3stalwarts (179 page)

“That’s what’s bothering the boy!” Hogan exclaimed. “He misses the girrels! Oh, Peter! Ye’re right enough. There isn’t even anny timptation in these lands. But, Peter, now the labor’s done and ye’ve got time to think, are you going back whome?”

“I haven’t anny money.”

“What have ye done with all yer pay?”

“It come in whiskey and money,” said the boy. “But it all come to the same thing.”

Hogan yawned.

“The trouble with you is ye’re too comfortable.”

“That’s a fact,” said the one-eyed laborer. “If he was unhappy, he could feel real comfortable.”

“What are we waiting for?” cried a man down the room. He wore a small, pointed hat on the top of his head and a dirty bandage on his left foot; and between the two he was naked.

“Put on yer pants, McCarthy,” said Hogan. “Ye’re no dacent sight.”

“Well, what am I going to do next?”

“Whatever you like.”

“I don’t know what I like.”

“Maybe I’ll go out to Ohio,” said another man. “They’re digging a ditch out there, they say.”

“That’s an uncivilized counthry.”

“They’re digging another in Delaware.”

“They’ve seen yez dig,” said Hogan, “so they flatther yez and come over yez. But digging ain’t the nat’ral state for anny wan of us. Me, I’m going to wait till O’Mory gets whome.”

“Where’s O’Mory, annyway?” asked a new voice.

“At a wedding?”

“Yis,” said Hogan. “At young Collins’s wedding. The young lad who helped Misther Fowler on the lock-gates.”

Silence fell over the long room. But all at once Peter asked, “And was she the one O’Mory went round with in the spring? Her that had black hair?”

“Herself the same,” said Hogan.

“I thought he had his own hone for her.”

“He did so,” said Hogan. “But I wouldn’t remind him of it whin he gets whome.”

“Then I don’t undherstand.”

“Maybe the girrel asked him over. I guess she did, and what is one girrel the more or less to him?”

“What is?” asked a skeptical voice.

“That’s what I said,” said Hogan, unruffled. “What is?”

“To be sure,” said the skeptical voice.

Hogan asked for his Hessian and the boy handed it down. It was made like a very shallow barrel with a strap round the drum and a spigot to draw from. Hogan sucked noisily. He wiped his mouth.

“All the blather,” he said. “Annyway we beat the black bhoys to the mark, didn’t we? And the work’s done, ain’t it? Well, me, I’m going to wait until O’Mory gets back, I am. And if me Hissian gets empty with waiting, I’ll just fill it.”

“What will O’Mory know about what we’re to do?”

“He knows the counthry,” said Hogan, and he pointed overhead. O’Mory’s bunk was over his own, and, hung from a nail, his red fireman’s helmet, with the golden Phoenix, No. 22, glistened like an outrageous jewel. All their eyes turned to it, and the trouble went out of their faces.

“I wonder will Jay-Jay come over?” said McCarthy, the naked man.

“Let him come,” said Hogan. “He hasn’t the numbers we have.”

“We’ve been laid off three days,” said somebody. “What are we waiting for?”

Silence fell on the room. Through it they could hear the stoves, the clatter of the metal ware as the cooks washed up. Hogan got up and with a bored face went over to the door. When he opened it a cold draft swept in.

They could all see him against the night sky. The stars were white and the young moon silver with frost. The barrack stood on the lip of the ridge just west of the locks, and the new timbers in the gates shone white as bone. In the cleft of the rock they saw the dipper low down.

“To catch the wather if it comes,” said a man.

“When is it coming?” asked Peter.

“Any time,” said Hogan over his shoulder. He stepped through the door.

As the little man breathed the cold air and stared across the miles of wilderness, broken only by the line of the canal and the lights in the few buildings of this new village, it came upon him that that was what they were waiting for. They wanted to see the completion of their work, the water from Lake Erie filling the lock-wells. Not one of them had seen Lake Erie. Roberts had told him it lay to the southwest, a body of water endless as the sea, where real ships sailed. Behind him he heard the boy Peter say, “What do they want this canal for annyway?”

It was the first time they had ever asked such a question. He had never asked it himself. It had been enough for him to shovel, to devil boulders, to feel the blister of the hot drill in his palms. To beat the work of the other gangs. They had licked them all, even the niggers.

The door swung to; and he went out on the bridgehead over the top lock. From there he could see the canal bed behind him in the deep-cloven rock, four miles in length, thirty-six feet deep. The cranes had been taken away. There was just the clay, the black gleaming stone, the trickle of leakage in the bottom, the straight wall of the towpath.

