CRIPPLED JACK by BOSTON TERAN

Author:BOSTON TERAN [TERAN, BOSTON]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HIGHTOP PUBLISHING
Published: 2022-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 58

When Matthew passed through the exit from the fairgrounds there was Vandel and his cohort. Whether they were about to press a conflict amidst the congratulations, the back slapping and autograph seekers, a hard rock character strode up alongside Matthew. He thought he recognized the man who spoke before the youth could pose the thought.

“Yeah, kid…last night. I’m with the Federation. Name’s Joe Sweeny.” He had a croaky voice and packed shoulders and he turned his sleet gray eyes upon Vandel.

“You here to start trouble with the boy?”

“Who the fuck are you?” said McSorley.

“I’m the guy what’s gonna shit in your soup, that’s who I am.”

Right after that, a half a dozen men djinned out of the crowd. Federation men from the night before, their clothes still stained with ash.

“Me and this kid are leaving here,” said Sweeny. “You understand, Vandel? We know who you are. And you four shits aren’t following…unless you want to trade bloodshed.”

• • • “I got an invite for you,” said Joe Sweeny. “From Mary Jones.”

Sweeny was now Matthew’s armed escort to a beautiful brick home in Hartman’s

Addition. The labor leader was the invited guest of a wealthy Neapolitan

businessman who had made his bones as an importer. He was also considered a

dangerous foreigner who believed the eight hour workday and livable wage were

legitimate claims.

It was a stately neighborhood of Phaetons and gentle ladies with their well dressed

tots. So you can imagine the neighbors when they saw the house guarded by

whiskey swizzling, tobacco spitting workingmen of the Western Federation, who

eyed these women like they were something to be served up for lunch. Matthew had to wait while Mary Jones conducted a meeting on a screened-in

porch with half a dozen well suited gentlemen. He watched the women and there

was no doubt who was in command of that meeting. He was witness to a new type

of fire in the way she pounded one fist into the other palm to make her points. When the men retired, Matthew was called in. Mary Jones put out her hand to

shake and he offered his left, which was his good hand, but she reached out and

took the other.

“I want the hand that made you.”

He looked down at the twisty mass that was his fingers.

“God gave you that hand,” she said. “And that body. It is part of the blessing, like

so many others who crawled out of the womb, broken…but who answered the call.

And by their actions bear witness and so make others believe.”

She stood with arms crossed, waiting to see what, if anything, he might say, but

he was still in many ways a boy.

“Why’m I here?” he said.

“Here,” she answered. “As in this world? Or in this room? You are here…in this

world for the same reason I am. You are here…in this room for the same reason I

am.”

“Got no ideer, ma’am. Wha’ ya’ mean?” he said.

She stood with arms crossed. This tiny birdlike woman who was all sinew and

steel.

“Matthew…we are here to raise hell. You, in your way. Me, in mine. “I knew before the telling. I knew Ledru Drum. I knew that beast dog of his. I

knew the old Missus Drum. Knew her like one sister knows another. Shared

sufferings and joys, we did. And not in equal measure. And I was born with a

special sense to know what I see, before I even see it.”

She came right up to Matthew. He could see himself reflected in the glass of her

spectacles. A shy, wild eyed stranger.

“And when I see you, Crippled Jack, I see someone who means to carry the fight

to them. To whoever ‘them’ is. You got heaven locked up in one hand, and hell in

the other. Like me. And we don’t need any lectures on goddamn grief from anyone,

do we?”

“No, ma’am.”

She reached out and tugged at his shoulders.” She held him by the coat sleeves. “I

have a quest for you, Matthew.”

He did not know what a quest was, and he told her so.

“I want you to join up with the Western Federation. We are going to Leadville.

That’s where the real fight will take place for the heart of the state, and the soul of

the country.”

He did not know what use he could be to her.

“It’s a bloodthirsty place of unmitigated wealth as you know. The most powerful

mines in the country are there…and home to the men hired to kill you.” All the injustices he’d faced were leaning against him now like a weighted pillar.

How best to settle all this, he was not sure.

“Nola Dye is on her way there,” said Mary Jones. “She will be there for the

duration. For we intend to shut down that mountain of riches.”

She saw the conflicts, the personal turmoil, fanning across the boy’s expression. “It’s all right. In your own good time, you’ll decide,” said the woman. “But…I

have a favor to ask that will just take no more than today.”

Her request was simple enough. She wanted Matthew to scour the city and collect up to a hundred children. Poor children, urchins living on the street, those abandoned by their parents for want of a job, sickly children, desperate children left alone, children who had worked in the mines, at the smelters, with the railroad,

who had been cut loose because of physical injury.

