The CurrentNever Died

1885

Joseph Street. Coat shop.

Sixteen years old. Coat shop at 39 North St. Paul. Sneaks into Germania Hall, 424 North Clinton, for Haymarket.

1886

424 North Clinton. Rochester.

A German socialist hall. Haymarket on the table. She is sixteen. She is not supposed to be there.

1889

Sachs’ café. Suffolk Street.

Sewing machine. Five dollars. She meets Alexander Berkman over coffee. That same night he takes her to hear Johann Most.

1890

Germania Hall. Rochester.

Six months after she left. Most sends her home to speak. German workers. The eight-hour day. The coat-shop girl has a voice.

1901

Cleveland Music Hall.

He sits in the hall and hears Goldman. The current has found its instrument.

1901

Alias: Nobody.

German for Nobody. A man erasing himself so the deed can have a name.

1901

Rochester. Then the fair.

She spends a month in Rochester with her sister. Niagara. Buffalo. The Pan-American. She walks the grounds. Three weeks later the handkerchief.

1901

Northern Central. Sodus Point line.

The accommodation jumps the rail at the Fairville cut. Steam, dead, scalded. Eight days later Buffalo does the rest.

1901

Walbridge’s. Main Street.

.32 Iver Johnson. $4.50. Bought in Buffalo. Wrapped in a handkerchief three days later.

1901

A Republican president. Handkerchief. Two shots.

William McKinley, Republican, 25th president of the United States. Two shots at contact range.

1901

Roswell Park. Niagara Falls.

The best abdominal surgeon in Buffalo is in Niagara Falls, in a neck. “Even if it were for the president of the United States.” It was.

1901

Chicago cell.

The shooting is his. The mugshot is hers.

1901

The restless vice president.

McKinley seems to rally. To reassure the public they pack Theodore Roosevelt off to the Adirondacks, to Edith and the children, at the Tahawus Club.

1901

Dr. Vertner Kenerson. 56-inch waist.

They X-ray a man built like the president. They never X-ray the president.

1901

A Republican president.

McKinley dies. Roosevelt has been president for hours and doesn’t know.

1901

He is already president.

A runner finds Roosevelt on the mountain in the dark. By the time the wagon hits North Creek, the office has already passed.

1901

Electric Tower.

The fair that sold progress as a postcard. The Republican died in a city of light.

1917

Espionage Act. Jefferson City.

She and Berkman found the No-Conscription League. Two years in federal prison. Then Ellis Island.

1916

Rochester again.

Three nights on North St. Paul. Tolstoy at the Century Club. An associate arrested at the Fine Arts Recital Hall for handing out birth-control literature.

1919

Rochester. Then the Ark.

Out of Jefferson City. Home to Helena and Lena. She knows the deportation order is already written.

1919

The Red Ark.

Goldman deported. 249 anarchists. Rochester’s daughter sent out of the country she had radicalized in.

1934

Powers Hotel. Convention Hall.

FDR lets her in for a 90-day lecture visa. She stays with Lena on Caroline Street. Last talks in the town that made her.