Work Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

several kinds mingling with tongues my ear could not readily identify. It was as if Europe had been lifted by, say, the boot heel of Italy and shaken, every toiler from the hard-rock depths tumbling out here. Old habits had followed them across the ocean, husky Finns clustered with other Finns, the Cornishmen not mingling with the Italians, on across the map until each of the nations of Butte came to its own home street.
    By now Griff and Hoop were wistfully calling out to fellow Welshmen going by. “Keep fighting for that lost dollar, boys! We’re with you all the way, Jared!” This last, I could tell, was addressed to a lean, dark-featured individual at the front of the group, not nearly as far along in years as most of the other miners but plainly a leader. Striding along with a measured tread I identified as military, the younger man grinned through his grime and sent my companions a half wave, half salute.
    “What, is there a wage dispute?” I asked in surprise, having heard the hosannas about the riches of the World’s Richest Hill.
    “There usually is,” Griff grumped, Hoop nodding, “but this one’s bad. The damn company just told the union it’s lopping a whole dollar off the daily wage, can you imagine?” The calculating part of my brain certainly could; a twenty-two percent cut, a severe reversal of the Hill’s holy standing. “That’s a poke in the eye if there ever was one,” Griff was fulminating further. “Jared there and his council are working on how to turn it around, you can bet.”
    “A strike?” I knew from their earlier recital of labor’s struggles that the last time the union leadership called one, the strike had failed when Anaconda’s hired thugs broke the spirit of the mineworkers.
    “Nobody said that,” Griff intoned secretively.
    The last of the miners filed past, the next shift went deep underground into the catacombs of copper ore, and we three turned back down the hill toward the brick canyons of streets below. By contrast, the neighborhood I would be coming back to tonight looked made of matchboxes. More than ever I felt like a foreign traveler in the Constantinople of the Rockies. One particular question of the many crowding my mind made its way out first.
    “Hoop, Griff, help me to understand something. Why does Peterson, as Scandinavian as they come, pattern his business so strongly here to Dublin Gulch? Hiring me to stand in for him at wakes, for instance.”
    “Norwegians don’t die enough for him to make a living,” Hoop imparted. “The Irish, they’re another matter.”

3

    Y ou’re the cryer,” simpered the woman, her own eyes red from weeping, who opened the door to me that evening. “I can tell by the cut of your clothes.” Truly, I did feel quite distinguished in the olive-brown herringbone worsted suit, vest included, that the tailor had outfitted me with. The boardinghouse trio had assured me I looked freshly spit-shined.
    “Ma’am,” I began, having learned my lesson in Butte manners of address that first time with Grace, “at this sad time, I wish to convey the deepest sympathy for the loss of your husband, on behalf of the—”
    “Ma!” she brayed over her shoulder. “It’s the funeral-home fellow, dressed to the gills, come to pay his respects.” She all but swept me into the house and steered me toward a tiny elderly woman, attired in the dignity of black and settled in a wicker armchair beside the open casket. “It’s my rogue of a father, Lord save his soul, at rest there in the coffin,” my escort instructed into my ear as she led me over. “Ma has been expecting you ever so much. Father O’Rourke sent word he can’t come tonight, there’s a fellow hurt bad at the Neversweat may be needing last rites. So we’re awful glad to have a cryer to do the soothing.”
    This had me blinking. If I was expected to stand in for a priest, I hadn’t negotiated wages with Creeping Pete nearly hard enough.
    Approaching the shriveled