Читать книгу Mike Mullins of Boston Crick - Owen Templeton Garrett Williamson - Страница 7
ОглавлениеPatron of the Arts
It was last week that one of the old timers dropped in and at once we were swapping yarns about the early days. He had travelled the line when Cobalt was a pup and stumps were still standing on Third Avenue in Timmins. Varied and vivid were the tales he told and there was more than one about Mike Mullins. Harry McGee knew everyone and there was little about the railway that had escaped his notice.
It was therefore in a mood for reminiscence that I greeted Mike when he breezed in close on Harry’s departing heels.
“The best of everything to you, sir,” said Mike, “and a grand job you did with my yarn about Old John and him spreading the measle bugs all over MacDougall Chutes. The ribbing he’s been getting from the lads has clear put the pigs out of their silly heads. ’Tis sorry I’d be for him if I could forget the tales the same John has told about myself.”
“Forget and forgive, Mike,” I said, “It’s all good fun and not a bit of venom in the lot of it. Spring’s here and that’s a time for forward thinking.”
“Right you are, sir, but I can remember a spring when looking ahead didn’t seem to do much good. ’Twas the year after the big fire. That would be in ’17 and the whole country burnt out right from Cochrane to New Liskeard.” Mike paused and looked me in the eye. Reassured by a bit of green in it, he went on. “Devil a bit of anything was left. I mind the beaver was using cakes of ice to build their dams, a thing never seen before nor since. However, as you say, spring is here and pretty it looked as I come along. The crick’s nudging and eating into its banks and singing a tune that puts heart into a man. All the little birds is chirping as if there wasn’t three feet of snow into the bush.”
“I can see you have quite a love for music, Mike,” I said. “Wasn’t it the carols that time got you and John to playing Santa Claus?”
“ ’Twas that and more fun I never had. Yes, music of all kinds is good and the Irish pipes is best of all. Piannys is good too when the pipes is lacking.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you play one?” I said, for by this time I was prepared for anything.
“Devil a bit,” said Mike, “but any of them things sort of strums the heart strings of me and puts a tingle in my feet. No, I don’t play none but once I sort of acted as an impresario, I thinks you calls them.
“ ’Twas this way. In them days, I was the Agent up at Boston Crick. There was some claims about that was being worked though they has played out since. We was busy enough with mine hoists and boilers, pumps and drill steel. Lots of outfits got their chuck then through the Crick and men was coming and going all the time. The little town was pretty active too. All in all times was good right there. Then one day what should come in but a pianny, one of them high kind in a crate like six coffins stuck together. Well we rustled it into the shed and I see by the billing that it’s going to a claim ten miles back in the bush. They had been having trouble holding their men and I guess they thought a little music might liven up the camp.
“Anyway there it was just at the tail end of winter and the road, which was no more than a snow track through the bush, was breaking fast. A week before and taking it in would have been as easy as spitting over a log. Now it was impossible. That pianny was good for a month or two right where it lay. So we shoved it into a corner and that was that.
“Well, about this time there was talk of doings in the village. ’Twas in wartime, you mind, and all the lads of fighting age and some that wasn’t was overseas. They was Engineers and Highlanders mostly for the McKloskeys and the Murphys and the Indians all took a liking for the kilts. These fighting men was boys and ’twas well known that they’d fight the easier if they knew their home folks was backing of them up. So parcels was being sent as often as they could be got together and the letters from the lads was common property. Everybody worked together and the ways of raising money stopped at nothing short of blowing safes. This time ’twas to be a concert and I’m busy with my freight and passengers so I have no part in the arrangements.
“First I know, they was sticking printed posters on the station. Never had the Crick done anything so grand. There was to be singers and comic fellers, a fiddler and a magician, musical glasses and two pianny players. One of them was little Katie Doherty and the other was Ole Swenson, shift boss at the Whatahope. Nothing as big had ever been done north of the Bay. I’m reading the first of them and, I’ll not deny it, sticking my chest out because we could do so well, when who should come along but Father Walsh and the Consolidated minister.
“ ‘Good day to you, your Reverence and Mr. Jones,’ I says, ‘ ’Tis a fine doings for the lads we do be having.’
“ ‘’Tis that, Mike,’ says his Reverence, ‘but I’m thinking that we’ll have to cancel the whole affair.’
“ ‘Sure, there’s never been a fire in the schoolhouse,’ I says.
“ ‘Not the least taste of it, Mike,’ says Father Walsh, ‘and every artist is raring to go. The joke, if you can call it that, is sure on us. Mr. Jones and me, we arrange the whole thing and get the posters printed and then, bedad, we remember that in all the Crick there’s nary a pianny.’
