South of Heaven (8 page)

T
here were two jackhammers. Two men, spelling one another, worked each jackhammer. I took the place of a guy who’d had so much of it that even a mormon board looked good to him. He didn’t know mormon boards, I guess, or maybe he just had an awful hate for jackhammers. Which is a mighty easy thing to get.

You’ve probably seen jackhammers—or airhammers, to use their proper name. They’re used in breaking up pavement and the like. They have a two-handed grip across the top, in the shape of an elongated oval, with a heavy air-cylinder extending down from it. A steel drill fits into the end of the cylinder, and when the air is cut in that drill begins to vibrate and bounce about umpteen times a second.

It’s not the only thing that vibrates, either, as you may have noticed. Hanging on to that jackhammer is like holding on to a steel wildcat with St. Vitus’ dance. It shakes you from your shoe soles to your eyeballs, and little chips of rock sting your hide like birdshot, and I guess God must have his ears plugged to the noise because he sure wouldn’t put up with it if he could hear it.

On pavement jobs, the jackhammer work is only a few minutes at a time; on the pipeline, it’s almost steady. When you run out of rock, you move right ahead until you find some more. And if you don’t move real fast, if that jackhammer stops popping and rattling for more than a minute or two, you’ve got high-pressure on your tail.

Two strawbosses ran a check on us that afternoon; one of Depew’s men also came by to check our time and note my change of jobs. Then, a little after four in the afternoon, Higby drove up.

My partner and I had been taking fifteen-minute runs on the hammer. It was my turn to rest, and I was sitting on the ditch fill when Higby arrived. He gave me a sharp look, started to say something I guess; then figured out the situation—that I wasn’t just loafing—and came over and sat down by me.

“How’s it going, Tommy?”

I shook my head, shrugged.

“How’d you like to run a hammer…steady?”

I laughed, still not saying anything. Higby grinned sourly, then made his voice persuasive.

“You run a nice hammer, Tommy. And it’s a lot safer than powder. You just check back over your memory and tell me if you ever saw an old powder monkey.”

I said I’d never seen any old jackhammer men either. Then I looked at him frowning, struck by the strangeness of his urging a change of jobs on me.

“I work with Four Trey,” I said. “That was the understanding when I hired on. I help on powder with him and I deal blackjack for him as soon as.…”

“That’s still the understanding, as long as you cut the stuff and Four Trey wants you. I had the impression, however, that you didn’t care too much about shooting powder.”

“I like it all right,” I said. “I like it just fine. Now, unless Four Trey’s got some complaints.…”

“I imagine he’d tell us both if he had.” Higby shook his head. “But I’m sure he’d be willing to change helpers if I asked him to. And there’d be no trouble about finding him one. There’s always someone willing to shoot powder. Someone with so little imagination that he can’t picture himself getting killed or maimed, or who actually
wants
to get killed. You find a lot of those, too, around the big labor camps.”

“Four Trey’s got plenty of imagination,” I said. “He sure as hell doesn’t want to get killed, either, and neither do I.”

“I’d like to see you stay on jackhammer, Tommy. You could make a lot of overtime.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And who can take it?”

“It’s good for a man. Keeps him out of trouble. A man puts in a long day on a jackhammer, and he doesn’t want anything but bed.”

I said I’d been keeping out of trouble long before I ever fitted hands to a jackhammer and I figured I still knew the secret. He nodded and stood up, dusting the seat of his pants. I got up, too, since it was about time to go back to work; kind of wondering about his mention of keeping out of trouble. It might mean that he’d somehow found out about Carol, but I didn’t see how he could have. Certainly, Four Trey would never, never have butted into my affairs by asking him to talk to me.

I went back to work, deciding that it was just a generality tossed off during a conversation. He’d stopped for a breather and used the time to make a hard sell on jackhammers. He needed operators badly so he’d pulled out all the stops, getting a lot more personal than a pipeline boss ordinarily would have.

He spoke to the other men briefly, about what I couldn’t hear because of the noise of my hammer. Then he started walking up the line route, stopping every now and then to make a little marker of piled-up rock. He made approximately twenty of them in the space of about five hundred yards, then came back to his pickup and drove off toward camp.

