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Chapter One

THE EVICTION

March 1935

Bobcat drank his morning coffee in a little café just this side of Chihuahuaita. He said it "Chee-wa-ita," and it sounded pretty close to the way it sounded in Old Mexico, where they talked real fast. Bobcat talked slow, like most of the men who gathered at the end of the day at the American Bar. He drank his evening bourbon and branch water there, ten blocks from Chihuahuaita—in the heart of downtown Gallup. The American Bar was run by Guido Zecca, who ran more than a bar in those days. Guido was widely respected for his political instincts and his business dealings. At the close of the business day you could hear the tinkle of the glasses by men who had spent part of their day two doors away in the Sutherland Building, where Judge Bickel held court. On Saturday nights you could hear the noise from the western band even if you were across the street in the Angeles Bar and Pool Hall—the bar frequented by most of the men from Chihuahuaita.

Every once in a while someone would take note of Bobcat's habit of drinking coffee in the morning at a Mexican café near Chihuahuaita and whiskey at night in the American Bar. Some said he didn't know where he belonged; others said that was just Bobcat. Bobcat's real name was L. Edison Wilson, but almost no one knew that. Even his family called him by the nickname that suited him like "Black Jack" suited General Pershing.

At twenty-seven he was one of the youngest deputies in McKinley County. Of course, that didn't mean he was a kid. Bobcat was never a "kid." He grew up tough and stayed that way. Sheriff Mack Carmichael and his undersheriff, Dee Roberts, liked him and respected him, but they didn't talk to him much. After all, a man called Bobcat wasn't expected to be much of a conversationalist. Most didn't know whether he was thoughtful or just quiet. What they did know was that he was no one to mess with, no matter which side of the bars you were on in the county lockup.

"Just what the hell do you mean, they're going to raise the rent and kick 'em all out?" Bobcat asked Deputy Hoy Boggess. "Hell, those men were brought here to break the strike of nineteen and seventeen in the first place. I don't know that it's right to take away their land now, when times are hard and the mines are down."

Deputy Boggess was a man who just did as he was told. The politics and the way everyone was carrying on about it weren't to his liking. He and Bobcat were alone in the jail that crisp April morning. There wasn't much to do but talk and drink coffee till Sheriff Carmichael and Dee Roberts showed up at eight o'clock sharp, just as they had done every other morning for the twenty years Deputy Boggess had been on the job in Gallup.

It was no fun telling Bobcat that the coal miners renting those cold-water shacks on the west side of town were liable to blow up. This deal that the Gallup American Coal Company had cooked up with Senator Clarence F. Vogel was dangerous, and heads were liable to get busted.

Bobcat was the best deputy that Sheriff Carmichael had, although Chief Deputy Dee Roberts would never have said so. It wasn't that Bobcat knew the law. He didn't. Dee Roberts knew more law than Bobcat and Sheriff Carmichael combined; it was just that Bobcat knew people better. At least he knew the ones who were most likely to come in contact with the law.

Bobcat was just shy of five foot seven and had a barrel for a chest and short tree trunks for arms. He had an easy way about him. He was comfortable out on the Navajo Reservation or in Chihuahuaita. Even though he was a gringo, he was welcome in Chihuahuaita. Gringos didn't live in the Mexican parts of town, like Chihuahuaita. And just now, that's where the law was likely to be needed or tested.

Dee Roberts, on the other hand, was a tall man with a strong face and a hard look. Most thought him fair but hard. His tolerance for radicals and malcontents was about the same as his tolerance for bad whiskey and mouthy women. The only time he went into Chihuahuaita was to serve someone with a writ or to drag some poor soul to jail. Even taking Bobcat with him didn't make him welcome.

Bobcat's social acceptance in Chihuahuaita was sort of hard to figure. Part of it was that he was of a size that allowed him to look everyone there right in the eye. The coal miners in Chihuahuaita were mostly small, with tight, sinewy muscles. Digging coal for a living made you that way. Their skins were dark, but their eyes were open to fairness. They could see that in Bobcat. They accepted him, but, like everyone else in Gallup, didn't mess with him. He knew all about cracking kneecaps and knuckle punches to the Adam's apple as a way of dealing with men who didn't see things his way.

