Sweet Thunder Read online

  So was the manse, a changed place not necessarily for the better without my sole companion clomping around in old boots and pajamas early and late.

  Often now it was near midnight when I would hear a taxi putt-putting up to the front door, and the sounds of someone more than sizable retiring for the night. At breakfast, Sandison would eat heartily as a cowboy, questioning me about any sign of Anaconda weakening on the lockout and grunting whenever I asked him the state of his health or that of the Butte Public Library, then off he went, still listing several degrees to his wounded side but as functioning as a locomotive. Leaving me with the echoing house and its principality of unoccupied rooms, as if I were some fairy-tale figure under a strange spell. Prince of an empty manse, with his princess fled.

  • • •

  “It’s you, is it.” Answering my knock, Grace peeped the door open as warily as if I were about to storm the boardinghouse. “The famous trick rider. What brings you to our humble neighborhood?”

  “I came to see if I can help out.”

  “I can’t think how,” the reply came swifter than swift. “We don’t need any fights fixed or names fiddled with, thanks just the same.”

  I flinched, but did not give up. “Grace, please. Couldn’t a little money be put to use, perhaps?”

  Her expression warmed one degree, from skepticism to suspicion. “I hate to ask, but is it honestly gotten?”

  “Positively.” I reached in my pocket and produced the thin fold of bills. “Sandy had a fit of conscience and upped his rent somewhat. That’s where this comes from, I swear on a hill of Bibles.”

  Keeping one hand on the doorknob, Grace still eyed the money dubiously. “He opened his wallet, just like that? Tell me another.”

  “I prompted him a wee bit,” I admitted. Which prompting, in truth, had been met by the Sandisonian grumble, “When I gave you this place, I didn’t expect you to turn into a gouging landlord. Oh, well, leave it to you to get blood out of a Scotchman. Here.”

  Back and forth between being shrewd landlady and aggrieved spouse, Grace bit her underlip, but the next thing I knew, the cash had vanished into her apron pocket. “All right then. It will come in handy. Good day, Morrie.”

  “Wait. I wanted to ask—” What I wanted went beyond words, to the essence of man and woman and life altogether, the constellation of chance that draws us one to another out of the lonely depths of night. Try speaking that to an unwilling listener, especially one you are only nominally married to. I instead pleaded: “Can I come in? Only for a minute? I feel like a leper, standing out here.”

  Wordlessly she swung the door open and pointed to the parlor. “Make it quick. What was it you wanted to ask?”

  “If I can borrow Hoop and Griff. The kitchen drain is leaking again.”

  “I’ll send them first thing in the morning.” She looked at me questioningly. “Is that all, I hope?”

  “Did you enjoy the parade?”

  Grace closed her eyes as if seeking strength. “You. Can you not get it into your head, Morrie, that you can’t come mooning around here and win me back with sweet nothings? Too much has happened.” Blinking now, the violet of her gaze hazed a little with moisture, she said huskily, “Just go. Please.”

  “Grace, can’t we—” Such a thumping broke out overhead, I feared for the ceiling. “What’s making the awful racket?”

  “Oh, that,” she said as though the commotion were nothing. “Giorgio at his exercises. He does jumping jacks. Lifts a dumbbell.”

  I somehow held my tongue about the aptness of that word associated with the Mazzini creature. My turn to be highly suspicious.

  “How is he paying his rent? There are no wages these days.”

  “On the cuff. You would let him do the same,” she maintained entirely inaccurately. “He can catch up on the rent when the mines are running again.”

  “Not much of a provider until that day ever comes, is he,” I took what little satisfaction jealousy would allow me.

  The jumping or dumbbelling or whatever it was went on above us as we stood looking at each other helplessly. Grace was the first to say anything. “Morrie, what’s going to happen? I don’t mean with us. That’s—” She washed her hands of the topic. “The lockout and all, what can make Anaconda ever back down?”

