Stories from Suffragette City Read online

  In the article, several commentators weighed in on the terroristic tactics.

  One said the militancy clearly damaged the cause and set back the movement. Even worse, a large portion of the movement had started to give priority to militancy rather than obtaining the vote. One observer noted that it had become a kind of holy war, so important that it could not be called off, even if continuing it prevented suffrage reform.

  Which seemed, as the article noted, the big difference between there and here. The American movement had not succumbed to violence. The focus remained on obtaining the right to vote through peaceful and civil means.

  He’d never known that about the Brits.

  Another story on the page caught his attention.

  It dealt with the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Founded by a woman in 1911, its members strongly opposed the suffrage movement. A quote from its mission purpose seemed to say it all. The great advance of women in the last century—moral, intellectual, and economic—had been made without the vote, which proved that suffrage was not needed for their further advancement. Incredibly, quotes in the article alleged that the majority of women did not want the right to vote. They believed that the men in their lives accurately represented the political will of women around the country.

  Not any of the women he knew.

  For NAOWS, true womanhood was quiet, dignified, and regal. Supposedly, political equality would deprive women of special privileges now afforded them by law.

  He wondered what those were.

  The quotes also made the incredible assertion that doubling the vote with women would increase the undesirable and corrupt vote. And, lest anyone forget, a woman’s present duties filled up the whole measure of her time and ability. There was little room for more.

  He had a hard time fathoming that anyone with a brain actually believed that. But, apparently, there were some who did. The group was headquartered in Manhattan and there was a picture of their storefront establishment with the article. Located on East Thirty-Fourth Street, just down from the Fifth Avenue intersection.

  His fogged brain cleared.

  And he visualized the map that had been on Samuel Morrison’s desk. The red crayon circle had been around that intersection, along with a notation for 4:15 p.m. Was it possible? Had he found the target? Was that why he’d been attacked?

  He had to get to East Thirty-Fourth Street and find out, so he worked through the math and geography, as any New Yorker could. The train he was on to Union Square stopped at seventeen stations and would take at least forty minutes. It was a long way from there to Thirty-Fourth Street, especially with the crowds. Surely there would be another train from Union Square to the Thirty-Fourth Street station, but that would take ten minutes with at least two stops. That was fifty minutes, plus another five for getting to the other platform and up the steps.

  The whole trip? Right at an hour.

  He’d have just enough time, with a few minutes to spare.

  The train pulled into Union Square.

  He rushed across the platforms and barely caught a train north to Herald Square. There, he fled the car and ran up the steps, wincing with the effort, and came face-to-face with a mass of people, all facing toward Fifth Avenue. Was every person in New York at the parade? He elbowed his way through the crowd and was just about clear of them when he heard a child cry out.

  He looked down.

  A little girl of about six or seven lay at his feet, on her knees. Crying.

  Had he knocked her over?

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, as he reached out and picked up the child.

  She had long, reddish hair and the greenest of eyes. She wore a white coat, dirty in places, with a sash across her chest that read Miss Suffragette City. In her hands she clutched a box camera.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  She shook her head, her eyes still brimming with tears.

  “Where’s your mama?”

  Every second he delayed could mean disaster.

  “In India,” the child said.

  Had he heard right? “Who are you here with?”

  “My aunt Katrina.”

  “Point her out and I’ll get you to her.”

  “I don’t see her. Not anywhere.”

  She gave a renewed sob. He could not waste another moment and spied a young woman a foot away who looked sympathetic.

  He approached her. “Miss?”

  The woman turned.

  “This little girl—” He looked down. “What’s your name?”

  “Grace.” She sobbed again.

  “Grace is lost and can’t find her aunt. I have—an urgent appointment. Might you please help her?”

  He didn’t wait for the woman to agree. He just handed the child over to the young woman, who set down the art case she was carrying and took the little girl from him.

  He hurried down East Thirty-Fourth Street and could hear a band’s big booming drum and brass horns blasting in the distance.

