, and ran faster.
Prophet ran past Trinity Church, heading east on Wall Street, then turned north on Nassau. Longbaugh stayed after him, and they both slowed to a trot, until Prophet reached the subway station at Fulton. He turned, gave Longbaugh a quick glance, and ran down the stairs. Longbaugh followed, slowing to pay his nickel. He wondered if the anarchist had paid or if subway fares conflicted with his principles. On the platform, a crowd waited for the train. Prophet’s size and head start made it unlikely Longbaugh would luck on to him, but he continued to look. He heard a subway train approaching from inside the tunnel. He leaned and saw a light growing closer, brighter. A warm press of wind blew by as if a false train arrived ahead of the real one. The real one braked loudly to stop beside them, and every passenger watched the doors open. People came off. Then people got on. He craned his neck to see if Prophet was one of them, but he had already decided this was not the way to catch him.
He walked back to the offices of The Masses. He looked for the floppy editor and was told he had stepped out. The pastries had all been consumed while the thin box remained, a raft for crumbs.
Her writing confirmed things he had learned along the way. Some passages, however, were elusive, her words cautious, as if someone looked over her shoulder. He reread the letter where the initials SFS appeared for the first time, while thinking of her unfinished last letter, SFS traveling back and forth across the ocean. But he was unable to find anything to illuminate her later comment. In between, there were references to his journeys, as she concluded he was traveling exclusively on American ocean liners. Longbaugh did not understand what that meant.
He reread the section where she considered the benefits of hiding out with anarchists. This was written while she lived in the second boardinghouse, after having left Abigail’s. He reread the paragraph where she wrote she would gladly enter the paranoid anarchist world if it would keep the Black Hand from finding her. Her only reservation was Prophet. He was in love with her.
The floppy editor returned, teeth sunk into an éclair, fingers covered in sweet.
Longbaugh smiled to see what he had started. “I should have brought more.”
“I shouldn’t be doing this. It’ll spoil my wife’s supper. But I’ll eat all of that as well when she sets it in front of me. Sadly.” He patted his proud belly sadly.
“May I ask you about Prophet? About Jonah Calvin?”
“Apparently you know more than I. For instance, his real name.” Indicating the handsome editor who had rejected Prophet’s piece. “Although surely Eastman knows it.”
“Does he ever mention plans? Or where he lives?”
“Not where he lives. But he wants to be asked about his plans so he can pretend to be coy.”
“Did you ask?”
“Never.”
“So he didn’t tell you.”
“Oh no, he told me every chance he got.”
“And?”
The literary editor looked at him suspiciously. “They tell me I’m a soft touch, but I’m fairly certain I should be more circumspect here.”
“Do you get the best out of your people?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Then whatever you’re doing is working.”
“You’re not one of my people.”
Longbaugh shrugged. “I bribed you with an éclair.”
The editor nodded, acquiescing. “I suppose I can rationalize that. You want to know his plans. Not sure how to answer that. He’s not your typical anarchist. He’s like the cliché of an anarchist. He’d like to make a name for himself. But it was as if he was asking me for ideas on how to do it.”
“I hear he likes to borrow other people’s ideas.”
“Oh yes. Quotation without attribution is larceny.”
“You’re doing that thing, taxation without representation is tyranny.”
The editor cocked his smiling head, pleased.
“How would he make a name for himself?” said Longbaugh.
“Well, first I suppose he should blow something up. Preferably with people in the general vicinity.”
“You suggested that to him?”
“Of course not. That’s just how he would do it if he were the cliché.”
“You think he has that in him?”
“It’s plausible, to prove a point and make himself appear important. Unless he blows himself up first.”
“So he doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“Not in me.”
“And he’d use dynamite.”
“That would be the cliché.”
&n
bsp; “Where does one get dynamite?”
“Well, ‘one’ gets dynamite either from one who provides dynamite, or one who needs dynamite and stores it for future use, like those in construction. When they built Central Park, they cleared out acres of bedrock.”
“Central Park is complete.”
“The subway is not.”
Longbaugh smiled.
“Assuming,” said the floppy literary editor, seeing his shirttail out and tucking it in, “you can picture him with the guts to steal for his ‘cause.’”
• • •
LONGBAUGH risked a return to Abigail’s boardinghouse. He approached as Siringo had originally, circling in from blocks away, lurking to know if Siringo lurked. As he was well acquainted with the neighborhood, he was able to see without being seen in order not to be recognized. He might have consulted with any number of local peddlers, urchins, or even a few unrespectable bartenders to know if Siringo was near, but he risked that they were in Siringo’s pocket and the information would go the wrong direction. Han Fei’s help would have been welcome. But Han Fei was recuperating, and Longbaugh had resolved to shield him from any more danger.
Once he satisfied himself that no one was staking out the boardinghouse, he moved in to begin his own surveillance. He had been there only about an hour when he got lucky. Abigail came out the front door with empty bags over her arm. Shopping day. He let her pass by him to see if she was being followed. He picked up nothing suspicious and eased into the flow of pedestrian traffic. He did not fear losing her, as he was familiar with her routine and would catch up to her at any number of her favored stores and carts. But Siringo might know her routine as well. Longbaugh stayed alert.
He shadowed her from across the street, then moved ahead of her. He entered the pharmacy, which was usually her last stop. Even on those weeks when she had no need for soaps or cleaning products or medicines, she would peruse them idly before indulging her weakness for chocolates, as if by her attention to serious things she had earned that small wrapped box, a thing to hide at the back of the pantry. He stayed near the picture window, feigning interest in a shaving brush as he scrutinized the waltz of the street. Difficult as it was to pick out an enemy, on two different occasions he targeted possible stalkers with eyes on Abigail. Each time it proved to be an admirer of her looks. She seemed not to notice, and he thought that perhaps things were better in the marriage. She lingered at a fruit cart and he continued to catalog those wandering by.
