Charlotte had an appreciation for windows. She remembered when they had first come out to Daybreak, how they had to stretch oilcloth over the crude rectangles they had cut in the cabin walls and mount shutters on the outside, so that the only choices for the women who worked inside all day were the darkness of the closed shutters or the dim illumination of the oilcloth, which let in the wind and cold along with the light. So when the colony finally saved up enough money to buy windows for the houses, real sash windows that could open and close, the addition felt like a victory of outsized proportions.
In the old days she had used a chink between the logs of the house as a safekeeping place for letters, the ones James and her father had sent her during the war. When they had framed up the walls and put in the sash windows, that hiding spot had closed over. So Charlotte kept the jamb on one side of her kitchen window wedged in place without nails, allowing her to pop it out and read the letters whenever she had a mind. Charlotte was not one to look backward, but occasionally she went through the stash of letters to remind herself of who she had been, and still was, although not everyone saw it anymore.
And there were new letters to add to the stack, now that Mr. Gardner had decided to take up the pen. It was a little silly, since they saw each other most Sundays at Mrs. Bone’s, and he stopped by to sit on her porch once a week or so. No matter. Receiving a letter was always a pleasure, even if the sender had been by to visit in the meantime.
Today’s letter to be tucked into the pile contained more food for thought than usual, as it included an invitation to visit his cabin, what he liked to call his “estate,” after their Sunday lunch. No respectable woman, whatever her age, would visit a man’s house unaccompanied, but Charlotte found herself considering just that. She told herself it was not so much desire for Ambrose Gardner, but curiosity about his mountain aerie, that led her. She certainly didn’t want to draw scorn as a Woodhullite.
A worry for a later day. For now the community needed care. After months of conversation and debate, they had not reached consensus on the company’s offer to buy their timberland, and they would have to take a vote soon, an avenue she didn’t like but couldn’t see any way around. The whole idea of living in community was to avoid the kind of petty politicking and appeals to self-interest that plagued the world outside. But here they were, and the best she could do was try to make the vote as open and respectful as possible in hopes that the losing side wouldn’t have hard feelings.
She punched the window jamb into place. For no reason she could think of she felt suddenly angry, frustrated at the world. A woman her age hiding letters like a thirteen-year-old. In the old days she needed the hiding place because raiders could use them to scout out which side you were on, and being a shade of blue when you needed to be gray was enough to get your house burned. But nowadays who cared? And yet here she was, bound to old habits like a dirt farmer.
From her window she could see a man on foot coming down the main road from town. He had passed the turnoff to Daybreak and appeared to be headed on south, but when he reached the spot across from Charlotte’s house where the Daybreak road came in again, he stopped and looked back, rubbing his face. He was a small man, wearing a wool coat that was far too large for him and too heavy for the weather, a wool cap cut from the same cloth, and he carried a valise.
After a moment the man turned toward her house. She opened the door before his knock, and he took off his hat. At least he was that much of a gentleman, anyway.
He looked to be around twenty-five, with close-cropped red hair and bleached-out blue eyes. He squinted up at her from the doorstone. “That the commune up there?”
“It is,” she said. “And here too. We cover this whole valley.”
His look was dubious. “You don’t hardly look like what I expected.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Something more commune-looking, I guess. This just looks like a bunch of houses.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, I ain’t disappointed, just surprised.”
Charlotte put her hands in her apron pockets and waited. The young man squinted in the direction of the village. “I need a place to stay for a while. Think you all could put me up?”
“We’re not a hotel, and we’re not a stop on the Grand Tour.”
“I know that. But I have similar aims as you folks, and I have work to do around here. Thought I might find a room to sleep in while I go about my tasks.”
“And what might these similar aims be?”
He shrugged. “I’m starting to wonder if you’re a safe person to talk to.”
“And I the same. Talk or don’t talk, I have work to do.”
“All right,” he said. “Sorry, force of habit. Where I come from we have to guard our speech.”
“Where is that?”
“Chicago,” he said. “And by similar aims, I mean the empowerment of the working class.”
“Ah. I’m sorry to disappoint you a second time, but in Daybreak we don’t talk about people as ‘classes.’ We aim for the empowerment of everyone.”
“You may not talk about it, but you do it just the same. When’s the last time a rich man went off to join a commune?”
“I take your point. Where did you hear about us, anyway?”
His forehead furrowed. “In a book, I think.”
“Mr. Nordhoff’s, I imagine. Keep in mind, that book is a dozen years old or more.”
“So you’ve given up your ideals?”
