Work Song - Ivan Doig [57]
Wincing, I put away reverie and sat up. My mind took a resolute new posture as well. You don’t need to be an Ecclesiastes devotee to realize there is a time to equivocate and a time to do something.
Still in my slippers, I trotted down the stairs. In the living room, Grace whirled from the sideboard where she was putting away her mending, looking flustered at my hurried arrival. I halted at the foot of the stairs, she braced at her end of the room. Practically in chorus, we blurted:
“I was wondering if you might want to—”
“If you don’t have anything better to do—”
Both of us stumbled to a pause. She caught her breath and expelled it in saying, “You first.”
“I’d be impolite.”
“Morrie, out with it, whatever it is—we can’t beat around the bush all night.”
“I suppose not. I, ah, I wondered if you might like to go to Miners Day. With me, that is.”
Grace covered her mouth against a wild laugh. I felt ridiculous and, calling myself every kind of a fool, was ready to slink back upstairs when she put out a hand to stop me. “Great minds run in similar tracks. I was about to knock on your door and ask you.”
8
Never seen you quite so dolled up, Morrie. Mrs. Faraday will have to go some to keep up with you.”
I smoothed the fabric of my new checked vest and adjusted the silk necktie bought to match it. “Everyone tells me Miners Day is a holiday like no other. You are quite the fashion plate yourself, Griff.”
“Better be, on account of the parade. We’ve marched in every one of them, haven’t we, Hoop.”
“Since parades was invented.”
The brand-new work overalls on both of them looked stiff enough to creak, and underneath were the churchgoing white shirts and ties. Their headgear, though, was the distinctive part. Each wore a dingy dented helmet that must have seen hard duty in the mineshafts.
“Are you expecting a hailstorm?” I asked with a straight face.
Hoop proudly tapped his headpiece. “The Hill tried to knock my brains out any number of times, but nothing ever got past this lid. Anymore we only wear it the one day a year, don’t we, Griff.”
Telling me they had to form up early with the other marchers or spend the entire parade looking at hundreds of behinds, the pair hustled out while I waited for Grace to come down from her room. With the Hill not operating due to the holiday, a stillness had settled over the city, and the boardinghouse was in rare quiet. A silent room that is not your own tends to breed long thoughts. Around me now, the boardinghouse’s furnishings seemed to sit in arrested attitude, as if arranged in a villa in Pompeii. The mood of timeless deliberation drew me in and I became more aware than ever of the wedding photograph on the sideboard, where Arthur Faraday stared levelly at me. Something in that everlasting straight gaze reminded me of Casper, likewise gone too early from life and a bride who idolized him. Introspection is a rude visitor. An unsparing look into myself went to the heart, in more ways than one. I know myself fairly well: I am solo by nature. Incurably so, on the evidence thus far. But what a hard-eyed trick of fate—perhaps reflected in Arthur’s stare?—if I was destined, around women, always to be a stand-in for better men.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I heard Grace behind me, her footsteps quick on the stairs. “I had about forgotten how to dress up.”
I turned to look at her, and looked again. She had gone some, in Griff’s phrase for it. Her hair was done up in a crown braid, and atop that sat a broad-brimmed summer hat with a nice little swoop to it and a sprig of red ribbon. Her dress, attractively tailored to her compact form, was of a sea green with a shimmer to it. Even her complexion had a new glow, assisted by just enough rouge to give her cheeks a hint of blush.
“Very nice,” I fumbled out.
“You, too,” she managed.
With Arthur in the room, we stood there, shying away from further compliments, until she remembered to check the clock. “We should get a move on,” landlady back in her voice, “everyone turns out for the parade.