Chapter Seven The Girl in Flaming Red The walk back to the Columbine takes the men four days, on account of getting caught in Limon and white-capped all over again. They catch a break in Strasburg, the last stop before Denver, and hitch a ride in a vegetable truck the rest of the way. The four men know something is wrong even before the truck crests the hill at the mine's gate. The door to every cottage is open. Men and women are tossing their clothing into luggage. Men are gathering across from the office. Fierce arguments surge into frenzies as the disputes come to blows. Ortega spots his wife Mary and his children trudging through the mud with their bags. He calls for her and breaks into a run. "Oh Johnny, *idiota*!" cries Mary as they collide in an embrace near the gate. "Where the hell have you been?" Eastenes feels a tug on his shirt. His wife Bertha grabs him by the collar. She buries her face in his shoulder, sobbing. When Dorothy and his other children pull on Eastenes' pants, they all nearly collapse into a pile. Bell is trying to make sense of just what is going on, when he hears what sounds like a entire schoolhouse stampeding their way. Ortega peeks over Bell's shoulder. "*Madre Mia*, Mrs. Beranek!" whimpers Ortega. Beranek, rolling pin at her side, is storming towards them with her husband and sixteen children in tow. "Come here, you deadbeats!" yells Beranek, "I'm gonna knock yer blocks off if it's the last thing I do!" The air is suddenly bursting with the sound of all their children, over two-dozen in total, demanding answers of their own. "Enough!" says Beranek. "Mister Bell, whole world's gone to Perdition, and you've been off for four whole days at some speakeasy or cathouse or I don't know what." Bell adjusts his glasses. "Well, Mrs. Beranek, I wouldn't exactly say--" "And *you*!" Beranek points her rolling pin at Ortega. "My fellow charity tycoon, ha!" Ortega shakes his head. "No, seÑora, we were white-capped." Beranek makes a start at him. "*Night-cap*? I knew it!" "No!" says Eastenes. "The Sheriff and his goons kidnapped us. We've been walking back for four days." Jacques sees Spanudakhis and Davis walking toward the gate with their suitcases. He grabs them both. "Nick, what's going on?" asks Jacques. "Oh, it ain't good, Jay-coo," says Spanudakhis. "The police are raiding our homes every night. The jail is full to the brim!" Davis points to something in the sky. "Hey! They're coming back again!" "Who's coming?" is what Eastenes tries to say, but he's cut off by the roar of an airplane engine. A biplane swoops low over the mining camp, loud enough to fill every corner of Eastenes' brain. When his eyes open, he and everyone else in the camp is on the ground, cowering. The children have scattered, and their mothers run off to collect them. "Not again..." says Bell under his breath. Plans were a weapon of war against miners during the Long Strike, scaring off protests in the Southern Coal Field. "What was that?" asks Ortega. "The National Guard" says Spanudakhis. "They fly them planes over the camp, all day and all night, until we can't sleep or think." "And that's just the start of it," says Davis. Bell looks at Davis. "What else is there, rookie?" "Mister Bell... the militia's back." Bell says nothing. "They call themselves the Rangers," says Davis. "They're on orders from the Governor. Led by some guy named... Scarf? Scherf?" "Wait," says Bell, "*Louis* Scherf?" "Yeah, that's the guy," says Davis. Bell turns away and pulls off his glasses. He turns away from the other men, lost in thought. When he turns back around, all eyes are on him, waiting for an explanation. Bell puts his glasses back on. "The older union men talked about a militia man named Pat Hamrock. He led the militia at the Ludlow Massacre. Hamrock's first lieutenant was Louis Scherf." Bell watches the hope leave their eyes. Bertha looks up at Eastenes. "I never liked this. Now they send their dogs after us?" Eastenes kisses Bertha on the head. "We're lucky we didn't die out on the plains. I have six kids; maybe you still want to take the risk, but not me. Not me, Bell!" The plane flies over again, and they all dive for cover. Bell watches the plane fly south, probably refueling. When he looks back, Eastenes is leading his children to the front gate, headed for Lafayette. *Ludlow*, thinks Bell, *it's Ludlow all over again*. In his mind's eye, the White City burns. "Mister Bell?" Bell looks down at Davis. "We were going to call a vote, on whether or not to continue the strike." Bell looks at the teeming tableau of families scrambling beneath the mine's tipple. He knows a miner's fear of having the tipple come crashing down on you. "We were close," says Bell. "I could feel it." Bell straightens his frayed Sunday jacket and scrapes off some dried mud. "It's been my privilege to stand alongside you, Davis." They hear a car horn blaring down on the county line road. "Is it the cops again?" asks Davis. Bell adjusts his glasses, his eyes tracking the road down to the highway. The car is an Oakland two-cylinder, the car used by the Wobblies down south. He could see pickets on the road's shoulders, following the car up the hill. *It can't be*, thinks Bell. *She was arrested... she's still in jail...