by Bill Albert
For me, she was more like the Welcoming Angel and the Angel of Death, which pretty much summed up the confusion which had become my life.
“Well, if she came to full-breathing life right this very minute, she wouldn’t find herself enjoying much damn liberty in this country, would she? And do you know, when the President dedicated her back in ‘86 not a single woman was invited to the ceremony, not a single, solitary one? Imagine that! But we were there just the same. A whole boatload from the Women’s Suffrage Association of the state of New York sailed right up close to that little island and let the world know loud and clear that old Miss Liberty was ours, she was one of us, and we weren’t going to stop fighting until we got our own liberty. And we haven’t stopped either and, by God, we never will!”
After having set me straight on the Statue of Liberty and all the rest of it, she put down her shears and walked back across the room to the stove and the smoking skillet.
9
The light is starting to fade in the warden’s office. Short days of the Idaho winter closing in. Harry has just left the cabin for the long walk down those wooden stairs to Wallace. Probably on his way to Cedar Street to get jug-steamed and wick-trimmed. I pause and look up at the ceiling thinking how to get on to the next part of the story without using up this warm time too quickly.
McParland clears his throat. I pull my eyes back down to the paper and then sneak a look across the table. The old man is staring at me, milky boiled eyes over the top of his glasses. On the other side Charlie seems asleep but I know he isn’t. I dip the pen in the ink pot and hold it poised above the paper like I was thinking, which of course I am, although not about what I’m supposed to be thinking.
“You got another problem, son?” McParland asks softly.
I hear the menace. A drop of ink from the pen falls onto the white paper. I smile the best I can and shake my head.
“Some light? Maybe that’d help you along.”
He nods at Charlie, who gets up, stretches and then walks over to the door and snaps a switch. In the center of the ceiling the electric chandelier suddenly glares, the harsh light from the four bulbs giving me nowhere else to go but back to the story they want me to tell them.
McParland reaches over and yanks the ink-blotted paper from under my hand, balls it up and lays it carefully in front of him.
Someone’s knocking at the door. He gets up. A chance to escape from under his damn stare for a few minutes. A guard sticks his head into the room.
“Mr. McParland?”
“Right.”
“Got a message for you here. Just come in over the telegraph wire.”
“Right.”
He takes the yellow paper, reads it, then folds it in half and sticks it in his waistcoat pocket. He glances over at me, but I can’t read anything about the telegram in his face. All the same I got a real bad feeling about it. And why not? I’ve never seen a telegram that had anything but grief in it for me.
“Got any reply you wanna make, sir?”
“No, nothing,” McParland snaps. “And I don’t want any more interruptions. You just hold everything till I say different.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard replies, closing the door slowly behind him.
“Don’t understand anything about how to go about this kinda thing,” McParland grumbles. “And you, boy, there’s no call for any of your lollygagging there. Get on with it!”
Old bastard! Too much depending on his goddamned story. And I’m too damn tired out with all this goddamned carry on. McParland pushing at me, Charlie staring at me, the electric light hitting those shiny brass reflectors and burning down at me, and Montana Jim waiting out there somewhere to settle my Christ-killing Jew account for good and all. My left hand is throbbing again. And what’s in that damn telegram? The hell with them! I look down at the blank paper and try to focus on what I want to remember.
Like my first real Christmas.
Of course, I had seen Christmas before in New York, but only from the other side of the street.
“They have theirs, we have ours,” was how my father explained it without explaining anything.
“Pagans!” spat Grandpa Liebermann, which explained even less except that maybe he thought my father’s answer was too much of a compromise.
In ‘98 I was finally seeing Christmas close to and it was real special.
“Don’t usually have all this damn fuss,” grumbled Aunt May, “but Al reckoned as with you two boys here it wouldn’t be right not to.”
A little cut-off pine tree stuck in a tin can with cut-out paper stars and angels Aunt May made, some pine cones we painted up and white candles which were lit each night. Then there was all the singing down in Wallace at the church and Christmas dinner in the cabin with chicken, potatoes, gravy, and a plum pudding. But best was the presents Benny and I got.
“Don’t you go losin ‘em now, boys,” Al said, looking all pleased and embarrassed.
“And don’t go playing stupid with them either,” added May. “A tool is what they are, not damn toys.”
A Dick’s Hand Fitting Easy Opener Pocket Knife. Two blades and a black ebony handle with a thin silver shield. I swelled up with being so happy about it.
“Catalogue knife,” Benny said dismissively, when we were alone by the woodpile. “A forty-five center from the Sears and Roebuck is what we got us. What’s that? Can’t make out that damn finger waggin, Mouse. Jesus! but ya can sure tire me out.”
I was trying to tell him in sign that I didn’t care where they got the knife from or how much it cost, but he wasn’t even trying to understand. It had been going that way ever since he got in tight with those damn O’Malleys.
“You wanna see somethin that really does the job?”
He knelt down to the woodpile, cleared away some snow and brought out a small bundle wrapped in black oil cloth.
“Now this here is the real business, Mouse.”
