“All right, all right, just. calm down, Charles, please.”
Neither spoke for some minutes. Then Charles said that they should leave now but come back with money and men. Somehow the mention of “men” made them realize, just as the mention of “murder” made them realize that they could be murdered, that “men,” from the NPL or the IWW or the MCPS or wherever, a crack squad of socialist commandoes from the office of the mayor of Minneapolis, were long overdue. The mention of “missing men” and the echo of the mention of “murder” made them think that there had in fact been some killing already, perhaps a lot of it.
Now was the time to see Rejean Houle and find out whose side he’d chosen for the day.
They chose the train station, and that was where the big man found them. “No one seems to know who you are. I’ve spoken to a number of organizations, both fair and foul, and nobody claims you. So you either got someone big pulling for you, or someone big pulling against you. Or possibly someone big not giving a shit about you, if they ever did. I guess I should say that you’ve got both, which is why you are standing so still and nervous-like in my town. So I’m going to treat you like I treat all strangers, and tell you plainly you better get the hell out of here, and I mean now.”
“I have documents, asshole,” Charles said.
“Is that French for asshole documents? That would be wiping paper?”
“I have documents from Teddy fucking Roosevelt. I—”
“No, no, no, I don’t care who you are now. I just want you—”
“Don’t show him the documents, honey,” said Vera. “He doesn’t deserve them. They’ll just confuse him. Let McGee and the MCPS deal with him later.” She laughed artificially but persuasively, and Charles helplessly admired it.
“Okay,” chuckled the big man. “Show me ‘the documents.’”
“No,” said Charles, “second thought, I don’t have to prove who I am to you, whoever you are, you big fat fucking asshole, or to anybody else. This is the United States of America, you goddamn thug. We’ve got plenty of money, we’re not vagrants. You can’t kill us. Even if you are confused.”
Charles supposed that was when it became clear that he could.
“And look,” said Vera, “look around you, you simpleton. Are we not at the train station?”
“My, my, my,” said the big man. “Guess I’ll see you later.” He started to walk away, then stopped. “When are you people going to realize that we are making do here. We are facing up to the mysteries of life and the hard obstacles of making a living and we have nice little village here that you are interfering with. You are not making things better, see? You are making things worse.”
When he was gone, Vera said she would wait to see if anyone from the NPL or, long shot, the IWW, showed up. If they did, she would try to give the speech; if they did not, she would not. Charles silently acquiesced, making a strong simple gesture with his head.
Night fell. A man whose name Vera did not recognize, but who seemed not merely authoritative in his argument but concerned for her well-being too, had reached them via telephone at the hotel, to which they had returned as if in a traveling spotlight. He’d made it clear the NPL would have nothing to do with her as a stand-in for Daisy, who had been quickly rearrested and remained in jail as a flight risk, no bail allowed. They would in fact disavow her; and, as there was evidently no longer an IWW presence in the town, she would find herself in a pickle. He wanted to know what the hell the IWW was thinking of anyway. “If they are around somewhere, are they just looking for a fight? Like in the good old days? Because this isn’t the good old days anymore.”
“I’m doing this on my own,” Vera said, mouthing her words exaggeratedly into the little megaphone atop the candlestick, the awkward artificiality of the act making her feel even more secretive, even deceitful, causing her to make exaggerated faces and use her hands more than she would have were she face to face with the man.
“I don’t understand,” said the tiny squawky voice in its boiling ocean of static.
“Nobody does,” said Vera. “That’s okay.” She smiled at the megaphone and hung the speaker in its cradle. It was hard to imagine herself as tiny and squawky in an ocean of boiling static, but she knew that it must have been so from the caller’s perspective.
The men from the IWW hall, five of them, quietly appeared at the door of their hotel room. From a distance they passed for calm, serious men, but this illusion was quickly dispelled: they were in the late stages of crippling panic, either groggy with it as one would be when saturated by any chemical, dull and dopily indifferent to any kind of stimulation — a smile and a kind word as well as a threat or a loud noise — or bound by it so tightly they might have been in straitjackets, able to move only their eyes. Only one of them seemed able, or willing, to follow one thought with another, and he was dumbfounded: he could not understand the false affiliation with the MCPS—“It’s not false,” Charles said, “I am merely using it under false pretenses”—the purpose it served, nor their unwillingness to appeal to that organization immediately.
“That would remove us from danger, possibly,” Charles said.
“Well, why the hell don’t you do that?”
“We sorta came up here to be in danger.”
“Nobody here gives a damn about that!” the man shouted too loudly. “We’re already dead!”
“Ditto that,” said Vera, who had been staring out a window at the tracks.
“This is not our home!” cried one of the silent Wobblies. “The world is not our home, you can understand that when you’re left alone for a while. These, these people here. they’ve banded together so they can feel like this is their home. They’re not afraid.”
“Oh, they’re afraid,” Charles said.
“Not like we are.”
“We aren’t afraid,” said the first Wobbly to talk. “We’re dead. Nothing to be afraid of when you’re dead. I’ve learned that.”
“If there has been a little doubt sown in the minds of the big men around here, then maybe they won’t act so recklessly,” Charles said. “They won’t act like such nasty bullies when all people are trying to do is feel at home for a while. Of course the happy functioning of the little village is in jeopardy. People they don’t even know are suffering so they can have a happy little village. I could excuse them if they didn’t act like they’d earned the right to their happy village. Of course I’m intruding. Intrusion is just as much a part of their happy little world as ignorance is. Doesn’t matter what they prefer.”
Nevertheless he went downstairs and persuaded the clerk to let him place a call, slapping coins down as hard on the desk as he had done at the saloon some days in the distant past. He spoke for a very long time to someone he did not know, who could not or would not connect him to anybody he knew. He was told that his concern for his personal safety was noted with emphasis, that steps would be taken, and that he was not to worry. He could leave if he wanted to, or he could hang in there and see what happened next. He was working, wasn’t he, for the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, and had something of a duty, did he not?
Charles trudged up the steps to his room. Did he in fact want to be safe? Wasn’t it closer to the truth to say he wanted “revenge”? Against the greedy unprincipled arrogant assholes who had killed Father and all those poor players who were blown to pieces mid-strut, mid-fret, a beautiful, moving speech about what it meant to be human just beginning to flow in its strange and awful way from the brain to the vocal cords, the palate, the tongue, the teeth, the lips — most of all the oxygen-rich lungs? Which would soon be shredded and bubbling on the floor of the stage?