The Outcasts (14 page)

“Fanfare,” Goray said emphatically. “A good sign.”

“Is there a phone? May I call my office? I've ordered a truck for the boom.”

Goray was interested. “You cannot leave it on the crane?”

“Not at forty miles an hour. It's long and heavy, you know. We'd tip at the first curve.”

“Ah. And on the job?”

“Maximum speed five miles an hour on the job. Better still, three.”

“I see, I see.” To Hartog he bubbled, “Technology, my friend. Salvation in a homicidal world. Nuclear energy, next. Power-plants. Our great need.”

“And stability.”

Goray blinked.

“General Ros.” Morrison was showing off.

Goray's face told him not to pursue it. Of course. He felt foolish.

“Anyway, is there a phone?”

“There is a telephone downstairs,” Hartog said. “On the street side.”

“Then you'll excuse me.”

“Yes, yes, go ahead.” Goray waved him off. “I shall join you shortly.”

“My pleasure,” Hartog said, and they shook hands again.

Downstairs the smell of hides was stupefying. Bales of hides. Rows of bales of hides. Morrison did not envy the longshoremen, or even the crew of the Xenophon. Bags of coffee, then, much better, and rice. Timber. A huge crate labeled
WORKS OF ART
bearing an address in London. Bags of sugar: he stepped closer to sniff, but backed away quickly: bees swarmed.

Utu answered, and Morrison instructed him to have the truck there at noon. Two drivers, and they must plan to spend the night at the camp. And the small crane should leave immediately. Utu was crisp and confident: it would be done.

“One more thing, sir.”

“What is it?”

“We have been wondering, the three of us, if … if we might, ah, come to see the unloading.”

Behind the casual words, perhaps in that brief hesitation, was an intensity that shocked Morrison; an intensity not heard, not even felt in an ordinary way, but registering violently upon some new sense, unused and unsuspected before now.

“Yes.” Morrison was flustered. “Yes, sure. Take a half holiday. Come down after lunch.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, sir, thank you!”

“Well, sure,” he said. “See you later.” He hung up.

Good God! One little old fifty-ton crane!

And yet he understood.

Goray and he boarded the Xenophon and were led to her captain, a man of forty or so, unlined and cheerful and blond, who glanced briefly at the clearances and poured three tots of whisky and sent for his chief mate, a man of thirty or so, also unlined and cheerful and blond, who said that the boom would come off at one, the carrier by three, and the upper cab by five. The cables were off already, and there had been no damage whatsoever, not a scratch, a smooth crossing. A crate of parts was on the dock.

“Thank God,” Morrison said.

“I thank you in the name of the government.” Goray raised his glass. “With whisky before luncheon. That is a most valuable machine.”

“It's a pretty one, too,” the chief mate said. “I'd join you, there, but I'm working. Cheers anyway. The kind of machine you get fond of.”

“Just get it off in one piece,” the captain said.

“Will do,” he said. “Where do we put it?”

“There'll be a truck here for the boom,” Morrison said. “A forty-foot flat trailer. Just drop it gently, the long way, the inserts too. If you could get that crate of parts on afterward I'd appreciate it.”

The chief mate said, “No sweat.”

The captain's cabin was like a room at a motel. There was even a print of Old Faithful. But the maple chairs were bolted to the floor.

“Drop the upper cab on the carrier. There's a hole in the bottom, and a post in the carrier that goes up through the hole. I'll position it for you.”

The chief mate said warily, “You know about this kind of work?”

“No. But I'm an engineer, and I know this machine. I won't touch anything. Or you can come down and do it.”

“We'll do it together,” the young man said agreeably.

“Good. Then I'll set the flanges and we'll be off your dock in half an hour.”

“Lovely,” the young man said.

“How do you unload the carrier?”

The captain was bored. Goray was bright-eyed and alert.

“We drive it right down a ramp.” The chief mate smiled. “Same ramp we drove it up.”

“Good old American know-how,” Morrison said.

“Yes sir,” the chief mate said with vigor. “That Liberian flag didn't fool you for a minute. What are you going to do with this machine, anyway?”

“Build a bridge,” Morrison said.

