THE MUHANNAS RODE THE train up to Williamson, the county seat, to attend mass. The small Catholic church was built high on a hillside over town, where snakes, bobcats, and even the priest’s pet rooster had all found their way into the service on occasion. After mass, they walked down the steep streets into town, the three pigtailed girls nearly skipping, so excited were they for hot fudge sundaes from the ice cream parlor at the River View Hotel—a Sunday tradition.
Doc Moo and family sat at the long marble counter of the ice cream parlor, relishing their post-church hot fudge sundaes. The girls swung their knee socks and patent leather shoes beneath their stools, chattering away, while Musa read his latest copy of Wild West Weekly, his cowlick standing up from the crown of his head like a little black feather. Adele, the oldest, kept licking her finger and trying to smooth it down. Meanwhile, Moo and Buddeea were sharing a banana split, slowly deconstructing the domes of ice cream with long spoons.
There was only one other patron in the place—a hard-faced man in a worn suit who sat slightly crooked at the counter. Since the start of martial law, miners had been arrested for consorting in groups of three or more—bunching—or being in possession of labor journals. Anything deemed agitating could bring out the cuffs. The prisoners were brought to the county jail in chain gangs, herded like cattle into overcrowded cells where they pissed in corners and shat in buckets—such were the stories Moo heard during his rounds.
Now Musa leaned over and tugged on his father’s sleeve. “Papa, look.”
Moo and Buddeea turned to see the great chestnut gelding of Captain Brockus pass before the front window of the place, big as a dreadnought, the captain’s striped green trousers and hooded stirrups flooding through the glass. The rest of his patrol followed, their horses smaller, their spurs and tack clinking as they passed before the hotel.
“The captain,” said Adele.
“Such a beautiful horse,” said Amelia.
“Sure is proud of himself on it,” said Corine.
The bell jingled and Captain Brockus strode into the place, three troopers in his wake. He strode straight to the lone man at the counter, his boots ringing on the parquet floor.
The hard-faced man looked up from his ice cream. “Good day, Captain. You and the boys come for banana splits?”
The police commander’s face was shaved clean, humorless as a bust. A powerful scent of aftershave filled the parlor. “A. D. Lavinder, we have it on good authority you’re in possession of a sidearm.”
Lavinder. Moo had heard the name. A Union organizer.
The man continued to eat his sundae. “I got a state-issued permit to carry a sidearm on my person, Captain.”
Captain Brockus bent toward him—brisk, exact. “I am the state, Lavinder, and your carry permit is null and void under martial law.”
Lavinder spooned another bite from his sundae. “And what a state it is.”
The troopers unbuttoned the flaps of their holsters. The bow-tied servers wiped down the bar and retreated through the swinging doors to the kitchen. Moo and Buddeea hustled Musa and the girls from their stools, leaving their ice creams unfinished.
Captain Brockus ignored them, his attention focused on the man at the counter. “Surrender your weapon and we’ll take you in peaceful. Major Davis wants to see you.”
“The Bulldog wants to see me, does he?” Lavinder took another heaping bite of his sundae, sucked the spoon clean, and held it upright before his face, examining his reflection. He looked wistful almost, like he was seeing something he might not see again. Then he set the spoon down on the counter. “Well, you go tell the Bulldog, if he wants to see me so bad, he can come by my office at Union headquarters.”
Moo was herding the family toward the door as fast as he could. Captain Brockus looked up sharply at them, his eyes saying: Git out.
The Muhanna clan had just stepped outside when they heard a sickening smack, like a side of beef slapped down on a butcher’s block, and a single high animal shriek.
Moo pushed the family along, arms wide, trying to shield them. Their faces were white; the girls were holding their mouths, beginning to cry. No one would forget that sound, the violence of it. They were nearly to the corner when Moo looked back over his shoulder. The troopers were dragging the man toward a waiting car. His body hung limp between them, the toes of his shoes scrawling dark lines across the cinder.
FRANK CROUCHED IN A corner of the kitchen, his heart galloping in his chest. One of the servers eased open the back door and ducked his head into the alley.
“Clear,” he said.
Frank took up the satchel of UMW journals he’d been ordered to hand off to Lavinder for distribution in town. The man’s beating had sent his blood running crazy, spiking under his skin. Now he had to calm himself and walk out of here like he hadn’t more worry than a woodlark.
As he stepped toward the door, the server put a hand to his chest. “Just leave the bag, man. There’s too much heat out there. We’ll burn ’em in the furnace downstairs.”
Frank shook his head. “These are all we got for this town. No more’s being printed. I’ll get them back to my contact and they’ll work out a different plan.”
“Them tire irons ain’t taught you nothing, I reckon.”
Frank slung the satchel over his shoulder, securing it beneath his once-fractured arm. “Just the opposite, boss.”
