Sweet Thunder (23 page)

The newspaper office saved me from myself, the rescue vessel moored within reach of the isle of Ajax, thanks be. What was it about being met daily by Armbrister's brisk number of column inches of editorial space I had to fill; hearing the staccato of typewriters start up, each as distinctive as a telegrapher's rhythm, as rewrite men and headline writers set to work on the nightside's stories; answering shouted queries such as “Morgie, is it Freud or Jung they call ‘the mechanic of dreams'?”—what did I find in the din of deadlines and wisecracks and calamities and trivia and pronounced personalities on the page and off that captured me so?

Chapters of the earthly saga, I suppose, old as the alphabet. Humanity's never-ending tale of who did what to whom, when and where, and if told right, how and why. The
Thunder
, with Armbrister's bloodhound knowledge of Butte and Jared's foxy tactics against Anaconda, was set up as well as a newspaper could be to pursue that hallowed goal of journalism, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. If I live into eternity, I shall still think daily news and opinion set in type for all to read is honorable work. Although that belief was severely tested by the example of Cutthroat Cartwright.

  16  

Ever wondered where schemers come from? Do they breed in stagnant pools as mosquitoes do? That would explain the pestilential cloud of political agitation, reckless charges, and editorial sophistry hanging over the Thunder. Underneath all the buzz, the scheme is the same old one of stealthy attack on the American system of productivity, the envy of the world—at least those parts of it not colored in pink or red.

—CUTLASS

“H
OO HOO.
C
ARTWRIGHT HAS A TOUCH,
you have to admit.”

“You bet. So does a skinning knife.”

“Sophistry, I don't think we had that in school. Hey, Morgie! What's this sophistry guff your opposite number is so worked up about?”

“Mmm, a style of argumentation that goes back to the Greeks. The root—”

“Yeah, yeah, always look to the root, we know.”

“—is the verb that means playing subtle tricks.”

“About like bluffing in poker, huh? Keep up the sophus-pocus, champ, you've got Cartwright looking at his hole card.”

If our high-spirited staff had a taste for no-holds-barred editorial brawling, our grimacing editor sometimes had a bellyful of being slandered.

“Damn it, can't you come up with something that will shut that windbag's yap for a while?” Armbrister demanded of me, flinging Cutlass's latest into the wastebasket. “I'm sick of us being called every name under the sun.”

Taking up the challenge at my typewriter, I soon placed on Armbrister's desk a sheet of paper he snatched up for a look, then put down as if it might bite him.

The
Post
having descended to entomological depths in its latest diatribe—if anyone's head is buzzing with buggy ideas, it is that of the Anaconda-paid prattler who calls himself Cutlass—all that needs be said is consider the source and beware the frass.

—PLUVIUS

“Frass?” Armbrister reluctantly tried out the word. “Never heard of it. What monkey language is that in?”

“English.” He gave me a sour look. “By way of German, naturally.”

“Naturally. What the hell does it mean?”

“Insect excrement.”

For a space of several seconds, Armbrister found nothing to say. At length, he let out: “I had a hunch it was something like that.” He ground his teeth, the way editors will, picked up the sheet of paper in a gingerly fashion that had it hovering over the wastebasket where Cutlass's invective ended up, then thrust it at me. “Run it.”

•   •   •

Thank heavens, my barbs could drive Cartwright into wounded silence for short periods, while he and his invisible bosses on the top floor of the Hennessy Building contrived some new attack. More than a few of my
Thunder
colleagues celebrated each such absence of Cutlass's slash and thrust—“Guess who's gone fishing today”—in tried-and-true journalistic fashion, by going out for a drink after work. “C'mon, Morgie, join us,” Cavaretta all but took me by the arm on one such occasion, while Sibley of the city hall beat and several others, including Mary Margaret Houlihan beckoning in a frisky way, as they formed up at the doorway. I was half out of my typing chair before I remembered. For me to show up in a speakeasy, dead ringer for the Highliner that I seemed forever doomed, destined, fated to be, was to invite complications not even I could imagine. “Really, I . . . I can't,” I said lamely. “I'm expected at the house.”

“Okey-doke, pal.” Cavaretta slapped my shoulder and went to join the others. “But the invitation stands, anytime.”

The happy mob of them went out, while I did meaningless things such as squaring paper and pencils on my desk until they were clear of the building. Quiet descended so completely I could feel it on my skin, the newspaper office deserted except for the night editor and a couple of rewrite men silently editing copy at the far end of the room. In my trance of solitude, I hadn't seen the overcoated figure standing against the wall by Armbrister's glass cage of office.

“You have a lonesome cat these days, Professor?”

Sharply coming to, I told Jared I didn't know what he meant, although I did. What business was it of anybody, if the human race and for that matter the feline held nothing for me these nights?

Keeping his voice low, the publisher here strangely after hours came over to me, purpose in his gaze. “I saw that kind of stare on men in the trenches, my friend. Come on, get your things on. I'll walk you at least partway to that house that's expecting you so wonderfully much.”

Side by side, the two of us joined the downtown flock of other home-goers, secretaries from the tall buildings and clerks from the storefronts, Welsh miners coming off shift and singing the way to their neighborhood near Grace's boardinghouse, messengers and delivery boys hopping trolleys now that their day on foot was done. Summer had found Butte at last, but there was still a mild nip in the air on clear evenings such as this, a new moon free of clouds standing over the work-lit Hill. Walking with Jared Evans was just short of a march, this man who had led other men under killing conditions and since had added the political weight of the state. Was the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt watching from somewhere? We had not gone a block before the soldier-senator beside me spoke his mind.

“You and the missus are on the outs, I gather.”

