by Bill Albert
After those thousand soldiers came in, after martial law was declared, and after every miner, card-carrying or not, was roughed up, rounded up and thrown in a big hay barn, Aunt May came around to seeing that the dynamiting of the concentrator wasn’t so much about angry miners as it was a dastardly plot by the mine owners to use that anger to destroy the Union.
“Seems to me,” Al argued, “I mean from where I was sat, that it was just plain old union boys, May. Just them and the drink and the hotheads.”
“Al Hutton, don’t you remember anything? What about that creeping-around-two-faced bastard Siringo in ‘92? What was he doing? You think those leopards have changed their damn spots?”
“I’m just sayin, May, that . . .”
“Of course you don’t see them, wouldn’t be any point if you could. Blending in is what they do, like the damn snakes in the grass they are.”
Aunt May became splendidly combustible with what was happening around Wallace. She emblazoned that fire in letters, writing to newspapers in Wallace, Mullan, and Wardner, and when they wouldn’t print them for fear of the military, she wrote to the big newspapers in Spokane. Angry-hot letters they were and she shot them off one after another, hardly drawing a breath between them.
“Is this America or Cuba, or maybe they figure it’s them damn Philippine islands? Are we black woolly savages who have to be ruled, occupied, dictated to and crushed under the iron heel of the military? Can’t sit by and let them murder the Constitution right in front of our eyes, can we? Where’s the law? Where’s the Bill of Rights? Freedom of the press? Freedom of speech? Damn number one on the list! Where’s freedom of speech and freedom of the press with Bill Stewart locked up for printing what’s no less than the truth? Where is democracy when the duly elected sheriff of Shoshone County and three duly elected district commissioners are arrested on trumped-up charges? And those poor innocent boys rotting in those barns in Wardner. Have they charged them with anything? They have not! Habeas corpus. Little Hy, habeas damn corpus. Well, where the Sam Hill is it? That’s what I want to know. That’s what the people of America should want to know.”
In her letters she said all of that and more while denouncing the President of the United States of America, the Governor of Idaho, Bartlett Sinclair, the soldiers, the officers, the state-appointed deputies, and the mine owners, blasting away at them with everything she had.
“Stepanfechet, so-called Governor of the great state of Idaho, elected to serve all the people, has fallen under the seductive siren song of Mammon. Now he satisfies only the selfish, self-serving, scandalously sectional interests of the Mine Owners Association. They have but to raise their simpering, sniveling, sinful, scurvy voices and our sycophantic Stepanfechet shuffles and skips to their scabrous serenade.
“What do you think of that, Al?” she asked putting down the piece of paper.
“Whole mess of ‘s’ words ain’t there. May?”
After that she didn’t ask for anyone’s opinion but just the same, every night, she’d read out her letters in a loud booming voice, so loud that Al reckoned how she didn’t have to send them to the newspapers as most people in the Coeur d’Alenes would have heard them anyway. Of course, he didn’t say that straight out to Aunt May.
18
By the end of the first week in May about every miner in the district had been arrested. Soldiers were searching the towns and roaming the hills and gulches looking to arrest more. Mines had closed down, store owners and saloonkeepers were hurting for business while families went hungry or were driven out altogether. The editor of The Mullan Mirror had been arrested and his printing press padlocked, and to top it all off Bartlett Sinclair decreed that any miner who wanted a job had to renounce the Union and sign the yellow-dog contract, which was worse than death for a union man. Things were pretty damn rough, people were suffering pretty damn bad, but for me, well I have to admit, I was enjoying all those tumultions no end.
First off, I finally had a genuine Western adventure. It wasn’t what I had foreseen, it sure wasn’t anything I’d read about, and it scared me something awful while it was going on, but the scaring wore off after a day or two and it made the story a whole load better for the thinking about.
Besides giving me a reprieve from Spokane, the Dynamite Express made me a real-life hero at school. Everyone wanted to be my friend. They even stopped singing those damn rhymes at me about roses, violets, and Jews.
For Benny, however, having the town full of soldiers meant new opportunities to make money.
Instead of gutter butts, Benny had taken to smoking two-for cigars, although I guess you could say they weren’t really two-fors, as the Grand never saw the nickel. Sitting out back of the store by the privy he was thinking hard, puffing hard, and blowing fat, rolling smoke rings.
“Ain’t no harm to her. Mouse. Those girls gotta live and they ain’t goin to do much business otherwise we show those soldier boys where it’s best to go. Just showin them around is all we’s doing. Course, it’s only the white boys we have any truck with, not them black nigger soldiers.”
He beamed, half closed his eyes and leaned back against the door of the privy. The smoke curled over his straw-colored hair, making a halo.
“Yeah, you could say that. Why not? A public service is what it is. Thanks, Mouse. I like that a whole lot.”
Like a concentrator working on the ore coming down from the mountains, Benny reprocessed irony and wore it shiny and proud. I see that now. Back then I didn’t know one end of irony from the other. My friend Jason Glover figured that the knowing wasn’t so important as being mute gave me a natural sense for it.
