Two-Gun & Sun (13 page)

I was done folding. I took up a small stack and called over my shoulder to him, I'll be right back!

I hurried outside, put the stack down and slipped a copy of our first newssheet inside that wooden frame beside the front door. A crowd began to gather as I tightened the screws on the frame. Some, given the faint rim of charcoal around the pink skin of their eyes, were either taxi drivers or miners, though none that I recognized. A couple of them had plain-dressed women on their arms, their wives. Parker as well. I thought Morris might be there, anxious to see our first product, but he wasn't. My competition was, though, reeling on the steps.

No charge, I told the clutching hands. In celebration of our first!

I saw the slats of the blind flash open, and then shut. Vincent.

I slapped the newssheets into waiting hands, studying the faces above them and delighting in their furrowed concentration. They had been a long time without real news. Some took two copies.

When all the sheets were gone I went inside and called to Vincent. But there was no answer. I found the back door ajar from his abrupt departure. He must have been in a hurry to show copies to his friends in Lousetown.

I was disappointed. I had looked forward to this moment. But I closed the door and headed back out with another bundle so that I could slip copies through mail slots at various points around town, such as the bank and Meena's, but first, the Post Office. On top of this bundle were two envelopes, each containing a single, folded newssheet, in lieu of a letter, one heading for Nelson and the other for Australia. I had no more to say than I had in the last notes, so all I had written on each was the line: Here it is! And then I signed with a flourish.

Ed was there, polishing glasses with a towel. I gave him several copies as well, but he didn't even take a look, just said he'd leave it on the lower shelf for next morning, when the bar turned back into General Delivery and he transformed into postmaster. I supposed I couldn't expect more from him. When he was done here he'd have a few hours to sleep before coming back to sort mail, including my envelopes. And then the laundry to send out. But I felt another slump of disappointment. Uncle had talked about that, the letdown when the rush to get the paper out was all over. There was nothing older than yesterday's news, he advised. Your best work will end up wrapped around a fish. Get busy on the next one. It's the only thing to do.

News arrived unexpectedly the next day.

Vincent was already at work when I descended the steps, and had I stayed upstairs I might never have known he was there at all, would never have thought to look through the hole to see him, quietly breaking up the form and returning each piece of type to its slot in the drawer.

I strode across the room.

There you are, I said. I came straight in yesterday after handing out the newssheets, but you'd already left.

I said it quickly because I could see that something was wrong, and I'd sat up late last night puzzled that he hadn't come by.

His fingers flew, dropping pieces of lead into the appropriate slots. Had I not left him enough copies for Lousetown? Had I not thanked him enough for his help?

If it wasn't for you, I said, this newssheet wouldn't exist—

He stopped sorting to shoot me a look that was either contemptuous, or simply astounded.

I had to go warn everyone. Revolution comes to Black Mountain!

The room grew hot. I tried to stammer an explanation: I thought you'd be glad to see your leader mentioned in the
Bullet,
as any visiting dignitary would be.

My throat was swelling and tears were threatening and Jesus Christ I hated it when that happened.

His life is
in
danger
, right?

He raised his blackened hands in exasperation, thumbs and fingers pinching tiny pieces of lead.

The foolishness of my actions was only beginning to dawn on me. He had asked me not to mention his sun-powered press and I had respected his wishes. Maybe he thought by that one example that I should know not to write about anything else in Lousetown. But was that fair? He had said nothing about not mentioning his leader's arrival, just that I couldn't interview him, and I would have pointed this out had he not beat me to it.

Announcing his arrival? Same as interviewing him! Either one is risky.

He continued sorting, and then he said something I wasn't expecting. Look. It's not your fault. It's mine. You couldn't have known. Like you said, if it wasn't for me—

That made me feel worse, and I apologized.

The front door burst open then to the sounds of shouted demands for my presence, but what could be more important than this?

Go, he said. It's fine.

I promised to return as soon as I could get away.

Silver Evans was at the front counter, helmet under one arm, shaking the newssheet at me with his free hand. Two of his deputies stood on either side of the open door. A third watched the street.

What do you mean I
claimed
moral defence?

That's what you said.

What did I care what Silver thought of my coverage? If I hadn't had to watch my words over his story I could have filled that hole and never have offended Vincent. I wasn't sure how true that was, but it felt good to shift the blame.

That's right, Silver replied, I said it. But I didn't
claim
it. See? There's a difference. It was moral defence, no claiming needed. The inference is all wrong. Does anyone here blame me for shooting that naked old buzzard?

He left the newssheet on the counter, his helmet a paperweight over it. He turned, arms open as he approached his deputies, as though he were asking one of them to dance instead of seeking their support.

Does any one of you think I did wrong? he asked.

One of them shambled around him and over to me, so close I could smell the wet burlap stink of dirty hair, see his bloodshot eyes.

He lowered his voice and said to me, What's this about some famous China Man coming here?

I tried to hold his stare. The man's reaction was exactly what Vincent had been worried about.

Chinese, I replied tartly. A doctor.

Doctor, he snarled. Coolie. Same fishy stink on every one of them.

I laughed rudely. The man needed to get a good whiff of himself.

He stabbed my top button with a filthy finger. I hear you hired a China Man, too. A printer. That right?

I staggered back, skin stinging where the button pinched.

It was the same sort of question Parker had asked, but with a different tone entirely.

Chinese, I repeated.

Where'd you hear about this revolution, anyway? he asked. From him?

My guts lifted and then plunged, sweat beaded my upper lip. Danger. For me, for my printer. He was right. I shouldn't have run the notice. I should have waited until after the event to write about it, instead of ringing alarm bells with it. I was trying to fill space and I was showing off, yes, showing that I knew more about what was going on than anyone else did.

