Joe Hill (17 page)

Bottles grunted and smacked. His mouth, was its too-long wet lips and its caved cheeks, was troublesome to look at, like the naked display of some degenerative disease. “Thosh Shonshabitchesh,” he said aimlessly, and swung an arm with sudden violence. The puckered lips gave an incongruous, old maid prissiness to the words.

“Shit down,” Bottles said. An expression of impotent exasperation crossed his face, and he worked his rubber lips as if to bring them back into shape by muscular effort. “
Shit down
!” he mocked himself savagely, and pushed Joe toward a chair. “Been having trouble with my god damn teeth. Had to have ever fuckin’ one yanked.”

“That’s bad luck,” Joe said. He had a feeling that Bottles might have deteriorated too far, that he might not be good for anything any more, and he had to be good for something or they were wasting their time. “Can’t you get some store teeth?” he said.

“Don’t sheem to fit,” Bottles said, and sprawled over a chair that creaked and sagged. “Whole god damn jawsh shot, sheems like.” He waved his arm at the chemical bench against the wall. Beyond the bench he had made a kind of brick kiln, stove-size, with a blacksmith’s bellows built in near the bottom. “I been fuckin’ around too mush with that shtuff. Got myshelf god damn good and poishoned.”

Joe said carefully, “You’ve been doing a whale of a job for the
OBU
, though.”

The agate eyes bored at him, no old man’s eyes, no sick maunderer’s, though his face was so fallen that the sag of his cheeks pulled even his lower eyelids into a droop. “I fuck around with that shtuff for fun,” he said. “My own enjoyment.” After a moment’s challenging stare, he said. “Come here, show you shome’m.”

From the bench he reached a glass jar about a third filled with what looked like ordinary blue clay. On top of the clay was about three inches of a liquid, colorless like water, and on the surface of the liquid was a thick silvery scum.

“Shee that? You know what that ish?”

“What?”

“
I
do’ know,” Bottles said. “What the hell, I jusht fuck around for the fun of it. You know how I got that?”

“How?”

“Tryin’ to make glue. Out in the woodsh theresh theshe fernsh, you sheen ’em, shticky shap oozhin’ out all the time. I collect thish shap, shee? Gonna make shome new kind of glue. But I get fuckin’ around, mixshin’ thish shtuff with one thing and another, and I throw it in with shome clay and ashids, and all of a sudden I get thish. What ish it?
I
do’ know. Aluminum? Metallic shodium? Magneshium? I do’ know. Sho I’ll fuck around shome more and find out. Jusht for fun.”

Joe finished looking at the jar and put it back on the bench. “What I came over for,” he said, “I wanted to talk to you about doing another job for the union.”

He watched Bottles’ eyes, but the eyes told him nothing, and the rough voice ground out only a grunting, abrupt sound that could have meant anything from curiosity to fury. There was a long pause, until Bottles said, “What’re you talkin’ about, jobsh? I do’ do any jobsh.”

“I’ve been talking with the boys at the hall, McCandless and Call and Riordan.”

Bottles’ lips made smacking noises as he worked them into shape over his shrunken gums. He looked away and spit into a can, leaning carefully. When he straightened he said, “They’re mish-taken. They think I do jobsh, whyn’t they come down here them-shelves? I do’ know what you mean, jobsh.”

Joe watched the ruined face, the hard little pouched eyes, but he could see no sign that he was getting anywhere. “This is a job I want to do by myself,” he said. “You know what’s been going on down by Potlatch?”

Bottles continued to look at him.

“Seattle’s sent organizers down there three times to open a hall and keep it open and hold meetings,” Joe said. “The sheriff and his goons have run them out every time, and wrecked the hall as fast as they open it.”

“Yeah?” Bottles said.

“They’ve worked over the crews till they’ve weeded our boys all out,” Joe said. “What they’ve got now is a picked mob of gunmen and finks and scissorbills, and the union can’t even hold a meeting.”

“Yeah?” Bottles said.

“Well, I want to bust that up and get the boys organized. It’s a lockout, see? There are fifty workers there that’ve just been kicked out. All they need is organization and some help.”

“Yeah? What help?”

Now Joe held the pouchy eyes steadily. “What it takes. Stink bombs, maybe. Phosphorus maybe. Dynamite maybe, if it comes to that.”

Bottles hawked with contempt, and his head wagged. “Shtink bombs and phoshphorush and dynamite! I told you, I jusht fuck around for fun.”