  The parade was drawing nearer.

  The throbbing in his head threatened to slow him down, but he refused to concede to the pain. Was this a fool’s quest? Was Samuel Morrison really planning on bombing the anti-suffrage headquarters? Perhaps as a way to bring the violence of the Brits to their shores? A way to discredit the movement? Or further it? Hard to say. It all sounded so preposterous.

  Until he saw the man with the pencil mustache.

  The same man who’d been with Morrison last evening and the same one who’d attacked him a few hours ago. Headed down the sidewalk, carrying a small suitcase, the hand holding the case bandaged where it had been bitten.

  In all the excitement, no one paid the man any attention. The focus was behind him, at the Fifth Avenue intersection, on the rapidly approach parade. It seemed that whatever was about to happen had been coordinated with the parade’s arrival. Greater drama? More impact? More carnage?

  Ahead he spotted the storefront and the makeshift banner above it that read HEADQUARTERS NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO WOMAN SUFFRAGE. Affixed to its window were various posters and leaflets. Men in suits and hats were stopped reading them. More people wandered in and out of the open front door. Apparently, the organizers were taking advantage of the crowd to spread their anti-suffrage message. A sign above the front entrance proclaimed PLEASE COME IN.

  His attacker was a hundred feet ahead, approaching the anti-suffrage headquarters. People milled back and forth on the sidewalk, many headed toward the parade, others away from it. Lots of activity. Movement. Plenty of distractions for no one noticed a small suitcase laid down near a pile of trash at the curb. Then Pencil Mustache scattered some of the trash over the suitcase to cover its presence and turned, heading back toward him.

  Randall decided enough was enough.

  At the next trash pile, he grabbed a short length of wood, about the size of a baseball bat and equally stout. There were so many people on the sidewalk that it would be difficult to isolate him from the crowd, and he used the bodies ahead of him for cover.

  His target approached.

  Twenty feet.

  Ten.

  He cocked the board back and stopped, allowing people to flow around him like a boulder in a stream.

  The man saw him too late.

  Randall swung and the board caught Pencil Mustache solidly in the gut, doubling the man over. Randall recocked his arms and crashed the board down onto the man’s spine, sending him to the sidewalk.

  People reacted to the assault with fright and raised voices.

  “Get out of here,” he yelled. “There’s a bomb.”

  Some began to flee; others seemed paralyzed.

  “Go. Now. There’s a bomb here.”

  He tossed the board aside and rushed ahead, pushing his way around people running in both directions. At the trash pile he found the suitcase and grabbed its handle. He had no idea of the time but it had to be close to, if not after, four fifteen. He kept moving, conscious of the fact that
he might well be carrying an explosive device.

  An alley. That’s what he needed. Anything off the street.

  Just ahead, he spotted one.

  He came to its end and stared down a narrow corridor between two tall buildings. Nobody there. He launched the suitcase into the air.

  “Get away,” he screamed to the people around him. “Now. Get away from here.”

  They all began to scatter.

  He took cover against the building at the alley’s entrance, out of any line of fire.

  And waited.

  He kept motioning for people to stay away from the opening.

  Two policemen appeared and ran his way.

  “There’s a bomb in the alley,” he called out.

  They both stopped, not yet to the point where the alley opened to the sidewalk, and drew their weapons.

  “Do not move,” one of them said, as both guns were aimed his way.

  * * *

  He sat, alone, in the cell, where he’d been for the past three hours.

  The two city cops had arrested and handcuffed him, then transported him to the precinct. He’d tried to explain, mentioning the man he’d cold-cocked, Samuel Morrison and Officer Figaro, but no one was listening. Finally, he did what he told his clients to do when confronted with the police and went silent. No one he’d defended had ever talked themselves out of jail, but nearly all of them had talked themselves into it.

  No bomb had exploded, either.

  At least not while he was on East Thirty-Fourth Street.

  What happened after?

  Who knows.

