Work Song - Ivan Doig [75]
“You brought this on yourself, Professor,” he said as though I didn’t know any better. His dark eyes held a glimmer as he went on: “Remember when you were telling me why ‘pie in the sky’ gets in a person’s head and won’t leave? The ‘nimo gizmo’ side of things, you called it?”
“The mnemonic aspect,” I was glad to clarify. “It derives from Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, and—”
“That’s what I’m saying, the union needs that kind of brain food.” Past the brim of his hat I could see Rab glistening with interest. Jared scanned around as if scouting enemy terrain and lowered his voice. “I got to thinking about what you’d said and it hit me—why shouldn’t the union have a song like that?” He made a fist. “Something that shows our spirit. There on Miners Day, when the band played ‘Men of Harlech,’ I damn near bawled and I wasn’t the only one. That kind of thing. I mean, hell, up against Anaconda, we’re in a fight just as much as any army.” I practically had to shield my eyes in the face of his fiery determination. It took only one look at Jared to know he was purposeful as a harpoon, and another at Rab to remind me that the whiff of anything venturesome was catnip to her. I had to admit, the two of them were made for Butte.
“Professor?” He spoke now as if taking me deep into his confidence. “You see where I’m going with this?”
“Vaguely. You have in mind musical phraseology that will rally—”
He didn’t wait for me to finish. “A song of our own that will make the Wobblies sound like sick cats. And that’s where you come in.”
Well, who would not want to be the author of “La Marseillaise” or “Marching Through Georgia” or even “Yankee Doodle”? However, sometimes I know my limits. “Jared, that’s generous of you, but songwriting is actually not among my talents.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he sped right over that. “All I want you to do is to make the case to a few people for a hell of a good song for the Hill. Miners can be contrary. We have more factions than a henhouse.” He gazed up at the dark strutworks over the mineshafts and the spill of neighborhoods between. “The Finns would join up with the Wobblies lickety-split if the union gives them any least excuse. The Italians think the union is getting too radical. The Irish are itching to run things themselves, and the Cornish think they could do a better job than the Irish or any of the rest of us. So on down the line.” Abruptly he batted my shoulder, which was going to develop a callus if this kept on. “You’re just the right one to set the bunch of them thinking about a song that will pull everybody together instead of their own grumbles. Rab swears you’re a wonder when you get going.” Her smile ratified that.
“Ah.” Flattery is a quick worker. “I suppose I could lend whatever modicum of musical knowledge I have. If you’d like, the next time you hold a meeting, I could come by the union hall and—”
“That’s the rub,” Jared said quickly. “The bunch we want won’t come near the union hall, the way everyone is being watched like sin these days.”
The rogue had already calculated the next, I later realized, but he offered it as if the notion just then strolled up to him.
“Come to think of it, though, there’s one place in all of Butte where the cops and goons know better than to go. Down the shaft.”
No three words in the language could have been more unwelcome to me. I am not subterranean by nature. Quite the opposite; I tend to look up, not down, in life. The sky has held fascination for me since I was a boy sneaking out to the Lake Michigan shore on clearest nights, tracing out the constellations shimmering over the water. Above me in the hypnotic dark, Sagittarius the archer bent his everlasting bow while Pegasus flew on wings of light; those and all the other patterns etched in star-silver define heaven to me. I know of no mine pit in the sky. Now I was being asked to reverse my basic inclination and point myself into the blind paths under the ground. Down where a glory hole led to.
“Must we?