The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

“I know what you meant.” Early covered his eyes against the sun. “So, Gregory Dolan, are you a big man for these Wobblies?” “Nah.” Gig seemed both embarrassed and pleased at being taken for a union leader. He was on the free speech committee, he said, but was not an elected officer. “I simply share the belief that since all wealth comes from labor, labor ought to share in the wealth it produces and not merely be its fuel—” Early Reston grinned. “And do you have opinions that John Locke didn’t write first?” “Maybe.” Gig stopped and could barely contain his own smile. “Tell me, what kind of student of bum economics are you?”

philosophy: Locke since all wealth comes from labor labor ought to share in the wealth it produces.

It seemed to Rye that his brother usually had a famous saying at the ready, and as they moved down the trail, he went with an old favorite: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” Early Reston squinted as they walked, the same grin on his face. “Well, go on, you well-read son of a bitch, don’t stop there.” “For if you gaze long enough into an abyss—” “The abyss gazes back,” Early said. “And that’s me, friend. The abyss smiling back.” Rye had never seen anyone compete with Gig in the quoting of famous men. This Early Reston was like Gig meeting his match and his best friend at the same time, and they went back and forth about this fella Nitchee, or that one Marks, or some guy Russo, who Early said believed that “liberty with danger is preferable to peace with slavery.” “Tommy Russo?” Rye tossed in from behind, thinking of a young Italian they’d picked apples alongside. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” said Gig over his shoulder, less to educate Rye than to show off for his new friend. “His Discourse on Inequality is basically the Wobbly pitch after a bath and a glass of port.” This caused even Jules to laugh, and Rye felt left out, as he often did when Gig broke out the union talk. He’d been listening

discussing philosophy : "Nichee, Marks, Ruso" Jean-Jacque Rosseau " Discourse on Inequality like a wobbly pitch after a bath and a glass of wine."

It’s about equality. It’s about the worker owning the means of production.”

workers owning means of production

Mother married late, a union that lasted just long enough to produce me. She would volunteer, without being asked, that my shiftless father “flew off with a soiled dove.” Then there was Jules, who met Aunt Agnella while digging fence posts near the family house in Mullan. After that, Jules was in and out of our lives, catching work on ranches and orchards most of the year, during which time it would be just Mother, Aunt Agnella, and me in the little Mullan house.

fabrication re Jules

” In the story, Jules was twelve or thirteen, working on Plante’s cable ferry. One day two outlaws stole the ferry, cut the ropes and escaped downstream. Jules tracked the men from the shore on horseback as the raft rode the current down to the falls. One fell off and Jules kept expecting the other to swim for shore. Instead the man simply rode the boat over the falls.

1864 Jules tracked down outlaws who stole ferry raft and saw boy go over falls. The outlaw who swam to shore was AL BOLIN.

“Jules said if the kid jumped off the boat and swam to shore, he’d have been arrested and hanged. But as long as he stayed on the boat, his fate was his own. I think that’s why Jules liked the story. And why he rode the rails instead of moving onto a reservation. I think he came to believe it was better to choose your life, and that even choosing your death was better than letting someone else choose your life.”

the meaning of the story of the boy going over the falls: ".. it's better to choose your own death than letting someone choose your life."

When she glanced up at the driver, Rye took in her whole face and thought how funny the word beautiful was, that it could mean such different things. The stark contrast of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s black hair and eyes against that pale Irish skin or Ursula’s scarlet hair and pink lips and high flushed cheeks. She looked at him looking at her, and before he could turn away, their eyes locked, and she glanced down at his lips. Rye wondered if she did this to make men think about kissing her, because it certainly made him think that, then he felt awful for even thinking about kissing his brother’s girl.

Some nameless ache hit him, and he imagined Gig and Ursula making a house together, her cooking dinner—and felt a swirling confusion: his arm pressed in her bosom. Rye wasn’t sure if he wanted to be kissed by this woman or mothered.

"..Rye wasn't sure if he wanted to be kissed by this woman or mothered."

It seemed funny, as they walked the grounds, that Rye had imagined Lem Brand would hire someone to brag for him—he would have been just as likely to hire someone to draw his breaths. He gushed with pride over every aspect of his estate: here, a two-story carriage house with room for four premier autos and an apartment for his mechanic; there, Spanish stables for two of the finest breeding horses in the western United States; up there, a sledding hill and archery course. He described everything with such care (“a footbridge made from Amazon rosewood assembled with no nails or screws”), it was as if he’d built it with his own hands.

The estate was overwhelming, and Rye felt a kind of dazzled panic—like a hungry man trying not to eat too fast.

