Work Song - Ivan Doig [46]
Blue-uniformed policemen were chiding the crowd to stay back, while burly civilian types who could only have been plainclothesmen prowled the blast site. Reporters were clamoring out questions and receiving no answers. Flash powder kept going off, the hollowed-out pay office in rinses of light that would put it on front pages all across the state.
My companions were not impressed. “Mighty poor job of setting the dynamite,” either Hooper or Griffith appraised there in the deep shadows of the Hill.
“Could’ve done that much with firecrackers, couldn’t we?” said the other.
To me, the building looked devastated enough, the huge ragged hole in its front displaying broken bricks like snaggled teeth. I moved closer to the skeptical experts. “Do I hear that this blast wasn’t up to your standards?”
“The stupid pay office is still standing, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes.”
“That’s no kind of a result, if you’re gonna blow something up.”
“Waste of a good fuse and a match.”
“But,” I wasn’t able to budge from the evidence of my eyes, “the front of the building is by and large gone.”
“So what? They’ll get bricklayers in here in the morning and have it fixed back up before you can say boo.”
“Spell this out for me, then,” I gave in. “How would someone who was an old hand at blowing things up have done it?”
“All it would have taken,” Hoop explained patiently, “was to set the dynamite at the corner of the building.”
“It’d slump over like a dropped cake,” Griff mused, practically smacking his lips as he envisioned it.
By now the cloud of reporters and chain lightning of photography flashes were concentrated around one small circle of men next to the Flying Dutchman’s headframe. Even though I had expected something of the sort, my heart sank. As flash powder flared again, I saw in the glare the strong but strained features of Jared Evans in the midst of his beleaguered union officials. Although I had nothing to lend but moral support, I headed over.
An arm slipped authoritatively through mine, nearly scaring the life out of me. “I just knew you’d show up, Mr. Morgan,” Rab’s warm voice was next to my ear. In stylish scarf and jumper, she cut an unlikely figure there in the industrial spoils of the Hill. With perfect prepossession, she assessed the cordon of newspapermen surrounding Jared and the other union men. “Look at the mob of them. They’re like pecking birds.”
As the two of us sorted our way there in the semidark, we could hear the volley of questioning. Peppered from all sides as he was, Jared raised a hand for quiet.
“We’re told no one was hurt,” he chose what to deal with and what not to. “Given that someone is killed in the working conditions in these mines every week of the year, in this nasty incident only bricks suffered any harm, for a change.”
“Anaconda says provocation like this will make it take ‘all necessary measures’ to deal with a strike,” called out a newspaperman in a better topcoat than the others, which marked him as working for the Daily Post, the mining company’s mouthpiece. “What’s the union think of that?”
“There is no strike,” Jared deliberately raised his voice above the clanks and clatters of the night shift in the other mines around. “When the miners of this hill go out, there’s never any mistaking it—you can hear the grass grow, up here. That’s it, gentlemen, no more chitchat, thanks.” To his council members: “I’ll catch up with you at the union hall. We’re in for a late night.” Jared’s expression had lifted measurably when he spotted Rabrab, and she and I skirted the pack of reporters to join him. As we did so, Rab “accidentally” tripped the Post man, sending him stumbling into an oily puddle and cursing at the splatter on that spiffy coat.
Smiling tiredly, Jared chucked his feisty fiancée under the chin. “You’ll get us a big headline.”
“They’ll smear you no matter