MOTHER JONES STOOD BEFORE the motley ranks of the Redneck army, waving a roll of paper in her hand.
“You boys know what I have here, do you? A telegram from the President of the United States of America. Yes, I have. Sent straight to me. A promise, boys. A promise to rid this state of the gun thugs who haunt your homes and streets, who evict families and shoot strikers and break the backs of unions. Men like the Baldwin-Felts sons of bitches who machine-gun tent colonies with armored trains and beat miners to death and turn their wives and children penniless into the streets. Men who murdered our dear Sid in cold blood and broad daylight, in front of his wife, on the very steps of an American courthouse.”
Mother Jones, in her black dress, looked back and forth over the crowd, looking into the faces of her boys. A hardscrabble lot, wide-eyed like nocturnal creatures, accustomed to toiling in the dark chambers of the mines. Hard men—no other kind survived this life. Their red bandannas looped their necks like those of wild bronco riders or a whole army of Billy the Kids. Mother’s heart moved in her chest as they cried to her.
Read it!
Let’s hear it!
Please, Mother!
Mother nodded and set her eyeglasses low on her nose and read aloud from the paper in her hands, quoting the President: “I request that you abandon your cause and return to your homes, and I assure you that my good offices will be used to forever eliminate the gunman system from the state of West Virginia.”
Mother pushed her eyeglasses high on the bridge of her nose and squinted again into the crowd, staring her truth into them.
“Disband, boys. Go home to your warm wives and little babes. You have done enough already. You see what you boys have accomplished, do you?” Mother shook the telegram beside her cheek. “You’ve spoken into the ear of the President of the United States, and he’s heard you for once, he has. Not only heard but responded, given his promise to run these God-damned gun thugs out of the state for once and all. Don’t spoil that victory, boys. Don’t spoil it by going to war.”
Silence a moment, the men unsure how to receive such news. Presidents never heard their cries. Presidents heard the cries of senators and governors and congressmen, barons and magnates. Men who wore high hats and black tails, who had country houses and maids and tailors. It seemed too good to be true. They looked at one another. It had to be.
“Let’s see the telegram,” yelled someone from the crowd. Then others joined in—they wanted to see some evidence of the President’s pledge.
Let us see it!
Could it be bogus?
Show us it’s real!
A Union official stepped from the corner of the stage with his hand out, ready to inspect the telegram, but Mother snapped the paper to her chest. “Go to hell. It’s none of your damn business. This is a private communication to me!”
She feared blood, certainly. This ragtag army was no match for the might of the United States Army, which could bring whole nations to their knees. Crack infantry divisions, complete with artillery and air support, could come weaving into these hills like a giant serpent of steel and fire. She feared the creeks would run red from Blair Mountain, where the Czar was building his defense.
Her boys might think she’d lost the fire and lightning in her own breast. Not hardly. But she was older than they were, wilier by half a century and more. Like an ancient she-bear, long accustomed to the various trickeries of men, Mother sensed a trap, a great set of iron jaws buried in the earth of these hills, waiting. So she’d done her best to turn them back—by whatever means necessary.
When she wouldn’t turn over the telegram, her boys denounced her. Mother Jones was a fake, they said. A charlatan. A liar. Mother Jones, who once warned the governor that if he didn’t rid this state of these God-damned Baldwin-Felts mine guard thugs, there would be one hell of a bloodletting in these hills. Mother Jones had lost her nerve.
So they said.
These men, who’d fought for their country in the trenches and killing fields of the Great War, where their chances of survival were higher than in the depths of the company mines. These men, they no longer heeded their mother. They marched past her, into the hills.