The Big Both Ways (43 page)

“You know, they fired me for cutting my fingers off.” She paused and looked around. “But they didn’t do a thing to that machine. It’s still working there if I’m not mistaken.” A few of the boys laughed out loud.

Slip was close enough now that he could see Ellie clearly without having to stand on his tiptoes or lean around the hulking kid who had blocked his way. Slip pulled the axe out slowly and kept it under his coat. He bumped a fat man standing next to him, but the man never turned his head.

His fingers turned white against the head of the axe. He looked at the battered woman he had come so far with.
Who am I kidding?
Slip thought to himself, letting the axe swing loosely at his side.
This is not my time to change
.

“I guess I’m going to jail,” Slip muttered, and the big man in front of him turned to give him a sour look.

“Then stay the hell away from me, buddy,” the big man said.

“I ain’t going to lie to you, boys,” Ellie continued. “I don’t really care if you go hungry tonight. I got my own troubles.”

Men started grumbling, looking around to see if this was the real speaker or some crank.

“You know what else? Nobody cares. Nobody cares if you get lung disease working up in that mine. Nobody cares if your kids die young from something that a rich kid just gets a couple of shots to fix. That gold is just a bunch of rocks without your labor, but you think they’re going to pay you enough to fix your teeth or feed your family if you get hurt? If you don’t know it yet boys … ain’t nobody cares about you, as long as they get their gold.”

“Who the hell are
you
, lady?” someone yelled.

Ellie snapped right back. “I’m just a lady who wants a good life. I want a man who doesn’t come home too tired to make babies at the end of the day.”

And a wild cry went round the crowd, some laughter, some booing.

“I want a good life for me and my man. I want something more than the promise that if we work hard we’ll get rich. That if we cough up our lungs down in a hole or change the diapers for rich women’s children, then we’ll get rich. ’Cause that’s a lie and you know it.

“We know that the only way anybody gets rich is by exploiting the hard work of people just like you.” Ellie pointed to an old man standing in the front of the crowd. “Hey, pop, you know anybody ever got rich working in a mine?” The old man shook his head and spit on the ground.

Ellie raised her voice so that the men in the back standing on their toes could hear. “Just look around, boys. You see anybody here who’s gonna get rich? You see any Rockefellers in the crowd today? Hell, you see anybody who’s going to make babies tonight?”

A couple of men elbowed each other and laughed. One guy pointed his own thumb at his chest. Ellie picked up on the gesture and looked straight at him.

“You aren’t going to make babies. Hell, you’ll be lucky to live through the week.”

Some boys were grumbling. The deputies were scowling and tapping their batons against their legs.

“I’ll tell you something else. You ain’t going to start a revolution neither. The union says you’ll get justice if you stick with them. Well, they’re sticking together, but nobody’s working, nobody’s getting any justice.”

Ellie pointed down to a dark-haired kid with a patched felt hat. “Did they ask you if they should go on strike?” Ellie yelled out to the crowd, “Are you going to share in the profits if they end up getting a raise? Hell, no. You just want a job so you won’t have an empty belly tonight. You just want to start work and maybe get a say in things. But the trade unions won’t feed your kids tonight.”

“You’re goddamn right!” the man next to Slip yelled.

“You think those union boys care a whit about you? They don’t. Truth is, all you boys are going to die broke. The union don’t care as long as they get their dues. Management don’t care as long as they get their gold, and the government don’t care as long as you stay quiet. So where’s that leave you sorry sons of bitches?” Ellie looked out at the crowd and they didn’t speak. They didn’t step forward and not one of them would look another in the eye.

Ellie stepped forward and took a breath, and then stopped. “The hell with it,” she said, and stepped down off the box.

Men started yelling insults. They had their fists pumping the air.

“Goddamn Red bastard,” screamed the man next to Slip. He started pushing the smaller men out of the way. Another called her a “management spy” and surged in behind the other, yelling, “I’ll show you where that leaves us.” Men were fighting their way over to Ellie, and they knocked her to the ground.

