Never seen you quite so dolled up, Morrie. Mrs. Faraday will have to go some to keep up with you.”
I smoothed the fabric of my new checked vest and adjusted the silk necktie bought to match it. “Everyone tells me Miners Day is a holiday like no other. You are quite the fashion plate yourself, Griff.”
“Better be, on account of the parade. We’ve marched in every one of them, haven’t we, Hoop.”
“Since parades was invented.”
The brand-new work overalls on both of them looked stiff enough to creak, and underneath were the churchgoing white shirts and ties. Their headgear, though, was the distinctive part. Each wore a dingy dented helmet that must have seen hard duty in the mineshafts.
“Are you expecting a hailstorm?” I asked with a straight face.
Hoop proudly tapped his headpiece. “The Hill tried to knock my brains out any number of times, but nothing ever got past this lid. Anymore we only wear it the one day a year, don’t we, Griff.”
Telling me they had to form up early with the other marchers or spend the entire parade looking at hundreds of behinds, the pair hustled out while I waited for Grace to come down from her room. With the Hill not operating due to the holiday, a stillness had settled over the city, and the boardinghouse was in rare quiet. A silent room that is not your own tends to breed long thoughts. Around me now, the boardinghouse’s furnishings seemed to sit in arrested attitude, as if arranged in a villa in Pompeii. The mood of timeless deliberation drew me in and I became more aware than ever of the wedding photograph on the sideboard, where Arthur Faraday stared levelly at me. Something in that everlasting straight gaze reminded me of Casper, likewise gone too early from life and a bride who idolized him. Introspection is a rude visitor. An unsparing look into myself went to the heart, in more ways than one. I know myself fairly well: I am solo by nature. Incurably so, on the evidence thus far. But what a hard-eyed trick of fate-perhaps reflected in Arthur’s stare?-if I was destined, around women, always to be a stand-in for better men.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I heard Grace behind me, her footsteps quick on the stairs. “I had about forgotten how to dress up.”
I turned to look at her, and looked again. She had gone some, in Griff’s phrase for it. Her hair was done up in a crown braid, and atop that sat a broad-brimmed summer hat with a nice little swoop to it and a sprig of red ribbon. Her dress, attractively tailored to her compact form, was of a sea green with a shimmer to it. Even her complexion had a new glow, assisted by just enough rouge to give her cheeks a hint of blush.
“Very nice,” I fumbled out.
“You, too,” she managed.
With Arthur in the room, we stood there, shying away from further compliments, until she remembered to check the clock. “We should get a move on,” landlady back in her voice, “everyone turns out for the parade. I hope we can still find a place to see.”
“Spare yourself that worry,” I rallied. “I know just the spot.”
MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD, the populace of Butte lined the downtown streets a dozen thick. I shouldered a way for us, Grace with a grip on the tail of my coat, to the block by the library. She looked dubious as I led her past people picnicking on the steps to the big arched doorway. “Isn’t the library closed for today?”
“Except to the privileged.” I displayed the key.
We slipped in, the ornate front door sweeping closed behind us. Inside the thick walls, the din of the outside world was shut out. The foyer, its Tuscan paneling and dark timbered beams as royal as ever, stood staidly empty. I glanced up to see whether Shakespeare winked at us as we passed through the Reading Room doorway, and he may have. Grace gazed around the elegant quiescent chamber with a trace of awe, and then at me. “Sam Sandison must trust you.”
“Mmm, I suspect he simply doesn’t want me to have any excuse day or night for not being in here doing all the things he piles on me to do.”
As we passed through the Reading Room, I could not help but stop for a minute and run my eyes over the mezzanine’s ranks of books, silent but eloquent. I was smitten every time by the finest collection west of Chicago, and to have its literary riches almost to myself this way seemed like a scene in a dream. Housed in their volumes, the souls of writers waited in this great room to come out into the light of day. I would not have been surprised right then if Joseph Conrad materialized at the railing like a stalwart first mate on the deck watch, or Emily Dickinson came tiptoeing out of the shelves to peer down to the unattainable life below.
“My. It’s so different in here without anyone around, isn’t it.”
“Grace, you needn’t whisper.”
“Oh, right.” She trilled a laugh in relief. “If you promise not to shush me.”
A last lingering moment, I gazed at the varicolored bindings as a person would cast a final glance at the jeweled colors of a cathedral window. Then I motioned Grace to the stairway, but she stayed as she was, studying me. “This is the love of your life, isn’t it. What’s in these books.”
“I suppose it is,” I conceded. “As the phrase goes, for better and for worse.”
