Work Song Read online

  I crept along until I could sneak a look around the far corner. Eel Eyes, his back to me, was slouched against the building, dully watching for me to return to the photography line. I was scared to do what I was about to do, but more scared not to. The one advantage I had was musical; the Miners’ Band had arrived somewhere on the park premises, and the triumphal march from Aïda was blaring loudly enough to drown any sound I could possibly make. Whatever Nile god is in charge of brass knuckles I said a quick prayer to, and fitted the metal onto my fists. Coming up unheard behind the bored goon, I clipped him hard on the crazy bone of his left elbow.

  He yelped like a coyote and flopped around clutching the elbow, his business hand unable to reach for the blackjack or gun or whatever he carried in his coat. Grabbing hold of his shirtfront, I backed him against the rear of the soda parlor. While he was still squirming in pain, I rested a fist on the point of his chin, where at any sharp move the brass knuckles could knock out his front teeth.

  “Typhoon isn’t close enough to be any help to you,” I uttered with so much bravado I hardly recognized my voice, “so you’re going to have to tell me a thing or two. Why do the pair of you keep following me around like collie dogs?”

  “Coincidence,” he said sullenly, looking down his nose at the brass knobs threatening his teeth.

  “Come now, Roland. Before one of us gets hurt”—I tapped his chin hard enough to make him wince—“you need to rid yourself of this ridiculous notion that I’m worth tagging after. Where does it come from, anyway?”

  “How am I supposed to talk with those things half in my mouth?”

  “Try.”

  He drew his lips over his teeth and munched out the words. “Let’s square with each other, Morgan, or whoever you are. You’re up to something, but Ty and me are on to you—so what do you say we cut a deal?”

  “I am not ‘up’ to anything, you idiot, and whatever the pair of you think you’re ‘on to’ is a figment of your overcooked imaginations.”

  “Oh yeah? Try this for size,” he mustered hardily for a person in his situation. “Butte ain’t been quite the same since you showed up. You got off that train and funny stuff started happening. Wildcat strikes. That old mug who runs the library wakes up and throws his weight around. And today you’re up there on that balcony like a royal highness and at just the right time some Wobbly belts out a song and throws the whole parade bunch into a fit. Don’t that add up to something in anybody’s book?”

  “That is all coinci—” I caught myself from using his exculpatory word. “I swear to you, man to man, I did not come to Butte to stir up trouble. What more can I do to convince you?”

  “Leave town. Vamoose.”

  I hated to admit it, considering the source, but there was a lot of sense in that. Something else outweighed it, though. Maybe this was a wrong reading of the human condition, but it seemed to me there ought to be a limit to the number of times in life a person was obligated to vamoose.

  Eel Eyes took my brief silence to mean I was thinking it over. “Ty and me will put you on a train tomorrow, how about?” he blurted. “We won’t lift a hand to you except to wave good riddance, I promise. Him and me can find better things to do with ourselves than trailing you around.”

  “Then go find those, starting about now. But I’m not leaving. Butte is too interesting at the moment.” His left hand was creeping toward the inside of his coat, so I rapped his knuckles with my brass ones. “Ow!” He sucked his lips over his teeth again. “And one more thing while we’re at this,” I leaned in on him instructively. “In case you’re told to deliver any messages about a glory hole to a certain boardinghouse, save yourself the trouble on that, too. Now go collect your fellow idiot and”—I have to admit, I took nasty pleasure in the word—“vamoose.”

  I gave him room, and he backed around away from me. At a safe distance, he spat out: “Okay, we’re done following you since you’re on to it, but that ain’t the only way to nail you. We’ll get the goods on you yet.”

  “Tsk, Roland. You really ought to take up some other line of work.”

  He looked at me with sneering pity. “There’s goods to be got on anybody, sucker.”

  “DID YOU HAVE to brew the root beer for those?” Grace inquired when I came back. We sipped our fizzes while the last few couples ahead of us in line were posed to wait for the click of the shutter, then it was our turn.

  If memory serves me right, it was Balzac who believed that the human body has layers of self, and each time we are photographed one of those ghostly images is peeled off us irreparably onto the photographic print. In our case, Grace posed cautiously beneath the shelter of her hat, and I’m sure I looked as though I had too many things on my mind, which I did.

