“Sure do. Back there a ways when you had us taking our pulse, how come we couldn’t do it on our veins just as good as on those archeries? ”
“Clean out your ears, dummy,” the girl next to him jumped on that. “It’s not archeries. That’s bows and arrows. It’s arthries, like arthritis. Isn’t that right, Mr. Teacher?”
“You are both nearly correct.” But not near enough. While explaining that the returning blood in veins was too dispersed to register a pulse, I despaired of ever making my words stick in minds as flighty as these. Then an idea hatched.
“Miss Rellis?” Rabrab was startled to hear me call her that for the first time since she was the age of these students. “Do your young scholars ever sing?”
“They most certainly do. Why?”
“Can they sing this one?” I whistled a snatch of it.
Confidently, Rab swept to the front to lead the command performance. “Class, serenade Mr. Morgan such as he has never heard.”
Whether it was the song’s mischievous endorsement of betting on bobtail nags or the familiar sassy tune or simply the chance to bawl at the top of their adolescent voices, the sixth-graders attacked the old favorite with gusto, making the auditorium ring with the final galloping chorus:
Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah! Camptown racetrack’s five miles long, oh the doo dah day!
“Unforgettable,” I said with a congratulatory bow to the class when the last high-pitched note had pierced the rafters. “And would you believe, the exact things we have been talking about go nicely with that same tune. Hum it for me and I’ll show you.” With the room practically vibrating to Stephen Foster’s jingle-jangle rhythm that practically anything can be fitted to, I improvised:
Arteries and veins and pulse, heartbeat, heartbeat! They all deliver life to us, that’s the job of blood!
“Ready to try it?” I challenged. They couldn’t be held back. Rab looked radiant as the young voices romped through my version a number of times.
“One last thing.” I rolled my sleeves down at the conclusion of the songfest. “At next week’s story hour, I am sure Miss Runyon will be happy to show you the knack of the tourniquet.”
“I HOPE YOU DIDN’T do too much damage to the minds of the youngsters.”
Sandison was back to prowling the mezzanine when I came upstairs. “Just imagine”-he swept a hand over the scene of the miners tucked in every conceivable sitting place in the Reading Room below-“if we had this kind of patronage on a usual day. The trustees would think we’re geniuses.” He looked resentfully at the Roman-numeraled clock high on the wall. “And at one minute past noon, ninety out of a hundred of our involuntary scholars will hightail it out of here to the nearest speakeasy. The poor fools.”
“That’s an altogether gloomy view of humanity, isn’t it, Sandy?” I protested. “Surely a good many of the men apply their minds while they’re in here like this.”
“Hah.” He rested his bulk against one of the grand bookcases, the gilt-edged works of George Eliot over one shoulder and Ralph Waldo Emerson over the other. “Let me tell you a story, Morgan.” A distant look came into those iceberg-blue eyes. “It was back when I was just starting out in the cattle business, before I could get things built up into the Triple S. I was wintering in by myself-Dora and I hadn’t been to a preacher yet. It was a bad winter, down around zero a lot of mornings when I’d have to pitch hay to the cows. Other than the feeding, I had all the time in the world on my hands, and the winter wasn’t half over before I’d memorized every damn word of all the reading material in the house.” He turned his hands up empty, still in the distance of remembering. “There wasn’t a library or bookstore in fifty miles in those days. The only neighbor was an old prospector, up a gulch a couple of miles away. I’d seen a beat-up copy of Robinson Crusoe in his cabin.” Sandison fixed his disturbing gaze on me. “You’re a bookworm, maybe you savvy: I had to have that book or go crazy. I saddled up to go get it. Snow was starting to come down heavy, but I didn’t give a damn, I wanted something to read. When I got there the old coot drove a hard bargain-I had to promise him a veal calf in the spring. Anyhow, he finally handed over the book and I wrapped it good in a piece of oilcloth and stuck it under my coat. Rode all the way home in a blizzard, and both ears were frostbitten, but I still thought it was worth it.” One more time he scowled down at the mineworkers, some of whom were starting to watch the clock. “See there? Do you think any of these would have gone through that for the sake of a book? Look at them, they’d rather educate their tonsils than their brains.”
Maybe I thought he was scanting the capacities of the Quins and the Jareds and others from the Hill whose minds were as lively as could be asked for. Maybe I was still sailing on air after my session with Rab’s young minds. In any case, I indignantly invoked the bard of us all, presiding open-eyed as an owl above the entrance to the jam-packed Reading Room. “You leave me no choice but to bring down Shakespeare on you, Sandy. ‘The music of men’s lives’ is not so easy to call the tune of, we must remember.”
At that, the expression under Sandison’s beard was unreadable, but the rest was plain enough. Shaking his head conclusively, he moved off toward his office, leaving these words over his shoulder: “You’re an optimist, Morgan. That’s always dangerous.”
“YOU HAVE A CALLER.”
Along with Grace’s knock on my door came the distinct note of curiosity in her tone. I was as inquisitive as she was. With my head still full from that day in the library, I could think of hardly anyone in the entire city who would be paying me a call here, with two shadowy exceptions. But Grace, of all people, would know an Anaconda goon when she saw one. Wouldn’t she? To be on the safe side, I made sure the brass knuckles were in my pockets before I went downstairs.
The parlor was empty, as was the dining room; no caller, no Grace, anywhere.
Just as panic was setting in on me, she called from the kitchen: “In here, Morrie. Your visitor is making me tired just looking at him.”
At the first glimpse of my guest, I relaxed the grip on my weaponry. Dealing with a twelve-year-old may take a lot of one’s resources, but usually not brass knuckles.
Skinny as the sticks of kindling in the woodbox behind him, in dusty patched pants and a hand-me-down shirt, Russian Famine was only barely occupying a chair, one leg jittering and then the other, ready to bolt. Grace, as usual in crisp apron and a dress so clean it practically squeaked, was looking at him as if one or the other of them was at the wrong costume party. So as not to confound her even further, I retrieved the boy’s given name with a smile: “Wladislaw, we meet again. What brings you?”
Even his words were thin and fidgety. “Miss Rellis needs to see you. At that Poority place.”
“It’s another long story,” I fended off Grace’s quizzical look. Gesturing toward our surprise caller, I made a supping motion. “Perhaps…?”
“Good heavens, yes.” She cut a thick slice of bread, put it on a plate, and set it in front of the famished-looking youngster. Pouring from the syrup can, she said, “Say when.”
“I like it sogged.”
The syrup pooled on the plate before the boy nodded. As he tucked in to the food, Grace wordlessly cut another slab of bread for him. I excused myself to fetch my hat from upstairs. When I came back down, Grace’s guest reluctantly licked his fork and edged out of the chair to go with me. “I may be a while,” I told her. “Skip me at supper.”
“The larder can stand a chance to recover,” she bade us off, still looking mystified.