We agreed that only Johnson and I would recruit new members at first. It was a frightful thing to approach a man, to read his eyes as you talked to him and wonder if you had misjudged him. It was even more worrisome to learn from Johnson that union officials in Charleston didn’t think the Levisa coalfield was ready to be organized.

“Why’d you come?” I asked.

“I knew they was a Socialist paper down here. I met Doc Booker in Charleston last year. Thought I’d give it a try.”

When I asked Doc Booker about this, he said, “That’s right. Them union officials say, ‘They’s a bear in the woods. It be too dangerous, so let’s send a colored man, see if he come out without the bear eat him.’”

After a week I had spoken to eight men. On Friday a gun thug met me and Daddy on our way to work at the drift mouth. He pointed his rifle at my head and grinned.

“Where’s your union card?”

I stepped back. The gun barrel poked me in the chest.

“What’s this?” Daddy said.

“Git on out of here, old man. This is between me and your boy.”

“I dont know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Hell you don’t. You got ten seconds or I’ll blow a hole in you. Where is it?”

My head felt like it would burst into flames.

“In my shoe,” I managed to say. I had slit the instep with a razor and worked the card down inside.

“You kill my boy you’ll have to kill me too,” Daddy said.

The guard laughed. “Go on home, old man. We’re going to teach him a little lesson.” He pushed me with the rifle barrel. “Let’s us take a walk down to the powerhouse.”

Daddy yelled after me, but I couldn’t understand him. Five gun thugs met us at the powerhouse, dragged me inside. The boss man, Malcolm Denbigh, an Englishman, stood beside the huge coal-eating furnace that provided the electricity for Winco. Johnson was with him. His arms were tied behind his back and he stared down at his feet.

“We’ve had our eye on you for a while, Lloyd,” Denbigh said. “You run with a crowd of red agitators at Annadel. Now you’ve brought this union nigger here. What do you think we ought to do with you?”

My knees gave out. Hands gripped me like iron pinchers and held me up.

I tried to say, God, Johnson, I swear I didn’t tell.

One man threw open the furnace door.

Shall we throw this white boy in, cook him black as a nigger?

Their mouths opened. They were laughing.

Who else took the pledge, son? Who else?

A rifle butt struck me in the belly and I doubled over. They dragged me over to the furnace, made to lift me, then pulled me back and threw me against the wall. I struck my head.

I’d rather kill a nigger. It’s more fun.