People have been asking me about the results of the Poetry
Center Contest.
I don't know yet and I'm not sure how soon I will know.
So don't ask.
Readers and listeners are invited to La Boca Coffee
House for an open reading every third Sunday
of the month at 8 o'clock.
We've got refreshments here at the auditorium tonight
and tables have been set up right out in the hall.
Robert Houston has been with us in the Creative Writing
Department since 1973.
His novels are A Drive with Ossie, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday!, Bisbee '17, and most recently, Cholo.
He's the editor of and contributor
to translations of Leon Felipe called The Last Troubadour.
He's written articles and reviews
for Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Nation, Southern
Exposure and other magazines.
We're very happy to have him read for us tonight.
Robert Houston.
[APPLAUSE]
How about [INAUDIBLE].
Oh, wow.
What?
I ain't ashamed.
Thank you, Lois.
It's always a little more difficult, a little more
nerve-wracking to read before home audience
and especially for free.
Why?
There's always somebody like that out there.
But we'll see if we can get through it.
I just want to lay my Pima College Memorial air gauge down
first.
Now I think what I will do this evening is read, first of all,
from a novel that I wrote a few years ago that I'm seriously
considering going back to and doing
a little tinkering with and seeing if anything
can be made out of it.
It's called Beating Old Saul.
And I really haven't read much from it.
We'll see how it goes.
I'll tell you a little bit about the people first.
I always feel as if I should be doing stand up
jokes up here to start off with.
Why?
There's one in the audience, except he's sitting down.
But I won't do that.
Instead, I will read a little bit
from the beginning of the novel to give you an idea of who
the characters are.
And then I'll read a wedding scene.
Weddings are always nice.
I like weddings.
So first of all, Levy.
"Levy finally got in bed and stayed there in 1943,
listening to telephone talk shows on the radio at night
and to Gabby Bell call Birmingham Baron baseball games
in the afternoon.
Mornings, she wrote letters to congressmen,
played solitaire, and watched old lady Woods next door
yell at her dead husband, poor [? Eiry ?],,
across an ironing board.
She stayed in bed, she said, because of her nerves.
Around 43, things had gotten to be so much for her
that her nerves just wouldn't take it if she
had to stand up and cope.
So when the union sent her husband Reuben
to organize new locals, they moved her bed from house
to house intact with the sheets and the ragged patchwork quilt
still on it.
Only that way, she said, could she
survive the moving in dither, spitting
her snuff into the radio and saving her nerves.
Levy traced her nerves back a long way,
though, she kept them bundled up like old love letters,
all through the time she was raising her children
and following Reuben around from pipe shop
to pipe shop in the long years before the union discovered
him.
She guess her nerves were her father's fault.
Her father was a mustachioed Atlanta carpenter who
spent most of his time sitting on the front porch with a jar
of whiskey singing songs like, oh,
Jeff Davis is getting mighty grand, sitting down to coffee
with a coffee pot of bran, and giving
rebel yells to trolley cars.
Levy was his only daughter and his whiskey runner,
back and forth between the house and her uncle's saloon
with the whiskey jar.
She had her first attack of nerves on a whiskey run,
in fact, when she was 11.
On the way home from the saloon, she
wandered into a Carrie Nation lecture
thinking it was a vaudeville show.
When she found out what it was all about,
she was so shocked that she dropped the jar of whiskey.
And as the fumes shot like a cloud of sin
around her and the starched audience,
she discovered her nerves.
Not long after the police brought her home from that,
her papa sent her out for another jar in the middle
of the Great Atlanta Race Riot.
She had her second attack of nerves
when somebody threw a Black man off a bridge
so that he splattered on the sidewalk
just in front of her new patent leather boots.
Her third attack was the one that knocked her nerves
permanently out of whack.
The July she was 14, her father stood up
to give a rebel yell to the postman
and fell over the porch rail.
He broke his neck on the birdbath.
The postman, who knew him well, thought
he was simply drunk again and passed on by.
It wasn't until Levy investigated the vacant whiskey
jar and topped over birdbath before supper
that evening that she found him dead among the pig wort bushes.
When she felt how cold he was, she pitched a two-day hissy
and then went into a major nerve attack and fainting fit that
took her six weeks to come out.
Her mother was a first cousin once removed
of Jefferson Davis on the Moore side
and so had no idea what to do with Levy except
keep her out of sight and hope she would get married.
Levy learned quickly and well to be lonely
and took up solitaire."
