Joe Hill by Wallace Stegner Read Free Book Online

pickled.
    It is a lovely and restful thing to stand in a saloon in the late afternoon taking your time with a nickel glass of steam beer and hearing the quietness of the talk, nobody argumentative yet, nobody drunk and wanting a fight, everybody relaxed and waiting for the free lunch, the light gray across the tables and the mirrors shadowy and the bar shining with pale soft reflections. It is a good thing to cross your feet, leaning; or to put one foot on the rail and hunch over the bar’s friendly solidity, just resting and taking it easy after a day’s work or a day’s hanging around or a day’s walking on the picket line.
    Across the bar, before the dusky mirrors, there are bright-colored punch boards painted all over with gold coins, and with shoulders comfortably touching the shoulders of the men on right and left you can study the things the boards will give you for nothing, for a nickel, if the luck happens to come your way: 90, 190, 290, 390, 490, 590, 690, 790, 890, and 990 all win a box of delicious assorted chocolates. The boxes are there in a stack, solid proof of the board’s honesty. There are also the things the even hundreds will get you—a jackknife, a razor, a fishing reel, a varnished fish basket with a strap, a shaving mug. There is the grand prize for number 1000, a .12-gauge Marlin repeating shotgun worth twenty dollars. It slants there in the corner of the mirror, a satiny shine up its blue barrel, its stock seductive and smooth and curved.
    You can get it for a nickel. Everybody’s got a chance. If you miss the shotgun, you’ve still got a chance at the reel, or the fish basket, or the shaving mug, and if you miss those you can probably win some chocolates.
    In the squares of little paper-covered cells where luck hides,some of the holes are punched out and black. Someone has played a system and punched out the corner cells of each square; one whole square in the lower left hand corner is punched out.
    “… Anybody won anything on that board, Emil?”
    “Just one knife and a box of chocolates. That’s getting ripe.”
    He lays the board on the bar, and you say, “If it wasn’t for suckers like me, sharks like you would have to work as hard as I do.” But there are all those chances. You can pick off a twenty-dollar prize for a nickel. Everybody’s got the same chance.
    You push at random with the little punch. “What the hell,” you say, “I’m shooting the wad.” You unroll the little worm of paper, 596, and Emil slides your nickel off his edge and drops it in the till.
    The crowd is thickening at the bar, and you move down, making room for more shoulders. “How about another beer, Emil?” Then there is a difference in the room, as if a corner has been turned, and here is Tinetti with the tray of mounded plates, the loaves of thin-sliced rye, the pickles knobby as an alligator’s back and sweating cool brine, the sliced bologna and the salami with globules of fat among the rich dark meat, the slices lying spiraled and overlapping like the ripe coins painted on the punchboard.
    As the plates slide out there is a perceptible drift, a gradual slow surge, dignified but irresistible, toward the free lunch end. The men who are closest say something to Tinetti, something friendly and casual, and for a suitable interval Tinetti stands there dangling the empty tray, talking. It is two or three minutes before one of the beer drinkers, almost absentmindedly, reaches out and picks up a slice of bologna. Still talking to Tinetti, he peels the gut off and chews slowly. They are talking about the relative chances of Detroit and Philadelphia in the American League race. A man on the left, listening politely, covers a slice of rye with a slice of ham, and as if by afterthought with a pickle. The first man moves away, getting a slice of salami and a piece of bread as he goes, and the crowd edges past a little at a time. There is a smell of garlic in the air, and Emil refills many beers. Tinetti,