Haymarket

To watch eighteen-year-old Lucy Eldine Gonzalez cross a room, her step stately and purposeful, her red twill dress rustling dramatically—to see her move was to know at once that she wouldn’t take kindly to having her time wasted with quavering inquiries about how long to boil the lye and grease scraps for soap, or whether the missing cowpuncher ought to be searched for in town and given the two dollars more a month he’d demanded, or just let disappear—since he knew as much about cattle as a hog does about a side saddle.

Lucy had to deal with such questions, had to deal with them over and over again, as the woman who ran her uncle’s small Buffalo Creek ranch—which was why she insisted the questions be short and kept her answers even shorter. Most of her waking hours were spent feeding the chickens and razorback hogs; pouring candles and knitting socks; making sure the hired hands kept the vegetable rows weeded, the wheat fields tended, the stake-and-rail fence in repair; and overseeing the two Mexican women in the repetitive round of household chores.

But Lucy felt alive not when cleaning out the ash hopper or cooling a prairie chicken in the creek, but when, finally alone in her room at night, she could pore over the
New Orleans Tribune
, read the reports of the latest measures being proposed by the Radical Republicans in Congress to curtail the latest atrocities—a ten-year-old negro boy castrated and cauterized,
made
to live; a white woman rumored to be giving her favors to black men, dragged from her home, hot tar poured into her vagina …

Lucy had learned early that most people, including her uncle, worried far more about cattle than negroes—give or take the occasional spurt of outrage over a “stunt” like the Fifteenth Amendment. “Next, they’ll
want to give the Chinks the right to vote!” one cowpuncher stormed to the others as they sat around waiting for Lucy to put out the evening meal. “It’s a damned tyranny, is what! Next, they’ll be followin’ us into the outhouse!”

“No, next they’ll be givin’ the vote to women,” Lucy said, slamming down a bowl of grits directly in front of the bunk hand. “And a good thing, too. With so many ignorant men votin’, we need
some
way to elevate political life.”

They stared at her like she’d turned lunatic, then, as if she’d never spoken, turned back to talking among themselves about the familiar staples:

Whether the Texas fever disease would strike the herds again this year.

Whether the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe would build beyond its current terminal, now that the railroad rate wars had eased.

Whether the homemade buggy deserved the jury prize at the state fair, when everyone knew the best wagon known to man was the New Hampshire Concord.

Whether the higher prices they’d been getting by driving the cattle to Abilene instead of Sedalia made up for the longer distance, given the increased risk of stampedes and stealing.

Lucy had nothing to say on such matters. She held herself aloof, moved imperiously from kitchen to table, a silent, smoldering figure. Her uncle often warned her that people thought she was high-falutin’.

“You got the skills to sew yourself a red twill dress,” he once said angrily, “but you oughta have the sense
not
to, oughta wear the same flax homespun the other women do.”

“And dye it with the same oak bark, I suppose.” Lucy made no effort to conceal the contempt in her voice.

“That’s right!”

“Oak bark’s dull. I like bright colors.”

“Well, you might like a husband one day, too, and you ain’t gonna find one till you learn to act more everyday-like.” Lucy made no answer.

Talk of her “arrogance” wasn’t the only disapproving gossip to reach her. She knew that some people thought she was a negro. Her dark skin, broad nose, and curly black hair had long since set people to wondering if Lucy’s Mexican uncle wasn’t simply her employer, a man who’d hired her
as a young girl for her vibrant, lustrous brown beauty—and been helping himself to it ever since. There was even a rumor that Lucy had been born a slave; and another, that she’d married one and then left him.

She refused to respond to the rumors. Once in a great while some particularly obnoxious cowpuncher, the kind that arrived out of nowhere without a pair of spurs or a bedroll to his name and was gone as soon as he had enough drinking money in his pocket, poked his face in hers and sneered something about not taking orders from a “nigger bitch.” Then, her temper would burst like a creek flooded by storm, her words splaying him like a Gatling gun: “I don’t talk to a man oily as a snake that drags the ground when it walks. Stick this in your ear, mister: You’re addressin’ a woman of Spanish and Aztec blood. Not an African. My mother was Mexican, my father a civilized Creek. That’s all you need to know, or ever will know. Now move! Get!”

