by Patrick Lee
Dick O’Leary interrupted the chairman as he accidentally dropped the empty whiskey bottle on the wooden floor. “Sorry, Vic.” The other men threw impatient stares at the red-faced O’Leary as Chairman Pollard prepared to continue. Pollard cleared his throat and used his gravely voice to gain the attention of the men, “As I was saying there, number two, Mother’s Day is this here Sunday, and it would be a good idea if we shortened up the picket time for the married men. Some of you single guys need to take longer turns at the gates. Sign up with Duckey on that too.”
He coughed and sipped from his water glass, “Another thing. You probably heard Senator Mansfield ain’t about to help us force the bastards to the table. We might be needing a vote in a week or so to see if we want to keep goin’. Be thinking about it. Now I open it up to the floor.” A slight pause followed as Mikhail slowly raised his hand. “Chair recognizes Brother Mik Anzich.”
Mikhail clumsily pushed back the undersized chair and he stood up to speak. His six-foot-seven frame and two hundred and fifty pounds rose from the table as he prepared to talk. Some of the men in the front two rows cranked their necks to make eye contact with him. “I got somethin’ to say. So I’ll say it right out. Don’t want any of yous’ to hear it second hand. Me and my boy leave Monday for Hungry Horse to work. My little Anna has the polio. We got to work to pay the bills. Ain’t nothing we planned to do. Family comes first. We’ll be out in back after the meetin’. If you’ve got a problem, that’ll be the time to speak up.”
He sat down and stared straight ahead toward the back of the room. The silence roared and deafened the room. No one made a sound. Chairman Pollard cleared his throat. “The floor’s open.” Still silence. Only hushed grumbling by O’Leary and Nelson. “Well, I guess this meeting’s over.” He slammed the gavel down and looked across as Mikhail walked down the three stairs toward the back door. Tomas followed him out the door and into the dimly lit gravel alley behind Union Hall.
Mikhail walked to the edge of the alley where it met a wooden picket fence. He slowly took off his gray sweatshirt and hooked it on an exposed nail on the fence. Pulling out a pair of worn leather gloves from his pocket, he slipped them on his giant calloused hands. Tomas took off his black horned rimmed glasses and placed them in the pocket of his jean jacket, which now hung on the fence. He slipped on his yellow leather gloves and pulled them tight over his fingers. “I’m scared Dad. Most scared I’ve been in my life.”
“Me too, Tomas. It got’a be done this way.”
“Any tips for me?”
“Stay on your feet. Both men’ll put the boots to you if you go down. Stay up and box like Nolan learned you.” The back door of the Union Hall exploded open. Dick O’Leary led the group toward the two men standing in the alley. A large circle of men choked off the alley as they surrounded Mikhail and Tomas. Mikhail spoke first, “Do you chose me, John Navarro?”
The short, stocky Mexican made his way into the circle and faced Mikhail. He spoke broken English through his wide smiling lips, “You’re wrong to leave, Mik. I don’t fight you. I owe you one favor. You got me and my brother our jobs. I fight on your side this time. He took off his white dress shirt and handed it to his brother. Tomas stared at Navarro’s huge dark chest, biceps and neck. The men standing near him took a couple of steps backward. Navarro walked over and stood alongside Mikhail.
Dick O’Leary stepped into the circle. “I can’t take you, Mikhail, and I’m sure as hell not going to try Navarro. But I chose your pup there. Nelson gets to finish him off if I don’t git the job done.”
“Now hold on there lads.” Tim Nolan pushed his way from the back of the crowd and entered the circle. “I can’t miss all of this fun now can I? It’s not goin’ to work for the Kid to fight the both of you, now will it? I’ll go a few rounds with you, O’Leary. My nephew can have it out with Pee Pee Pants Nelson.”
Mikhail spoke up, “Butt out, Nolan. Not your fight. Tomas’ll handle his own.”
Nolan took off his gray sweater and tossed it to Mikhail. He laughed as he answered Mikhail. “My fight now you big ugly Bohunk. I’ll be goin’ up to Hungry Horse with you and my nephew.”
Mikhail bristled after hearing the words of his close friend. “He ain’t your nephew.”