Well, Levy has two daughters and here they are.
"Violet was Levy's youngest, pretty in a less spectacular
way than her sister, Victoria.
Not frail, but fragile.
Violet's face was molded, Victoria's was chiseled.
Violet flowed, Victoria crackled.
Violet studied God and Victoria, men.
Violet was curves and willows, Victoria angles and pines.
Violet believed explicitly in everything-- love, propriety,
charity, and good work, private property, Levy's wisdom,
her father Reuben's intellect, the superiority
of Victoria's beauty, and, most passionately, in salvation.
Victoria believed in herself.
And as if on purpose, all her vital powers
had gone into growing a pair of such large, erect, and
perfectly conical breasts that there was nothing left over
to give her any waist or hips at all or any
need to believe in anything more.
Violet was thus clearly the only one
who could have made her first husband Leland sit up
all night holding a gun on her or who
could have made a September marriage to Wick the frog just
before he and the broomstick wound up
among the coffee grounds under Levy's rotting back porch."
Well, that's the wedding that I'm going to tell you about.
"Violet married Wick the frog when she was a little over 40
and they had to run off to Georgia
to do it to avoid her mother Levy.
Wick showed up one day selling alphabetical bibles."
And Wick does this, he sells alphabetical bibles
and if someone buys an alphabetical bible for him,
he figures they must be a good Christian.
So after he goes out and buys his fifth of Old Mr. Boston
and drinks it, he comes back and sleeps under their back porch
or on their back porch, figuring that they
were extending that charity.
He's called Wick the frog, because Violet's daughters
think he looks like a frog.
Wick is a man who drinks a considerable.
The only other name in this section
is Reuben, Levy's husband.
Reuben is a labor organizer who loves peace and working
man above all other things and never sees
that there's a contradiction involved in that.
His only real wish is to be as famous as his father who
founded eight different churches, because, each time he
got one going, they tried to slap dogma on him.
And eventually, he gave up and founded his own three-man bible
college, Montezuma College, on a hill beside a steel mill
to make his own dogma, but he never got any pupils.
He did get famous, though, and Reuben's
been trying to live up to that since.
Anyway, Violet decided to marry Wick.
Now what they do is go to motels together, Violet and Wick.
But what they do in the motels is play checkers,
because Violet has decided that's the only way
to keep Wick sober.
And this thing starts the morning
after a night in a motel.
But Wick sneaks off to the bathroom a lot
where he keeps his bottle of Old Mr. Boston hidden.
So Violet is less than successful.
She's going to marry Wick, because the Lord wants her to,
she's concluded.
She hasn't been with a man in eight years
and the Lord wants her to sacrifice herself.
"Violet got some breakfast down Wick
in Irondale just out of town.
But by the time they got 15 miles,
he lost it all over the back seat of the cab."
I should say that she's decided to take a cab to Georgia.
It's 150 miles, but she's never been any place.
And the simplest thing to do, to her,
seemed to maybe call a cab.
"He lost it all over the back seat of the cab.
The only way she kept the cab driver from turning back
was to get him to stop at a gas station
so she could scrub his cab out for him.
In Anniston, halfway to the state line,
she got Wick to eat a hot dog at a Dairy Queen.
But by Tallapoosa, just outside Georgia,
he spewed it on the back of the cab driver's neck.
The cab driver swore that if they hadn't already
been in Georgia, he would have dumped them and gone back
alone.
But Violet scrubbed his cab out again
and gave him a track and $2 to get his uniform cleaned.
So he agreed to go through the rest of the trip
if she promised not to feed Wick again.
She promised.
In Bremen, they got their blood test
in the County Health Office just across the street
from the Trojan prophylactic plant.
The nurse had a bad time with Wick
who kept scratching the ticks he said
were crawling all over him.
Violet sat and held both his hands
and talked to him until he was able to sit still long enough
for the needle to go in.
They were compatible, the blood test showed.
And the nurse gave them the souvenir card
that said, get married in Buchanan County, Georgia.
No waiting.
From Bremen, it was nine miles to the County Courthouse
in Buchanan.
Violet knew what they had to do in Georgia from her
and Leland's battle schemes before."
That was her first husband.
"In Buchanan, they had to find a judge who,
with luck, might be in his office in the courthouse.
Violet hoped so.
She hated to bother people at home with business things.
The courthouse was the only real business building in town,
a two story Gothic stone cube with a steeple and handless
clock.
