Work Song - Ivan Doig [43]
A crowd is a temperamental thing. I could tell at once that as watchfully quiet as this one was, it would not take much to make it growl.
The minute I arrived, Sandison—grim as thunder—beckoned me up. The library staff nervously held its place at the closed door as he and I stepped to one side and conferred.
“What are these lunkheads doing here, Morgan, instead of out on a picket line somewhere?”
“Sandy, I know no more about this gathering than you do.”
“Some help you are. What are we supposed to do about all this mob?”
“Put out more chairs? There are stacks downstairs from when the Shakespeareans—”
He cut me off with a look. “Let them in and make them at home, are you telling me? Hell, man, the Butte Public Library isn’t supposed to take sides in some damn dogfight of this kind.” Then the oddest thing. There on the topmost step, Sandison turned and gazed out at that sea of workingmen’s faces, much the way a pharaoh might have looked down from a pyramid. In that suspended moment, he seemed to draw something known only to himself from those so many eyes. Then he gave a laugh that made his belly heave.
Shaking his head, he climbed onto the base of one of the doorway pillars. I feared he might fall, but he clambered up as if he did this all the time. The sight of him perched there, with the white aureole of his beard and cowlick against the grave Gothic stone of the building, made the crowd fall silent; once more, I could feel that strange mixed mood of apprehension and fascination that followed Samuel Sandison like the shadow at his heels.
“It looks as if the library has some new visitors today,” his voice rang off the building across the street, “and I have one thing to say to all of you. It pertains to behavior that will not be tolerated in this public institution.” Throughout the crowd I saw faces darken, the phalanx of idled miners readying for yet another warning against “unlawful assembly” even here. “You maybe do it out of habit up there on the Hill or down in the shafts,” Sandison blazed, hands on his hips, “but this is not the place for that kind of thing, understand? I am only telling you once.” He glowered down at some of the hardest men in Butte as if they were schoolboys playing hooky. “No spitting.”
With that, although I would not have thought it possible, his voice rose to another level. “Let us in, Morgan.”
ONCE INSIDE, I made straight for the cashbox Sandison kept in his desk, grabbed a fistful of money, and sent someone scurrying to the newsstand down the street to buy all available reading material. I would worry later about a ledger entry for Miscellaneous diversionary matter. Next, several of us lugged chairs from the auditorium to the Reading Room, the mezzanine, even the foyer. Meanwhile the miners circulated, speaking in hushed tones if at all, as they got the feel of the grand paneled rooms and the tiers of the world’s writings. With the arrival of the newsstand supplement of newspapers and such, so many men settled at tables and in corners with newsprint spread wide that the Reading Room took on the look of a schooner under sail. The library staff, originally taken aback as I had been, caught a fever of enthusiasm at having constant customers, cap in hand, requesting guidance; librarians do not ordinarily receive such worship. I detected a warm gleam of triumph even from Miss Runyon when a stooped miner asked in a thick Italian accent for L’avventura di Cristoforo Colombo and she was able to produce a pristine Florentine edition from the mezzanine treasure house.
One thing I particularly