Opening Scene: Introduces First of Two Protagonists and Presents Inciting Incident for his Character

Everett, Washington, November 5, 1916.

The steamer Verona glided into sparkling Port Gardner Bay as more than two hundred strong belted out “Hold the Fort.” The Union men aboard had passed their short voyage up Puget Sound’s evergreen coast singing the anthems from the red songbook they knew by heart. With the smokestacks and warehouses of Everett in view, their voices boomed:

We meet today in freedom’s cause and raise our voices high!

We’ll join our hands in union strong, to battle or to die!

They were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. Most called them the Wobblies, though nobody could say for certain how they earned the nickname. From points as far east as Butte they had answered the summons to rush to Everett. The week before, forty-one of their brothers aiming to preach the Wobbly gospel on Everett’s street corners had been beaten and run out of town at gunpoint. That Sunday, they would have their say. The festive mood on the crisp autumn afternoon was so infectious that the Verona’s few nonunion passengers didn’t mind being crammed among the footloose harvesters, miners, and timber beasts.

Hold the fort for we are coming, union men be strong.

Side by side keep pressing onward, victory will come.

Jack St. Dennis slapped some backs then squeezed from the excursion boat’s upper cabin onto the deck.

“Hey Jacko!” Tom Tracy called above the singing, thrumming engine, and bracing wind. Tracy had the muscular build of a teamster with intelligent eyes, a high forehead, and thick black hair that ran down the sides of his face into coarse whiskers. He put out an emergency appeal for two thousand men after the previous week’s incident. If only four hundred responded, that wasn’t bad; he had no ability to cart them to Everett anyway. 

The Wobs that assembled in Seattle resolved to pool their money and chartered the Verona. So many men marched four abreast from the IWW’s skid road meeting hall to the docks that morning that the small vessel reached its maximum capacity of 250 passengers in a jiffy. The steamer company had a second boat, the Calista, in reserve. It followed behind with the overflow of Wobblies and the displaced passengers who bought advance tickets to ride the Verona. 

“Ready with your spiel?” Tracy shouted in his hearty bass.

St Dennis hitched up his cut-off overalls to the top of his caulk boots. “As I’ll ever be.”

Tracy leaned in closer so he could make himself heard without yelling. “You’ll go before Ashleigh. He’ll be our closer.”

“Is he going to make it? I haven’t seen him.”

Tracy grinned. “Old Charlie’s predicting a turnout of five thousand or more. You think he’d miss a chance to speak to that kind of crowd? He rode up by rail on the interurban. That way he didn’t take a space on the boat. Just as well. It’ll give him a chance to work the press he invited for today’s lesson in free speech.”

Everett’s mill owners had crushed a strike by the local workers who cut shingles from raw cedar. Having gone months without pay and with a cold winter coming, the humbled shingle weavers slunk back to their jobs on the bosses’ old terms. The millworkers weren’t Wobbly radicals. They were craft unionists who considered themselves a rung above the unskilled farm and industrial laborers who belonged to the IWW. The Wobblies nonetheless descended on Everett to buck up the dispirited shingle weavers and demonstrate organized labor’s unbroken resolve. St. Dennis planned that afternoon to teach his listeners a practical lesson on how to do six hours’ work in a ten-hour day. If the shingle weavers folded their arms in the right way—the smart way—the bosses would come around. They wouldn’t have a choice.

St. Dennis eyed Abe Rabinowitz standing apart from the boisterous crowd on deck. The young New Yorker, fresh from that city’s public university, had recently shown up in Seattle. He sought out St. Dennis who, though not yet thirty himself, was a veteran organizer by Wobbly standards. Rabinowitz had earned his union credentials organizing garment workers in Newark and was eager to bring the Northwest fighting spirit back home. In the few weeks St. Dennis had known him, he seemed an irrepressible optimist—as a Wobbly organizer one had to be. He stood against the rail studying the shoreline.

St. Dennis edged over to him. “See something?”

“It’s too quiet.” Rabinowitz frowned and turned up the collar of his pea coat.

A lone dockhand and three men in dark suits and fedoras waited on the City Dock. The brooding commercial buildings lining the wharf cast a shadow over the waterfront. 