When Sheriff Carmichael took a chance and signed him on as a deputy, he told Dee Roberts to break him in. The first thing that Dee told Bobcat was that the gun on your hip and the badge on your chest are a lot alike. One was there to make sure the other got respect. Sometimes it's hard to tell which was which. Try the badge first; if that doesn't work, the gun will.

The fact that Dee Roberts was "just" the undersheriff might have seemed strange to an outsider. Sheriff Carmichael was taking his turn to be sheriff of McKinley County. Dee Roberts had been the sheriff before him and would be again after this term.

New Mexico's two-term limit was a curious thing to easterners who thought that job experience was a good thing in elected officials. In New Mexico, experience counted just the same; it was just shared by men who understood one another.

First it was Carmichael's turn, and Dee Roberts would be the undersheriff. When it came election time again, Dee would run, win, and appoint Carmichael as his undersheriff. After all, the law said two terms per man, but it didn't say you couldn't work it out yourselves when it was your turn to be the sheriff. The ballots always said either Carmichael or Dee Roberts. Sometimes people wondered which one was calling the shots. Actually, it didn't matter. In the jail or out in the county, it was hard to tell who was the sheriff and who was the chief deputy. Either one caused men to look up and pay attention till they left. Bobcat, on the other hand, caused no stir. If you were minding your own business, so would he.

The latest strike would either get fixed or broken. It didn't matter to Bobcat which side won as long as both sides kept the peace. Gallup depended on the coal coming out of the ground, and no one could rest easy as long it was locked down in the pits and the coal diggers were facing the picket lines instead of the hoist lines.

The coal would still be there, but what with martial law and busted heads and all, there was no telling what might happen with this new deal. That new deal is not to be confused with FDR's New Deal. When a local big shot like Senator Vogel buys 100 acres of land right out from under striking mine workers, Gallup's new deal was likely to be Bobcat's bad deal. Like all the other cards dealt to him, he would play the hand and let the pot ride.

So Deputy Boggess was careful with Bobcat and answered up real quick when Bobcat hollered: "Damn straight I want to know who thinks they can pull a man out of his house after he's been there for nigh on to eighteen years. Just because you're a state senator doesn't make it right."

Deputy Boggess was older and more experienced than Bobcat, but he was, well, more fearful too. But then again, almost everyone was more fearful than Bobcat.

The Gallup Independent would confirm the rumor that night with a worrisome headline: "SENATOR VOGEL BUYS 110 ACRES IN CHIHUAHUAITA." Bobcat read the paper that night as he always did, with a little bourbon and branch water at the American Bar. Hell, now it was legal.

The Gallup Independent reported that State Senator Vogel bought the land and the houses (actually more shacks than houses) from the Gallup American Coal Company for an "undisclosed price." The purchase included "Chihuahuaita and the Henderson flats and plots on both sides of Highway 66 out by the cemetery."

I can vividly remember sitting with Bobcat reading the paper, along with the usual crowd in the American Bar. Other men in the bar were also reading the paper, and so you got some news with your eyes and some with your ears as the bar talk filtered through the small, smoky room. Too early for pool balls to clink and not late enough for Guido's radio to be cranked up behind the bar. So the conversations weren't exactly with one another as much as they were about the same thing. "It says here that our good senator didn't reveal the purchase price, but it runs to five figures." "What it runs to is bad news for those out on strike, that's for damn sure." "But doesn't he have a right to do that?" "If you got the money, you got the right."

The front-page article noted that "it was understood" that "Vogel plans to sell lots on the plot to present holders of homes on a monthly payment plan."

Bobcat didn't respond; as usual he listened more than he talked. The talk floated around and over him along with the smoke and clink of glasses. I could tell that the talk made his gut tighten up. My gut was telling me that the "monthly payment plan" would likely mean evictions at a time when this town was ready to blow.