OFF THE CORRIDOR to Sandison’s office was a small balcony, like a flex in the stonework over the main entrance’s keystone arch, and the parade coming down Broadway would pass practically beneath us. Grace went straight to the balustrade and took a full look around, adjusting the swoop of her hat to keep the sun out of her eyes. Smiling her best, she plucked at the cuff of my suitcoat. “This is such a treat, you devil.”
The rising roar from the street announced that things were under way. The copper capital of the known world knew how to stage a spectacle. Everything in shoes walked in the parade. The lodges-Masons, Elks, Templars, Odd Fellows, you name it-all of them sashed, some plumed. The firemen, prideful of their new hook-and-ladder Ford. The suffragists, resolute with their signs championing the correction to the Constitution that would give women the vote. The trade unions, and in Butte that was every trade; bakers, tailors, cooks, carpenters, even blacksmiths went by with their banners in the breeze. Most groups were led by a drum, the boom of march step resounding off the buildings. Then behind those marchers came the big horses, the brass of their harnesses gleaming, pulling delivery vans of every sort, and other horse-drawn conveyances polished up for the occasion. A traveling carnival, calliope and all, rolled past in gold-spoked wagons; a stiltwalker ambulated by nearly at eye level with us. The next group on wheels were putt-putting automobiles with dignitaries trying to maintain dignity in the herkyjerky progress.
Eventually, more pedestrianly, came contingents of schoolchildren. Rab, gaily dressed, went by in charge of a flock of beribboned girls representing her school. She spotted me, waved, and blew me a kiss. Grace looked at me with a slightly raised eyebrow. “She must have been quite something as a girl.”
By now the Miners Day processional had gone on for a considerable time, and I leaned out to see how much more there could possibly be. “Good heavens!” was all I could say.
Bearing down on us was what looked like an army of toy soldiers magnified to heroic size. Each marching man wore a uniform of emerald green with gold-thread embossing across the chest and down the sleeves, and their cap visors were set identically low to their brows. The mix of gaudy uniforms and shiny musical instruments suggested an orchestra conscripted onto the stage of an operetta. As the marching mass neared the library, its leader spun in his tracks and, walking backward, lifted his arms. Instantly instruments sprang to lips, and at his signal, a Sousa march roared to life. Sun glinted off a tuba, the extensions of trombones, the squadron of cornets. The bass drums produced a beat that could be felt on the body.
“The Miners’ Band,” Grace managed to make herself heard into my ear. “They’re nationally known. Not for lullabies, as you might guess.”
And in the wake of the powerful music, here came the miners in their hundreds and hundreds, beneath a forest of banners with the union council proudly at the front. Leading them with his level stride was Jared Evans, in suit and tie and a snappy hat that might as well have been a crown. With his triumph in the wage battle, he was the hero of the day; Caesar coming home to Rome after victory could have received no greater tribute from the crowd. Grace and I added our cheers. The banners dipped and rose and swirled in back of Jared and the other council members, where the ranks of men who worked in the mineshafts stretched for blocks, each national group distinct to itself as I had seen them that first day on the Hill, but now scrubbed and tidied and in their best clothing. We strained to see, and tucked in between the Finns and the Serbs were the retired miners, with Griffith and Hooper and dozens of stooped replicas all in their vintage helmets.
By now the band had wheeled about and strutted back, facing the mineworkers. The resplendent bandleader lifted his arms and everything halted. He bowed from the waist toward the council, and a great cheer went up for the union and the restored wage. The other council members pushed Jared, grinning and not objecting too much, out for recognition by himself. The bandleader spun, up went the arms, and in tribute the band thundered into the mighty Welsh anthem “Men of Harlech.”
Men of Harlech, march to glory!
Victory is hov’ring o’er ye!
Bright-eyed freedom stands before ye-
Hear ye not her call?
“I’ve never been within five thousand miles of Wales,” Grace was sniffling when it was over, “and that old thing always makes me want to bawl.”
I was somewhat misty myself. “A very wise man once said mankind’s two great magics are words and music.”
Meanwhile Jared had doffed his hat to the band and the crowd, and the marchers were starting to shuffle into motion again.
Then it happened.
From somewhere, perhaps an alley or a rooftop, came a lone singing voice, just short of a yodel but with a devilish lilt to it. The refrain sliced through the parade mood:
Wear the copper collar,
Swallow dirt for your dollar.
You’ll get pie in the sky
When you die.
Jared looked up as if the mocking ditty had hit him like an arrow. A squad of policemen at the intersection, whom I had assumed were on hand to hold back the crowd, jumped into action toward where the derisive singing seemed to come from. Before they made much headway, the invisible songster was at it again.
Work and pray,
Live on hay.
