Thou art not conquered.
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Eva hears the hushed click of the vestibule door closing behind her. As she has done so many times before, she walks toward the altar. A few rows from the back, she pauses, considering a pew, deciding against it. For a long time, she simply stands in the aisle and tries to pray without kneeling. Not a single word comes to her. She is vaguely surprised by that.
She has known the prayers since she was a small girl. Coming to Mass with her family, hearing the Gregorian chants and the Latin liturgy—those are among her earliest memories. The prayers are as familiar to her as . . .
As her brother’s name.
There is only a black silence inside her, like the echoing darkness of the abandoned mines she and Kazimir used to explore. And when, at last, the words break loose, they come to her like a cave-in. Like the crushing collapse of everything she relied on. Like the loss of everything she thought was true and good.
“Why?” she demands, her eyes on the thin and bloody figure above the altar. “Why do you just hang there and let all this happen? Why don’t you do something? Why do rich people keep getting everything? Why do they always win? Why isn’t MacNaughton in jail? Why isn’t Tom Fisher in a box in the ground?”
“All good questions.”
She whirls, heart lurching in her chest, for the voice is quietly feminine, and for a panicky, crazy moment, it seems that Saint Catherine or the Holy Mother herself might have spoken. Instead, she sees a woman standing in the doorway, dressed in ordinary street clothes, not in saintly robes.
She is in her middle years, short and plump, seemingly made entirely of circles: curly hair coiling about a round, sweet face with lively blue eyes. Coming down the aisle, she pulls off her gloves and holds out both hands to Eva. “I’m so very sorry about your brother,” she says. “And forgive me for startling you. I’m Ella Bloor. Mother Jones sent me. She said, ‘Ella, you get yourself up to Calumet as soon as you can and help Annie Clements.’ ”
“Annie’s in jail.”
“So I heard. We’ll see what we can do about that. Mother also said I should give her very best to a girl named Eva Savicki. A boy outside on the street told me I could find you in here. What happened to your brother is a stinking shame. You have every right to be angry and shout your questions, but . . .” She lifts her eyes toward the crucifix. “That’s made of wood,” she says bluntly. “It won’t have any answers for you.”
Sliding into a nearby pew, Ella Bloor plops down abruptly and folds her hands in her lap. Her pudgy little legs don’t reach the ground. Pointing her toes, she tips a hinged kneeler out so she can rest her feet on it.
“It took me a lot longer than you to ask hard questions and demand straight answers.” Taking her bifocals off, she polishes the fogged-up lenses with a hankie. “Then again, I had a very nice childhood. Petit bourgeois. Nothing special really. I went to nice schools and had nice friends. We lived in a nice big house with a nice big lawn around it. But you only had to glance down the hill to see the glass factories. We’d drive in our nice carriage through town—on our way to someplace else that was nice, of course—and we’d go right past homes that were small and shabby. Paint peeling. Windows broken and boarded up. And the people weren’t ‘nice.’ Their clothes were raggedy. Their shoes were old and misshapen.” She puts her glasses on again and looks away, remembering. “Now, why didn’t I just accept that, like everyone around me? I really don’t know. But . . . it just didn’t seem fair to me. I’d ask my father, ‘Why do we live in such a nice house up on the hill while the people who work in the factory live in those awful little houses down below?’ And he never really answered except to say, ‘That’s just the way things are.’ I must have been about eight when I asked my mother, ‘Why doesn’t somebody paint the houses and fix things up?’ And she told me, ‘Because no one has any money—they drink it all up.’ ”
Ella Bloor shakes her head and smiles at Eva, who is still standing in the aisle. “Took me years before I understood that the poor don’t grind up their cash and make some kind of fruit punch with it!”
The older woman pats the pew next to her, inviting her to sit. Eva does so, but it feels strange, as though a sacred place has become ordinary and human because this woman is speaking in an ordinary human voice.
