Work Song - Ivan Doig [62]
He yelped like a coyote and flopped around clutching the elbow, his business hand unable to reach for the blackjack or gun or whatever he carried in his coat. Grabbing hold of his shirtfront, I backed him against the rear of the soda parlor. While he was still squirming in pain, I rested a fist on the point of his chin, where at any sharp move the brass knuckles could knock out his front teeth.
“Typhoon isn’t close enough to be any help to you,” I uttered with so much bravado I hardly recognized my voice, “so you’re going to have to tell me a thing or two. Why do the pair of you keep following me around like collie dogs?”
“Coincidence,” he said sullenly, looking down his nose at the brass knobs threatening his teeth.
“Come now, Roland. Before one of us gets hurt”—I tapped his chin hard enough to make him wince—“you need to rid yourself of this ridiculous notion that I’m worth tagging after. Where does it come from, anyway?”
“How am I supposed to talk with those things half in my mouth?”
“Try.”
He drew his lips over his teeth and munched out the words. “Let’s square with each other, Morgan, or whoever you are. You’re up to something, but Ty and me are on to you—so what do you say we cut a deal?”
“I am not ‘up’ to anything, you idiot, and whatever the pair of you think you’re ‘on to’ is a figment of your overcooked imaginations.”
“Oh yeah? Try this for size,” he mustered hardily for a person in his situation. “Butte ain’t been quite the same since you showed up. You got off that train and funny stuff started happening. Wildcat strikes. That old mug who runs the library wakes up and throws his weight around. And today you’re up there on that balcony like a royal highness and at just the right time some Wobbly belts out a song and throws the whole parade bunch into a fit. Don’t that add up to something in anybody’s book?”
“That is all coinci—” I caught myself from using his exculpatory word. “I swear to you, man to man, I did not come to Butte to stir up trouble. What more can I do to convince you?”
“Leave town. Vamoose.”
I hated to admit it, considering the source, but there was a lot of sense in that. Something else outweighed it, though. Maybe this was a wrong reading of the human condition, but it seemed to me there ought to be a limit to the number of times in life a person was obligated to vamoose.
Eel Eyes took my brief silence to mean I was thinking it over. “Ty and me will put you on a train tomorrow, how about?” he blurted. “We won’t lift a hand to you except to wave good riddance, I promise. Him and me can find better things to do with ourselves than trailing you around.”
“Then go find those, starting about now. But I’m not leaving. Butte is too interesting at the moment.” His left hand was creeping toward the inside of his coat, so I rapped his knuckles with my brass ones. “Ow!” He sucked his lips over his teeth again. “And one more thing while we’re at this,” I leaned in on him instructively. “In case you’re told to deliver any messages about a glory hole to a certain boardinghouse, save yourself the trouble on that, too. Now go collect your fellow idiot and”—I have to admit, I took nasty pleasure in the word—“vamoose.”
I gave him room, and he backed around away from me. At a safe distance, he spat out: “Okay, we’re done following you since you’re on to it, but that ain’t the only way to nail you. We’ll get the goods on you yet.”
“Tsk, Roland. You really ought to take up some other line of work.”
He looked at me with sneering pity. “There’s goods to be got on anybody, sucker.”
“DID YOU HAVE to brew the root beer for those?” Grace inquired when I came back. We sipped our fizzes while