Chapter 3

November 1916

“It was a massacre. They were layin’ for us as we sailed into the dock all linin’ the rail and singin’ our Wobblies songs.”

The speaker is Em Brush and he stopped to down his third shot of rum. I noticed that his hands were steady although he used both of them to hold the glass. I had to hold the first glass to his lips because he was trembling so much. We were sitting in a dingy little room in the Seamen’s Mission in Billingham up near the Canadian border.

He was talking about a confrontation between members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), more commonly called ‘Wobblies’, and the authorities of Everett three days before where people had been killed. The Governor of Washington had sent in militia to restore order and seventy Wobblies are in jail charged with murder.

I walked into Yakima town on the morning of November 6^th dressed in the business suit that my receptionist Ellen had sent from Minneapolis where I had my office. I had a long list of things to do but I didn’t get further than the sheriff’s office. I went there first because I owed him thanks. He could have thrown me in jail but instead he had cleared my name. ‘Edward Spencer, Sheriff’ was painted above the door of his small office on Main Street.

“The Union have murdered twenty-five lawmen,” he said as I entered, smiling. “There was a shoot-out yesterday on Everett dock.”

I sat down with a bump on a chair opposite his desk. There had been trouble in and around Everett for much of the year. A strike by shingle weavers had been supported by IWW activists arriving to make speeches and organise marches. Local businessmen had banded together into vigilante groups and had used pickaxe handles to beat up strikers and visiting Wobblies. It was no surprise that there had been further trouble, but the scale of this latest incident was shocking.

Sheriff Spencer sat quietly, giving me time to assimilate the news. When I looked up at him his eyes were steady, but I could see in them none of the hatred that might have been expected from a law officer talking to a Union activist.

“That’s a preliminary report and it’s from the sheriff’s office in Everett but something struck me a bit funny.”

He stopped and looked at me, so I was forced to think.

“How many casualties were there on the Union side?”

“I wondered about that, so I sent a couple of wires. I haven’t had a reply, but an official notice came through that the State Militia has been sent to Everett and Seattle. Arrests are being made as we speak.”

“I came to see you to ask if you and I could work together to ease tensions in Yakima Valley. I’m sorry that more men have died but I still think that talking is more likely to succeed than fighting.”

There was an awkward silence after I had spoken. I had promised Spade Docherty that I would take the lead in proposing peace, but I felt overwhelmed by the numbers of people on both sides who could only see violence and extermination as a solution. Sheriff Spencer was still looking in my direction, but he was deep in thought, so I don’t think he saw me. I was becoming uneasy, and I was on the point of standing up when he waved me back into my seat.

“Sheriff McRae up there in Everett is a fanatic. I shouldn’t be telling you this, you understand, but it doesn’t ring true that he and his deputies would be caught in a position where they couldn’t give as good as they got.

“The doc speaks well of you and everybody around here respects Bodack and Callack. I see and hear a lot more than I tell. The problem I’ve had in the past is that I only get one side of the story.”

He got up and went over to the stove in the corner of his office, poured two cups of coffee and brought them back to his desk. His rather abrupt speaking style was at odds with the friendly tone.

“I’d despise a man that changed sides, but do you think you and me could meet somewhere in the middle to exchange information. I’m not looking for an informer. In fact, I’m not sure exactly what I do want.”

So, I told him about Spade’s idea that it was the country that mattered and that the people had a duty to do their best for it. I don’t think I was explaining it very well until I mentioned that Spade had gone straight from me to Willi Fassbinder.

“I know that Spade will have said nothing to harm me or the Union. In fact, he will have reduced any possible misunderstanding – after talking to Spade, Fassbinder is more likely to listen to me.”

He nodded: “So you think people of goodwill can work together despite their differences.”

From that point on our discussion shifted to the ways of achieving our ends. It was as if we had tested the ground and found that it was safe to build on it. Ed would follow the official enquiry into the Everett incident while I would try to find out what the Union was saying. It took me two days to find Em Bush and persuade him to tell me what he saw and heard before, during and after the massacre. I went straight from Sheriff Ed’s office to the depot – well, I did make one stop.