“Children who were like you,” she said. “The gutter and alley children.” “Wha’ I do wit ‘em?”

“Ah!” she said. And she leaned in close to him as if in confidence. “Tell them

they’re going to have a fine dinner and then attend the theatre.”

Matthew took to the street with his Vetterli slung over a shoulder and Joe Sweeny

on his flank smoking a chipped and battered pipe.

The first children they approached were street wise and listened skeptically.

“What’s the catch?” was usually the first thing out of their mouths.

This is where Joe Sweeny stepped in and pointed his pipe at Matthew. “Do you

know who this is? It’s Crippled Jack…the marksman. He just won the shooting

match at the fairgrounds today. You want to come along. Fine… What do you got

to lose? You’re hungry and dirty and not a cent between you.”

After Matthew acquired a small entourage of cast asides following him it got a lot

easier. They moved along at a slow pace as two of their number were on crutches

and one in a three wheeled wheelchair.

Sweeny played harmonica, and he took the instrument from his coat pocket and

tapped out the saliva, and from there on he riffed up flashy tunes. They were eye

grabbers all right liting through the Denver downtown and children came up to

them flush with curiosity about where they were marching off to.

Matthew knew the best street corners for begging, the best for scaring up a few

pennies by running errands for storekeepers, or loading a wagon, maybe carrying

some woman’s packages…even where youthful thieves and pickpockets worked

their trade. He found children there. And he knew the alleys where poor black kids

like those he suffered alongside at Sugarland worked at their survival. These were all

the streets of his own past, where he was reprising the tragic dreams of his boyhood

that left him heartstricken and empty. But no matter now. Today was all about this

little ragtag army of human grievances that knew too well about anguish and

mortality.

• • •

On the street behind the Denver theatre was a vacant lot where Mary Jones and the Federation brought food and set blankets on the ground for the children to sit and eat. Mary Jones moved among them, asking about their lives, then she had Matthew follow her to the theatre where they entered through a stage door. There, a white haired attendant silently nodded to her.

She whispered to Matthew, “He’s Federation.” She asked Matthew to wait, and she disappeared into a darkness of stage flats and props where a small crew of men awaited.

Once alone, Matthew edged out past the curtains where he could look into the vast interior of the theatre. He had never been in a theatre before. Not a real theatre, anyway. He’d never been close to such beautiful velvet seats and intricately painted scrollwork, never stood beneath a hand carved ceiling and awe worthy chandeliers.

His first thought, oddly enough, was that his clothes were too filthy for those seats. It was then Mary came up alongside him. She was cleaning her glasses with a white cloth and spoke to him cautiously so as not to be overheard.

“You’re to have the children at the stage door at seven. That attendant will guide you in. You and Joe must be quick and steady.”

Matthew nodded.

“A number of theatre hands will guard the stage. If something or anything should befall me…I want you to take my place.”

To say Matthew looked shocked would be an understatement.

“You know what has to be said…Do so for as long as you can.”

“I’m na’ able ta’.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s curse about being able…it’s being willing that matters.” After the children were fed, Mary gathered them up and explained what were her intentions, and how they may be able to help their own cause.

Things happened quickly after that. Matthew led them across the street to the stage door with Sweeny herding up the stragglers. This night was special and the theatre would be flush with newspapermen. It was a political fundraiser for the mayor, who was an anti-union advocate of the first order. The evening’s entertainment was to be a burlesque of The Pirates of Penzance titled Beadle’s Pirates for Ten Cents. It was based on Beadle’s western dime novel series of the same name. And so the costuming, for that evening’s show, was western attire.

Having seen the costumed cast of characters milling about backstage Matthew understood clearly why Mary Jones had chosen this night, this show, for her assault on the system. It would give her and the children a fighting chance to get to and on the stage, and to make her case before the powers that be brought her down.

The white haired attendant gave Matthew the nod and here he came through the stage door, the children filing along behind him like God’s own little troopers.

Matthew heard the stage manager say to the attendant, “Who the hell are these kids?”

And the attendant, calm of purpose, answered, “Guests of the mayor, for a few words he means to say to the audience…before the show.”

Before tomorrow came dawning up, that old man would be without a job…for sure, so thought Matthew.

Matthew and Sweeny got the children lined up and packed in behind the curtain. Mary Jones appeared from the shadowy flats of bygone plays and took her place with the children. She motioned for the stagehands who were with her to begin their task.

Matthew could hear the call of those creaking rope pulleys as the heavy cloth drapes began to slowly spread apart, and he was suddenly looking beyond the footlights and into a world of finery, wealth, and prominence. The theatergoers had been politely whispering among themselves up to then, but when the curtain

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