3stalwarts (81 page)

“Not you,” Hector answered ingratiatingly, and winking at Dan until the tip of his cigar was almost screwed into his eye.

“That’s all right,” said the fat woman. “He can come aboard with us. I’ll give him a good piece of pie for supper.”

“No better than what he’d get here if he wasn’t a strange man, Lucy Gurget!”

“Bigger, though,” said Mrs. Gurget with a broad grin.

“Lucy, you shut up!” said Solomon, coming back from his team. “If you two get arguing, we won’t never get to Delta House. Now then, Mrs. Berry,” he soothed the little woman, “better get on.”

Mrs. Berry put one foot on the plank, and then drew it off as if it had scorched her.

“Hector, you throw that nasty-smelling cigar overboard, you hear me?”

Her husband complied with one last wistful and tremendous puff that left the smoke trailing from his nostrils for a good minute.

This point gained, Mrs. Berry trotted up to the gang-rail, where she stopped stock-still.

“Hector, them rats? Are there any left? Either there are rats, and I won’t go, or there ain’t— which?”

But Solomon, with a triumphant chuckle, had seized the shore end of the plank and with a strong heave yanked it from under her. She pitched forward with an angry scream and disappeared from sight. Then he ran to the blacks and switched their rumps with his hat. They jumped ahead, and Hector swung the boat away from the bank.

“Gid-ap! Gid-ap! Lift a hoof, by Cripus, or I’ll stomp on your innards!” yelled Solomon at his mules.

Both boats gathered way.

“Mercy, Sol,” gasped Mrs. Gurget after a volcanic eruption of laughter. “You oughtn’t to have done that. You might have hurt the poor woman. Hector!”

“Eh?”

“Nell ain’t hurt, is she?”

“I guess not. She lit on some potatoes that was kind of soft.”

Black shadows lowered over the canal. The setting sun had left a twilight of pale green; and the wind had begun to rise again, with a piercing note among the trees. Dan walked on the off side of the team, for there was only an occasional white gleam on the water to mark the edge of the towpath. The outlines of the woodlands blurred, and farm buildings merged with their shadows. Here and there they saw a light across the fields. It was quite dark when they came to the Delta House and tied by for the night.

Rome

There was still a star or two way down in the west when they started ahead in the morning. The dark hulk of the Delta House, in which they had heard men laughing and singing the night before, loomed silent be-side the dock. The ghost of the night’s fires rose in a thin line from the centre chimney. The thump of the horses’ hoofs on wood echoed against the walls. But when they had cleared the dock the boats moved into stillness, except for an occasional whimpering of water round the bows.

The hush of morning was all about them; in it small sounds grew suddenly. As they passed a herd of cows, standing at ease in their night pasture, they became aware of their deep rhythmical breathing; and they heard the thin suck of mud about their feet. They could see united clouds hovering above their horses, and the flat green gleam of their eyes; but the cows stood so quiet there was no voice of bells.

With a loud rustling a muskrat ran out of the grass on the side of the towpath and slipped into the canal so smoothly that they barely saw the ring he made; but the slop of his belly against the water came to their ears like a report.

On the stern of the Nancy Mrs. Gurget sat, a mountain of wraps and shawls, with only her face visible. Now and then she would raise a hand to her lips and blow a cloud of steam over it.

“Early morning travel when it’s warm is the best there is,” she said to Dan; “but this late in the year it’s so cold it gives a body the flesh-creep.”

It was cold. Both Dan and Solomon stamped their feet as they walked, and, by the rudder of the Ella-Romeyn, Hector Berry was whipping his arms round his middle and puffing and blowing from the exercise. The lights in the cabin windows, where Mrs. Berry was moving about in comfort, shone behind misted glass.

The low hills to the east began to assume clearer outlines; far behind them a white light was growing; but before the sun rose wraiths of mist began to play upon the water, and gradually merged and thickened, until without warning the boats were traveling in a dense white that glistened like hoarfrost on the decks and turned the worn leather on the teams into handsome harnesses. A rich earth smell of potatoes issued from the pits of the boats and followed them along; and though they could not see, and though sound had dimmed and lost its frosty music, the boaters became aware of the smell of barns when they passed them, and the stinging scent of barnyards.

For an hour and a half they pushed on through the mist, feeling their way blindly, as if they were approaching birth. Dan walked behind the black team, his eyes following eagerly the line of the towpath. The grey shapes of Solomon Tinkle and the mules were barely visible a hundred feet ahead. With each stride into the dim whiteness, progress seemed more futile; and distance became an immeasurable quantity. And yet after a time the wetness on Dan’s face felt less chilly, and he became aware of something stirring ahead of him.