A Confederate soldier at the foot of an obelisk
guarded the bandstand and little square in front of the door.
The road around the courthouse and square
was dirt and half a dozen gingerbread houses and two feed
and mercantile spaces onto it.
Mud seethed around the courthouse like quicksand.
And as Violent crawled out of the cab
by the wide, cracked steps, she had a flash of fear
that she would sink into it and never be found.
The cab driver had to help Wick get out of the cab
and pretended to pick ticks off of him
to keep him calm as they went into the courthouse
behind Violent.
Violet led the way, her face still without expression,
down the long dim hallway that ran
the length of the courthouse.
The wide boards of the unvarnished floor,
the olive wainscoting that rose halfway up the walls,
and the cracked green plaster above swallowed the light
from three naked bulbs dangling at intervals
from the high and cobwebby ceiling.
Gray light from the door at the other end of the hallway
faded toward her into the dimness
and made Violet feel as if she were
in a tunnel on a mineshaft.
Their footsteps thudded and echoed
on the dust of the [INAUDIBLE] boards.
Along the walls, like souls in purgatory-- note,
Violet didn't believe in purgatory--
sat a handful of old men in overalls and old women
in bonnets staring blankly from wooden benches at the walls
opposite them as if they were all waiting for something
with incredible patience.
Even as Violet stepped over a muddy dog asleep
at the door labeled Judge Cecil Bledsoe,
she couldn't get rid of the feeling
that she was underground, that she
was about to run out of air.
Judge Bledsoe was in, sitting before a roll
top desk in a room far too large for an office,
trying to catch enough light from the tall leaded windows
to read a sheaf of yellow legal papers.
He didn't look up when Violet came in.
Only when Wick groaned did he raise his eyes
over his glasses at them.
His heavy eyebrows that hung like awnings over a tiny face
with no chin rose slightly when he saw Violet
clutching the door frame"--
I mean, I'm sorry.
"Rose slightly when he saw Wick in the door frame,
groaning and trying to show the cab
driver where to find the ticks.
'He all right?' he asked Violet.
Violet was standing alone in the center of a huge room.
'We want to get married,' she said.
'Figured that.
Is he going to live long enough?'
He has a fever.
Violet's knees kept trying to come unlocked.
'Blood test,' Judge Bledsoe asked.
Violet crossed the room and handed him the form
the nurse had given her.
The judge put it down without looking at it.
'Got a witness,' he said.
Violet looked blank.
The judge nodded toward the cab driver.
'He going to be your witness?'
Violet looked over a shoulder at the cab driver.
He shrugged.
With a sigh, the judge heaved himself out of his swivel chair
and walked past Violet to the door.
He was shorter than she was, almost as short as Wick.
And at the door, he stood patiently
while the [INAUDIBLE] led Wick out of the way
to a cane bottom chair and deposited him in it.
Wick whimpered.
Lord, Violet thought, if you've ever helped me carry it.
The judge buttoned his coat and shouted down the hallway,
'wedding, everybody.'
The sound of slow bustling and shuffling feet
started up from the hall as the judge stalked back to his desk
and began asking Violet questions
for form he filled out with an old black fountain pen.
Violet felt the bow string began to tighten again
since the dark hole yawned.
The judge finished the form and Violet
turned to see a room full of old men and women
from the benches in the hall.
One of the women, faceless beneath her bonnet
and shapeless under her feed sack dress,
handed Violet a small bunch of winter wildflowers
and patted her arm.
The men were solemnly shaking Wick's and the cab driver's
hands.
Three or four dogs milled around in the crowd and one of them
hiked his leg on Wick's chair.
Huzzah! one of the men said and kicked it.
Violet [INAUDIBLE] old woman until the old woman
had to push her away.
The dark hole retreated a little bit.
Violet stood as straight as she could and let a film of tears
well up in her eyes.
'Ready,' Judge Bledsoe said.
'Well, let's get the bride and groom over by the door.
Everybody else in place now.
Who's going to give the bride away?'
'My turn,' one of the old men said.
'I reckon so, Riley,' the judge said. 'Best man?'
'Me,' another old man said.
'Ain't your time, Thurlow.
It's Winston's, ain't it?"
"Thurlow can do it,' the old man who must have been Winston
said, glowering at Wick.
Wick was pulling up his pants leg, looked for a tick.
Thurlow stepped out of the crowd,
lifting him up for his chair and steered him to the door.
