by Jim Thompson
We were two kids, a young man and a young woman, come together for the first time. The first time for her, yes, as well as for me. For as little as I knew about women, I knew that much. We had given each other the gift that can only be given once. And in the glory and wonder of giving it, we had no thoughts for anything else.
How could we talk at such a time? How could I even think of questioning her?
Frankly, I would have been a little worried about myself if I had.
I settled down under the blankets, contentedly tired and ready to sleep. But I wasn’t due to get much that night. My eyes were just drifting shut when the beam of headlights swept the prairie—only one pair at first; then another and another and another until the landscape leaped and danced with light, and the sound of laboring motors filled the air. I opened the tent flap wide and looked out.
The cars were all the same make, big Hudson sedans. Their rebuilt bodies were half-again as long as they had been originally, and they were equipped with extra–heavy duty springs and tires. Canvas water bags hung from the radiator caps. A winch, for winching out of quicksand and mud, was bolted to the reinforced front bumper. Roped to the roof were four spare tires, and a set of digging-out tools. Roped to a built-on platform at the rear was a pile of baggage.
They were stagecoaches, and they went wherever man went, to all the places where trains didn’t go and never would. Just as the horsedrawn stagecoach was the forerunner of the train, these were the forerunner of our present-day bus system. The drivers wore boots and broad-brimmed hats, and they were tanned the color of saddle leather. They wore gunbelts and .45’s, and they didn’t wear them for decoration.
Their passengers that night were welders and other skilled workmen—dragline and ditcher operators, heavy-machinery mechanics and the like. They were high-pay men with strong unions, so they doubtless all owned cars. Which, needless to say, they’d been smart enough to leave at home.
A pipeline was no place to bring a car, not if it was worth anything. It would be stolen—whole or piece by piece—the first time you turned your back to it.
The long line of Hudsons pulled into camp, and drove off into the night again. Their recent passengers began to bunk down in the tents, calling back and forth to each other, and making a lot of noise about it. They were sore. They had a right to be. The line had waited until the very last minute before notifying them to report to work in the morning. They were worn out from traveling, yet they would get almost no rest before facing up to a hard day. They were hungry, but they could get no food.
The pipeline company—its financial backers, rather—had let them in for this hardship merely to save a few dollars. The relatively small cost of feeding them supper. For if a man was in camp, he had to be fed.
Normally, the bosses on pipeline jobs were pretty free and easy about such things. Your wages were docked a dollar a day for room and board (“slop and flop”), and if you didn’t have any pay coming—if you were in camp a day before the job started—you were welcome to eat without paying. But it obviously wasn’t going to be that way here. The moneymen on this job weren’t giving anything away.
Everything finally quieted down, and I went to sleep. Little more than an hour later, about an hour before dawn, I was awakened again.
Truckloads of men were coming into camp—the common working stiffs, guys who had been jungled up in town while they waited for the job to open. They climbed down from the big flatbeds, hurried bleary-eyed into the tents to claim bunks for themselves. Like the welders and other skilled workmen, they, too, were victims of the line’s penny-pinching. Called into camp at the last possible moment to save the cost of one meal.
They were hungry and worn-out, too tired to do anything but curse. About as capable of doing the hard day’s work that lay just ahead of them as hospital patients. So the penny-pinchers would find their stinginess a damned expensive business. And I wondered how anyone could have been so stupid. But so-called smart people often outsmart themselves, I’ve found.
To make a dollar, they make an enemy for life. To save a dollar, they lose a hundred. They have eyes only for what’s happening at their end of the rope, overlooking the guy at the other end.
The camp never got quiet again that night, but I went to sleep anyway. An hour passed—a little less than an hour, actually—and it was dawn. And I was brought wide awake by Wingy Warfield’s foghorn voice.
“YEEOWWW!” he yelled. “YOW, YOW, YOW, YEEOWWW! Grab your shirt and hit the dirt! Yow, yow, yow! Pile out, you boes, get on your toes, an’ blow your nose on your underclothes! YOW, YOW, YOW!”
