by S. L. Stoner
At last they reached a second narrow bench halfway to the bottom. Sage was feeling the strain of staying upright on the muddy slope. Acting before Chester shot him another amused look, Sage sucked in a breath and quickly side-stepped over to stand by the trestle timbers. Once there, he noticed that halfway under the bridge, a single ramshackle hut clung to the hillside, its door and window glass long gone. Still it was marginally more intact than the others farther up the slope because its roof looked relatively sound. Likely because of the sheltering bridge overhead. Sage studied the hut. When was the last time someone lived in it? Where had they gone? Up out of the ravine and into a better life, he hoped.
An onslaught of sheeting rain lashing into the ravine with a ferocity that made the naked branches tremble cut off that thought. He and Chester quickly crab-stepped deeper beneath the bridge, seeking a spot sheltered from the water streaming down from the sieve-like roadbed. The driest spot they found was next to a piling that sported a plywood patch overhead.
Heaps of garbage, tossed from above, lay here too, mounded against the creosoted pilings by gusting winds. Chester kicked the garbage away from the nearest piling until he’d exposed its base where wood met earth. He reached into his pocket for a sharp metal rod with a wooden handle. Crouching down, he jabbed the rod into the post, meeting resistance at less than an eighth of an inch.
He stood up.“This piling seems to be solid enough, though it won’t be for long if they don’t clear away this mess,” he said gesturing at the garbage. “This stuff holds water against the wood and that causes rot. Bad enough that this ravine is so damn deep no sun ever reaches down here to dry it out. All this trash makes it ten times worse.”
Chester moved downhill to the next post, ignoring the rainwater streaming onto him. Sage slid behind. This time, Chester’s jabbing blade easily slid into the wood at least two inches. Chester shook his head. “This one’s decayed bad.” The next piling let him sink his blade all the way to its hilt. Once the bridge carpenter finished inspection down near the creek bed some minutes later, they climbed back up to stand under the plywood patch near the shack that sat lowest on the hill.
Raising his voice over the sound of the driving rain and the noise of the swollen stream, Chester summed up the results of his jabbing. “There’s bad decay riddling a number of the substructure pilings. You look careful, you’ll see that the bridge has settled uneven because of the rot in so many posts. That high water down there, shoving against pilings weakened by dry rot, torqued the whole kit-and-caboodle past its ability to carry a load. Likely that’s why the planking gave way up above. The nail spikes worked loose. Probably pushed the underlying stringers so out of kilter they tore loose when the wagon broke through.”
Chester shook his head, his weathered face grim. “Even without inspecting it, we know that the bridge’s north end is in the same or worse shape since that’s where the wagon broke through.” He nodded toward the men across the ravine who were struggling to rig a block and tackle around the fire wagon so they could winch it uphill. A wide swath of snapped bushes leading from the wagon to the gully rim meant the horse’s carcass was already on its way to the rendering shed.
“Hard to believe anyone survived that fall,” Chester said. He pulled a brightly patterned blue bandanna from his pocket and wiped the rainwater off his face.
Sage studied the crosshatched timbers far above his head. “What about all that wood way up there? What determines whether those timbers are in good shape or not?” he asked, pointing and hoping Chester wasn’t planning on their climbing up the structure.
“Don’t matter too much about them girders if these support pilings are rotten,” Chester responded. “Especially since the road planking overhead is so bad. Look,” he pointed upward too, “See how there’s so much light coming through in some places? That’s where the plank patches are near to hanging free in the air.” Chester shook his head.“It’s a wonder the whole damn thing hasn’t collapsed long before now.”
“But I thought the Mackeys supposedly repaired this bridge not that long ago?” Sage said.
“Yup, not more than six months ago.” Chester’s lips twisted. “There is no way on God’s green earth that all this decay happened in such a short time. I’d guess the Mackeys just painted the old timbers black with creosote so they’d look new. Look up there.” Again he pointed, “You see, they stopped creosoting once they reached the point where a man might not notice if he looked at the bridge from the edge of the ravine. Even so, this mess might have held up under that fire wagon except for the high water down there.” He pointed to where the creek bed was overflowing its banks and pushing against the bridge pilings. Unlike the stream where Sage fought to save Jimmy, the one flowing below was shallower and narrower—no more than six feet across. But the steeper incline sent the water racing downhill with tremendous force.
“Like I said, just too much strain for the bridge to hold,” Chester continued. “Pilings probably shifted under the water’s push and with things already so rickety everywhere else . . . .” He shrugged his shoulders, leaving Sage to provide the inevitable conclusion.
“The whole structure was loose as a goose and failed under the fire wagon’s heavy weight,” Sage supplied and Chester nodded grimly. Overhead, the rain began to drum ferociously on the bridge planking.
“Isn’t the city engineer supposed to inspect repair work?” Sage asked, raising his voice above the din. It seemed impossible that some bureaucratic functionary decided to risk people’s lives that way.