  Quite a mess he’d gotten himself into. And all from trying to help out a friend whose daughter was married to a cheating husband. Of course, he’d never uncovered a single shred of evidence on that allegation.

  A door opened and someone approached the cell.

  Captain Donnelly.

  With Officer Figaro.

  Donnelly opened the barred door and looked at Figaro. “Do you have something to say to Mr. Wilson?”

  The younger man looked embarrassed. “I apologize for not taking you more seriously earlier today. It was a grave oversight on my part.”

  He stared at them both, tired and still a little dazed from the earlier head blow. “Yes, it was. But it’s over now. Forget it.”

  Donnelly dismissed his subordinate, stepped inside, and sat on the metal bench. “You did good today.”

  He waited.

  “That suitcase contained a bomb, along with screws and nails that would have caused a lot of carnage. When you tossed it into the alley, you damaged the detonator and it failed to explode.”

  He could sense there was more.

  “We arrested the man you attacked. You gave him quite a beating.”

  “Which he deserved.”

  Donnelly smiled. “Remind me not to rile you up.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “You broke a couple of his ribs. Otherwise, he’ll survive. But he did give up Samuel Morrison and told us about the whole plot. It seems Morrison is not really a supporter of women’s suffrage. He joined the Men’s League as a way to keep abreast of what was happening. His intent all along was to cause mayhem and mischief and implicate the movement in violence. With it happening in Britain, where it’s all but ruined the message of an equal vote, he thought the same could be made to happen here. The suffragettes would deny any link to the bomb. But no one would have believed them. He saw it as the fastest way to end the whole thing.”

  “And he could not have cared less how many people he hurt or killed?”

  “It didn’t seem so. What you did was extremely brave. The witnesses said you grabbed the case and flung it into that alley. That bomb could have exploded at any moment.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “We went to arrest Morrison, but he fled his office to the roof and leaped off the Flatiron Building to his death.”

  Coward. But Randall would have expected no less. “That’s no great loss.”

  “I agree.” Donnelly slapped his hand on Randall’s knee. “You did a great thing, my friend. We’ll be charging the man you attacked with the assault on you and attempted murder for the bomb. Of course, you’re free to go.”

  * * *

  He left the precinct and stepped out into a chilly evening. The wind continued to whip through the buildings. It was nearly eight p.m. and he recalled what Florence had said earlier. Mrs. Belmont is throwing a party at her restaurant. Will you meet us there?

  So he headed that way.

  Inside, he found a large group of suffragettes celebrating after the march, everyone’s spirits high.

  He spotted Florence and Margaret.

  Thank goodness they, and everyone else, were safe.

  No telling how far Morrison would have gone if he’d been able to bomb that building. He might have thrown the whole movement into jeopardy. And disparaged the work of so many brave women in both England and America who never resorted to violence. Who instead mustered courage and used civil disobedience to make the point that they deserved the same voice in government as men. They’d endured ridicule, arrest, imprisonment, hunger strikes, being force-fed, and so many other indignities.

  But they’d persevered.

  And would continue to do so.

  Truly placing a whole new light on the negative mantra of deeds not words.

  Florence hugged him, a smile filling her face. Then she pointed at his head. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I fell down. Stupid me.”

  “It was glorious,” Margaret said. “Wonderful. What a great day.”

  He was thrilled at the joy on the young girl’s face.

  “And, see,” Florence said, “nothing happened. It all worked out perfectly.”

  Yes, it did.

  Thylacine

  PAULA MCLAIN

  Lucy Cuthbert woke from a dream of fire to the feeling of—all too real—being burned alive. The heat came with terrible pressure, radiating in molten waves from her stomach up through her chest and neck, flaming into her face, which pulsed and vibrated unbearably. She threw off the duvet, feeling sure she wouldn’t be able to stand it, not this time. Her heart was beating so violently she could feel it thrashing everywhere. She was a kettle on the boil, a lobster pot. A kiln. Her nightgown was a wet glove, pasted to her torso. She couldn’t breathe. This was the end. It had to be. She would incinerate and be nothing but ash and regret and insufficiency.

