Ivan Doig - Work Song

“YOU LOOK SUNNY THIS MORNING,” Grace observed.

As I sat down to breakfast that next day, it was all I could do not to reach over and pat her on the dimpled cheek in celebration of our mutual survival. “A sound night’s sleep does wonders,” I restricted myself to. She herself looked refreshed by something, taking time off from the kitchen to sit and sip coffee until Hoop and Griff appeared. I still was only a boarder and she still was the landlady, but when Grace wasn’t having to doctor herself against her own nerves, she also was a very attractive companion at the table. Right now, with her freshly braided hair a coil of gold, she resembled the sunshiny maiden on the lid of tinned shortbread. The sovereign maiden in charge of all such tinned goods, that is. While I was in the midst of such thoughts, she gave me, in the words of the poet, a brightening glance, and I smiled gamely back. Maybe this was only a mild degree of thaw between us, but it improved the climate. She watched me expectantly as I settled into eating. “Well, have you noticed?”

Whatever it was, it hadn’t caught my attention yet; certainly the cold toast was the same as ever.

“The house, Morrie,” she prompted, “the house!”

“Ah.” I scanned around. “New curtains?”

“All right, you,” she said in mock exasperation-at least I hoped it was mock. “There hasn’t been any dynamiting for days and days, has there?” She knocked on wood, but her smile was triumphant. “I was curious,” she continued in a confiding tone, “so I had Arthur’s old partner in the mines look into it for me. And guess what? The shaft under here is played out and Anaconda has had to seal it off. You can quit worrying about sleeping in a glory hole,” she teased.

Little did she know that the Chicago watery version had just passed me by. “Grace, that’s nice news,” I could say unreservedly. “Butte would not be the same without the Faraday Boarding House.”

Bouncing up when she heard Hoop and Griff on the stairs, she went off to fry their breakfast.

The two of them came in grinning, grinned at each other, then grinned at me some more as they sat at the table.

“We been thinking,” said Hoop as if it was something new.

“You’ve got yourself a lulu of a problem, slipping a couple hundred people into the library the night the song gets voted on,” Griff said as if that fact might have escaped me.

“Wouldn’t be the first time the cops broke up a meeting and arrested everybody in sight,” Hoop went on, tucking in his napkin.

“Righto,” Griff confirmed, spooning sugar into his coffee. “So we figure what you need, Morrie, is an eisteddfod.”

I did not want to say that something pronounced eye-steth-vod stumped me as much as if he had been speaking mumbo-jumbo. But it did.

“Perhaps you could elaborate on that just a bit, Griff.”

“Glad to. Like everybody knows, an eisteddfod is when the finest singers and the greatest bards in Wales gather from the hills and the valleys and every mine pit from Caernarvon to Caerphilly”-he swept a knobby hand around like an impresario-“and try to outdo one another.”

“Kind of a jollification,” Hoop put in. “Like Miners Day that just don’t stop.”

With that, my tablemates sat back and slurped coffee, magnanimously ready for all due praise.

“I see,” I coughed out. “Actually, I don’t. The Welsh miners are the only ones who would have any idea what an eye-eisteddfod is, and they’re just a handful among the song bunch. Everyone else-?” I spread my hands.

Griff squinted at me. “You’re a little slow on the uptake today, Morrie. Everyone else outside of the song bunch, after we clue those in.”

“Nobody is gonna go near the thing,” Hoop expanded on that, “who don’t know the lingo.”

Thinking back to the Welsh minister and the tongue-tying eternity of tragwyddoldeb, I couldn’t argue with that.

Somewhat against my better judgment, I tested the matter out loud.

“Such as the public at large and the police, you mean.” Both wrinkled heads bobbed at my response, gratified that I was catching up. My tablemates now took turns expanding on why an indecipherable event that would unobtrusively slip a couple of hundred people into the basement of the Butte Public Library was such a surefire idea.

Grace came from the kitchen with a plate in each hand, stopping short at Griff’s grand culmination:

“Hoop and me can handle the whole proceedings for you, don’t worry none.”

I had not really started to, until he said that.

IT WAS LIKE TRYING to rein in runaway horses, but I managed to make the pair promise to contain their eisteddfod enthusiasm until I could test the notion on Jared. Meanwhile, I was late and had to bolt for the library. People were out and about in unusual numbers, I couldn’t help but notice, all heading down toward the railroad tracks where a sizable crowd had already gathered. I presumed another political figure was arriving to make a speech off the back of a train; but President Wilson himself would not be a shield against Sandison’s displeasure if I weren’t in the head count of staff before he opened the library.

Too late. When I got there, everyone had gone in but Rab, who was practically dancing with impatience as I hastened up the steps.

“Mr. Morgan, you came from that direction,” she spoke so fast it was nearly all one word, “did you see it?”

This was not my day, linguistically. “Do you suppose, Rab, you could take a deep breath and define it for me?”

She was as disappointed in me as Hooper and Griffith had been. “Oh, here.” Whisking over to a stack of newly delivered Daily Posts beside the doorway, she handed me one with fresh ink practically oozing from the EXTRA! atop the front page.

Beneath that, the even larger headline:

OUTSIDE AGITATORS WARNED

And below that, a jolting photograph of the railroad overpass where the IWW organizer had been lynched a few years before. From the middle of the trestle girders dangled a hangman’s noose. Attached to the rope was a sign readable even in the grainy newsprint reproduction:

THE MONTANA NECKTIE

YOU ONLY WEAR IT ONCE

WOBS AND OTHER TROUBLEMAKERS-

LEAVE TOWN BEFORE THIS FITS YOU

Digesting this, I had mixed reactions. Plainly the goons, stymied about me after Chicago was no help, had broadened their approach to include any other strangers in the vicinity of the Hill; when you are a target, I have to say, you do appreciate having that kind of attention shared around. On the other hand, a noose just down the street from where you lay your head at night is still too close for comfort.

“Jared says the police are taking their sweet time about removing it,” Rab confided over my shoulder, again as fast as words could follow one another, “so Anaconda gets to scare everybody.”

“We have to let Jared handle that,” I stated, “while we have to get inside and handle books or face the wrath of our employer.”

Her mischievous laugh surprised me. “We wouldn’t want that, heaven knows.”

DISPATCHING RAB TO TAKE OUT her ardor on the book collection, I had to tend to a few office matters before joining her. If I was in luck, Sandison would be out on one of his prowls of the building. But, no. There he sat, stormy as thunder. Before I could utter any excuse for being late, he flapped the Post’s front page at me. “Did you see this damn thing?”

“By this hour of the day, I believe everyone in the city has seen either the newspaper or the actual piece of rope, Sandy.”

“This town,” he said in a tone that it hurt to hear. “It just can’t resist having dirty laundry out in the open. Hell, anyone knows outsiders are asking for it, that’s where rope law comes from.” Saying that, he took another furious look at the front page photograph, his gaze so hot I thought the paper might singe.