Oakley Hall - Warlock

“They know a wage cut is coming tomorrow. I’m afraid they will do more than get drunk when they find it is to be a dollar a day.”

“Yes,” she said listlessly. She leaned forward to study his move.

“We may be very busy,” he said. “It is always sad when we are busy, isn’t it?” But he thought it would be angry this time.

“I hear them talking about the Miners’ Union again,” Jessie said. She jumped his checker and snatched it up, and looked up at him with her pale mouth bent into a smile and her eyes alight for an instant. But only for an instant.

“In the end they are going to have to have their union, Jessie,” he said. “They will have to have their union to get out from under the manipulations of a bunch of conniving speculators in San Francisco and New York. And maybe to get out from under — our charity just as much as that.”

“They hate charity, don’t they?” Jessie said, matter-of-factly.

He stared at her. She let the checker in her hand drop to the board. “I am tired of living like this,” she said, with infinite weariness. “What is there here for me?” He saw the sheen of dampness in her eyes. The little muscles at the corners of her lips flexed to form an ashamed smile. Then she whispered, “Do you ever feel you were made for something, David? Made to do something — oh, something fine! But not know—” She stopped and shook her head, and the ringlets danced.

“I think everyone feels that sometimes, Jessie.”

“Oh, no! Oh, I don’t think everyone does. Most of them just live along. But there are a few who can do — I suppose I mean be something. Something that can go on even after them. And shouldn’t those people be trying every moment to be that? I mean, God gave it to them to do or be, and if they didn’t try I should think they would be very afraid of God.”

“It is your move, Jessie,” he said.

She was leaning forward with her hand on the locket that hung at her throat, a vertical frown line creasing her forehead, and her eyes were far removed from him. She said, “How terrible for a person to know what he could have been. How he could have gone on. But instead having to live along being nothing, and know he is just going to die and that’s the end of it.”

She was talking about Blaisedell, and he did not know what to say to her. He removed the checker she had dropped upon the board. Her eyes turned toward the door again; Brunk appeared there, with his cap pulled low upon his forehead and one big hand grasping the door frame. He was grinning, and his face was flushed with liquor.

“Miss Jessie,” he said thickly. “And the good doctor Wagner. Good night.” He said it with a peculiar inflection.

“Oh, good night, Frank!” Jessie said.

“Good night, Brunk.”

“No,” Brunk said, with a solemn shake of his head. “I mean, it is a good night. Mostly, just before payday, it’s not. But this payday—” Brunk grinned again.

“Looking forward to it, are you?” the doctor said grimly.

“Am,” Brunk said. He glanced around with exaggerated caution. “Because you know what?” he whispered. “It is going to go down to three -fifty a day and they are not going to stand for it.” He raised a thick finger to his lips. “Oh, but I won’t tell them! Let them hear it from Mister Mac. Then they will bust!”

“And then we can try to patch the bloody heads they bring here.”

“Bloody heads to you, but men to me!” Brunk said proudly. “For some’ll have to get bloody heads so the others can hold theirs up. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.” He turned to Jessie. “Well, Miss Jessie, maybe Lathrop hadn’t courage enough. But I have. I have!” he said, and hit his fist upon his chest.

“That’s fine, Frank,” Jessie said, in a colorless voice. “But I wish you wouldn’t shout so.”

Brunk stared at Jessie and his face was at once shocked, hurt, and furious. “You don’t think I am good enough, do you, Miss Jessie?”

“Of course I do, Frank!”

“No, you don’t,” Brunk said. He glanced at the mezzotint of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the wall behind Jessie’s head, and his face twisted. “Because I am no gentleman ,” he said. “Because I am no — no long-haired, white-handed gunman. Oh, I know I am not good enough and it is only a bunch of dirty miners anyhow.”

The doctor thrust his chair back and rose. “You are drunk,” he said. “Get out of here, you drunken fool!”

“Not so drunken as her fair-haired boy-killer!” Brunk cried. “That is so drunk his high-rolling friend’s got to half carry him away from the French Pal—”

The doctor darted forward and slapped Brunk’s face. Brunk staggered a step back. The doctor slapped him again. “Get out of here!” he cried, in a voice that tore in his throat.

Brunk put his hand to his cheek. He turned slowly away. He moved toward the foot of the stairs, where he leaned against the newel post, a thick, dejected figure in the darkness of the entryway.

Jessie was sitting up very straight, her mouth tightly pursed in her stiff face, her eyes glancing sideways at the checkerboard as though she were considering her next move. Her hand plucked nervously at the locket at her throat.

There was a scuffling sound outside on the stoop, a low cursing. More drunken miners, the doctor thought; he was tired of drunken miners beyond patience. He stepped out toward them just as they came in through the door — two men who were not miners. Clay Blaisedell had come back to the General Peach.

Morgan edged his way inside with an arm around Blaisedell, who was hatless, sagging, stumbling — not wounded in brave battle, merely drunk to helplessness. Brunk had turned and was watching them.

“Come on, Clay boy,” Morgan was saying. “Sort those feet out. Almost home now — where you were bound to go.” He was panting, his white planter’s hat pushed back on his head. “Evening, Doc,” he said. Then Morgan said, “Evening, Miss Marlow,” and the doctor felt Jessie’s fingers grip his arm.

Blaisedell pulled away from Morgan and stood swaying, his boots set apart and his great, fair head hanging as he faced Jessie. Jessie moved a step forward to confront her drunken hero. He had thought she would be shocked and disgusted but she was smiling and looked, he thought, with a painful wrench at his heart, triumphant.

But she did not speak, and after a moment Blaisedell started for the stairs, holding himself very straight. He stopped at the foot, as though realizing his incapacity to mount them, and leaned upon the newel post as Brunk backed away.

Morgan said to Brunk, “You look like you have a strong back, Jack. How about a hand upstairs?”

“Let him lay in the gutter for all of me!” Brunk said. “One that would shoot down a sixteen-year-old boy in—”

“Don’t say that, bullprod!” Morgan said; his voice was like metal scratching metal. Blaisedell clumsily tried to turn, and Morgan caught his arm as he staggered.

“Help you either!” Brunk said. “That would kick a broken-arm fellow’s teeth in!” His voice rose hysterically. “High-rollers and road agents and murdering pimps and worse! Well, I am not afraid to talk out, and there’s things—”

“Stop it!” Morgan snapped, just as the doctor heard Jessie utter the same words, her fingers tightening on his arm again. Brunk stopped and looked from Morgan to Jessie with his tortured red face.

“I have been looking for coyotes howling that tune,” Morgan said, in the metallic voice. His eyes, glinting in the light from Jessie’s room, looked as cold as murder.

“You will have a lot of teeth to kick in then!” Brunk cried.

“I’ll know where to start!”