Dan Simmons - Black Hills

— I see you helped your own fucking self to most of it. Some fucking gift, Tonto.

Paha Sapa blinks at the subtlety of the insult. There’s a sidekick Indian character named Tonto on a new cowboy radio drama that premiered on a Detroit radio station, WXYZ, the previous February. WXYZ is powerful enough that frequently, when the atmospherics are right, listeners with good sets or an understanding of the ionosphere can pick it up out here in the Hills. Paha Sapa has actually heard the station—and that cowboy show with the great opening music—on the earphones he had added to the little crystal set that Robert built the summer before he went into the Army, twenty years ago.

Paha Sapa smiles slightly and looks around the garbage heap of a room. The sheets on Mune’s unmade bed, once white, are mostly a caked yellow now.

— Tonto? Cute, Mune. I don’t see your radio, though. How have you been listening to The Lone Ranger ?

Mune lets out a boozy breath and drops into his chair at the table. The chair groans but does not quite collapse.

— What the fuck’s the Lone Ranger? Tonto means “stupid” in Spanish, Tonto.

Well, so much for subtlety.

Mune is a dimwit but was a decent winch man the few weeks he worked at Mount Rushmore. But he is a drunkard as well as a dimwit—and a drunken Mune, it turns out, is invariably a mean Mune—and although Mr. Borglum tends to look the other way when men come to work hungover on Saturdays or even Mondays, he will not abide any drinking on the job or someone like Mune Mercer, who came in hungover every day of the week. Out on the cliff face, men’s lives depend upon the sobriety and sound judgment of the other men—especially winch men—and Mune was hungover, red-eyed, and surly until ten or eleven every morning.

When he wasn’t drunk, Mune was mostly a gentle dimwit giant, and the other workers tried to cover for him—for a while—but when Mr. Borglum, who’d been traveling, finally saw the truth of the matter, he fired Mune’s huge butt the same day.

So Mune had been both surprised and suspicious a week earlier when Paha Sapa came to him with the offer of a truly spectacular fifty dollars in exchange for some night work at the Monument.

Mune, mouth open and beady little eyes squinting under his derby, had cocked his giant thumb of a head to one side to show his cynicism.

— Night work? Whaddya talking about, ’breed? There ain’t no night work on Rushmore ’cause there ain’t no lights for it, so there’s no fucking night work.

— There will be a week from now, Mune—on the weekend before the president arrives on Sunday the thirtieth. You have heard the rumors about FDR coming up to the mountain, haven’t you?

— No.

One of the nice things about Mune Mercer is that he is never defensive or apologetic about his ignorance, which is vast.

Paha Sapa smiled then, a week ago this very night, and presented Mune with a full bottle of cheap whiskey, and said—

— Well, it seems sure now that the president is coming, on Sunday the thirtieth, Mune, and there’s going to be a big celebration and unveiling of the Jefferson head and Mr. Borglum wants me and you to do some night work so we can prepare a surprise he has in store for the president and for all the VIPs. And, for whatever reason, he wants this to be a surprise even for the rest of the guys working on the hill. And because we have to work alone and at night—but Mr. Borglum says it’ll be almost a full moon that Saturday night—he’s willing to pay us each fifty dollars.

Mune squinted his suspicion then, just as he is doing now. Fifty dollars is a fortune.

— Why would Mr. Borglum want me, Mr. Billy Half-breed? He fired me, remember? Right in front of all the fellows. Is he hiring me back for good?

Paha Sapa shook his head.

— No, Mune. Mr. Borglum still doesn’t want a drunk on the payroll. But, like I said, he wants this to be a surprise for all the other workers and their wives, as well as for President Roosevelt and Senator Norbeck and the governor and the rest of the high muckety-mucks down below in the reviewing stand. It’s a onetime deal, Mune… but it’s fifty dollars.

Mune looked more ridiculous than usual that night as he squinted beneath his derby and above his cold cigar stump until his thin slits of eyes disappeared (as they are starting to now) in folds of lashless fat.

— Show me the money.

Paha Sapa brought out a wad of money, almost a year’s savings for him, and pulled fifty dollars from the roll.

— What’s so secret that Mr. Borglum would pay me an’ a half-breed to set it up at night? He going to blow up his own fucking heads or something?

Paha Sapa laughed politely at that, but his skin grew cold and clammy.

— It’ll be a sort of fireworks display. I guess there will be newsreel cameras there and Mr. Borglum wants to surprise everyone with a real spectacle.

— You sayin’ that that nigger lover Roosevelt is coming at night?

— No. Sometime in late morning, I think. While the shadows on the faces are still good.

— A fireworks show in the middle of the day. That don’t make no fucking sense.

Paha Sapa shrugged, obviously as amused by the Old Man’s whims and eccentricities as Mune was.

— It’s a fireworks show with quite a bit of dynamite behind it, Mune. I guess it’s going to be in the form of a twenty-one-gun salute to the president… you know, like the military gives him when the band plays “Hail to the Chief ”?… but with little blasts the whole length of the Monument, moving some of the stone that we’re gonna have to move anyway but making it sound like like a formal cannon salute. Anyway, Mr. Borglum said I could hire you for this one night only, partially because you’re not in touch with many people and won’t blab, but I have other men I can hire if you don’t want to do it. It’s fifty dollars, Mune.

— Gimme my fifty now. In, you know, advance.

Paha Sapa gave him only five one-dollar bills, knowing that Mune would spend it on booze in the first two days and be relatively sober by the time he, Paha Sapa, needed him the next weekend.

MUNE DRINKS FROM THE BOTTLE of the fifth, not offering to clean a glass to give Paha Sapa any. Seeing the state of the two glasses in the sink, Paha Sapa is glad there is no offer to share.

— I need another ten bucks.

Paha Sapa shakes his head.

— Look, Mune. You know Mr. Borglum won’t pay you the rest until the job’s done tomorrow night. I’m working with Jack Payne all day tomorrow on the drilling in preparation for this surprise… and since Jack already knows that something’s up, I might as well give the night work to him and pay him the fifty bucks… or I should say the forty-five that’s left. I know he’ll show up sober tomorrow night.

— Palooka? Fuck him. You and the old man offered this job to me, you fucking sack of half-breed shit. Try to Jew me out of it and…

Mune tries to raise his bulk out of the chair but Paha Sapa stands and easily pushes him back down. The moonshine is powerful stuff and Mune has probably been hitting it since Tuesday.

— Then sober up tomorrow—I’m serious about that. If you’re drunk or even seriously hungover when I come to fetch you tomorrow night, Mr. Borglum has ordered me to go get Payne or someone else. I mean it, Mune. Be stone sober tomorrow night or this fifty bucks goes to someone else.