Read Part I here.
April 1939, Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Part II, anti-fascists and their Hailie Selassie automaton prepare to confront fascists arriving on the afternoon train.
The door
groaned as Doherty pushed it open. He stepped out and walked to the rear of the truck. The
statue was tied securely to the bed. Six feet tall, about his height, although
that was taking some liberties with the subject who reportedly topped the
five-foot mark only when wearing thick-heeled boots. Still, the ruler of a
mighty kingdom. Doherty had to hand it to Weaver –- the man had done a fine job
sculpting Hailie Selassie out of the metal from expended Italian artillery
shells that he found in piles across Ethiopia. The serene face, the mustache
and beard, eyes that seemed to come alive.
Doherty walked
to the driver’s side. In the cab, the driver was toking on a spliff. “Jeez, Weaver,”
the white man said. He knocked on the window.
The black
man rolled it down. “What is it, Irish?”
“You have
to smoke that now?”
“Calms me,
man. And it’s part of my religion.”
“I know.
But now? You are a black man in a city that’s 110 percent white. We are waiting
at the train station to do a number on a hero of the white race. Is this the
right time to be doing your drug?”
“No problem,
Jim.” The black man held the spliff like a cigarette. “How they going to see my
ganja cloud when the sky is brown with dust already?”
“They can
smell it.”
“Smells
like burning weeds.”
The train
whistle blew.
“That’s our
train,” Doherty said.
Weaver inhaled
one more batch of smoke and tamped out the spliff on the truck floor. Doherty
didn’t understand Weaver’s so-called religion. He worshipped Selassie, a.k.a.
Ras Tafari, as the second coming of Christ. Smoked leaves of a weed like
Doherty smoked cigarettes. But when Doherty wanted to dull life’s pain, he
turned to whiskey. Calmed him down. That’s what Weaver said ganja did for him.
When they camped out at night, Weaver lit up and the stuff smelled a bit like
the sage he and his father burned for cooking fires while hunting in the Red
Desert. A bit sweeter – not unpleasant. When Weaver was not driving and smoked,
Doherty could swear that the smoke got to him. He felt mildly elated, even
imagined shapes crossing in front of him on the road. At Weaver’s urging, he’d
smoked it a few times but felt it made him lazy. A guy couldn’t afford
dreaminess when fighting fascists.
Weaver opened
the door and stepped out of the truck. He was a few inches shorter than six-foot-tall
Doherty. He wore Army boots, denim trousers and a blue work shirt. He had the
hands of a workman, calloused and cut-up, a blue-black bruise on the knuckles
of his right hand, souvenirs of a bar brawl in Omaha. Doherty’s left hand still
hurt from that same fight. This Rastafari religion might profess a love of
peace, but he’d never seen anyone fight like Weaver when the chips were down.
Doherty inspected
the truck. Statue was OK. The banner wrapped around the outside walls of the
truck bed read: “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” That’s what Selassie
had said in a warning to the rest of the world.
Nobody
seemed to be listening.
Doherty and
Weaver met on the New York docks. Longshoremen refused to unload the Bremen, a
German cargo ship that flew the Nazi flag. A riot erupted and the two men ended
up taking shelter in the same waterfront bar. After a few drinks, Weaver
invited Doherty to a warehouse in Brooklyn to see the Salassie statue. Doherty
was impressed. Weaver, an art school grad from Detroit, built the statue. He
went overseas to fight for the world’s only black monarch. He stayed for the
art.
The two met
in January. In March, they loaded Ras Tafari onto Doherty’s beat-up truck and
they were off.
“Think he’ll come out the front door?” said Weaver,
eyes on the depot.
“Where
else?”
The train
depot was built of stone with a large clock tower. They could see the train’s
passenger cars as they eased to a stop in back of the station. Their target was
in one of those cars. They planned a surprise attack on their fascist opponent.
But, there were limits to violence. One often got better results with theatre.
He had seen enough of human behavior to know that drama was a handy form of
persuasion. He had seen the National Socialists of Germany at work. He had
watched the Spaniards and Italians. They all loved the movement of large casts of
actors against decorative landscapes, whether that was the mountains of
northern Spain or the deserts of Eritrea.
“Maybe he’s
just going to talk inside the depot and then get back on the train?”
Doherty thought
about it. “Can you maneuver your statue into the station?”
Weaver smiled.
“It could be done, depending on the size of the doors.”
Doherty saw
the glint in Weaver’s eyes and knew his friend was conjuring. The man was good
at improvising. Good with his hands, too, whether it was fighting or sculpting
statues from old artillery shells.
People were
arriving at the station. First thing they did when getting out of their cars
was look at the two strange men and the big statue in the back of the truck.
None came over, at least not at first. Two young couples got out of a sporty yellow
coupe and walked over to the truck.
“What’s
this?” asked a pretty girl whose brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She
stared at Weaver. “Are you the artist?”
Weaver
nodded.
“Who is the
statue of?” the girl asked,
“Haile Selassie,
Lion of Judah,” Weaver said.
“Must have
taken a long time to make,” said the girl.
“I know who
Haile Selassie is,” said the boy next to ponytail. “Ethiopia, right?”
“Right,”
said Weaver.
“Did he say
that?” said the other girl, a long-haired blonde. “On the banner?”
“Yes,” said
Doherty. “He said it in a speech to the League of Nations.”
“Oh,” said
the girl. “They’re a bunch of communists aren’t they? That’s what my dad says.”
“The U.S.
is in the League of Nations,” said Doherty.
“Commies,”
said the boy with the blonde. “C’mon, guys, we got to see the speech for Mr.
Lain’s class.”
The
ponytail girl took one more look at Weaver before being pulled away by her
boyfriend. Doherty and Weaver watched them go.
“She liked the
cut of your jib,” said Doherty.
Weaver shook
his head. “Kids,” he said. “Those are the boys America will send off to fight.
Think there’s any hope?”
“Those two guys
don’t look very promising,” Doherty said. “But ponytail? I could see her with a
carbine. She’s feisty like those Spanish Republican women. Some were damn good
shots.”
Weaver looked
at Doherty. “You still writing that Spanish woman, what’s her name?”
“Anna –
she’s Basque.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheets of folded
paper. “Took this letter a month to find me. She’s safe in France now.”
“How’s she
doing?”
“Fine. It
surprises me. She was a tiger.”
“In bed?”
Doherty chuckled.
“You kill me, Weaver. Yes, in bed and on the field. Her husband and brother
were both killed in Guernica. She took no prisoners.”
“Except
you?”
He slapped Weaver
on the back. “I went willingly, chum. Like a lamb to the slaughter.”
To be continued...
Tune in to this same channel on Jan. 25 for Learning to Breathe, Part III.
