Twenty

CARRIE BISHOP

I’VE NEVER KNOWN HOW IT WAS PLANNED, OR WHO WAS IN charge. They were pledged to silence, and they keep their word even today. What I do know is that Rondal was gone most nights to the miners’ hall on Summers Street, or on the train to a local union hall up some holler. I never expected to be with him in the evenings.

Summer evenings in the city had a special charm. A cool breeze from the Kanawha River blew the daytime heat from the sidewalks, and the air softened. People came out to stroll along the brick streets and children flew by on rollerskates or played hopscotch. I liked to walk up Kanawha Street, past the elegant Ruffner Hotel and the three-story stone mansions set back beneath the trees. Rondal said they were mostly coal operators’ homes, but I liked to look at them anyway.

If I didn’t feel like walking far, I sat on the riverbank and watched the boats, looked in the store windows downtown or went to the stone library near the state capitol building. I didn’t have any money, but Rondal had a small salary from the union and he gave me quarters for ice cream sodas. On my birthday, he took the entire day off. We walked around the corner to Majors Book Store and he gave me a copy of Bleak House for a present. Then we took the streetcar to Luna Park, rode the merry-go-round and ate hot dogs. We ended the day with vaudeville at the Burlew Theater. I loved to be with him, but I didn’t mind being alone. He was happier than at anytime I had ever known him.

He did tell me a little at night when he came in worn out but unable to sleep and I bathed his face with a cool cloth and massaged his back. He spoke of Sheriff Don Chafin of Logan County, the meanest man in the state of West Virginia.

“He’s got secret police like that Czar had in Russia. He’s got hundreds of deputies, and the coal companies pay all their salaries. In Logan County, folks disappear in the middle of the night. And ifn anybody at the Huntington depot buys a train ticket for Logan, the secret police tail him, no matter who he is, or what his business is. The union aint never even got a toehold in Logan County. But we got to go through there to git to Justice. We’ll have to hang that bastard Chafin.”

He brought in a case of Pabst longnecks and drank three bottles every night.

“The local boys at headquarters are gitting nervous. The federal boys in town know something’s up. Everybody’s scairt.”

“How many men you talking about?” I asked.

He sipped his beer, studied the bottle. “Ten thousand,” he said.

“Lord in heaven,” I said.

He gave me a U.M.A. headband to sew onto my nurse’s cap. It covered the three black stripes that stood for the Grace Hospital.