Work Song Read Free Page B

lay him away in?” he whispered.
    “Rosewood,” came to mind.
    “The diamond of woods,” Peterson uttered with reverence. “My golly, that casket must have been something pretty to see.”
    “Unforgettable.”
    “Hmm.” He moved to his desk at such an unctuous pace that I saw where the nickname “Creeping Pete” came from. Picking up a list there, he read off: “ Dempsey, O’Connor, Harrigan —and that’s just this week’s deceased. You’re hired.”
    We dickered over the wage and, as we both knew we would, met in the middle. There was a further matter: my attire. Displaying a jacket sleeve nearly worn through at the elbow, I told him my tale of the missing trunk as if it were the loss of a royal wardrobe. “Surely if I am to uphold the name of this establishment, I should be better clothed than circumstances have left me, wouldn’t you say?”
    Not so much as a hmm met that; Peterson apparently took it as a matter of principle that anyone representing the funeral home should be at least as well-dressed as the corpse. He scrawled something on a pad and handed it to me. “Take this over to Gruber the tailor. He’ll fix you up.”
    Tucking the note in my pocket, I turned to go, the vision of a new suit warming me inwardly. “Mr. Morgan,” the sepulchral tone stopped me in the doorway. “You have been to Irish wakes before, haven’t you?”
    I was intimately acquainted with mourning; how many variations could there be? “Uncountable times.”
    “You start tonight.”
     
     
    “YOU’RE GAINFULLY EMPLOYED? That’s not bad for a start.” Standing on a chair, Grace took time from feather-dusting the chandelier to nod at me in general approval. “Even if it is when things go ‘boo’ in the night.”
    “I am not naturally nocturnal,” I admitted, “but that seems to be when wakes take place.”
    “Just come in quiet, that’s the rule of the house.” She turned back to brushing at the chandelier with a practiced light touch, its crystals tinkling softly. Turbaned with a towel as she attacked these higher parts of the house, she looked exotic there on her perch, except for the familiarity of the violet gaze whenever she glanced around at me. I watched while she went at the chore, unexpectedly held by her stylish housekeeping. I had intended to go straight to my room and pass the time until lunch relaxing with a book, but the moment would not let loose of me. “You’ll get to know the Hill”—Grace’s words reached me as if across more distance than was between us—“like it or not.”
    Rousing myself, I began to say I could blame her prime boarders Hoop and Griff if the job didn’t fit, when the floor shook under me, the chandelier crystals rattling as if trying to fly off.
    “Jump!” I cried in alarm, my arms out to catch her.
    Grace held to where she was, only flashing me a bemused smile. “My, how gallant. It’s not an earthquake, if that’s what you’re thinking. Only dynamite.”
    Feeling foolish, I toed the floorboards, which seemed to have settled back into place. “What, they’re mining here? Right under us?”
    “Under every bit of Butte. There are miles and miles of tunnels—Arthur used to say it’s like Swiss cheese down there.” Her gaze at me had something like a jeweler’s appraisal to it now. “Morrie? Do you have a minute?”
    “Easily.”
    She allowed me to help her down from the chair. But as soon as we were settled at the kitchen table, where serious talk is most comfortable, Grace Faraday, landlady, took charge. “There’s something you had better know, if you’re going to be rooming here for a while.” Contemplating me across the oilcloth, she tapped a finger on her cheek as if consulting the dimple. “Besides, you seem the sort who finds out anyway.” She inclined her head to indicate the spacious yard that wrapped around the house, then again to include the room we sat in. “The mining company wants to get its hands on this,” she confided.