Slip walked forward and swung the axe toward the men surrounding Ellie. A man with a pick handle knocked the knees out from under Slip and the axe clattered out of his hand. The big man crouched over Ellie and swung away at her with roundhouse
punches. A couple of older men tried to pull her attackers off. Men were yelling and swearing, their mouths flecked with spit. People in the back of the crowd pushed forward to see what was going on. Someone in the back threw a rock into the crowd. A bottle arched over the street and exploded against a man’s skull, and a roar went up from the crowd.

And then, just as if a dam had given way, the mob became dislodged and surged up the street: a current of shabby men flowed up the avenue toward the Union Hall and the mine.

Tom Delaney ran out into the street and sapped down a big man beating Ellie. Others ran away and followed the charge to the hiring hall. Deputies jumped over men lying in the street, trying to stay ahead of the crowd. The men in the front of the crowd had their fists in the air. They jostled each other as they stormed up the street.

The scabs rounded the corner near the Union Hall and a wave of union boys with pick handles waded into the crowd. Sticks smacked against skulls and men fell limp to the ground; some tried to pick them up, and others stomped them with their boots. Firemen turned on hoses and tear gas canisters spun in the streets.

Three scabs had Slip on the ground and were kicking him while he curled and tried to roll away. Walter Tillman pushed his way out of the current of men heading up the street and pulled the men off. Slip stood up and ran, and he became indistinguishable from the other men running through the streets.

George Hanson pushed and punched his way through the crowd until he got to where Delaney was lifting Ellie Hobbes to her feet.

“I’m taking this woman into custody,” George yelled above the din.

Two Floodwater ops pushed toward George. Both of them were wearing heavy leather gloves. One punched him in the gut to double him over and the other caught him on the chin with a right
upper cut. George rolled on the street, then looked up for a moment and saw a dazzling field of blue diamonds. Then he went limp.

Tom Delaney grabbed Ellie by the infected stumps of her lost fingers. “What the hell was that?” Delaney hissed at her.

Ellie was doubled over in pain. She could not walk. Delaney shifted his grip and Ellie straightened up.

“I built a fire under them,” Ellie said, finally.

“All I know is I wouldn’t want to be you,” the Floodwater man said, jerking Ellie’s bad arm through the door of the bar.

“That’s a comfort to me, Tom,” Ellie said, as the red-faced detective led her into the back room where the supplies were kept.

Inside the dark room they could hear the shouts and splashes of men being hosed down, the sound of boots thumping the wooden sidewalks in both directions, men running toward the fight and men running away. Shouts and curses. Glass breaking. Tom pulled on the chain of the overhead light. Then he took out his revolver, pulled the hammer back, and put it to Ellie’s ear.

“You got to answer for what you did to Ben Avery,” Tom said.

“Go to hell,” Ellie spat out.

Delaney said, “I’m not saying that Ben didn’t screw things up. I never told him to go ahead and kill the union man, and now it’s fallen to me to clean all this up.” The barrel of the gun was quivering against the thin skin of Ellie’s scalp. “You were a good little bum, Ellie, but you’re dog meat now.”

“Least I’ve been some use in this sorry world.”

“You’re a cocky little cunt, aren’t you?”

“You can’t kill me.” Ellie was breathing hard, her wide eyes were darting around the room.

“Let’s just see about that,” he said, and picked up a bar towel. “Here,” he barked. “Wrap this around your head. It will be easier to clean up that way.”

George Hanson opened his eyes slowly. The din of the riot was a thin sizzle in his head. A crowd of men ran past him down the hill
with bandannas held to their faces, their eyes red and streaming tears. George rolled over and pushed himself up. There were no policemen on the street. The clattering in his head grew louder. Men were running down the street from the Union Hall, and one bumped into George and nearly sent him to the ground.

“Sorry, bub,” the man slurred. “I wouldn’t go up there,” he added, then took off back down the hill.

George limped his way to the New Miners Association Hall and stumbled in the front door. Handbills for the speech were scattered on the floor along with the glass from one broken window. George took out his revolver and walked the edges of the room toward the back. He heard only his own weight squeaking against the floorboards. There was a door to a back room on the first floor, and he heard a thump, then the scuffle of feet. He took out his gun and pulled the hammer back and put his ear to the door. A glass clattered to the floor. More footsteps. Then nothing.

