Ivan Doig - Work Song

Relieved, I took to my chair while Sandison squashed into his. “All right, just between us, I helped myself to old Cartwright’s work where it seemed to fit.”

I could not resist: “Rustled it, might one say?”

Another gusty sigh. “That’s fair, I suppose. Who the hell ever knows what you end up doing in this life?” He rested his folded hands on his belly. “Anyhow, Dora touched up the tune a little,” he blandly shared the credit and guilt. “She’s musical, you know.”

“How did you know about the songwriting sessions?”

“Hah. Don’t you savvy anything yet about running an outfit? First rule is to keep track of what’s going on in the bunkhouse.”

“You sided with the union.”

He brushed away virtue, redemption, whatever it was, with a rough hand. “Anybody who puts a hornet up Anaconda’s nose, I’m with.”

“If I may say so, Sandy, you’ve given the miners one of those anthems authored into the mind beyond forgetting.”

“They’ll need it, won’t they.”

For a minute we sat in silence, in tribute to the workers’ battle ahead for a fair share of the yield of the Hill. Sandison stirred before I could. Gruff as a grindstone, at least trying to be, he appraised me. “You didn’t come by just to say nighty-night. Am I going to see that milk face of yours from now on?”

“I fear you won’t, Sandy. I have another chore to tend to, and the library is best left out of it.” Goodbye was not easy to say, no matter how I tried to dress it. “I must draw my wages and-what is the ranch phrase?-ride the grub line for a while.”

Sandison frowned sadly and reached for the cashbox. “Now I’ll have to hire a pack of flunkies to do whatever you’ve been doing.”

We both stood, and shook hands the way people do when they know it is for the last time. “One good thing about you, Morgan,” he looked down his beard at me. “You don’t stick around long enough for a person to get sick of you.”

FOR THE NEXT MATTER I needed the satchel, which I had brought with me and stowed in the sorting room. A full moon carpeted the library steps with silver as I departed the citadel of books, and there was a promise of frost in the air. Butte slept as much as it ever does. The main activity in the downtown streets was out front of the Daily Post building, where the night janitor was dismantling the scoreboard, and I tipped my hat to it as I strode by. Like everything else, baseball was over with the passing of its season.

A few blocks farther on, I turned in at the well-lit cigar store. The regulars telling stories at the counter fell silent and met me with stares, all except the messenger, Skinner, who jerked his head toward the back room.

When we were alone there, Skinner jittered from one foot to the other in agitation. “How’d you know?” he asked sourly. “The World Series stinks. The Sox should of won.”

“Rightly or wrongly, Cincinnati did,” I chided. With the kindness that can be afforded from picking a winner, I elaborated: “Use your noggin. If you were any of the White Sox being paid Maxwell Street wages, would you play your heart out for Cheap Charlie Comiskey?”

“It beats me,” he surrendered, and got down to business. “Like I told you, we had to lay your bet off with the big-city boys to cover it. The bookies back east in Chicago ain’t happy with this, but we pay off honest in Butte.”

“I was counting on that.” I opened the satchel. Sorrowfully, Skinner began dumping in the bundles of cash.

GRACE WAS WAITING UP.

“I heard.” Apronless there in the dining room, she nonetheless appeared to be laboring over something. She tried a smile that she couldn’t make stick. “Hoop and Griff came home to spruce up before they spend the night celebrating in a speakeasy. They went out of here singing the thing at the top of their lungs.”

“The union has its work song,” I concurred, “and its work cut out for it, as always.” I halted near one end of the dining table as she had stopped at the other. From her eyes, I could tell that a question was tugging hard at her. “What is it, Grace? You seem on edge.”

The catch in her breath audible, she made a flustered motion in my direction. “I wasn’t sure you would be back. I don’t know why, I just had a feeling-I peeked in your room and saw your satchel was gone.”

“I needed it for an errand.” Setting the satchel on the table, I opened it as wide as it would go. “Come and see.”

Bringing her quizzical expression, she looked inside, and looked again.

“Morrie,” she gasped, “did you hold up a bank?”

“Not at all. An honest wager on a sporting event paid off.”

Before she could tell me again what she thought of betting, I hastened to add: “It was very nearly a sure thing.” Still, it seemed only fair to give myself a bit of credit. “Although perhaps not everyone would have recognized it as the kind of chance that comes along only once in a lifetime.” History soon enough confirmed me in that, as several White Sox players were found to have been bribed and made miscues that let the Red Stockings win. So much for the 1919 Anklet Series.

Unable to resist, Grace peeked into the satchel for the third time. “There’s an absolute fortune in there!”

“Mmm, an adequate fortune, I’d call it.”

“I’m still in the dark.” She gestured helplessly at the trove on the table. “To win this much, didn’t you have to put up a whopping stake? Where did you get that?”

Her eyes widened with every word as I told her.

“YOU”-she had trouble finding her voice-“you bet the library books? ”

“Sandison’s, let us say.” I explained that the inventory with the accompanying assessment made a highly impressive asset, and Butte bookies had seen stranger things put up as a stake. “They don’t ask too many questions.”

Grace still fumbled for adequate words.

“But-then-what if you had lost?”

“Ah, that. Sandison would have told the gamblers in no uncertain terms the books belonged to him and not some minor functionary of the library, I felt quite certain.”

With an incredulous laugh Grace sank into a chair at the table and sat looking up at me as if I had grown wings. “You’re rich. How does that feel?”

“Better than most other choices,” honesty compelled me to say. I gestured to the satchel. “There’s enough to go around. Take what’s needed to put the boardinghouse on easy street, why don’t you. And the union strike fund will get a share. So will a certain pair of young lovers, as a wedding gift. Then another sum for them to help Russian Famine along in life and keep the copper collar off him.” I knew myself well enough to admit: “As for the rest, I’ll see how fast it wrinkles.”

I paused. The time had come. Sitting down across from Grace, I reached over and took her hand, patting it as she so recently had caressed mine before I set forth with Sam Sandison to Section 37. “There is a complicating circumstance, unhappily.” If I knew anything in this world, it was that the Chicago gambling mob was going to be angrily curious about the major betting loss in some outpost of the Rockies. So it had to be said, and pats of the hand did not really soften it: “I must move on.”

A goodbye to a good woman costs a piece of the soul, and having already paid once when I departed from Rose in that earlier time, not much was left in me after I spoke this one. The old feeling of leaving love behind came back like a terrible ache; pernicious bachelorhood was no joking matter. With regret I watched Grace’s face, so near and yet so far, for the effect of my news. I hoped she was not going to cry, because that affliction is catching. But there was a glisten as her eyes met mine. Her chin came up an inch in the Butte way, and I was bracing myself for a landlady-like farewell when she uttered instead: