A row of peeling dark green houses slid past across the creek. Their jumbled back porches were immodestly laid bare to passing trains. Washtubs hung on the walls and gray laundry flapped from wires strung between the porch posts. A spindly yellow dog charged across a footbridge, tossed its head. The noise of the train drowned out its yapping.

At the last house a woman leaned over the porch rail beside a row of potted plants. She waved at us. Then she ran down the steps and across the road to a green frame post office. She yanked the American flag from its bracket beside the door, tucked the pole under her arm and loped across the bottom, her skirt held high and her ponytail flying. We rounded a long curve beside a baseball diamond and she met us on the other side, planted her feet wide apart, and whipped the flag back and forth, beating the air to cream. We cheered like we were at a baseball game. A man near me, who wore an army helmet, flat like a saucer, snapped to attention and saluted.

The woman was lost to us around the bend.

Twenty-one

RONDAL LLOYD

ALMOST AS SOON AS WE ARRIVED AT THE FOOT OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN, we got word that we had to turn back. We were ordered to a meeting with the District 17 leadership at the baseball field in Danville to learn why the march was called off.

The men were in an uproar, and I was furious. Blair Mountain was all that stood between us and Logan, and Logan was the gateway to Justice County. I had no intention of returning to Charleston. But when the men heard the District was backing down, they got nervous. Talcott and I went to Danville to try to get things going again. Carrie and Doc Booker stayed behind because Carrie was so weary of traveling. I put her up in a hotel at Clothier and Doc boarded with a colored family nearby, the hotel being Jim Crow. I figured they were safe enough, for the union boys from Ramage and Sharples were in control there. We loaded the train, backed it up and returned to Danville.

They are good men, the District leaders. Two of them are even socialists, friends of Doc’s. But they just didn’t know. They always wanted to talk strategy. I admit that strategy is important. But they had lived in Charleston too long and couldn’t understand that things had gone beyond strategy.

Frank Keeney, the District president, stood at home plate on the Danville diamond with his hands in his pockets and jiggled his legs nervously. Miners filled the bleachers behind the batting cage, packed the infield, hunkered down along the baselines. Talcott and I pushed through to get in close. I knew Keeney would be looking for me.