Clay Hand

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  It seemed to take him an eternity to reach them. The only sound now was an occasional crackling, like the snapping of twigs, in the walls around them. Phil rubbed his eyes. For an instant he could see the sheriff, the light of the unguided torch playing over his sweating face. Phil directed the light on the box. He saw the lid of it open before his eyes bleared again.

  In a moment, Fields straightened up and caught his arm. He led Phil into the open as though he were a blind man. They lay on the ground a moment, choking and retching. Behind them, the smoke billowed out of the opening. Fields got up, wiped his eyes, and looked around.

  “Where’s the other entry, McGovern?”

  Phil pointed in its direction. There was no sign of smoke from that end of the valley. The two men hurried to the mouth there. A thin film of dust wafted from it, no thicker than the rays of a winter sun. Even as they watched, it thickened a little, but not to near the intensity of the flow from the entry they had just left.

  “Take the car and go for Lempke,” Fields said. “Tell him to bring masks. I don’t think that was more than a local blast, but I’m willing to bet right now it wiped out any information we might of wanted from down there.”

  Chapter 27

  “IT’S LIKE A BLOODY octopus, that’s what it is, with its catacombs waiting to suck a man in.”

  “Shut up, Billy, and take your drink. You’ve got my flesh creeping.”

  Phil stood at the bar with Nichols, listening to the complaining men in the back of the room. He was tolerated now—ignored or tolerated, sharing at least one misery with them, the waiting.

  The force of the explosion had not been sufficient to carry into the present diggings, but word of it soon passed through the town. For several hours, subsequent explosions were awaited, but they had not come. The danger of cave-in handicapped the exploration, and now as the evening wore on, the men drifted back to McNamara’s to await the outcome and word as to whether they would be expected to go down in the morning.

  The playing cards lay in a pile on the table, around which sat a dozen men, their taste for the game dulled. Phil knew some of them by name now—Billy Riordon, the O’Halloran brothers, Tom Cavanaugh—and the rest by face.

  Cavanaugh got up and rubbed his hands down his buttocks. “I’m getting carbuncles on my backside with the sitting,” he groaned.

  “They’ll match the pair on your knees from the crawling then.”

  “Aye, but the devil a mouth of food they’ll earn me. How long do you think Lavery’ll carry us? And the contract negotiations coming up in June and us maybe going out then with a reason. I say the hell with all superstitions. When your time in this world is up, it’s up and there’s an end to it.” He blew his nose a honking blast.

  “Will you listen to the one was turning blue and green going down this morning? He’s the brave one with a glass in his hand. Tell me, Tom, what’ll you do in the morning if they order us in?”

  “Aw stick it, will you, Billy? The morning’s a ways off yet.”

  “There’s a bad sign when a woman’s been in the mines. As long as she’s around living….”

  “Can it!”

  Billy humped over his glass of beer, measuring the amount left, Phil thought.

  “They’re on edge, McGovern,” Nichols said.

  Phil lit a cigaret. “They’ve got reason. I won’t ever forget the feeling in that tunnel.”

  “Where’s the sheriff?”

  “Still out there. They’ve got him in a hell of a spot.”

  “There’s no gas in the mine, they tell us,” Billy keened over his empty glass. “Do you remember them telling us that in 1938, was it? They’re as pure as the mountain air. And sure the graveyard’s swimming with the pieces.” His voice rose like an evangelist’s. “Their souls were exploded to heaven.”

  “Shut your gab for the love of heaven, man,” McNamara shouted.

  “Then set me a drink on the book.”

  “If you drained the barrel it wouldn’t improve your disposition. Sit there a while and count your blessings.”

  “I can count them for you on this hand!” Riordon shouted. He waved the hand at McNamara on which three fingers were missing.

  A cold chill ran over Phil. “Give him a drink,” he said through his teeth. He remembered the dancing little man of just two days before, when they voted a return to work. The dancing feet were still now, or shuffling, one foot on the other beneath the table.