Evictions out there in Chihuahuaita would be Bobcat's to serve. The Gallup Police Department would gladly duck that little job. Out of the city limits meant out of the city politics. Not that there weren't politics aplenty in McKinley County. Gamerco was out in the county. It was a town built by, run by, and owned by the Gallup American Coal Company. Since it was in the county, it was Bobcat's job to see that the law was there just like everywhere else in the county.

It was a perverse sort of thing that Gamerco had more deputies living in it than in the rest of the county altogether. That was because they had "special deputies" selected by the coal boss, Tom Dooley, and duly "deputized" by Dee Roberts on orders from the McKinley County Commission and the district attorney's office.

Hell, they argued, why do you oppose free deputies? The mine pays 'em, the mine gets to tell 'em where to patrol. As the sheriff put it, They're not our problem, but they're ours to call in when we need them.

Bobcat pondered those special deputies as he ordered his second and last drink of the day. His mind and his gut said that he would have plenty of help from the "special deputies" if he had to evict anyone in Chihuahuaita. That kind of help he could do without, no matter what the hell the county commission said.

Gallup was a fearful place in the spring of 1935. Every man and woman in town was in some way afflicted by the news that Chihuahuaita was being sold out from under the families that lived there. Back in 1917 another big coal-mining company, the Victor American Fuel Company, signed a labor contract with the United Mine Workers. Many thought that was a bad thing, although everyone had a miner in the family. Unions were back-east things. They weren't needed out here in the West—at least not at that time.

The bad news about Victor American's acceptance of a union for its workers was tempered by the good news about Gallup's other main business, the railroad. The railroad owners opened El Navajo Hotel. Just think of it. A spanking new hotel right on the track siding. The folks in Gallup mostly called it the Harvey House.

A month after the hotel was finished in 1923, the UMW organized Victor American's mines. A strike was called against the Gallup American Coal Company. That was the other big coal company in town, and they weren't unionized.

Hardly a month had gone by when the UMW brought in some so-called Austrians and tried to close down the power plant. That was an indirect way of hurting the mines, since the power plant had two coal-fired generators. If the power plant were shut down, no one would have electric power in town. That meant no water since the water system depended on electric pumps. Gallup didn't have backup oil-fired generators in those days.

The Gallup American Coal Company responded by bringing in strikebreakers from Mexico. In 1917 you could do that sort of thing. The strikebreakers didn't speak English, but more half the town spoke Spanish, so most everyone got along just fine. Gallup American Coal let their new workers put up adobe houses on the west side of town just this side of Henderson Flats. It became known as Chihuahuaita.

Before long, nearly a hundred families were living there. They paid a little ground rent, about ten to fifteen dollars a year, and stayed out of the union. With the combination of these non-English-speaking strikebreakers occupying Chihuahuaita and Gallup American Coal's owners convincing FDR's secretary of war to sit this one out, the strike was broken. The local politicians wanted intervention by federal troops, but that never happened. Gallup American Coal won that round by giving the men houses to live in while shutting the union out. Unfortunately for both sides, labor peace wouldn't last.

At the very start picket lines went up all over the north-side mines. The bigger mining companies had company stores and company houses. Some of them cut off credit. When that didn't work, they started eviction proceedings in Gamerco and Mentmore. The writs were filed in the McKinley County Justice Court, housed in the Sutherland Building just down from El Morro Theater on Coal Avenue. That JP court was run by a man who was called Judge Bickel to his face and "Bail-less Bickel" behind his back. The boys across the street at the Angeles Bar and Pool Hall on Third and Route 66 said it straight out: No bail, no cojones.

The evictions bothered some, but they weren't as bad as the embarrassment of having to call in the New Mexico cavalry to break up the crowds. That was a bad omen. But at least the houses in Chihuahuaita were left alone and the men went back down into the shaft, just as they had done every year since 1917.

Gallup would have gotten through 1933 just fine, even with the Depression and FDR's National Recovery Administration in town, if it hadn't been for the so-called National Miners Union. Thinking back on it now, it's hard to remember that the United Mine Workers was entrenched and working hard to bargain for fair wages out at Victor American Coal Company's mines. Who needed another union? Especially one that the assistant administrator of the NRA said was "linked to the Communist Party." Gallup was no place for communists in 1933 or any other time, for that matter.

