Hardcastle (35 page)

“If she were unfaithful, would you kill her?”

“Well, I might,” the young man said, “and the son of a bitch that bedded her too.”

“Forgive me,” Zigerelli said. “I am only an ignorant man, and I am trying to understand. But I do not think I am as ignorant as you. For this time I do not require that you kill Mr. Hardcastle—one day, perhaps, it will be necessary—I require only that all of you stand firm and fight him as an enemy; for he is your enemy; he is not your father and not your lover.”

Beside Music, Regus shifted, ran his finger back and forth under his nose. “Mister,” Regus said, “I think you are about to let yer mouth overload yer ass. You tell these boys straight out what you think we ought to do and have done with it.”

“I do not understand this thing you say, Mr. Bone,” Arturo Zigerelli said, a puzzled half-smile on his face. “Please explain. And tell me also, if you will, how your friends have become unmanned, for it is a mystery to me, although I have seen it many times before.”

“I ain’t interested in yer mysteries,” Regus said. “These folks here, sleepin on the ground and on my dogtrot and in the barn, likely ain’t interested either.” Regus stepped into the circle of men around the fire and hitched up his pants. “Since ignorance seems to give a man the right to ask questions, I’ll claim it myself. I’d like to know what the National Miners Union has on its mind to do. Let me hear you talk on that, Mr. Zigerelli.”

The Italian looked at Regus for a moment as though puzzled, as though he had never quite seen him before; but then his dark eyes seemed to glitter, and he smiled as though, perhaps, just maybe, he did know this man after all. At last Arturo Zigerelli laughed aloud. “Yes,” he said and gave Regus a short and formal bow. “I ask your pardon,” he said, and while the men stood about the fire to listen, he began to speak in a different voice, a voice that was soft and sad, if somehow more resigned. “The news is not good,” he said. “At many mines, because we were clumsy or because of informers and spies, we have been discovered. Many of our field workers are in jail at this moment; others have been beaten, some tied to trees and whipped until the skin was gone and they could not stand; and many miners have been evicted.” For a moment Arturo Zigerelli stopped speaking, his eyes focused on nothing, and in that moment Music realized how strange and out of place the Italian was. It wasn’t simply a matter of his queer cloth cap and his striped woolen suit, which, no matter that it was baggy and soiled, did not belong in Switch County, Kentucky; the Italian’s body seemed built to finer tolerances and his features were somehow more delicate than the miners’, who, in both body and face, seemed long-coupled and angular and rough-hewn, as though they had been made with an ax. The Italian was quiet only a moment, but somehow Music believed he had caught Arturo Zigerelli’s own thought: the strange, small man was wondering, himself, what in God’s name he was doing in Switch County. Still, the Italian merely wet his lips and went on. “To continue in secret to organize is not possible,” he said. “There is no longer any secret. Therefore, in Kentucky we will call a strike of all members of the National Miners Union on the day after tomorrow. Everywhere will be picket lines. Everywhere we will call upon the scab to join us so that we will become stronger and stronger, until we can break the capitalist coal operators and bring them to their knees. Yes,” he said and licked his lips and nodded. “We have asked for a checkweighman to be elected by the miners to see that they are not cheated on the coal they have mined.” Arturo Zigerelli looked from one to the other of them and smiled. “This checkweighman is a right you have already; it is a law of the state, but the operator does not allow it,” he said, tilting his head to one side and shrugging his shoulders. “Also we have asked for many other necessary conditions so that the worker may live with dignity.” He wet his lips and nodded. “You must, all of you, learn these demands that we have written down and say them to each other and to the world and, most of all, to the scab who passes you in the picket line to sell his labor and his life so cheaply. He must be taught that you are right and he is wrong. He must be taught that you are his brothers and only together can either of you live like men. Is it not true?” he asked. “Yes? Yes?” he said and looked from one man to the next.

The faces of the miners were grim and thoughtful, Music thought, but they nodded.

“We have not been beaten,” Arturo Zigerelli said, as though he had seen what Music had seen. “The tocsin of war has only now sounded,” he said and smiled. “Ha, it is only necessary that we be men of steel, because once the capitalist sees that we will not be beaten, that we will have the final victory, he will fight more desperately than he has ever fought before. So,” he said and smiled and drew his shoulders up toward his ears in a gesture that was almost comical, “be of good cheer.” All at once he took hold of the miner nearest him and shook his hand with both his own, and then passed among the others, giving each man’s hand a single firm shake. “Have cheer,” he told them. “Mr. Music and Mr. Bone will bring food and supplies tomorrow. Next week your comrades in Chicago will return full of knowledge and courage with which to fight your enemies. And we will win. Yes? Yes?”

