Sweet Thunder (31 page)

I was startled. “Pardon?”

“Down in the dumps,” he specified. “You sorta look like you lost your best friend.”

An apt enough description of the situation with Grace. “Yes, well,” I alibied, “I have some things on my mind and I suppose it shows.” I shifted the conversation. “I've been meaning to ask, to offer, really.” Guilty as I felt, this was hard to get out. “Wouldn't you like more boxing lessons? A left hook isn't the only weapon to be had.”

“It sure ain't,” he blurted, glancing sideways at me in apology. “Sir, sorry as all get out, but I'm gonna call it quits on the boxing.” He added bitterly, “'Least until I get some meat on my bones and any muscles.”

“Famine, we've been through this,” I tried to lift his spirits. “You're blessed with speed.”

“So's jackrabbits, and all kinds of things get them,” he said in the same dark mood.

“Mine isn't the only case of the dumps, hmm?” I jogged him lightly. “I'll tell you what, let's make a bargain to quit feeling sorry for ourselves the rest of your route. Then we can go back to being worrywarts. Agreed?”

That got a rise out of him. “I ain't no—” He caught himself. “Yeah, well, maybe I do have too much stuff on my mind, like you say you do. How we supposed to get rid of that?”

“Let's talk about something else. Tell me,” I flipped my fedora off my head and held it the way a magician holds a hat full of magic, “if I could pull out Russian Famine, grown and muscled and with meat on his bones, what more would you want to be?”

The old schoolhouse trick worked. The boy brightened, and in between dashes to deliver stacks of newspapers while I held the baby buggy from rolling half a mile downhill, he confided that his great dream in life was to be a trainman, on the famous silk trains that rushed the delicate cargo from the port of Seattle across the breadth of the country to the mills of New Jersey. “Run the locomotive, how about,” he enthused during one scampering return, pushing the lightened carriage so fast I had to skip to keep up. “Highball 'er as fast as she'd go,” his imagination was already up in the cab of a cannonball express, whistle screeching as the wheels pounded the rails, no other sound on earth like it. I had to concede it was a dream with a certain appeal. He confided out of the side of his mouth, “Them trains got the right of way all across the country, you know. Don't stop for crossings or nothing, just let 'er rip. Wouldn't that be something?”

I could agree with that. Yet the vision of another young dreamer with extraordinary physical skills would not leave me. Casper had wanted to be a street preacher in Chicago's Bughouse Square before awakening to his body's possibilities. “Don't take this wrong, my friend,” experience spoke up in me, “but you are destined for higher things than that.”

“Awful nice of you to say so, sir,” he sobered, coming down to earth where the wheels of the baby carriage met the hard streets of Butte, “but that don't help getting chased off my corner and putting up with the hussies.”

Before I could try to buck him up from that, we were at the last stop, Blind Heinie's newsstand outside the Hennessy Building. “I'm kinda late,” Famine apologized, with a look at me as he hurriedly scooped newspapers from the bottom of the baby carriage and stacked them within practiced reach of the grizzled old man.

“Alles
forgive,
Jungchen,”
the news vendor assured him with a guttural chuckle. As I went on my way and Russian Famine trundled the carriage back on the same route we had come, the sweet words lingered in my ear, the benediction we all seek in the winding journey of life, young and old alike.

•   •   •

It is a measure of how low my domestic subsistence had sunk that a cafeteria became my salvation. Bachelor life soon drove me to regularly staying on late at the newspaper and then eating at the Purity before facing another evening alone at home, to call the manse that. Even with the city on hard times, there was definitely no lack of clientele because fetching a meal for oneself felt like a bargain whether or not it actually added up to one. I suppose it was not a good sign—bachelor habit setting deep—that every suppertime without fail I headed directly for the counter where pasties were stacked in a warming pan and fed myself as mindlessly as a dray horse going to a feedbag.

Thus came the evening when I was dishing up my favorite fare, a plump, crusty pasty and the Purity's tasty gravy, when I felt a presence. The way a shadow across your path can cause a sudden chill. Or a window man can be sensed rather than seen. I turned my head ever so slightly.