“I asked our minister my questions, and he said, ‘The poor will always be with us.’ Even when I was a child, I knew that was no real answer! Christian complacency, that’s what it is.” She shrugs, and a small smile crinkles the skin around those bright blue eyes. “Mind you, I was nearly twenty before I had the nerve to say so.” She cocks her head and looks side-eyed at Eva. “Personally, I like a little Old Testament fire, myself. ‘Justice! Justice you shall pursue!’ And even better: Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley!”
With that, she kicks the kneeler back out of the way and heaves her little self up onto her small feet, and fills the nave with a ringing, mellow voice, trained in a hundred union halls: “ ‘Now rise, like lions after slumber—in unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth like dew! We are many—they are few!’ ”
Her voice is ordinary again. “Did you know that Shelley wrote that about the Peterloo strikers?” She reaches for her gloves and pulls them back on. “I used to be a journalist, covering labor. Now I’m a socialist. I’ve stopped asking God questions. I just ask myself, ‘What needs doing right now?’ ”
She beckons Eva toward the door. “Come along, my dear. You and I have work to do.”
* * *
Eva retrieves her coat and hat from the church cloakroom, and when they are both bundled up, the little woman pushes the big door open and shouts into the cold, “ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends!’ ”
The street outside the church is empty. Jack must have given up and gone home, Eva thinks, and that is a relief. Mrs. Bloor keeps up a steady patter of poetry and declarations as they march through the streets. Eva doesn’t say much, but for the first time since Kaz was hurt, the constant urge to scream or weep has eased. She feels she is part of a parade of two: leaning into the knives of the Arctic wind, nose and eyes streaming, lips thickening in the cold. Then, to Eva’s surprise, they stop in front of a bank.
“I’ll wait out here,” she says.
“Why?” Mrs. Bloor asks. “It’s freezing!”
“I—I’ve never been inside a bank.”
“First time for everything! Pay attention, child. There are lessons to be learned.”
Inside, the bank is all figured marble walls, and stained glass windows, and gleaming copper gaslights. Dark wooden wainscoting, deeply carved and heavily oiled. Intricately designed mosaic floors . . .
“Fancy as a church,” Ella Bloor whispers. “Just try to find a school this nice! The rich are reverent about their money. Shows you what they really care about.”
Standing behind a high counter topped by a delicate-looking wrought iron fence that goes all the way up to the coffered ceiling, a row of clerks wearing green eyeshades and starched white shirts beneath gray pin-striped waistcoats attend to prosperous men in fine woolen topcoats.
“Watch this,” Mrs. Bloor says with a wink, taking Eva by the elbow as though they are mother and daughter. Even though they are both dressed with notable shabbiness, Mrs. Bloor marches up to a teller’s window and, with blithe confidence, leans past the gentleman at the front of that line. Her voice is firm when she says to the teller, “Young man, I’d like to see your manager immediately.”
Eva expects a harsh rebuke. Indeed, the customer who was being waited on seems startled and then put out. Mrs. Bloor smiles at him and places an ingratiating hand on his sleeve. “Thank you so much,” she says warmly, as though he were allowing her to do something she means to do regardless. “You are so very kind.”
The gentleman blinks, then shrugs. The teller murmurs, “A moment, please,” and leaves to knock on the closed door of an office behind him.
Ella Bloor glances at Eva and winks again. “Lots of tools in a woman’s kit,” she whispers. “Learn to use them all!”
The teller returns presently and asks them to follow him into the manager’s office. An older man wearing a very nice suit rises when they enter. “How may I serve you, madam?”
“My name is Ella Bloor. I wish to make a deposit,” she says, her voice sweet and unassuming. When he inclines his head with deference, she adds, “Into the account of the Western Federation of Miners’ Local Fifteen.”
The manager’s smile fades. Mrs. Bloor’s eyes do not drop. She lays a draft from the Schenectady Trust Company on his desk.
“Ah,” he says, taking in all five figures. “Yes. Of course, madam. Have a seat, if you please.”