You guessed it. Right smack in the middle of the 12th Annual Intertribal Indian Ceremonial, the workers walked off the job. They climbed out of every shaft at all of Gallup American Coal's mines around Gallup. The others followed suit, out of sympathy, I suppose.

There were two kinds of people in my little town in those days: the Anglo establishment and the Mexican coal diggers. Although the strike had been in effect for only one day and there wasn't a single act of violence, Governor Arthur Seligman declared martial law in McKinley County and ordered National Guardsmen to blockade the town. He later said that his decision was based on calls from the mine companies, local officials, and the UMW.

Martial law? Most people had no idea what martial law really meant. The few who understood the legal possibility of martial law for an American township could not have imagined how long it would last. As one of the six lawyers in town, I spent a fair amount of my time explaining just what martial law meant. Governors and presidents have the right to declare martial law whenever "an overwhelming public disturbance makes the civil authorities unable to enforce the law." For Gallup that meant that the New Mexico National Guard surrounded the whole town.

We were hardworking people, but we sort of took our freedoms for granted. We never gave much thought to legal terms like "habeas corpus" and "writs" and "forcible detainer." Gallup had been one of New Mexico's most important towns for almost forty-five years by then. No one had given two seconds' worth of thought to Article 1, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution ("the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion as the public safety may require It"). I looked it up for a lot of people that week. Almost all of them discussed it; quite a few of them cussed it. There were few answers. Who were the soldiers there to protect? People? Profits? A way of life?

We had our local sheriff and our local police chief, and they were all we needed before this. We didn't think we needed a full company of troops commanded by a bird colonel checking everyone in and out of town and threatening all of us with military jail if the curfew was violated. Right off the bat, the military commander hit my little town with a "mass gathering ordinance" that required a permit for all meetings of more than five persons. Needless to say, no permits were granted for the men of Chihuahuaita. The National Miners Union took to holding their meetings and so-called rallies across the Arizona border nineteen miles down Route 66 on the way to Win ... slow. Back in town, the pickets were scattered down the roads leading to the mines, with no more than three or four congregating together.

John L. Lewis followed the situation in Gallup closely and telegraphed our governor and offered his personal assistance. Mr. Lewis pointed out that everyone knew that the damn communists in the National Miners Union were the instigators of all this. He argued for a policy in Gallup that would allow the mine owners to make a bargain with the UMW to "encourage a union that is committed to the upholding of American institutions."

Sure enough, the UMW offered membership to strikebreakers, and they signed up those who crossed the picket lines. That meant that instead of being labeled "scabs" they could claim they were union miners who choose to work. Hell of a deal. It was the Depression. It was the thirties. It was the time of the "red scare." Both the UMW and the mine owners heaped a bunch of discredit on the National Miners Union by adding racial slurs to red-baiting since the union's membership had a large Mexican majority. Our own paper, the Gallup Independent, referred to them as being from Old Mexico, just to make sure no one would be confused.

More than 300 troops came in and blocked entry on Route 66 east and west and on Route 666 north and Route 44 south. Blocking the roads was just part of it. The people of Gallup were more affected by the curfew than the roadblocks. Emotions ran high, and as a Vidal, one of Gallup's leading families, put it, we were "locked in, loaded for bear, and ready to blow."

August gave way to September and then on to October. Governor Seligman died of a heart attack. In the middle of November, I thought it would end when all sides seemed to reach an agreement. About 400 miners were then out on strike, and the companies agreed to rehire immediately about 100 of them. In return, our new governor, Andrew W. Hockenhull, promised that the remainder would be given jobs as soon as possible on new public works projects. The only thing that stood in the way of a settlement were the men in the McKinley County jail. It was no coincidence that they were the leaders of the National Miners Union who had been jailed for violating martial law.