The old lady with the flowers walked with Violet to the door,
patting her all the way.
Violet's lips were moving, saying the 23rd Psalm
over and over.
The rest of the men and women stood in two ragged lines
on either side of an imaginary aisle.
Riley shuffled up, took Violet's arm,
and smiled at her from a round, toothless mouth.
'Now,' the judge said.
One of the old men along the aisle
began to sing something that sounded
to Violet like (SINGING) hear Nora hitting ner ner,
hear Nora hitting ner ner over and over again,
while the woman who had given her the flowers hummed "Heaven
is Nearer Now That Mama is There."
Riley marched Violet, lips still moving, toward the judge.
He watched Violet's lips as they walked.
"Beg pardon ma'am," he said as they reached the judge,
"you talking to me?"
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me,"
Violet said audibly.
"Yes ma'am, praise Jesus," Riley said
and quit watching her lips.
When they got to the judge, Thurlow started down
the aisle with Wick.
"Oh, Lord, they've got it backwards," Violet thought,
"I'm not supposed to be here first."
She looked to the judge to tell him how horrible it was,
when one of them darted across the aisle,
and Wick tripped and fell down on top of it.
The dog yelped.
The same old man as before stepped out of line,
said "Huzzah," kicked it, and Wick
crawled off into the line of old women with his eyes closed.
One of the old women screamed, and two or three old men
dove for Wick.
Violet could stand no more.
She let herself sink down into the dark hole
and began to fill its muddy bottom with tears.
The next thing she knew, Riley was holding her arm
while the judge was asking Wick if he took this woman
to be his lawfully wedded wife.
Wick's eyes were focused somewhere
beyond the judge outside the window
where it had started to rain again.
He didn't answer.
The judge reached out and shook him and repeated the question.
"Hot damn," Wick said softly.
"What?
What's that?"
the judge said looking toward Violet.
Violet closed her eyes again.
She treaded water in the black hole as hard as she could.
"He says, I do," she said.
Her voice didn't break.
It didn't even quiver.
When she opened her eyes again, Riley's toothless face
was poking a three-day beard at her.
"Get to kiss the bride," he said.
He shifted his chewing tobacco further back in his cheek
and took Violet's shoulders.
Violet was abhorred.
He kissed her full on the mouth and she gagged.
"It's done, Lord," she said to herself.
Wick was taking a long drink of corn whiskey
from a Mason jar Thurlow held up for him.
"It's done, Lord."
Victoria and Levy peered down over the edge of the dark hole
at her.
Reuben stood behind them, staring off
at some far point in space.
"I've got me a man again, Victoria,"
Violet said, "a man, mama, just like you do."
"Fee's $10, Mrs. Makewater," the judge
said, "two more if you want the engraved certificate.
Most folks give a little something
to these good people."
He waves his hand toward the old men and women.
"And congratulations.
Need you two and the witness to sign my book now."
When they left the judge's office,
Violet walked in front again, her
face a mask, clutching the rolled up,
engraved certificate.
Wick came behind with Thurlow, the cab driver, and the Mason
jar.
On the steps, Violet felt that she'd come up above ground
again from the dark courthouse.
And in the dim, wet dusk, she gave quarters and dimes
to the old men and women until she ran out.
Thurlow helped stuff Wick into the cab
and took back the empty Mason jar.
Two teenagers in a hot rod with Alabama plates
pulled up to the steps behind them.
The girl huddled wide-eyed under the skinny boy's arm.
As the cab slid away through the mud, one of the old women
threw a handful of rice.
The last thing Violet could make out
was Riley's toothless face as he waved a goodbye kiss,
and turned away to follow the teenagers into the courthouse.
"It's done, Lord.
Thy will be done."
The tree limbs against the sky were what Levy had told her
they were when she was a little girl--
witch's fingers.
The white whiskey seemed to have taken care of Wick's ticks
for the time being.
As they turned onto the main highway out of Buchanan,
he tried to lean over to Violet and wound up sliding down
in the seat beside her.
"Hon," he said without trying to get up.
"Yes, Wick, I'm here."
"This supposed to mean we in love, don't it?"
"Yes."
"Good.
I've always wondered what that felt like."
he reached an arm for Violet's knees but missed.
By the time they reached Bremen, he was asleep.
[APPLAUSE]
Clapping is always good in the middle of reading--
wakes people up.
[LAUGHS] Well, let me see.