The transaction goes smoothly. The manager’s good manners seem a little strained toward the end; nevertheless, he shakes Mrs. Bloor’s hand and ushers them out of his office, polite as you please. The teller nods to them as they pass. The gentlemen in the queues tip their hats. A boy in uniform pulls the heavy carved door open for them.
Mrs. Bloor smiles prettily at each of them in turn and takes Eva’s arm to steady herself as they descend the shoveled stairway to the street. After swiveling her head in both directions, Mrs. Bloor hurries toward the nearest cross street. Before they’ve gone half a block, Eva feels the older woman’s hand clutch her arm harder and then begin to shake. Nerves or the cold? she wonders, but soon little whines begin to escape from her companion.
“Oh, Eva!” Ella Bloor cries when they’ve turned the corner and are finally out of sight. “Did you see his face when I showed him that bank draft? You could practically hear him think, Well, a deposit is a deposit . . .” She starts to laugh. “And then—when he saw the number—it was, I want that money! ”
Eva giggles and soon great gusts of laughter rock them both as Mrs. Bloor mimes the goggle-eyed greed of the bank manager, and the grumpy courtesy of the gentlemen in the queues, and the bewilderment of a teller who’s never had to wait on a woman.
“Oh, my Lord!” Mrs. Bloor gasps, pressing one hand against her diaphragm. “I think I ruptured myself!” That sets Eva off again, and the effort to sober up fails twice, laughter returning like an echo, a little weaker each time. Finally, wiping away tears that are as much from breathless merriment as from the cold, Mrs. Bloor lets out a long sigh and cries, “Oh, but that felt good! Now then, where is the union office?”
“It used to be in the church hall,” Eva says. “Since the riot, it’s been in Frank Aaltonen’s kitchen.”
“Lead on, Macduff!” Mrs. Bloor cries, and when Eva looks confused, Mrs. Bloor says, “It’s from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The correct quote is ‘Lay on, Macduff,’ but people have been getting it wrong forever. Now it just means ‘Show me the way.’ ”
* * *
The paved streets and sidewalks of the shopping and banking district have been cleared to the pavement since the day after the storm. In the workmen’s neighborhoods, the snow squeaks beneath their feet, for it has merely been packed down with horse-drawn rollers, the side streets lined by frozen white walls, twenty feet high.
“This is amazing!” Mrs. Bloor says. “I feel like a Hebrew crossing the Red Sea. I wonder, does it ever get cold enough in Egypt to freeze into God’s miracle . . . ? How much farther?”
“Half a mile, I think.”
They crunch along in silence until Mrs. Bloor asks, “What have you learned so far, my dear?”
“I—I’m not sure. . . . Banks are fancier than churches or schools?”
“And money changes everything,” Mrs. Bloor says firmly. “It changes how you think of yourself, and it changes how people treat you. That’s why the rich hold on to every damned penny, long past the point where they know what to do with all their money. They buy bigger and bigger houses stuffed with more and more things. They hire a little army of servants to take care of it all and to say ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘yes, sir.’ Every Sunday, they go to church, and when Jesus tells them to give all they have to the poor, they drop a few coins on the collection plate. On Monday, they go back to their offices to make more money and complain about the cost of labor. You’re allowed to ask them for charity, but if you say, ‘Take less,’ they’ll call you an anarchist.”
When they turn down Fourth Street, the MacNaughton mansion becomes visible, set apart from the city, up on a slight rise. Cocking her head at it, Mrs. Bloor says, “So, you have to wonder, don’t you, why a man who lives in a fine house like that would want to change anything.”
“He doesn’t,” Eva says. “Well, not yet.”
“And he won’t,” Mrs. Bloor says. “Not ever. So it’s up to us. We have to change things.” Her tone becomes thoughtful. “It’s always been like this, Eva. It used to be warlords against peasants. Now it’s factory owners against mill girls and industrialists against unions. Who knows what comes next, but don’t be fooled—we will win battles, but the war will go on. Remember, Jesus said, ‘The poor you shall always have with you.’ What he didn’t mention is that the rich will always be there to exploit them.”