He peeled back the folds of cloth and there in the center lay a heavy-bladed butcher’s knife with a smooth wooden handle, and nestled up to it were two little leather sacks, one of them tied at the top with a piece of rawhide. Benny tapped me softly on the side of the head with it. Marbles I thought, although ball bearings is what it was.
“Trick is to get ‘em right behind the ear. Never know what’s hit ‘em. And if they do, well then . . .”
He picked up the knife and hefted it menacingly. Then he took my hand, opened it and tipped out the contents of the other bag. Coins, gold and silver ones overflowed, a couple rolling onto the ground.
Benny sure was having a good Christmas.
“They comes out of them saloons, cribs, or them dance halls, liquored up to here. Thinks they got the whole damn world by the tail. But they don’t. I tell you straight, it ain’t easy walkin with all that snow and ice and havin a load on like they does.”
He walked a few weaving, staggering steps to show me.
“Dumb bastards! Ha! Easy as shittin, Mouse. Easier. They comes around a blind corner, or in to somewheres dark and we’s waitin. Trip ‘em up, give one or two hard ones and then get their poke and run for it. Ten seconds it takes with the five of us in the push to roll a stiff. Course, sometimes they fights us, but that ain’t nothin. Tim or Tom gets on their back, puts the strong arm on ‘em and soon they’s lyin on the ground like tied hogs. Those O’Malley boys sure knows how to work it. Shit yes, they does!”
Benny was getting one useful education up Canyon Creek. No doubt he figured it would help him to his goal and could be it has, but what’s more likely it’s done is helped him into a place like where I am right now or maybe a wood-markered grave somewhere not so special where the dirt is soft.
“That’s more like it, son. Much better.”
McParland leans over my shoulder and reads what I’ve written. It’s not this story, but the beginning of the one he wants,
which is how you got to play it, especially if you want to keep everyone happy and on your side. And, surely, that can’t be such a bad notion, tight corners or no tight corners, hard times or no hard times.
10
People in and around Wallace were forever arguing about the weather, by which I don’t mean the weather on the particular day they were arguing, being as how that would have been plumb crazy, not, of course, that that would have stopped them, mining towns being what they are—overfilled with crazy people. No, they argued about what the weather had been like in years past, argued so hot that it seemed that winning would make some difference, which just goes to show how crazy they really were, even though I found out later it was the same just about everywhere you went with people and the weather.
“May, I’m sorry but I reckon it was ‘94 that were the worst. Don’t you remember . . .”
“Al Hutton, how can you sit there sucking on that damn pipe and talking through your damn hat!”
It was the first time I had ever heard him talk back against Aunt May, which was a measure of how serious they took the question of that old-time weather.
“I’ll give you ‘94 was bad,” admitted May. “All I’m saying is that in ‘90 it was a lot worse. Weren’t there twenty-foot drifts up Canyon Creek? Thirty below in February?”
“But, not the snow slides, May, what about them snow slides? Seven of ‘em in one day.”
“We talking about slides or we talking about cold?” shot back Aunt May triumphantly.
What sparked off that tussle was me complaining to Aunt May about how cold it was.
“You think this is cold?” she had declared.
That was all it needed to set the two of them arguing.
I didn’t give a hoot about ‘90 or ‘94 or any of those other winters. Ninety-eight was plenty cold enough for me. At the beginning of January it hit twenty below and the snow was so thick up the Canyon that it took three days to clear the line to Burke. Al wouldn’t take Benny and me with him that time, said it was too dangerous and he’d get himself in trouble with the Company if anything happened. But we did go with him on some of the day-to-day runs when they used the rotary to move the snow.
Sitting up in the push engine behind the rotary snowplough was a treat. Even Benny had to admit that. The snow mechanism filled up an entire car, what with the nine-foot cutting wheel set in a metal catcher at the front and a steam engine to drive both that and the fan to blow the snow up and out to either side of the track.
“This ain’t nothin,” Al told us as we watched our own private blizzard falling around us. “Back in ‘94, and mind, I don’t care what your Aunt May says, after them big slides in March it weren’t before July we had her clear up to Burke. Afore that they had to unload everythin and haul it the two and some miles to Burke by sled and pushcart. Now, when a winter lasts ‘til July, well, that’s what I calls a bad winter!”
The winter and the heavy snows also meant a lot of time stuck fast in the cabin with Aunt May and Al. We played checkers and Al taught Benny and me cribbage, blackjack, and poker. May didn’t approve of the cards, said it would lead to no good.
“Poor boys working under the ground like slaves for weeks, maybe even months, then losing all their money in one short night to some damn tinhorn cardsharp who’s never broken an honest sweat. You think that’s right?”
“Course not, May, “Al began, “but we just playin a little social . . .”
“Bad habits don’t know anything about social, Al Hutton. I’ve seen it all before, too many damn times and so have you.”
That got Aunt May going again about her early days in the Coeur d’Alenes and, as with Buffalo Bill, each time she told it it was a little different.
“Twenty-three, that’s all I was when I came out West. On that Northern Pacific emigrant car to Rathdrum and then riding on the hurricane deck of a cayuse pony up to Eagle City.”
I saw Al, leaning back in his chair mouthing along with her, “. . . deck of a cayuse pony.” He wasn’t mocking, more like humming a familiar tune.
