Civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
James MacNaughton awakens to darkened silence. Heavy brocade curtains block drafts through the bedroom windows, but they also block the light—what little there is of it in December, in Calumet. He hates this time of year. Sunrise, in midwinter, doesn’t come until it’s nearly nine in the morning, and he is reduced to relying on an alarm clock to maintain his normal routine.
The lingering smell from last night’s burned roast reminds him of a thoroughly disagreeable evening. An expensive cut of perfectly good meat, ruined. Wasted. Still in bed, he glances at the clock. Seven forty-three. The alarm hasn’t gone off yet.
He lies still, wondering what did wake him, until he hears someone pounding on the front door. “Answer that!” he shouts before he remembers that he is alone in the house.
The pounding is insistent. “All right! All right!” he mutters, sitting on the side of the bed and smoothing back his sleep-disarrayed hair. “I’m coming.”
He draws his dressing gown on over his pajamas, shoves his feet into his house slippers, and hurries down the stairs. It is in that undignified attire that he opens the front door to a young courier.
“You’re MacNaughton, right? Not the butler?” the boy asks, and when the chief executive officer of the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company nods curtly, the urchin shoves an envelope into his hands. “Dr. Fischer says that’s for you.”
He takes the delivery. The brat holds out his hand, expecting a tip. Shaking his head at the impertinence, MacNaughton looks down at the insolent little face and shuts the door without a word.
Alone again, he opens the envelope, withdraws the contents, and glances at it long enough to see that it is a list of names and ages. They are numbered, so he looks at the bottom line before dropping the pages on his desk in the study.
Hoping to resume his morning in an orderly fashion, he goes back upstairs to start his routine again. He is halfway to the bathroom when the alarm clock goes off. He returns to his bedroom, shuts the alarm off.For a time, he simply sits on the edge of his bed, calming himself before he starts over. Down the hallway to the bathroom. Ten minutes of calisthenics. A shave. A shower. Then it all goes wrong again.
What is the matter with people these days? he asks himself, rummaging through his wardrobe, opening drawers, looking for stockings and underclothes. There is no loyalty, no respect, he thinks as he dresses himself.
He will have to hire temporary help until his family returns from Europe. Mary will want to interview candidates for a permanent staff, and this time he will make sure she doesn’t hire any more immigrants. Not even those from Great Britain can be relied upon.
On the landing, he pauses more briefly than usual, taking in the cityscape. There has been some snow overnight, though not enough to require the street cleaners. Streams of worshippers are leaving the churches. Calumet is quiet, and he is relieved, for he half-expected, if not a mob with pitchforks, then some sort of rumpus.
Of course, nothing has been done about his breakfast, but how difficult can it be to make oatmeal? He goes into the kitchen. Opens a window to draw off the lingering stink of the burnt roast. Finds a pot, fills it with water, and stands there watching it slowly come to a simmer.
“Does it always take this long?” he asks the empty room. “Why is this so slow?”
Once again, he hears pounding on the front door and he stalks down the hallway. “What now?” he demands, seeing that the courier is back.
The boy shoves two telegrams at him. “Want me to wait?” he asks, offering the reply forms.
MacNaughton glances at the sender’s lines. “Yes,” he says. Then he shuts the door and leaves the brat to learn some manners in the cold out on the porch.
The first telegram is from Mary. She and the girls have read about the occurrence in the London Times.
I should have expected this, he tells himself. Copper telegraph wires now connect the far north of Michigan to the rest of the world. The union has wasted no time in alerting the press, undoubtedly couching the story in the most lurid and damning terms. The second telegram is from Boston, and it reinforces his surmise. Quincy Shaw, president of Calumet & Hecla, has also seen the union version of the story and knows it must be countered, for embedded in the text is an instruction to general manager MacNaughton.
I FEEL SURE THAT EVEN WITHOUT THIS MESSAGE YOU WILL DO EVERYTHING IN COMPANYS POWER TO GIVE ASSISTANCE TO THE VICTIMS OF THIS FRIGHTFUL ACCIDENT STOP SEE SOME WAY THROUGH TO THE LOCAL PAPERS STOP CONVEY MY SYMPATHY TO THOSE FOR WHOM THE LOSS IS A PERSONAL ONE AND TO THE WHOLE COMMUNITY THAT HAS TO FACE THIS DREADFUL TRAGEDY FULL STOP
He is reaching for a reply form when, for the second time in twelve hours, he detects an awful odor coming from the kitchen. Crying, “Oh, for the love of God!” he rushes in and sees smoke rising from the pot he meant to cook the oatmeal in.
The water has boiled away. Without thinking, he snatches the pot off the stove, sears his palm on the handle, and drops the pot, hopping away from it as it clatters to the floor.
“Damnation!” he shouts in pain and frustration.
