The boy put on a long face. “Flunked is what I shoulda done. Hung on in Miss Rellis’s class. Now I’ll get some old biddy for a teacher.” He sent me a sideward look, his eyes as quick as the rest of him. “I maybe won’t be going to school too much longer anyway. Skinner says I’m in luck, the Hennessy bunch has its eye on me when they do any more hiring.”
That knifed through me. So much for my bright idea of having posted him to the almighty top floor, just for the summer, to watch for any message of a certain sort dispatched by the goons; true to its nature, Anaconda was ready to swallow him up.
“What does your uncle think?” I asked, afraid I knew the answer.
“He says it’s up to me.” Famine scuffed along, head down. “I don’t much want to, but a kid has got to eat.”
SO, things flew at me like that during those days; and the hours after work the fledgling lyricists of the Lyre Club were steadily ready to consume. “You’re quite a night owl again,” Grace waylaid me as I was about to hustle back to the library one of these times.
My spirits instantly shot upward. How good to have her popping out of the kitchen to trade small talk as she used to. “These evenings, though,” I responded in relief, “everyone involved is healthy enough not to require a casket.”
“That’s not bad-”
“-for a start, yes, yes, you needn’t remind me.” That drew nothing more from Grace; she just hovered in the hallway. The recent distance between us had shrunk to within reach. I chanced hopefully: “If you’re feeling daring, would you like to come with me tonight?”
She shook her head, but still made no move to let me by.
“Hoop and Griff, bless their incurably Welsh souls, have taken practically a proprietary interest in the song sessions,” I gabbed to break the silence.
Grace pinched her lip, restricting her response to a careful “Mmhmm.” I waited, willing her to find whatever words she needed to put us back on the good terms of Miners Day.
Finally she wound her hands in her apron and said:
“Rent day was three days ago, Morrie.”
Deflated, I paid up and exited into the night.
AT MY SECOND HOME, the library, once more the miners and wives and Rab and Jared and Hoop and Griff and I filed into the basement without the whole passel of us being hauled off for unlawful assembly. It was a critical night: by dint of my tugging and hauling, we had reached melody, in the steps of song construction. However, I was making scant progress by standing on the stage and humming famous melodies as illustration, and in frustration I bemoaned the auditorium’s lack of any means of musical accompaniment.
To my surprise, that put life in my audience. For once, there was unanimity in the knowing grins of everyone but me, even Jared and Rab.
It was left to the Cornishman to ask:
“Has thee not heard of the Butte Stradivarius?”
“I confess I have not.”
“Thee shall have that remedied.”
THE CONCERTINA, rapidly fetched and in Cornish hands, could produce any melody I could think of, and plenty more. The wheezebox, as I came to think of it, made my point that a good tune was essential to a good song.
“That completes the three parts of musical invention,” I announced exultantly as the last wheezy strains of “Camptown Races” wafted away into the plaster foliage atop the auditorium walls.
“Rhyme, rhythm,” I smacked my fist into my hand with each word, “and melody. Keep those in mind and the Hill and its union shall sing a work song to rival that of the angels in their airy labors.” (Or, in my mind and Jared’s, to challenge that infernally mocking ballad of pie in the sky.)
This was a proud moment, and the craggy miners who had manfully sat through nights of musical instruction now slapped their knees and batted their neighbors on the shoulders and shouted out, “Good job, Professor!”
I took a modest bow. “I have done my utmost, and now it is up to you. Appropriately enough, creating the right song will take work, don’t think it won’t,” I exhorted further. “Inspiration most often follows perspiration. Now, then,” I advanced to the lip of the stage and made a beckoning gesture to the group, “what ideas do I hear for that song?”
Discord ensued.
The Finns wanted something grand and sonorous, in the manner of a saga.
The Cornish wanted something brisk.
The Irish wanted something rollicking that would tear the hide off Anaconda.
The Welsh, who legitimately had music in their blood, were outnumbered and outshouted by the others, as usual in history.
The Serbs wanted something that dripped blood.
What the Italians wanted was not clear, but it was nowhere close to what the other nationalities had in mind.
Standing up there trying to referee the musical wrangle, I wondered what it took to get committed to a mental institution in Montana.
At last Jared dutifully climbed onto the stage beside me and in his best top-sergeant manner managed to institute some order.
“This is a start,” he took command of the chaos in an unarguable style Napoleon might have admired. “There are a few differences of opinion, but talk those over with each other, with your shift partners and anybody who can carry a tune, all right? We’ll sort out what’s promising and what isn’t, next time. After that, we’ll get the union delegates from each shift at every mine together, and settle on the best song.” Without breaking his cadence of being in charge he asked over his shoulder: “How many people does this place hold, Professor?”
“Hmm? Perhaps two hundred. But you can’t-”
“It’ll be the damnedest thing they ever heard on the top floor of the Hennessy Building,” Jared vowed with a fist, “our song when we get it. Folks will sing it in this town as long as there’s a chunk of copper left in the Hill.” He clapped his hands, once, sharply. “Now let’s go home and get to working on the work song, everybody.”
As the group dispersed, I stood by numbly, still jolted by Jared’s fervent promise to assemble two hundred miners here in a library space where they were not supposed to assemble at all. Knowing perfectly well that if I asked him, “How?” the reply was going to be, “Professor, I leave that to you.”
Quinlan passed by me with a troublesome grin, humming to himself. That tune at least was unmistakable. “Same song, second verse. / Could get better, but it’s gonna get worse.”
WHEN I CLOSED UP THE LIBRARY, Rab and Jared were waiting for me down on the steps. “Come with us to the Purity for pie,” he invited, direct even when he was being pleasant. “I’ll even buy.”
I joined them, and the sound of our footsteps was our only company on the lamplit streets. Of course Rab had a dozen enthusiasms about what the sought-after song should be like, and Jared winnowed those in his wry fashion. I contributed what I could, although my head was a swirl. A crowd of a couple hundred, to get past the police, the goons, and, perhaps most consequential, Samuel Sandison, without attracting attention? My mind went back and forth over this, which simply dug the problem in deeper. My mood was not helped when we passed the Daily Post building and I saw that even the so-called autumn classic, the World Series, was jinxed this wayward year; the scoreboard being set up for the forthcoming games announced the Chicago White Sox-Skinner would crow to me unmercifully-versus the Cincinnati Red Stockings, as purists knew the team that sports pages habitually shrunk to the Redlegs or Reds. The Anklet Series, I thought of it with disgust. Where were the teams with good sound contentious names, Cubs, Tigers, Pirates? When even baseball starts to go downhill, I grieved, there’s no telling what will follow.