You’ll get pie in the sky
When you die.
Now a couple of the council members shouted to the bandleader, a march tune was struck up, and the parade slowly snaked into motion once again. Looking back from now, what strikes me in the whole episode was that although I had never heard the pie-in-the-sky stanza before, I knew its origin almost from the first few insidiously catchy notes. So did Jared, according to his reaction. That kind of serenade rose straight from the Little Red Songbook.
“That’s Butte for you.” Grace had been waiting as patiently as she could for me to return to myself. “The top of the world one minute, the glory hole the next.”
NOW IT WAS her turn to surprise. With the parade over, I assumed we would follow the crowd to the next attraction, down at the depot. Butte was a regular stop for political speakers traveling through, in that ritual of a suspender-bursting oration from the rear platform of a train. Today’s portable statesman was the imported variety, Eamon de Valera, a leader in Ireland’s struggle against British rule, and judging by the sprigs of green in lapels and bonnets of everyone rushing by us, Dublin Gulch was avalanching off the Hill to hear him. Grace, though, firmly headed us the other direction. She would not tell me our destination-“You know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you?”-as we bundled onto a trolley. All I saw ahead as the trolley tracks continued past the outskirts of the city were mine dumps and the wall of mountains that topped out at the Continental Divide. Yet Grace and the other holiday-goers packed in with us were as merry as if we were bound for paradise.
The last stop on the line, in the tuck of a valley at the foot of the mountains, may not have been my notion of paradise, but it was somebody’s idea of a fantasy land. We stepped off into an enormous amusement park, with COLUMBIA GARDENS spelled out in floral design against an entire hillside. Everything but the flowers seemed to be in excited motion. As I tried to take it all in, a roller coaster galloped through the treetops, and beyond, a Ferris wheel spun against the sky. Across acres and acres of the only green grass I had seen since coming to Butte, there were picnic groves; a playground featuring a brilliantly striped maypole and high-flying swings and a labyrinth of monkey bars; a merry-go-round; a zoo; a baseball diamond; a boxing ring; a trout pond; flower gardens; on and on. And the populace of the city had arrived in force to absorb the pleasures, it looked like. There is an unforgettable painting by Bruegel of swarms of children, serious about their fun, each bunch engaged in a different game and oblivious to the larger world. This panorama was like that.
Directly ahead from where Grace and I stood was a huge central pavilion, vaguely Italianate, surrounded by a soda parlor and other refreshment stands. “Pinch me,” I told her, “I seem to have been whisked off to Coney Island. Who runs this?” She only gave me a certain kind of look.
“Don’t tell me,” I groaned. “The Anaconda Company.”
“You’re getting better at the facts of life,” she awarded me.
The extravaganza surrounding us, then, was the other side of the copper coin, at least for this one day. Shaking my head at the turnabout of Anaconda’s conduct, I asked Grace what she would like to do first. “Stroll the gardens,” she chose without hesitation. “I haven’t had an outing like this since-it’s been a few years.”
For as long as there are men and women, some things in life will best be done arm in arm, and strolling a flower garden is one. We exclaimed together at a hillside burst of blooms planted in the design of a giant lyre, as if a Gulliver had temporarily laid aside his music-making. Grace’s grip on my arm was an exclamation in itself as we happily competed in naming off blossoms while we walked. Under the spell of the aromatic surroundings, we soon were sharing more than just the pleasure of the day. Grace’s story was entirely rooted in Butte, I learned. “The mapmakers don’t get rich on some of us, Morrie.” To help support the family she had been a bucket girl, selling sandwich lunches from a pail as the men trooped to the mines on the Hill. There she caught the eye of a young miner on the same shift with her father; Arthur Faraday, as patient as he was gallant, had his reward when she reached marriageable age. The toils of Butte took her parents before their time-heart and lungs worked to death-leaving the young couple the gift of property. I listened raptly, the makings of a life always casting a spell on me. “We thought we had it made, Arthur and I, with the house in our name and his job in the Speculator.” Instead, the fire, the worst in American mining history, widowed her overnight. There had been no children. “Nature did not provide.” Left on her own, Grace used what resource she had-the house-and boarders such as present company were the result. “You and the matched pair are good about the rent,” she patted my arm, “but it’s still a hard go. The taxes and the upkeep and all. I get by, though. No sense in waiting for my ship to come in when there’s none in sight, I’ve decided.” She tilted her head in my direction, putting the question lightly enough. “What about yours, is the library it? You seem at home there.” I cocked the same kind of look to her. “Do I? I don’t always have the Butte Public Library all to myself, understand.”
