The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 17

A few minutes later, the same man appeared in the doorway of the building, face bloodied, pushed into the street by one of the security men, his glasses skittering onto the cobblestone as he cried, “What is my crime? What is my crime!”

The crowd rumbled and muttered like it hadn’t chosen which team to root for, heads swinging left and right at signs of action: To the south a young woman in a plain gray smock yelled, “Wake up! Wake up!,” and a cop pulled her down the street, then the crowd swung the other way, to the north end of Stevens, where Frank Little had gone limp and was being dragged by the arms, his legs bumping on the streetcar tracks. His soapbox was still in the street, and a long-bearded man climbed up and began singing with a heavy Slav accent, “Oh, say can you hear,” the first lines of the workingman’s “Star-Spangled Banner,” Coming near and more near—

That man went down, too, pounded by a security goon, but another man was already on the box behind him, and Rye yelled, “Jules!” as if he might warn his friend, who either didn’t know the workers’ anthem or didn’t like it, because he started singing in French: “C’est la lutte finale, groupons-nous et demain!” and a cop standing just a few feet away cocked his head in confusion. But Hub Clegg had no hesitation and stepped in behind Jules with a raised nightstick, Rye reflexively closing his eyes rather than see the blow land—but when someone near him yelled, “Oh!,” Rye opened his eyes and tried to fight through the crowd.

That was when another voice, Chief Sullivan’s, thundered, “Boys!” and a great surge came and this was no longer a show or a baseball game but a full-on riot, cops and bull goons mowing down Stevens, swinging nightsticks to clear the street, and people running, falling, being trampled, Rye swept up in a wave moving north, his last view of Jules a bloodied face and his hands shackled behind his back.

“Hold the line!” someone shouted, and Rye could hear another man pick up the workingman’s anthem: “Come all ye who labor”— and that voice stopped, and a heavier accent, “The Industrial Band throughout all the land—”

But he couldn’t see the action anymore, and there seemed to be nothing left of the Wobbly lines, just a man or two running from the cops, and the crowd heaved forward and pulled back like a living thing, Wobblies scattered to the edges, a new shift of cops running into the melee, fixing suspenders and buttoning coats, a man in a fine suit running down the street with a shotgun.

For an hour, the crowd moved back and forth down Stevens to Front, where, amid the bedlam, a man on the corner began to sing: “Come workers unite! ’Tis humanity’s fight!” A brick flew from a third-story window and the man was dropped, then a hail of bricks came and Rye ran with the crowd out of the melee, and how long it went on, Rye couldn’t say, the crowd scattering and flowing like a tide, back and forth, bricks and sticks and winded cops, singers and speakers shackled and hauled off and so much happening Rye couldn’t focus on any one thing.

Until his eyes fell on a small dark-haired man in a bow tie who walked calmly through the throng and climbed on what had to be the IWW’s last crate, for cops were stomping them everywhere, the man producing a mouth harp and blowing a note through it, Rye transfixed as the man took a deep breath and sang—“And the Banner of Labor will surely soon wave”—and for just a moment time seemed to halt, and everyone—cop, workingman, Pinkerton, and suffragist—turned to look—“O’er the land that is free”—for the man’s tenor was glorious—“From the master and the slave”—pure as birdsong—“The blood and the lives of children and wives”—as if God had broken through the melee to allow this song—“Are ground into dollars for parasites’ pleasure”—either that or the Italian was just too short for the cops to see—“The children now slave, ’til they sink in their grave”—for that’s when even God lost interest and the tenor’s face warped sideways, inside out, eyes and nose and lips bursting forth in blood—he’d taken a club to the head and down he went—that harsh music critic Hub Clegg on him like hound to bone.

Another man quickly stepped on the box, and Rye’s first thought was surprise that he hadn’t seen Gig standing there, but there he was, climbing on the Italian’s tiny stage, and Rye calling, “Gig!” and lurching toward him, his brother so small up there, Rye struggling to get upstream though the fleeing people as Gig picked up the tenor’s chorus, “And the banner of labor will surely soon wave—”

A security man took Gig off the box, and as he fell, another man swung a rifle stock at him, Rye yelling, “Gig!” And Rye had almost reached his brother when he found himself in front of the empty crate, and then he was on it, his voice thin and frightened as he picked up the song, “O’er the land that is free—”

He blocked the first swing with his forearm and yelped the last of the song, “From master and slave!” as his brother yelled, “Rye!” and something hit him in the back and he tumbled to the street, looked for Gig through the scramble of legs and feet, but a kick to the gut took what was left of his breath and Rye Dolan finally gave up and curled into a ball, covered his face with his arms, and waited for what felt like had been coming his whole short sweet life.