  “Perfect!” cried the photographer as the flash powder went off with a poof.

  He emerged from under his black cloth to hand me a numbered receipt. “Here you go, you can pick up your picture at the gate when you leave.”

  Grace startled me by taking my arm again. “Now I have a surprise for you.”

  Surprises come in two sizes, good and bad. Hers remained indeterminate while she steered me through the holiday throng toward the grandstand by the playing fields. The area was buzzing with activity as sporting events took shape; I could not help but notice two boxers going at it in the ring at a corner of the grassy expanse. After Eel Eyes, a boxing match appealed to me as restful. But Grace did not guide me up into the stands to spectate the various contests as I expected. With a flourish, she led me to the lip of the grass where the surprise came into sight.

  I laughed helplessly. “Why didn’t I think of this?”

  “You must be slipping,” she teased.

  “I’ll try to make up for it. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  She frowned. “Has anyone ever told you, Morrie, you are restless company? ”

  Off I went in search of a gnome that moved, and found him circulating in the vicinity of the men’s lavatory, as expected.

  “What’s up, buddy?” the halfpint messenger, in Sunday suit and bow tie for the day, called out when he spotted me. “Hey, how about those White Sox? They’re burning up the league.”

  I sighed. Chicago follows a person like a botanical name. “The Comiskey Cheap Sox,” I scoffed as I came up to him. “They’ll unravel.”

  “You Cubs guys don’t know real baseball when you see it.”

  “I shall keep looking.” I left it at that and got down to business. “Skinner, I believe you might know how a man could place a bet.”

  “Think so?” He scanned the grounds. Satisfied that no strolling policeman was going to intrude on his working territory, he whipped out a much-used notebook. “What’s your pleasure? The boxing matches? The mucking contest?”

  “The boys’ hundred-yard dash.”

  Indignantly Skinner pushed away the money I held out to him. “You kidding me? Use your noggin, buddy. Not till I look this over. How do I know you’re not running some junior-size Jim Thorpe in on me.”

  RUSSIAN FAMINE was shambling back and forth at the edge of the field of contestants like a stray keeping his distance from the herd. All the boys in the race wore jerseys cut down; the stenciled FARADAY BOARDING HOUSE practically wrapped around him.

  I went over to lend encouragement. I needed some myself after a closer look at our entrant. His gangly arms and legs were as pale as if the bones beneath were reflecting through, the strawy hair had not been combed in days, and for lack of a handkerchief in his racing outfit he was busily wiping his nose with the tail of the jersey. I had to hope the rest of him was as runny as his nose. Bending down to him, I urged in a low voice: “When you’re in the race, Famine, just imagine the other boys are trying to catch you and beat you up.”

  “Doesn’t take much imagination,” he said stoically.

  “To the victor belongs the spoils, remember.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just run like the wind.” I patted him on a barely existent shoulder,
then joined Grace on the sidelines. She looked worriedly at the bigger boys in the race. “You’re the one who told me he’s lightning on two legs. He’ll need to be.” She inclined her head indicatively at a lanky redheaded lad, Irish as Saint Paddy, wearing a jersey with PETERSON’S MODERN MORTUARY across his chest, and on the back: AND FUNERAL HOME. “Look at that one, he makes two of poor Famine. This had better be worth the five dollars,” she muttered, meaning the sponsoring fee.

  “At the very least, it will distinguish the boardinghouse.” I did not need to say with precision that it would distinguish it from the different sort of houses a block or so away in Venus Alley.

  Catching Skinner’s eye, I stepped over to place my bet. Observing this wagering side of me, Grace bit her lip but said nothing. Skinner wasn’t happy to see me either. He shook his head, squinting skeptically at the assortment of boys, and Famine in particular. “Huh-uh, I don’t bet blind. How do I know this kid of yours isn’t some kind of freak of nature?”

  The gambling spirit took another leap in me. “Then let’s try this. I’ll bet he wins by at least ten yards.”

  “Ten out of a hundred?” Skinner exclaimed. “A racehorse couldn’t do that. You’re on, let’s see the color of your money.”

