3stalwarts (133 page)

“Single-jointed.” Hammil nodded delightedly. “Them three-inchers cover the whole foundation.”

“Then the two-inch planking’s just inside the stone.”

“That’s right. They’re water-jointed.”

“I don’t know that country at all,” said Jerry. “Have they got good mills out there?”

“That’s the trouble. There ain’t any nearer than Hannibal. Joshua For-man has a grist and saw mill there and guarantees my sawing, but the roads are bad. We’ll have to do considerable roading for ourselves.”

“Do they aim to use hemlock for the bottom?”

“Maybe for the timbers. I’d recommend it. There ain’t any wood to beat it under water. Mostly, though, they’re talking spruce and cedar for the gateposts.”

“We don’t bother with the stones,” said Jerry.

“No. Masonry and cutting is going to be let out to different hands. But Holley said he wanted somebody reliable to do the foundations.” Hammil looked up and his fat face tried comically to conceal his pride. “Of course, they ain’t given me the written contract; but they’ve promised it.”

Jerry bent over to read the minute figures along the arrows.

“Ninety feet,” he read aloud, “and that’s just between the gates; and fifteen foot across between the lock-walls. The change in water level’s eight feet. How big a boat do they plan to run on this canal?”

“Sixty feet by seven, drawing three and a half. It figures up to thirty tons.”

“How many horses draw it?”

“Two. Though one could, I guess. They say one horse on water hauling can outhaul sixty on a wagon.”

“Lord!” said Jerry. “That alters hauling, don’t it?”

Hammil looked up.

“Say,” he said, pointing his dead cigar, “do you realize, boy, just what it means? It means that freight is going to be hauled more than two-thirds cheaper, A hundred dollars a ton they figure will cost less than thirty when this ditch is dug between Albany and Buffalo. To-day a farmer gets thirty cents for wheat when the market’s up in the Genesee Valley. He’ll get better than a dollar in bad years. Do you think that ain’t going to make a difference? Ohio trade’s coming this way now. We’ll take the whole works right out of Pennsylvany’s hand. Look here, I’ve traced a map.”

He shoved the plans aside and fished from his drawer a copy of Eddy’s Map of New York.

“I don’t draw very good,” he apologized as he opened it. “But I’ve marked out the line it’s going to follow. Here’s Utica,”— he made a smudge with the end of his cigar,— “now follow left or west and here is Rome. That’s where they commence.”

“It seems queer commencing in the middle,” Jerry said.

“Don’t it? But it’s pretty cute. Look, the south counties have voted solid against the canal from the beginning. Tammany don’t see the sense of spending money they can’t get their fingers into. Well, supposing we commence at Albany? It’s the hardest part of the digging, and they’ll say it don’t pay. But up here’s a long level. Working east, it goes to Frankfort. Going west, it reaches into Cossett’s swamp (they’ve marked it ‘Salina’ here) . The whole of it’s close to seventy miles. Now you see, commencing here, the progress is immediate. There’s money spent and a lot to show. That’ll hurt Tammany’s feelings. But they won’t let us stop till we reach Albany, so’s they can get the benefit. But here’s the idea. We work both ways to oncet. They wouldn’t let us start at Buffalo, so we’ll have to work out that way backwards. It’ll be a long time afore we see Erie water reaching into Montezuma; but we ain’t going to put Mohawk in the Hudson until we’ve done just that.”

He spoke as if he had been a party to the whole scheme.

“There’s plenty of times I’ve seen Mr. Wright riding down the Mohawk sighting out the lay of land. I’ve seen him and young White and Broadhead laying levels, with some of our college boys to hold the markers, working for nothing. I went along with Judge Geddes part of the way beyond Montezuma— that’s going to be tough digging, Jerry. But I do believe I never did suppose we’d get to the actual point of digging.”

He leaned back.

“I come here when I was a lad, Jerry. Just a lad, younger than you. Utica was a young village then. Just a crossroad without even a school. I built the first one. That was my first job. I don’t know how I come to settle here. I guess I’d have moved on after I made my first money if I didn’t light my eyes on Mabel Kip. Right then I said, even if my father was a carter back in Catskill and died in prison for the price of a horse, I’d marry her. But I didn’t let on until I’d got five hundred dollars put away, and then I went to the old man. It took me four more years, but we got wedded. And I’ve gone right ahead. And once I stayed here I commenced to see that Utica was a coming place. Better than Canandaigua, where I’d planned on going. Right now there’s more money here. I built the market. Yes sir, but I remember when we used to get out to the Oneida Castle for to buy our peaches off the Indians every fall for pickling.”