Chester’s lips twisted with disgust before he shouted back, “Now, that there’s a good question. Before you and I set off, I spoke to a couple of the men who worked on this bridge. They said that, before Mackey moved them to another job, the city engineer showed up a few times. They all say he stayed on the bridge jawing with Mackey before the two of them ambled off together, likely heading for their favorite watering hole. For certain, if a man was serious about inspecting, he’d come down here where we are. When a substructure’s no good, like this one,
any fool who took the time to look would know that the whole trestle structure is rickety. ‘Course, that’s the problem. A fellow first needs to see it to know that. The men told me that city engineer never climbed down off that damn trestle roadway. They said he hates getting his shoes dirty. Can you imagine such gol darn laziness?”
An inarticulate cry at their backs made them both jump and whirl around. The scarecrow figure of a man leapt out the open doorway of the nearby hut that Sage had studied earlier. Within seconds, the man scrambled up the hill and disappeared behind the shrubs crowding the bank edge.
“A hobo,” Chester commented. “And likely a bit demented if he’s living down here. He probably thought the police had come to round him up. They’ve been cracking down lately. Some of our so-called ‘better’ citizens don’t appreciate seeing homeless folk on their streets.”
Sage shuddered. What is it like, living down here in these huts, in this sunless, bone-chilling damp? Some kind of hell to his mind. No thanks. He’d rather curl up in a doorway or under a fir tree.
Chester’s brow furrowed making Sage wonder whether the other man was pondering his own uncertain future in light of their seemingly futile strike against the Mackeys.
s s s
The two men returned to the strike line late in the day to find the men’s spirits still high even though some of their newfound union supporters had drifted away up the road. A laughing audience stood around one newcomer in particular. He appeared to be regaling them with a story. They stood in a warming sun break, their heads bare, their sodden coats open. Sage smiled at the sound of their laughter. He and Chester sidled up to Leo. “How’s it going?” Sage asked.
Leo grinned in response. “Ah now, the men’s spirits are perking right up.” Leo took his elbow and they stepped aside. “You and Chester find anything helpful?”
“The whole Marquam trestle is rotten through. Chester here thinks the Mackeys replace
d a few timbers to keep that bridge standing a bit longer and painted creosote over the rest so they’d look new. He thinks all the rain is what caused it to collapse last night. That collapse was inevitable, though, even without the rain.”
Leo nodded slowly, “That fits with what I’ve heard. I questioned some of the men after you and Chester headed off to inspect the bridge. They agreed it was commonplace for Mackey to tell them to replace some of the bad timber low down on a trestle only to find themselves transferred to another job before they finished repairing the whole bridge. Said Mackey always seemed to finish up his bridge jobs with a maverick crew, using the most worthless kind of unskilled day laborers, fellas who are desperate and drunk. Usually both at the same time.”
“How certain are you that the Mackeys used day laborers like that on other bridges beside that one over the Marquam Ravine?” Sage asked.
“Pretty certain. They win the construction contracts for most of the city’s bridge work since Mackey Sr. is exceedingly tight with the powers that be. He’s on the board of directors of some big banks and a trustee of that highfalutin’ golf club down there south of the city.”
Chester rubbed the whisker stubble on his chin, pondering the situation.“Thinking back on it, those jobs kinda smelled like five-day-old fish. They’d send a crew out with their tools, keep them busy for a few days on the lower part of the trestle and then move them on to another bridge. Since we were working so Godawful many hours, I don’t think none us really thought about what was happening to the bridge repairs we didn’t finish. “I guess, if you asked me back then, I might have told you that we expected Mackey’d send us back to finish them off. But, according to the fellas, I reckon that none of us ever was.” Chester stopped speaking and stared up into the sullen sky that for the moment was again allowing the sun to break through. Regret was heavy in his features. “I’m mighty sorry now that we didn’t think to ask. I’d like to think at least one of us would have said something about how unsafe the darn thing was.”
“Do you think the city commissioners know that the city engineer is not inspecting the work on the trestles like he should?”
“There’s no telling. From what I’ve seen the last few years, City Hall seems to run its contracting business with a wink and a nod,” Leo answered.
The strikers’ laughter erupted again. The storyteller punched the air with a fist and the group roared. Sage studied the man who wore canvas trousers with a dingy union suit showing above the open collar of a wool plaid shirt. His only distinguishing garment was a tan water-repellant duck coat adorned with a bright orange corduroy collar. The bill of the man’s fifty-cent cap was too narrow to offer much protection when rain fell. Now, however, it allowed sunlight to strike blue eyes bright with humor and flashing white teeth midst a neat blond beard. The man looked to be somewhere in his mid thirties and accustomed to working outdoors.
A striker approached them, chuckling. “Say, Leo,” he said, “You oughta come hear the stories O’Reilly’s telling us. He’s just come down from the Idaho mines. Said his boss acted just like Mackey until somebody sent a barrel of lit dynamite slid’n down the water flume into the stamp mill! ‘Course, after that, the Dickensen detectives landed on the scene ‘thick as flies on a fresh cow pie.’ His words. So O’Reilly headed on down here. Sez the pot’s boiling a mite too hot for him up north.” The man chuckled before hurrying back to take his place among O’Reilly’s audience.