Close to tears, he is running tap water over his reddening hand when he smells something else. This time he wraps his other hand in a kitchen towel before he grips the pot handle and lifts it off the floor.
“Damnation,” he mutters again, glaring at the perfectly round scorch mark on the kitchen linoleum.
The courier is banging on the door again, yelling, “I can’t wait any longer!”
“Two minutes!” MacNaughton yells back.
Hurrying to his office, he lays out the reply forms. Knowing that the contents of any wire he sends is likely to be made public, he is always brief and measured in his responses, even when his writing hand is not bandaged.
He cannot manage cursive, so—slowly and with care—he prints his message to Mary: A SENSELESS TRAGEDY STOP WE ARE DOING WHAT WE CAN FULL STOP. To Shaw, he simply replies: UNDERSTOOD FULL STOP.
Given the apparent breakdown in civil society, he expects that the courier will have left by then, but the child is still on the porch, stamping his feet and slapping his arms to keep warm. He takes the replies MacNaughton hands him, then holds his palm out again.
“Tell the telegrapher to put it on Calumet & Hecla’s account,” MacNaughton says curtly.
Noticing the bandage on the executive’s hand, the courier asks with what sounds like sympathy, “Aw, gee. Hurt yourself?”
Receiving only a glare in response, the boy shrugs and takes his leave. Halfway down the front walk, he looks over his shoulder and yells, “Serves you right!”
With that, the boy makes a dash for the street and hits a patch of ice, going down hard.
“Serves you right!” MacNaughton calls.
There is, he thinks, some justice in the universe.
* * *
Back in the kitchen, he dumps the oatmeal pot into the trash and finds some cheese and an apple with which to break his fast. Feeling somewhat better, he places a telephone call to his secretary’s home.
“Get the office up and running,” he says, and his tone makes it clear that there is no point in reminding him what day it is. “I will need to make several calls through the company switchboard.”
On his way out the door, he finds a special edition of the Daily Mining Gazette lying on the porch. The front-page headline is huge and black, and a gross exaggeration:
80 PERISH!
CHRISTMAS EVE TRAGEDY AT CALUMET!
FALSE CRY OF “FIRE!” THE CAUSE.
Heads will roll for this, he thinks. God damn them all.
When he arrives at his office, his first call is to the editor of the Calumet News, a local paper run by a man who knows that loyalty to the company is paramount to his own future. “I would like you to print the following,” MacNaughton tells him. Then he dictates the statement from Quincy Shaw’s telegram, amending the wording slightly and leaving out the sentence about influencing the local papers.
The next call is to the home of the Daily Mining Gazette’s editor, down in Houghton. Listening in as his secretary speaks to the man’s wife, he hears the woman call to her husband, “It’s James MacNaughton, dear.” Her palm over the mouthpiece isn’t enough to keep MacNaughton from catching the man’s complaint: “It’s Christmas, for crying out loud.” Nevertheless, he comes to the phone, and MacNaughton begins without preamble.
“Get your facts straight. There were seventy-three, not eighty, dead.”
“Are you certain about that number, sir? Our interviews last night indicated that some of the bodies had been taken directly to private homes and—”
“I am quoting the official enumeration made by the coroner, which is the only information that should be reported. Now, then. Take this down: Sheriff Cruse will be offering a reward.”
“For the man who yelled, ‘Fire’?” the editor presumes, his pencil scratching. “We’ll need a description—so far, all we know is that he was from the Citizens’ Alliance—”
“Stop interrupting me! The so-called ‘man who yelled fire’ is nothing more than an unverified rumor being spread by the union. Remind your readers that Charles Miller is an outsider and a known criminal and tell them that he is attempting to use the deaths of children to benefit his illegal and violent strike. Make it clear in future editions that no one was seen wearing a Citizens’ Alliance button.”
There are four seconds of silence.
“Sir, the New York Times is already on the wire service reporting that a man wearing a Citizens’ Alliance button came up the stairs and shouted, ‘Fire!’ And we have witnesses who said—”
“Hysterical women and children. Not reliable sources. In any case, the New York Times cannot possibly know what really happened yesterday in Calumet, Michigan. They are undoubtedly among the newspapers Charles Miller has contacted to spread his lies and malign the decent people of our city. You are the newspaper of record here in the Copper Country, are you not?”
“Yes, sir, I like to think so.”
“Good. Now. Sheriff Cruse will offer a reward of one thousand dollars for information leading to the conviction of union thugs responsible for the recent murders in Painesdale.”
Once again, the silence persists for countable seconds, and James MacNaughton can almost hear the editor thinking, But not for the man who yelled fire? And then reminding himself, There was no man. No one yelled fire.
“Yes, sir,” the editor says finally. “Shall I interview Sheriff Cruse for details, or would you like to dictate them?”