“You pretty much look the part, Ewan,” Ed told me, “Except for that hat.”

Ellen had packed my suit and my town shoes, but I was still wearing the worn sombrero that I favoured when I went out dressed in jeans and a work shirt. I called in at a hatter’s shop on my way to the station. Fortunately, I had unstitched my belt the evening before and taken out the fifty dollars in gold that I carry there for emergencies.

I went first to Everett, but the town was closed up tight. When you came round a corner or went into a saloon there would be two or three locals in deep discussion, but they would stop as soon as they spotted me and silently glare at me until I moved away. Even the barber shaved me in complete silence so I knew that I would get no information in the town!

My next move was to the scene of the massacre – well, the next pier along, actually. I boarded the harbour ferry to try my luck in Seattle where the Wobblies had started from on the fifth. The purser sold me a ticket and I risked asking about the excitement they had experienced the previous day.

“We seen nothin’, mister, although we did pick up a guy that jumped off the boat right under our bow. We was just leavin’ for Victoria and Vancouver so we stopped and picked him up. Saved his life, I reckon, since it’s almighty cold in the Sound in Novembry.”

“Do you know who he was?”

I had hoped that his love of a good story would make him careless, but he shut his mouth, and his expression became impenetrable. I thought I had blown it, but a crewman had heard the exchange and chipped in.

“Sure, we knowed him. It was that Em Bush. Things must have got pretty hot for Em to have anything to do with water!”

His voice tailed off as he noticed the expression on the purser’s face.

“This guy’s Ok, Tom,” he pleaded. “He’s a gent and he aint gonna make trouble.”

I moved away along the deck, but I stayed close enough to listen to the argument about the ethics of giving information about a mate that might be in trouble. They were agreed that it was wrong to grass up a mate but there was a long dispute on whether or not Em Bush qualified for the accolade. He had a reputation all round Puget Sound as an unreliable drunk. They agreed that his presence on the boat argued that someone had offered him money for drink.

I asked no more questions, but I reckoned I had discovered a great deal more than my clumsiness merited. Em Bush didn’t sound like an idealist but rather was someone that would do pretty well anything for the price of a drink or two. The Seattle newspaper I bought said that three hundred Wobblies had set sail on two boats, and I wondered how many of them were dedicated members of IWW and how many had been recruited in dockside saloons.

If I had brought my working clothes, I might have made the rounds of likely drinking dens in Seattle but in my business suit I wouldn’t be allowed through the doors. I walked past the IWW Hall where the men had assembled, according to the paper, but there was only a notice hung on the door announcing that the building was closed indefinitely – across this someone had scrawled ‘For Keeps’.

My best bet was to try to trace Bush and get him to tell me what he knew. The purser and sailor on the ferry had let slip that Em was in the habit of staying in Seamen’s Missions. Puget Sound has several missions in two countries so he could move on when he outstayed his welcome. I caught the afternoon ferry to Victoria, the Canadian town on Vancouver Island that had been their first stop after they picked him out the water.

I drew a blank at the Seamen’s Mission, but I learned a little more about the massacre from gossip in the bar of the hotel where I put up for the night. Most of the casualties had been amongst the Wobblies and it was rumoured that there might have been as many as thirty made the same choice as Em Bush and jumped into the Sound.

The following morning, I heard a rumour at the pier that Bush had crossed to Port Angeles on the American side, and I wasted the day going there to check it out. The problem was that I had to return to Victoria before I could get a ferry to Vancouver on the Canadian mainland. There was no sign of Bush in the Seamen’s Mission although he had stayed there in the past and the people in the hotel I stayed in barely knew that a massacre had occurred.

Now I was in the secretary’s office in the Bellingham Mission having won Em Bush’s trust at the price of a bottle of rum. He admitted taking part, but he denied that he had been paid.