  “They’ve had enough charity from strangers,” someone said, coming up to the bar from behind him. In the mirror he saw the bloated face of Jerry Whelan, and even as he spoke, he gave off the foul smell of stale liquor. “I’ll buy a round,” the taxi man said. “Set us up eight of them.”

  McNamara’s eyes were on him like the tongues of snakes. “You’d be better buying a bottle of milk for the kids.”

  The reprimand rolled off Whelan like sweat. “That’s no way to talk to a customer, Mac.” He laid a dirty dollar bill on the bar. “Put them there on a tray, and I’ll save you the trouble of carting them.”

  One by one the beaded glasses were drawn. Whelan rocked back and forth, waiting. He winked at Phil in the mirror. McNamara picked up the bill, and brought back twenty cents.

  “Aw now, Mac. You’ve been charging the boys a nickel since their trouble. You’ve no reason to take advantage of my generosity.”

  “To hell with your generosity. My price is a dime.”

  Whelan shrugged and ambled back to the table with the tray.

  “If I knew of a whorehouse in Winston,” McNamara said under his breath, “I’d swear to God he was their pimp.”

  True to the barkeep’s prediction, Riordon drained his glass and began a litany of the disasters that had overtaken the Number Three mine. The men settled morosely beside him, and he wove his tale as an old woman would croon a lullaby to the one grandchild left her…the heroes and the cowards, and the giants laid low…the wailing of women and the cry of children at the smoke-scarred tipples. Other men drifted in from the gathering murk of a Winston twilight, some pausing at the bar, and some roaming back to listen, as the crying voice of the maimed miner droned on. Phil and Nichols stood, as though the power to leave had been taken from them, and behind the bar McNamara wiped his sweating face on his apron. Whelan sat beside Riordon, weeping a drunken flow of tears.

  Finally McNamara brought his fist down on the bar with a blow that toppled the glasses set there. The men looked up at him as though startled out of a dream. “You’ll go home to your supper now, Billy Riordon,” he said quietly. “We’ve had enough of your keening.”

  Riordon looked at him stupidly. Cavanaugh got up. “Mac’s right, Billy. You’ve the magic spell on your tongue when you’re wound up.”

  “Aye,” someone added. “There’s the spell of magic on all of us. We can’t work and we can’t be idle. They’ve made us as leave trust the strangers as the men giving us work.”

  “You’re right, Gabby,” Whelan shouted, clambering to his feet. “The curse of hell on all foreigners in Winston.”

  “And on them that give them shelter!” Riordon added.

  McNamara went to the end of the bar and took off his apron. “You stupid gobbeens,” he shouted, waving his hand. “There’s a country laying in two parts over there, and some of us banished from it forever because the ignorant likes of you took it over. You listen to the mouth nearest your ear and go wild at its bidding. Go home and listen to your children crying. There’s no superstition in that!”

  “Will you look at the hackle rise on the man?”

  “He’s a tender spot, you see, and we put our finger in it.”

  “The tender old lady, the dear widow of Og…”

  Phil lost track of the baiting voices, for the men had bunched around McNamara, jostling one another in the first sport they had that day. Beside him Nichols swore out loud.

  “The one wouldn’t throw him a kiss unless she was chewing tobacco…”

  “Mac, I’ve an idea!” s
omeone shouted. “Why don’t you ask her to marry you? She’s got a pump in her kitchen, man. You heard what the old man of magic said at the hearing. She’s been waiting by it all these years to be turned from an old toad into Queen Maeve.”

  “Aye, Mac! Speak up! You’ll go blind with the gold of her hair!”

  “And she’ll sing to you, Mac! You’ll think it’s the nightingales calling…”

  “Or the harps of Tara!”

  “Oh, what a glorious transformation from an old bagpipe, and him only to say the word.” It was Whelan said that, wheeling around on Phil and spitting the words into his face.

  Phil tightened his fist, and Nichols caught his arm. “They’re waiting for that, you damned fool. They’ll make a shambles of you.”

  Whelan brushed the dripping sweat from the tip of his nose and threw back his head laughing. The laughter stopped abruptly as did the whorl of sounds in the barroom. McNamara had come round the bar, his eyes two slits of wrath. He caught the taxi man by the collar of his coat and lifted him off the ground. He set him down with a violence that brought the slobber to Whelan’s mouth.

