Chapter 6: 1969

Anjelica Harris narrating

I could see the tears roll down my Joey’s cheeks as he finished saying goodbye in front of all our family and friends to the only real father he knew. I felt the tears running down my cheeks, too.

The woman standing next to me put her arm around me. I knew her, by face if not name, but she knew me and she must’ve known Joe and loved him too. He had just so much to give, everybody loved Average Joe Harris.

The coffin was laid on the shoulders of eight sorrowful but proud men. I knew them all well, three of them were my children. When they drew near, Joey spotted me at the back of the church.

“Momma, you made it!”

“Yes, they tried to filibust us all night but we got the Farm Reform Act through the House and onto the Senate last night, and I flew up early this morning.”

I fell in behind the coffin, with our daughters Jelly Fox and Molly Andrews and we walked out to the Harris family plot, where Joe’s mother and uncle lay along with memorials to Joe’s brave cousins, lost in France while keeping the world free from imperial oppression.

Joe was a Justice of the Peace and a local Councilman, but he wasn’t interested in politics, he was a working farmer, but he was interested in farmers’ rights in Washington, so he urged me to serve in the House of Representatives for the State of Montana, which I did from 1969 to 1971, the second woman and the first person of color from my state to do so.

I almost left Conrad with Johnny and without Joey back in 1936. Joey flatly refused to go. At the station my first husband Johnny Bianchi was disappointed about leaving Joey behind. As soon as Joe reached the farmhouse and between them Joey and Granny Harris explained to him how I’d left with my first husband and how it came about that he was still alive, Joe jumped on his bike and rode hell for leather to the railway station.

Why the station? Johnny, the businessman and club owner from Chicago, was afraid of flying. Joe had me comfortable flying solo in all three of our planes, all very different, within six months of bringing them home.

“Angel,” Joe said at the station, as we stood there the three of us, “please don’t break up our family. I know you told Mum that your former criminal husband is now legit, but do you really know this man? Do you remember what life was like when you were his wife and how your life is now? Do you realise how many people are relying on you for their jobs, at the dairy, the farm, the small businesses and tradesmen in this town? Do you realise how much I would miss you? Granny would miss you and Joey, if he joined you, and how you going without him would tear Joey apart? And what about the baby?”

The baby! In all the excitement, I’d forgotten the baby, our baby, Joe’s baby inside me, due before Christmas. How could Gianni, Johnny make me forget my baby? Was I mad?

I looked at Johnny, clean-shaven, tall, dark and handsome, his black hair slick, in his smart double-breasted suit, sharp down to his patent leather shoes. The Windsor-knotted tie complemented his sharp silk shirt, diamond tie pin and matching diamond cuffs, his shirt cuffs being tugged by his soft, manicured hands as I looked him up and down, every inch the stylish businessman in his mid-30s.

Joe, on the other hand, his sandy-colored hair thinning and uncombed, he was of just above average height and wiry build, his worried face scarred and tanned by daily contact with the elements, in his late forties, his work dungarees freshly soiled and permanently stained by the toil of his labours, his thick cotton unbuttoned shirt frayed at the collar and cuffs, his working boots scuffed and caked with mud, his hat pulled from his head and screwed up in his calloused hands as he pleaded with me to reconsider.

I had kissed his scars nightly, lovingly, thanking him for doing his sacrifice and service for both his countries when they needed him. I was proud of him in company, an honest, decent, modest man, successful because people like him, respected him, trusted him. I loved him for caring for me and loving me completely when only a couple of days before I met him I was dismissed as a ‘fat colored cow’. Joe had loved my son as if he was his very own. I loved him because he treated me with respect as an equal, in our businesses, in our home and in our bedroom. I loved him for his dedication to work, making us indispensable to the town. I loved his slow gentle smile and his passion for life. I loved him for loving me as much as I loved him.