“Ya, he is. I adopted him. Ya can’t remember shit can ya?” Some of the men laughed. “Now let’s go here, O’Leary. Let’s show the boys what a couple of Micks can do with their dukes.” He shadow boxed a few steps and came within inches of O’Leary’s face. Then he danced backwards as he circled his fists. “Come on, Big Dog, let’s see what ya got.”
O’Leary lumbered toward Nolan and led with some fierce left jabs that Nolan easily dodged. The big man fired a circling right hand that flew just above Nolan’s head. Nolan unleashed five jabs that accurately found the O’Leary’s whiskey-redden face. Blood exploded from the nose of the stunned man. Nolan danced backwards again and bowed to the crowd of men. One of the men yelled, “Kick his ass O’Leary, teach the cocky little prick a lesson.”
Dick O’Leary knew he had to get his opponent on the ground. He charged, missed with a clumsy tackle and skidded face first on the gravel. Again Nolan taunted him and the crowd with his dancing and shadow boxing. Jimmy Nelson lost control and Sunday punched Nolan in the right cheek and knocked him to the ground next to O’Leary. Nolan quickly rolled away from his enraged opponent and sprung back to his feet and danced toward Nelson.
Tomas jumped into the circle and stood in front of Nelson. Before Jimmy Nelson fired a punch, Tomas landed three lightning quick jabs to his chin and forehead, and followed with a strong right hand to his cheek. Nelson went down. Tomas danced back and waited. Nelson waved his hand. He had enough.
Dick O’Leary crouched on one knee and wiped the blood from his nose on his bare arm. “I’ve had enough for now Nolan. We ain’t done. You gotta come back to Butte sometime. We’ll finish it then. I had too much time in the bottle tonight.”
“That’ll be fine Big Dog. I’ll look you up for sure. Anybody else wanta go a couple of rounds?”
The crowd dispersed. Mikhail watched as O’Leary helped Jimmy Nelson stagger through the door. He also watched John Navarro flip his white shirt over his shoulder and saunter back into the building behind the grumbling crowd. It saddened Mikhail to think that he lost such good friends and co-workers. He didn’t tell Tomas, but he knew they’d never return to Butte. His family came first. The doctor bills had to be paid. They’d come back for his daughter and little Anna later. He joined his son and Nolan as they took the long way around to his Chevy. Nolan rehashed the fight with Tomas and praised him for his footwork. “You learn good, Kid. You remind me of myself as a young buck.”
Tomas didn’t respond to Nolan’s comments. It was done. That’s all he cared about. Nolan interrupted his thoughts, “What time we’ll be leavin’?”
Mikhail held the door open and looked at Nolan. “Why you goin’, Nolan?”
“Christ Almighty, somebody gots to take care of a big ugly Bohunk like you. That nose might scare up a bear or two. Maybe one of them grizzly bears might think you’re a mate and mount ya. I’m surprised they even allow your type to work outside of Butte.” He laughed and winked at Tomas.
Mikhail replied, “Eleven on Monday.”
In 1952, more than 57,500 Americans contracted polio. As children got older and played with others, swam in public pools, and went to school, they were exposed to the poliovirus, which then caused paralytic poliomyelitis. The poliovirus lived in water and was transmitted from feces. When it entered the stomach it attacked cells in the central nervous system, which controlled muscle function. Polio paralyzed its victims by killing off the spinal cord’s motor-nerve cells, which control various muscles.
In the cases of respiratory paralysis, the chest loses its muscle action and the patients were in danger of suffocation when they could not get enough air into their lungs.
Five-year old Anna Sednick woke up three weeks earlier with a headache, fever,
and a sore throat. She swam the afternoon before at the YMCA pool. After suffering from breathing problems, her mother rushed her to the hospital where the doctor placed her in an iron lung. The iron lung pumped air into lungs through a tracheotomy tube in the windpipe. Mikhail withdrew the remainder of his savings to keep his granddaughter breathing using this machine.
She looked up at him from her machine. The bellows motor pushed air in and out of the tank and made a whooshing sound. Anna timed the whooshing sounds and talked in between the whooshes, and said, “Papa, I’ll miss you. Who’ll read me stories?”