He peeked out the door himself, made sure the alley was still clear, and then stepped out. A pair of cats looked up from their meal of dead rat. Faces scar-flecked, ears nocked. Frank looked to the river. It was close, flowing green and dark past town. The safest escape would be to cross the Tug and take to the hills on the Kentucky side, but the journals would be ruined—the water was too high this time of year to wade. In the other direction, he had to cross at least four city blocks before he’d make it to heavy woods where he could disappear.
He thought of Mama-B up there at the holler, sucking her teeth at his predicament. I done told you. He turned from the river and gripped the satchel strap at his shoulder, heading up the alley toward town.
The two cats paused to watch him pass, jaws bloody. Williamson always seemed a strange town to him. So wide and clean in the avenues, so dank and dark in the shadows. Maybe that was all towns.
He emerged onto Second Avenue, where the state police were loading the limp man into a car in front of the hotel, surrounded by a throng of onlookers. Everyone distracted. He turned and headed up the sidewalk in the opposite direction, trying to walk like a man who knew just where he was going, who wasn’t carrying a satchel of red-hot contraband. A prize for any of the state troopers or vigilance men posted around the place.
He crossed the street and kept heading south, his boots clicking on the cinder. Most people were headed in the opposite direction, flocking toward the spectacle. He turned up the next alley, a narrow brick ravine of fire escapes and cigarette butts. There was a tavern and pool hall on the next avenue, and the railroad tracks ran through the center of town another block past that.
Frank was just to the end of the alley when a pair of state troopers turned the corner on foot. One of them held an unlit cigarette between two fingers.
“Officers,” said Frank, bowing his head slightly.
They didn’t move for him to pass, a wall of green wool and brown leather. They wore knee-high riding boots and thick gun belts with crossed shoulder straps to support the weight of their pistols. Their wide campaign hats were slightly cocked, shading their faces. In the distance, Frank heard the hoot of a train.
The first trooper lit his cigarette—Captain Brockus didn’t allow his men to smoke on duty, but the captain was otherwise disposed at the moment, handling the situation in front of the River View Hotel. The trooper blew smoke from beneath his wide hat. “Where you think this boy’s going in such a hurry, Trooper Gibb?”
The second trooper shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess, Trooper Biggs, not without seeing what he’s got in that satchel of his.”
The first one drew on his cigarette. “Boy, what you got in that there satchel?”
Frank heard the train engine again in the distance, sounding from the edge of town. The words came quickly to him, almost without thought. “Library books.”
“Lie-berry books,” said Trooper Biggs, laughing through his teeth. “You hear that, Trooper Gibb? I don’t recall there being no library in this town, fine a place as it may be. You?”
“No, Trooper Biggs, I surely do not.”
Frank looked back slowly over his shoulder, stretching his neck. He could feel a strange sensation in his limbs, a kind of power. His thighs hung heavy as field guns, loaded. His chest and shoulders broad as a breastplate. His arms had ripped the guts from mountains, had absorbed the iron hate of men.
He nodded back the way he’d come. “The library’s in city hall,” he said. “Just a little closet of a place.” He looked at the men, sniffed. “You got to be a Mingo County resident to get a card.”
The first trooper flicked his cigarette away. “Set the bag on the ground, face the wall, and spread your legs.”
Frank thought of Mama-B high up there in her rocker, waiting for him. He thought of Lavinder, just now, and his own beating not a year ago—a body left for dead. He thought of how puny these men were without their shields or pistols or batons. What he could do to them with his bare hands.
He began to comply, squatting as if to set the satchel at their feet. The troopers had their palms resting on their revolvers, casual. Men so sure of themselves, their rank and power. Frank let the satchel touch the ground just a moment, as if to surrender it for their inspection, only to snap it back hard to his chest and explode from his crouch, bull-rushing them, driving between the two troopers like a siege ram. They were thrown back stumbling and falling against the brick walls and he was already halfway across Third Avenue, cutting diagonal to intercept the coal train.
He had the satchel clenched in the crook of his arm, his boots cracking across the asphalt. A roadster hooted its horn and Frank flew across the hood hardly breaking stride, hearing the shouts of the troopers behind him. He sprinted past a line of storefronts and cut toward the train.
The coal hoppers were unladen, headed downriver into the coalfields, the engine picking up speed as it cleared the edge of town. He hit the crushed stone of the railbed at full speed, lungs searing and breath tearing from his chest, driving all his strength into his feet. The train seemed to get faster with every chug of the engine, ratcheting away from him, the iron cars retreating from his grasp, and he heard shots behind him, bullets hissing and sparking. He gave up his spirit, same as he had beneath the falling clubs of the Baldwin thugs, he gave it up to Evie, to God, to whatever may come. Then his hand found the iron rung of a coal hopper’s ladder and he was hanging from the car, throwing the bag into the empty hull and hurling himself over the side as shots ricocheted off the iron.
He lay in the bed of the coal hopper heaving, clutching the satchel against his chest with both arms. Above him, a flurry of daylight stars.