The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 19

Rye jerked awake at some point in the night, bars pressed against his face, stunned to think he might have slept on his feet, but no idea if it was a minute or an hour. At last the stairwell door opened and light came in, a shift change and a new jailer appeared alongside the one in glasses. He looked at the cell and covered his mouth in disgust. “Jesus, Carl.” Then he turned and spoke to the other one quietly: “Who approved it?” Finally, the door was opened and the prisoners poured out; they wept as they squeezed out the cell door. Rye looked back to see six men still inside, collapsed on the floor, the Italian singer one of them.

They were marched upstairs and into the jail courtyard. Soon other Wobblies from other cell blocks joined them and they lined the four sides of the square. No one looked any good—there were black eyes, cut lips, torn clothing—but Rye’s group had gotten the worst of it, pissed and sweated and bloodstained, and the others looked at them with pity. Rye saw Jules in a line to his right, coughing and breathing heavily, staring at the ground, and Gig across the square, mouthing, You okay? and Rye nodding a lie: Yeah. Gig had been put in with Walsh and Little and the union leaders, segregated to keep them from organizing and agitating. A man next to Rye said there were more than a hundred men in a jail built to hold forty. Three jailers and six private security men with rifles stood guard on the edges.

They were given scratchy jail grays, and they changed quickly in the cold, their old clothes piled in front of them, a jailer poking through them with his nightstick. Then another man came with a biscuit and cup of water for each man. They bounced in place, waiting for their turn, and ate and drank like animals. After the heat of the sweatbox, it was freezing in the courtyard, and even out of his damp clothes in the jail coveralls, Rye couldn’t stop shaking. Men fell and were helped up by those around them.

They had been in the dirt courtyard an hour when Hub Clegg came out with another cop, his face bruised purple, and it took a moment for Rye to recognize Old Slate Hair, the bull cop who’d led the attack on their camp, left squirming in the dust by Early Reston.

Rye and Gig caught eyes.

Sergeant Clegg put a hand on Slate Hair’s shoulder and spoke kindly to him. “Ready, Edgar?” Slate Hair nodded and he and Clegg walked the lines, looking from face to dirt-scarred, bloodied face.

Rye couldn’t help himself and glanced up as Slate Hair went past, the deep raspberry Early Reston had put on the big cop’s face filling him with a kind of pride.

“I don’t see the one hit me,” Slate Hair said when he’d looked at all of them. “He was thin and older.”

“What about the others?” Clegg asked.

The big cop pointed at Jules. “That old Indian was there, but he didn’t do nothing but laugh. There was a kid I didn’t get a good look at.” Then he pointed at Gig. “But this is the one did the yapping before the other one jumped me.”

Clegg walked over to Gig. “That right? You a yapper?” Then Clegg turned to Slate Hair. “He’s not so yappy now.” Then back to Gig. “What’s your name, son?”

“Gregory Dolan.”

“Where you from, Gregory Dolan?”

“Montana,” Gig said. “Last few years, I lived here.”

“Nah, you don’t live here any more than a cockroach does.” Clegg had thick lips and bulging eyes, a face that looked like it was pressed against a window. “Tell me, Gregory Dolan, what Montana town had the good sense to run you off?”

“Whitehall.”

“Your whore mother suck off Irish mine rats there? Or was it coolies?”

Gig just stared.

“You don’t look Chinese, so I’m going with Irish whore. And your da? Whatever man lifted her skirts a Saturday night?”

He didn’t answer and Clegg got even closer, so that he could’ve taken a bite from Gig’s face if he’d wanted to. “Tell me the name of the man attacked my sergeant, Gregory Dolan of Shitfuck, Montana.”

“Your man attacked us,” Gig said.

“That ain’t what I asked,” Clegg said. “Who else was at the river yesterday?”

“I don’t know,” Gig said, but Clegg did not like the answer and gave him a quick jab to the gut with his nightstick.

“One more time,” Clegg said. “Tell me who was there?”

“I was there,” Rye said, surprised to hear his own voice.

Clegg spun. “Who said that?”

“I did.” The men around Rye stepped back slightly, and he spoke in a rush to get it all out: “We were just sleeping when your man attacked us with that mob. We ran away and your man chased us and tried to throw us in the river. The man who hit him, I didn’t know him, and he left right after—” Rye felt clever at his truthfulness: He hadn’t known Early Reston’s name before he beat Slate Hair.

By this time, Clegg was standing in front of him, his features even worse up close. Black flecks of tobacco spotted his teeth. “What’s your name, son?”

“Ryan Dolan. I’m his brother.”

“So, we got both whoreson Dolan brothers.” Clegg looked back and forth, from Rye to Gig and back to Rye. “I don’t see it. Must’ve been half a poke made this little one.” Then Clegg walked to the line Jules was in. “How about it, Shitting Bull—these Dolan boys telling the truth?”

Jules nodded without looking up or making eye contact. Clegg gave him a lighter poke, in the side, Jules’s face unchanged.

And now Clegg circled back to Gig and stepped up into his face again. “I suspect I could beat and sweat a buck like you for a month and not get anything. So how about I work on your little sister instead. Give him another night in