The Cunning Man

by D. J. Butler

  “Mr. Rettig,” Hiram said, “I heard from Sorenson, the foreman at the mine, that Eliza Kimball was staying at this hotel. Perhaps she might be a better messenger.”

  Rettig shook his head. “She refuses to see me.”

  Hiram surrendered. “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t fret, Mr. Rettig,” Michael said. “We Mormons have secret handshakes. We’ll get them to sign.”

  Rettig burst into laughter. “Your son has a quick wit, Hiram. I believe he’s been funning me, and none too gently. I thank you for agreeing to help.”

  Hiram wasn’t sure if it was the right move, showing up on the Kimballs’ doorstep with the railroad’s man’s offer. But maybe even an offer they rejected could unite the Kimballs. Maybe Ammon and Samuel could come together against a common enemy.

  And Eliza?

  “I’ll do this as a favor to you, Mr. Rettig,” Hiram said, “but I’m going to ask for something in return. There’s a woman in jail here in town, Mary McGill. I was wondering if you could do something to help her out. She’s innocent.”

  Rettig lifted his lorgnette back up to his eyes. “Hiram, I truly am sorry. But that is between her and the local authorities. I have no power.”

  Hiram found he had nothing to say, so he took his leave with Michael in tow.

  Chapter Nine

  Hiram and Michael left the hotel. The chill air drove their hands into their pockets, where Hiram felt Rettig’s envelope.

  The police station was a solid cube of heavy brick, like a bank with all the grandeur stripped away. Its windows were sealed with black iron bars and its blinds were drawn, but the doors were open. Light spilled out onto the sidewalk, splashing into yellow puddles in the blue of the early evening. Two police cars were parked in front. A train chugged by the distance in a rush of engines. A long whistle blew. The scent of the coal burning and the hot metal of the wheels on the tracks were brought to Hiram by the breeze.

  A woman laughed raucously from inside a nearby saloon.

  “Ooh-la-la,” Michael said.

  “You know why I don’t ground you when you make comments like that?” Hiram said.

  “Because I’m seventeen years old, practically a man, and soon hopefully going off to college to become a physicist?”

  “Because you’re funny. I like that in a fellow.”

  “Also, who would drive the truck?”

  “I would drive it myself. I know how, believe it or not. And my license is just as valid as yours.”

  “But you would fall asleep and crash.”

  “Only once in a while. It might still be worth it.”

  “I guess I’ll keep being funny, then.”

  “Ooh-la-la,” Hiram said.

  “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

  Hiram walked up the steps and through the open door, and Michael followed. Inside, a wide waiting room with hardwood floors was dominated by a single desk. On the desk rested a logbook and a pen. Benches for waiting lined three walls. Closed doors at the back of the reception room, and wooden stairs leading up, hinted at other spaces.

  Through a large window of pebbled glass set in a door, Hiram saw and faintly heard two policemen interviewing someone. The third person sounded drunk and belligerent.

  The colored policeman sat at the desk, watching Hiram and Michael. His head was shaved bare beneath his uniform cap. His eyes were set wide in his face, and his ears were large, and maybe just a tiny bit pointed. His expression was emotionless; did that reflect cruelty? Fatigue?

  “My name is Hiram Woolley,” Hiram said.

  “I remember you,” the policeman said.

  “I’m not from here,” Hiram began.

  “I know who you are. A Mormon farmer come down from Salt Lake with food for the miners. You and your boy here. You drive that Ford Double-A. Only he drives it, not you. Maybe your eyesight is bad? But you don’t wear glasses.”

  “I have occasional fainting spells.” Hiram shot Michael a glance before his son could say anything. “Very occasional.” Who had the policeman been talking to? Naaman Rettig? “I’m sorry, you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “You mean you don’t know my name.” The policeman blinked slowly, as if it were a conscious act. “I’m Sergeant G. Washington Dixon, but most people call me Shanks.”

  “Because you’re tall?”

  “On account of my long legs.”