“Cooking for those forty Youngstown coal miners, all of us looking to make our pile on the North Fork. Just like you, Benjamin Shorter, I came for the gold. There was plenty of it in those days. I saw those railroad advertisements telling how you could pick up nuggets just for the bending down. I expect you’ve heard that damn song too?”
Aunt May began to sing in a hoarse tenor, which for all the gravel in it wasn’t really all that bad.
They say there is a land
Where the crystal waters flow
O’er beds of quartz and purest gold
Way out in Idaho
We’ll need no pick or spade
No shovel, pan, or hoe
The largest chunks they top the ground
Way out in Idaho
We’ll see hard times no more
And want we’ll never know
When once we’ve filled our sacks with gold
Way out in Idaho
She held the last O for what seemed a good long while and then leaned back in her chair, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Course,” she said after the echo of her singing had settled, “I didn’t believe all that bushwah, but figured it had to be better than where I was back there in Kyles Corner, what with all the mines being bought up by the big combines and those mangy scab Polacks and I-tal-ians being brought into the coal like they were. Couldn’t even cuss in English, worked for next to nothing, too. Made it damn tough for the American boys.”
I was expecting her to say they could live on air, but I guess maybe in Ohio that wasn’t possible like it was in New York.
“I soon figured her out, like those card games of yours, it wasn’t the prospecting or the digging or the panning that made you rich. Course it made some rich, but most of those that made a strike didn’t keep it long. Boomers, shortstakers, too damn many shortstakers. Sold out or lost it gambling or drinking or whoring . . . OK, Al, I know what you’re going to say but these boys aren’t blind or stupid, are they?”
Al nodded and began his close examination of the floorboards.
“Where was I, oh yes, it’s those who provided who made the money that counts in the camps. You know what I mean? Like old Jim Wardner, he saw it right off, began hauling that greasy butterine across the Bitterroots to Eagle City. After that it was freighting, saloons, even banking at the end. Making more and more money while miners made their piles, lost them, came and went of no account at all. So that’s where I started, cooking out the back of one of Jim’s saloons in Eagle City. Butter, beans, bread, and coffee at a buck a throw. Worked like a Chinaman, but even that couldn’t make it last. Gold dried up and so did poor old Eagle City. Soon enough Murray started to go the same way.”
She reached over with an iron rod, hooked the door of the range open and threw a couple of pieces of wood onto the embers.
“Nothing for it, had to move out. That was about ‘86, the year after Noah Kellogg’s jackass kicked open that vein of galena and all hell was breaking loose up Milo Gulch, growing like fury it was. Got a job at Charlie Rice’s hash house, which was a pretty ripe dump, then got my own place fixed up in Wardner. Had myself a cow, a broom, bucket, cook stove—about like this one here—wasn’t bad at all, unless some cheap bastard tried to Jew me down at the end of the week.”
She boomed out a laugh, “Still, the broom handle usually settled any of that nonsense damn quick enough!”
It was in her shanty restaurant that she met Al, who had come to work as an engineer on the new narrow gauge they had just finished laying up Canyon Creek.
“Swept me right off my feet, he did.”
That was the only explanation we ever had about why the two of them got married.
The picture of thin-armed Al sweeping all of Aunt May off her feet set a bubble boiling up my throat, but I pulled
down the corners of my mouth hard as I could, pretending I was just rubbing with my fingers, and kept that bubble from being any more than that.
“Poor May,” Al told me when we were alone. “Bad enough that in ‘87 Dutch Jake threw the most splashed out weddin anyone can remember in the whole Northwest, but when Grace and Ed, that were the bridesmaid and my best man, asked if we’d care to make it a double weddin and that right before they started playin ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ well it were all I could do to hold May down. Still, she saw it funny later on, especially after Grace dumped that bowl of oyster stew in her lap. Ain’t no one likes a good joke much as does your Aunt May.”
Snow slides? Blizzards? Busted thermometers? Frostbit ringers and chilblained toes? No. I reckoned as how they should measure the meanness of the winter by how many times you got snow-caught listening to Aunt May tell her “cayuse pony” story. Of course, compared to most tough things that you bump up against in this life, listening to that wasn’t bad, especially for a seasoned listener like I was becoming. Nonetheless, by that particular story measure ‘98 was one damn hard, mean, and long winter.
11
It wasn’t at the cabin that the widest and wildest selection of stories in Wallace was to be heard. To find those you had to go to October & September Johnson’s Grand Combination Store.
After Harry’s visit I figured that Aunt May was dead set against us working, but it turned out it was only Harry Orchard she was dead set against. Saturdays and holiday time off from school she insisted we earn our keep.
At first Benny didn’t like the idea much, thought it might cut into his time with the O’Malleys, but what with Aunt May fixing things up and insisting it was either a job or something far worse, which she never got around to spelling out, he soon talked himself around to her idea like it was his all the time.
“Shit yes, Mouse. I reckon how delivery boys might just be about the best there is, don’t ya see that? Tips, like back with the Wild West, pickin up lots of swell information and all that. Angles, Mouse, so many damned angles to get at!”
