The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 102

And that’s when she came in, as big and lovely as ever, in a blue bustled dress with a feathered hat. “They shut down the variety shows,” Ursula said. “Thank God.”

“Margaret’s doing real theater now,” said Edith, “a touring production of George Cohan’s Forty-five Minutes from Broadway.”

“It’s a small part,” Ursula said.

“It’s a star turn!” Edith said.

“Don’t listen to her. The producers are merely filling some of the lesser parts with local actors, and I got one of the singing roles.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Edith. “She steals the show.”

Ursula put a hand on the other woman’s arm. “Edith, can Ryan and I have a moment alone?”

I followed Ursula to Edith’s office, and once the door was closed, she gave me the warmest hug, and the smell of her, the press of her bosom, it all made me think of my brother, how much Gig had liked her, and my own boyish fantasies that she and Gig would raise me someday. I fought against crying.

“I’m sorry about what happened to Gig,” she said, and before I could ask how she knew, she added, “Willard told me. I was very fond of your brother. I hope you know that. When I heard, I felt responsible. For getting you tangled up with Lem that way. My intentions—” She didn’t finish the thought but leaned in, confiding. “I sent an anonymous letter to the police. Nothing came of it, but I had to do something.”

I reached in my pocket. I put five hundred dollars on the office desk.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Inheritance,” I said.

She looked as if I couldn’t be serious.

“Gig would want you to have it,” I said.

“Oh, God, no,” she said.

“Please,” I said.

“Absolutely not.” She said that she owned the hotel free and clear now and was doing quite well for herself. I tried several times, but in the end, she was the only one who wouldn’t take the money.

She walked me out of the hotel and, on the street, ran a hand across my face, as if memorizing it. She looked at me from both sides. “You look older,” she said.

“Like him?”

“Oh, God, no.”

I only saw her once more, eight years later, in December 1919. Spokane had become a quiet and conservative place by then. The rushes had ended, timber and mining were in decline. The population had flattened, and temperance and religious forces had succeeded in shutting down the vice in Spokane.

Elena and I had come downtown to see the Christmas windows at the Crescent. Gregory was almost three, Daniel just a baby. Bets and Calvin hadn’t been born yet. This was just weeks before Prohibition went into effect, but Spokane had already banned alcohol. I parked in front of Jimmy Durkin’s old place, got out, and was reaching in the backseat for little Gregory when I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

It was her, walking with a poodle and a well-dressed older gentleman. “Well, hello there,” she said. “It’s Margaret Burns.”

Before I could say anything, she gestured up at the old Durkin’s. It was a dry pool hall and cardhouse now. A sign advertised free coffee and ginger ale.

“Well,” she said, “at least Gig didn’t live to see that.” Then she took the dog and the gentleman and strolled off.

“Who was that?” asked Elena.

“That”—I watched her walk down the sidewalk on the gentleman’s arm, a fur stole flapping over her shoulder—“was Ursula the Great.”

I must’ve started ten letters to Gurley. But in the end, I never wrote to her. I had only known her a few months, after all, and the more time passed, the less I felt it would make sense, getting a letter from me. Meeting her was like being swept up in a typhoon, then dumped back on the ground. But the storm had long ago passed. My old friend Tolstoy said the closer a man gets to history, the less he seems to have his own free will, the more his life is commanded by the gravity of big events.

I imagine Calvin would’ve agreed with that as seawater swirled around him. And Gurley, too.

Gurley. How many times as a young man did I roll that name across my tongue. I had never told Elena this, but at one time I believed that I loved her, although that’s a strange word for someone like Gurley—love. She seemed too tough for it. Back then, I knew cops and killers, detectives and anarchists, and not one of them had her strength, could have done what she did.

I watch the TV news now and I see the Freedom Riders and Martin Luther King Jr., people protesting at lunch counters and on buses. She would be right alongside them, alone and pregnant, nineteen, and not a doubt in her mind that goodness would eventually prevail.

I wish I could be so sure.

There was always a part of me that felt she was too bold, asking too much, going too far. I was a strong union man my whole life, but I could never go that fast, like she did, like Gig did. I sometimes felt guilty, living my quiet life, paying my union dues and getting small rewards, while true believers like Gurley fought with their lives.

The labor wars continued throughout the teens. In 1916 three hundred Wobblies boarded steamers in Seattle to go support a strike in Everett, but when they got there, two hundred armed men were waiting, and for ten minutes they unloaded on the steamers, 175 bullets tearing into the pilothouse alone. Most of the men on board were unarmed, but a few returned fire, including a private detective who had been planted as a spy inside the union. One steamer nearly capsized from the men running from gunfire, and when it was over, five Wobblies were dead on the ship, and more in the water, their bodies never recovered. Almost thirty were wounded. Two deputized citizens were killed, although it was determined later that they’d been shot in