Mikhail leaned over the iron lung and softly looked at her beautiful face. He couldn’t remember ever crying before. The sensation overwhelmed him as he tried to answer her. It didn’t seem real that this mountain of a man who so many feared and respected was reduced to such a state of helplessness. His daughter Katya answered for him, “Mommy’ll read to you while Papa is away. You know some of the words yourself, and you’ll read to Papa when he comes home. OK.”
“OK, Mommy. Papa can read to Uncle.”
Tomas walked out of the hospital room into the hallway and sat in one of the chairs. He placed his hands over his face as he wept and mumbled to himself. “Why did all of this happen to us? What did little Anna do to deserve this terrible disease? And now we’re leavin’ Anna and Katya when they need us most.”
Mikhail came to the door and called Tomas into the room. “We’re goin’ Son. Time to say goodbye.”
Tomas walked around to the other side of Anna’s bed. He bent down and kissed her cheek. “Get better, Butterfly. We’ll ride the roller coaster at The Gardens when I get back. Understand?”
With a breathy quiet voice, Anna replied, “You’re a big chicken, Uncle. You get scared on the hills.”
“I’ll just have to close my eyes and hold your hand when we go down the hills.” Tomas faked a forced smile and walked over to his sister.
Katya burst into tears as she firmly hugged her brother. Through her tears she whispered, “Be good to my husband. He’s a good man. Tell him how much Anna and I love him.”
“I will, big sister. Can’t promise what our dad’ll do. But I will, I promise.”
Anna looked up at her grandfather and said, “Papa, why is everybody crying?”
Nothing in his life prepared him for this moment. Not even his rough childhood after his dad died. Not even this horrible strike and the scene at the union hall prepared him to leave his beautiful little granddaughter lying in a mechanical tube. “We cry cause we’re sad to leave.”
“I’ll get better Papa. Okay?”
Mikhail Anzich embraced and kissed his daughter and walked out of the room. His life totally flipped upside down. He walked by the nurse’s station and hurried down the stairs to the parking lot.
Tomas read aloud the May 6, 1952 edition of the Hungry Horse Newspaper that his brother-in-law David mailed to him. Mikhail drove as Tim Nolan slept in the back seat with his mouth wide open.
The Hungry Horse Project is a combination power and flood control project that was contemplated as a result of a survey of the area by the United States Geological Survey in 1934-35. The name of the project came from Hungry Horse Creek, a small tributary that entered the river about two miles upstream from the dam. This creek obtained the name when several half-starved horses were found in the snow-filled valley during the early days of the region.
Hungry Horse Dam is on the South Fork of the Flathead River, fifteen miles south of the west entrance to Glacier National Park and twenty miles northeast of Kalispell, Montana. The dam site is in a deep, narrow canyon approximately five miles southeast of the Fork’s confluence with the main stem of the Flathead River. The dam will play an important role in the program for meeting the growing need for power in the Pacific Northwest and a storage system for controlling devastating floods.
The South Fork River is diverted through a thirty-six foot diameter horseshoe shaped tunnel about one thousand feet long through the right abutment during the construction of the dam.
Tomas stopped reading as Nolan passed some foul gas. Nolan opened the fly window in the back. “Sorry boys, too much chili at the Chili King last night. Throw that in with the ton of Butte Special Beer I drank, a man’s gonna have some gas.”
Mikhail shook his head as he looked over at his son. Tomas laughed and rolled down his window to let out the rotten odor.
“Can’t imagine what the dam looks like, Dad. It’s almost finished. About five months or so to go.”
“Can’t neither.” His thoughts quickly changed to his son-in-law, David. It was a lot to ask to accept a job from him. “David most likely won’t let us forget what he’s done for us. Even though we’re working to help his daughter. I don’t trust him, but we got no other choice. He comes from good people. Don’t make sense how he turned out. We just got to make the best of it. Five months ain’t too bad a time.”
The rustling of the wax paper in the backseat caused Tomas to turn around and Mikhail to look into the rear-view mirror. Nolan dug into the tuna sandwiches on homemade bread that Katya prepared for them. Mikhail couldn’t pass up the opportunity to kid Nolan, “We only gone hundred miles. Food’s to last us until tomorrow, go easy on it.”
Between mouthfuls, Nolan came back, “I’m all in from all the back seat driving I’m doin’. Maybe you could keep it on the road some so a man wouldn’t have to work so hard. Then I wouldn’t have to eat just to keep up my strength.”