  “You’re a trouble-maker, Jerry Whelan, and I’ve never been afraid of trouble in my life.” He dragged him to the door and pitched him into the street. He whirled around. “I’ll sweep the whole damn lot of youse out if you don’t go now of your own power.”

  He returned to the bar and put on his apron. One by one the men departed.

  “Can we buy a drink?” Nichols asked.

  McNamara shoved the bottle over to him without speaking, and then turned his back on them. He pulled a drawer open on the backbar, and for a second Phil saw a glint of steel, and in the sudden stillness, he heard the click of a cartridge chamber as the big Irishman checked the revolver.

  Phil downed his drink and went outdoors. The street lights flickered on while he was standing outside the tavern, and as he became used to the half-light, he saw the men standing in clusters, hunched and cold, but reluctant to move on to their dismal homes. Their wives would be grim-faced, their children wide-eyed, and there would be no talk or laughter in the house…an early bed to save on light bills, to quiet hunger, to still complaint.

  A few doors down the street, Whelan and Billy Riordon were peering in the window of the drugstore. Whelan gave a great shout: “Ho, boys! Come look who we found in the store here!”

  The men lurched across the street to join him. There were no more than a dozen of them, tired, resentful men, with the wind catching at the legs of their pants like a cur dog.

  “What would you say he’s buying? A blister maybe. Do you remember the blisters in the old country? And Lord, aren’t we the ones could blister a man if he was asking it? A blistered magician!”

  The words cut through Phil like a knife. He swung back into the tavern. “McNamara, they’re up the street here waiting for Clauson to come out. I think there’s trouble.”

  The big Irishman had his coat on in an instant. With Nichols and Phil he moved down the street. A burst of raucous laughter arose from the men gathered at the drugstore door, and they knew Clauson had come out. McNamara peeled the men off one by one and reached the old magician.

  A sullen quiet settled over the group, and Clauson looked from one face to another in terror. He did not know foe from friend, and certainly he expected McNamara to be the last one to befriend him.

  “Go on, you stinking cowards,” McNamara shouted. “One of youse lay a hand on him and I’ll blow you into the next county.”

  Phil caught a glimmer of the revolver in his hand. The men fell further away from him. McNamara pocketed the gun, and took Clauson by the arm. “We’ll find the sheriff and you can make charges against this bunch of heroes.”

  Clauson withdrew his arm. “I have no charges.”

  “Make them, for God’s sake, man. They’ll take you for a coward if you don’t. They’ll be back at your throat when there’s no gun at their bellies.”

  “Why should I charge them? Are they less afraid than I am? I will go home, and they will go home.”

  “I’ll walk you out there, Mr. Clauson,” Phil said.

  McNamara shook his head. He whirled around on the sullen men standing there, most of them not knowing what they might have done. “All right, you heard the man! Go home to your suppers. What you need is the fear of God put in you when you start acting up like this.”

  “What they need is peace,” Clauson said, following Phil as he elbowed a way through ahead of him.

  “We’ll be a long time forgetting this, Mac,” someone said.

  “Use your head, man. You’d be a longer time forgetting it, if I hadn’t come out. How do you think you’d feel in the morning if you’d laid your hands on an old man?” He started for the tavern and then turned back on them. “Come round peaceable after your suppers and I’ll stand you a beer or two.”

  Nichols went into the tavern with him, and Phil walked with the magician through the dim streets.

  “All I wanted was a bottle of alcohol,” the old man said, as though he could not understand it at all. He repeated the sentence several times before they reached his house.

  There, the sheriff’s car was parked in the driveway, and they could see Fields and Rebecca talking in the living room. Phil asked the old man where Glasgow was as they went up the steps.

  “Working, I suppose. He has been gone since early morning. I wish that he would not return.”

  Phil told the sheriff what had happened. Once more Clauson repeated: “And all I wanted was a bottle of alcohol.” He sat down wearily.

  “By the sheriff’s calculations, you should have quite a supply of it, Papa,” Rebecca said.