He turned his back on it to lean on the rail and looked over the lower level to where the canal channel turned due east. Water came to the lock-gates. One boat was tied up, the boat that had brought in their last provisions. It was lovely to look at, the still boat sleeping on the water, like a chip caught by a grass blade, in the shade of the forest.

The stars could almost talk. On the height to left and right clustered the village lights. That upper lamp in Eseck Brown’s came from Mr. Roberts’s room. He was still making out his accounts. He did not know what the real work felt like; there was no ache in his hands. Hogan’s palms tingled.

He leaned over the rail to spit from his quid and listened for the fall on the plank bed of the lock. It came. At the same instant his wide ears caught along the Deep Cut the scrape of boots, and, peering into the darkness, he saw the shapes of men strung out along the towpath.

“That’s Jay-Jay,” he said under his breath. “I wish O’Mory was whome.”

He cast another look down the canal. The bhoys were no good in a shindig without O’Mory’s voice to compel them. Then his heart lifted. From the other direction, low down under his eyes, another man was coming. There was no mistaking the swift length of that stride. Without a sound, Hogan turned and ran for the barrack. The Irishers lay round the room as he had left them.

“Boys!” They looked up. “Jay-Jay’s coming.”

Instantly their faces brightened.

“Give me me pants,” cried McCarthy. A man laughed.

“What’ 11 we do with them?”

“I wisht O’Mory was home,” said Peter.

Hogan said, “He’s just coming round the bend. He won’t be here for five minutes or more. But just set round nat’ral and easy, like ye’d expected them in for a pot of tay.”

Round the room the men disposed themselves easily. Conversation broke out on the weather, on whiskey, on girls. Their troubling was forgotten. A couple in the corner by the kitchen door started a song:—

“Rory’s scowlding wife is dead, ‘Heigho!’ cries Rory. ‘Me dearest duck’s defunct in bed; ‘The devil’s cabbaged her; she’s fled! ‘With her roly, poly, gammon, and spinnage, ‘Heigho!’ says Rory.”

Hogan started to laugh. He laughed at the boy Peter, winking at him, making faces. And then, still laughing, he turned round to the door and wiped his eyes.

“Good evening, Misther Jay-Jay,” he said. “Shtep into me poor house and meet me bhoys. Is it very cold tonight?”

Through the door stepped Jay-Jay. He was not very tall, but he was built with tremendous weight. His barrel chest showed through his thin shirt as plainly as if it were naked. It arched from his collarbone to his high, thick stomach. His arms were smooth, showing the muscle by their shape. His legs were thin and flat, and for all his weight he moved lightly. His thick lips, his brown eyes with the yellow whites, his kinked, close hair, his tight-set ears, and his broad, flattened nostrils had an almost aboriginal cast. His neck appeared to bulge outward from the base of his ears. With his shining black skin and the flexing of his nostrils, he appeared among the slender Irish like some tremendous stallion. But when he returned Hogan’s greeting, his voice was gentle and husky: “Evenin’, Mistah Hogan. Mistah O’Mory heah?”

“He is not,” said Hogan. “But he’s coming. Shtep inside.”

“Brought along some mah boys, Mistah Hogan, if it ain’t no bothah to yo’”

Hogan licked his lips. He giggled suddenly again. “No trouble at all, Jay-Jay.”

Thirty negroes trooped through the door. Most of them were black as Jay-Jay, and they brought with them an outlandish, tropic odor. Hogan indicated tables and benches.

“Set down,” he invited them. “We was just talking about you black bhoys when you came to the door.”

“Was yo’?” said Jay-Jay, rolling his eyes round at the little man. “What was yo’ sayin’, Mistah Hogan?”

“We was just saying we kind of expected yez. Here we’ve been waiting all this time for yez to finish up back there and it was getting lonesome. It must have been hard,” said Hogan pityingly, “but maybe it was the wet. Ye never could stand the wet.”

“Say so?” said Jay-Jay, folding his thick hands.

McCarthy, buckling his pants, took the wink from Hogan.

“It was the lizyards,” he said. “Back the first day in Montezuma, whin I jumped into the mud, a pair of thim came up against me belly. I could feel thim niddling their mouths against me stummick. They niddled up and niddled down and then one of them got to me pip. ‘Hello, Alice,’ he says as plain as me father in Gaelic. ‘This don’t look right. There’s no milk in this bhoy.’ Then I seen Alice sticking her eye out of the mud be me arm and having a look. ‘No, Michael,’ she says. ‘This bhoy’s got a white skin. Come along, maybe we can find a nigger.’ “

The Irish stamped and roared.