  “Jared and I are putting every effort to it.” Unspoken was the fact that our every effort so far had left the greatest copper mines in the world shut tight as a drum.

  Tight-lipped, she nodded. From her expression, I could tell that there luckily was not more.

  • • •

  My mood weighed down by wife, lockout, Cutlass, manse, and anything else that came to mind, I retreated from the boardinghouse one more time. Deep in brooding as I started home without even Sandison to look forward to, I let traffic thoroughly pass so the next turn of events would not be, say, getting run over by a Golden Eggs truck.

  As I crossed the street thinking the coast was clear, traffic of an unanticipated sort emerged as a pram came trundling out of Venus Alley, simultaneous with a covey of streetwalkers sashaying to their posts for the night. Bent low behind the laden baby carriage, pushing for all he was worth on the uphill street while the ladies of the evening kidded the pants off him, in a manner of speaking, was a depressed Russian Famine. Misery famously loving company, on impulse I changed direction to accompany him as he distributed the Thunder.

  “Hiya, sir,” he greeted me disconsolately, his ears burning. “Come to hear the canaries sing?”

  “Ooh la la, what’s under that beard, hon?” a buxom redhead in minimum street apparel squealed at the sight of me. “I bet you been just waiting for the barbershop special.”

  Quite sure she did not mean a shave and a haircut, I declined the offer, to a round of catcalls from the Venus Alley sisterhood as they stationed themselves along the block. My ears now the red ones, I joined Famine in a concerted stint of pushing that propelled the buggy and us out of the red light district into a calmer neighborhood of speakeasies and funeral parlors.

  As the street turned less precipitous, I let him commandeer the conveyance by himself again. Brushing my hands, I asked as cheerily as I could, “The daughters of Venus aside, how goes the carriage route? At least, you only have to drop the papers at each place and collect for them, am I right?”

  “Yeah,” he said grudgingly. “It’s slow nickels instead of fast dimes, though,” he gave the classic response of the frustrated earner.

  I had to smile. “Sometimes something comes along and changes that. Luck, for a better word.” He eyed me as if it had better hurry up. “Do you mind if I walk with you? I’d like the company.”

  “Nah. Help yourself.” Strenuous as his task was, he managed to jounce along typically, every part of him on the move. I fell into step, and that seemed to loosen his mood. “You get that way, too, huh?”

  I was startled. “Pardon?”

  “Down in the dumps,” he specified. “You sorta look like you lost your best friend.”

  An apt enough description of the situation with Grace. “Yes, well,” I alibied, “I have some things on my mind and I suppose it shows.” I shifted the conversation. “I’ve been meaning to ask, to offer, really.” Guilty as I felt, this was hard to get out. “Wouldn’t you like more boxing lessons? A left hook isn’t the only weapon to be had.”

  “It sure ain’t,” he blurted, glancing sideways at me in apology. “Sir, sorry as all get out, but I’m gonna call it quits on the boxing.” He added bitterly, “’Least until I get some meat on my bones and any muscles.”

  “Famine, we’ve been through this,” I tried to lift his spirits. “You’re blessed with speed.”

  “So’s jackrabbits, and all kinds of things get them,” he said in the same dark mood.

  “Mine isn’t the only case of the dumps, hmm?” I jogged him lightly. “I’ll tell you what,
let’s make a bargain to quit feeling sorry for ourselves the rest of your route. Then we can go back to being worrywarts. Agreed?”

  That got a rise out of him. “I ain’t no—” He caught himself. “Yeah, well, maybe I do have too much stuff on my mind, like you say you do. How we supposed to get rid of that?”

  “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me,” I flipped my fedora off my head and held it the way a magician holds a hat full of magic, “if I could pull out Russian Famine, grown and muscled and with meat on his bones, what more would you want to be?”