Since most of the other men were already dressed, they were at the wash benches ahead of me, dabbling at their faces and hands and then running toward the long chow tent. They began to pile up at the entrance where Depew and his assistants were checking them off for time. There were sullenly restless grumbles at the delay, then yells and shouts and curses. And then they were storming into the tent from all directions, through the front and under the sideflaps. Knocking Depew and his helpers out of the way, bowling over everyone who tried to stop them.
There was a blast of gunfire. I looked up from washing. It was Bud Lassen. He was firing into the air, but not by very much. A little bit lower and he would have hit someone, and that, of course, would have been the end of him and probably the end of the camp. It would have started a riot that nothing could have stopped.
I stared at him, stunned, as he raised his gun to fire again, almost holding it level. Depew was only a few feet away, making no move at all to stop him. Actually grinning, a smugly mean little grin, as he watched. I looked around wildly for Higby, but I couldn’t see him. As I learned later, he was deliberately keeping out of sight, since Depew was running this end of the show and Higby wanted no part of it.
I let out a yell, a warning, but no one heard me. There was too much noise. I yelled again and then I vaulted over the wash bench and ran. Wondering why no one but me could see the terrible danger, why they kept on jamming into the tent when they should have been running for their lives.
Bud apparently saw or sensed my approach. He hesitated for a second, then swerved the gun toward me.
He wasn’t quite fast enough. His moment of hesitation had let me get in close, and I left my feet in a flying tackle, hitting him just above the knees.
He did an almost complete flipflop, came down hard on the ground, the gun flying from his hand. As he rolled and grabbed for it, I threw myself on top of him, and began to pound him in the face.
I was killing mad. Everything had piled up in me—the loss of sleep, the senseless cruelty of the line’s backers, the brutal murder of Fruit Jar. All the indignities and humiliations I had suffered or felt I had suffered during my weeks of waiting for work had piled up in me, and now crashed down on top of me. Something seemed to snap in my brain, and all I could see was a red haze. And I did my damnedest to beat Bud Lassen to death. I was screaming that I would kill him when Four Trey and some other guys dragged me off of him.
I tried to break away from them, to get at him again. Four Trey shook me, yelling for me to stop for God’s sake. But I wouldn’t; I guess I couldn’t. So he knocked me cold with a hard clip to the button.
He may have hit me a little harder than he intended. (And just maybe he didn’t either!) At any rate, it was one hell of a good punch. When I came to, Four Trey was carrying me over his shoulder, lugging me down the gentle slope away from camp. I mumbled foggily, and after a few more steps he paused in a kind of natural hedge of sage brush and set me gently upon my feet.
“Okay?” He frowned into my face. “All right now?”
“Sure,” I said, slurring the word. “What—where’sh ev’yone—?”
“Never mind!” he snapped. “Just stay here and keep out of trouble! Stay right here, get me?”
I nodded fuzzily, wondering why he was so sore. He turned and went back up the slope, and I rubbed the fog out of my eyes, at last coming into full consciousness.
<
br /> Above me, men were streaming out of the chow tent—coming out of it, not going in—and the strawbosses were sorting out their crews for the day’s work, then pointing them to the particular trucks they were to ride. In the distance, I heard the rocking chug-chug of the ditching machines. Still further away a chorus of jackhammers began to chatter. There were shouts, whistles, cries of “Over here, bo!” Then the first of the big flatbeds broke into a thunderous roar, wheeled out of camp with its jampacked load of men. One by one the others roared thunderously and followed it, a rocking jolting procession of men and machines heading for the start-o’-line.
The last of the racket died away, and the camp was almost completely silent.
Four Trey came into view, started down the slope with an armload of tools. I hurried to help him, but he pushed past me with a curt shake of his head, leaving me to trail after him empty-handed.
He dropped the tools in the growth of sage. Stood examining the terrain for a few moments. At last he turned back to me, made a sweeping gesture with one hand.