What I'm going to try to do is read a short section now.
I've been told by Lois that I've got to stop after 52 minutes
because the machine goes off.
So this one shouldn't run that far.
No.
No, it won't run 52 minutes.
We're already halfway through the 52 minutes-- even
more than halfway.
So if you want to stand up and do some calisthenics or slap
yourself, that's all right.
I don't mind.
See what I mean about reading at home?
This is a section from Bisbee '17.
It's told from the point of view of a man named Jim Brew.
What happened in Bisbee in 1917 is the subject
of this book called Bisbee '17.
The IWW, the notorious Wobblies, called a general strike
in Bisbee--
in his last life, he was Wobbly--
a strike that shut down the mines during World War I.
The Wobblies were perhaps the most romantic union
this country has ever seen.
They were our last genuinely native radical movement.
To settle that strike, Sheriff Harry Wheeler, the Sheriff
of Cochise County, the last of the two-gun sheriffs,
organized a 2000-man army, which is, in fact, the largest
posse in the history of the West, far as I
know, and pulled a midnight raid, rifle butts on the door,
that sort of thing, dragged a couple
of thousand strikers out, and the next day
shipped 1,200 of them out in cattle cars into the desert.
This was the largest mass kidnapping
that I know of up until that time.
Well, this is near the beginning of the book,
and the Wobblies are in town.
Jim Brew is a miner.
Some other names that come up in here, although they're not
really vital--
Bo Whitley will come up, the young IWW organizer
who's in town, Jim's cousin, who is
sort of the romantic lead of the novel, if you will.
Harry Wheeler, I've already mentioned--
the last of the two-gun sheriffs-- little guy, about 5'
2".
He was too short to get in the Army,
and never could live that down.
And Shotgun Johnson, his deputy.
Big Bill Haywood-- everybody knows Big Bill Haywood,
I think.
Everybody ought to know Big Bill Haywood, who
was the leader of the Wobblies.
Captain Greenway and Grant Dowell and Tom Matthews
are all company officials.
Captain Greenway became-- after he
got through deporting Wobblies-- a regent of the University
of Arizona among other things.
OK.
Jim Brew, July 1, 7:00 AM.
"Too old," Jim Brew tells himself
as he drags himself up the haulage tunnel of the Copper
Queen west, wore out and too blessed old for the graveyard
shift, timbering all night in the hot spot drift
where the heat is so high the water in the air
turns into underground rain, then coming out here
where the air gets sucked in through the cracks
in the mountain so hard the wind blows forever.
And it's always 40 degrees.
If the miner's consumption don't get him,
the God almighty winds in this shaft will.
Bo Whitley once said that Jim Brew
looks like a sly bear, hunkered over when he walks, with arms
that swing down nearly to his knees,
eyes just a little oriental, inherited from a Cherokee
grandmamma on his daddy's side.
His hair is cut too short on the sides and too long on top.
His ears are as flat as if they had
been pasted back to his head.
For the most part, he's reconciled himself
to being too old and broke nosed and stumble-footed ever
to have a wife.
But every now and again, alone at night in his room at Mrs.
Stodgell's boarding house down in Jiggerville,
he thinks maybe not.
Someday, a little ahead, he'll marry
him a cantina girl from Naco.
He's already sending money to two of them.
One of them even gave him a present--
a good cavalry sword she snitched from the Mex officer.
But the thing Jim Brew would appreciate
more than anything else is a change room, a bathhouse.
He comes up all sweaty and stinking like this,
and has to walk home through the early morning mountain
chill in the same dirty long johns he's worked in all night.
If he had a wife to keep a hot bath for him at home
it wouldn't be so bad.
At the Union meeting the other night
Bo Whitley said that if St. Peter was a company man
he'd send you through the pearly gates
in your sweaty long johns, same as here.
Jim Brew thought that was pretty rich.
He told it to all the boys on the graveyard shift.
Bo Whitley's smart-- got a schoolhouse in his head.
Everybody else thinks so, too, which pleases Jim Brew.
He practically raised Bo Whitley after Bo run off
from his family.
He's his cousin, too.
And now that Bo has come back a big man with the Wobblies,
he still stays with Jim.
Most of the other stiffs in the boarding house
always thought he was a little queer, probably
from the time a chink hit him in the head
with a rock in a fight up in Tombstone,
but they respect him now.
If the Union's going through with a strike
like Bo says they're going to, they might get a change room.
