The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

A hard season for men, but lying was having a banner year.

And lying there, Rye had an insight that felt like a reverie, that, man or woman, Catholic or Prod, Chinese, Irish, or African, Finn or Indian, rich or poor or poor or poor, the world is built to eat you alive, but before you go down the gullet, the bastards can’t stop you from looking around. And he doubted that any magnate in a San Francisco mansion ever woke to a better view than he and his brother had that morning, staring at a red slash of sky from the crisp dirt infield of a weedy baseball diamond.

“Well, go on, you well-read son of a bitch, don’t stop there.”

He imagined everyone had a picture in mind of the word America—flags or eagles or George Washington’s wig—but from that moment on, he thought he’d imagine waking on a ball field with his brother, fighting off a mob, then marching into town in a moving debate of economics and justice.

in her sickness creating a love for the ages, or maybe that was love: grievance to grieving to grave.

block after block of wretched glorious humanity wandering the east-end streets and alleys, hungry, thirsty, lonely beggars and bums and hands and sawyers and millers and miners and scuffs, broke brothers and failed fathers and godforsaken grandfathers, all languages, religions, and races, crib rats and saloon girls, temperance ladies, nuns and cons and pickpockets and socialists and suffragists, the wicked, broken, and unholy—Americans, them, too, every one.

“I just don’t see how you fight a class war without the war.”

There is no world but this one. And all we want is to be seen in it. I see you, the boy said. And I was grateful.

“I’ll tell you what, Rye-boy,” Gig said as he settled into his cot, “after four whiskeys, Early’s case for making bombs instead of speeches begins to make a little sense.”

He wasn’t sure what to say about bombs versus speeches (How about neither?) but it didn’t matter: Soon Gig was snoring.

People expect a story to always mean the same thing, but I have found that stories change like people do.

But Jules hated the missionaries and said cruelty and hope should never be served together.

Rye wondered at the kind of man who could afford to hire someone to yell out his bragging for him.

A WOMAN owns nothing in this world but her memories—a shabby return on so steep an investment.

By the time I met her, she was putting her stage makeup on with a putty knife, dying her hair every morning, and every night wrestling her rangy tits into corseted captivity like two escaped criminals.

“Is it only you,” I said, “or is every man in this town an insufferable cunt?”

Give money to a monkey and he’ll fill his cage with bananas. Give the same money to a dim American and he’ll build a show library every time.

“Come on. Tell the truth.” Early closed one eye. “You don’t actually believe the story Gurley is selling out there, do you? I mean, that it’s possible?” “I don’t know, Early,” said Rye. “Does it have to be possible to believe in it?”