Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [82]
For buying some stovepipe outside the company store! somebody says.
Exactly. A bad mistake. He knew the rules.
When Oliver came in the gate before noon, she knew by his face what he was going to tell her. He walked with a hard, pounding haste, and he started talking, or stammering, before he was to the bottom of the steps. “Well,” he said, “are you . . . I guess we . . . are you ready to move?”
“You resigned.”
“I quit. Resigning would have been too polite. It was all I could do to keep from knocking him down.”
“Oh, Oliver, I’m glad!” she said. She was sure she was. Her spirits surged up as if to an insult or a challenge. She would have walked off the mountain with her baby in her arms and no more possessions than the clothes on her back–but they would have been impeccable–rather than yield one inch or even acknowledge the existence of Lawrence Kendall. “I couldn’t have respected you if you hadn’t,” she said shakily, and took hold of his arm above the elbow. It was as hard as an oak branch. He kept looking around him in an odd, furious way as if he were looking for a place to spit. “What happened?”
“Ha!” he said. “What happened! He came down and ordered me to take a construction crew up by Day tunnel and tear down Tregoning’s house.”
“What?”
“Can you believe it? That’s exactly what he wanted. There’s a crew doing it right now, poor Chepe’s bossing it.”
“But tear down his house? Why? What earthly good . . . He was already fired.”
“Oh, sure!” he said. “Sure, sure. He was fired, he wasn’t allowed to sell anything. That isn’t enough, the lesson isn’t rubbed in yet. Tregoning owned his own house, the manager before Kendall let him build it on company land for a dollar a year rent. That was to encourage a skilled man to stay. So now Kendall’s tearing it down and scorching the earth. There are already thirty Chinamen scavenging boards and stuff, and a crowd of Cornish women just standing on the hill watching. Not a word out of them, they’re like people watching a hanging. It’s a wonder he didn’t hang the whole family, or drive them off the mountain with dogs. They’re off by themselves watching too. None of their neighbors dares even speak to them.”
“I hope thee spoke to them. Did thee?”
“Yes,” he said, and gave her a crooked, apologetic, impatient look that tightened her insides with pity and sympathy for him. She had never seen him upset. He was the laconic one who was always in command of himself. This outrage unmanned him, he shook like a dog. She could have taken his head against her breast and rocked him and told him never mind, never mind, it’s not your fault, you did all you could, it’s the way this brutal place is. “I hope you don’t mind,” Oliver said. “I gave them all the money I had, twenty dollars or so.”
“Oh, Oliver, of course thee should have! It was generous.” She hung onto his arm, huddling against his rigid body that moved in twitches and jerks. His eyes were stretched wide like those of a man trying to see in the dark, he whistled through his teeth.
“I wish I knew,” he said. “Hell, I do know. He wouldn’t go that far just to enforce a company rule or scare grumblers into line. Unless he was making an absolutely calculated move against me, he wouldn’t have the gall to come to me and tell me to do his dirty work. I hate it that poor Tregoning gets it this bad just because of me.”
“I almost wish thee had knocked him down.”
“Ahhh!” He jerked and twitched; she hung on.
“At least,” she said, “now thee’ll explain everything to Mr. Smith and Mr. Prager.”
But he made a face of disgust and distaste. “Let Kendall do