Jim should know if they're on strike as soon as he comes out
of the tunnel.
Bo said the strike was already-- had already been decided on,
and the final meeting last night was more or less a formality.
Bo says the IWW are syndicalists.
Jim doesn't know what that is, but it sounds all right.
Bo says that means the Union will take the mines away
from the bosses.
Jim guesses he'd rather have the Union pay
his wages than the company.
He can see the end of the tunnel,
and he opens his carbide lantern to get
ready to shake the burned carbide out of it
at the mouth of the mine.
He knows the number of bare light bulbs above by heart.
There are three more before the collar of the tunnel.
If they can get a change room out of it,
Jim guesses he'll go on strike all right.
Nobody should be able to say that Jim Brew was a damn scab.
And if they get $6 a day like the Wobblies want,
he could get a little ahead and marry a cantina girl from Naco.
They make good wives if you treat them right.
Everybody says so.
He'd like to stay in Bisbee, maybe get a pension
if they win the strike.
Hell, he's looking 60 in the face now.
He's too old to be a tramp miner or a 10-day boomer
anymore, two old to hop freights and sleep in Mulligan camps
by the side of the railroad track.
Leave that to the younger stiffs.
They like it.
Jim Brew's seen a little bit of it all.
He remembers he was seven years old when the Yankees came
and his daddy and mama had to leave Alabama.
He remembers San Angelo, Texas, and how
his mama cried when her good rocking chair got burned up
in the range war.
He remembers Bisbee, when Heath and his men
shot up Mr. Goldwater's store.
And the boys got mad and busted through Mule Pass
to Tombstone and lynched Heath.
He seen a man get killed with a hammer in Tombstone Canyon,
with an ax in Brewery Gulch, with a gun in Naco.
He's worked everywhere, from the orphan line in Nevada
to the sunshine in Idaho.
He's double and single-jack drilled, mucked,
trimmed, and skinned in every kind of hard rock mine
on God's green earth.
He's seen Geronimo and fought his braves.
He's dealt Faro in Sonora, California, and Blackjack
in Goldfield, Nevada during the gold boom.
Once he got so well thought of they
even made him payroll banker in Butte,
which was the best job he ever had.
He's plaster mined in Oregon, and prospected
from the dragoons to the superstitions.
What he's really wanted to do most was be a peddler.
But there's always been a woman that needed money,
or a Panguingue or a Coon Can grande
game that needed sitting in on.
Oh, he'd love it, though.
Get something that people wanted to buy
and set up a stall somewhere-- souvenir rocks,
maybe, for the people who come through on the Drummer's
Special from the east.
When they win the strike, he'll do that maybe.
He knows the strike is on as soon
as he steps out into the yard.
Over the quiet pulse of the steam hoist
he can hear the singing and hollering.
And the mounted company bulls are all around
the collar of the shaft to search him
and the other boys, looking for swiped dynamite they say.
Then Miles Merrill, the chief company bull,
makes a little speech about the Wobblies being
German agitators, and how he's sure
every patriotic miner will ignore them down at the gate
and show up for work tomorrow.
He doesn't get finished before one
of the stiffs with a Swedish accent tells him to go screw
himself.
Merrill gets huffy and asks him why he doesn't go back
where he came from.
The guy says he can't because he's an Indian, and most
of the other miners laugh.
One of the company scissorbills makes
a remark about German spies and the Swede hits him.
The company bulls break it up.
The world has cracks in it, like the mountain above the mine.
All month Jim Brew has felt it.
You don't know who's a union man and who's a company fink.
The Mexes all might be Villistas,
to hear the company union men tell it.
You don't know who to speak to on the street anymore.
The distrust is like a fog, creeping up
Tombstone Canyon and Moon Canyon and all the canyons of Bisbee.
Who the hell do you turn to?
Who's a German spy?
Who's a company spy?
For his money, Jim Brew will stick by Bo Whitley.
If there's anything Jim Brew has learned
is that you got to go by the people in an outfit
to know whether the outfit is any good.
At the gate, the company bulls make
sure everybody keeps moving.
Just outside on the railroad right-of-way,
a half a dozen deputies with car beams
are keeping the way clear.
Jim looks around for Sheriff Harry Wheeler,
but doesn't see him.
The deputies are being bossed by Wheeler's deputy, Shotgun
Johnson, strutting with his sawed-off 12-gauge.
Some of the day shift people are trying to get in
through the picket lines.