“Great,” the chief mate said, and then, “Where you from?” and that killed the next few minutes, and then Morrison towed off a reluctant Goray and went to find Tall Boy.

Tall Boy stood among sweaty dockers, and was offering cigarettes. The dockers wore ragged pants and nothing else. Some bore hooks and some shoulder-pads. “Oh, that is a bridge,” Tall Boy was saying. “People going to come out there just to
look
at that bridge.”

Goray and Morrison lingered in the shade and did not interrupt. From here, at the bows, they could see the river, a mile and more across, sluggish, brown, implacable; and a barge, and half a dozen dugouts, pirogues, one deep under coconuts. The far shore was surprisingly bare: one wooden building, many shacks, a fringe of palms. The land lay flat along the coast, and there was no forest, only a long flat sweep of green and dun to the far horizon. “There is a ferry,” Goray said, “and a road, for about thirty miles, to a settlement called Himmel's Creek. In between, a few farms.”

“I'm sorry I mentioned Ros. That was stupid.”

Goray shrugged. “It was only that we do not know how Hartog feels. A certain discretion is valuable.”

“Yes. How are things? Politically, I mean. The radio scares us and then says everything is all right.”

“Yes. Officially, all is well. But I worry. It is so easy, you see, when you have a general to give orders. Your George Washington was not the father of his country because he conceived it, but because he
took care
of things. The children came to him with their troubles and he resolved them. Though I will admit that he was an unusual man. In spite of his slaves. A Yorkshireman, I believe. With big feet. Do you know what I have never understood about your country?”

“No. But it's nice of you to admit there's something.”

“Touché.” Goray was genuinely delighted. “I have never understood how, with so much power to be grabbed, your early politicians declined it. Not merely Washington refusing the monarchy; but all of them so busy making a good country that they forgot to assure themselves lifetime jobs, and salt monopolies, and whole counties.”

“They'd just rebelled against all that.”

Goray was astonished. “My dear fellow. You cannot be so naïve. Name one other—any other, anywhere, any time—group of revolutionaries who did not immediately assume the privileges of the deposed.”

“I'm afraid I don't know that much history,” Morrison said. “I wish I did. You and Philips make me feel illiterate.”

“We don't mean to.” Goray smiled. “It is desperation on our part. There is so much to learn—so much being forced upon us so suddenly—that the few of us who can read and write are permanently drunk with knowledge. Most of it, I must say, useless. This machine, now—that impresses me.”

“Me too. I don't know how a machine can make a man so happy, but when they told me it was undamaged—”

“I noticed,” Goray said. “I felt somewhat the same. The life of the government depends not on intentions but on accomplishment. On other things too, maneuvering and deals and so forth. But also accomplishment. Statistics. So much more rice grown. So many miles of road put down. So many telephones. Housing, bridges, hospitals. If we slacken, the people will feel cheated and will fall in behind some general—like Ros—who will tell them to win the world's respect by being strong; even making war. Horrible. That man is the real savage.”

“Well, the bridge will be a good one,” Morrison said. “You can promise them that. It will also be one of the most beautiful bridges in the world.” Morrison nodded seriously. “In the world. Tall Boy is right: people will come to see it. And it took no genius. Only technique.”

“Good.” Goray's smile was faintly like Bawi's; a pale copy. “Maybe it will keep us in power for another week or two.”

Morrison laughed. “My boss told me to stay out of politics.”

Goray arched in glee, eyes and mouth wide. “You were—wait, wait, there is an American phrase.” Finger raised, eyes glittering behind his glasses, he sought. “Yes! You were
arse-deep
in politics the moment you landed.”

They laughed together, and Goray slapped him on the back. Tall Boy heard them, and broke away from the dockers.

“Tall Boy,” Morrison said. “This is Mister Goray.”

“Albert Goray.” He shook hands with Tall Boy, who was uneasily respectful and tipped the fez with his left hand.

“Tall Boy is the heavy machinery man,” Morrison said. “The best in the country. This crane is for him.”

“Ah.” Goray bowed slightly. “You are an important man, Tall Boy. Take care of your toy.”

“I will.”

“We'll have it on the road by six,” Morrison said. “We'll take it to Serpa's tonight. He has that big lot. We'll stay at the hotel and start out in the morning.
If
nothing bad happens.”

