NOPE, I AIN’T. WAY they cut that feller’s heart clean out.” The speaker was one Mr. Lennie Downs, a teamster who drew on the county payroll and whose fingers had an affinity for his nose. The rain fell in veils and curtains as the afternoon yearned toward evening. I shared the driver’s bench at the front of the wagon, while the navvies huddled, wet to the bone, in the open bed behind us. Protected by India-rubber capes, the deputies slumped on their horses. Mr. Downs had been speaking without pause, even as his fingers conducted their meaty investigations of his nasal passages. It is a nasty habit. He was undeterred by the downpour that come over us and delighted by the doings back in Heckschersville. For Mr. Downs was a man who liked to talk, and now he had a fine, new tale to tell. I feared I would be mocked back home in Pottsville. Tucked into my cape, but sodden little the less, I had lent the teamster only half an ear. Most of what Mr. Downs recited was gossip or common complaints about the Irish miners.
