The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 77
“I have business with the Agitator,” Rye said.
The man told Rye he believed the Agitator was run out of a saloon on Cherry Street, so Rye walked there. The bartender, who was just opening for the day, pointed him to a back staircase off the alley. Rye went up the rickety outdoor staircase and came to a wood door with a smoked glass window. Painted on it in red block letters was the word AGITATOR. It was a Sunday, and it dawned on Rye that no one might be at the office, but when he knocked, a woman’s voice called out, “Yeah?”
“I’m looking for Olen Parr,” Rye yelled through the closed door.
“He’s in jail!” the woman yelled back. “In Everett!”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, a week probably!” she called back. “That’s up to the judge!”
“What I mean is, what did he do?”
“That’s up to the judge, too!”
“Please let me in!” Rye called through the door. “I have something for him!”
“I told you, he isn’t here!”
Rye looked around in frustration. “I was here a few weeks ago!” he yelled through the door. “With Elizabeth Gurley Flynn! I’m with the Wobblies in Spokane! I’m the orphan Mr. Parr interviewed!”
Finally, the woman opened the door. She was short, with wiry gray hair and glasses at the end of her nose. She squinted over the frames. “You’re the orphan? From the story, I was picturing someone nine or ten years old.” She was holding sheets of loose paper as if she’d been reading something.
“No, it’s me,” Rye said. “I just turned seventeen.”
Then he removed his bowler, flipped the brim liner, and dug around in the satiny lining of the crown. “I apologize,” he said, “it might be a little sweaty.” Rye pulled out three typed pages, folded and mashed, from the crown of his hat.
“You an orphan magician, then?” the woman asked.
Rye did his best to flatten and smooth the pages. “This is from Gurley Flynn. She’s under house arrest in Spokane, so I had to smuggle it out. They confiscated and burned the Industrial Worker to keep her from printing this. She wants me to ask Mr. Parr if he will consider running this story in the Agitator.”
The woman opened her mouth—
“I know. He’s in jail. In Everett. Please. Just read it.”
She began reading. Slowly, her face changed. “Jesus,” she said. “Can you prove this?” She looked up at him. “No, of course you can’t.” She read a little more and then flipped to the second page. “Jesus,” she said, then “Jesus” again. And finally, “Shit.”
She invited Rye in. The apartment was dark and cramped, two typewriters on small tables, and news pages clipped on a hanging clothesline. This front room was apparently the offices of the Agitator. Behind were a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small galley kitchen. Rye could smell onions frying.
He looked up at the clothespinned news page. Beneath the Agitator flag was a banner headline calling for GENERAL STRIKE! The woman excused herself and left, returning ten minutes later with two older men. Neither one said anything as they leaned over a table to read Gurley’s story. When they were done, they looked up at the woman and nodded.
“Give us a minute,” she said to Rye, and they retreated to the bedroom to talk. When they emerged, the woman said they would remake the front page of the Agitator with Gurley’s allegations, and would print a special edition of the Industrial Worker the following week and distribute it all over the West Coast.
“You’re not going to wait for Mr. Parr?” Rye asked.
The woman looked at Rye over the rims of her glasses. “I love Olen, but the man can barely knot his shoes.”
Soon another woman and two men came up to the apartment, and by early afternoon, the office was a flurry of activity.
Rye stood and put on his coat. He could still catch the three p.m. back over the mountains.
“Where are you going?” the woman asked.
“Catch a train back to Spokane,” Rye said. “I have to work tomorrow.” Then, almost an afterthought: “And I need to go find my brother.”
Gig
IT’S ALWAYS the same, first drink of the day: uisce beatha. Our da called it that. Water of life. Deep pull of air, eyes pop, and it’s a goddamn clear world on the other side of the glass.
Hello there.
But here’s the rub, Rye-boy. Second drink’s better.
Of course, it’s going to turn at some point, but when? The first is good, the second better, and sometimes the third makes me a goddamn genius or lands me in a woman’s bed. To wit, it’s a blind roll past two. Four, six, nine—eventually, I might wake soiled on a railroad siding or, in this case, with my wasp of a little brother on the sleeping porch floor, wiping up the water of life I’ve just gagged—me saying, “Don’t goddamn do that. For once, leave me alone.”
But the words don’t actually come out, and when you leave that morning for your job—my baby boy brother has a job and is caring for me like I’m the child—that’s when I knew I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I’m sorry, Rye, I was cold and tired and done with it all.
An rud nach leigheasann im ná uisce beatha níl aon leigheas air. That was Da’s old adage: What cannot be cured by whiskey and butter cannot be cured. I used to believe it meant that butter and whiskey were the cures for everything, but I have come to realize that saying is about something else, about that which cannot be cured by whiskey or butter or anything in this world, namely, life. That steaming fly-covered shit pile of heartache, life.
Real hunger shuts everything down. By day five in jail I couldn’t