by Oakley Hall
12
The next morning he felt hot and thirsty and tired and he was thinking of going away again. He had heard someone say they needed cat skinners up in Canada. They were paying big money, whoever-it-was had said, but you had to sign on for a year. He drowsed on his way to work with Jack, trying to picture what Canada and Alaska were like. He didn’t say anything to Jack about V; he didn’t want to have to think about V.
When finally the lunch hour came, he lay down with his head against one of the drums of Red’s tampers to try to sleep. The rest of the job was out of sight and they seemed to have the whole, wide, hot, dusty valley to themselves. Red and Jack and Toussaint and Harry were shooting craps in the shade of Harry’s roller and he could hear Toussaint chattering as he shook the dice: “Speak for Toussaint, dice…Stay away from me old seven… Come on eight, come on you double four…Hallooo, eight!”
The sun was hot and soothing on his face. He could feel it hot on his eyes beneath his eyelids, and then he was dreaming, an ugly confused dream in which there was no vision but only shouting sound. Toussaint’s voice was crying out shrilly; there were other voices…He jerked awake, not knowing where he was at first, then knowing, and knowing what was wrong as he looked toward the others.
He grasped one of the long spikes of the tampers and pulled himself up. “Cut it out!” he yelled hoarsely. His feet were heavy, stumbling, as he ran toward them. “Cut it out, Jack!” he cried.
He saw Jack swing and Red dodge back. Harry and Toussaint stood against the side of the roller; there was a grimace on Harry’s dark, Indian face.
“Come on,” Red said. “Come on, big boy.” Jack stripped off his shirt and flung it from him. Harry took hold of Ben’s wrist, pulling him up short as he ran toward them.
“Let go,” Ben panted. “We got to stop it. Goddamn it!”
“You can’t stop it,” Harry said.
“They gone have it out anyway,” Toussaint said. His eyes were wide open and rimmed with white. Ben heard the quick splat of fists behind him. Harry released his arm and he swung around.
Jack’s nose was bleeding; a splash of scarlet covered his upper lip. He moved toward Red cautiously. “Come on,” Red panted. “Try it again, blade man.” His left lashed into Jack’s face, lashed again.
“Cut it out, Goddamn it!” Ben cried. He took a step toward them.
“Keep away,” Jack said, and suddenly Red jumped in toward him, his arms pumping, their four feet shuffling in the dust and the dust rising. Ben could feel it prickle on his face.
Jack staggered back and away and then slid forward to hit Red in the side. They were moving slowly now, awkwardly, stumbling in the dust, their mouths open and gasping. Ben closed his eyes, grimacing, listening to the terrible, dull sound of their fists.
“Jack’ll kill him he nails him with that right,” he heard Harry say. The voice seemed to come from very far away. He opened his eyes. Jack swung the right; Red had his hands up but the blow drove them back into his face. Crouching, Jack followed him.
Red stopped, feinted. Jack came forward. Red jumped to one side as he lunged and slammed his fist down like a club on the back of Jack’s neck. Ben heard Harry whisper, “Rotten son of a bitch.”
Jack fell forward into the thick dust that rose and swirled over him. He pushed himself up slowly, turning to face Red. “That filthy rotten son of a bitch,” Harry said, and Toussaint was whispering, “Jack. Jack. Jack. Lookout, Jack.”
He cried out, “Look out, Jack!”
Red moved in. His right flashed like a piston at Jack’s face. Jack caught the fist with his left hand. The fist drew back again. Then Ben saw the long looping right swing up from Jack’s side.
There was a sound like a dropped watermelon and Red was sitting down. But Jack let out a stifled cry and clutched his right hand to his face and bit it. Ben could see the corners of his mouth twisted down in agony.
But when Jack let the hand drop his face was expressionless. He watched Red push himself up. Ben could see Red grinning. Red staggered back toward Jack but Jack leaned away from him and hit him with his left, bringing it up from his knees, swinging it with his shoulders like a scythe, and the fist crashed against the side of Red’s head.