“I’m a Wobblie,” he assured me, taking out a very battered pocketbook and extracting a membership card unmarked apart from a little water-staining on the edges. It was dated 1915 and the signature was hard to read although it looked suspiciously like William Cody, who is to my certain knowledge, not an authorised signatory for the Union!

On the morning of the fifth, Em told me, he and three hundred others had assembled in the IWW hall in Seattle and marched down to the pier singing Wobblies songs. About forty of them got on board the Verona, a steamer that tramped around the islands in the Puget Sound. The remainder boarded the steamer Calista, a much larger boat recently commissioned. The Verona set off first with the men on board enjoying the outing. Em reluctantly admitted that there was a good supply of booze, but he insisted that it was zeal that had them singing Wobblies anthems as they approached the pier at Everett.

Chance Wiman, the skipper of the Verona called their attention to the crowd on the pier as he brought his vessel alongside. He controlled it so well that the boat came to a stop, inches from the jetty and right opposite the leader of the armed gang awaiting their arrival.

‘Boys, who’s your leader?’ the man on the pier shouted. The Wobblies laughed and jeered, and someone shouted out: ‘We’re all leaders.’ The boat was stopped but not tied to the pier since the longshoremen that normally took the lines were nowhere to be seen. One of the boat crew stepped ashore and dropped a line over a bollard. McRae, the sheriff leading the shore party, drew his pistol and shot at the crewman.

That triggered a fusillade that lasted for about ten minutes. Em admitted that some of the Wobblies were armed but he insisted that most of the shots came from the crowd on the pier and from more men on a tugboat that had nosed towards the battle. The passengers on the Verona rushed to the side away from the jetty almost capsizing her. Em spotted the ferry leaving an adjacent pier and dived into the water.

He saw no more of the action although it was his opinion that more people ended up in the water. He estimated that dozens must have been killed either by shooting or drowning. By that time, he had downed his fifth shot of rum and he was becoming inattentive. When I pressed him, he became irritated at first then weepy because I mistrusted what he was saying.

In the end I believed that he had told me what he saw but I was not convinced that his story covered all that had happened in a very confused situation. He was convinced that someone had warned the authorities that the Wobblies were coming. The number of deputies on the pier supported that contention and the presence of the tugboat was a clincher – if it was really there.

While I was thinking up any last questions, Em downed another snort and lapsed into maudlin self-pity. I stood up and gave the Mission secretary a few dollars and was saying final farewells when I heard one of Em’s gripes.

“It wouldn’t have happened if Big L had been with us. He said he’d come in the Verona but then he backed out and got on the Calista. He’d have sorted out that McRae!”

I turned and shook him to get him to tell me more about ‘Big L’ who I assumed was my nemesis, Lewis, but Em Bush had passed out.

I spent the train journey back to Yakima thinking about money. Union dues are small since the men that pay them have very little spare cash. Even if all the three hundred travelling to Everett had been Union members, which I seriously doubted, there had been the cost of renting two boats and the generous supplies of alcohol Em boasted about. It must have cost IWW in excess of a thousand dollars in total.

The strike of the shinglers had been going on for six months and there had been demonstrations before now with speeches from senior Wobblies spokesmen. There had even been confrontations that had made the newspapers across Washington State. The fifth November stunt had to be aimed at a wider audience. To excite the United States nationally the IWW needed a major confrontation with several slayings; just what they got, in fact.

With that level of investment, it would be essential that the two sides met face to face and the only way to ensure that was for the Wobblies leaders to reliably inform McRae and his cronies when and where the demonstrators would arrive. I had left Minneapolis because Spade warned me of a problem, but I wouldn’t have been in such a rush if someone I didn’t know and trust had walked into my office with the same warning; I’d have got no work done at all if I’d paid attention to every rumour I heard.

McRae must have received the information from someone in the IWW organisation known and trusted by the sheriff. He had gone all out in his response even to the extent of hiring a tugboat to provide him with crossfire. I could put a name to the likely culprit, but I recognise that I am biased, and I decided to withhold my final verdict until after I had spoken to Ed Spencer.