Those markers were places where we had work to do. There appeared to be enough of them to keep us busy through noon tomorrow, if not longer. I mentioned this to my partner when it came his turn on the hammer, and he gave me a sore look.

“Lay off, pal. I ain’t in the mood for kidding.”

“Kidding? What are you talking about?”

“The big boy didn’t tell you, huh?” He shook his head grimly. “We do that tonight. Every damned bit of it before we button up the day.”

“
Tonight?
But…but, dammit to hell…!”

“Can’t do it, hmmm? Just ain’t up to it? Well, don’t bother to tell the man, because I already done it and he just didn’t believe me at all. He said I must mean that I wanted to drag-up my time, and if I didn’t mean that I’d better get hot on this hammer.”

“Gee,” I said, “I was just going to ask if I couldn’t work over.”

He grinned tiredly, spat dust from his mouth and scoured his hands against his pants. I turned the hammer over to him, and he gave it a boost with his knee, brought the drill down on a patch of rock and cut in the air.

It began to shake, rattle and roar. He bore down on it, arms stiff, and it whined and clattered and tried to jump away from him. His teeth clenched with the effort to hold on, and his whole body jerked and vibrated.

I moved back away from the noise and dropped down on the fill. I began to massage my legs and arms, groaning when I hit a knotted muscle and wondering what Carol would think when I didn’t show up.

I figured that she’d probably be pretty upset about it, that she’d maybe think I was sore and wasn’t coming back. I looked up the line at the work that remained to be done and I decided that we might get through in time for me to pay her a quick call. A doggone quick one, just long enough to say hello and let her know I wasn’t sore. Because I sure wasn’t up to or interested in anything else tonight.

Like Higby had said, all you wanted after a hard day on the hammer was bed. Just a bed, with no one in it to crowd you.

At five o’clock a kitchen flunky in a company pickup brought supper to us. It was packed into five-gallon lard cans: one for coffee, another for beef, chicken and ham, another for bread-and-butter, cookies and doughnuts, and the remaining two for potatoes and mixed vegetables. We ate all we could hold and put a few doughnuts and cookies in our pockets. The flunky dumped everything that was left over onto the prairie, then drove back down the line toward camp.

We had a cigarette or two…makin’s since none of us had any ready-rolleds. Then we matched for turns on the hammers, stepped up the speed of the generator and went back to work.

It was almost ten o’clock by the time we had finished, and long jagged streaks of lightning were crackling across the black sky, seeming to rip it apart like a curtain, then to sew it back up with thunder.

I rode in the seat with Higby going into camp, and he kept sticking his head out the window, feeling for rain. He looked as tired as I felt and he seemed to get older with each crack of lightning. A hard rain, one that continued through tomorrow, would stop work on the line. Even a hard night’s rain would set the job back, but for only a few hours with any kind of luck. The blazing sun and the constant wind dried things up fast. You could toss a dipper of water on the ground, and it would evaporate almost before it landed.

Higby swore under his breath, sidled a worried glance at me. “Well, Tommy? What do you think?”

“Nothing to it,” I shrugged. “Nothing more than a spring shower.”

He said he sure as hell hoped I was right, and I lied that I’d bet money on it. I figured that he already knew that only a fool or a stranger prophesies the weather in West Texas, and there was no point in reminding him of it.

Camp was dark except for the water-barrel lantern and the lantern in the truck-parking area. Higby brought the pickup to a stop, spoke to me quietly as I started to climb out.

“A hell of a hard day, huh, Tommy? I imagine you can’t wait to hit the sack.”

“Well…” I hesitated. “If there’s something you want to talk to me about, Mr. Higby…”

“No, no, bed’s the best place for you. I guess you know I’ll want you on the hammers again tomorrow.”

“I figured,” I said. “But that wraps it up, right? I’m down for powder monkey’s helper and I’ll be back to it after tomorrow.”

“Stay on the hammers, Tommy,” he said softly. “You’ll be glad you did later. Stay there and make your overtime and keep out of trouble, and.…”

And that was as far as he got. Because I was about as exhausted as a man can get and every nerve of my body was raw, and that second mention of keeping out of trouble—well, it was too damned much. I was in plenty of trouble right then, and I’d got it all from being put on those lousy hammers.