Red fell forward, his arms around Jack’s waist, and Jack stepped back to let him drop, then stood over him, sobbing with exhaustion, wiping the blood from his face with his left hand. After a moment he leaned down and tried to pull Red upright. But he had not the strength and he lost his balance and staggered back, almost fell.
“Quit it now, Jack,” Ben heard Toussaint cry. “He had enough now.” But Jack hitched at the top of his pants as though to stop himself from falling and stumbled forward and tried again to pull Red to his feet. Toussaint ran up to him, holding his arms, pulling him away, pleading with him; “Quit it now, Jack. He had enough now. He out, Jack.”
Jack jerked away and fell to his knees. When he got up the face he turned to Toussaint was terrible. He raised his fist. “Keep your nigger hands away from me!” he whispered.
Toussaint stared at him. He took a step back, turned. Then, hurrying, he got his lunch pail and disappeared around the roller, and a moment later Ben saw him again, walking jerkily, his knees seeming to bend both ways in his faded dungarees. He began to run. His thin legs pumping up and down, his arms flapping, he looked like a scarecrow running.
When Ben looked back Harry had jumped forward and was holding Jack away from Red. Jack was struggling feebly, but then he went limp and Harry half-pulled him, half-carried him away and sat him down against the rear tire of Jack’s grader. Jack leaned his head back, panting ceaselessly. His face was bloody and bruised and blood and sweat had muddied the dust that matted the hairs of his bare chest.
“For Christ’s sake, Ben,” Harry called. “Go take a look at Red, will you?”
Ben started. Moving in a trance he got his water bag and went to where Red lay sprawled, one arm pinned under his body. He rolled him over. Red’s face was a mask of dust, bloody around the mouth, and Ben poured water into his hands and tried to wash the blood away. Red’s eyes opened and looked up at him, glazed, unseeing. “Take a drink,” Ben said. He put the snout of the water bag into Red’s mouth. Red guzzled it noisily.
Ben helped him up and helped him over to the cat. Red stopped and leaned his arms on the track and his head on his arms.
“You better take the rest of the day off, Red,” Ben said.
“M’all right. Just gimme minute. Gimme drink.” After he had washed his mouth out and spat, Red probed in his mouth and brought out a tooth. Cursing unintelligibly he flung it away.
Ben turned. Jack had risen and was squatting beside the starting motor on the frame of his grader. Ben saw that he was coiling the rope around the flywheel with his left hand. He snapped the rope and the motor popped, slowly, then faster. Jack waited, shifted in the Diesel and climbed heavily up to the seat. The roar of the Diesel thickened gradually and Jack sat stiffly erect, staring out at the grade where Toussaint had disappeared. Finally he shifted into gear and the grader pulled away.
Red raised his head and watched it move off. He took a few experimental steps along the side of the cat, holding onto the tracks. He had moved to the front of the cat when Harry came up.
“You better knock off, Red,” Harry said.
“I’ll go get your car and run you home,” Ben said. “You better call it a day.”
“I’m okay,” Red said. He began to crank, grunting with each stroke of his arm. Harry reached over and turned on the gas cock. “Thanks,” Red said. “Forgot.”
“Listen, Red; you’re in no kind of shape.”
“To hell with me,” Red said. “You guys go on back to work.” They stood watching him for a moment, then Harry scowled and shook his head and the two of them walked silently toward Harry’s roller. There Harry leaned up against the frame, brought out a sack of Bull Durham and rolled a cigarette. They heard the uneven clack of tracks as Red set the cat moving, the drawbar screeche
d as he turned too sharply, and the huge, heavy, spiked drums of the tampers clanked as they rocked in their frames. Red was crouched low on the seat, both hands clamped on the right friction clutch.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” Ben said. “He couldn’t let Jack alone, could he?”