“All right,” he said, “this is our latrine. Fifty feet long, three wide and two deep. Grab yourself a mattock and get busy.”
I picked up a mattock—a pick with a wide blade. He went back up the slope to the supply tent, returning a few minutes later with a case of dynamite balanced on one shoulder and two steel rock drills on the other.
He dropped the drills on the tool pile, then carried the dyna some fifty feet farther before easing it down to the ground. Leaving it there, he went on another fifty feet or so to a bare place in the prairie, where he carefully took a small box of dynamite caps from his pocket and held it in both hands as he lowered it to the earth.
A dyna cap is black and not much bigger than a penny. It is the percussive force which sets off the dynamite charge and it explodes very easily, and one of them is enough to blow off a man’s hand.
Coming back to where I was, Four Trey picked up a mattock and went to work with me. Neither of us saying a word as we marked off a rough outline of the latrine, then began clearing it of sage and grass. Finally, after we had been at it for more than an hour, he rested on his mattock and slanted a wryly amused glance at me.
“Getting hungry, Tommy?” he asked.
“I can make out,” I said. “You don’t hear me kicking, do you?”
“You should have eaten early. Machine and powder men always eat early.”
He was right, of course; I should have left a call with the crumb boss. But it had been so long since I’d worked powder that I’d forgotten.
“All right,” I said. “It’s my own fault.”
“It’s not the only thing, Tommy. That brawl with Lassen was your fault, too.”
“All right,” I said again, but I was beginning to boil. “He was about to shoot into a crowd, and it was my fault for trying to stop him. I should have let him start a riot and have the camp torn down…?”
“It’s your fault for being stupid”—there was a sharp edge to his voice. “Sure, Depew is a complete stinker, but he’s not a sap. Did you actually think he’d allow Bud to commit murder? That he’d just stand and watch without saying a word of protest?” Four Trey shook his head disgustedly. “Lassen was firing blanks, for God’s sake! Anyone even half as bright as you are should have known that he was.”
He picked up his mattock and went back to work. I did the same, feeling like two cents’ worth of nothing. The mattocks went up and down, chug-clomp, clush-clush, and the sun began to pull sweat from me like a magnet. The silence between Four Trey and me dragged on and on, and then I brought the mattock blade down on a ten-inch centipede, cutting it in two. The two halves started to run away in different directions, and Four Trey pounded them into the ground.
“Ever get bitten by one of those?” he asked casually.
“No,” I said. “But one clamped onto my bare leg once. I knocked him off all right, but there were these two rows of little holes like pinpricks where he’d held on with his feet. They got infected and I had chills and fever for a week.”
“Is that a fact?” Four Trey shook his head interestedly. “I’ve been lucky, I guess. I got bit by a tarantula, but I was more scared than hurt. The biggest damned spider you ever saw, Tommy. As big around as a saucer and furred like a rabbit.”
“I’ll bet it jumped on you,” I said, because tarantulas are great on jumping. Four Trey said I’d bet right.
“I was lighting a cigarette from a coal-oil lamp, and the thing jumped at the light. They go for light, you know. It missed the lamp and landed right across my mouth and nose.”
“Holy cow!” I said. “That must have given you a jolt!”
“It did, Tommy,” he chuckled. “Oh, it did. I wouldn’t care to go into embarrassing details, but the hotel made me buy them a new mattress and bedclothes.”
We laughed about it, the laughter almost making me forget how hot and hungry I was. Four Trey scrubbed his palms against his pants and took another grip on his mattock.
“Now, getting back to Bud Lassen, Tommy.…”
“Yeah?” I said, a little nervously. “What, uh, how do I stand on that, Four Trey?”
“Well, Lassen shouldn’t have been firing into a crowd, blanks or no blanks. So Depew couldn’t have you run out of camp like he wanted to. Higby threatened to take the matter right to the top, and Depew had to back water.”
“I’m glad Higby took my part,” I said. “I just wonder why he ever hired Lassen in the first place.”