At first it sounded no louder than the breathing of the herd they had passed earlier in the morning; then it turned into a steady drone, thin, like the awakening of bees; and it gained volume as they approached it, and the mist wavered now and then, so that at moments he saw Solomon quite clearly, and there were articulate sounds in it, and a long trahn-ahn- ahn-ahn, repeated over and over like a melody in music. Suddenly Mrs. Gurget sat forward in her chair.

“Listen. There’s the horns. Hear ‘em, Dan? Them’s horns! They’re blowing on the Erie Canal.”

All at once they heard a cart rattling along a wooden street, the sound of a bell; and the mist lifted without noticeable motion, and they saw upon their right the outline of a town.

And then they felt the sun warm upon them, and a burst of color came upon the buildings; rising smokes, shot with gold, were pulling away to the westward; windowpanes gleamed reflected light; carts and wagons and the voices of men moving rose about them with increasing vigor; and the two boats came round a bend into a long line of docks and warehouses, reflected in the water of a long basin. And everywhere Dan looked upon the water there were boats, of all colors and of many shapes, with men and women moving on their decks. Boats coming in and hauling out, both east and west, the drawn-out wailing of their horns a sound behind the stirring sound of the town.

Solomon stopped the mules upon the dock, and the Nancy swung in close with the Ella-Romeyn at her rudder, and Mrs. Gurget and Hector tossed tie-ropes ashore and came down the gangs.

The fat woman was laughing.

“By Nahum, Dan! What do you think of Rome?”

3

ERIE CANAL

Port of Rome

Mrs. Gurget walked over to Dan, who was hitching the Ella’s tie-rope round a post.

“Dan, Sol and me are going to push on for Syracuse right off. It’ll have to be good-bye for now.”

“Yeanh,” said Solomon, trotting up behind her. “Hullo, good-bye; that’s the way it is on the Erie.”

“We like you a lot, Dan,” Mrs. Gurget went on. “Sol and I, we talked about you last night after we went to bed. We’d like to give you a job, but we figger we couldn’t pay you as much as you’d get somewhere’s else.”

“That’s right, Dan, we’re kind of slow folk.”

“No, we ain’t. How can you look at me, Sol, and say that?”

“Well, we take our hauling slow. We don’t get into no competition for speed. He wouldn’t see so much going along with us.”

“No, he wouldn’t. So we’re going to say good-bye. Ain’t we, Sol?”

“Yeanh. We’d better.” He took hold of her fat hand. “You give it to him,” he said in a low voice.

“Well, good-bye, Dan. Good luck.”

He shook hands energetically.

“Keep your eye open for that rapscallion, Calash. You can’t tell when you mightn’t see him and make a penny. It’s always a good idee to keep your eye open, Dan; though it’s handy not to tell everything you see.”

He shook hands once more and trotted off to his. mules.

“Hurry, now, Lucy,” he called.

Dan noticed him busy unhitching the tie-ropes, but keeping an eye on them over his shoulder.

“What do you aim to do, Dan?” Mrs. Gurget asked.

“I guess I’ll get a job.”

“Well, it oughtn’t to be hard nowadays.”

She hesitated a moment and poked at a wisp of her dyed red hair.

“Me and Sol was thinking maybe you ought to have a little extry in your pocket, Dan. Maybe you won’t need it. If you don’t, you’ll want to give it to some gal maybe when you’re lonely. Good-bye, Dan. If you get bad off, come and find us. We’re apt to be somewhere anywhere.”

She caught him suddenly to her with her right hand, and he had the feeling of being smothered against her breast. She kissed him loudly close to his ear and turned away. He watched her hustle over to the Nancy, settling her bonnet as she went. He put his hand in his coat pocket and drew out some bills she had put there. A couple of men, coming along the dock, jostled against him. When he recovered his balance, the Nancy was under way, Solomon cracking his whip over the mules and keeping his face to the path, and Mrs. Gurget steering on the stern. He felt a sudden weakness in his legs, and his eyes blurred. Then a boat cut in behind the Nancy and he had one view of Mrs. Gurget waving a pudgy arm before she disappeared up the canal to the west.

Dan counted the money in his hand— five dollars and twenty-five cents; it was a handsome gift.

As he returned it to his pocket, someone took hold of his other arm.

