Rye shook his head. How naive to think that only nine dollars separated Brand and him. “And do you ever sell them twenty-dollar gloves?”
“Of course.” The salesman leaned in. “There’s a pair of forty-dollar gloves I could order from Milan. I have sold two pairs this year.”
Rye looked around the store again. A man and his wife were staring at him, the wife seated, the man behind with his hand on her shoulder, as if he might protect her from whatever Rye was surely carrying.
When Rye looked back, the salesman was chewing his cheek. “You’re one of those Wobblies,” he said.
Rye didn’t answer. But at that moment, he felt done with it all—done with the beatings, done with Taft, done with Lem Brand and Ursula, done pretending they could stand on soapboxes and draw justice out of the air. Early was right. Rye didn’t believe in anything but a job, a bed, some soup. A simple farmhouse behind Mrs. Ricci’s boardinghouse. Gig out of jail, living with him.
And in that moment, all he wanted was to go back to the doorman in front of Louis Davenport’s place and clap at him in the warmest gloves in the world.
“I was there the day of the riot,” the salesman said. “I saw you, shackled in the street. I remember because you seemed younger than the others. Reminded me of my grandson. I’m sorry what they did to you. The police here—” He shook his head but didn’t finish the thought.
Over his shoulder, two other salesmen looked their way.
“Are the ten-dollar gloves warm?” Rye asked.
“They are very warm,” the salesman said, “but really, I think—”
“I’ll take two pairs. One for me and one for my brother.”
The salesman smiled but did not budge.
“And can you wrap his pair?” Rye said. “I’d like it to be a gift.”
The man hesitated. “Son, you should know, these gloves are not going to be nine dollars warmer than the gloves at the Emporium.”
“Yeah,” Rye said, “maybe they will be to me.”
26
It was after five, and outside it was tunnel dark. Just two hours before Gurley’s speech, and Rye rushed to get back to the union hall.
As he walked, he looked down at his hands, almost stunned to see the rich brown gloves, a band of white fur at the wrist like a bird’s plumage.
How would he explain this? A month’s wages for two pairs of gloves? Gig’s pair was in a slender box with a bowed ribbon. He’d be in jail for six months, and then, what, Rye gives him a pair of white-fur-lined gloves? In July? I’ve lost my mind, he thought. He wondered if Bradley & Graham’s would take the gloves back.
He turned down Stevens Street and saw one of Lidle’s newsboys, a skinny black kid already hawking the Worker. “Second Wobbly action!” the boy was yelling. “Free pies tonight at the IWW Hall!”
Rye felt an auto on his left. It was driving slowly next to him. He glanced back and saw the big headlight eyes of a Model T grille. Then the car pulled around him and onto the curb, curls of smoke from the exhaust, the red ash of a cigarette glowing in the window. The driver’s-side door creaked open and a man rose above the car’s roof. It was Brand’s thick security goon, Willard. He tossed the cigarette butt. “Get in.”
Rye stood still. “I can’t. I have to be at the hall.”
Willard sighed and, as if thinking, This job, reached into his coat pocket and set something on the roof of the Model T. Rye couldn’t see it but guessed by the heavy clank it was a pistol. “Get in,” Willard said. “It’s goddamned freezing out here.”
It was barely warmer inside than out. Willard sat back in the driver’s seat, his breath coming in heavy bursts of steam. They rumbled along in silence until he finally looked over. “Nice gloves.”
Rye looked down. “They’re weasel.”
“And the box?”
“A second pair.”
“In case you lose those?”
“Something like that.”
There was almost no traffic. Willard offered Rye a cigarette from a box he pulled from his coat, but Rye shook it off. Willard stuck one in his own mouth, popped a match across his thumbnail, and lit it. He sighed again, a sound that Rye took to mean: Sorry for this business.
“I have to be at the hall in an hour,” Rye said.
Willard said nothing. They motored up the South Hill, the snow getting heavier and the wind through the open side window stinging Rye’s face. This was nothing like the first trip to Alhambra. No hats or scarves, no soft Ursula to hold his arm, just Rye and Willard in an icy automobile.
The gate to Brand’s driveway was closed, guarded by two men in long coats and earflapped hats. One of them was holding a rifle against his chest, the other had his gun strapped over his shoulder. They were standing around a burning ashcan in front of the gatehouse. The one with the strapped rifle walked over.
“How’s he doing?” Willard asked.
“Birdshot,” the man said, and wiggled his fingers.
“He alone?” Willard asked.
“She left an hour ago.”
Rye wondered which she. Ursula? Brand’s wife?
They were waved through. One man watched from the window of the carriage house gate. Another man guarded the front door of the house. “What’s going on?” Rye asked.
Willard parked the T, killed the motor, and opened his door.
There was no tour this time, no doors thrown open, no Amazonian redwood or African onyx. Willard led Rye into the house, the front-door security man nodding them through. Down a long hallway, past a dark dining room, they went through a pantry and into a plain room behind the kitchen.
At the servants’ table sat Lem Brand, a glass of something dark and a half-eaten meat pie in front of him. He was on a stool, facing