He looked across at Jerry.

“Utica’s a good place for you, boy. And I’m going to help you start. You stick with Caleb Hammil. By God!” Suddenly his mind caught something out of his enthusiasm. “You handled them plans and read them out most as quick as me. I hadn’t thought of it.”

Jerry flushed. Hammil leaned forward to pat him on the shoulder.

“You read them like a real mechanic. You’re going to make a good man for me. I guess we can build as good a lock as Mr. Weston himself or any seven-thousand-dollar engineer from England— when a man not even a mechanic can see the whole of it as good as you.”

He bent forward over Eddy’s map.

“Look here, Jerry. Here’s where the locks is going to be. Here’s number one, like I showed you. Two comes a mile beyond of it. Three’s eastward of Camillus at Owasco outlet. Four’s direct in Jordan. Five comes here, just westward of Port Byron. Six and seven let you down to Montezuma and the marshes. Seven locks. I’m going to do foundation work on aqueducts, but there ain’t been no plans passed on. I’m glad we’re going to work in reasonably settled country… . Well, Jerry, what do you think of it?”

Jerry hesitated.

“It looks like a considerable piece of work. How far is the whole of it, Mr. Hammil?”

“The Erie’s three hundred and sixty-three miles as drawn. And that leaves out the Champlain Canal. I don’t thing the Champlain’s worth for much but lumber trade.”

“That’s a long way to dig.”

“Oh, the digging don’t count for so much. It’s just a matter of time. It’s the locks and aqueducts that count. Take the Genesee! That river’s more than twice the size of ours and yet we’ve got to cross it. I don’t know who’s tackling that, but I’d hate to have it contracted up with me.”

“How long do they think it’s going to take?”

“Five years. Perhaps a year more. They’ve done a thorough scout, but you can’t ever tell what you’re going to come across underneath the ground. Marl would make slow digging. But marl is worth something. And gypsum. They might get coal in some of them westward counties. Coal enough to pay the whole expense.”

His eyes glistened as he sat back once more.

Behind him, through the window, Jerry noticed the shadows lengthening from the trees and daffodils. Some hornets, nosing the swelling plum buds, sparked like jewels. He had never heard any discussion of the canal before. But now he realized that it was a job about to be tackled; and the magnitude of its conception thrilled him. Here he had taken better than a week to come this far west, and yet he was less than a third the length of the canal. He had walked. Other men would have to dig that distance. Dig a ditch for water, forty feet across, and four feet deep.

Outside along the pathway quick steps disturbed the gravel. Looking forth together, they saw a woman in a print silk dress, full-skirted and high-bodiced, with a shawl drawn over her shoulders and across her breast. The fringed point at the small of her back fluttered to her walking.

“There’s Mrs. Hammil,” said the fat man with an air of pride.

She looked much more at home in her surroundings than did Hammil. From the small fingers protruding from her crocheted mitts of silk to her small oval face with the dark hair and eyes and composed mouth, she was daintily made. She walked as if the world were hers; and when she mounted the stoop and paused at the door, her figure was poised and graceful.

“There’s something for a man to work for,” said Hammil. “Well, Jerry, we’ll have to be stopping. I didn’t notice it was late. I’m busy tomorrow. You mind the horse. Next day I’m driving westward, and I’ll want you with me.”

He got up and again they shook hands. As Jerry came round the house to the street, he heard the woman’s silvery voice greeting her stout husband through the open door.

“I’ve just hired a young man,” he heard Hammil say. “A clever boy. He looks ambitious.”

Ambitious. Jerry stepped out. His chance lay clear before him. Hammil had succeeded in an earlier day; but a greater day was coming. And he, also, had something to work for. As he went along, he thought of Mary and how he would tell her his good news.