Harry shrugged, lighting his cigarette. He raised his head, shaking the match out, and Ben saw his eyes widen. The cigarette dropped from his mouth. “Oh, Christ!” he yelled. “Oh, Jesus Christ!”
Ben jerked his head around. Red’s cat was a hundred yards away, moving slowly in low. The tampers rocked behind it, spiked feet punishing the ground. The seat was empty.
Already Harry was running after it. “Where the hell is he?” he cried, his face twisted and white as he looked furiously over his shoulder at Ben. Jack’s grader was tearing over toward them from the fine grade.
As they ran laboriously through the loose dirt, they saw Jack stop the grader and jump off. He ran forward a few steps and halted, looking down at the grade. He took a step back, another, and then, as though he had been kicked in the stomach, bent over, retching. He looked as though he were going to fall as he ran back toward his grader, and Ben knew what had happened. Red had fallen off the back of the seat. The tampers had run over him.
Ahead of him, Harry stopped. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “Oh, look at that! Oh, God, Ben!”
Ben caught up with him, looked down, and then quickly away. He didn’t look again at the crushed, bloody, dirt-covered thing on the grade. “Jesus, God!” Harry breathed.
“You better try to catch the cat, Harry,” Ben said.
Harry didn’t speak immediately, didn’t move. Then he said, “Yeah,” and began to run again.
Ben saw Jack looking at him. Jack’s face was dead white, his mouth was open and pulled tragically down at the corners, twitching as his chest heaved. His left hand clutched tightly the frame of the grader, the other hung limp and half-open at his side. They stared at each other and Ben knew he should go over to him.
But he did not, and as he watched, Jack moved slowly along the side of the grader and climbed up to the seat. He drove away in the direction of the timekeeper’s shack, standing up and leaning forward against the controls, his shirt tail flapping behind him.
Ben never saw him again.
13
The note Jack had left trembled in V’s fingers as she handed it back. Her other hand was at the side of her face, tugging at a strand of her hair. “But why,” she whispered. “Why, Ben?”
Ben shrugged tiredly. “I guess he didn’t want to stick around to face it.”
She almost screamed it at him, “He didn’t kill Red!”
“He helped. We should never have let Red get up on that cat, so I guess it’s our fault too. But I can see how Jack feels.”
He stood just inside the door of V’s room, V close to him. She turned her face to the wall and slowly hit her fist against the edge of the open door. “What happened?” she said, talking into the wall. “Tell me what happened.”
“Jack didn’t know when to quit hitting him,” Ben said. “Afterwards Red tried to run his rig and he fainted, I guess, and fell back off the seat. The tampers went over him.” He almost said, “Jack was hitting you, V, when he was hitting Red,” but he stopped himself.
“What’s a tamper?” V whispered.
“It’s a kind of drum. A steel drum full of water that rolls on a whole bunch of spikes that’re shaped kind of like feet. There was two of them in tandem.”
She turned to face him, her mouth forming a circle, eyes round. Perspiration shone on her upper lip.
“Each tamper weighs about five tons,” Ben said, and then he watched her silently as she stepped back, slumped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. Her fingers protruded through the blonde hair at the sides of her head. Watching her, he felt nothing. He had felt anger, anger at no one, at nothing in particular, anger only that this thing had happened; he had felt sorrow, sorrow for Red, for Jack, for V, pity for Jack; but now he felt nothing. Whatever was in him capable of feeling, was bruised and overworked and shocked, and he felt as he had when he was in the hospital after Bill Rasmussen and Arlene had been killed.
“Well, he’ll be in the Navy pretty soon,” he said. “I wish I was with him.” And since he had found Jack’s note in their room, Jack gone, he had been wishing desperately he could be in the war. He wanted to participate in something, instead of always being on the outside, caught up only in the ripples, feeling only vicariously, affected only indirectly, for even with Doris he had not felt part of it, feeling that as soon as he was involved with her, some piece of him had dropped out and had stood to one side, watching.