“Ellie,” he called out. “Ellie Hobbes, you in there?” George stood to the side of the door, reached slowly for the knob, and eased the door open with his back against the wall.

A buffalo of a man came from behind him. He had one hand resting on the gun by his belt. From his angle he couldn’t see George’s revolver, and as he walked straight toward the policeman he reached out as if he were going to throw him in the street. “Push off, pal,” he said, and his left hand grabbed at George’s shoulder.

The policemen turned and hit him with the butt of his gun, once across the nose and once again on the back of his head as he fell. George rolled him over, took the pistol from under the man’s coat, and then turned to the door leading to the back room.

The door creaked on its hinges and cool air carried out of the open door. He could smell spilled beer and old cigars mixed in with the unmistakable tang of gunpowder.

George pushed his revolver into the room as if it were a flashlight. He shined it in every corner. “Hobbes?”

First he saw the legs splayed out on the floor. Then a
blood-spattered towel against the side of a wool coat. George stepped into the room.

“Goddamnit,” he said just under his breath.

A thick smear of dark blood and brain matter spread like a halo beneath the tall man. Nothing moved except a few flies buzzing around the widening puddle of blood. Tom Delaney lay dead on the floor.

A glass fell behind the counter and George swung his gun. “Police officer. Let’s see your hands. Hands up, damnit, or I start shooting.”

Two small hands trembled into view. They were holding a sawed-off shotgun with smoke still curling from both barrels.

“Stand up.” George barked, and the boy Ellie had tipped so generously stood up with the gun over his head.

“He was going to shoot her, mister. I swear. He had his gun out and he was going to shoot her.” Tears streamed down the boy’s cheeks as he blubbered. “She just got up and ran out of here.”

“Where’d she go?” George uncocked his gun.

“I don’t know. She said ‘thank you’ though. And she gave me two dollars. Can I keep it? Can I keep the money?”

The tired police officer holstered his gun and slumped down on a beer keg.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Just show me the door she used.”

Outside, the fire brigade was rolling out the last of the hoses, and men were shouting orders over the rumble of people running in every direction.

Annabelle curled up in the dory and pulled the canvas over her head. The sounds of thudding boots and sirens tumbled through the streets and out across the beach. Peeking out, she saw the wisps of gas drifting down the side of the hill, like the clouds sliding through the trees. She hated the sound of sirens. She crawled to the bow of the dory and opened the kitchen box to find a sharp knife. She groped in the dark until she clutched it in her hand. She heard
someone step right up to the dory and stop. Annabelle held her breath as a white arm reached into the gloom and touched her face with cold, sticky fingers.

Slip ran north and away from the roar of men’s voices. He made his way under the wharf and along the beach. Once he reached a quiet street he pulled himself up onto the sidewalk and started walking back toward the dory. He walked fast, but not fast enough to call attention to himself. By the time he came within sight of the dory the riot sounded like a high school football game and a small one at that. Men were beginning to drift away in twos and threes. The police were lining up bleeding union men and placing them under arrest, and a few scabs were freely milling around the mine employment office where there were no employees to process the men who wanted to work. All the same the strike was over.

Slip walked down to the dory and called out Annabelle’s name but no one answered. He threw back the tarp and dug around in the bottom of the boat. He ran around to the other side. Then he slumped down with his back against the dory. He had lost the axe in the riot and had a fresh set of bruises on his face and ribs. Ellie was going to the cops and she would testify against him. The girl was gone, and he was a thousand miles from Grand Coulee country. Slip lay down on the gravel beach. Small waves, panting like a pack of wolves, moved closer and closer as the tide came in.

The world refused to stop for Slippery Wilson, and that’s all he had ever asked of it. There was a cabin near a river and a beautiful woman who loved him. These things had been anchored, unchanging in his heart, for as long as he could remember. As an adult he thought he had been moving toward them, but of course he hadn’t.

“Maybe I just need a nap,” he said aloud as the chill crept through his clothes, and he closed his eyes.