  The old schoolhouse trick worked. The boy brightened, and in between dashes to deliver stacks of newspapers while I held the baby buggy from rolling half a mile downhill, he confided that his great dream in life was to be a trainman, on the famous silk trains that rushed the delicate cargo from the port of Seattle across the breadth of the country to the mills of New Jersey. “Run the locomotive, how about,” he enthused during one scampering return, pushing the lightened carriage so fast I had to skip to keep up. “Highball ’er as fast as she’d go,” his imagination was already up in the cab of a cannonball express, whistle screeching as the wheels pounded the rails, no other sound on earth like it. I had to concede it was a dream with a certain appeal. He confided out of the side of his mouth, “Them trains got the right of way all across the country, you know. Don’t stop for crossings or nothing, just let ’er rip. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  I could agree with that. Yet the vision of another young dreamer with extraordinary physical skills would not leave me. Casper had wanted to be a street preacher in Chicago’s Bughouse Square before awakening to his body’s possibilities. “Don’t take this wrong, my friend,” experience spoke up in me, “but you are destined for higher things than that.”

  “Awful nice of you to say so, sir,” he sobered, coming down to earth where the wheels of the baby carriage met the hard streets of Butte, “but that don’t help getting chased off my corner and putting up with the hussies.”

  Before I could try to buck him up from that, we were at the last stop, Blind Heinie’s newsstand outside the Hennessy Building. “I’m kinda late,” Famine apologized, with a look at me as he hurriedly scooped newspapers from the bottom of the baby carriage and stacked them within practiced reach of the grizzled old man.

  “Alles forgive, Jungchen,” the news vendor assured him with a guttural chuckle. As I went on my way and Russian Famine trundled the carriage back on the same route we had come, the sweet words lingered in my ear, the benediction we all seek in the winding journey of life, young and old alike.

  • • •

  It is a measure of how low my domestic subsistence had sunk that a cafeteria became my salvation. Bachelor life soon drove me to regularly staying on late at the newspaper and then eating at the Purity before facing another evening alone at home, to call the manse that. Even with the city on hard times, there was definitely no lack of clientele because fetching a meal for oneself felt like a bargain whether or not it actually added up to one. I suppose it was not a good sign—bachelor habit setting deep—that every suppertime without fail I headed directly for the counter where pasties were stacked in a warming pan and fed myself as mindlessly as a dray horse going to a feedbag.

  Thus came the evening when I was dishing up my favorite fare, a plump, crusty pasty and the Purity’s tasty gravy, when I felt a presence. The way a shadow across your path can cause a sudden chill. Or a window man can be sensed rather than seen. I turned my head ever so slightly.

  Practically next to me, there stood Cartwright, with a cutthroat smile that more than lived up to that nickname. Slick dresser that he was, he had on a pearl-gray suit and matching vest with a silken lavender tie that was more properly a cravat. Before I could react to his sudden presence, he slapped me on the shoulder and said in a louder voice than necessary, “How’s the world treating you, buddy?”

  Nudging his tray up to mine, he looked over the meal line offerings as if I weren’t the real thing on his menu. “Pork chop sandwich?” he whistled in disbelief. “They eat anything in this burg, don’t they?” Then ever so casually, he dropped all pretense. “You danced circles around me with that editorial today, I have to hand it to you. Sheer razzmatazz. You’re one whiz at wordslinging, you are.”

  I made to move away, leaving him with the rebuff: “Really, we have nothing to say to each other except in print.” But he plucked at my sleeve, smiling all the while.

  “Oh, I think we do,” his voice practically oozed fellowship. “Especially since this seems to be the only way at you.” He flexed his upper parts, the cannonball head to one side then the other, as if working kinks out of his neck. “Boy oh boy, that Evans of yours knows his stuff. A couple of Irish miners, both of them pretty far above my weight class, pushed me around a little the other night. I was given the impression you’re a privileged character, and if anything happened to you, I’d get plenty more of the same.” He gave me another unwelcome pat on the shoulder. “There, see? We have a lot in common. We both want to keep breathing. And it’d surprise you how well that can pay.”