St. Dennis pointed to the hill rising above the wharf. “Look past the tracks.” Beyond a railroad crossing Everett’s courthouse square teemed with workers unfurling enormous red banners. Their cheers at the Verona’s approach lilted over the bay. “That’s what counts.” The young man failed to brighten, and St. Dennis tried to reassure him. “We’re gonna do just fine.”

Rabinowitz eyed St. Dennis. “These people are capable of anything.”

St. Dennis rubbed his chin out of habit. He had shaved off his vagabond beard with a straight razor that morning for his appearance before Everett’s city dwellers. His skin felt stubbly, but he hadn’t nicked himself badly. “There’re too many of us this time, Abe.”

The captain cut the throttle. A crew member at the bow tossed a line in a lazy arc to the dockworker on the pier who slipped the rope over a bollard and drew it fast. Another deckhand wedged ahead of St. Dennis and Rabinowitz to swing the gangplank into place. The Wobblies on board whooped and broke into a marching song. Men filed up from the cabin below. They pressed together waiting to disembark like tourists impatient to start a holiday.

The shortest of the three men on the pier stepped forward. He seemed about fifty with a flabby lassitude that masked a temperament as hard as the steel jacket he wore under his suit. The man cupped his hands around his mouth to better cast his voice. “Boys, I’m Sheriff McRae. Who’s your leader?”

St. Dennis found himself staring at the sheriff from the opposite end of the gangway and bellowed the stock Wobbly retort. “We’re all leaders!”

The Wobs on the boat erupted in cheers and laughter. Without turning from the Verona, the sheriff waggled the revolver he drew from a holster on his belt. At the sheriff’s signal, over a hundred armed deputies streamed from one of the warehouses fronting the dock and fanned out along the wharf.

McRae leveled his revolver at the gangplank. “You can’t land here.”

“The hell we can’t!” St. Dennis roared as his fellow Wobblies surged behind him.

A gunshot echoed across the harbor. St. Dennis turned to see Abe Rabinowitz stagger and crumple onto the deck. Then a hailstorm of rifle fire from shore rocked the boat. Some of the terrified Wobblies dropped to the deck where their prone bodies became targets for buckshot and dum-dum bullets. Most bolted for cover on the far side of the upper cabin. The panicked rush caused the steamer to list and water poured over the lower deck. Men without a handhold skidded into the bay. Those who saw no escape jumped. Sharpshooters among the sheriff’s men fired on the figures bobbing in the icy water.

St. Dennis struggled to maintain his footing and keep his head amid the screams and bodies jostling him. Bullet holes scarred the pilot house, but the engine revved. Somebody was trying to power the Verona to open water. St. Dennis dropped to the sloping deck awash with blood and slithered to the mooring line. Stretching over the boat’s gunwale, he flicked open his switchblade. He sawed at the rope pulled taut as steel cable. A bullet whizzed by his ear. The gunman would be adjusting his sight. With single-minded focus St. Dennis threw all his bodyweight into one slash at the rope. The line snapped. The Verona, engine in full reverse, tore backward as if launched from a slingshot. St. Dennis hurtled overboard into the murky sludge at the edge of the pier.

His heart clenched as he hit the frigid mix of seawater and mill runoff. Port Gardner Bay had been dredged for deep draft freighters, so there was no seeing the bottom. St. Dennis descended below the Verona’s keel through the inky brine weighed down by his waterlogged boots, overalls, and flannel shirt and underwear. He oriented himself and willed his legs to kick hard to the surface. He broke water to the sound of gunfire, gulped air, and submerged. St. Dennis held his breath as long as he could stand then rose to the waterline once more. With all the power in his numb extremities, he paddled to the City Dock and clambered up the wooden pilings.

St. Dennis flopped onto his back gasping. The guns were still. He rolled over to see the Verona out of range and steaming for Seattle. The Calista, which had overtaken the Verona in Port Gardner Bay, was turning to beat a retreat with her sister ship. St. Dennis got to his feet unable to control his shivering. A pack of deputies charged him, and he raised his trembling hands into the air. They might have plugged him right then, but several women who came for the rally shoved past the barrier Sheriff McRae had erected at the railroad tracks. They ran straight for the deputies in their long Sunday dresses screaming, “Murderers! Murderers! Murderers!”