He flushed with sadness, as if every moment of his life were occurring all at once—his sister dying in childbirth, his mother squirming in that one-room flop, poor Danny sliding between wet logs, Gig in jail, and Jules dead—and how many more? All people, except this rich cream, living and scraping and fighting and dying, and for what, nothing, the cold millions with no chance in this world.

"...the cold millions with no chance in this world."

Her real name was Edith Hardisson, he said. She was forty-six years old. She was not the youngest child of an East Coast stage family but the oldest of six, daughter of a clerk and his wife from Independence, Missouri. Her parents were members in frightful good standing of a devout chapter of Reorganized Latter Day Saints, and they betrothed her at fifteen to a widower and pig farmer from their church, but Edith ran away before the wedding.

“You had to know I wasn’t going to bring her back here,” he said. I looked back up at Brand. “So I began thinking,” he said, “there must be some other reason you brought up my agreement with Ursula. And I realized that if I were in your position, I would do the same.” Brand reached into a valise next to his chair and produced another document. He handed it to me. There was a wax seal on it. It read Spokane County and Official Deed and Bill of Sale. The building was listed as the Bailey Hotel, Spokane, Washington. “This is the hotel we talked about her running,” he said. “Fifty-two single-occupancy rooms that rent for five dollars a month. But that’s just on paper. We get three dollars a day from the thirty or so women who ply their trade in cribs on the alley side. That’s where the real money comes from. From that, I pay the police to look the other way.

deed partial ownership of the Bailey hotel to Burke; change to first ursula-serve as a front

I looked over the document. It was two pages long. At the bottom of the second page were two lines transferring ownership from Burke, who had signed below his name, to my legal name, Margaret Anne Burns. The contract was dated that day. Brand held out a fountain pen.

He smiled, crossed out 20 on the contract and wrote 25, then initialed it. “And you will pay Burke five dollars a month for two years,” he said. “I will pay Burke two and you will pay him three,” I said. He held out the pen. I took it. He pointed. “Here,” he said, “and here. And here.” When we were done, I set the pen down. It weighed forty pounds.

She said that Al was an old union pick, blown up in an anarchist’s bombing in the ’99 labor wars. That in spite of his injuries, Al was a top organizer, and they should count themselves lucky he’d agreed to be their guide for two days of fund-raising in Wallace and the mountain mining towns of Idaho and Montana. “Al can be a sight, and it takes a moment to get used to him,” Gurley said. “So try not to stare, though neither should you look away.” Early sat up in the seat behind Rye. “How am I supposed to look and also not look?” Rye liked having Early along. It reminded him of traveling with his brother. “I mean that you should behave normally,” said Gurley. “Well, that’s what I’m saying,” Early said, “looking and not looking are fairly normal behavior for eyes.” “You’ll see,” she said. Al Bolin was waiting on the platform when they pulled into Wallace, and Rye saw right away that normal eye behavior was going to be impossible. The man lurching toward them was six feet tall on his right leg and six-four on his left; a four-inch peg had been nailed to his right cowboy boot to make up the difference. His arm and shoulder on the right side were diminished too, half gone, like his portraitist had lost interest. But it was his face that Rye couldn’t keep from staring at: the cave-in that constituted the right side of Al Bolin’s burned, mottled mug, the eye patch and torn nostril, the gnarled mouth, and the hole where his right ear should be. A metal clip was punched through his ...

“That’s why I want to take you where the workers are,” said Al Bolin. He said he’d added one stop to their tour. Instead of going around the mountains, they were taking the Great Northern through the mountain pass for a noontime talk in the border town of Taft. “Taft?” Early looked up sharply. “Wait, we’re going to Taft?” “Sure,” Al Bolin said. “You don’t have to be in Missoula until five, and Taft is where the workers are. Probably two hundred of them just sitting up there. Timber work’s shut down for winter, and the rail jobs are winding down. You want workingmen, they’re in Taft.”

At the door, Early Reston straightened. Rye felt his unease and watched his friend’s eyes sweep the room and finally fall back on Bolin, who was backing away toward the rear of the building. They both watched as Al slid out a side door. “Where’s he going?” Early said, and he went out the front door to catch up to Bolin.

The point, of course—in the old days Del would have done the job himself. Trusting it to Bolin had been soft. Lazy. I was replaying my mistakes while the bartender dragged a

Well, no, Del. I cleared out. I set it up and I left. I figured thirty men could handle two bums and a girl. And I didn’t think you’d want me connected to that business. What good would I be to you later if I lost my cover?” “What good are you to me now?” If my ankle didn’t ache from the bum-stomp earlier, I might have meloned Bolin’s rotten face, too. What a mistake, giving him this job. Old and tired, Del, you are. “Where’s my money, Al?” “I have it. I decided—” “You decided?” “I decided I’m keeping half for my trouble.”

