Work Song - Ivan Doig [53]
“We’ll see,” I said, smiling. “That’s up to the man who runs the library.”
“With all the whiskers? The one they call the Earl of Hell?”
That stopped me in my tracks.
“Where did you hear that?”
Famine slowed himself to wait for me by walking backwards. “Down around the stockyards. Those cowboys riding the fence are always yakking about something.”
I felt relieved. I could easily believe Samuel Sandison had been high-handed in his ranch days and gained that name in the Triple S bunkhouse. That had me thinking about the doggedness of reputation, fair or not, when Famine, curiosity on as much of his face as there was, wanted to know:
“What’s a earl?”
“Someone who owns everything but a good name, usually. That other word, I’d advise you not to use around Miss Rellis.”
“Uh-huh, she’s death on cussing.” Restless as a hummingbird, Famine now was talking to the top of my head. I had frowned him off clambering on fire escapes along our backstreet route, but he couldn’t resist hopping up onto the loading docks at rear entries to stores. He teetered along the planked edge of this latest one, his sense of balance making a mockery of gravity. I watched with the envy of those of us who have outgrown the blind bravery of a twelve-year-old. Perhaps it was the pale sharp cheeks or the flatly factual eyes beneath the toss of uncombed yellow hair, but he looked oddly pristine up there, more like a trainee in an acrobats’ academy than a schoolboy. I thought back to the blood enthusiasts among his classmates, and to the black eyes, bent noses, scabs, and bruises that my Marias Coulee pupils accumulated in the average mayhem of the schoolyard. Skinny and milk-skinned as he was, my young friend seemingly would be a bullies’ delight, yet there was not a mark on him. “Famine, I’m not trying to be nosy, but the bigger boys don’t give you trouble?”
“Would if they could catch me.”
“You’re quite the runner, then. Don’t they ever catch you?”
“Huh-uh.” He continued along the outmost inch of the loading platform with the aplomb of a tightrope walker. “I run until they drop.”
AFTER DEPOSITING ME at the entrance to the Purity Cafeteria, Famine vanished at a high lope. The owner, a scarlet bow tie blazing under his set of chins, met me with a glad cry. “I knew you’d be back,” the gust of welcome nearly parted my hair. “Your appetite wouldn’t let you stay away! Help yourself, this is the spot to fill that hollow leg!” I slipped in line behind a broad-beamed couple who obviously had partaken of the menu many times before. First things first, as ever; I peeked from behind the glassware breakfront to make sure the Typhoon goon was not on the premises, then gathered a meal for myself and joined Rab and Jared at their corner table.
Fatigue showed on Jared, but so did something like the sheen of a winning streak; Rab’s pride in him stuck out all over her. He had not backed down after the dynamiting of the Flying Dutchman pay office, simply skipped aside from any blame with the kind of remark Butte loved—even the Daily Post could not resist quoting him—to the effect that anybody who worked for Anaconda maybe should have his head examined, but no miner was dumb enough to blow up the place his wages came from. In boxing parlance, I knew, he and the union were winning the early rounds on points, with the shift stoppages he was invoking about some faulty working condition or another in the mineshafts; the danger was whether the company would be provoked into unloading a haymaker, such as a lockout or a show of force, brutal and bloody, by its goons. Well, he was the tactician and I wasn’t. I simply remarked, “On behalf of the library, I should thank you for our unprecedented number of users, lately.”
“Always glad to encourage the cause of learning,” Jared responded, wearing that droll expression somewhere between pious and piratical. “I hear you’re quite the expert on blood.” He eyed me as if curious to find any evidence to back that up.
“In a pedagogical sense,” I said, between bites