can end up in a glory hole if you don’t watch your—”
Swish, and then bang! All three of us jumped.
Samuel Sandison towered in the doorway, the flung-open door still quivering on its hinges behind him. “What’s this? The idlers’ club in session?”
All at once there was more breathing room around me, both goons stepping back from the perimeter of authority Sandison seemed to bring with him. What was I seeing? He was twice their age, and though of a size with Tolliver, no physical match. Yet the two burly interlopers now looked very much like spooked schoolboys. Why the white-faced wariness all of a sudden?
Sandison’s ice-blue gaze swept over them and onto me, and I blinked innocently back. “We’re only here because this helper of yours is up to something,” the pointy-faced one was saying, not quite stammering, “and the people we work for need to know what he’s—”
“Quiet!” Sandison boomed, the word resounding in the enclosed room. “You tell them on the top floor of the Hennessy Building that they maybe run everything else in town, but not this library. Clear out of here, and I mean now.”
The pair cleared out, but not without glares over their beefy shoulders at me.
Now all I faced was the stormcloud of beard. Sandison inspected me as if having missed some major feature until then. “Miss Runyon told me you were taking an unconscionably long time down here. Morgan? Are you up to something?”
“Sandy, I swear to you, I am an utter stranger to the battles of Butte.” That left Chicago out of it.
He shook his head. “If you weren’t such a bookman, I wouldn’t have you on the payroll for more than a minute.” Turning to go, he said, as if he was ordering me to head off a stampede: “Get the damn corkboard rigged up so we don’t have to hear any more from that old heifer Runyon about it.”
I PICKED AT MY FOOD that suppertime, drawing a look of concern from Grace. “More turkey, Morrie? It’s not like you to be off your feed.”
Down the table, two sets of bushy gray eyebrows squinched in similar regard of me. Neither Hoop nor Griff asked anything about my disturbing day, however, in respect of our pact not to bother Grace’s head about the goons’ interest in me. Pushing away my plate, I alibied: “A touch of stomach disorder, is all. Nothing a restful evening in my room can’t fi x, I’m sure.”
Upstairs, flat on my back atop the dragon coverlet while I stared at the ceiling and waited for inspiration of some sort to show up, I never felt less sure of fi xing anything. The zigzags of life were more puzzling than ever. There I lay, in the most comfortable circumstances I had known for a long while, with work that nicely employed my mind, and the goons of the world were sure I was a secret operative for the most radical wing of the laboring class. It was dizzying. If America was a melting pot, Butte seemed to be its boiling point. The Richest Hill was turning out to be also a Cemetery Ridge of copper to be fought over, and some trick of fate had dumped Morris Morgan—all right, Morgan Llewellyn—right in the middle of it. Not the spot I thought I was choosing when I stepped down from that train.
A train runs in both directions, the ceiling reminded me, as boardinghouse ceilings tend to do. Lying there looking up at the map of plaster imaginings, I felt an old restlessness. It was a lamplit evening in the Marias Coulee teacherage, when I knew I was losing Rose, that a faint stain in the beaverboard ceiling seemed to suggest the outline of Australia. Even here in Grace Faraday’s well-maintained accommodations, did that swirl in the plasterer’s finishwork over by the window resemble South America?
Fate comes looking for us, often when we are most alone. Stealthily the conclusion I was waiting for crept down from the ceiling and took shape in the corner of the room. My gaze followed it to my satchel, shabby reliable companion in a portable life.
I swore softly to
Swish, and then bang! All three of us jumped.
Samuel Sandison towered in the doorway, the flung-open door still quivering on its hinges behind him. “What’s this? The idlers’ club in session?”
All at once there was more breathing room around me, both goons stepping back from the perimeter of authority Sandison seemed to bring with him. What was I seeing? He was twice their age, and though of a size with Tolliver, no physical match. Yet the two burly interlopers now looked very much like spooked schoolboys. Why the white-faced wariness all of a sudden?
Sandison’s ice-blue gaze swept over them and onto me, and I blinked innocently back. “We’re only here because this helper of yours is up to something,” the pointy-faced one was saying, not quite stammering, “and the people we work for need to know what he’s—”
“Quiet!” Sandison boomed, the word resounding in the enclosed room. “You tell them on the top floor of the Hennessy Building that they maybe run everything else in town, but not this library. Clear out of here, and I mean now.”
The pair cleared out, but not without glares over their beefy shoulders at me.
Now all I faced was the stormcloud of beard. Sandison inspected me as if having missed some major feature until then. “Miss Runyon told me you were taking an unconscionably long time down here. Morgan? Are you up to something?”
“Sandy, I swear to you, I am an utter stranger to the battles of Butte.” That left Chicago out of it.
He shook his head. “If you weren’t such a bookman, I wouldn’t have you on the payroll for more than a minute.” Turning to go, he said, as if he was ordering me to head off a stampede: “Get the damn corkboard rigged up so we don’t have to hear any more from that old heifer Runyon about it.”
I PICKED AT MY FOOD that suppertime, drawing a look of concern from Grace. “More turkey, Morrie? It’s not like you to be off your feed.”
Down the table, two sets of bushy gray eyebrows squinched in similar regard of me. Neither Hoop nor Griff asked anything about my disturbing day, however, in respect of our pact not to bother Grace’s head about the goons’ interest in me. Pushing away my plate, I alibied: “A touch of stomach disorder, is all. Nothing a restful evening in my room can’t fi x, I’m sure.”
Upstairs, flat on my back atop the dragon coverlet while I stared at the ceiling and waited for inspiration of some sort to show up, I never felt less sure of fi xing anything. The zigzags of life were more puzzling than ever. There I lay, in the most comfortable circumstances I had known for a long while, with work that nicely employed my mind, and the goons of the world were sure I was a secret operative for the most radical wing of the laboring class. It was dizzying. If America was a melting pot, Butte seemed to be its boiling point. The Richest Hill was turning out to be also a Cemetery Ridge of copper to be fought over, and some trick of fate had dumped Morris Morgan—all right, Morgan Llewellyn—right in the middle of it. Not the spot I thought I was choosing when I stepped down from that train.
A train runs in both directions, the ceiling reminded me, as boardinghouse ceilings tend to do. Lying there looking up at the map of plaster imaginings, I felt an old restlessness. It was a lamplit evening in the Marias Coulee teacherage, when I knew I was losing Rose, that a faint stain in the beaverboard ceiling seemed to suggest the outline of Australia. Even here in Grace Faraday’s well-maintained accommodations, did that swirl in the plasterer’s finishwork over by the window resemble South America?
Fate comes looking for us, often when we are most alone. Stealthily the conclusion I was waiting for crept down from the ceiling and took shape in the corner of the room. My gaze followed it to my satchel, shabby reliable companion in a portable life.
I swore softly to
Similar Books