It didn't help much here in town that American Communist Party publications all over the country were declaring the Gallup strike to be a victory for "the new proletarian spirit created by the Depression in America." What did help was that the two unions convinced the mine owners to raise the pay from $4.48 to $4.70 per day. As I said, the most pressing problem was the rehiring of the men out on strike. The mines gave a pledge of guaranteed work, and the unions sacrificed many of their other demands. The promise of employment to a lot of those men was never fulfilled. It would play heavy in the minds of the people in Chihuahuaita a year or so later.

Martial law lasted longer than anyone thought it would. Winter hit hard that year, and the troops still surrounded the town. Curfews and checkpoints and search warrants became everyday things. The governor even said the week before Christmas, "We cannot keep the troops in Gallup forever." But it seemed like he was going to. On January 31, 1934, it finally stopped. Martial law was lifted, and civil law returned at 8 A.M. Bobcat had his usual morning coffee just about that time just this side of Chihuahuaita. Everything was back to normal. Sort of.

Bobcat stood in front of Dee Roberts's big quarter-sawn oak desk, looking down at the mess of paper. That seemed preferable to sustaining Roberts's steady gaze as he waited for more.

"I told you all I know," Bobcat said. "My friend Emiliano lives there. He said his dad has them all paid up, although that isn't true for everyone out there. Anyway, he went to a meeting last night and heard that Vogel is going to put a high price on them. Everyone is afraid of eviction."

It had been thirteen months since martial law was lifted. Not everyone could go back to work. Some did and some didn't. Some hoists were full in the morning and some went down half empty. Some of the smaller mines settled on a wage plan, but the Gallup American Coal mines went from closed to open to closed again. The men went back down into the shafts when the troops left, but now they were staying home again. All in all, it was a time of getting by, not getting ahead.

Bobcat still had that gut tightening that last night's Gallup Independent had caused. "Goddamn hell, what's the matter with folks?" Bobcat thought out loud to the chief deputy. "Vogel doesn't need more money, Gallup American Coal doesn't need another strike, and we don't need to evict people who are out of work and are just getting by from day to day."

Roberts thought before he answered. Now, just when was it that what someone "needed" had anything to do with anything? This was what someone "wanted," and that always won out over what someone "needed."

Roberts knew that Bobcat didn't square with the strikers; he thought they ought to work just like everyone else. Sure, times were hard, but a job is a job. Why risk yours for one more damn dollar a day? Every mine around was paying almost five dollars a day. That was a damn sight better than no dollars a day.

So the men on the picket lines—Slavs, Italians, and Mexicans alike, whether from Gamerco or Chihuahuaita—were gonna be dumb shits in Bobcat's eyes even more now. They were out of work on purpose and about to be out of their homes, sort of on purpose. Besides, who in hell didn't know that there was a Depression going on? Bobcat wasn't an owner's man any more than he was a union man, but he did know that jobs were hard to come by everywhere.

He knew that the track yard just down the street from Bubany Lumber was full of hobos early every morning, that is, until the railroad dicks and their hired stiffs came in with the "morning newspaper." That was what they called the head-crunching sticks they used to clear out the railroad yard every morning. That was the routine, but not until after they had their own coffee at the White Café on Railroad Avenue.

Bobcat rambled on, although Dee paid little attention. "And even if it was our business, which it ain't, why in God's hell do the mine owners think that kicking the strikers out of their houses will get them back to work? A man fool enough to walk off a job in these times is fool enough to enjoy sleeping on the ground."

Roberts thought, That's just like Bobcat, getting good and pissed at the unfairness of somebody doing something they had a legal right to do. Even though he was an officer of the law and a direct damn subordinate of Sheriff Carmichael and Undersheriff Roberts, Bobcat's sentiments were well known: "Just because it's legal don't make it right."

Not that he said all that much about anything. He did let it be known that the strikers were dumb shits and that the mine owners had the law on their side. But as he said: "That didn't make kicking them out of their houses right."

As in small towns all over New Mexico, kids played together. It didn't matter that some lived in Chihuahuaita. The kids from the south side of town didn't know anything about strikes or work or politics. For them it was just play. For the parents it was different. They picked sides and pretty much stuck to their family groups. Back then you were family to the railroad or family to the mines. Even if you didn't work for either, you had family in one or the other and often as not both.