  The old man looked at her, not understanding, and then away at nothing in particular. He was almost beyond caring, either, Phil thought.

  Fields took his hat from the table. “I’d stay away from town except in the daytime, Mr. Clauson. I’m going to round up as many deputies as I can. But with the mine the way it is now, I can’t even be sure of them not turning on me.”

  Phil rode back to town with him. “We won’t know anything out there till morning,” Fields said. “It’s slow business. Who started the fracas in town?”

  “It started in the tavern. Jerry Whelan in a way. He bought a round of beer. Then they started to rib McNamara about the widow and he threw Whelan out.”

  “He’s a bad actor, that one,” Fields said. “He’s always around when there’s trouble. He thrives on it.”

  “Could he be in the pay of someone?”

  Fields slowed down to cross the tracks. “I don’t know. Before this explosion I might of thought so. But this business puts our trouble in the big leagues, and Jerry Whelan don’t belong there.”

  Chapter 28

  BY SEVEN O’CLOCK THE men were drifting back on the town again. The pianist without any music in his fingers came into McNamara’s and sat down at the piano. The card game picked up. One after another the roisterers of the afternoon returned, sheepishly passing the bar. McNamara grinned at them as though nothing had happened, but his small keen eyes measured every face for the mischief in it.

  At the bar, Phil played blackjack with Nichols for an hour. He called a tune now and then for the pianist. Nichols and McNamara exchanged bawdy jokes, some of the men shuffling up to listen occasionally. Finally Phil pulled himself up. He did not want to drink. He did not want to sleep. He did not want to wait. But they were all waiting. At the house, the widow and Margaret were waiting, too.

  He put on his coat and nodded to Nichols and McNamara. The street was the lonely captor of the wind, a scavenger down its length that flung its find of debris against the darkened store windows. He walked on to Lavery’s, reluctant still to turn up to the widow’s house. At the railway station, he saw two men parading the length of the platform and back, their breath showing in the cold damp of night. Deputies, probably. He walked on, remembering the old man as he walked through the mobsters… “what they need is peace…” and Rebecca Glasg
ow that morning weeping, and who would be glad to see her husband hang…

  He was moving along the road toward the magician’s house, where the light in the window beckoned him, a will-o’-the-wisp. How many times had Dick followed it—warmth and a gentle word in Winston. How much greater his need, perhaps.

  Two more men were pacing the road in front of Clauson’s driveway. He saw them first as shadows in the pale moonlight, as they must also have seen him. One of them flashed a light on him, and turned it out, recognizing him. They turned from him without speaking, and he walked up the drive.

  Abreast of the house, he saw three people inside. Glasgow was home. The old man was in his chair, the shawl about his shoulders. While Phil moved closer, Glasgow went to the stairs and up them. After a moment, and a muffled sound as though he might have called her, Rebecca rose from the chair where she had been sitting opposite her father and laid a book on the table. She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand as she left him, the magician not looking up until she was gone. He sat for a long time, his eyes beyond the open book. His shoulders began to quiver then, and soon he raised his hand to brush each cheek beneath his eyes. Phil turned away from the sight of an old man weeping, and returned to the town.

  Even from Lavery’s corner he could hear the piano at the tavern. Across the town, at the Sunnyside, no doubt the juke box was yielding what it had of music—there Slavic dances, the schottische instead of the jig.

  The storekeeper was locking up, padlocking the door from the outside. When Phil called a greeting to him, he called back: “Are you going up home?”

  “Yes,” he said, although the words put him in mind of the song of the night before. He felt far from home, indeed.

  “I’ve a kitten here for the old lady. Take it up under your coat.” He went back into the store and returned in a moment with the small animal. “Mind you tell her to put butter on its paws the minute you get in the house. I don’t want it back here in the morning.”

  The kitten nestled against him, and before he was halfway up the hill he could feel the vibration of its contented purring against him. He slowed his pace to enjoy it—warmth, trust—things as fragile as the animal that gave them to him. “It will take you a while to become a mouser,” he said aloud. “It takes all of us a while.”