“Look!” I exploded. “What the hell is this, Mr. Higby? What does the top man on a big pipeline job care what happens to a working stiff like me? Why are you bothering with me? What am I to you, anyway? I appreciate your sticking up for me with Depew, but.…”

“You don’t owe me a thing, Burwell. I did what I had to do; what I thought was right. And you’d better make that
Mr.
Depew.”

His voice was stony cold. It yanked me out of my mad like a skyhook, made me realize that I was way, way out of line in talking up to him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Higby,” I said. “Really sorry. If you want me on a hammer.…”

“I don’t. You’ll go back on powder tomorrow morning.”

“But…you’re not going to fire me, then?”

He shook his head. “I laid myself open for back-talk from a punk. It’s my own fault that I mistook him for a man. No”—he cut me off before I could interrupt. “No, I’m not going to fire you, Burwell. Not for this. If I did, I’d probably lose Four Trey along with you. And he has friends who might pull out if he did, and his friends have friends, and…So you’re safe, Burwell—for now, at least.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, miserably. “I ought to have my tail kicked.”

“You’re not worth it.” He opened the door on his side and started to get out. “I’ve wasted too much time on you already.”

He gave me a curt nod, strode away toward the high-pressure tent. I got out and went over to the wash bench.

It would be hard to tell you how I felt. Shabby, cheap, crummy—all those things and a lot more besides. A tinhorn through and through. A good man had tried to befriend me, and I’d thrown dirt in his face. It was a low-down thing to do, a punk thing, and I felt as low as a guy could get.

I made a pass at washing up. I went through the walkway between the tents, headed across the prairie toward the place where Carol was camped. Somehow, I wasn’t very set-up about seeing her tonight. I was even a little annoyed when I thought of her, which was unfair, but understandable.

Except for her, my touchiness about seeing her, I wouldn’t have blown up with Higby. Except for her, I would still have been aces with Four Trey, instead of having him half-leery of me.

I’d considered myself a man, a guy who’d finally grown up and come to grips with himself. I’d been a man, and a little ol’ gal barely five feet tall had made me forget that I was.

I didn’t know then that the right girl can do that to a man and that it’s the surest sign that he is one. I was too miserable, too anxious to push some of my blame on someone else.

I went stumbling across the pitch-dark prairie, brooding, muttering to myself. I caught my toe in a prairie-dog hole and fell down and I remained flopped for a moment, rehearsing a little speech I intended to make.

“Now, I’m telling you, girl. You’re going to straighten up and knock off the nuttiness or it’s going to be down on the mope-pole for you! I’ve had just a big plenty, and from now on.…”

There was a crash—the damnedest one I ever hope to hear. A great bayonet of lightning speared down past my head, and a plume of white fire leaped up from the ground to meet it. There was a blinding flash, literally blinding. The prairie was suddenly as bright as blazing day. I closed my eyes against it. I opened them again on a world that was suddenly so dark that I thought I had lost my sight.

And then it began to rain. Not drops, but streams, rivers and lakes and oceans of water.

It can be a long time between rains in Far West Texas. A year, sometimes two years. Nature doesn’t get around to the place often, and she has to make up for lost time when she does. And she must have had a lot to make up for tonight.

I couldn’t see. I could hardly take a deep breath without drowning. I started running, falling and stumbling at every step. I became completely turned-around, losing all track of where Carol’s housecar was or the camp was or I was.

I started traveling in what I hoped was a circle, but I didn’t make a very good go of it, I guess, because it was hours before I reached the line. I began following it, following it the wrong way at first and ending up at the far end. I turned around and started back the other way. And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the rain stopped.

Not another drop fell. It simply stopped as suddenly as though a faucet had been closed.

It was dawn by then. When I finally reached camp, the sun was creeping up over the horizon.

It was going to be another scorching hot day. Which meant nothing at all to me at the moment. I was chilled through one side and out the other and I wanted to thaw out at the kitchen range and drink four or five gallons of scalding coffee.