After we left Seattle on the branch line, I turned my attention to my personal finances. I opened a bank account in Cumberland with my first wages from the rail gang and I had left my money there until last year when I took the Union job based in Minneapolis. I had sent fifty dollars to my mother every quarter day since I landed in the United States. It cost less than a dollar to transfer the money to a bank in Aberdeen.

If sending money to a foreign land is straightforward, arranging transfer between banks in different States is a nightmare. I would have to find time to go to Minneapolis and withdraw my cash in the form of a bank draft that would be accepted by a bank in Yakima where I wanted to open an account. In the few days since I talked to Spade, I had accepted that I wanted to spend a substantial part of my future in this area.

I was not prepared to explore my reasons, but I was aware that I had a buzz of excitement at the thought of going back to Minneapolis and asking Ellen for a dinner date. I had my thirty-second birthday this year and I hadn’t given a thought to the fair sex until the last few weeks. Now I’m excited to see Ellen again with the intention of exploring a possible romantic interest, and I can’t deny that Helga Fassbinder is not the least of the attractions of the Yakima Valley.

I called in on Ed when I got off the train and told him everything I had discovered. He confirmed that a tugboat full of deputised citizens was involved in the incident. There were about two hundred deputies on the pier all armed and in a volatile frame of mind. According to McRae he ordered the Wobblies to remain on board and was laughed at. The fighting was fierce but didn’t last long. Wiman, the Captain of the Verona took shelter behind the safe in the wheelhouse; afterwards he counted one hundred and seventy-five bullet holes.

Two deputies were confirmed killed and a further twenty injured, including sheriff McRae. The IWW reported five dead with twenty-seven wounded, but these figures had not been verified. The Union members returning to Seattle were arrested and were being held awaiting trial. The State Governor had sent Militia to Everett and Seattle and had ordered an enquiry by the State Detective. Ed shared my view that the massacre had been orchestrated to cause an armed confrontation.

He was a lot less certain that one man had been responsible for both Everett and the earlier trouble in Yakima where I had been injured. He was sufficiently impressed by my story, however, to take down the best description I could give of Lewis. He wired it to the State Detective and to sheriffs in the surrounding towns.

The affair had been reported in eastern newspapers and a question had been asked in Congress. Ed planned to draft a report including my discoveries that we would jointly send to the Governor; he had more experience of preparing evidence that would satisfy the official mind and it would give me time to visit Minneapolis before the winter made travel difficult.

I felt grubby from my travels, so I headed back to the cabin to bathe in the freezing water that cascades down the cliff behind the cabin. Apart from my wish to remain in the area I’d no long-term plans. Ed will help with introductions to the farmers and the civic authorities, but I need time to prepare a convincing strategy to lay before them. It will be as well to leave that until the report for the Governor is finalised. I was sure that Calum and Morag would let me stay through the winter.

There is a sharp little rise just before you reach the plateau with the cabin, and I was halfway up when there was a commotion in the bushes to my right and a man emerged from the undergrowth. Tall and well-built, he was carrying a heavy stick with an iron ferule and what looked like a silver top carved in the likeness of a horse’s head. He must be well over sixty, but he looked fit and formidable.

“Good afternoon, son, are you lost?” he greeted me.

“No, but if I ever do get lost this is the place I’d choose.”

“I’m Willi Fassbinder and I’ll say it’s a pleasure to meet a young fellow with such good taste!”

We both laughed and I took a step up the slope, but he raised his stick and waved it about the plateau and the slope he had been walking on.

“What would you do with this?”

It felt as if it was a continuation of a discussion he had been having with himself. This man is the leader of the farmers that I must convince to pay a living wage to harvest workers and a moment before I had decided that I would have to plan my meetings with him with great care. His question, inviting me into his thoughts, was just the kind of thing I do, so I found myself warming to him as a man. Whatever the outcome of our negotiations, I would like to have this old farmer as a friend.

