Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner

Author:Wallace Stegner [Stegner, Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-91171-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

2

The morning newspaper told him that the cornerstone had been laid at a new Mormon ward house, and showed him the faces of the men and women who had participated in the ceremonies. It informed him of a controversy between a Better Government committee and the sheriff about conditions at the county jail, and of the death of a tramp who had been found along the Western Pacific tracks between Salt Lake and Black Rock, and of a family stabbing in Bingham. It gave him the information that ore shipments from the Silver King, Daly-Judge, and Apex mines were up thirteen per cent above the same period of the preceding year, and that the Second International was meeting in Switzerland and denouncing nationalism and war. But it told him nothing about what was happening in Sacramento, and he looked carefully among strange names and strange faces up and down the columns of the whole paper without finding any clue to the expectancy he felt. It was as if he had come here to meet someone and could not remember who.

At noon he ate in a workingmen’s eatery on Second South, and came out afterward to pick his teeth and lean against the wall, watching people pass. A bum panhandled him for a cup of coffee, and Joe gave him a nickel. Another bum struck him for a match, but Joe didn’t have any. He learned comfortably against the wall, watching faces.

Along the sidewalk came a dapper young man with a mustache, his legs encased in peg-topped riding breeches, his calves booted in glistening British boots. In his hand he carried a crop with which he tapped the side of his leg as he walked. His heels were crisp and confident on the sidewalk.

Looking at him come, Joe was moved by ribald amusement. He was astonished that such a dude would have the nerve to appear on the street. With the corner of his mouth he chirped twice, sharply, as if to a horse.

The dude looked sideways, startled, his crisp walking uninterrupted but his hand forgetting to tap the crop against his boot. He had large soft brown eyes and his mustache was brown and luxuriant. As his eyes met Joe’s they went angry and hard, and his mouth stiffened. Joe gave him a still, intent look, one the poor prune couldn’t misunderstand.

“Giddap!” he said, and removed the toothpick from his mouth.

For a hopeful instant he thought the dude was going to take the challenge, and he shoved his shoulders away from the wall eagerly. But the dude’s face, a face like a girl’s with an artificial mustache pasted on it, turned ahead again, reddening, and the crisp bootheels clicked on. Two men standing across the doorway looked at Joe and shook their heads and laughed.

Joe let himself back against the wall, taking advantage of the narrow ledge of shade. As he leaned, his eye caught a glimpse of a man who passed and hesitated, turning; a man with loose shoulders and loosely hanging arms, and a face that took on a hanging, sheeplike grin.

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