  “Sergeant Shanks,” Hiram began again, “the woman you have in custody, Mary McGill, didn’t shoot me.”

  “That’s what you said up at the mine. What I can’t figure out is, this is the least Mormon town in this whole state. Those miners you brung food to ain’t Mormons, they’re Orthodox and Catholic and Lutheran. At least their wives are, since most of the men are just godless sons of bitches slugging out their lives underground to add a little oomph to the locomotives of the D and RGW. What are you doing here?”

  “They’re God’s children, regardless,” Hiram said. That was true, but then he felt compelled to tell a little additional truth. “Also, the Kimballs are Mormon.”

  Michael shook his head. “They’re not just Mormon, they’re really Mormon.”

  Sergeant Shanks raised his eyebrows. “What, you mean like, really righteous?”

  Michael shook his head. “They’re from one of the old families. I bet you wouldn’t know the name Heber Kimball, but you’ve heard of Brigham Young.”

  “My schooling was limited, but I ain’t completely ignorant.”

  “Heber Kimball was his best buddy,” Michael said. “And Ammon and the rest of them haven’t yet fallen so far from the tree that the boys in Salt Lake have forgotten them. You know, they’re part of that whole old polygamy upper-class set.”

  That was more truth than Hiram would have liked to share. Michael wasn’t wrong, but the fact that Hiram might be down here to help the scions of an old Salt Lake clan, as much as the miners and their families, made Hiram slightly uncomfortable. “But the point is, Mary McGill didn’t shoot anyone. She was trying to get the rifle away from one of the miners. When I stepped in to help, I got shot accidentally.”

  “You might draw a lesson from that.” Sergeant Shanks stared at Hiram and sucked a tooth. “One of the Germans, wasn’t it? What was he going to do, shoot little Sammy Kimball?”

  Hiram sighed. “Maybe.”

  Sergeant Shanks nodded. “I tell you what I do like, though. I like that you brought food for the miners, and not just for Ammon Kimball. Anyways, I ain’t gonna let her out. We got her held on disturbing the peace, and regardless of what happens with the shooting, she’s been stirring up the miners, so it’s a fair charge.”

  “Stirring up the miners, heavens to Betsy!” Michael feigned shock. “What did she ask for, decent wages? No more seven-year-old kids sorting coal from rocks with their bare hands?”

  Hiram frowned at Michael. The boy was going to get them both into trouble one day.

  Michael ignored his signal.

  Sergeant Shanks laughed. “Yeah, well, the state legislature don’t share your views. Throw in vagrancy, she might be looking at a few months in Sugar House. But I expect it’d be alright if you wanted to talk to her a bit.”

  “Can Michael stay here with you?” Hiram asked.

  Michael went to protest. Hiram put up a hand.

  Shanks laughed some more. “Sure, I like your mouthy boy. I was a mouthy young man, myself.”

  * * *

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Mary McGill clutched the first bead of her rosary between her thumb and the knuckle of her forefinger.

  The cell was a standalone cage of iron strips, each strip an inch and a half wide and painted white. The strips ran horizontally and vertically, with three-inch gaps between them. A ferret couldn’t wiggle between the strips, which were riveted together at every point where they crossed.

  The cage had a ceiling of crossed strips, too, and it was bolted onto the hard
wood floor. Outside the cage, the floor retained its shine and was colored the lovely red-brown of varnished hardwood. Within the cage, the floor had been scuffed to a dead gray trough, barely wide enough to hold two flat iron bunks, riveted to the side of the cage, one above the other, and a simple toilet in the corner.

  Mary thanked God she was the only prisoner in her cell.

  One other such cage sat beside hers, its bunks holding two drunk men, snoring soundly. The room had no windows and was lit by a series of electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The whole place smelled of bleach.

  “…and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.” She moved to the first of three beads, relaxing into the rosary, and concentrating on her desire that God free her from her bonds. She said three Hail Marys, then the Glory Be, and then recited the first Glorious Mystery from memory.