“Fruit!”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow so I explained that plum and apple trees should do well on the plateau. He pointed out that it was fifteen hundred feet above sea level, but I drew his attention to the fact that the existing trees were deciduous except around the cabin where there were conifers. For years Calum had taken a crop of hay from the land leaving enough grass to feed the sheep over the winter so the growing season should be long enough to let fruit ripen.

Mr Fassbinder was nodding in acknowledgement of my arguments although he was sceptical. His biggest problem, he told me, was with the market for fruit in this area, especially as we would be in competition with traditional fruit-growing areas. By this stage we were arguing like two men planning a joint venture, agreed in principle but thrashing out the details. I was looking out over the ground seeing it as it could be, and it was some moments before I became aware that he was becoming agitated.

“See here, Mr Clooney – for I suppose that’s who you are – will you give me an honest opinion? Would this land support grape vines?”

“Not on the plateau but perhaps on the slopes especially if you could find a south-facing location.”

I explained that ground frost was a hazard making the level surface of the plateau unsuitable.

“If Calum and Morag will have me, I want to spend the winter here so I could hunt up climate data – they must have records in Seattle, surely.”

“I don’t suppose you read German. I’ve kept a record of the weather since I arrived here if that would help.”

“How long would it take for me to learn the German words for snow or thunder? Most of the information will be numbers. Once we know the growing conditions, we would be able to decide on the most suitable grape.”

It turned out that he had a collection of books on viniculture that he would be happy to lend me.

“Come to dinner tonight, and not a word of this to anyone – especially not my children!”

The word was that Erich had been given a telling off by his sister and he was living in town drinking and gambling. Helga was living at home, so I took her riding crop with me to return it to her. In the event, she decided to eat in her room when she heard that I was to be the guest of honour.

In a way it was a strange meal. Willi – by this time we were on first name terms – and I are the main adversaries in a dispute brought into stark prominence by the events in Everett and yet we had a pleasant, relaxed time together. We avoided contentious issues, but it was out of mutual regard and there was no feeling of awkwardness.

I had worked in Napa Valley in California on the grape harvest, and I had been kept on during the winter to help the vintner. They wanted me to stay in the spring, but I became restless in those days when I spent more than a few weeks in one place. Willi confessed that both his children were opposed to planting vines because, they said, he should be taking things easy and not taking on new responsibilities.

“The truth is, they think I’m over the hill, a relic that should be in a museum.” Then he grinned and punched me on the shoulder: “We’ll show them, lad!”

I left with a parcel of books and his weather journal. Our relationship was like the one I shared with Spade. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed a pleasant conversation in such gracious surroundings. The word was that Willi had been a poor man when he arrived from Germany, but his home was well furnished, and he was clearly an intelligent and well-educated man.

My path crossed a paddock before I would plunge into the woods that covered the slope up to the cabin. When I was one pace from the trees a ghostly figure stepped into the middle of the path; it was Helga, and I had a choice of stopping or lifting her out of my way. I was tempted but I politely took a half-step backwards and waited for the attack that was clearly coming.

“If you hurt my father, I’ll kill you.”

“If I hurt your father, I’ll let you kill me.”

The light wasn’t very good amongst the trees so I couldn’t read her expression, but she took some time to consider my answer. I judged that she would choose another line of attack.

“What’s in the parcel? Did you pinch something as you left?”

“Your dad lent me some books to give me something to read in case I get snowed in this winter.”

“I own that cabin and I know I haven’t given you permission to stay.”

“Morag said it would be Ok. She thinks of you as a daughter, you know. Of course, she thinks of me as a grandson so that sort of makes us related – maybe not mother and son but possible aunt and nephew. Should I call you Aunt Helga?”

She took a step towards me, and I gripped her upper arms in case she was planning a physical assault. Even in the poor light I could see the anger flashing in her eyes making her radiantly beautiful, so I pulled her closer and kissed her on the lips. I had expected that I would have a wildcat on my hands, but she remained still with our lips touching for a heartbeat before she pulled away and pushed past me to run off down the track.