“I didn’t say that.” She paused. “I see you can hold your own in a debate. Chicago man, defender of the working class. I take you to be a union man.” He didn’t answer. “Were you in that mess in the Haymarket?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘that mess,’ ma’am. I was there, and I took my lumps, and gave a few too. But I will swear to you right now that neither I nor anyone on our side fired a shot.”
“Or threw a bomb.”
“Or threw a bomb. We lost innocent men that day, and we lost more innocent men in the phony trials that came after.”
“Don’t waste your time talking to me about innocence,” Charlotte said. “I’m not your prosecutor.” She pointed down the road to Pettibone’s house. “One of our members lives there, and he’s also a deputy sheriff. If you’re on the run, keep running. We don’t harbor fugitives.”
“Ma’am, the only people looking for me are the railroad goons, and I take that as a badge of honor.”
“I suppose that explains why you are on foot.”
He nodded. “They’ve got our pictures behind the counter at every junction station in the country, after what we did to the Gould lines a while back. Struck ’em down cold, we did.”
“I hate to tell you this, but there aren’t twenty railroad men to organize in the entire county. Somebody’s sent you on a rabbit chase.”
“Did I say I was here to organize the railroad?” the man said, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t remember saying that.”
“Well, enough banter,” Charlotte said. She nodded toward the village. “You’ll need to talk to our president about a place to stay. Fourth house in on the left. Ask for Newton Turner.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He replaced his cap and picked up his valise, then set it down again. “I forget myself. Reuben Pierce.” He extended his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Pierce. I’m Charlotte Turner, Newton’s mother. You can tell him I sent you.” She shook his hand, and as she watched him trudge up the road, Charlotte felt a pang of sadness. Another idealist, off to cure the ills of the world, no older than she had been when she came out to Daybreak. Another set of grand ideas for the betterment of humanity, another life thrown into the struggle. So now it was overthrowing the bosses that would lead to the new era, not altering human nature.
He called over his shoulder. “And you can tell your deputy friend to look me up. Nary a warrant in any state of the country.”
“I may just do that, Mr. Pierce,” she called back, although she was less concerned about Charley than about his boss, Sheriff Pomeroy, who had demonstrated little regard for the finer points of the law in his dealings with Mr. Gardner, and who could be expected to do the same with this young man.
“Of course,” she said aloud. She should have realized it immediately. This Mr. Pierce had come to organize Crecelius’ men. Well, good luck with that, she thought. He’d have no luck at all at the sawmill. Those men were all locals and could no more be organized than a field full of mules. He might have better luck at the mine, where some of the workers were immigrants brought down from the city, but even there she wouldn’t bet on it.
And he wanted to stay in Daybreak, an idea that bore the stamp of trouble as bright as a brand. Why couldn’t he stay in town and perform his heroics from there? Because he had no money, that was plain. And any hotel or boarding house that put him up would be hounded out of existence by the company. She sighed. So this could be interesting. Well, they’d harbored abolitionists before the war and somehow managed to survive. If this pale-faced fellow was the new image of social reform, so be it.
And what kind of name was “Reuben Pierce,” anyway? German, Jewish, English? This man looked to be none of those. Probably an alias. More cause for misgiving.
Charlotte felt a powerful need to talk to Ambrose Gardner, to sound out her impressions of this man Pierce. She rarely doubted her own judgment, but for some reason she did now. Perhaps she should have turned him away. Why risk alienating people who were, after all, their neighbors, for a red-haired stranger who strolled into their midst? But that thought felt like a rationalization the moment she considered it.
She walked to the barn and saddled one of the good riding mares. She rarely used her sidesaddle these days, since she usually took a wagon whenever she headed to town, but with the saddle she could make better time by cutting through the country. One of the villagers was feeding and brushing down the horses, and he gave her a look of idle curiosity. “I need to be gone for a few hours,” Charlotte said to him. “If anyone asks, tell them I may not be home till after dark.”
She took an easy pace over the succession of ridges west, not wanting to tire the horse, and picked up the road between Ironton and Annapolis south of the sawmill. She knew he lived somewhere on the other side of the town, but figured she would ask directions once she passed through. To her surprise, a mile before she reached it, she spotted Gardner’s recognizable form loping in her direction. She stepped down from her horse, led it to a patch of grass near a rock outcrop where it could graze, sat on the rock and waited for him to arrive.
He looked at her in surprise and sat down beside her. “I was just coming to see you.”
“And I was coming to see you.”
“Not sure what it was, but a couple of hours ago I got an overwhelming urge to talk to you,” he said. “Not that I don’t always have that urge, but this morning it was particularly acute.”