* A great throng of cheering men and women is following the car now, making a tidal wave through the open gate. The car door opens, and Bell can't see who it is with all the people in the way, but he knows it must be *her*. Women rush from cottage to cottage, spreading the word, and families stream out of every door. A group of miners run to the trash heap behind the office, grabbing broken mine cart sidings, wood pallets, and used powder boxes. In two minutes, a makeshift stage is hammered together from the debris. In the darkening twilight, the miners pull out their carbide lanterns, each light focused on the stage. The stage wobbles and bends, even under the girl's slight weight, and the crowd is cheering so hard she stays silent for a full minute. Six weeks ago, the Wobblies had put out a call for every footloose rebel to come to Colorado and fight the good fight. She had been arrested in the march up Delagua Canyon, and yet, by escape, bail, or early release, here she is. The crowd quiets down at last, and Flaming Mamie speaks: "Every last one of us came from some place else. My parents came from Croatia." She points to Ortega. "You, your people, Mexico. Greece. France. Bohemia. But I am not Croatia. You are not Mexicans, or Bohemians, or French." Mamie unfurls the cloth in her hands. A familiar sight: forty- eight stars, thirteen stripes, red, white, and blue." "I'm an American!" The crowd cheers. She takes long steps along the creaking stage, letting her American flag shine bright in the glow of the carbide lanterns. "In one week, it will be Thanksgiving. All of us came here to America in search of a better life, just like the pilgrims on Thanksgiving. And yet when we try to speak freely, they call us criminals. When we ask to be paid enough to live, they call us socialists!" She hocks a wad of spit into the dirt, as sure as any tobacco marksman. "I'm not attacking America. I'm defending what it means to be an American! "We dig the coal that burns in every home, that powers every street light, that runs every train, and for our hard work, they fly their warbirds overhead to drive us crazy!" "It's not right!" cries Mrs. Beranek. "To beat hell!" shouts Bertha. "To beat hell!" shouts little Dorothy. Bertha cups her hand around her daughters mouth as the crowd laughs. Mamie waves a finger across the crowd, making eye contact with each one in the multitude. "When you struck in 1893, nothing changed. When you took to the streets in 1903, nothing changed. When they smothered your wives and daughters at Ludlow, and shot poor Louis Tikas in the back, nothing changed. "They still cheat you at the weigh machine. They still pay you so little you have to hunt rabbits in the fields to eat. They still pay you with scrip. They still forbid a union that would let you speak as one. "When they blew the three whistles at the Vulcan, and then the Hastings, you asked for the mines to be made safe, but nothing's changed. "They have you down for the count. They think they took the heart out of ya. And maybe they did. I say if you give up this time, you give it up for good. "But if you get back on your feet and stand together, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what names they call you, then you still stand a chance. People for generations to come will remember how you chose to stand for what's right. They'll remember how you fought to have a voice! You fought to be free! You fought to give your children a better tomorrow! "So now, you wives, you mothers, you brothers, you miners, I'm telling you to get back up again, and every time they knock us down, and call us dirty foreigners, and tell us to go back where we came from, I want you to get right back up and tell them all, 'I'm an American, and I'm not going anywhere!'" The roar of the crowd that night had been louder than any airplane that could have flown overhead. Along the barbed wire fence, and on the high tipple, the guards and Rangers watch the miners celebrate in the chill autumn air. Tonight, the Union Hall in Lafayette rings with songs of the old country. These men and women come from nations that had waged war across Europe and Central America for centuries, but here, tonight, their joy was shared joy, and their struggle, shared struggle. Little Dorothy, and Lupie, Ortega's oldest daughter, watch their parents dance on the worn-down hardwood. Eastenes and Bertha look at each other, more in love now than they could have ever believed possible. How could that not be the case, when they had met at a dance just like this, and after one date had decided to marry? They had barely known each other then, but now life had taught them what the other was made of, and it was beautiful. The families in the Union Hall make room for Ortega, and he wows the crowd with that lightning footwork that won the champion's belt. When he was in his prime, Ortega, a mere featherweight, had been the headliner, and Jack Dempsey, the legendary Manassa Mauler, why, *he'd* been the undercard fight! Yet, Ortega was glad to have his prizefighting days behind him. Coal mining was a technical trade, and with his body in top shape, and a good head on his shoulders, he could keep at it for some time. A boxer, though, washed up and punch-drunk, with no other skills to sell, a man like that couldn't take care of a wife and kids. Ortega stops, resting his hands on his knees to cough. He looks up and sees Beranek, and her husband Joe, teaching their children the dances of their own childhoods. They just about take up half of Union Hall. After Mamie's speech, Beranek was the one who called the vote to continue the strike. Before the resounding "Yes!" had left the lips of every miner there, she had begun marching off toward the line of cars at the bottom of the hill, for a ride to the Simpson Mine. She'd heard they had stashed a few supplies, and wanted to negotiate. Ortega wonders what might have happened if this force of nature hadn't been standing at the gate when his cage came up from the shaft. Maybe they'd still be in this hall. Maybe he'd be back down in those tunnels on a night shift, hunched over a four-foot seam. The young Jerry Davis has no woman in his life, but a meeting with Flaming Mamie more than makes up for that. At the back of the Union Hall, Mamie handed Davis the American flag from her speech. She told Davis that the hope for freedom grows when that flag waves in the sky. That flag has seen America through its darkest nights, and if they fly that flag proudly, freedom might live another day. Davis carries the flag in his arms on the ride home to Frederick, east of the Columbine, and hangs it on the wall by his bed. He wonders if Mamie, being a dangerous, exotic labor advocate and all, has been to every state with a star on that flag. Mamie's probably been to all sorts of far-off places, thinks Davis, places like Moscow, Caracas, and Minnesota. Davis falls asleep, the twangs of the Union Hall's music still clamoring in his ears.