And Lord, there are a lot of boys on that line,
like a company picnic.
The day shift scabs aren't having too good a time of it.
Neither are Shotgun Johnson and the deputies.
Jim Brew would sure as hell hate to run that picket line.
When the Wobs strike, they call it good one.
He gets to the gate, and the boys on the picket line
are hollering for him to join them.
Most of the other men going out the gate join,
but who knows how many do it for fear of getting their ass
busted if they don't?
Just up ahead, three or four of the boys on the line
have got hold of a scab, who Jim heard yell "traitor"
at one of the Wobs before.
Now he's down on the ground, and the boys
are kicking hell out of him with their miner's boots.
Shotgun Johnson breaks it up and shoots off one barrel
of his 12-gauge into the air.
Boys calm down a little bit, but the scabs still
have to dodge rocks to get through.
They're looking worried.
Jim guesses it's because they know
they got to get back through that line
after they make their shift.
And there's more than one thing can happen
to a stiff underground, too.
Jim would hate like hell to get in a cage,
to go underground thinking that the hoistman with his hand
on the brake might be a Wob.
Jim feels a tap on his arm.
Bo Whitley's motioning him onto the line.
Bo is grinning that grin he has sometimes
that makes him look like a kid with a devil in mind.
Jim [INAUDIBLE] from when Bo was a boy.
If they weren't men out on a picket line,
he'd like to hug him.
Instead, he takes a kick at a deputy.
Bo slaps him on the back for that.
Hell, Jim's been in strikes before.
He even carried a Wobbly card once back in '07 in Goldfield.
Everybody carried one then, from the mayor to the newsboys.
Big Bill Hayward got so carried away in that one
he even tried to organize a Bronco Busters Union Local over
in Salt Lake.
But Jim's a little worried, too.
He ought to be studying about a pension.
What the hell kind of life is it for a man without a pension?
Soup kitchens and missions and the poor house.
But he can't let Bo down.
So when the deputy whirls around,
Jim brings his lunch pail down on him.
Deputy ducks, and Bo pulls Jim out of the way
back into the crowd.
All the scabs are going in or passed now.
A good half of them gave up and went home.
A dozen or so even got on the picket line.
Bo jumps up--
I'm sorry.
Bo jumps up on a 50-gallon oil drum that nigger John
Brown is holding for him.
He tries to say something, but most of the boys
are still worked up and yelling cuss words at the deputies
and company bulls.
So Bo and a fat fellow, who seems to be Bo's assistant,
start a song to get everybody's attention.
Jim remembers it from Goldfield and joins.
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum.
Hallelujah, bum again.
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again."
it's a good one to get the boys in a better mood.
And by the time they get to the last chorus,
everybody is singing it at the top of his lungs, even
the Bohunks and Dagos who don't know what it means.
Lordy, Jim feels good now.
He had forgotten how fine a strike could
be, like a tent meeting except the preaching makes more sense.
The deputies stand back now that they see there is not
going to be any trouble.
Shotgun Johnson tries to make sure that the pickets stay off
company property, but can't so he gives up.
And then the speechmaking begins.
Jim can't understand a lot of it because it's
in Finn and Bohunk and Mex.
But he and the other stiffs hollering just
like the Finns and Bohunks and Mexes do.
That's the Wobs for you, Jim thinks.
The FFL won't even look at you unless you're a citizen.
The Wobs take anybody, even niggers.
Then Bo Whitley speaks.
Jim's proud.
Bo's good, uses his hands a lot, and makes his voice sing like
a revival preacher's.
Crowd gets quiet now.
Bo tells about the girls in the shops, and the dark mills,
and the children with their legs cut off
so that capitalists can sail on big boats to Europe.
He says that capitalists are fat and live off
the blood of the working stiff.
He tells about the widows and orphans from the unsafe mines.
Some of the boys are crying before he gets done.
Then he tells what the Wobs want--
$6.00 and 8 hours a day, collar to collar;
water hoses on the pneumatic drills to keep down the dust
that gives you the miner's consumption and can kill you
in less than a year.
No blasting during work shifts so the mines
don't cave in and choke you.
Two men on all machines underground so
if one gets hurt, he's got somebody
to go for help before he lays there and dies.
The boys cheer him after every demand.
"How many of you boys ever had a physical examination?"
Bo asks.
Some of the men laugh, but most of them make faces and groan.
"Now, ain't that funny," he says.
