The Celestials by Karen Shepard

easier, she thought, if she were moving to the ebb and sway of just a husband, rather than a husband and wife. How much easier, yet at her age, she thought sadly, how unlikely.
    None of the three suggested ceasing, working as they were to keep the sounds of the meeting up the street at bay. The town’s Crispins and their sympathizers gave vent to their feelings as their side of the question was advocated, and through the open windows came loud and frequent cheers, the periodic stamping of feet, and the clapping of four thousand pairs of hands. It was the laughter that seemed to disturb Calvin most, and his fingers thrummed the felt of the game table, their game pieces jittering. His agitation was so apparent that Julia took pity on him and placed her hand over his, settling his fingers and the game.
    *
    What to do? What to do? This was the question the meeting was meant to address and dispatch. Though he did not like to pollute his lips with Sampson’s name any oftener than necessary, Cummings felt he must point out that of those who would test labor, Sampson was the champion. It was men such as he against whom the common laborer must protect himself as well as protect the Celestials, as they too were wronged by being forced to do work for fifty cents for which they ought to receive two dollars, and it was clear that John Chinaman was a gentleman far superior to Mr. Sampson.
    So what to do? What to do to resist this innovation that threatened to ruin their organization and put them beneath the concern of the capitalist? Violence must not be resorted to under any circumstances. They must seize the power at the ballot boxes next fall. In the meantime, cooperation was the call of the day, among Crispins and between Crispin and Chinaman.
    Alfred judged Cummings charismatic and compelling. He had pushed his way through the crowd to see a man strong-armed and sturdy-legged with a low center of gravity, as if when God had laid a hand to Cummings’s head, He had put a little too much weight behind the gesture.
    But as much as Alfred found himself wanting to believe, something kept him from handing over his full trust.
    After Cummings closed the proceedings, and the crowd finally grew tired of itself and dispersed, Alfred discovered himself in a bar with friend and brother Daniel Luther, the same brother he had stood beside on the depot’s platform ten days before, voicing what turned out to be mutualconcerns, both of them knowing that they should keep their voices low.
    â€œIf violence is our enemy,” Daniel wondered, “then whose suggestion were those rocks and bats? Were we meant to bang them together like a marching band?”
    Alfred stared at his beer and thought, first, that this was a drink he couldn’t afford and, second, that he must chew some mint on the way home.
    Daniel went on. “And what about throwing the train from the tracks? Seems like violence to my mind.”
    Alfred felt as if someone had taken him into his own backyard, lifted a board in the fence, and shown him that behind the yard, the home, the street, the town he’d known his whole life, there was a mirror version, yet populated by all different people getting up to all different things.
    â€œThe train from what tracks?” he asked.
    â€œBetween Troy and here,” Daniel said. “Some machinists in Troy and Eagle Bridge had organized, or been organized, to throw it at a dangerous point in the roadbed. Such of the Chinamen not killed or maimed were to be otherwise so disabled as to prevent them from engaging very actively in the shoemaking business.”
    Alfred’s surprise and sadness at being left out yet again were magnified by the fact that his friend seemed to take Alfred’s ignorance as utterly expected and, even worse, just.
    â€œWhere’d you hear tell of all this?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from sounding like a child’s.
    Daniel said the point was that someone’s