My silence seemed answer enough.

Thought I smelled fish in here, he said. That's what you want?

And then he pressed himself against the counter in a lewd gesture, his tongue playing with his bottom lip.

I couldn't bear any more of the foul man and I called out to Silver, who moved back to the counter, forcing the dirty-haired deputy aside. Even as I talked to Silver I could still see the deputy, in quick glances, how he returned to stand by the door, how he continued to taunt me, opening and closing his lips like a gaping fish, moving his hands in his pockets as though he were digging for change.

Mr. Evans, I said, I reported accurately what I saw and heard. If you still think there was falseness in my words you could write a letter to the editor complaining.

I should have complained about the deputy, but that would have meant describing his gestures. He would have enjoyed that.

You would print it? Silver asked.

He looked genuinely charmed.

I would, I said.

I could say this because I knew that the minute he sat down to write out a complaint he would become ensnarled in an explanation of the subtle difference between the words
claim
and
said.
And I would most certainly publish it if he managed to finish the tangled piece.

I'll think about it, he said. I have to get the rescue drill going.

Rescue drill?

It was hard to hide the excitement in my voice.

He gave me a wounded look, then sighed. C'mon then.

He slid his helmet off the counter and jammed it onto his head.

It was a curt invitation, but I was after a story for the next issue, and I wanted them out of my shop before they discovered my printer in the next room. I had to hope that he had overheard us, and that maybe he had already left.

I took them out the front door, just in case, and made an elaborate, noisy show of locking up.

The dirty-haired deputy led the way around the building to the pithead behind my shop, past dark figures clumped around a fire, their orange faces upraised. I fought the repeated memory of flickering flames and smoke to seize control of the moment. Silver had stopped to speak a few words to the men, leaving me alone with the deputy, his evil eyes on me. I felt like I had the printing press pounding in my chest, and pretended to study the threatening sky.

Silver returned with the group and we proceeded together. I was relieved to be in the company of so many.

On Silver's order, I climbed into a cart just inside the entrance, one that seemed to be set aside for visitors. He climbed in with me. Uglier carts filled with dark brown coal had rolled down the rails and waited on a side track to be emptied. Our cart, motored by the pumping arms of a man pushing a metal pole up and down, scooted past and clicked along the tracks, down a slope, iron wheels grinding around corners.

It was warm inside the tunnels, some of them not high enough for a man to stand up. The green-yellow light of lanterns glowed weakly against the rough walls of dirt and the dull metal of their helmets. Another cart rolled behind us, filled with several men, though the dirty deputy was not among them.

Silver said that not so long ago this tunnel was where coal was extracted. With each foot of coal removed, the production line moved another foot inward, the miners, deeper.

We're an up-to-date facility, Silver said. The Black Mountain Coal Company uses the latest equipment. No horses or mules in here. All machines. No stooping over like in the mines back in England.

I swivelled to point behind me at the low ceiling.

No one uses those old tunnels, he said. Not much, anyway.

I suppose the union makes sure of it.

This your first mine? he asked. I've been in a few and every union I seen comes to the table with two demands, work conditions and wages, and every time without fail the conditions are dropped in favour of wages. Why? Numbers. They're easier to argue about than safety. I ask you, we give the miners five cents more or five dollars more and does it make their work any easier? Any safer?

I could tell him about back home and the smelter two towns over, how people like my father had objected to work stoppages for hampering weapons production and the war effort, but how I had friends whose fathers and brothers worked in dreadful conditions there, Bess's for one, so I sided with the union. Arguments at the dinner table. Fists on the tabletop rattling the dishes long after both strike and war had ended. He was fighting for Will, of course, who never returned. When Uncle was there Father had one more against him. But to bring all that up now would take away from the news at hand.

I suppose money dulls the pain a little, I said. But there should be a union. Are you saying there isn't?

His reply was a snort. Then he added, With so many Chinese around? They lost that battle.

And then he looked at me, puzzled that I didn't know better, as he put it.

It was a brief ride, and then I was handed a mask with a corrugated rubber tube dangling like a snake from the metal mouth.

In real emergencies, he said, it'll be attached to a respirator box. These are broken sets, but serve the purpose for a rescue drill. Inside is a mouthpiece you put between your teeth, and a pincer over your nose.

Someone used this before?

Inside the mask I saw the bit like the snorkels my brothers and I wore when exploring the lake, hoping to sight fish or sunken treasure. The twins never cared whose snorkel was whose but I was revolted by the thought of the mouthpiece covered in their spit. I could imagine the taste and smell of it, and felt my gorge rise, as I felt it now.

Silver smiled at me. No doubt he enjoyed such flashes of revulsion in me, brief though they were. Encouraging proof that I was, indeed, female, even inside those bulky coveralls.

For now, he said, you can just push it aside. It's not connected, like I said.

Two of the men from the other cart joined us. Each of us had a mask. We slipped them on, straps tightened around the backs of our heads, then descended by rope and pulley on a wooden platform with metal sides that dropped us into a subterranean room.

Although the hose on my apparatus coiled about freely, unattached to any respirator, the mask itself comforted me with its ability to separate me from my surroundings.

Clustered together in the metal box, we looked like sea demons from those books of my brothers, all bulging glass eyes, with tentacles dangling from a round, metal disk like an astonished mouth. A couple of them had headlamps strapped over their foreheads, but there wasn't much room for them above the goggles. Silver carried a lantern.

He told me as much about himself as the drill, how he was both drägerman and sheriff, serving the people underground and above. His rescue crew from the cart behind us, he added, were his deputies above.

The posse, I was thinking. And among them, somewhere, the dirty deputy.