I walked home berating myself. First of all, I meet Willi Fassbinder and do absolutely nothing to argue the case for better treatment for harvest labourers and then I grab his only daughter in a most ungallant fashion and kiss her. If she told Morag to throw me out, I could have no complaint. For thirty years I have been proof against the attractiveness of women and now I’m going around kissing a girl who has already tried to kill me!

On the other hand, I thought giving a little skip, she didn’t pull away immediately so perhaps she wanted the kiss as much as I did. I went into the cabin and told Morag what a wonderful evening I had had.

“I can see that,” she replied dryly, handing me a scrap of handkerchief. “I noticed the other day that Helga’s started wearing that lip colouring that’s become all the rage!”

For a number of reasons, I decided that I should not delay my visit to Minneapolis, so I rose early the next morning and caught the first passenger train leaving Yakima depot. Ed Spencer wasn’t in his office, but I wrote him a note and pushed it under the door. Once we were on the move, I got out Ellen’s letter and read it again. When it first arrived, I put off reading it until I was alone; in fact, I waited until I had gone to my room before I opened it and laid it out on the davenport. I didn’t expect there to be a personal message, you understand, but I had an instinct that I should be alone when I read the letter.

Until I followed Spade Docherty out of the office, I would have sworn that I hadn’t noticed Ellen as anything other than a pleasant girl who had the makings of a very good receptionist. At some point I must have ingested the yeast that was now fermenting into a romantic interest in her. I took the letter out of my pocketbook and unfolded it to read it again although I could probably recite every word.

Dear Mister Ewan Clooney,

I’m real sorry to hear you got hurt but I’m pleased you are better. They have sent a man to take your job but he is horrible, always getting too close and taking liberties so I left and got another job. (seeps)The guy, Leggett his name is, says you caused all the trouble and the police are after you but I don’t believe that for one second. Look me up when you get to Minneapolis and I will tell you things about the union that will make your hair curl.

Your friend for life, Ellen

I puzzled over the meaning of ‘seeps’ when I first read the letter laid out on the davenport, but all was made clear when I turned the sheet over. It was nothing more than an instruction to see the PS.

PS

I would not have minded a bit if you had got fresh!!!

It was almost eight in the evening when we pulled into the depot in Minneapolis, but I went to Ellen’s home, even although it was rather late for a man to call on a respectable, single lady. When I got to the address on her letter, I was catechised by her landlady but when I said who I was the old lady’s attitude changed. She left me in the parlour while she went upstairs coming back minutes later with Ellen.

I went forward to hug her and then remembered that I was neither her beau nor a relative. I think she would have hugged me if it hadn’t been for the presence of her landlady. They both thought that I should open my shirt to prove that my wound was as trivial as I claimed but they eventually accepted my refusal and we finally settled down, each with a glass of very stale sherry.

Ellen had overheard conversations before she left the AWO office that convinced her that Leggett was conspiring to set up confrontations between management and workers. She was not allowed to open the mail as she had when I was in charge and Leggett carefully locked his office door when he went out.

“Not that that would have stopped me – the key for the rest room fits his door!”

Margaret, the new receptionist, didn’t mind the mauling at first because she thought Leggett had serious intentions towards her, but she had since seen him coming out of a club with a redhead on his arm. In Ellen’s considered view, Margaret was a woman scorned and would let me have a look around Leggett’s office anytime I wanted. I stored the information away, but I made no attempt to analyse it. I was more interested in knowing who was visiting the office. I could have saved a lot of time and trouble if I had listened with more attention.

Ellen is now working for an attorney in the same building as the AWO office and meets Margaret for lunch most days. She didn’t openly suggest that I join them the next day, but I think she would have done if the landlady had not been listening. All she had told me so far amounted to no more than hints and innuendo and I decided that I couldn’t spare the time for Margaret at present.