“Just the same …”

“Where you from?” Bottles said violently. His face was suddenly very red. “How the hell I know who you are? You come in here and proposition me thish way, I do’ know you from a hole in the ground. You’re in the wrong plashe.”

“Here’s my paid-up card, for one thing,” Joe said.

Bottles shrugged, but looked.

“Ever hear of Joe Hill?” Joe said.

“Maybe sho, maybe not, I’m tellin you, mishter, you got the wrong coon.”

“Well, I’m Joe Hill. I’ve been working all up and down the coast. You know George Reese in Portland, and McCandless and Riordan over here, and you know Frank Little, and know he just went up to Great Falls on an organizing trip. I’ve been working with all of them. You’ve heard of Joe Hill, so you know who I am. You don’t have to act as if I was a stool.”

“I thought you shaid your name wash Hillshtrom.”

“Hill, Hillstrom, what difference does it make?” Joe said.

Bottles stared at him steadily, his heavy shoulders thrust forward a little. He grunted as if in surprise, and coughed. “All right,” he said. “I heard of Joe Hill. Now tell me why Bert McCandlessh didn’t come down here himshelf if the union needsh help.”

“I told you,” Joe said. “They think they have to calm the public down. Too much talk of
IWW
dynamiters. They won’t move unless the company kills a half-dozen men, then maybe they’ll do something. They’ll get voted down sooner or later, but meantime those boys are down there taking a beating.”

Lifting the lid of the stove, Bottles spit in on the fire, and after he had spit his lips puckered into an ancient, helpless hole. “I shpose you’re all right,” he said. “I got to be careful. Beshidesh, I got a belly full of thish phoshphorush. I got me damn good and poishoned, shee? I damn near died. Hadn’t had shome oil of turpentine handy, I would of. I been fuckin’ around with thish stuff too long. Now I got thish phoshy jaw. Any day now I’ll yawn and busht my god damn jaw right off. My jawbonesh rotting right in my head, shee? I bitched myshelf good with that phoshphorush shtuff.”

Joe was silent. For a moment, as he looked at the degenerated and poisoned face of old Bottles, he hated him for a scissorbill. Just once more. He was already wrecked, what difference would it make?

“You come around here ashkin for shome’m imposhible anyway,” Bottles said. “Chrish shake, you do’ make that shtuff overnight. You got to treat bone ash with shulphuric, and filter off the calshium shulphate, and conshentrate it, and mixsh it with shawdusht, and dry it, and dishtill it, and then you have to shuck it up into
tubesh. Jusht shlip oncesh, like I did, and you get a mouthful. Maybe you’d like to shuck up that shtuff into a tube with your mouth.”

“I thought you might have some left around,” Joe said.

“Yeah? You know what I’d get if any cop came in and found any of that around? I’d be shmart to leave it laying around, I sure would.”

Joe shrugged. “Well, if you did have any, it might be smart to get rid of it.” He threw up his open hands, letting the possibility go, but he was not quite ready to give up the whole thing. Any chemicals, any explosives, were too precious. Bought at a drugstore or hardware, they could be traced—unless a Pinkerton bought them to plant and frame the union. In a fire, you needed a backfire, and he said to old Bottles, holding his anger and disappointment in, “How about stink bombs?”

The agate eyes blinked, the mouth pursed. “Okay,” Bottles said. “I can give you shome shtink bombsh.”

From a brace under the bench he fished out a padded chocolate box with the picture of a girl under a parasol on it. Inside there were many little blown-glass bubbles with a plug of cooled glass at the bottom. They looked like crude base-loaded salt-shakers. Bottles stood silently counting them, his limber lips moving. “About four dozhen. That do you?”

“Fine.”

Joe reached for them, and as he took them in his hand he saw that Bottles was watching him intently. Across Bottles’ shoulder he could see that the rainy dusk had frayed off into dark, and that mist was thick on the inside of the windows. Bottles’ shadow loomed and moved on the wall; the movement of the shadow arm as the old man reached into his pocket was like a threat. His hand came out with a jackknife in it, and Joe tensed, muscles and nerves tightening alertly. For a moment he expected Bottles to attack him. Then the old man grunted, turned aside, opened the knife and set the tip of the blade under the edge of a knot in one of the two-by-four studs. The knot slipped out like a cork to reveal a slanting augur hole. Feeling with a thick finger, Bottles pulled out a six-inch glass tube filled with a yellowish, cheesy solid.

Slowly Joe began to smile, but Bottles did not smile as he handed
the tube over. He replaced the knot and pried out another one and took three tubes from a second hole. From a third he got two more, and finally he stood looking at Joe with his mouth pursed and helpless and old.