“I could sleep in the crane,” Tall Boy said.

“Nobody's going to make off with it. There's only one man in the country who knows how to run it.”

“You,” Goray said.

“Me. By tomorrow night, me and Tall Boy.”

Tall Boy took on the look of a new father. “Lord Jesus,” he said.

“You are a Christian?” Goray asked.

“Yes sir. You, sir?”

“No,” Goray said mournfully. “I am a politician.” Then he grinned his quick grin and said, “Let us go and eat.”

They ate rice and beef and peppers and shards of coconut, all heated up in one pot, and drank tea. When they returned to the dock, the truck was there, the long flat-bed trailer, and there too were Utu and Isaacson and Vieira-Souza, all in white, short sleeves, no hats, like cricketers at the tea-break, but they were drinking beer from bottles. They greeted Morrison almost timidly, and he introduced them to Goray, whom it seemed they had met, and there was nothing to do but stand in the shade and chat.

After a while a hatch opened, and blocks swung and cables stretched and twanged. The chief mate joined them, sweating through his khaki shirt, and Morrison presented him. “Why don't you take off your shirt?”

“Company rule,” the chief mate said blithely. “Tell the men from the boys,” meaning nothing special, but he did not see the look that crossed five faces, and Morrison did.

A monstrous lattice of steel emerged from the hatch. Their boom. The sun danced off it in a hundred blinding glints.

“Where do you want the truck?”

“Right where it is,” the chief mate said. “We took care of all that while you were gone.”

Morrison asked Utu, “Where are the drivers?”

“Gone to buy a drink,” Utu said, and Morrison was so taken with the music of “byee ah dreenk” that he was almost not angry.

“Find them,” Morrison said. “Right now. And tell them to lay off the drink until they reach camp tonight.”

“Yes. Yes sir,” Utu said, frightened, not knowing what it cost Morrison to issue an angry order.

Their boom hung high, and swung toward them, drifting and silver-black against the deep yellow sky. It passed across the sun. Morrison was dazzled, and looked down at the chief mate, who stood beside the trailer semaphoring. The boom hung still, then lower, lower, lower; the mate and his men laid guiding hands upon it, and shifted their feet. The mate waved again, and the boom settled gently on six inches of matting. The men disengaged the cables. Morrison wiped his brow.

Tall Boy poked him. “How we get that on the crane?” he worried.

Morrison put an arm around his shoulders. The boom was down, and safe. “Another crane. A small one. It went out this morning. Maybe the same one you had at Gimbo.”

“That was ten ton,” Tall Boy said. “You know about Gimbo?”

“Yes.”

“That was funny,” Tall Boy said.

“Okay, gentlemen,” Morrison said. “Show's over for now. Nothing more till about three.” The chief mate came laughing up. “Good work,” Morrison said. “Thanks.”

“Service with a smile,” he said. “Call again.” An ass, Morrison decided.

Two hours later the hull swung open amidships and became a ramp. The boom, the inserts, the crate of parts were gone, in the care of Morrison's tippling drivers, who had submitted indifferently to his amateurish reprimand and accepted somewhat more gracefully his promise of abundant beer at the end of the line. Which left the six of them loitering, smoking, watching other men work, dodging the sun; yawning. When the ramp came down, Tall Boy laid a huge hand on Morrison's shoulder, and Goray flashed him a comical glance of mock terror, and the other three fell silent and gawked.

The chief mate was not an ass. He urged her out at a mile an hour, swung her right at the moment Morrison would have chosen, and brought her to a stop far down the dock, at the bows, with plenty of room to back her into place for the upper cab. He ordered the ramp up, and waited, and only when the dock was clear came to Morrison and asked, smiling, brisk and smug, if he wanted to take over.

“Yes,” Morrison said. “Come on, Tall Boy. First lesson.”

They scrambled aboard. It was not much of a lesson because the carrier was driven much like any truck, but it was twenty-five feet long and weighed twenty-four tons and was not altogether child's play. Tall Boy whispered to himself. Morrison backed with great care. He set the brakes, cut the motor, dropped the keys into his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. “The driving is just oiler's work,” he said. “The real work is in the cab.” Tall Boy nodded; he knew.