“I’m real sorry,” Hector Berry was saying. “Real sorry. This here’s my regular driver. Mr. George Williams, meet Dan Harrow. A man can’t have but one driver to his boat, can he— if he ain’t working for one of the fine companies?”

“That’s right,” said Dan in an embarrassed voice. “A man can’t.”

He wondered what the fuss was about.

“Well,” said Hector, “here’s your pay.”

He took a dollar out of his pigskin wallet. Dan mechanically pocketed it.

“Well, good-bye,” said Hector, making a motion to go.

“Luck,” grunted Mr. George Williams. “Pleased to meet yer any time.” And he went aboard the Ella.

Immediately Hector took Dan by the arm again and began to speak hurriedly in an undertone.

“I’d keep you with me, Dan. Honest to hunkus I would, I like you, for a fact, and he’s no good”— he pointed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Mr. George Williams. “Men that drinks like him is no good, Dan, and mind I said so. Oh, I don’t mean a swaller on a cold day is going to rumple your innards for the rest of your life— not me. But when a man drinks so long the likker commences running over at his eyes, there ain’t no chance left for connection of thought. By dang, I’d fire him tomorrow.”

He raised his fist.

“By dang, I would, by holy dang. When I say a thing, by dang, I mean it. But he’s Nell’s nephey, and she’s took a notion against you. Regular snarl she gets into when I say, ‘I guess I’ll hire Dan Harrow— he’s good with horses.’ I mean what I say, ‘Good with horses.’ You’re a good boy, Dan; I like you.”

He wrung Dan’s hand.

“Your pa done me a turn once. Any time you need anything you come and see me.”

“Hec-tor! Hec-tor!”

“Coming!” bawled Hector. “Luck to you, Dan.”

He turned round and went hurriedly aboard. Dan saw Penelope Berry’s wizened face thrust from the cabin door under a mammoth pink night bonnet, her grey hair full of skewers over her forehead, and curl-papers dangling to her shoulders. He grunted.

“The danged old coot.”

But his eyes watched her until the turning of the boat cut off his view of the door, and then he stared after Hector’s plump, spraddle-legged figure on the poop of the Ella-Romeyn, until the glare of the sun on the canal brought the water to his eyes. At least they were familiar… .

It was all strange to him. The boats, more than he could count, coming in and going out, many passing through without a stop, each with a man steering and a man walking behind the towing team, moving at a slow pace, but giving an impression of an intense, suppressed desire for speed. The line boats, recognizable for the hard faces of their captains, largely Irishers, brought in gangs when the great work of the canal was coming to a close; they had an air about them of men aware of physical well-being. Boats bearing emigrants out to the West, Germans, an old man on one with a mug in his hand and a long china pipe to his mouth and a nightcap on his head, stiffly promenading the deck in his stocking feet; and tow-haired children on another. A New Englander going by, driving a boat, a cold-faced bearded man who spoke in a nasal tight voice ordinary words to his horses more impressive than oaths; a boy steering, his young face grimly serious. Two boats of tall, light-haired folk,— “Hunkers” said a man at Dan’s back, and his companion answered, “Damn fool Swedes,”— but they had a light in their blue eyes.

Boats of all colors— greys, greens, blues, reds, muddy magentas, and many white, floating on their reflections, many bearing strange folk, entering a strange country, the look of whom made Dan uneasy, so that he found comfort in the figures of the boaters, who rolled their r’s in swearing, and who walked as if they knew what their hands were doing. They wore no uniform to tell them by; they were careless in their dress, but their clothes suited them individually— small high felt hats, and broad-brimmed hats with flat crowns, and caps with ear flaps turned up; and some wore coats, and some suits of homespun, and some heavy woolen shirts of dark blue or brown; and one old captain went by wearing a peajacket, and he had a conch at his lips, and his face was red with blowing, and the sound of it swallowed the sounds of the people round him so that he could not hear their laughter, but stood with his pegleg braced in an augur hole; and perhaps he felt the ocean.

The words of the old peddler Turnesa, on his wagon, occurred to Dan: “The bowels of the nation … the whole shebang of life.” He could see it in the hurry and a certain breathlessness above the easy noise; he could smell it in the boats coming from the West, the raw foods, the suffocating odor of grain, the scent of meat, of pork, the homely smell of potatoes, to be digested in the East and produce growth. It mystified him, though he seemed to understand it, and it stirred a great affection in him for living, for the people round him, and the clean light of the sun.