Work Song - Ivan Doig [44]
BUSY WITH EVERYTHING, I was hastening down the hallway and past the drinking fountain when a familiar voice caught up with me. “Just a suggestion, but the flavor of the water in this place would be improved by piping in some rye.”
“Quin!” The Irish conquistador face looked more solemn in this circumstance than it had at wakes. “I had no idea you were the library-going type.”
“Funny, boyo.” Quinlan winked and indicated toward the horde in the Reading Room. “A lot of us feel the call of culture today. In about a hundred percent of those cases, the wife told us to get out of the house.”
“Why not on a picket line, showing solidarity?”
He arched an eyebrow, amused or the opposite. “Tsk, Morgan, for a sighted man you’re deep in the dark, aren’t you. There’s no picket line. No negotiating session. No anything whatsoever. Jared Evans just made some kind of safety excuse and pulled us out at the start of morning shift like that”—he snapped his fingers—“and is letting Anaconda stew about it.” He hardened as I watched. “Whether it gets us our fair wage or we need to try stronger persuasion—” The shoulders of his coat lifted, and I was aware that the Little Red Songbook, in some pocket or other, could find an adherent in more than musical ways. “We’ll see if the lop-eared Taffy knows what he’s doing.” Quinlan’s expression suggested it would not be easy to prove to Dublin Gulch.
AT THE END OF the day, I had to resort again to the higher powers to uncloud the bafflements of Butte for me.
Hooper was several rungs up, against the weather side of the house, industriously slapping on paint while Griffith held the ladder. “Everything still standing, downtown?” Griff called out upon sight of me.
“Every brick in place, when I left. Why weren’t the pair of you in the middle of things today?”
Hoop dipped his brush and stroked a comet of paint onto the siding. “Told not to.”
“Saving us for when we’re really needed, Jared says,” Griff reported. He wagged his head in general acknowledgment. “Caught Anaconda with its pants down today, he sure did. Put a Welshman in charge and you start to get somewhere. Look at Lloyd George.” He gestured as if the prime minister of Great Britain might materialize to set things straight in Butte.
“Yes, but—”
“Your turn,” Hoop called down.
I waited while the two of them traded places, like two aged sailors scrambling in the rigging. “But why this so-called work action instead of a genuine strike?”
“No strike, no strikebreakers.” Holding the ladder with both gnarled hands, Hoop looked around at me as if deciding how much more tutoring I was worth. “Besides catching that other gang—”
“—with its pants down,” Griff contributed, along with an emphatic swipe of his paintbrush.
I must have looked blank. Top and bottom of the ladder, both of them eyed me. The silence grew until at last Hoop spelled out:
“The Wobblies. They’d cut in on a strike, try to take it over if they knew it was coming.”
“Send in infiltrators.” To hear Griff echo Typhoon Tolliver was an unnerving experience. I drew myself up.
“As a mere bystander”—it was hard to tell if that registered on those walnut faces—“it appears to me the union council won the day, as you say. But what happens tomorrow?”
The last word was Hoop’s. “Things go back to their normal confusion.”
TRUDGING UPSTAIRS to my room to wash up before supper, I reflected again on that zigzag pattern of life. There I was, simply a hopeful empty-pocketed climber of the Richest Hill on the planet, and suspected of something more by nearly everyone except Rabrab, who usually saw connivance behind every mustache. At least, I told myself with a grim smile, tonight I could