“You must have sensed something,” she said, and told him of her encounter. She left out any mention of receiving his letter. Gardner listened carefully as she described the man and their conversation. He picked up a twig and twirled it between his thumb and fingers.
“So he said he was at the Haymarket?”
“Yes, and he mentioned the big railroad strike.”
“Knights of Labor man, then, most likely. Not the bomb-throwing type. I don’t think he poses a threat to you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s the community. If this Pierce or whatever his name is starts organizing and uses our community as his base, word will get around. We’ve lived in peace with our neighbors for a long time.”
He gave her a sidelong smile. “Any neighbor you’re especially concerned about?”
Charlotte felt suddenly glad to have someone she could tell her worries to without fear of judgment. She leaned her head against his shoulder. “You know there is. If I were younger, I’d not hesitate about tangling with the company, but nowadays I’m not sure. We can’t even agree whether to do business with them.”
Gardner sighed. “That’s the advantage of being an old hermit,” he said. “I’m not required to agree with anybody.”
It calmed her to hear his sympathetic tone, even if nothing he said helped her think. On the ride out, she had gone over as many possibilities as she could think of, and all appeared to lead to trouble and strife.
“Want to hear a story?” he said.
“Sure. Happy or sad?”
“Little bit of both, I suppose, like most stories. When I was young, I had a little rabbit dog, and he was about the best dog you ever saw. He wouldn’t just flush the rabbits, he would chase ’em down and catch ’em, he was that fast. My dad always used to say, ‘That dog’s too eager. He’s gonna regret that one day.’ But I always liked him being that eager, even though it meant that he was the hunter and I was the retriever most of the time.
“Anyway, we were out one day, and old Ruffian scared up a rabbit. And off they went! Dashing and darting this way and that. Then all of a sudden he gave a big yip and came running back. Turns out he’d run right over the top of a copperhead, and it bit him on the cheek.”
“So your dad was right.”
“I guess he was. Dog’s head swelled up to the size of a pumpkin, and he laid under the house for three days. But you know what? He lived through it, and next time we went hunting he was out there running after rabbits like always.”
“So the moral of the story is that creatures always follow their nature. Or maybe that dogs just don’t have any common sense.”
“Oh, you want a moral. That’ll cost extra.”
They shared a laugh at that, while Charlotte considered the situation in Daybreak. Ultimately, it was not her decision whether the man stayed; Newton was president now, and he would probably give him a place to sleep until the next community meeting; lack of hospitality was not the Daybreak way. By then they would have a better idea of Reuben Pierce and his motives. She should stop worrying and let the processes they had lived by for all these decades do their work. The wisdom of the many is greater than the wisdom of one, as Travels to Daybreak put it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden movement from Gardner, who stood up and faced north. “Well, here’s trouble,” he said.
She stood up and followed his gaze. A large man on a dark bay horse was coming down the road at a leisurely pace, like a parson on his way to Sunday dinner. She recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place it.
“He’s seen you, so you might as well stay here,” Gardner said. “Otherwise, I’d send you on a ways.”
As the man drew closer into view, she remembered. The rough-looking fellow in the mine shack, the one who never sat down and didn’t accompany them. “Why would you send me away?”
“I’ve had some unpleasant dealings with this man,” he said. “Name’s Lon Yancey. Works for you-know-who.”
“I met him once. It would hardly seem fair of me to bring you my troubles, and then skedaddle off when yours appear.”
“I appreciate that. But yours are at a remove, and mine are immediate. But no matter. We’re here now.”
By this time Yancey had reached them. He stayed on his horse in the road, took off his slouch hat, and waved it at them.
“Ain’t this a sight,” he said. “Sorry if I interrupted your confabulation.”
“Just a chance meeting,” Gardner replied. “Mrs. Turner’s headed toward town, and I’m headed up your way.”
“It ain’t ‘my way’ exactly. I just stop there and get my jobs to do, and then go off whichever direction I need to. I’m headed down to Clearwater today.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, some kind of problem at the railhead. The payroll shipment didn’t come in on time, and some of the boys are sitting down.”
“I’d probably sit down, too, if I wasn’t getting paid.”
Yancey gave him a sardonic look. “I expect you would,” he said. “These boys’ll get paid. They just gotta have patience. Nobody believes in the virtue of patience anymore.”
“If you say so,” Gardner said. “You carrying the payroll?” There was a hard edge to his voice that Charlotte had never heard before.