“Thash all of it,” he said. “Thash the lasht, and I ain’t makin’ no more. I been poishoning myshelf for too damn long. I ushed to be a shtrong man, shtrong ash a bull, by God. Now I haven’t got shtrength enough to pull your pecker out of a lard pail. Phoshphorush poishoning, ever hear of it? Phoshy jaw. Itsh got my heart, too. Other night I woke up like shomebody’d drove a crowbar through my chesht.” He threshed the violent arm outward. “Phoshphorush! I’m really bitched for good. I’m not makin any more.”

“That’s all right,” Joe said. “You’ve already done your share to help the cause along.” He rolled the tubes in newspaper and packed them into the candy box along with the stink bombs, and wrapped the whole box in another newspaper. When he had it all done Bottles, who had watched every move, splatted his loose lips contemptuously.

“I never ashked to get rotted away in the god damn cause,” he said.

“That’s the way the luck goes sometimes.”

“Shcrew it!” Bottles said.

Joe tapped the box under his arm. “Every working stiff on the coast will owe you for this. Every working stiff’s behind you, too. We’re all in it together till we win it.”

“Only I’m in it a little deeper than mosht,” Bottles said. “I washn’t cut out to be a fuckin’ martyr. Hell with it. Thish ish the lasht.”

Joe smiled and shrugged. He eyed Bottles a moment—an old guy, washed up. There would be no help from him any more. He felt no sympathy for Bottles’ troubles. Maybe he
was
poisoned, but he didn’t have to cry about it. You took what came. If you weren’t in the movement for keeps, you didn’t belong in it.

“Well, take it easy,” he said. Bottles did not shake hands. He followed Joe to the door, and looking back from the shore end of the gangplank toward the lighted door where the old man stood, Joe saw him big-shouldered and bushy-haired like one of the mountain giants of the fairy stories, one of the workers in metals, the livers in deep caves, the lonely and isolated and dangerous, made poisonous by the fumes of their own subterranean forges.

In the late afternoon of the next day he walked out of the wood-enclosed right of way to the cleared rim of a gorge. Ahead of him the narrow-gauge tracks ran out on a spidery trestle two hundred feet over tidewater. Across the gorge, spilled in wild confusion down the slope, an avalanche of logs had been dumped from flatcars coasting around the upper edge, and had fallen in a tangle of red-brown plated pine and gray fir down to the orderly parquetry of wet logs choking the river behind the boom. Lower down, on the far bank, already in deep shade, were the mills and the one false-fronted street of the town. He saw four men stacking lumber, and steam drifted from the mill buildings, wisping away against the bluffs. The rain had all blown away inland; the sun was setting clear, and the crossties and timbers of the trestle were already dry, though the grass and ferns where he sat down were damp.

In the ferny quiet he sat with his back against a stump. After a while he heard the quitting whistle down below. The sun glared fierily through the needle-tops of the firs, and the air grew chillier. Joe checked the angle at which the sun was setting, and turned to see where it would rise in the morning. Straight up the gorge. Then the rays would hit the trestle by eight o’clock, at least, and by ten the protected angles of the timbers should be getting nice and warm.

Tomorrow was Sunday; there shouldn’t be anyone crossing the trestle, and no work going on. The scabs would all be lying around the bunkhouses getting over a big Saturday night, probably, and it would be hard to rally a crew for an emergency. Maybe the whole thing would fizzle, but there was a chance it would work, or work at least enough to slow things down, break up the operation of the company’s plans.

It was almost time, almost dusk. Joe filled his pockets with dry needles from a protected spot under a tree, and from his bindle he took the chocolate box. Working very carefully, he cracked the tubes and with twigs and newspaper worked out the pliable sticks of phosphorus. The glass he covered with needles and dirt, and when the gone sun was only an area of intenser light behind the forest on the point beyond the rivermouth, he rose with his bindle across his back and the phosphorus held carefully in his hands and started across the trestle.

The earth fell away under him, he saw the slaty reflecting water,
the matchstick crisscross of the floating logs, the smokes lifting toward him in windless feathers. Down below were the elements of his devoted life: a struck mill and a lockout, striking workers evicted from company houses and scabs installed in their places, a permanent deputy paid by the company and a crew of goons to “keep order” among the mill hands camped in tents and shanties out beyond the company street. In the straggling street paralleling the choked rivermouth, among the raw lumber and piles of slabs and corrugated iron sheds, oppressive capital and militant labor faced each other in one of the ten thousand battles of the revolution.