Except for Benny and his push, a few saloonkeepers and crib girls, the soldiers were not too popular with most grownup people in and around Wallace. Of course, some of those all-too-respectable people who Aunt May hated so much, the ones that had run away and then sneaked back when the Army came, they couldn’t wait to entertain the Army officers in their swell big houses and introduce them to their unspoken-for daughters. That was only to be expected according to Aunt May.
“Whores and highfaluting high muckety-mucks. That’s just about how it is. And I tell you what, it’s those whores who are a damn sight more honest about it too.”
Down at the Grand the potbellies were passing stories back and forth about the Negro soldiers who guarded the miners in Kellogg. They told how they insulted the wives and daughters and did worse things which, because the Johnson sisters were never out of hearing, they didn’t explain more than to shake their heads at each other or stomp their boots and shoot angry streams of tobacco at and, thankfully for the most part, into my spittoons.
Black ones or white ones, the Miss Johnsons didn’t care to have the soldiers in the Grand, but couldn’t chase them out like they did the pimps and card sharks.
“Herod’s soldiers, that’s what they are,” Miss Jan said.
“Completely Godless to a man,” is how Miss April summed them up.
Still, they took their money just the same.
In the Dimes, like at the Wild West Show, the cavalry was forever coming to the rescue. The wagon train, the fort, the stagecoach, the settlers, Buffalo Bill and Major Frank Powell, whoever needed rescuing you could bet your last red cent that with one or two bullets left, the water running out, and the Indians moving in for the grand finale, a bugle would be heard way off in the distance and then they’d ride in, guns blasting and flags flying.
In and around Wallace the soldiers had come with their bugles and flags to the rescue of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining Company, at least that’s how Aunt May saw it.
“You boys keep well clear of them barsweep yellowlegs. You hear me?”
We heard and we still didn’t stay clear. The soldiers were everywhere you went in town and they were always saying howdy to us kids, giving us pennies for nothing, wanting to pass the time of day. We also went down to Kel
logg, the rail junction south of Wardner, and watched them parading. Swords flashing, the band playing, whole platoons wheeling right and left, horses high stepping and kicking up dust. It was grand. There was no way we were going to miss that, no matter what Aunt May said.
There was also the more serious paying business of “showing them around.”
Now that I was a celebrity the O’Malleys decided to let me in their gang. I didn’t particularly want to, but Benny insisted what with things like they were it was too good an opportunity to pass up. The way the O’Malleys put it, it was an opportunity I wasn’t going to be allowed to pass up.
“Anyways, what your loud-mouthed friend Shorter here tells us, Jewboy, is how’s might be as you knows too much to leave you out.”
“He won’t say nothin, Tim,” Benny said quickly in his own defense.
“I is Tom.”
“Tom, he won’t say nothin, I can guarantee that.”
“Mean he can’t say nothin,” added Tim laughing.
He had small greeny-yellow teeth. So did his brother.
“So what the Devil good is he then,” asked Delbert Dodds, a scowling-browed, tetchy boy from Mullan who was one of the O’Malleys’ many cousins.
“Let’s see here,” Tom said, grabbing me by the arm and pushing me roughly towards Delbert. “Look at him. Sorry sight ain’t he?”
“Sorry sight true enough, Tim,” he said shoving me back.
I stumbled but managed to stay on my feet.
“It’s Tom.”
Even their own mangy cousin couldn’t tell them apart.
“Maybe ya’s right, Cousin Del. Maybe the little Jewboy ain’t good for a whole hell of a lot.”
He slugged me hard in the back and I stumbled toward his brother.
“He reads and writes real fancy,” Benny offered, as I lurched by him on my enforced journey between O’Malleys. “Better than most ordinary people can.”
“What the hell good is that?” asked Tim.
I knew it was Tim because by then I had spotted a big boil on the back of his neck right behind his left ear. Besides I could see that Tom was the real leader of the push.
“Yeah, what we needs is the strong arm,” Delbert added, flexing a scrawny bicep.
“Not now we don’t,” Tom said firmly. “Not with them soldiers here. Too damn risky.”
“Yeah,” Benny chimed in. “The smooth talk is what we’re needin, not the strong arm. Sure, that’s our ticket now, the smooth talk.”
“Jewboy can’t do no smooth talk neither,” Tim observed again, hitting me so hard in the chest I was knocked flat.
It seemed a lot less bother, not to say safer, to stay on the ground.
“Don’t fret boys,” Tom said, looking down at me. “We’ll find some use for him.”
19
Showing around, making introductions, whatever name you chose, it was flesh peddling plain and simple, and I was forced to help the push do it. I started out by inscribing cardboard calling cards with girls’ names on them in big swirling letters. Hester, The Two-Petal Daisy, Rose of the Valley, Sadie May, Frisco Alma. My expensive education at the Dr. Julius Sachs School for Boys was paying off for Benny and the pimply O’Malleys.
“I’ve heard how them choice parlor houses in Kansas City and New Orleans give out cards like this, Mouse. Ad-vertisement is what they calls it. Business bein down so much as it is I figure those girls won’t mind payin for a little high class ad-vertisement to draw them in some trade.”