If the cowpuncher was belligerent enough to stand his ground, Lucy, composed and haughty, would turn on her heel and stalk off. That might end the confrontation. But not the rumors.

Even Albert Parsons had heard them—heard them long before he let Lucy know it. The two first met when Albert, back in 1869, started traveling to north Texas as a deputy revenue collector for the state, a job few people wanted now that taxes (and tempers) had gone sky-high in response to what the Conservatives were calling the “needless” new Radical expenditures for building roads and setting up a public school system.

When Albert rode into the courtyard of the Gonzalez ranch for the first time that April day two years ago, Lucy had appeared abruptly in front of him, hands on hips, as if daring him to dismount.

“This is the Gonzalez ranch, mister. What’s your business here?”

“Excuse me, ma’am, beg pardon for intrudin’ on your land … My horse Bessie here’s got a powerful thirst, and I was hopin’ …” Albert’s words trailed off as Lucy moved into full view, staring up at him. He’d never seen such a woman before—golden brown skin, high cheekbones, a full and sensuous figure, deep, intense black eyes. She moved and spoke with such authority, such concentrated vehemence, that she seemed like some sort—an ancient sort—of queen.
That
was it! Albert thought: She’s like a reincarnation of that Egyptian princess—Nefer-somebody—he’d seen a picture of during his school days in Waco.

Seeing Albert looking blank-eyed, as if in a trance, Lucy had trouble fighting back a smile. She knew that look, and what usually followed was some crude attempt to paw her. But she’d seen at a glance that this man had a quiet kind of gentleness about him.

“Well acourse your horse can drink,” Lucy said, “if you can manage to get down off the poor beast so I can lead her to the trough.”

With a laugh, Albert leapt off and Lucy took Bessie’s reins. “You look pretty parched yourself. You head inside there”—she pointed to an archway leading into the long adobe building—“and when I finish with Bessie here I might just find somethin’ for you. If you succeed in staying alive that long. You’re about the sorriest lookin’ cowpuncher I ever seen.”

“Ain’t no cowpuncher, ma’am, I’m an assessor, a revenue collector.”

Lucy’s face clouded over, yet the trace of a smile remained. “Are you now? Well then, I guess we’ll spare the cheese and currants and give you two soda crackers instead.”

She turned away, led Bessie across the courtyard, let her drink her fill, then tethered her to a post. Lucy retraced her steps back to the main house and entered the sprawling but sparsely furnished long room that served as combination parlor, kitchen, and eating area. As she strode into the room, she was already in mid-sentence.

“… Now just what kind of ‘revenue’ you fixin’ to collect?” Albert jumped up from his chair the moment she entered, but Lucy motioned him impatiently to sit back down again. “Let’s hear some figures.”

“Well, ma’am, accordin’ to my records, Mr. Gonzalez—”

“Señor Gonzalez. I’m his niece, Lucy Gonzalez. And we both expect a proper form of address.”

“Yes, ma’am. I do apologize.” Flustered, Albert hastily consulted his notes.

“Well, it says here that Señor Gonzalez hasn’t paid any kinda tax for two years.”

“That’s because he don’t approve the way the money’s bein’ spent. ‘One year of Radical rule,’ he says, ‘and there ain’t a dime left in the Texas Treasury. They’re filchin’ hard-earned money from the people and squandering it on schools for niggers and roads to nowhere.’ ”

“But the State
needs
a school system, ma’am. I’m surprised you feel that way …” He saw Lucy flinch.

“I was tellin’ you how my uncle feels. That’s what matters around here.
Even if I did share his views—and I’m not sayin’ I do or don’t—why would that surprise you?”

Her twinkling condescension made Albert sputter in embarrassment. “Well, ma’am, can’t rightly say why I had that … that impression …”

“Stop bein’ so nervous, boy! Once you learn to speak your mind straight out, people’ll respect you more. Anyway, I already know the answer: my brown skin. Which I feel sure you noticed,” Lucy added sardonically.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Figured, seeing as how you’re not blind. A little glazed, maybe, but your eyes do seem to work okay. Anyway, you guessed right about my views. The negro people may not be my people—I’m Mexican and Creek—but I do believe every child has the right to go to school, and make somethin’ of himself, whatever his color. We need for the day to come when dumb white boys like you don’t run
everything.”
Lucy paused. “Hell, boy, I don’t even know your name.”