“Oh, no, I don’t do that kind of thing,” said Yancey. “I’ll just reason with them. They can get all the credit they need at the company store, anyway. It’s not like we’re gonna let them starve. They’re reasonable, they’ll understand this. Except one or two, and I may have to throw them in the river.”
“So you’re the company tough.”
“I guess I am. My employer prefers persuasion to violence, but what they want more than anything is results. That’s what I provide, and they don’t much care how I do it.”
“Same old song around the world, Yancey. Just like Father Abraham said. ‘You toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’”
Yancey snorted. “I’ll have to take your word on that, old man. I was just a boy when they shot Old Abe.” He gave his horse’s reins a soft flip. “Anyway. I was going to stop by and see you on my way back, but you saved me the trip. We need your answer once and for all if you’re going to sell us your timber.”
“Once and for all,” Gardner said, his voice low. “Once and for all, I’d sooner spike every tree I own than sell them to you.”
“Aw, you don’t want to do that,” Yancey said. “Them trees is worth three or four years’ pay. But I’ll tell ’em you said no.” He chucked the horse forward. “Wish me luck on keeping this business down in Clearwater peaceful. Last time I was down there, I had to poke a fellow with my knife.” He paused, as if in reflection. “Ever see what a twelve-inch Bowie knife will do to a man, old-timer?”
Gardner stepped into the road. “Of course I have, you ninny. I was in the war. I’ve seen what a knife can do to a man, and a bayonet, and a musket ball. I have seen what you can do to a man with a load of grapeshot, and chain shot, and a simple cannonball. I’ve seen death and destruction to last ten lifetimes. Don’t think you can frighten me into selling my land with bold talk about a knife.”
Yancey didn’t stop his horse. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said over his shoulder. He waved his hat to Charlotte then planted it on his head. “Safe travels, ma’am.” Then he kicked the horse into a trot and disappeared south.
Charlotte led her horse into the road and stood beside Gardner, watching him go. Gardner sighed. “Well, now I have this to deal with,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t have had it anyway.”
“True,” Charlotte said. “At least now, you have the chance to think ahead. Otherwise, he would have shown up at your house unannounced.”
Gardner nodded, his lips pursed. “I imagine he still will. But I’ll know he’s coming.”
He looked up the road and then down, meditative. “Listen, I’m going to go home now. You should too. We’ve got things to take care of.”
Charlotte knew that to be true, and knew that her ride out here had been impulsive, maybe even foolish. Despite that knowledge, she didn’t want to leave, not quite yet.
But Gardner was already looking across the valley, his jaw working. “I’ll follow the railway line to town. Whenever the track crews replace a crosstie, they just toss the old spikes to the side, and I can pick up twenty or thirty along the way.” He returned his attention to Charlotte. “I’m sorry you were here to see this, Mrs. Turner. You’ve got troubles of your own. Don’t worry about me, I can manage this ruffian. It’s the company I’m concerned about.”
She smiled at him. “I’m not sorry. So you really plan to spike your trees?”
“Yes. I can fend off this man, but they’ll just send another. The only way they’ll leave me alone is if I have nothing of value to them.”
“But they’ll have no value to you as well.”
“Oh, that’s not true.” He regained a little of his insouciance. “The shade, the noise they make in the breeze, the acorns for my squirrels, the pine boughs for my bedding. Those are the things I value.”
“You use pine needles for your bedding?” She wrinkled her nose.
Gardner’s enormous laugh returned. She was glad to hear it after the earlier tension. “Just a few in my mattress to freshen the aroma. But I do have another bed, one made entirely of pine. I’ll have to show it to you one day, Mrs. Turner.”
Charlotte chose not to answer. “If you insist on dashing off, at least you can help me onto my horse. And I’m still thinking about your dog and his rabbits. I wish I owned a dog like that.”
“I do too. The dog I’ve got nowadays couldn’t catch a rabbit if it was tied to a stake.”
He half-bent down beside the horse and laced his fingers together to make a step for her. Charlotte rested her hands on his shoulders. But she didn’t place her foot into his hands, not quite yet.
“You can stop calling me ‘Mrs. Turner’ whenever you want to,” she said. She leaned toward his surprised face and kissed him. His lips were salty and a little sour, but she didn’t mind. She let the kiss linger for half a minute, then stepped into his entwined hands and vaulted into her saddle.
“How’s that for a moral to your story?” she said as she gathered the reins. “See you on Sunday.” Then she twitched the reins and trotted off the way she came, feeling a little giddy and entirely too pleased with herself. Yes, she had troubles of her own. But for the moment she felt perfectly unafraid of them, and she intended to make this moment last as long as she could.