3stalwarts (141 page)

“A water rat, I reckon.”

“I reckon so,” said Jerry.

Lewis got to his feet.

“I must mosey. A man gets curious thinking about his job. I thought I’d come and see it, Fowler. Pleased to know you.”

They shook hands.

The Teamster

The oxcart had creaked off an hour before, and Melville had waved from the woods. A new course of stone was beginning. Jerry was adding up the figures in his tally book. He had his luncheon frying on the stove. Now, he closed the book and brought his food into the main room to eat.

As he finished, he heard a sound he had not heard for many days. Pennsylvania Bells. He set down his teacup.

Melville had said at parting, “Caleb’s due to-day. Maybe you’ll be visiting a girl in our house after dark.”

He sat there in the beam the sunlight threw across the room. It was a clear day on the marsh; a northwest wind was combing out the marsh grass, drawing whispers from it as it dried, bending it down in waves of olive grey. In the sky the clouds were tumbling like blown bees. He could feel the wind against the shanty wall, a steady pressure, making the flies uneasy.

He put his dishes in the kitchen and went to the door. He passed through it, walking slowly down to the piled stone, and sat himself there. Now the wind hummed a din of grasses in his ears, but he could hear the bells more plainly. And after a while he saw the first team turn out of the cedar scrub into the marsh. He saw the teamster’s head and shoulders, and his small brown hat with the goose feather in its band, and his cracking whip. And last, lumbering and pitching, the high white hood rolled forth on its wide wheels.

The leaders were matched blacks; but one had a white blaze. He heard the clink of their heavy trace chains.

“Morning,” said the teamster. “You’re Jerry Fowler, I should say.”

“Good morning. Yes.”

“My name is Roger Hunter. I’ve brought a wagonload of edibles for Caleb’s men.”

“There’s solid ground around that shanty.”

“Good. I’ll draw up alongside the kitchen end.”

He spoke to his horses. “Hup! Come on, Nate, Joe.” The team took up the load, the wagon lifted to the slight rise of ground, the five-inch tires squeezed out water from the sod and left damp snails’ tracks.

“Come on inside,” invited Jerry. “Have a cup of tea.”

“No, thanks. I had my breakfast back a ways. I’ll just blanket up the team.” He was reaching through the tail flaps and now he slung a pack of oilcloth blankets on the ground. Jerry helped him spread the stiff grey cloths over the horses’ backs.

“Have a stogy?” asked the teamster. He had opened up his tool chest and taken forth a small cedarwood box.

“No, thanks.”

Selecting a seven-inch stogy, the teamster came into the kitchen to find a light. Then they sat down in the bunk room, and he filled the sunbeam with blue coils.

The teamster’s cheeks were drawn thin, the bones showed in his face, and the weather in his eyes. As he puffed the cigar, his lean-fingered hands kept plying the supple lash of the long whip that lay coiled before him on the table. In the sunlight it smelled strong of tar, and it gleamed with a semi-lustrous oiliness like an actual snake.

“This is the hardest place I’ve had to haul through,” he said. “Oxcarts always bite a road.”

“It’s pretty bad,” said Jerry. “Have you seen Caleb?”

“He ought to be pretty close behind me. He stopped a while at the farm back there.” Hunter glanced at Jerry’s eager face. “He dropped a girl there.”

“Did he?”

“Yes, he did,” said Hunter, grinning. “A right pretty girl. She’s hair the color of my sorrel wheeler.”

He said it with the manner of a man who could judge women. Jerry flushed. A fly bungled against the sash.

“Where do you come from, Hunter?”

“Rochester.”

“Where is that? I never heard of that town.”

“That’s likely. It’s a brand-new town. I settled there and have been drawing wheat. It’s on the Genesee.”

“I’ve heard of Genesee wheat. A valley for it. That’s where Wadsworth farms are, ain’t it?”

“I draw his wheat. But he’s mostly going in for sheep. He’s practising with merino lines. Like the Friends out by Crooked Lake— Jerusalem. I own six wagons now and I’ve been doing pretty well. But this big ditch by all accounts is going to spoil my trade.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“I’ve thought I might go into boating. I’ll look for a likely partner to do building of them, and myself to manage hauling.”

He looked straight out through the door as if he saw his laden boats.