Eva stops walking, exasperated. “Well, then . . . !”
Ella turns to look at her. “What’s the use? Is that what you want to ask? Because in the long run, we can make things better. As Mr. Parker said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ So here’s what good people do: We don’t give up. We will not be cowed. We will refute their lies. We will get the vote, and we will use it. We will take them to court. We will march in their streets, and we will fight for justice every damned step of the way.”
It’s not easy picking out the Aaltonen place along the row of identical half-buried houses. It helps that there’s been a lot of foot traffic to Frank’s place since the riot, and after two tries, they knock on the right door.
Husky with layered sweaters, the president pro tem of Local 15 opens the door to them. He recognizes Eva of course, and they nod commiseration to each other, for Frank’s brother Yrja was killed in the riot. Then he looks at the stubby little woman at Eva’s side, waiting for an introduction.
“Mr. Aaltonen, this is Mrs. Bloor. She—”
His eyes light up before Eva can finish. “Mrs. Bloor! Mother Jones said you would be coming! Come in! Come in! Welcome to Calumet.”
Stamping snow off her shoes, Mrs. Bloor starts to unbutton her coat. Eva shakes her head. Their breath is visible even inside the house, and it’s best to stay bundled up. So they simply loosen their scarves and take off their gloves.
“I am happy to be here, Mr. Aaltonen,” Mrs. Bloor says when they move toward his kitchen table. “I have come bearing cash and encouragement. We just deposited a bank draft for thirty-six thousand dollars into the union account.”
He goes still. Smiling, she says archly, “I hope you don’t mind my boldness . . . ?”
Stunned, Frank says, “No! Of course not! I just—I didn’t expect . . . We never hoped for so much!”
“Every penny was collected for Calumet by the members of thirty-six trade unions at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, sir. A thousand dollars from each! And a message to the miners of Calumet: You are not alone.”
It is impossible not to be borne along on her cheerful energy as they draw rickety chairs up close to the kitchen stove, for Ella herself is thrilled by what she has to tell them. “We were ready to go out for eighteen months or more, but G.E. settled after just one week of a general strike! Everybody went out. Nearly twenty thousand workers!” she cries. “Molders, metalsmiths, machinists, carpenters, electricians—almost everyone who works for a wage in Schenectady! The important thing was, we had the mayor on our side. George Lunn is a socialist and a Congregational minister, and he’s committed to an industrial democracy that is accountable to the needs and desires of the working class. Union voters put George in office, and he knows it! So when a pack of company cops beat up some office girls on the picket line, I went to see him. And I took twenty-five men of the strike committee with me—big, strong boys! We told Mayor Lunn, ‘The police had no call to do that. We have perfectly orderly picket lines.’ And you know what he did?” She waits for them to shake their heads. “He deputized the strike committee representatives! So when the scabs showed up from Albany and Troy, union deputies ordered them to leave. When they resisted, we arrested them, and the mayor kept them locked up until the strike was over!”
Frank Aaltonen takes a long breath. “Mrs. Bloor, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that in Calumet. We don’t have a mayor at all, let alone a socialist mayor. This town is owned body and soul by Calumet & Hecla. Nothing happens unless James MacNaughton wants it to happen.”
“Yes, I understand,” Mrs. Bloor says, all business now. “It’s capitalism for industrialists and feudalism for the rest of us. Bend the knee and do homage or lose your job, if not your head. But the Copper Country is still part of the state of Michigan, and Governor Ferris is a good man. So here’s my plan. We’re going to go to Lansing and— What is it, child?”
Eva has just jumped up, a look of panic on her face. “I completely forgot! Jack’s mother invited me to supper! I was supposed to go there after—I’m sorry, Mrs. Bloor, do you have a place to stay tonight?”
“Yes, dear. I have a room, thank you.” She waves Eva toward the door with a plump little hand adorned only by a thread-thin wedding ring. “Off you go! I’ll find you in the morning.”