Practically next to me, there stood Cartwright, with a cutthroat smile that more than lived up to that nickname. Slick dresser that he was, he had on a pearl-gray suit and matching vest with a silken lavender tie that was more properly a cravat. Before I could react to his sudden presence, he slapped me on the shoulder and said in a louder voice than necessary, “How's the world treating you, buddy?”

Nudging his tray up to mine, he looked over the meal line offerings as if I weren't the real thing on his menu. “Pork chop sandwich?” he whistled in disbelief. “They eat anything in this burg, don't they?” Then ever so casually, he dropped all pretense. “You danced circles around me with that editorial today, I have to hand it to you. Sheer razzmatazz. You're one whiz at wordslinging, you are.”

I made to move away, leaving him with the rebuff: “Really, we have nothing to say to each other except in print.” But he plucked at my sleeve, smiling all the while.

“Oh, I think we do,” his voice practically oozed fellowship. “Especially since this seems to be the only way at you.” He flexed his upper parts, the cannonball head to one side then the other, as if working kinks out of his neck. “Boy oh boy, that Evans of yours knows his stuff. A couple of Irish miners, both of them pretty far above my weight class, pushed me around a little the other night. I was given the impression you're a privileged character, and if anything happened to you, I'd get plenty more of the same.” He gave me another unwelcome pat on the shoulder. “There, see? We have a lot in common. We both want to keep breathing. And it'd surprise you how well that can pay.”

His close presence was making me uncomfortable, as well as his gall in trying to bribe me in public. “You can save some of that breath. I told you before, I'm not for sale.”

The damnable man laughed as if we were sharing the best joke. “You don't know your own worth, my friend. You can name your own price. What could be sweeter?”

“Strychnine.”

I uttered that in spite of the vision of my satchel stuffed with money once more. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company had even more of it to spare than did Chicago gamblers.

Cartwright's eyes hardened, although he kept up the deadly geniality. “Butte rules take some getting used to,” he lamented. “These miners don't know when they're licked. But you're not that kind of dumb cluck. Cash in while you can. Throw some moolah at that run-down monastery you live in. Go on a nice long trip somewhere.” He cocked a look at me. “Morgan? You still with me? What the devil are you doing?”

“Merely humming ‘Flight of the Bumblebee' while waiting for a nuisance to go away.”

He snickered. “Smarting off isn't going to help. Come on, get with it. People already think you sold out, so you might as well.” I looked sharply at him. “Just the two of us palsy-walsy in public like this does the trick,” he said almost sympathetically. “Word gets around, you know.”

A rapid glance around the dining room verified that all too well; people were watching us, too many of them with the rough cut of miners. Up at the front, the proprietor was monitoring matters with a double-chinned frown. As sure as anything, even if the word did not spread some other way, he would inform Jared of my seeming duplicity. Jared I might explain this away to, but others, the union core and the faithful readership of the
Thunder
, would be left with a distinctly wrong impression: that I had sold out to the other side.

“Just in case you need any more convincing,” Cartwright leaned in as if the conversation had reached the confidential point, “there are some, shall we say, Anaconda associates out in the crowd. They're making sure people notice us being chummy.” My knees went weak. Goons, even in here? “Naw, don't bother to look around,” my antagonist advised in a cheery tone. “If they're doing their job, you can't spot them. Window men, we call types like that back in Chicago—who knows what the term is out here in the sticks, huh?”

The next blow came as a casual afterthought. “Oh, and by the way, they tail me to make sure I don't meet with any kind of accident.” Cartwright rocked back on his heels. “We're really some pair, aren't we, you and me? Two newspaper guys who get to call the shots on something that counts, for a change. Cream rises to the top, why not?” The spiel was practically purring out of him now. “The only trouble is, we've worked ourselves to a draw. I can't touch you, and your union henchmen can't touch me. A standoff like that”—he spread his hands as if juggling—“you may as well take what you can get and retire in style. Well, that's the setup anyway.” He beamed me a final smile that his eyes had nothing to do with. “You know where to find me when you want to cut yourself a nice fat deal. Don't let me keep you from your meal, pal.”