Little by little the faces of the miners seemed to brighten, and on one or two Music could see even a faint, wry smile, as though the enthusiasm of the Italian, or perhaps his very strangeness, his queer speech and behavior, had begun to lift their spirits.

“You,” the Italian said to the angry young miner. “I have seen that you have hot blood. To you goes the honor of giving into Mr. Hardcastle’s hands the list of his crimes, which he must correct.” He led the young miner to his car and handed him two papers. “One is for the swine Hardcastle and one is for yourselves so that you can see the new life your victory will bring.”

The young miner looked at the papers in his hand as though he didn’t quite know how they got there. He shook his head. “I cain’t read,” he said. “Why don’t you give em to the son of a bitch yerself?”

“It will be a little dangerous for you to give these papers to Mr. Hardcastle,” the Italian said, “but for me it would be many times more dangerous. It does not matter that you cannot read. Mr. Hardcastle can read, and you will see in his face what is on the paper. Take one or two friends with you and go to his house. It will give you pleasure, I think. Yes?”

The young man nodded at last. “I’d like it better if I could read it to him and make him sign the goddamned thing in the bargain.”

“Ha,” the Italian said and gripped the young man’s shoulder briefly. “Someone here can read it to you, and perhaps you can learn it by heart and recite it to Mr. Hardcastle. And someday, my friend, you may be sure you will force him to sign away his power.

“Now,” the Italian said, “I would speak a moment to Mr. Bone and Mr. Music,” and while the young miner showed the documents to the others, who squinted in the firelight to decipher them, Music and Regus and the Italian walked a little way apart. “My talk of the slave loving his master has offended you, I fear,” Arturo Zigerelli said to Regus.

“It came right close,” Regus said, his arms folded across his chest and both his voice and his eyes cold and bleak.

“I regret it,” the Italian said. “Sometimes it is even possible for me to forget that we will win. I have learned how hard the enemy will fight, and this does not weaken my spirit, but the men do not stick to our organization. Their resolve is weak.” He cocked his head to one side. “And everywhere, it is true, our organizers are being found out and beaten or arrested.”

Regus pursed his lips and nodded. “I’m right surprised that you’re still runnin around loose, come right down to it,” he said. “Kenton Hardcastle might not have the money or the backin that some of these sons a bitches got behind them, but he’s a hard case; make no mistake.”

“Yes,” Arturo Zigerelli said. “I have not spoken to him, but I have spoken to the sheriff.”

“And you ain’t in jail?” Regus said.

“I make arrangements with him for the body of my comrade,” Zigerelli said, “but I also have the help of the smartest of our lawyers, who brought the charge of murder against this Cawood Burnside. And, I think, brought caution to your sheriff.”

“Will they get Cawood for murder?” Music asked.

The Italian shook his head. “No, my friend. The grand jury has already let him free; but the lawyer of the National Miners Union has frightened the dogs a little, I think, and they are not sure if they dare to shoot Arturo Zigerelli also, for they have been told I will not be found on the property of Hardcastle. Even my pistol, now, I do not carry any longer.” The Italian looked at the ground and rocked from toe to heel and back. “It is rare, is it not, that in death a man can do so much? My comrade has raised many thousands of dollars for the miner, and in death he protects me also. But he cannot protect you tomorrow. Two of our trucks already have been attacked. Both were burned, and the stores were lost.”

“What about the drivers?” Music asked.

“Of one truck, he was not harmed, but only cursed and threatened,” the Italian said. “But of the other, we do not know, for he has vanished.”

Regus turned his head and spat into the darkness.

“If you drive to Bristol, you must be watchful, for there is danger now, not just in Switch County, but everywhere,” Arturo Zigerelli said.

“We already told ye we’d fetch them things,” Regus said.

“Do you have still the address where the supplies will be waiting?”

“Right here in my pocket,” Music said.

“Good,” the Italian said. “I give you my hand and I must go.”