Sage again studied the newcomer. The man intercepted the look and smiled widely before returning his gaze to those gathered around him.
Hmm. Had the Saint sent this O’Reilly fellow to help out? He knew that St. Alban sometimes sent in reinforcements. He hoped that was the case here. They could definitely use the help. Especially from someone as cheerful as the Irishman. Laughter was always good. Still, he didn’t think it like St. Alban to send in someone without giving Sage notice. Well, maybe it’s some other labor leader whose lending a hand by sending in O’Reilly to raise
the men’s spirits. Regardless, there was no cause, as of yet, to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.
s s s
Sage was at Mozart’s in time to step in as its supper hour host. Business was slow. The gas lit dining room, elegant with its damask-covered tables and sparkling silver cutlery, was nearly empty. Outside, rain poured down, undoubtedly keeping Mozart’s regular customers snugged close to their warm hearths. Fine with him. He needed the time to think. His thoughts bounced around like a rock tumbling down a streambed. He tried to impose order on his thoughts. First, there was the Mackey bridge repair scheme. How to use that fact and was there time to use it? It also meant that more was now at stake than just winning the strike. That woman and her baby might still be alive if that fire truck had reached them in time. What about other fires? Even without the strike, the idea of bridges falling and more people dying was reason enough to take immediate action.
He’d worked it out by the end of the supper hour. Not a complete plan—just a place to start. The first step, find Ben Johnston. As a journalist, Johnston was familiar with City Hall because that was his job.
“Sage,” his mother said with asperity, as she entered his third floor room and found him dressing in his warm street suit of herringbone tweed, “Do you think you might trouble yourself to spare a moment to tell me what happened today? I don’t mind managing the restaurant all by myself. That said, I’d at least like to be kept in the know about what is going on down at the strike line.”
He sighed, pulled off his hat and sat on a chair. Her point was valid. Without her, Mozart’s doors couldn’t stay open and they’d lose the most important prop in their entire subterfuge. Besides, over these past two years, she and Fong proved irreplaceable comrades in their secret endeavors for the labor movement.
He quickly told her about the rotten bridges.
“My Lord, Son” she breathed. “That’s so dangerous. That poor woman and her baby son. Is there no act so low that those greedy scallywags won’t stoop to doing it?”
“Chester tells me most of the trestle bridges are over twenty years old, built when thousands of newcomers started moving into Portland. The land developers needed the trestle bridges built to give prospective home buyers easy access to the newly platted lots. They pushed for city-wide taxes to build the ravine trestles. Once their lots all sold, though, those same developers sang a different tune because they’d moved their money on to other interests. In the years since, they have vehemently fought any taxation for trestle repair. So the city has been repairing the bridges on a shoestring. Which brings us to the Mackey’s little scam. The way they work it is to bid low and short the job every which way possible to make a profit. Looks like they grease the skids with a few bribes here and there.”
She shook her head.“So what about that poor dead woman and her baby? You want to bet that the Mackeys will never be forced to answer for those two deaths?”
“I’d lose that bet, I’m afraid.” Sage said. “Still, I refuse to accept the fact that it’s just fine and dandy if a rich man makes decisions that kill people, just so he can parade around in three carriages instead of two. The excuse is that he’s just using shrewd business practices, like anyone would. Yet, if a man steals to feed his family, he’s sent to jail as a criminal.”
A bitter fury welled up but Sage restrained himself from expressing it. Mae Clemens didn’t abide hateful talk. More than once she’d lectured that hate, and the violence it bred, was too easy an answer and doomed to failure. She’d lived smack in the middle of a war between the Dickensen agents hired by the mine owners and the Molly Maguires who fought for the miners. Her world flipped upside down when her father and brother joined the Mollies. Company thugs murdered them both, the ambush made possible by inside information. Worst of all, his mother’s own husband—Sage’s Welsh father—was the Judas who marked them for death. Although she hadn’t killed John Adair, Sr., Sage figured it was basic decency rather than a lack of desire that had
stopped her. Sage had never met his father, which was just fine with him.
His mother put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed hard before she departed.
Sage stayed seated for a while longer, staring at the pencil his fingers had just snapped in half.
SIX
Sage found Ben Johnston in the hotel lobby, his long legs sticking out from beneath an open newspaper. The middle class hotel served as Johnston’s temporary residence. He’d told Sage his plan was to move his family over from the eastern Oregon town of Pendleton once The Journal’s future seemed certain. Until that happened, the hotel lobby served as his evening parlor whenever he was in residence. Pleasantries completed, Sage began querying the newspaper man about the functioning of the city’s common council. After answering a few questions, Johnston raised a palm to forestall any more, saying, “Wait just a minute now, John. I’d be both inaccurate and incomplete in my explanation if I tried to tell you how City Hall really operates in this town. I am too new here and certainly no insider. I’d rather you hear the information straight from the horse’s mouth. Meet me here tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and we’ll go over to the Stumptown Café. I’ll introduce you to a man much more knowledgeable about City Hall’s inner workings than I am.”