“With wagoning a man most generally loses money hauling west. But when this ditch is dug there’s going to be a land opened up beyond a natural dimension— and it’s going to have just this one passway, as I see it. There’ll be more traffic westward then than there is eastward now.”

He stretched his legs.

“I wonder when that blasted cook will get along to empty out my wagon?”

“Cook?”

“Yes. Your diggers weren’t only a little piece behind me. Aaron’s brass! They’re coming now.”

They had not heard the two big bolster wagons bumping in from Orville.

But now voices rose by the lock-site, and a pompous man was standing in the doorway.

“My name is Edwin Brown.”

“Are you the cook?” demanded Hunter.

“I have engaged my services to Mr. Hammil.”

“Well, engage them for me and unload that wagon out there.”

Edwin Brown drew up his thin shoulders.

“Sir?”

“Yes!” Hunter reached for his whip and began idly to manipulate the lash. “Where I come from, Brown, we don’t use these on horses. We use them there to scarify a man, mostly cooks.”

“Yes, sir,” said Edwin Brown. “I’ll get my helper. Tom! Tom!”

He went out through the door, his voice yodeling over the marsh. They saw him single out a fuddled-looking old fellow, completely whiskered, with mismated eyes. A moment after, he was standing behind them in the kitchen, shouting out directions while the helper groaned and wrestled with the barrels.

Hunter grinned. “Here come your diggers,” he said.

A big, stoop-shouldered fellow stood in the doorway, fumbling a hat in his hands.

“My name’s Piute Sowersby, mister. There’s forty of us here.”

He was thrust aside by a diminutive fellow, incredibly long-armed, with popping blue eyes and a drawn, froglike mouth.

“Introduce me, Piute.”

“This here’s the gang-boss. He’s my partner, Mr. Fowler. Name of Turbe.”

The little man grinned amiably at Jerry, but Hunter started.

“Not Cosmo Turbe, the rough-and-tumbler?”

Turbe’s frog’s mouth stretched fatuously. He sidled up to Piute and cocked his ear.

“Identical,” said the big man. “Celebrated in Kentucky, on the ‘Hio river, and anywhere along the Zane Trace.”

“What are you doing back here?” asked Hunter.

“He’s aiming after a little money. Him and me. And actual liquor. He wants to find a man worth marking.”

Jerry stared. He had heard tall stories of the rough-and-tumble fighters in the territories.

“Mark?” he asked.

For answer, Cosmo Turbe sprang up on the table just in front of Jerry’s hands. His boot heels flashed silver in the sun. He dropped himself flat on his back, his heels just over the marks the nails had left.

The nails had dug a pattern in the new wood, a star traversed by a jagged line.

“A star,” explained Piute, “and a bar of lightnin’. For a marker. They match.” He pointed to the nails. Cosmo Turbe swung off the table and sat quietly on a bench.

Just then a wagon clattered to the door. Jerry saw Bourbon’s head and restive forefeet. He ran outside.

The fat contractor jumped over the wheel, and the whole wagon rocked.

“Jerry-boy! How be you? Gol! I thought I’d never get here.”

He shook hands heartily.

“We’re ready to commence. We’ve got to hustle, boy. Martin’s grubbers will be working in from east in no time.”

But Jerry did not look at him, for on the seat sat Mary. They did not speak; but he had an impression of the wind against their faces.

Caleb thumped him on the back.

“Get out of here. You ain’t no use to me. Take Bourbon back to Melvilles. You’re fired.”

Jerry turned slowly round.

Caleb was grinning, tipping winks at Cosmo Turbe and Hunter, and they were grinning back.

“Show up tomorrow morning and maybe I’ll hire you on for foreman at ten dollars to the week. Get out. I can’t have my lock all fluttered up with married people.”

Two MARY

1

“Being wishful makes a woman look for signs’

“Co’ boss! Co’ boss!”

Mary tried to make her voice ring nasally like Melville’s. When he called, it was amusing to see Dumple and the heifer turn obediently from their browse. But her clear voice never fooled them. They would look up to see if they had been seen, and then placidly pursue their way until she overtook them and turned them for the barn.

“Co’ boss!”

She braced herself against the wind and felt the thrust of it on her breast. Moulded tight across her thighs, her heavy woolen skirt fluttered behind her. Loose ends of her hair were snarled. Her cheeks were brilliant and her eyes shone as deep blue as the open spaces in the clouds. She had to turn her cheek to the wind to call, “Co’ boss!”