As he had done with the others, he took first Music’s hand and then Regus’s in both his own and gave them each one single, hard pump before he turned on his heel, stopped a minute to speak to the miners around the fire, and got into the Dodge coupe. A moment more and he had backed around and disappeared up the highway toward Valle Crucis.

“Well,” Regus said, “I guess you and me ort to think about gettin some sleep.”

“I guess,” Music said, and while Regus went off to give good-night to the men who were going to pass the night guarding the belongings down by the road, Music went up to the house to get his quilt, for without quite knowing when he had decided it, he had made up his mind to sleep under the big bull pine where he and Merlee had made love. But when he gathered his quilt under his arm and stepped carefully across the dogtrot among the bundled drowsing bodies to tell Ella where he would be, she wouldn’t hear of it.

She had found herself a baby to hold and was sitting in her rocking chair, the sleeping infant’s smooth face against the coarse and weathered skin of her neck. Music suspected it was the child who had been crying in that tired, mechanical, almost obligatory fashion when he had been in before, if only because the woman sitting at the table seemed to be the same one, seemed, in fact, not to have moved. Her dark, glittering eyes and the strange spots of red at her cheekbones made him wonder if she weren’t the wife of the young, hotheaded miner who had been arguing with Regus.

“Why, chile,” Ella said when he told her where he was going, “hit’s cold as Christmas! I won’t have ye a-layin out on the ground. Why, that’s crazy. Ye’ll catch yer death!”

“No’um,” he said, “I’ll be fine. When I was a boy and off hunting, I use to stay out in far worse weather and call it fun; and there’s folks on the dogtrot or some of these little children that can put my straw tick to good use.”

“No,” she said, “I won’t hear it!” The child on her bosom stirred and turned its face away from her neck, dragging its lower lip half wrong side out in the process, but it did not wake. Ella’s hand went up to its back, her fingers against the nape of its neck and the fine, downy hair which curled there, and such an abstracted look of pleasure came to her face Music knew he was forgotten and could have left without another word if Regus had not come in at that moment and brought her attention back. “Ree,” she said, “tell this youngin he ain’t to go out and sleep on the ground and it wintertime and cold as kraut.”

Regus looked at Music with the quilt bundled under his arm and cocked an eyebrow. “Well, Momma,” he said, “first time I ever laid eyes on him he was a-layin on the ground and sleepin like a rock. I don’t think he’s altogether housebroke yet.”

“Nonsense,” she said.

“I sleep better when I’m off to myself,” Music said. He nodded to Regus. “I guess I’ll see you about daylight in the morning.”

“Mercy,” Ella said. “Honey, dip him up a cup of that broth before he goes. I saved all the chicken and rabbit bones and sorta broke em up, so you look out you don’t get no splinters in yer throat. I’ll have to strain hit fer these youngins,” she said, caressing the downy hair of the child sleeping on her bosom.

The woman at the table rose, dipped a tin cup into the pot simmering on the woodstove, and handed it to Music. She was bloodlessly pale except for the spots of red on her cheeks, and her great, dark, glittering eyes made Music instantly ashamed of his own good health. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and feeling awkward and guilty, drank the broth off as quickly as he could despite the fact that it was piping hot and scalded him all the way down to his stomach. The pieces of bone, which were indeed in the broth, went down like gravel and broken glass, but at least they didn’t stick in his gullet. He nodded good night to them all and let himself out upon the dogtrot.

He spent half an hour raking up pine needles, rolling himself into his quilt as though it were a cocoon, and covering the quilt over with a great mound of pungent needles from his feet to his waist. Finally he drew his left arm inside and, one-handed, finished the tedious process. Except for his face, which was stiff with cold, he was quite warm and comfortable, and he looked up through the pitch-black arms of the pine and the tufted clumps of needles to the stars. They seemed so brilliant and pure and remote they reminded him of his former life with its simple ambitions. Of his present life he seemed to understand nothing, as though, having so recently been born into it, he could get no proper perspective. He needed to think about it, about the nature of his obligations. It seemed to him he must see them through before he could pack up and leave, but it was difficult to imagine any exact moment when they would be satisfied, nor was he sure that obligation was exactly what bound him. In the circle of his arms Merlee had said, “I didn’t think I’d own anybody in my life ever again, Bill Music.” Was there a time, then, when a person ceased to own himself and was claimed instead by people and circumstances? He remembered when he’d thought he owned himself, and the memory was sweet.