“He must hate me for this,” V said.
Ben nodded abstractedly, staring at her and trying to bring her face, which he loved, into focus, in his eyes. “He must hate me for what I’ve done to him,” V said.
He nodded. “Ben,” V said. “Don’t just stare at me. Help me, Ben.”
He turned his eyes to the window, and he was surprised at the coldness of his voice. “I’ve done enough,” he said. “I should have kept out of it. I…” He frowned as he forgot what he had been going to say, and then he looked at her once more. “I’ll bet he hates you, V,” he said.
She was bent forward, her shoulders hunched like an old woman’s, her hands clenched into fists like a little girl. Her white blouse was stretched tight across her back. “Ben, please, I had to get him back. You saw…Ben, remember what you told me!”
He felt himself nod. She’d had the tools. He’d told her she had the tools, if she only knew how to use them. He said, half to himself, “I didn’t know you’d learn to use them this well.”
“What? Oh, Ben!”
“You didn’t know when to quit hitting him,” he said, and then he went out and gently closed the door because he couldn’t bear to hear her crying.
14
It was late in the summer before he even saw her again. When finally he did, one night at the Hitching Post, he began seeing her often, running into her at a movie, or at a ball game, or glimpsing her blonde head moving among the other dancers at the Chamber of Commerce Hall. Then one night he took her to a movie himself, and stopped the next day at Deterle’s to see her, and all at once he was stopping at the drive-in every day after work, and making a date with her whenever he could.
After the first few times she dropped the mask she had put on for her battle for Jack. One night it was gone completely, and she never again put it on when she was with Ben, as though she had felt him out and knew he was to be trusted, or as though he did not matter enough for her to go to the trouble of wearing it. She was more sure of herself now, more wary, as though the stubborn, desperate singleness of her purpose had tempered her to a hardness she could not throw off. But the honesty remained, her straightforwardness was still there. The new, sleek smile he hated was gone with her pose, for Ben she smiled her old smile, and for him her eyes held the round, grave, innocent look he could never forget.
He couldn’t stay away from her. He had to see her even though she looked upon him as Jack’s friend more than her own, even though the few times she kissed him he had the jealous revulsion afterward that it had been Jack she was kissing. Finally she seemed to know what was the matter with him and he began to understand he was being handled, gently and carefully. Somehow he did not mind.
One afternoon when he had stopped at Deterle’s after work, she was talking to an old man in a black Lincoln convertible. She waved to Ben but stayed and talked to the old man while he waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and watching them.
The Lincoln was new and the man’s head was small and gray, sticking up over the edge of the door as though he were a turtle peering out of his shell. He was smoking a cigarette in a long holder, and Ben didn’t like the way V was talking to him.
“Who was that?” he asked, when the Lincoln had gone and V came across the asphalt to him.
“Roger
Denton. He has a ranch out near my father’s.”
“That the guy you go see every Sunday?”
V nodded. “He’s my best friend. He and you, Ben.” She seemed happy about something. The color was high on her cheeks and her eyes shone.
“He’s old, isn’t he?” Ben said coldly.
“What? Oh. Yes, I’ve known him since I was a little kid. He gave me a quarter-horse when I was sixteen.”
“I didn’t like the way you were talking to him.”
Her smile faded and she looked at him anxiously. Suddenly he felt foolish and tried to grin it off. “Guess what I’ve got,” V said.
“What?”
“Guess.”
“I can’t. What is it?”
She took a letter from the pocket of her skirt and showed him the return address on the envelope. “From Jack, unh?” Ben said, and he felt lonely and tired. “What’s he say, V?”
“He’s on Guam in the Seabees,” V said, and her voice was deep and happy. “He sent me a picture and he says he’s sending me a souvenir he picked up. It’s a wonderful letter, Ben.”
He fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it between his lips, fumbling for a match. “I guess our boys get lonely out there,” he said.
“Please, Ben, don’t go sour like that.”