For a month the wind had leaned upon the land. In the morning, Melville would stand in the kitchen doorway, his long nose pointed westward, reading the clouds for snow.

“It’s strange,” he would say. “It smells of snow, but it don’t come. Maybe it’s going to be an open winter. That’s bad for hauling.”

“Why is it bad?” Mary wanted to know.

“The snow would fill up all the sink holes. We could haul on runners twice the stone and timber we are hauling now.”

He would go out and she would hear the clink of Dumple’s bell in the barn, comfortably muffled by the heavy walls. She would help Dorothy with the cookery for breakfast.

The board was very cheap, for, with Melville hauling, Mary helped Dorothy to mind the farm. They had threshed together, laying the boards behind the cow stall and beating out sheaf after sheaf with flails. Dorothy handled a flail like a man, as if she took pleasure in it.

Except for Sundays, Jerry spent all his time at the lock. Some days Mary and Dorothy had walked out along the corduroy to see it. It always seemed like going down under water when they entered the marsh grass. The farm would be shut off, the trees; they would walk in the dry rustling alley with the wind unfelt above their heads. Birds, frightened by their passing, would let loose their perches and toss up in the wind and be snatched. The wet muck had a crust of frost, with splinter-like crystals interwoven that held their feet, but crumpled under cart wheels.

At the lock-site they would look into the black rectangular hole sinking steadily to the men’s shoveling. Jerry would leave off his work on the mitre-cills. He would show them the cills, triangular frames of wood, braced with V’s, and explain how the gates would fit. Mary listened to his voice without hearing the words.

The men looked small and sweat-soaked and muck-booted digging. She heard their names while she was there, but they seldom spoke in her presence. Only the cook at the shanty was talkative. He had a grievance.

“Just my luck to be settled here in this damned swale.”

Sometimes, when he saw them coming, he would hurry out to his clothesline to bring in his underwear. He told Mary that he put his pay every week into the literature lottery. He had never held a lucky ticket. But some day he would win the prize— ten thousand dollars; and would he get out of here promptly? Words, he said, were feeble things.

Mary felt sorry for the aged helper with his mismated eyes that took her in in turn.

“Me,” he said, “I’m a poor man. I put my money in the bank. I’ve got maybe fifty dollars saved up there. But Edwin’s going to get ten thousand.”

“Don’t heed him, Mrs. Fowler. He’s twirly, but he don’t mean harm.”

Later the gang moved on half a mile to the second lock-site and only a handful remained with Jerry to set in the cribbing— huge, heavy timbers resting on the hard pan. …

Mary came out on a rise of ground from which she looked for miles across the land. The wind enveloped her and drank her breath. Her body was young, poised there; it bent pliably with a curve like the deep-rooted grass. She knew the spot from many searches; of all the places she had ever been, in this she seemed most alone.

Yet she had no loneliness like that she suffered from in Utica, where, when Jerry had gone, the Charley family seemed to throng around her, and close out all her senses with their ceaseless bickers. Instead, the wind encompassed her, uniting her mind and body, and she could know herself.

She smiled again as she leaned into the wind, and called, “Co’ boss!”

Dumple and the red heifer were standing side by side regarding her from beyond a patch of alders. They had their rumps to the northwest and their tails were pressed tight against their bags.

Mary laughed down at their undisturbed white faces. She walked down the slope and turned them homeward.

But as she walked the wind still filled her with its living. She felt it pushing at her back, unraveling her hair and netting it over her lips. It made her laugh.

Overhead, a line of geese cut like a knife blade through the tumbling clouds.

Mary hitched the stool further forward till her shoulder rested under the boat-like curve of Dumple’s belly and her forehead leaned against the soft flank. She could feel a distant muscle working to the cow’s chewing of her cud. The teats, which were old, long, and scarred from briers and sharp marsh grass, filled her cold hands and, as the milk came, warmed them.

The log walls had no windows; chinks left open under the mow served for ventilation and the open door for light. But now it was dark outside; only a green sheen lingered westward under the lines of clouds. Mary could see, past the ratty tail of the old cow, the waving marsh grass be-yond the yard fence.

As night came, the wind blew fitfully, leaving long intervals of quiet when the sound of milking was articulate. Then the heifer stirred uneasily, for her bag grew heavy from the suggestive sound. She eased herself, and dropped her muzzle.