The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 71
“Can we stop?” Rye asked, but Willard kept driving. He crossed the river, drove through Little Italy, and parked on the street down the block from Mrs. Ricci’s house. He sighed—and something about the sound, almost an animal grunt, felt sympathetic to Rye.
Willard reached in his coat and handed Rye the envelope with Early Reston’s five hundred dollars in it. “You got a safe place for this?” he asked.
“No,” Rye said.
“Right,” Willard said. Then he handed him the box with Gig’s gloves in it.
Inside the sleeping porch, Rye looked around for a hiding place before finally sliding the envelope and the gloves under his cot. He barely slept. He heard noises, sensed shadows across the yard. He dreamed that Early was behind him on a train.
In the morning, he heard voices from the kitchen and sat up in bed just as Mrs. Ricci’s older son, Marco, was stepping onto the enclosed sleeping porch.
Marco was short and square, wearing a big wool coat, with curly hair below his hat, around his ears. “Cold out here,” he said. Any heat came from two vents cut in the kitchen wall. “Anyways, Ma says you could use a job.”
Marco said he had a friend named Joseph Orlando who ran a machine shop on Garland Street, on the North End. The day before, his stock boy had whacked off a couple of fingers with a table saw, and they needed someone to fill in. “Joe said the kid’s a real goob,” Marco said, “but if the goob comes back to work tomorrow with eight fingers, you’re probably out a job.”
“That’s fair,” Rye said.
Rye got cleaned up and dressed, and Marco chuddered him up the Division Street hill in an old Model N.
Marco kept glancing over. “Hey, where’d you get the gloves?” he finally asked, probably thinking they looked stolen.
Rye looked down at the gloves and the band of white fur hinting at the luxury inside. He was like a tramp in a tiara. “Murgittroyd’s,” he said finally.
“Fancy gloves for Murgy’s,” said Marco.
“They’re weasel,” Rye said.
Marco parked the auto on Garland Street, in front of a business called North Hill Fittings and Machine Shop.
“One other thing,” Marco said. “Ma said she agreed to sell our orchard to you and your brother. You know that won’t happen, right?”
Rye said nothing.
“How much you pay her so far?”
“Not much,” Rye said, “six dollars, maybe.”
“I’ll have her apply it to your boarding costs.” He shrugged. “Anyways, that’s all I can do. But there’s no way we’re selling that land to . . . well, to you.”
Rye thanked Marco, got out, and went into North Hill Fittings and Machine. Joseph Orlando was a short, wiry man who toured Rye around the store with great pride. He seemed to be under the impression that Rye was Mrs. Ricci’s nephew, and Rye didn’t correct him. The first building was a storeroom where Rye would get the bolts and bushings and other parts that customers needed while Joseph took their orders and their money at the front desk. Joseph explained which parts the shop manufactured, which they ordered, and how many were needed to die-and-cast. He showed Rye where to find invoices, order sheets, and inventory forms. Rye could barely keep track of the pads, flanges, washers, and pins, let alone the paperwork, Joseph spending five minutes alone on bolts—rim bolts, hub bolts, spindle bolts—and he was about to confess that he might not be smart enough for this job when Joe said, “But a broom and a mop are the only tools you’ll need to master today.”
Then Joe led him to a second building, behind the first one, a machine shop where two men ran cutters and grinders, threaders, presses, lathes, taps and dies, and the table saw that had taken the goob’s fingers. “Stay away from that goddamn saw,” Joe said.
Joe’s brother, Paul, worked in back with a big machinist named Dominic; Rye’s job was to go between storefront, storeroom, and machine shop. He liked being around the machines, the smell of oil and metal. Dominic was especially nice, stopping his drill press and raising his goggles to explain to Rye what he was doing. That day Rye cleaned up metal tailings and rubber shavings, oiled the saws and presses, and mostly fetched nuts, bushings, and bolts to take up front. He swept the floor so clean the men could’ve eaten dinner on it.
“Kid’s a fast learner,” said Dominic at the end of the day, and Joe agreed and said he wouldn’t mind if the eight-fingered goob found other employment. He gave Rye a dollar for the day and another half for what he called “a bonus for coming in on short notice.” He said, “Check back Monday; if the goob don’t show, the job’s yours.”
“Thank you,” Rye said. He put the money in his pocket and pulled on his coat, his bowler, and his ermine gloves.
Big Dominic was getting dressed to leave, too, and he looked at Rye and opened his mouth to say something, but Rye cut him off. “Weasel,” he said.
Back at Mrs. Ricci’s house, she fed him dinner like he was part of the family, “Mangiare!” she said when she caught Rye thinking about Gig, staring out the window with his fork in the air. After dinner, Rye built them a fire and sat drinking tea and reading the afternoon Chronicle, like a regular fellow home from work.
There was a front-page story about the raid and Gurley’s arraignment: “With the arrest of the petite and startlingly pretty agitator Mrs. Jones, and the permanent closure of their hall, the city has struck a final blow against the IWW’s dangerous insurrection.” Rye read the phrase “petite and startlingly pretty agitator” again, as if Gurley were a debutante. The Industrial Worker had been shuttered for good, the story went on, and more than a thousand copies burned. The paper was banned