  She heard the scraping sound of the door to the room being unbarred. She put her rosary away in a pocket, and then the man in overalls came in, the one who had got shot at the mine. Hiram. He was alone.

  She stood. “I didn’t mean to shoot you.”

  He walked to her cage. He was more handsome than she had noticed earlier, though he held himself tentatively, like a man who expected to be rejected. He took off his hat and smoothed down the few hairs clinging to his scalp. “I know. I told them that, and they don’t seem to care.”

  She started to touch her face, then pulled her hand away and lifted her chin. “I’m with the union. The United Mine Workers. It comes with the territory.”

  “You seem very…ladylike…for a union organizer.”

  “You would prefer a hairy goon named Moe?”

  He laughed a little. Just the right amount to show her he’d rather smile than frown. “I didn’t say I’d prefer one, but that’s more like what I’d expect. Are you not worried about, I don’t know, getting beat up? Shot at?”

  “My father likely wasn’t thinking about my chances of being shot when he insisted on my ladylike clothing and bearing. I think he was more concerned about doing right by the wishes of my mother, God rest her soul. But then, he was a drunk, so maybe he wasn’t thinking anything at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I lost my mother when I was young, myself. My full name’s Hiram Woolley.”

  “Mary McGill. Or perhaps my father thought a good ladylike posture and dress would compensate for the disfigurement I bear in my physiognomy.”

  “Fizzy…?”

  “Face, Mr. Woolley. I mean my birthmark.”

  Hiram Woolley looked at her face as if seeing it for the first time, and appeared surprised. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

  “God bless you, Hiram Woolley, I believe you’re telling the truth.”

  “I try to.”

  Mary McGill looked the man up and down. His denim overalls were frayed, his hands were callused, and even the skin of his forehead and cheeks had the leathery look that comes from years of working under the sun. “I expect you do, Mr. Woolley. Tell me the truth now, then—what are you doing in here?”

  “It’s my fault you’re locked up. I came to see if I could get you out.”

  “As you promised. And it wasn’t at all your fault. You spoke to the policemen, and they told you to mind your business.”

  “True.”

  “Then you came in here.” Mary raised her eyebrows to Hiram in challenge.

  Hiram put his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I wondered if there was anything else I could do to help you.”

  “Bony thing that I am, you’d never believe it, but I eat like a horse. Always trying to put on more flesh so I look less like a twelve-year-old boy, and it never works. I don’t suppose you have a pastry hidden in those overalls.”

  “Actually, I have a Snickers bar.” Hiram produced the candy square, wrapped in cream-colored paper that crinkled when he touched it, and handed it over.

  “Perfect.” Mary took the bar, a little soft from sitting in Hiram’s warm coat pocket. “A candy bar named for a horse, for a girl who eats like a horse.”

  “Named for a horse?” Hiram looked amused. “I had no idea.”

  Mary suddenly realized that she was enjoying the conversation. “There is something else, yes. Police Chief Fox allowed me one phone call when he brought me in, and I called the union’s lawyer. And of course, since it’s nighttime in Denver, no one answered.”

  “Will he give you another call?”

  Mary shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Give me the number,” Hiram said. “I’ll call the lawyer first thing in the morning.”

  “Denver two, twelve oh seven.”

  He repeated the exchange and number back to her. “And the lawyer’s name?”

  “James Nichols. And if he doesn’t believe you, tell him Gil said Five-Cent Jimmy would never let her down.”

  “I never knew a lawyer who only charged five cents.”

  “You never knew a union lawyer, then. Haircuts are even cheaper.”

  Hiram furrowed his brow. “What are you doing here, Mary McGill?”

  Mary sighed and sat down on the edge of the lower bunk. “It’s true that I came here to organize the miners. And I thought I’d be doing it in the usual ways, and asking for the usual things. God knows they could use the usual things, at the Kimball Mine and also at all the others.”

  “Higher wages.”