A dozen years I’d known Al Bolin, since I worked him inside the WFM, back during the silver wars. I liked him. He had courage. Easy to turn a coward, but a coward’s work left much to be desired. A man like Bolin, you only had a small shot of turning him, but if you did, he was gold. He was inside for me when an anarchist blew up a safe house—Al the only survivor. In the hospital, his wounds bubbled and seeped, but when he came to, I was there to whisper in the hole where his ear used to be: You’re gonna come out of this, and when you do, come and find me. He did and I took care of him. Gave him money and opium, and when he could move again, I got him work. Paid him to watch meetings and stoke a riot in Havre so my employer there could convince the police to crack down on the union.

And now? Find Flynn and the young Dolan tramp and plant them where they stood. Collect five grand from Brand and ask about this Pinkerton he apparently hired and wanted dead. Or better, take the Pinkerton with me to see Brand.

Del D speaking

I could at least drop the Dolan kid, fix that mistake, collect a thousand. If Brand wanted, I could even come back and do the brother when he got out of jail.

Del D speaking

But I was stumped. Gurley Flynn and Dolan were coming out of the train station together, her in a black cape with a carpetbag, him in that same ill-fitting suit with his bowler hat. So she’d come back after all. Well, that would be more money. But where was Reston? I reached into my pocket for a dollar coin, dropped it on the table, and was about to stand when a shadow fell and I looked up to see Early Reston. “Del Dalveaux,” he said, like we’d met before. It is the strangest aspect of aging—how faces blur, a language you no longer speak. Up close this man seemed familiar, but perhaps the way a common face is reminiscent of others—thin, weary, plain—an age that might be twenty-five or forty-five, so ordinary in appearance that only another agency man would appreciate the difficulty of achieving such anonymity, like walking in snow without making a footprint. “You have me at a disadvantage,” I said, my hand finding my .32. “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. “Has any man ever had the great Del Dalveaux at a disadvantage?” He took the chair next to mine. “Brand hired you?” he asked. “Indeed,” I said, my hand square on the Savage grip. “And you?”

Del D and Early W

“Yep. A month ago,” he said. “Wanted me to work both sides, rile things up, get the union throwing bombs and the cops busting heads. He wanted to avoid what happened in Missoula, the cops and mayor going soft.” “Well, no one’s gone soft,” I said. “You hire me to rile—I rile.” He looked away. “Maybe too much.” “You think that’s why my employer didn’t tell me about you?” “He didn’t?” “No. I thought you were just one of the bums.” “Really? He didn’t tell you?” I shrugged. “Would have been good information to have.” “For me, too.” “I’m sure. A snake, isn’t he?” “Did he do the driver bit with you?” I laughed. “And the dossiers?” “Jesus,” he said. “So, what office are you out of?” “Office?” This confused me. “I thought you were a Pink. Are you freelance?”

Early Reston sharing he was "working both sides" hired by Brand to rile things up get the union throwing bombs and the cops busting heads.

Reston spun toward the passing waiter, “Excuse me,” but the man skated by without stopping, and when Reston turned back, it was with a lunge, the blade sliding between ribs and nearly lifting me off my chair. I felt more pressure than pain, a thrust-lift-swipe in my chest and lung, the man’s full weight—not jerking but easy and practiced, like a butcher cutting rib roasts, and what felt like eight inches of steel in my side and God I was dead on my chair— My hand had come off the handle of the .32. I scrabbled for it, but it was gone.

Earl Reston is slow killing Del D with a knife in the ribs.

He took my hand and pressed it against the wound. “Hold your hand here. And take shallow breaths. It’s okay now. I will put you out quickly once you answer some questions.” I opened my eyes. He was standing above me, wiping clean the blade, which was smaller than I’d have thought, long and narrow, barely wider than an ice pick. The sky was low and gray behind him. “What are you going to do?” “Me? Finish the job I was hired for and go collect my money.” “I didn’t know”—wince weep shame—“he said you were a dangerous bum—said you punched a cop.” “Oh, I did more than that,” he said. It hit me then. “The cop who was shot?” He said again, “You hire me to rile, I rile.” It became clear then: Brand hires Reston, but he kills a cop, so Brand hires me to fix that problem. I pictured his consortium. “If anyone found out he hired you—” I didn’t finish the sentence.

Brand hired Reston to kill the cop and then Del D to Kill him