  His close presence was making me uncomfortable, as well as his gall in trying to bribe me in public. “You can save some of that breath. I told you before, I’m not for sale.”

  The damnable man laughed as if we were sharing the best joke. “You don’t know your own worth, my friend. You can name your own price. What could be sweeter?”

  “Strychnine.”

  I uttered that in spite of the vision of my satchel stuffed with money once more. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company had even more of it to spare than did Chicago gamblers.

  Cartwright’s eyes hardened, although he kept up the deadly geniality. “Butte rules take some getting used to,” he lamented. “These miners don’t know when they’re licked. But you’re not that kind of dumb cluck. Cash in while you can. Throw some moolah at that run-down monastery you live in. Go on a nice long trip somewhere.” He cocked a look at me. “Morgan? You still with me? What the devil are you doing?”

  “Merely humming ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ while waiting for a nuisance to go away.”

  He snickered. “Smarting off isn’t going to help. Come on, get with it. People already think you sold out, so you might as well.” I looked sharply at him. “Just the two of us palsy-walsy in public like this does the trick,” he said almost sympathetically. “Word gets around, you know.”

  A rapid glance around the dining room verified that all too well; people were watching us, too many of them with the rough cut of miners. Up at the front, the proprietor was monitoring matters with a double-chinned frown. As sure as anything, even if the word did not spread some other way, he would inform Jared of my seeming duplicity. Jared I might explain this away to, but others, the union core and the faithful readership of the Thunder, would be left with a distinctly wrong impression: that I had sold out to the other side.

  “Just in case you need any more convincing,” Cartwright leaned in as if the conversation had reached the confidential point, “there are some, shall we say, Anaconda associates out in the crowd. They’re making sure people notice us being chummy.” My knees went weak. Goons, even in here? “Naw, don’t bother to look around,” my antagonist advised in a cheery tone. “If they’re doing their job, you can’t spot them. Window men, we call types like that back in Chicago—who knows what the term is out here in the sticks, huh?”

  The next blow came as a casual afterthought. “Oh, and by the way, they tail me to make sure I don’t meet with any kind of accident.” Cartwright rocked back on his heels. “We’re really some pair, aren’t we, you and me? Two newspaper guys who get to call the shots on something that counts, for a change. Cream rises to the top, why not?” The spiel was practically purring out of him now. “The only trouble is, we’ve worked ourselves to a draw. I can’t touch you, and your union henchmen can’t touch me. A standoff like that”—he spread his
hands as if juggling—“you may as well take what you can get and retire in style. Well, that’s the setup anyway.” He beamed me a final smile that his eyes had nothing to do with. “You know where to find me when you want to cut yourself a nice fat deal. Don’t let me keep you from your meal, pal.”

  I found my voice as he started to turn to go.

  “Wait.”

  “Cutty”—he perked up at my use of that—“have you tried the Butte specialty, a pasty?” With that, I lifted my plate and mashed it squarely into his chest where cravat, vest, and suit met.

  For an incredulous moment Cartwright gaped at the dripping mess of gravy, mashed potatoes, and such plastered on his chest, while I rid myself of the plate. “You—” He drew back to hit me, but froze at the sight of my brass knuckles. Rather, the flash of brass as I whipped them from my side pockets in immediate readiness stopped him cold, but then he simply stared as I held my stance. Instinctively I had dropped into the fighting pose practiced with Russian Famine. Casper’s old pose.

  As the Purity proprietor bustled toward us with a moonfaced grin, calling to the kitchen for someone to bring a mop, Cartwright backed off, but he was not the kind to give much ground. Still eyeing me, he said silkily, “Handy with your mitts, are you. You’re full of surprises, Morgan. But round one isn’t the whole fight, you know. Better wise up and think over my offer.” Dabbing at his ruinously splotched suit with a napkin, he gave me one last smooth smile. “It still stands.”

  • • •