Tomas laughed again as he folded the newspaper and slid it under the front seat. “Once we get past Missoula up there, it’ll be the farthest I ever been away from Butte. Isn’t that something?”
Through a mouthful of sandwich, Nolan jumped back into the conversation, “Oh it’s something alright, Kid. Maybe your dad over there could get up off his big, brown Slovene ass once in awhile and take you someplace.”
Tomas wondered how Tim Nolan teased his father and got away with it. No one else ever said a harsh or teasing word to his father. Yet Nolan said anything he wanted and his father just smiled and shook his head. They must be real close friends all right. It’s a good thing for me and my father that Tim Nolan is along. He makes it a lot easier. I can take my mind off Katya and Anna once in awhile when he’s around.
CHAPTER THREE
Named for its shape of the number five, Lake Five was well known for its incredible color of blue, the beautiful variety of pine trees, and the spectacular backdrop of the peaks in Glacier National Park. A small town nearby, known as Egan, consisted of a boxcar depot, a sawmill, a company store, and housing for the railroad workers. The Western Fruit Express Company operated the Lake Five ice harvesting business during the winter. At times, as many as eighty men harvested ice from the lake. Ice was loaded into railroad cars and shipped to the division point in nearby Whitefish, Montana. Tourist cabins that opened in the 1920’s hosted train travelers from east of the Rocky Mountains who came to tour Glacier National Park and vacation at Lake Five.
Standing barefoot and wrapped snugly in her grandmother’s patch quilt, she stood on the back porch and waved goodbye to him as he drove away in his new Ford pickup. Warm sunny afternoons and rainy evenings of spring greened up everything nature allowed to live following the harsh winter of 1951-52. Cottonwood and birch trees sprung new branches and leaves almost overnight. The early evening smell of the red ocher dogwood and the fresh breeze off the lake permeated her senses as she deeply inhaled. A mating pair of loons swam gracefully through the still water in the bay in front of her long, sloping yard that led to the gravel shoreline.
This was her favorite time of the year. The dark, cruel winter finally left. A fresh start. A new beginning. Her thoughts shifted from the beauty of Lake Five to the complicated man who drove away from her log cabin. “What in the world am I doin’ with this married man? My husband’ll be home tonight. He’ll come driving up as soon as the train from Havre drops him off after his twenty-four hour shift. I hope and pray he’s so tired he goes rig
ht to bed. I don’t think I could stand it if he demands sex.”
Her thoughts of the last four hours and the incredible love making that she came to need and treasure burst into her mind. “Damn him, he’s so irresistible. I never knew it could be like this. But we can’t continue like this. Now, his in-laws are coming to work the dam. I can barely keep track of my husband’s schedule, run this string of cabins, volunteer for everything in Martin City and carry on with David. Now, I need to wait around until his in-laws go to work so he can call and set something up. I’ll go nuts keeping track of everything.”
As she walked back into her bedroom, she continued her self-talk. “Why can’t I just let him go? He’s no good. I know he pays for it with the girls at Mabels whenever he wants. He gambles, drinks, and spends too much money. He has a family in Butte. When did I lose my nerve? How did he take me over? Goddamn you David! Let me off the hook.” She burst into tears and returned to her bedroom.
By August 1946, two-hundred thirty-five business lots were leased, a park and playground had been platted, and water mains were laid. Over the next six years, twenty-five hundred residents settled down in Martin City. A third-class post office was built along with a four-room school and a jail. A forty-seat movie theater built of logs opened in 1947.
A women’s dress shop, two drug stores, a taxi, gas stations, grocery stores, cafés and bars, a variety store, hardware stores, apartments, a pool hall, a sporting goods store, a barber shop, barracks for the dam workers, an electric shop, a car garage, a lumber company, a rooming house, a confectionery store, and a butcher shop opened their doors for business in less than one year. All fifty-six businesses opened to accommodate the workers for Hungry Horse Dam.
As planned, David stopped his pickup in the parking lot of Bill’s Texaco Gas Station at the entrance to Martin City. He arrived an hour and a half late. David expected his father-in-law to make something of him being late. If it wasn’t this, it’d be something else. Mikhail leaned against his black Chevy with his arms folded. A patented scowl on his face greeted David as he approached. “Long ways to drive for you?”