“He didn’t. Depew hired him over Higby’s head. But, Tommy…,” Four Trey gave me a sober look, “forget that stuff about Higby’s taking your part. Don’t lean on it, because he’ll never do it the second time. Not unless it suits his own purposes.”
“Well, sure,” I said. “But…”
“Lassen’s gone to Matacora to get himself patched up. If you’d really hurt him, instead of hurting his appearance, Higby would have had to let you go. Because he isn’t going to run any real risk of losing his job on your account or anyone’s. He can’t, Tommy. There’s just one big pipeline construction job in the world. That’s this one. There’s just one job open for a big-line construction superintendent, and Higby’s holding it. He either works here or he doesn’t work.”
“Well,” I hesitated. “There’s always another job coming up somewhere.”
“Not this kind. The only kind he knows. And there may never be another one.”
Four Trey paused in swinging the mattock and wiped the sweat from his face. There was a peculiar sadness in his eyes, something I could not understand at the time, although I eventually did.
“Yes, Tommy, I think we may be near the end of an era. The building of the last big pipeline. I think we may be the first white men to come this way, and after we’re gone…” He shook his head, resumed his grip on the mattock. “Watch yourself around Bud Lassen from now on, Tommy. Keep your guard up. Don’t do anything that he can twist into trouble.”
I nodded, with a twinge of uneasiness. I thought of her, of Carol, and I wanted to say something about her being here. But I knew what Four Trey’s reply would be—and, of course, he was wrong about her! So…so I kept my mouth shut.
We had the latrine and garbage areas cleared of brush by noon and most of the shot holes drilled. Since the pipeliners’ noon meal was sent out to the job, we ate almost by ourselves in the big chow tent. I put away a great deal more food than I should have, and when we went back out in the sun I had to make a sudden run for the bushes. I came back out of them weak and headachy and wanting nothing so much as to go to bed, and Four Trey pointed to the sixteen-pound sledge hammer.
I picked it up. He picked up a rock drill. He jobbed it around in the rock, marking out a shot hole, then held it upright and nodded to me. I swung the sledge, bringing it down on the head of the drill. Each time I hit it, Four Trey shook and twirled it, forcing out the ground-up rock. My sledge blows had to be timed with this, striking when he had the drill upright. And, of course, it was my j
ob to swing the sledge.
There was a strict protocol to this. The powder monkey handles the drill, and his assistant does the heavy work. Four Trey had done a lot of things during the morning that I should have done, but I couldn’t let him go on doing it. For that matter, he was obviously of no mind to, being very tired and hot himself.
We were working on the last hole when I swung the sledge out of time. Just a little, but that was enough. It grazed the head of the drill, zipped down the side where Four Trey was holding. He jerked his hands back with a howl, clutching them between his knees as he did a doubled-over dance of pain.
“Jeez-ass Kee-rist!” He glared furiously at me. “What in the name of the living God is the matter with you, Tommy?”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m sure as hell sorry, Four Trey.”
“Sorry! A hell of a lot of frigging good it does to be sorry! Just come out of your goddam daydreaming and you won’t have to be sorry!”
I began to get sulky and sore and I said it was all the fault of the bosses. They should have given us a jackhammer, and we could have drilled every hole we needed in an hour. Four Trey told me to stop talking like a damned fool.
“It takes power to run a jack, doesn’t it? How the hell they going to give us a generator when they need ’em on the line?”
He went on cursing and scolding me, and finally I lost my temper and started yelling back at him. “Just what the hell do you want me to do, anyway? I said I was sorry. I apologized all to hell over the place. Now what else do you want me to do?”
“I want you to snap out of it! I want you to stop acting like a Goddamned dreamy horse’s ass! I…” He caught himself, swallowed heavily. “Sorry, Tommy,” he said quietly. “It was my fault as much as yours.”
“Well, no, no, it was my fault,” I said. “It really was, Four Trey. But.…”
“Never mind,” he gave me a quick grin. “Never mind, Tommy, boy. It’s been a sour day, but sweet night’s a-comin’. So let’s shoot some powder.”