  But wait. There. Something had shifted. The fire had reached the top of her skull and climbed through somehow, into the wall, to the inner workings of the house, and been absorbed materially. Or perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps the heat had simply collapsed in on itself, retreating to wherever it had originated from. Either way, she was empty now, wrung out and trembling, and all too awake. This would be the worst part, she knew. There were hours ahead of her with nothing but her restless mind, her worries and her fears, for company. Whatever time it was—she didn’t want to look—it was already tomorrow. Through this dark would come the dawn, then morning, then an anxious lunch—she couldn’t imagine an alternative—and finally, at three p.m. exactly, the banner parade would begin at Washington Square Park, tens of thousands marching, and Lucy in their midst. If she didn’t lose her nerve first.

  Tugging her nightgown after her like damp netting, Lucy turned toward the wall and worked to solidify the speech in her head, the one she’d been fretting over since she’d filled out the pledge card three weeks ago. Edwin hated spectacle, hated ostentation of any sort. Parades and theatrical pageants, open-air meetings in parks and town squares, hunger strikes, picket lines—all connoted hysteria in Edwin’s opinion, an unseemly urgency. His was a scientific mind, a temple of right order. Evolutions had their own pace, he insisted, and shouldn’t be bullied this way, so unnaturally.

  Lucy still remembered their exchange the morning after the first official suffrage parade, in May 1910, when Harriot Stanton Blatch had led four hundred wome
n and a single supporting man up Fifth Avenue to Union Park with banners and horses and a marching band, of all things. Edwin had flicked away The New York Times as if it exuded an embarrassing miasma and then walked away, into his study, putting an end to the matter, dismissing it, while Lucy had sat frozen, afraid to respond, uncertain of her own mind. Did she think that women were equal in every way to men? Did she truly believe that a woman was sovereign to herself, whole, able to govern her own life and mind? Did she, or only wish she did?

  The parade had been a radical act, to be sure. Women didn’t march; soldiers did. Women didn’t stand on wooden scaffolds berating the New York state legislature for failing to advance the suffrage measure. They didn’t demand; they yielded. She, Lucy, had yielded all of her adult life, not daring to question her role. Her self. But the newspaper still lay there. Lucy picked up the Times where Edwin had dropped it and felt a rising tide of contradictory emotions. The photographs of the parade formation passing along Fifth Avenue didn’t look hysterical or unseemly, but somber, almost funereal: dark-suited bodies surrounded by dark buildings, a heavy sky, pressing afternoon fog. One image showed a contingent of women who’d traveled all the way from Colorado, which had passed the voting referendum in 1893. The sign above their smart hats, very smart for Colorado, actually, declared: WE HAVE VOTED FOR PRESIDENT. Was that pride in their eyes? Triumph? Another photograph caught Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, National American Woman Suffrage Association president, mid-speech, her mouth cupped around some assertion or demand. One gloved hand gripped the scaffolding. Her shoulders were broad and immovable-looking in her black dress and doctoral robes—the whole of her appearing less like a gentlewoman than a human bulwark of sorts. What was she shouting? No? Now? Or was it the word you, perhaps? You, as in: You, Lucy Eileen Cuthbert. I see you there, hiding.

  That first parade had taken place five and a half years ago. And though she had said nothing that day to Edwin, not a single word to either agree with him or stake a small claim in the other direction, something had begun to stir in Lucy, a dark thing, nebulous and unformed, incredibly new and yet as old as she was. She was afraid to look at it, afraid to give it air or space or even a drop of water, but it had grown all the same. It prodded her now in the dark of her room, accosting her. Ready or not, tomorrow had become today. She’d run out of time to waffle or avoid the issue. Edwin had no engagements, this being a Saturday. He would be there in the house as she dressed in her white jacket and long white skirt and put on the pale straw boater she’d had since the year they met, when she was eighteen and utterly in awe of him and his keen analytical mind, his deliberateness.