"I had me one when I went to wrestle me a job last week.
Fellow asked me if I want to see--
if I want to join the company's union before I
go in to see the doctor.
"No thanks," I tell him, and pull out my little red IWW
card.
"I got me a real union," I says.
The boys whistle and clap.
"Then he sends me in to see old Doc Bledsoe."
Somebody hoots, and a couple of boys make raspberry noises.
Old Doc Bledsoe, he pulls on my earlobe and looks at my tongue
and tells me to wait outside.
A few minutes later, the fellow that asked me about the Union
comes out.
Sorry, he tells.
Doctor's report says you got two flat feet, polio,
one arm, apoplexy, consumption, and three balls.
The crowd breaks up laughing.
Jim looks around him and sees that even the deputies
are smiling.
Bo goes on.
"So," I says to him, "does that mean I ain't healthy enough
to work for Captain Greenway?"
Afraid so, the fellow tells me.
But one thing I want you to know for sure,
the fact you're a union man ain't
got a thing to do with it.
Well, one of the boys has brought up a washtub
from somewhere and beats out a tattoo on it
with a pair of sticks.
[COUGHS] Excuse me.
Striking's hard work.
The rest of the men slap one another on the back and clap
and whistle.
Jim is so proud of Bo he thinks he'll split open.
Bo holds up his hands for quiet.
"Are you boys as sick of that horseshit as I am," he shouts.
The men roar back at him, "Yes.
Hell, yes."
"You ready for a [INAUDIBLE] that
ain't afraid to take on Captain Greenway and Grant Dowell,
and even old Walter Douglas himself
up in his company president's chair in New York?"
"Yes.
Hell, yes."
"You ready for one big union?"
"Yes.
Hell, yes."
"You ready to give the mines and mills and factories
to the people they belong to, to the great working
people of this country?"
"Yes.
Hell, yes."
Bo jumps down off the oil drum and the fellas crowd around
him to shake his hand.
Then the fat man, who seemed to be Bo's helpers,
struggles up on the drum and announces
his name is fellow worker Hamer, and that there'll
be a big rally this evening up in City Park on the gulch,
and that there will be some surprise speakers.
He says he has some IWW membership
cards for the men who don't have one yet, and they can--
he can sign them up on the spot.
Dues are $2 to join, and $0.35 a month for everybody.
Bo sort of fades into the background,
and Jim sees him keeping his eye train station off to the left.
A crowd's gathering on the station platform.
Jim makes out Captain Greenway in his riding boots
and campaign hat.
He thinks he sees Sheriff Wheeler standing
on the other side of Greenway, but can't be sure
since Wheeler is such a runt and Greenway is so tall.
He's sure he sees Grant Dowell, though, and Tom Matthews.
A few of the boys from the Copper Queen Band
are forming up behind them.
For the first time, he realizes he should be afraid.
Wheeler and Greenway and Dowell and that bunch,
they don't forget things.
Jim takes his Ingersoll out of his watch pocket
in his Levi's and checks it.
Getting on towards 7:30.
Time for the Drummer's Special from El Paso.
With that collection of big wigs,
must be somebody important coming in.
A Wob taps Jim on the shoulder and says to him,
you signed up yet, fellow worker?
Jim is indignant that the stiff doesn't know he's a friend
of Bo Whitley's.
Of course, he's signed up.
Then the fat man, who said his name was Hamer,
works [INAUDIBLE] selling cards with songs on them
for a nickel apiece.
Jim looks through them for one of Bo's songs
and doesn't find one, but he buys three anyway.
Then Bo jumps back on the oil drum
and asks the boys if they'd like to serenade
some friends of theirs.
He points to the station platform
where Captain Greenway and Sheriff Wheeler and the others
are.
The boys clap and hoot some more.
Bo tells them to make it loud and asks the stiffs who
have song cards to share them.
Bo shares with the Jew jitney driver he knows
named Bronstein.
Bo plays the tune first on a harmonica,
then tells everybody to turn toward the station platform
and sing with him.
He makes a mock bow to the ladies on the platform
with their parasols.
Then he leads the singing.
And Jim imagines the music echoing off
the canyons for miles and miles, even as far as Mexico.
We have fed you all for 1,000 years,
and you hail us still [INAUDIBLE]..
Though there's never dollar of oil your wealth,
but marks the workers dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
and you lie on crimson wool.
Then if blood be the price of all your wealth, good God,
we have paid it in full.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]