Some of the negroes looked up hotly, turning from the Irishmen to their leader. But Jay-Jay was sitting with perfect calm, staring at the liver-colored nails in his folded hands. Hogan tossed a look at the door and came forward with his Hessian and two glasses.

“Have a dhrink, Jay-Jay?”

“No, suh.”

But Hogan’s heart patted his ribs.

“Then I will,” said a voice behind them. O’Mory in his Sunday suit was closing the door. His boots were muddy from his long walk, his bright eyes dry, his mouth soberly closed in his black beard; but Hogan could tell by the way his hands took hold of the insides of his pants pockets that his friend had been drunk and had brought the devil back with him.

He walked forward easily and reached a hand over the negro’s shoulder for the full glass.

“Well,” he said, “if nobody else will drink, bedevil, I will annyway. Here I come back from putting a boy to bed with his girrel and find ye all glooming like crows come home to a clean roost.”

He held the glass to the light as if measuring his swallow. “I seen Misther Fowler in Newport and he tells me the wather’s coming through tonight. Peter, me lad, run out and take a look at it.”

Peter went forth reluctantly. O’Mory turned to the negro. His eyes glittered.

“Here’s spit in yer eye, Jay-Jay,” he offered for a toast. “I believe it’s a custom of yer counthry.”

Hogan started. Something was eating the man. It was the wedding, of course: O’Mory had been bottled up the two whole days and he wanted to rouse the negro.

But Jay-Jay continued to sit silently, and the smacking of O’Mory’s lips was like breaking sticks in the long room. His mocking eyes roved over the black faces.

Jay-Jay at last looked up. When he spoke his voice was full.

“Brought mah bes’ boys, O’Mory, to lick your bes’. But they ain’t no sense in them fightin’. They’d on’y spoil it fo’ us. Goin’ lick yo’, instead.”

O’Mory’s savage grin grew almost friendly.

“Me bhoy, it’s time ye said something. I need the exercise.” His eye took in the black, massive torso. “Maybe I’ll get it.”

“Mebbe yo’ will,” said the negro, calmly, eyeing the Irishman. In his own way, O’Mory was something to see. He was built leanly. His long arms were muscled hard as whips; under the skin on his forearms the cords moved like strings as he stretched his hand out to grasp Hogan’s Hessian.

“Here’s a glass to ye, Jay-Jay. You and yer men wasn’t much in the marshes, but perhaps you can fight.”

The negro brushed the glass aside. His loose lips pursed and he spat full into O’Mory’s beard.

“Is a custom of mah country,” he said softly. And suddenly his brown eyes were lively.

O’Mory roared. He opened his hand, drew back, and struck the negro a tremendous swat upon the cheek. The sound echoed behind the stove, and the negro’s head snapped back. His neck stiffened. He got up from the bench slowly and said, “Try it again.”

“Annything to oblige,” said O’Mory, and he struck again.

The negro took the blow without a sign; but the crack sounded like a blacksnake whip on hide.

The door opened and the lad, Peter, came in.

“I couldn’t tell was the wather anny deeper. It’s too dark.”

He stopped. Nobody had heard him. And as he stopped, the negro knocked O’Mory down.

There was a roar from the men that made a wind to shake the lantern flames. Tongues of smoke leaped out.

O’Mory jumped to his feet.

“Get them tables out of the way. Hogan, hold me shirt.”

The stamp of feet filled the room, the scrape of table legs upon the puncheon floor. But the Irishers were watching Jay-Jay with a new light in their eyes. No one had ever knocked O’Mory down.

The negro had drawn back a pace before his men. His great closed fists swung by his sides in little jerks. His feet were flat on the ground, his knees slightly sprung, but his back was straight, and his barrel chest heaved with a quick easy breathing and his nostrils went in and out like the flutter of a stallion’s.

O’Mory’s shirt was off and his chest shone a lively white through the black mane upon it. The structure of the man showed beneath the skin. His breathing eased again.

When the room was cleared, he said, “Whichever one of us two beats the other, lave the black bhoys be.” He turned to Jay-Jay, “Come on, me bhoy.”

He sprang.

His arms cracked in. The two blows were lightning, striking like bolts, a flat, hard crack to the head, and a dull thud to the belly. The negro met them like a rock, and then he was in motion. So quickly, so lightly, did he move that he seemed scarcely to change his place. His feet did not step high and briskly like the Irishman’s, but they moved, instead, flat and close to the floor, with a faint shuffling sound, putting him here and there with ugly swiftness.