“I’m just getting ready to tell him that ’tis sorrow I’m feeling for them when I looks hard at Father Walsh. Then I feels sorry for myself. Everybody knows, including Father Walsh, that I have a pianny in the shed.
“ ‘You’d never do it to me now,’ I says, ‘You know they’d chop me into little pieces and I’d lose my job besides if it was ever to come out.’
“ ‘Mike, Mike,’ says his Reverence, ‘I’m ashamed. Don’t you ever give a thought to the lads in the mud of the trenches? I mind, when Tim Conlan goes away, you said there was nothing you wouldn’t do for him.’
“ ‘And,’ says Mr. Jones, ‘do you know about the Thirty-nine Articles and Runnymede and St. Bartholomew’s Eve?’
“Of course I didn’t and I see that I was licked.
“ ‘Gentlemen,’ I says, ‘Mike Mullins is your man and may all the shamrocks wither at Killarney if I don’t see it through. You’ll handle it like your baby sister and you’ll have it back in its box in the morning. I have my methods,’ I says, plucking up a bit of courage, ‘and, at least, ’tisn’t as bad as a burying I once went through.’
“So that afternoon the pianny went to the schoolhouse and I took steps to consolidate my position as the soldier boys would say. First I hopped into the pianny box with a hammer and a fistful of nails. I spiked it down as solid as the floor itself. Then I closed the box all neat and comfortable. Having taken my precautions, I went to the concert that night with my conscience as easy as any uncaught burglar. Everybody there patted me on the back and I sure felt good. If it hadn’t been for Michael Mullins there would have been no concert and well they knew it. Father Walsh opened the proceedings and when he thanked me for my public spirit was when he called me a impersario. Bedad, I was even sitting on the platform beside the instrument.
“The concert started with a comic song and Mrs. Jones, as light-fingered a lady as I ever want to see, was playing the accomp’niments. When the applause was nicely going, I looks at the door and there was Harry McGee, the Travelling Auditor. For all his crinkly smiles, he was the auditor, and me sitting on the platform right forninst the pianny I had pinched. I’m telling you, I suffered and it kept getting worse. The musical glasses comes next and a song was after. Then little Katie Doherty comes up to do her piece. I see right away by the hands of her that she’d been eating candy bars. The chocolate was sticking to her fingers. So up I gets pretending to fix the stool for her and gave them a wipe on my handkercher. It did some good because, when I wiped the sweat off my forehead, there was brown streaks across it.
“How I lived through the rest of it, I’ll never know. It seemed to go on for hours. Big Ole Swenson played ‘The Battle of the Baltic’ and the pianny took an awful beating. Mr. McGee sat through it all. Finally it came to an end with Mr. Jones announcing a collection of three hundred dollars and, praise the saints, there was no more praise for Mr. Mullins. Down I goes to Mr. McGee, for I figures them’s the tactics that’ll see me through and, sure enough Mrs. Jones comes rushing up.
“ ‘We owe it all to you, Mr. Mullins,’ she says, ‘Without—’
“ ‘Think nothing of it,’ I says, breaking in. ‘Sure, we all did our best for the fine collection,’ and I got Harry out of the school. We talk a bit about this and that, the fine crowd, the songs and the pianny playing and then he says,
“ ‘Been riding all day on Number 9 and I’ll turn in for I’m tired but I’ll have a word with you in the morning and we’ll check things up.’
“Well, there I was. No chance of moving the pianny before daylight and everything in the shed would be checked. I dreamed that night with battles and chocolate bars all mixed up together but, bright and early, I was at the station. About eight o’clock, Harry McGee comes down.
“ ‘Well, Mike, let’s go to it,’ he says, ‘for I’m taking the speeder north when I get the low down on your stuff.’
“I didn’t like the way he said it, me not being easy in my mind but I took the bills and we started in. There wasn’t much in the shed. We checked a bit of drill steel and a few oil drums. There was some odds and ends of furniture and then we come to the pianny.
“ ‘Mike,’ says he, ‘I think this’d be better at the other end. Let’s give it a shove.’
“ ‘Sure, you’re right, Harry,’ I says, ‘but think of the heft of it. I wouldn’t have you straining yourself. I’ll just get a few of the boys in here when we are done.’
“ ‘Why I could move it myself,’ he says.
“ ‘Of course you could with them big strong arms of yours but it wouldn’t be dignified for you to do it and I’ve a bit of a sore back myself. Would you be looking at this barrow now and it with a broken handle. ’Twas the way it come to us,’ and I got him to thinking of other things. By and by, he goes away on the speeder and Mike Mullins had scored again.”
When I next saw Harry, I grinned at him. “Mike Mullins certainly put one over you in the piano business up at Boston Creek. I thought you always got your man.”
“He sure did,” said Harry, “with me facing a foot-square shipping tag tacked to the back of it through the whole of the performance.”
