Work Song - Ivan Doig [19]
He tugged at his beard. “In other words,” he said as if it might be my epitaph, “all you know anything about comes from books.”
I bridled. “That is hardly a fair assessment of—”
“Never mind. You’re hired.”
“You are mistaken, I haven’t even made up my mind where to—here?”
“Here is where the books are, ninny.”
5
Sam Sandison? He’s meaner than the devil’s half brother. If you’re gonna be around him, you better watch your sweet—”
“The rules, Griff.”
“—step, is all I was gonna say, Mrs. Faraday.” Griffith speared a potato and passed the dish onward to me, along with a gimlet gaze. “You must have hit him when he was hard up for help, Morrie. He don’t hire just anybody.”
“I was as taken by surprise as the rest of you appear to be.” Announcement of my sudden employment at the library had set my suppermates back in their chairs, for some reason that I could not decipher. “What can you tell me of my new lord and master? None of you were so bashful about the business practices of the Anaconda Company.” The gravy boat came my way, but nothing else of substance from any of the threesome. “For a start, Griff, what exactly is the meaning of ‘meaner than the devil’s half brother’ in regard to Samuel Sandison?”
“He’s one of the old bucks of the country, tougher than”—cutting strenuously at the piece of meat on his plate, Griff glanced in Grace’s direction and hedged off—“rawhide. Had a ranch they say you couldn’t see to the end of. I don’t just know where. You, Hoop?”
Hooper gestured vaguely west. “Someplace out there in scatteration.”
“Employing, he told me, a veritable army of cowboys—but I would imagine any livestock enterprise of that size needed a rugged crew and a firm hand?”
“You’re lucky he’s only bossing books around anymore,” was the only answer from Griff. Vigorously chewing, he turned toward the head of the table. “Heck of a meal, Mrs. Faraday.”
I sampled the stringy meat and sent an inquiring look. “Not chicken.”
Grace shook her head.
“Rabbit, then.”
“My, you do know your way around food,” she remarked, a compliment or not I couldn’t tell. It occurred to me how much I was going to miss the tablefuls at wakes.
TAKING LEAVE of the C. R. Peterson Modern Mortuary and Funeral Home took some doing.
“As I have been trying to say, Mr. Peterson, I am sorry—”
“But you’re the most popular cryer I’ve had in ages.” He himself appeared ready to weep.
“—to have to give notice, but another opportunity has presented itself.”
He cast a mournful look at the ledger. “One of our busiest times since St. Patrick’s Day.”
“I am sure an equally qualified cryer will be called forth by the need.”
“There’ll always be an opening here for you,” he said feelingly, the lids of the caskets standing at attention behind him.
THAT WAS THE END of being chased every night by shadows. Yet something lurked from that experience, the sensation of being trailed through life by things less than visible. I tried telling myself Butte after dark simply was feverishly restless, what with the thirst of thousands of miners built up in the hot underground tunnels being assuaged in speakeasies, and desire of another kind busily paying its dues in Venus Alley—practically nightly, Grace turned away some lit-up Lothario seeking a house of the other sort. In that city of thin air and deep disquiets, wasn’t it to be expected that even shadows would have the fidgets? It is surprising how persuasive you can be when talking into your own ear.
So, I set out from the boardinghouse that first morning with a sense of hope singing in me as always at the start of a new venture. Samuel Sandison had instructed me to present myself at the library before it opened at nine, and I knew he did not mean a minute later. When I approached the rather fanciful gray granite Gothic building on the central street called Broadway—modesty seemed to have no place in Butte—I saw a cluster of people outside the front door and was heartened by this sight of an eager citizenry lined up to