Walking back towards Genesee Street, Jerry heard beyond the city limits the bells of cows coming in from pasture. The streets were quiet in the late afternoon. Down Genesee Street he saw the storekeepers in their doorways taking a look at the weather or talking back and forth across the roadway. A party of movers were coming up the hill. They were poor-looking folk. The men’s faces were sullen; the women’s dull. A troop of children of all ages padded barefoot in the dust. They eyed the sights of the town with half-wild eyes.

Watching them pass, Jerry’s senses again reacted to the ceaseless travel of this road. But he saw it now with new eyes, a choked thoroughfare, carrying in driblets but a portion of its natural trade. Eastward, towards Deerfield corners, where the afternoon sun was brightening the great hill, he heard the sound of Pennsylvania Bells. There had been scarcely an hour, he realized, since he had left Albany that he had not heard that chime. He saw the hood gleaming white far down below in the valley where it crept along the causeway; and the distance made it a small thing.

As he went down Genesee Street, people nodded to him. He nodded back; but his pace quickened. Time was getting on for supper, and he wanted to tell Mary. And at the same moment it occurred to him that, poor as their room might be, this was the first time in his life that he was coming back to his own home.

He saw the shop ahead of him, a trail of violet smoke ascending from the kitchen chimney. As he came abreast he had a glimpse of wash hanging out upon the line behind the house. At the corner of the gunsmith’s a small boy, obviously one of the Charleys, was having a parting word with a companion. They eyed Jerry cautiously when they saw him turning towards the door, and he was aware of their making comments.

“Hello,” said Mr. Charley from the dusk of his store. “We didn’t see you for dinner. Did you have any luck?”

“Some,” said Jerry, as he went by towards the stairs. He mounted them two at a time and swung himself through the trapdoor. It was shadowy in the narrow loft. A breeze was drawing through the south window.

“Mary,” he said softly.

There was no answer.

He walked the length of the room to the window, where a chair had been drawn up to get the light. Beside it on the floor his bundle lay open, and on top of it one of his shirts. He saw that she had been sewing, for the threaded needle was stuck through the eye of a new horn button.

Suddenly he sat down and took up the shirt. It was one of his old work shirts, badly worn; and as he turned it over in his hands he saw how she had been reenforcing the elbows with new scraps of flannel. He sat quite still, holding the shirt in his hands, and bis eyes slowly roved the room.

All the musty smell was gone. The boards gleamed clean with a faint scent of lye soap. The bed had been moved farther into a corner and the old trunks that belonged to the Charleys dragged out of sight beyond the trap. A piece of calico had been tacked to the rafters halfway down one side. He got up slowly and went over to it. His hand fumbled as he lifted it. From more nails driven in the rafters hung her wedding dress and clothes. And next to them his own meagre stock— side by side.

He came back to the bureau. Her name mug was set out to hold a little bunch of Mayflowers. He wondered where she had found them. He noticed that the water bucket was filled and a clean towel hung on either side of the wash-hand-stand. And he sat down again, realizing the privacy she had created with the stamp of her own cleanness. Overhead he heard a flutter of wings, and then the soft voice of the cock pigeon.

He heard her feet in the hall below. He knew they were hers at the instant they stepped out of the kitchen. She was mounting the stairs. Her head shone with a faint coppery lustre as it came up through the trap. Then she was in the room, her arms stuffed out with bedding, her cheeks pink with the ascent.

“Jerry!”

Her grey eyes were blue, and her voice was glad. But she dropped the blankets on the bed and started quietly to make it up.

“When you didn’t come back to dinner, I thought I might have time to get the room all ready.”

He watched the efficiency of her hands. In giving her back her papers he had given her more than her freedom; he knew it now, and he was not sorry. When she had finished she sat down on the bed and let her hands rest in her lap. She had asked him no questions. But as she regarded him now, her eyes were confident; and he found it difficult to tell her.

“It looks as if you’d been busy all day.”

She smiled.

“It looks nicer, doesn’t it? It was pretty dirty.”

“It’s real nice.”

“I wanted it all done for you to come back to.”

“It’s nice, Mary.”

She got up slowly and came forward to his chair. Her eyes were happy, but her face wore the quiet, submissive look that he had seen there ever since their wedding day. He felt that in another moment he would have to shout. As she bent down to pick up the unfinished shirt he put his arms round her waist and drew her down on his lap.

He tried to mask his voice.

“Tell me all you’ve been doing all day, Mary.”