I suppressed a groan. “Does it show on me that much?”

He tapped the side of his nose significantly. “Rab smelled it in the air. Don't ask me how, I'm only a male.”

“As am I, so all I can tell you is, Grace has moved out.”

“And Sandison's not healed up yet, so you're all by your lonesome in that moose of a house.”

“That is the case,” I conceded.

We waited for a spate of Model Ts to putt-putt through the next intersection, then as we crossed, he brought out: “It's not much of a guess you have time on your hands these evenings, so I wondered—”

“Jared, no.” This time I did groan; I could not face day and night jeopardy, even for him. “I dare not get involved any more deeply in union matters. One lead-coated message from Anaconda”—at that, he winced as if dodging a bullet himself—“if that's what it was, is enough.”

Jared looked at me levelly, frank as the moon. “That's not what I was thinking, believe it or not.” He lowered his voice as he had done in the newspaper office. “Rab and I need your help. With Russian Famine.”

I blurted, “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“The worst,” he said whimsically. “He's growing up. Remember what a holy mess that was, for any of us?”

Looking off ahead to where the street started to climb, Jared continued: “He's not really ours to raise as if our word is law, worse luck. Can't adopt him because he's still legally the ward of that uncle of his who used to go round with a pushcart sharpening knives, remember him?” A rueful shake of the head. “The old devil was pretty sharp himself, scooting back to Poland when he saw that Rab and I would look out for the boy. But never mind that, we just want to do the best we can for Famine, and that's where you come in.” Jared marched the words out of himself at a pace as determined as his strides. “He's at that restless age. Not saying much, but you can tell there's more going on in him than he knows what to do with. So, we wondered if you might pitch in and find something to keep him occupied.”

I was listening hard, but still had trouble believing my ears at Jared's next words. “Say, boxing lessons.”

I stopped short, under a streetlamp casting a cone of light like a net. “Wh-what makes you think I'm capable?”

Jared turned to me in surprise. “Rab again. She picked up the notion, back when you were her schoolteacher, that you knew a little something about boxing. Said you could square away with the eighth-grade galoots smartly enough, it kept them in order.”

I breathed again.

Man to man, Jared confided: “She'd rather you gave him Latin lessons, wherever she got that from.” He grinned ever so slightly. “I had to point out to her, Russian Famine has trouble sitting still for English.” Then, more soberly: “That's a tough bunch he's around at the detention school, and then there are the
Post
newsboys. We just want him to be able to stick up for himself if push comes to shove, as it generally does in this town.”

“All well and good,” I sighed. “And I happen to know a right cross from a left hook. But honestly, I am no pugilist myself. I don't see what good I can—”

“You're a teacher. You can do anything.”

The blunt force of that statement took my words away. Jared Evans reached out a hand and shook mine, a pact beneath the moon as old as brotherhood between men.

“It's settled then, Professor. You'll show Famine how to handle his dukes.” And he strode away at that marching pace, into the night.

•   •   •

Cautious as I was in answering the door since the postal gunman, Russian Famine was shuffling his feet like a nervous suitor by the time I let him in the following evening. “Hiya, sir,” he said with a swallow, stepping in as if across hot coals. “Some house,” his voice sounded shrunken. “You live here all by yourself?”

“For the time being,” I put the best face on that.

“I'd be spooked.” That hit home, in more ways than one. The manse yawned around us, growing bigger with the night. What does it say about the human nervous system that one of us had been more at ease springing around atop bookshelves at the public library, and the other of us thought less of cajoling a hundred people into a dance called America, than either of us felt at the prospect of spending time in a lonely house?

While I was hanging up Famine's jacket and cap, he turned so fidgety that I expected he was about to ask the way to the bathroom, but no. “Where'd the old fella get plugged?”

Uncomfortably, I indicated on my rib cage the approximate spot of Sandison's wound.

Famine shook his head, hair flopping. “Unh-uh, where was he at? Is there bloodstains?”

“As much as I hate to disappoint you, it happened right where we're standing.”

“Aw.”

Taking pity, I pointed to the bullet holes overhead. He brightened. “That's better!” After counting the ceiling perforations to himself, he gave me an awkward glance. “You didn't get a lick in on the guy with your brassies or nothing?”

That question in other forms had circled me ever since, but it took a boy to ask it. With a tight throat, I related that I was down the hall when the shooting started, but Sandison managed to land a blow.

“The Earl of Hell bashed him one? Awright!” I could see in his eyes he was imagining the scene down to the last detail, then the frown coming. “So how'd he get plugged?”

Truth can be such a difficult master. “He stepped in front of a bullet. Meant for me.”

“No kidding?” The boy looked at me a new way. “You're a lucky duck.”

“I suppose I am,” I said huskily. “Let's get on with the boxing lesson, shall we?” He trailed me into the drawing room, where I had shoved the furniture back for us to maneuver. When I produced boxing gloves for us both, he shuffled uncertainly again. “I dunno,” he mumbled, eyeing the mitts, each larger than his head. “How'm I supposed to wallop anybody with them things?”

“That's what we're about to work on, how to wallop without being walloped. These are the tools of the trade in learning that.”

“If you say so,” he said dubiously.

I had him strip off his shirt, as I did mine, true to ring tradition, and at once regretted it. In his undershirt, he was the definition of skinny; no more meat on him than a sprat, as the old saying goes. But Jared was right, he was growing, his legs and arms ahead of the rest of him. Where there's reach, there's hope.

As I was tying his gloves on, my fingers knowing how almost without me, he gnawed his lip before looking up at me and making it known, “I better own up—I got my doubts about this boxing stuff.”