We laughed, duly self-conscious about the day’s unexpected glimpses into each other. So much private time on the most public day of the year surely was too good to last. “Aren’t Hoop and Griff joining us?” I checked. “It’s not like them to miss this kind of spree.”
“They’re off to their own pursuits, they told me,” Grace reported in that tone of fond exasperation the pair customarily produced in her. All at once she clutched my arm hard enough to leave a mark. “Look, dear!”
Companionable as our promenade was, I was surprised silly by the sudden endearment. I had to wonder if I was keeping up with developments. Was this a forward side of Grace Faraday, hitherto hidden in the house rules of landlady and boarder? Then, thoroughly abashed, I saw the deer she meant, several does and fawns flitting through a stand of blue spruce in the near distance.
“Cutlets on the hoof,” I jested feebly and drew a swat on the arm, but also Grace’s teasing smile.
Something surprising seemed to be the constant at Columbia Gardens. Fresh riots of flora in exuberant designs kept showing up as we strolled. Around any curve of the path, we were apt to be met with flower-holding ceramic gnomes of the European sort. And down at a pond off to our side, evincing great interest in the ducks, was Typhoon Tolliver.
There in broad daylight, the awful sensation of being stalked by shadows came over me. Luckily, Grace was distracted by the next riot of flowers. Taking a neck-stretching look around as if I could not get enough of admiring the grounds, I caught sight of Eel Eyes behind us, lurking around a corner of the soda fountain.
Apprehension rose in me like the mercury in a thermometer with a match under it. There is no law that goons have to take holidays like the rest of us, but why was this pair of dunces on my tail at all? The miners and the Anaconda Company were at peace, at least temporarily. Were Typhoon and his sidekick simply in the habit of following my every move? Whatever the notion in their thick heads, I didn’t like it.
I scanned around some more. Back toward the pavilion and its huddle of refreshment stands, a photographer with his hood and flash powder was busily taking pictures of posing couples. “Let’s,” I said, pointing. “What’s a day like this without a keepsake? My treat.”
Grace hesitated, no doubt hearing from the spirit of Arthur. Verve won out. She primped her extensive hat and provided me a practice smile. “I suppose we shouldn’t let all this gussying up go to waste.”
The waiting line to be photographed was considerable, as I was counting on. “You hold our place,” was my next proposal. “How about a root beer fizz?”
“Morrie, are you made of money all of a sudden?”
“I hope you’re not turning down a root beer fizz.”
“Of course not.”
Off I strode, nonchalantly enough, to the soda parlor and its line of customers. The instant the angle of the building concealed me from Eel Eyes, I darted around to the back.
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 fascination 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.
“Switch!” cried the judge again, and like the flash team Hoop had told me they were, he and Griff switched jobs for the last stint of the quarter-hour contest.
“If only they don’t kill themselves,” Grace breathed. My concern, too, with money thrown in. As the contest drew down, Hoop was red with effort. I ached in some of my parts just from watching his exertion. Yet the beat of his hammer stayed steady. By the time the judge shouted that they were coming to the final minute, I could see no measurable difference in the extent of the drills into the blocks of stone.
Then, like a broken note between the rhythm of the hammers, came an anguished cry from Griff. His hand had cramped, freezing onto the drill and pulling him, bent by the pain, toward the path of the sledgehammer. Grace gasped and started to her feet and I vaulted toward the scene along with several other men. Hoop with miraculous presence of mind buckled his back leg at the last second, driving the hammer head into the dirt instead of Griff. The two of them stayed hunched that way, gulping for air, to the sounds of the Finnish team driving its drill the last inch to victory.
IN THE AFTERMATH, Grace and I consoled Hoop. Griff was avoiding everyone, staring at the hand that had betrayed him. I saw him wipe his eyes with his shirttail. “We’ll see you at breakfast,” Hoop told us wearily as we watched Griff disappear, shoulders bowed, into the holidaying crowd. “He’s gonna need some liquid refreshment to get over this. Me, too.”
“I’M SPENT,” Grace sighed, sounding already wistful when we ended our stay after a silent last tour of the gardens.
“Wait, we have to see how we’re immortalized.” I plucked the photographer’s result out of the envelope I’d picked up at the amusement park exit and she pressed close to me. At the sight, we both burst out laughing and teasing. She claimed I looked like a scared preacher, and I expressed amazement that Queen Marie of Romania had got into the picture with me.
“Such a day, Morrie,” Grace wound down as the trolley back to town toddled along the tracks to us. Her violet eyes sought mine. “I feel as if I’ve been on that roller coaster with our star runner.”
With a pensive smile to match hers, I provided my arm to help her up the step as the trolley rattled to a halt. “I know the feeling.”