  He bolted for the far end of the track to gauge the finish, and I swept Grace along, despite a little protesting squeal. Meanwhile at the starting line, eleven of the dozen boys took determined stances while the Faraday Boarding House entrant stood there, fidgeting from one scuffed foot to the other. Somewhere the band played “When You and I Were Young.” The starter’s pistol fired. And Russian Famine was in full flight while the others were getting their speed up. He ran as if the devils of the steppes were pursuing him with red-hot pitchforks. He ran however fast it is a boy can run. Down the track he came, flying toward us, leaving the puffing pack of other runners in his dust, if there had been any. He crossed the finish line so far ahead of the others that Skinner simply turned away.

  While Grace hurried over to congratulate her winner, I stepped aside to settle up with Skinner. Disgusted, he ponied up my bet. “Hardly fair. That skin-and-bones kid is like a streak.”

  “Exactly.” I made a show of taking out my wallet and plucking the money from his bookmaker hands. “Don’t you think he would make a messenger, if the right someone were to put in a word for him?” Skinner was giving the money hovering over my wallet a sad farewell gaze. “Who knows, I might forgive the bet if that were to happen.”

  Skinner perked up. “I guess I could see about it.”

  “At,” I emphasized with a riffle of the money, “the Hennessy Building.”

  “At the Hen? Whoo, that’s tough.” He scratched his head as if digging out a thought. “They do hire an office kid for the summer. Usually it’s some bigwig’s fat nephew.”

  “Put it to them that in the relay of their messages, they have a choice between a flatfooted chair-warmer and winged Mercury.”

  “I’ll skip that lingo, but those top-floor guys are always on fire to get their messages delivered fast.” He watched in dismay as I tucked the wagered sum into my wallet. “Hey, when do I get my bet back?”

  “At the time my friend Wladislaw becomes a messenger you-know-where.”

  WHILE I WAS AT THAT, Grace had flagged down a vendor and provided our victor with a feast of salami and cheese. Famine was devouring the victuals as if living up to his name when I joined them. I ruffled his hair, telling him that’s where the laurel wreath should reside for a race so splendidly run and won, and in professional interest asked what he was going to do with his winnings.

  He burped. “Eat some ice cream. Then go on the rolly coaster.”

  Grace and I watched him bound away. By then our own next diversion was hammering at us, literally. At the end of the field was what seemed to be a carnival of clang and clamor—even in its entertainment, Butte flexed its muscles—where contests of mining skills were being held. Arm in arm without thinking about it, we strolled over to spectate as the Miners’ Band set the mood with “The Anvil Chorus.” I saw Grace turn somber amid the displays of strenuous skills that had been her husband’s working life. The mucking contest was almost too fatiguing to watch, as men competed to see who could shovel a ton of ore into an ore car the fastest. Moving on, we came to a series of drilling contests, divided, I was interested to note, into weight classes like those of prizefighting—lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight—and competitors stripped to the waist readying for the match. Fit, muscular, confident of their skill, plainly these were the pick of the Hill, which meant of all the copper miners on earth.

  Which is why I thought I was seeing wrong—Grace’s reaction was even more pronounced than mine—when just ahead of us, swinging a sledgehammer and hoisting a drilling bar to loosen up, were Griffith and Hooper, shirts off, in their overalls and long underwear.

  The weight of years defined this competition, as the placard bluntly announced: OLDTIMERS DRILLING CONTEST.

  “No wonder they were so full of themselves this morning,” Grace burst out. “I hope they don’t fall over dead, the old fools.”

  Across on the other side, there seemed to be no similar trepidation around their competitors, a pair of Finns who had lost no huskiness to age. Their supporters were whooping and clapping and singing in Finnish as if the contest already was won.

  Wordlessly I assessed the matchup, although it didn’t take much study. I reminded myself that the gambling spirit should be harkened to only when the gamble carries a discernible chance of reward. I protectively patted the winnings Russian Famine had supplied to my wallet. In short, I took myself through the whole breviary of common sense, then told Grace I would be right back and went in search of Skinner again. She bit her lip even harder this time.