“Your tone is not appreciated, young man! Sheriff Cruse will contact you after I’ve spoken to him. And I want no more baseless speculation or preposterous claims regarding this regrettable accident. For now, you can simply say that arrests are expected.”
“Arrests. Plural, sir?”
“Yes! Plural!” MacNaughton bangs the handpiece into its cradle and curses his poor burned fingers. “Get me Cruse!” he shouts to the secretary. “And find out who’s handling the inquest!”
* * *
The rest of the day is a futile exercise in controlling the publicity, for it seems to James MacNaughton that he is the only man left in the country who has any sense. He is certain that any charity given to disloyal workers will invite them to claim that it is hush money; nevertheless, the Citizens Action Council authorizes the disbursement of cash to aid the families of the dead with funeral costs. Worse yet, a telegram arrives in midafternoon from Quincy Shaw. An emergency meeting of the C&H board of directors has been held. Shaw’s proposal that additional recompense be made by the company to the bereaved has passed, with three yeas, two abstentions, and one nay. Foolishness, MacNaughton thinks, but he has been given his orders and agrees to distribute the funds as soon as they are wired from Boston.
By the evening of December 26, the special editions of the Boston Globe, the Detroit News, and the Chicago Tribune arrive. Publishers are undoubtedly gratified to have something exciting for newsboys to yell about during the slow week between Christmas and New Year’s. Front pages are dominated by a titillating photograph of dozens of barelegged little girls, and damn Tom Fisher for not killing that Fenian photographer instead of merely roughing him up! Three anonymous sources have provided stories of “General Manager MacNaughton’s callous reaction to the disaster.” Well, there’s no question who that treacherous trio is, and James MacNaughton gives his attorney instructions to sue all former household staff members for defamation and slander. Let them pay legal fees for the rest of their miserable lives.
When he gets to the editorial page, the outrage continues. Woodrow Wilson has issued a statement lamenting that “in our rush to be great, we do not stop to count the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies over-taxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost of the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly.” That weasel Ferris has also expressed his mawkish sympathy, and the mayor of Detroit is reportedly sending one thousand dollars to help the union defray the burial expenses.
“Despicable,” MacNaughton mutters. And he telegraphs his outrage to both politicians, lamenting their shameless effort to turn an unfortunate accident into a partisan truncheon with which to beat one of America’s premier industries.
On December 29, the task of distributing checks to the bereaved falls to the company man whose usual job is to inform families of mining accidents. Walking from house to house, followed by a gaggle of reporters who’ve made the long, difficult trip north, he carries with him a list of seventy-three people, and their ages, and the addresses of their next of kin.
Shivering, he stands on the snow-packed street in front of each address. First he practices the pronunciation of each name, though he is sure to get most of them wrong. Then he does his best to make his heart as numb as his hands and feet when he approaches a home.
He rarely gets to the front door before he is noticed. Sometimes a flour-sack curtain is pulled back. Seeing the Angel of Death, those inside shout and gesture. Sometimes a man with a ravaged face flings open the door, and curses, and runs at him, yelling broken-voiced threats. Sometimes he climbs all the way up the front steps and knocks. Expecting someone else, a grieving woman appears. He speaks quickly then, hoping to get everything out before the door slams in his face.
“I have been authorized by Calumet & Hecla and by the Citizens’ Alliance to offer you sympathy for your loss and a cash donation for the burial of—”
For the burial of Katarina Gregorich, age ten.
For the burial of Jenny Giacoletto, age nine.
For the burial of Sulo Rubet Lauri, age eight.
For the burial of Elisina Taipalus, age six.
For the burial of Heli Ryadilahti, age thirteen.
For the burial of Johan Myllykangas, age seven.
For the burial of Kristina, Mary, and Katarina Klarich, ages eleven, nine, and seven.
For the burial of Ina Isola, age thirty-three, and her child Tilma, age five.
For the burial of Antonia Staudohar, age seven.
On and on, he works through the list. He is told to go to hell in a variety of languages, but rage is easier to accept than the cold fury of Frank Aaltonen, who hears him out and then asks, dead-eyed, “How much? How much are you offering for my wife and my two kids?”
The company man names the figure.
Aaltonen laughs in his face.
“Tell MacNaughton that you are authorized by Local Fifteen of the Western Federation of Miners to inform him that the union won’t accept a penny of this blood money. Tell the Citizens’ Alliance that we take care of our own. We feed our hungry, we clothe our naked. And we will bury our dead. We don’t want charity. We want a living wage, an eight-hour day, and an end to the one-man drill. And we want justice!”
There will be no such thing, the company man thinks as he descends the icy wooden steps onto the fresh snow below. There will be no justice in Calumet, which is not a mining camp or a village or even a city but an asset owned in its entirety by the company. Nevertheless, he completes his job. Name by name. House by house. Family by family.
When he gets back to the office, he does the only thing that has made it possible for him to carry out this task. He quits.