The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 83

“Well, you should ask Charlie his views,” she said, “but if calling for fairness and justice is radical, then I am about the radicalest woman in the world.”

Pugh tried everything to shake the witness, one day asking if her husband was in the courtroom, and when she began to answer, “No—” he interrupted with “And what do you suppose Mr. Jones thinks of his wife traveling to labor camps and mining towns in the company of such unsavory men?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, “but if he doesn’t like it, I doubt he’d like it any better if I traveled with savory men such as yourself.” Over the laughter, Pugh asked if her husband would find it so humorous, “you summoning every foreign scoundrel and savage to Spokane to harass our poor citizenry.”

Gurley didn’t answer right away. “I guess I’m wondering how you arrived at this theory that I can summon men from all over the world yet can’t seem to convince my own husband to catch a train and come here?”

Pugh was more effective cross-examining grim Charlie Filigno, mostly by asking forty different ways where Filigno was from. “Sicily,” he’d answer each time. “And your country of origin, then, Mr. Fil-ig-i-no?” “Sicily.” “So you arrived here in 1906 from—” “Sicily.” Pugh asked long, involved questions meant to confuse the union secretary and expose his weak command of English. “Are there not, in fact, criminal elements of the Industrial Workers of the World in this very city who have resorted to violence, beating up police officers, threatening public figures, committing untold numbers of crimes to further the cause of your radical agenda—in fact, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Filigno, that as secretary of the Spokane IWW, that despite your union’s repeated claims of nonviolence, you personally have done nothing to deter these individuals and, in fact, have expressed only the utmost respect and sympathy for your vile compatriots and countrymen?”

Fred Moore rose in objection: “Your Honor, if the prosecutor is done testifying, perhaps he could ask a question.” While Moore’s objections were never sustained, Pugh agreed to rephrase that particular question: “Remind this court again where you are from, Mr. Fil-ig-i-no.”

Rye followed the trial in the city’s dailies, his view of who was winning depending on which paper he’d just read, as if each were covering only one boxer in a match, the establishment Chronicle and Spokesman-Review cheering the hits that Pugh got in, the labor Press making it seem that Fred Moore and Gurley Flynn were mopping the floor with him. Still, Rye became increasingly nervous as the trial wore on, as countless union flyers, newspapers, and telegrams were entered as evidence that Gurley Flynn and Filigno were trying to cause a riot in the city. In an editorial, the Spokesman-Review vaguely referred to her pregnancy by noting that jurors are “clearly scandalized by this brash woman wearing the bustle wrong” and that the city, “having achieved eighteen straight convictions against union leadership, appears headed for nos. nineteen and twenty.”

Finally, on a Friday in late February, both sides rested, and the judge announced that on Monday, the case would go to the jury.

As Joe closed up the machine shop that Saturday, Rye nervously asked if he might have Monday off to go down to the courthouse to be there for the verdict. By then, the whole shop knew Rye had been involved in the Wobbly riot back in November, and while Dom and Paul were union machinists and expressed support, Joe was uneasy about having hired a kid from an outfit as rough as the IWW.

“The goob only had eight fingers, but at least I never had to worry that he’d dynamite the place,” Joe said.

“I would never do something like that,” Rye said. “And anyway, Wobblies don’t dynamite things. That’s more the anarchists you’re thinking of, Joe.”

“You aren’t one of them, are you?”

“No, Joe!” Rye said. “I don’t know what I am.” He thought of his brother and of Early Reston, out there somewhere. “Except the shop boy at North Hill Fittings and Machine.”

Paul and Dominic watched from behind the counter. Finally, Joe said, “Well, you can’t wear that to court.”

Rye looked down at his worn work shirt and dungarees. That afternoon he took the streetcar downtown to look for a new shirt. He was in an unprecedented position in regard to money. With Gig gone, and Marco insisting that their six-dollar down payment on the orchard be applied to room and board, Rye was paid up at the boardinghouse until May. Mrs. Ricci had even let him move inside to the warmer first-floor bedroom. Since he was earning nearly ten dollars a week at the machine shop, and Mrs. Ricci provided his breakfasts and dinners, and Gemma Tursi sent his lunches to work with Dominic, Rye had money for the first time in his life. He’d even opened a bank account.

He stood on the corner of Post and Riverside, hands in his pockets, staring into the window at Murgittroyd’s. The all-everything drugstore had a single row of stiff, boxy suit coats in between the pocket watches and fishing boots. A white $4 sign was pinned to the first jacket. A streetcar rattled past, and Rye left the window to walk down to the Crescent. He looked in that window at a rack of $13 sack-coat suits, gray, with a fine crosshatching of blue thread. A card on the floor of the window display read: THE HOME OF DIGNIFIED CREDIT. Had any phrase ever sounded better than dignified credit? Still, more than a week’s salary for something he might wear once? He glanced up the street and kept moving, eventually finding himself back on Sprague, at the window of Bradley and Graham’s, the corner shop where he’d bought his fancy gloves. He stared through the glass at swaths of fabric and pieces of vests and pants, a coat with tails that didn’t have a price on it. These suits weren’t even built yet. What would they cost? Fifty