Benny was right about business being bad. Even with the soldiers taking up a bit of the slack, no miners meant less customers for the working girls. Some pulled up stakes as soon as the army arrived. Within a couple of days about half the cribs stood empty, and down below Cedar Street the saloons, parlor houses, gambling halls, and hurdy-gurdies went dead quiet. So did business at the Grand.
The girls that stayed behind had to compete for what little trade there was. Benny’s idea must have sounded just the ticket. Seven for a penny, seven being a lucky number, including on-the-street and in-the-saloons distribution if they wanted it—that’s what Benny charged for my handiwork and the girls thought it was damn fine, made them preen like they were regular parlor house boarders. I only got a penny for every twenty-eight I wrote out, the rest of the money went to the push. “Overheads” is how Benny explained it. I didn’t argue. A penny is a penny, a broken head is a broken head, and I knew the O’Malleys.
Benny and I and sometimes one of the other boys would fall in step with the soldiers. Then Benny would whisper up at them, calling them “General,” asking them if they wanted a good time, promising them all forms of tempting enticements. As he rattled on he’d pass them a card. Most times the soldiers would ignore us, laugh, or try to swat us away like flies. That didn’t deter Benny.
“If you do her long enough, Mouse, you ask enough soldier boys, why I figure one in ten is good for the dime.”
He was about right too. The soldiers made a fuss but usually took a card in the end just to get rid of us, and often a young one on his own would go along with us and if he liked the look of the girl he’d give us a nickel. We’d get another nickel from the girl for steering the soldier to her crib and running for the beer. We didn’t do the parlor houses. They were too expensive for those poor soldiers, more for the officers. The crib girls charged only one dollar, some as little as twenty-five cents, though we never worked that low end of the Row. They didn’t pay for steering or advertisement cards, although with the way they were, so painted up, broken down, and bloated out, they’re the ones who probably needed our help the most.
The crib girls worked out of tiny, falling-down shacks close to the river. There were about thirty of them in a line, no proper numbers, just the girl’s name written on the door. They paraded at their windows in dresses cut down to show off what they had or stood in the doorway flashing their legs, calling out to any man who walked or stumbled by.
One of them was Maggie O’Malley. She called herself Maggie Martin so as not to embarrass her family, but everyone in Wallace knew her and her family so I couldn’t see how changing her name made any difference to anyone. When I got to know more about how those things worked, I realized that the crib girls as well as the fancy boarders who worked the parlor houses and the women who ran them all changed their names, sometimes two or three or four times. They did it to hide from the law, from jealous lovers, or from their family back in Iowa or Pennsylvania who thought they were married or had an everyday respectable job.
Maggie was the first crib girl I met face to face.
“Times might be bad but they ain’t this bad!” is how she greeted me at the door.
I felt my face go hot. I shook my head and pushed the cards at her.
“What? Oh yeah, sorry, I thought you . . . I . . . Hell, it don’t matter none.”
“Go on dolly girl, trim his little ol’ wick!” shouted a rawboned harridan from the next crib.
A big Negress in the crib on the other side shook a red handkerchief at us.
Heads began to pop out from the other crib windows. When they saw what was going on they started to call out, laugh and yell. The din was something terrible. Maggie ignored them.
“Say, you’re that there little Jewboy I heard tell about. Sure you are, honey. Howdy. Say these cards is real nice. Real nice.”
She couldn’t have belonged to the same family as Tim and Tom. Dark hair, big brown eyes that went up at the corners, and a creamy complexion under the rouge and powder. A gentle turn to her mouth and a sweet smile full of bone-white teeth. She was no more than 16 years old, maybe less and, of course, she was a whore.
“Maybe he wants a suck at yer tittie!”
“She ain’t got none to suck!”
“Come on over here little man, I’ll hold it for you!”
“Ya sure can write pretty. Shut the hel
l up you dumb-ass whores! Where’d they learn ya this at? Ya can’t talk, can ya? Poor little thing. Being a Jew, too. Guess how some people just gets all the hard luck that’s going spare. Ain’t that just the shitass side of things though? You should excuse my French.”
“Cradle stealin bitch!”
“Grab it, pinch it off . . . !”
“Pox-faced toad suckers! Don’t just stand there with your mouth catchin at the flies, honey. Come on in. Come on, I ain’t going to bite you. Not less you want me to!”
I definitely didn’t want her to bite me and I didn’t want to go into her shack either, not after what Benny told me went on there. But at that moment it was a whole lot better than standing in the road being screamed at full in the face by the entire row of crazy, screeching crib girls.
A big iron bed covered in a faded pink comforter filled up most of her room. There was also a table, two straight-backed chairs, and a small stove. A vase with paper flowers stood on the table and the walls were covered with pasted-up pictures of those Gibson Girls, looking coolly Eastern, fashionable and out of their element. Leading out the back was a doorway hung with a thin curtain. Everything was neat and clean. I hadn’t expected that after what I’d heard about the cribs.
“Sit, honey. Come on, sit down there.”
I sat on one of the chairs. She flopped on the bed, bouncing herself gently up and down as she talked.
“Someone sure did put a squeeze on your poor little neck, honey. A real shame for cryin that is.”
She bounced a few more times, watching her feet scissor past each other.