  THE RIVAL TEAMS were poised to start by the time I rejoined Grace, each pair of men at a block of bluish granite the size of a packing crate. These drilling matches were of the old classic type, before compressors and air hoses replaced muscle and diligence at the rockface; in other words, by hand. Two sets of hands, and two steel tools. The holder knelt with a five-foot drill of tempered metal, like a slim crowbar, gingerly in his grasp. The hammerman, swinging a sledge, would strike the end of it, and as he drew back for the next stroke, the holder twirled the steel a quarter-turn for the drill head to make another flaking cut. In the early rise of Butte to mining eminence, I gathered, this blow-by-blow assault on rock—offhandedly called “breaking ground”—was an essential skill; the hole drilled in this laborious but effective way would be tamped with dynamite and the resulting blast would bring down the wall of rock for the ore to be separated out. Life tells tales as strange as those we can make up: the copper that wired the world for electricity was set loose, like fresh water from a struck stone in a fable, by those pairs of hands and driven steel in the chinks of the Hill.

  Fortunately, dynamite was not involved in this match, which was to be a race to see which team could drive the deeper hole in a given time. Grace and I, already tense, watched intently as the judge fondled his stopwatch and instructed the two teams to get ready. Hoop, the hammerman, spat in his hands; Griff, the drill holder, flexed his fingers. The hardy Finns at the other block of rock did the same.

  “Ready,” the judge chanted, “set . . . DRILL!”

  The ear-ringing sound of steel hitting steel echoed off the hill where flowers spelled out COLUMBIA GARDENS, on up into the mountains beyond, and in not many seconds resounded again. The strokes of the sledgehammers set up a clanging rhythm best described as Hell’s bells. Yet the process was strangely hypnotic and suspenseful to watch; the hammerman had to hit, each and every time, a target no bigger than a nickel, while the holder had to absorb the sting of the blow and make his fingers turn the drill the correct fraction. It was inherently dangerous, the eight-pound head of the sledgehammer arcing at the holder if the hammerman missed, the shaft of steel thrusting spearlike toward the man with the hammer if the holder mishandled it. I watched in fascinat
ion as Hoop, scrawny as he was, swung his sledge in a pace steady as a pendulum, and Griff, equally meager, knelt fearlessly over the drill as if his life depended on its next turn. Their opponents meanwhile seemed built for the job. One of them gravely white-haired, the other with a mustache that would have been white except for tobacco stains, both Finnlanders looked as sturdy as the granite.

  As the clamor of the hammers went on and the drills chewed into the rock particle by particle, Grace nudged me hard enough to make me grunt. “Tell me, you,” she fanned herself with her hat as though the exertion of the competitors was getting to her, “which team did you bet on?”

  “I’m surprised at you, Grace. How could I not be loyal to the boardinghouse?” She was not the only skeptic. Skinner had chortled as he took the money I put on Hooper and Griffith. “Don’t know how to quit while you’re ahead, huh? Those old gimps have seen their day. You better stick to footraces and baseball, pal.”

  “Loyalty is one thing, using your head is another,” Grace now added to that, fretfully watching the spectacle of old men attacking hard rock.

  “Never fear, I still have enough to pay my rent.”

  “I wasn’t worried about that.” She fanned herself more rapidly, giving me a sidelong look. “Well, maybe a little.”

  It was no doubt true that in a world where chance operated as surely as gravity, I would have bet on the Finns. And perhaps regretted it, for Hoop was matching the mustached Finn blow for blow, their sledgehammers chorusing together. I was no stranger to contests, and this one could not have been closer, one team ahead by a fraction of an inch, then the other.

  “Switch!” cried the judge at the five-minute mark, and, fantastically, the men of both teams changed jobs without missing a stroke. That fast, Hoop was on his knees minding the drill, Griff was banging away with the sledgehammer, and the race into the rock thundered on.

  Grace sat on the edge of her seat, urging Griff on and muttering aside to me about the bawling-out he and Hoop were going to get from her at home. Griff’s long underwear darkened with sweat across the shoulders as his turn at hammering went on. It was incredible to think of, the human muscle that had gone into the extraction of ore before machinery came to the mines, and Griff and Hoop and their opponents were part of it then as they were now.