Work Song - Ivan Doig [76]
Jared brushed aside my quavery question. “It’s our only shot at getting the right people in one place at the same time.” Rabrab watched him with adoration as he tackled tactics. “How are you at being somebody else?” he asked me and didn’t wait for an answer. “Your pals Griff and Hoop never took themselves off the extra gang list, it makes them feel like they’re still miners. We can sneak you onto the night shift on one of their work tickets.” He wrinkled his brow. “First we have to get you past that pair of apes at the gate.”
I groaned. “Big and bigger? One of them with eyes that belong on a sea creature?”
Jared showed surprise. “How’d you know? The company stuck them there to watch for Wobs.”
“It’s too long a story to go into.” I felt a guilty kind of relief as I explained that Eel Eyes and Typhoon Tolliver would know me on sight; with them on lookout at the gate, it was impossible for me to enter the mine.
During this, Rabrab had been studying me.
“Your mustache, Mr. Morgan. If that were to come off, you’d look like a different you.”
MY UPPER LIP SMARTING, I trudged up the Hill in the company of Griff the next night. I felt undressed without the mustache, although I was in the same regalia as the hundreds of other miners around us: substantial trousers, a workman’s jumper, and an old hat.
Griff was practically hopping with anticipation. “You’re in luck,” he had me know as we trooped along. “The Muckaroo is as nice a digging as there is on the Hill.”
“Is it,” I responded without enthusiasm; doubtless there was a similarly prime spot in the salt mines of Siberia, too. To try to bolster myself for this, after the library closed I had gone down on my knees and examined the mine model in the glass case long and hard, but right now that seemed like no preparation whatsoever for the real thing. The screeching of pulleys and the throb of machinery sounded louder than in the daytime. Ahead of us, lit harshly, the headframe of the Muckaroo mineshaft towered into the darkness. The graveyard shift—how I wished it wasn’t called that—converged at the pinch of the mine gate and then spread out as men filed off to their eight hours of labor beneath the surface of the earth. Jared was a steady but discreet number of strides behind us, which was somewhat reassuring, but Griff hustling along next to me, madly eager to redeem himself after the Miners Day drilling contest, was not. I kept hearing Grace’s strained words when my conscience made me draw her aside after supper and confess what we were up to: “Think twice about this, Morrie, please? The Hill is the most dangerous place on earth, even for those who know what they’re doing.”
By now I’d had those second thoughts and many more, with no result but Griff to show for it. Allegiance to a cause is a prickly thing. Put your hand to it just right, and there is the matchless feeling of being part of something greater than yourself. Grab on to it the wrong way, though, and it draws blood. Back and forth this scheme of Jared’s wavered in me as our rough-dressed procession tromped out of the dark to the mine entrance.
The enemy was at the gate, the oversize pair of them scrutinizing every passing face, Eel Eyes with that sideways stare, Typhoon with doggish concentration. Griff braced up beside me as we neared that inspection. “Here we go, Mor—Hoop, that is.” He sneaked a look toward the weedy shadows along the high fence, muttering: “If that kid’s gonna do it, he better be doing it.”
“He will,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Just then a rock clanged off the tin siding of the gatehouse behind the goons. “Scabs!” came the taunt. “Anaconda stinks and so do you! ”
As hoped, Tolliver reflexively bolted off after the stone thrower, although he had no chance in the world of catching up with Russian Famine. Eel Eyes angrily stayed sentry, but his gaze kept dodging toward the darkness or in search of the jeering laughs from the rank of passing miners, while Griff and I, prim as monks, flashed our work tickets and slouched past him.
Jared caught up to us in the mine yard.