He walks and talks like Popeye. He always wears a striped grey work shirt and suspenders hold up his pants, the legs cut short to come just to the top of his work boots. Fritz sits silently for hours on his back step in the sun, his pale blue eyes squinting. His wispy hair is white and his stubby whiskers grey. He calls me sister. Fritz keeps very much to himself. He never accepts our invitations to holiday dinners, so my mother always makes him up a plate and takes it over to him. Fritz’s house is old fashioned and spartan, devoid of decoration except for old family photographs in elaborate frames screwed into the front room walls. He burns coal and has the last outhouse in the area. He owns no TV, no record player, only a small radio. His bedroom contains a dresser, a wooden chair and a rifle by the bed. He says you never know who might come in the night. Once, while I am away at college, Fritz goes out of his head for awhile, due to complications of a tooth ailment. He has trouble getting his driver’s license renewed. My father tries to explain that he just needs to get glasses, but Fritz, furious, will not listen. When I visit him he rants and raves that he doesn’t trust my father, never has, because my father is a Legionnaire. Fritz says they tried to stick the shootings on him way back when but it hadn’t stuck. He knows they are out to get him because of it and my father is involved. 14. ./Yfter Wesley Everest is saved from the mob, he is left in the corridor of the jail. From their cells, the other prisoners can see him lying in a heap, wet with river water and blood. He is unaware of the mob outside that loudly promises a lynching; unaware of the other prisoners being taken outside to be manhandled by the crowd, ropes placed around their necks. The prisoners are returned to their cells, but the same torture is repeated again and again. That night there is a brief power outage. On cue, a group of men enter the jail. The blackout does not disguise them. Everyone in town knows who they are—Centralia’s finest, its movers and shakers. They find Everest easily since he still lies in the corridor. Everest struggles to his feet and shouts, “Tell the boys I died for my class.” He attempts to fight against his new captors. They dump him on the back floor of one of the several black cars waiting outside. small boy listens unseen to a conversation between his grandpa and the old man’s friends. They talk about Wob- blies, parades and much more. The grandfather notes the child’s presence and silences his friends sharply, saying, “We have vowed never to discuss that.” In the ‘70s, the same boy is a high school student chosen to participate in Boy’s State, a competitive program sponsored by the American Legion to encourage and develop civic leadership. After a . Legion dinner to honor the students, a couple of WWI vets take the boy aside for a talk. They understand he’s working on a paper about the Centralia Massacre for school. “You’re way out of line,” they tell him. 16. J. he American Legion bar, faded and quiet, is patronized mostly by WWII vets. The regulars, who come in at 4 pm and linger till evening, are working class. Evenings and weekends their numbers augmented by small town businessmen, a few firemen and their wives. At the back of the building is an elevator, installed for the benefit of the WWI vets who can no longer make it up the front stairs. In 1977,1amtending bar at the Legion. By 4 pm I leave daylight to go up in the elevator. I enter the dim interior, permeated with the stale cigarette smoke of several decades. Smoke hazes my sight and surrounds my senses like thick cobwebs. It is a dry dew clinging to my face, settling on my hair, saturating my clothes. American Legion is a non-profit organization with special tax privileges. Therefore its bar is open only to members, who must show proof of membership, and to their guests, who must be signed in. If the club fails to follow these restrictions, it can lose its liquor license, and I am out of a job. One evening a raucous group of people I do not know comes into the bar. One of the men says he is a member but does not have a card. I tell him I cannot serve him. Amazed laughter swirls around the bar. “Don’t you know who he is? He’s the police chief!” “Well, I still can’t serve him without a card.” “But it’s okay; he’s the police chief” “That doesn’t mean he’s a member.” At this point the police chief tires of the entertainment and magnanimously digs into his billfold for his card. The regulars retell and joke about the incident for months. 18. worker for the Lewis County Historical Society finds precious little material on the Centralia Massacre. Amazed at the void of information, she becomes interested. She is told to mind her own business and stay out of it if she wants to continue working there. 19. J V ovember nights in Centralia are invariably moist, if not drenched. Headlights reflect off shiny streets; the light retracts countless times in the water laden air. The wet air sighs as you move through it, isolating you with a sense of quiet, persistent discomfort. Wesley Everest is castrated in the back seat of the car that leaves the jail the night of November 11, 1919. The car stops on the slippery brick street in front of the railroad station so that Livingstone, the county coroner, can wash his hands inside. Then the car continues to the bridge over the Chehalis River south of town. The first attempts to hang Wesley Everest from the Chehalis Bridge are unsuccessful. The rope is too short to snap his neck. His executioners haul him up again and again to lengthen the rope. Many cars come and park at the bridge, which is at the edge of town, unlit and dark. The spectators play car headlights on the bloodied, broken body and shoot at it. Finally, Everest’s body is cut down and it drops into the river. The rope is cut into pieces for souvenirs. 20. Xt is a particularly quiet night at the bar. Roots is op TV. A couple of regulars, vets in their late fifties wearing work clothes, sit at one end of the bar. A fat, well- dressed man swaggers in and greets everyone condescendingly. He’s not just a local businessman. He owns a chain of stores in Western Washington. I pour him a drink and he begins to rant. “Damn show is going to rile up those people,” he says, and then he makes several more cracks about niggers, hippies and libbers. We begin to argue. My regulars call for another round. When I take them their drinks, they speak conspiratorily out of the sides of their mouths. “Don't you know who you’re talking to?” they say. “That’s “You shouldn’t argue with him like that!” 21. 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