It was a golden summer. We lived in tents, but the weather was warm and the union sent us food. We had typhoid, but no more than was usual in the camps. Some of the mines still worked but our men blew up tipples and burned company stores. Some were killed, but no more than in the mines. Jenkinjones belonged to us. And whenever we walked to town we were greeted with a sign proclaiming FREE ANNADEL. The Free Press, black-bordered in memory of C.J. Marcum, ran articles extolling the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. On every corner, an armed miner stood sentinel with his red bandana knotted around his neck. The gun thugs called us rednecks. It was a name we accepted with pride.

There was no feeling like it in the world. I believed we could beat any coal company, any sheriff, any governor. So did everyone else. You could see it in the way people swaggered, hear it in the high-pitched laughter when they gathered over the cook-fires. I know now that Albion and Rondal were not so optimistic, that they hid their feelings for our sakes. I don’t know how they did it. And sometimes, later, I cursed them for it. If we had known, would we have gone out, suffered like we did? I can hear them now, answering such a question.

“Hit aint the right question, whether or not we win,” Albion would say. “The right question is, are we faithful? Ifn we strike just to win, we are lost at the start. We must strike to please God, because nothing else will find favor in His sight.”

Rondal? “A man does what he has got to.” And he would say nothing more, no matter how hard you shook him.

The miners were past arguments anyway. If Rondal had tried to dissuade us he could not have. On the Fourth of July, a vaudeville troupe came to Annadel. Isom persuaded them to give a series of free shows. (No one asked what means of persuasion Isom used.) They performed in each camp, but Albion and I saw them at the Roxie. We hunched together in the dark and held hands. A sing-along time followed the last act. Slowly, rhythmically, everyone sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” rocking from side to side, shoulders touching. I walked home with Albion in the moonlight, swinging his hand in mine and softly sang, “In the Good Old Summertime.” Ahead of us in the camp, firecrackers snapped and spat. Behind the tent flaps, men perched on the edges of spindly cots and cleaned their rifles.

Two days after Labor Day, trainloads of strikebreakers arrived, accompanied by more Baldwin-Felts guards. Miners on strike were fired and their names placed on the blacklist. The scabs moved into the company houses at Felco, Winco, Carbon, and all the Davidson mines. Only Jenkinjones remained closed.