“I think you might’ve gotten some of your mother’s spirit after all, Mabel,” Luis said later as they shared a loaf of bread he’d brought. They each took a piece and passed the loaf around to others in the tent camp.
“Yeah, you’re a chip off the old block,” Gloria said.
“No, she’s not,” Arthur said. “Mabel’s even braver than her mother—smarter, too. The newsreel was a swell idea. You’ll pardon me, but Mabel’s parents are the old guard. We are the new. The future. This is ours.”
Ours. Mabel liked the sound of that. She liked that Arthur believed in her so strongly.
“Do you think we can win?” Mabel asked.
“We’re certainly gonna try, Mabel Rose,” Arthur said, and she loved the way he said her name, like a mantra. With the sun behind him, he looked like a bold new American hero, someone who would shape the future. Arthur wiped his hands on his trouser legs and pulled Mabel to her feet. His hands were warm and strong like hers, and she liked the feel of them. “Let’s find somebody to print that newsreel and get it out there for people to see.”
A woman who’d been standing nearby beckoned Mabel. The woman spoke little English, so she relied on her nephew to relay the message. He listened, nodding.
“What is it?” Mabel asked.
“My aunt Ekadie says that bad is coming,”
“Fortune-tellers again,” Aron scoffed. “Bad is coming for Marlowe once the people see this newsreel.”
“Go on,” Mabel said, shooing Aron toward the truck. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”
The woman spoke to her nephew with rising urgency. Worry was etched into her face.
“It is your aura,” he translated. “She says she can see it all around you, the danger. The ghosts are warning her. There is betrayal. Fire. Death.”
Hadn’t Maria Provenza said much the same?
“What does she mean? What sort of betrayal?”
The young man spoke with his aunt once more. He shook his head. “She doesn’t know. But she says you must be careful.”
Gloria honked the horn. The others were in the truck waving to her, impatient, so Mabel thanked both the woman and her nephew and tried to shake off the warning.
“We’ve only got one shot at this,” Luis said, handing over the canister with the edited newsreel inside. “The projectionist is sympathetic. I paid him a few bucks to take a walk tonight during the premiere of this new Fritz Lang picture, Metropolis.”
“We’ll sneak in and put on the newsreel before the picture starts,” Aron said.
Through the square of a window, Mabel could watch the well-heeled audience flow in and take their seats while an organist played a boisterous tune on the theater’s Mighty Wurlitzer. Mabel’s stomach was all butterflies as the lights dimmed, the tuxedo-clad manager announced the picture, and the gilt-edged, red velvet curtains parted to the audience’s excited applause.
“Here we go,” Luis said. He set the newsreel in motion and left their calling card—THE SECRET SIX—next to the projector so that everyone would know. Then they ran quickly to the upper balcony to watch from behind the safety of the dark.
A title card appeared: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA? NO FUTURE FOR JAKE MARLOWE’S STRIKING MINERS! The newsreel’s first images spooled across the screen: The hungry children. The worried mothers. The militia men driving around in their trucks with their guns. A second title card read: UNION! It was followed by the long shot Mabel had gotten of the workers coming across the field, arms linked in solidarity, that then became the close-ups of those shining eyes in hopeful faces. That scene made her heart swell more than anything she’d ever seen in a Hollywood picture. She’d shot that footage herself. She was making a difference.
The audience grew restless—“What’s going on here? Is this part of the picture? Is it a joke? Start the picture!” Some booed, but there were others who cheered when the words A FAIR AMERICA FOR ALL! appeared on-screen. “Hear! Hear!” they called, applauding, and Mabel thought it might be the best sound she’d ever heard.
Down below, the manager hurried up the aisle, scowling up at the projection booth.
“That’s our cue. Time to go,” Arthur said, snugging his cap down low on his head, and they slunk down the stairs and through the front doors, disappearing into the crowds of Forty-second Street. Mabel looked up at the night sky, wanting to memorize every star. It didn’t matter that the newsreel was most likely being destroyed now. They’d done it. They’d made their mark.
But the following morning, only two newspapers carried a mention of the movie premiere’s disruption-by-newsreel, and it was hardly complimentary.
“‘Anarchist Thugs the Secret Six Take Over Movie Palace with Seditious Propaganda Newsreel,’” Gloria read aloud to the group as they huddled around a table at Chumley’s, a speakeasy. “‘We will keep these lying, outside agitators from disrupting our American way of life, promises mayor.’” She slapped the paper down on the table. “They’re calling us thugs when those militiamen are shooting up the camp? The very nerve!”
“But people saw it,” Mabel reminded them. “Once they’ve seen the truth, it’s harder to ignore. Small acts of resistance matter!” She found herself looking to Arthur, who stared back at her as if he were just seeing her for the first time, as if she were the only girl in the world. The blush burned all the way to Mabel’s toes.
A shaken Luis arrived late. “Management heard about the newsreel,” he said. “They had the militiamen tear up the camp. They beat some of the miners pretty badly. And they’ve threatened worse.”
Mabel’s misery compounded. Hadn’t the newsreel been her idea? The night before, Mabel had been electric with the joy of accomplishment. Now she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt more powerless.
“It was still a good idea,” Arthur said, trying to comfort her as the two of them sat in a basement Romanian tavern on Christopher Street, a plate of untouched cabbage rolls between them.
“It was a lousy idea. It didn’t help the miners at all. It just made things worse for them,” Mabel said. How naive she’d been to think that people would be swayed by ideas of right and wrong, by images of hardworking miners and their families trying to survive against the machinery of business. “We’re losing this fight. Jake Marlowe is so powerful. How do you fight back against that kind of power? We’re only five rebels and some striking workers.”
“Today. By tomorrow, who knows how many of us there’ll be?”
“We couldn’t even get people on our side when they could see the conditions for themselves! If they could deny that, then…” Mabel trailed off, her fists clenched on the scarred wooden table.
Arthur lifted her chin with his fingers. As their eyes met, Mabel’s stomach did its flip-flop. How had she not noticed that handsome square jaw before? “Don’t give up hope, Mabel Rose. You anchor me. If you lose hope, well, I might, too.”