Whoever lost this round was likely to be poorer for it. And I don't just mean in a money way. The men who owned the mines lived back east (or Chicago; same thing). But the owners had managers, and the managers had foremen. The foremen were all deputized, and all had gold badges to prove it. That meant they had the law on their side. So if the court ordered evictions, the men who owned the mines could evict the men who worked the mines. It was as simple as that.

Most of the managers and foremen for Gallup American Coal lived out in Gamerco, but that was only four miles from downtown Gallup. The families who lived in those adobe mud houses and cold-water shacks and whose men went down into those warm-weather mines lived in Chihuahuaita. Chihuahuaita was in Gallup until it got in trouble. Then it was "out there."

The fact that they built Gallup twenty miles north of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's winter camp when the conquistadors came through here 450 years ago was something we were proud of. We liked the fact that Santa Fe was only a half day away when the legislature was in session. The fact that Gallup had more money, more auto courts, more bars, and more sheep than any other town for 150 miles in any direction was downright chest thumping.

Gallup was mostly Hispanic, just like most of New Mexico. But we had a fair share of Italian, Irish, and Welsh families because they built the railroad. There were a lot of Slavs, a few Scots, a few Cornish Cousin Jacks, and a spattering of almost every other nationality. Lots of color, lots of passion, and our share of misery. We had ranchers and farmers and bankers and brothel operators. We had lots of traders and merchants, who claimed credit for making Gallup what it was. They understood that to make money, you had to sell your goods. Sometimes they forgot that every store in town was heated by coal and lighted by a coal-fired generator. A coal-fired electric plant pumped every drop of water. Everything came in on the rails, and most of what we sent out was by rail. Was Gallup a rail town or a coal town? In 1935 there was peace on the rails, but a war was about to break out in the mines.

Dee Roberts shuffled his papers while Bobcat fumed. "I know it's not right, but I'm only the undersheriff, not God, goddammit." Roberts often said things that Father Joseph up at St. Mary's Catholic Church would have laughed at before he declared it blasphemy. The irony of using God and goddammit in the same sentence escaped both Bobcat and his boss.

"I can't just go out there to Senator Vogel's house and tell him those people have a right to stay there after Gallup American has gone and sold the land to him, can I?"

Bobcat wasn't one to talk to or about Senator Clarence Vogel. Bobcat was half his age, and besides, he had never been properly introduced to him. That meant a lot to Bobcat. When Senator Vogel came in the office, he made his introductions to Sheriff Carmichael because he was in charge. Senator Vogel only dealt with the man in charge. Senator Vogel wasn't one to introduce himself to someone down the line, like a mere deputy, although he would talk to the undersheriff.

The fact that Bobcat didn't talk to or take any notice of Senator Vogel was unimportant, like a lot of things in Gallup, to Senator Vogel. Had he thought about it at all, it wouldn't have bothered him. Clarence Vogel was a man who spent all his time thinking about three things: paying the lowest price for what he bought, getting the highest price for what he sold, and upholding the "American way." That meant doing business with the Gallup American Coal Company. In other words, helping, if he could, to stamp out socialism and communism in New Mexico.

Like a lot of the men who were part of the political machine in the New Mexico state legislature at the time, Senator Vogel was a beefy man. His eyes and his eyebrows were bigger than most, and so he seemed to stare at you even when he looked away from you. His light skin sharply contrasted with the tans and browns of and the coal dust that was ingrained in the skin of those who worked the shafts. Senator Vogel's hands were connected directly to his forearms, as though he had no wrists at all. In addition to his title of state senator, he had a gold deputy sheriff's badge to put on when he needed a little more authority. He had an easy smile but a quick snarl. His way of talking to you was, like Bobcat's, right to the point. The difference was that Bobcat liked you as long as you didn't steal. Senator Vogel, while not a thief himself, sort of assumed everyone else did steal.

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Gallup 14 : A Novel

082632133X

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