  Mary nodded. “A better price for the coal they dig. No interest on the advances. Better rents on the shantytowns the mine companies have them living in. But also things like more safety equipment, English lessons for the men, for safety reasons, and for the families, because it’s the decent thing to do, so they have a future. Stop child labor.”

  Hiram frowned. “I heard the kids pick rocks out of the coal.”

  Mary shook her head. “That’s not all they do. They lead mules and carry messages and water. A lot of the mine owners will shrug and say they don’t employ the children, it’s the miners themselves who bring their kids down to help. So the companies technically don’t violate the law yet benefit from child labor nonetheless.”

  “I can see that,” Hiram said. “But sometimes a family’s got little choice. Kids help on farms, too.”

  “Your son worked?”

  “I taught Michael to drive when he was twelve. I needed him to run the tractor.”

  “You ever see a ten-year-old boy with black lung? A young man grown old by the age of sixteen, who has to roll back and forth on the floor at the end of the day to loosen up the phlegm in his lungs so he can cough up enough coal dust and free his breathing enough to be able to sleep?”

  Hiram shook his head and looked at his boots.

  “So that’s why it’s not enough that the mines don’t employ the children. We have to ban it entirely.”

  “So if a man brings his son to work, he goes to prison?” Hiram asked.

  “If he’s a coal miner, yes.”

  “So I expect this is an idea you have to teach to the miners.”

  “And I was teaching them. And organizing them, at the Kimball mine and elsewhere. But then the Kimball Mine closed, and things got really bad up there.”

  A shadow fell across Hiram’s face. “Worse than at the other mines?”

  “The other mines are still open. And since the Kimball men and their families live on company land and get food from the company store, they’re going deeper into debt by the day.”

  The shadow on the farmer’s face darkened. “I’ve seen the miners starving. One family was trying to eat a cat.”

  Mary was struck by the troubled compassion in Hiram’s eye. “On top of everything else, Mr. Woolley, the miners are divided by language.”

  “They’re mostly immigrants.”

  “And Italians work best with Italians,” Mary said, “and Serbs get along with Serbs, and Chinese with Chinese. So it’s always a challenge to get them to overlook the differences of language and food and dress an
d church and pull together, only at the Kimball it all got worse.”

  “They picked sides.” Hiram frowned. “Ammon has the Germans. Samuel has the Greeks.”

  “So at the Kimball, I stopped being able to organize for wages and safety and tried to push to get the mine back open again.”

  Hiram had a thoughtful expression on his face. “Samuel and Ammon both seem to have plans for operating the mine.”

  “Only they’re different plans, the two can’t agree, and each man is backed by a mob.”

  Hiram nodded. “I’ll call Five-Cent Jimmy in the morning, and if I have to send him a buffalo head by mail, I’ll do that, too. What else?”

  This strange, handsome farmer was offering to be some kind of deputy. “Go talk to Ammon Kimball. If he can forgive the men rent until the mine opens, or forgive debts for food, it would be a godsend. Or even if he could get food back into the company store and offer the men credit on better terms, it could be the difference between a family making it until the mine opens, and a husband riding the rails in search of work.”

  Hiram slipped his hat on. “I’ll do my best. I probably should get on to Ammon’s before it gets too late.”

  Chapter Ten

  Spring Canyon was a wall of darkness rising to either side of them.

  But for the Double-A’s headlights, the sky above might have shown them Orion or Gemini or other features of the winter night. As it was, the truck’s lamps revealed only a pale sequence of abrupt and disjointed images. A startled and sleepy cow. The corner of a brick springhouse. Rail fencing surrounded by sagging winter grass. The white hindquarters of two deer, bounding away to safety. Twice, oncoming headlights skidded past, forcing Michael to the edge of the road.

  Hiram was more than ready for a rest when he realized that a small constellation of lights to the right of the truck in the darkness must be coming from the windows of Gus Dollar’s shop. “Pull over.”

  Michael did. “You want another Coke?” he asked.

  “I want to talk to the owner.” Gus Dollar had craft, and he might know if there were supernatural components to the troubles at the Kimball mine.