The Daredevils by Gary Amdahl Read Free Book Online

saved, and that she wanted to bring the power and glory of the gospels, as she was only just beginning to see them, in their rags, speaking quietly, to bear on the social crisis that was threatening to destroy the greatest nation on earth. She had read Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis when it was published in 1907, coinciding perfectly with the throes of her own rebirth—and possibly San Francisco’s as well—in Christ, and when Rauschenbusch’s disciple at Rochester Theological Seminary, Thomas Ruggles, had come west, she had married him.
    â€œIf they finish a job in one hour rather than ten, they get paid a dime rather than a dollar,” Amelia said.
    â€œDon’t get hysterical, sister,” Tony suggested in his precociously vaudevillian way, having heard Andrew kid Amelia in this way more than once.
    â€œIf a dime,” Amelia said mock-tersely, “bought a dollar’s worth of groceries—”
    At which point Mother, out of hard-earned habit that would likely never fade, gently spoke her daughter’s name.
    â€œâ€”then certainly they could take advantage of your fabulous discount, my dear little brother, but it doesn’t, it’s more like a nickel, so either they take longer to do the job and get paid a living wage or they hop to and starve to death.”
    Father thanked Amelia with jovial conclusivity: yes, her brothers, both the younger and the older, were dolts but they would run the country.
    Amelia smiled and said they ought to consider ten-man brushes that could be controlled by a lone halfwit and so expensive that no single painter could afford it, leaving the purchase as usual to Big Business.
    In the old days, she would have then nodded at Father in a final attempt to be courteous—not to mention knowledgeable about the imperatives and requisites of actual large businesses—before dashing at the dining-room door, struggling as if drunk to open it, slamming painfully into the frame, and staggering into the hall. Mother would have offered the rest of the family a tastefully understated look of comic surprise, and they would have resumed their meal.
    Now, however, the Reverend Ruggles, who had relaxed his grip on Tony’s head but not released him, put a head-lock on Gus, and the three of them began to laugh and struggle.
    It had happened so often that it was referred to as a Ruggle-struggle.
    The boys flailed and grunted and Thomas shifted his weight about.
    When the boys gave up and went limp in his embrace, he said, “Your sister has learned to talk rough with her brothers, but don’t take lightly what she says. It will be very easy for you to say to her, and to all women, ‘Andwhat in the world does a woman know about it?’ So I want to urge you to think very seriously about what women may know about things. All right?”
    The boys cheerfully agreed that they would do so.
    Charles said, “I’m asking whoever wishes to answer: ‘What is for you the greatest unhappiness?’”
    Father was smiling vacantly, eyes angled to the side of his plate of bacon and eggs. He looked as if he had not heard a word anybody had said for some time. Mother was staring at Father. She turned to Charles, puzzled at first, then annoyed.
    â€œWhat kind of question,” she asked, “is that?”
    â€œIn what place would you like to live? What is your ideal of earthly happiness? For what faults do you have the greatest indulgence? What is your principal fault?”
    â€œIn Anatarctica!” shouted Tony, “where I would never have to hear questions like those at breakfast.”
    Charles half-smiled at him.
    â€œI’m kidding you, Chick!”
    â€œThe ranch,” said Father. “It is my ideal of earthy happiness.”
    â€œSimply existing there?” probed Charles, with faint but apparent testiness. “Standing in a meadow? Rocking on the porch? Soaping the saddles?