I found my voice as he started to turn to go.

“Wait.”

“Cutty”—he perked up at my use of that—“have you tried the Butte specialty, a pasty?” With that, I lifted my plate and mashed it squarely into his chest where cravat, vest, and suit met.

For an incredulous moment Cartwright gaped at the dripping mess of gravy, mashed potatoes, and such plastered on his chest, while I rid myself of the plate. “You—” He drew back to hit me, but froze at the sight of my brass knuckles. Rather, the flash of brass as I whipped them from my side pockets in immediate readiness stopped him cold, but then he simply stared as I held my stance. Instinctively I had dropped into the fighting pose practiced with Russian Famine. Casper's old pose.

As the Purity proprietor bustled toward us with a moonfaced grin, calling to the kitchen for someone to bring a mop, Cartwright backed off, but he was not the kind to give much ground. Still eyeing me, he said silkily, “Handy with your mitts, are you. You're full of surprises, Morgan. But round one isn't the whole fight, you know. Better wise up and think over my offer.” Dabbing at his ruinously splotched suit with a napkin, he gave me one last smooth smile. “It still stands.”

•   •   •

“I hear you had quite a chat with Cutlass.” Jared was waiting when I next arrived at work, after the weekend, with Armbrister attentively on hand.

“He trapped me,” I sighed. I explained that in true Cutthroat fashion he wanted to make it appear that the two of us were in cahoots, obviously bought off. The pursed expressions on my listeners caused me to pause. “Which I hope did not work whatsoever.”

Jared faced me squarely. “Professor, I don't doubt your word. Besides, Rab would beat up on me if I did. You were caught in a bad situation, as you say, and you wiggled out of it, by all reports. Good enough.” Now he paused. “Although you might have tossed that grub on him a little sooner.”

He cut off my protest. “That's that, all right? We've got other things to worry about. I'm heading to Helena to hold the governor's hand, he's getting the heebie-jeebies about when the lockout is ever going to end. Can't really blame him, I'm having a few of those myself.” He said it in droll enough fashion, for a man who had turned himself into a lightning rod under the menacing cloud of Anaconda. “Hold the fort, gents,” he left us with, off to catch the train to Ulcer Gulch.

Armbrister still was looking sour about Cartwright. “Conniving bastard to do that to you,” he gave the matter one last mutter. “All right, let's get back to making hay. I've been busy with Cavaretta, trying to figure out new ways to say no progress on the lockout. Please tell your suffering editor you aren't stuck for editorial ammo, too.”

“Have no fear.” By staying late as much as I had, I'd managed to work ahead; there was at least that to be said for doldrums at the manse. “I have blasts of various velocity against Anaconda ready to go in overset, slugged for each day this week. I wanted to surprise you with some good news for a change.”

Turning into Generalissimo Prontissimo, he shooed me off to fetch them for him immediately. “Morgie, nothing you do surprises me. Let's see the little wonders, so I can slap headlines on them and get them set. Damn,” he said with relish, “it's going to be nice to get back to tearing the hide off the
Post
, no more spitwads.”

•   •   •

But when both newspapers rolled off the presses the next day, I was the one who felt as if I were missing some skin. I had written an editorial I quite liked, to the effect that the smokeless skies over the tight-shut Hill were a clear indication of Anaconda's undue power, concluding:

When one lordly company can turn the actual atmosphere of an entire city, of a whole state, on and off at will, it is the very reverse of heavenly. It is satanic.

—PLUVIUS

As if by divination, the
Post
trotted out an old argument in favor of the smudge of belching smokestacks, of course with a certain Chicago flourish:

There are certain starry-eyed types who seem to believe that the Hill will produce its copper just by wishing, instead of basic economics. We've said it before, we'll say it again, we'll repeat it until the daydreamers grow ears as long as the jackass variety: the scent of smoke from working factories, such as the Hill's when the costs of labor and the rewards of corporate investment are in economic balance, is the smell of money, wages, prosperity. You only have to be smart enough to sniff.