by Jim Thompson
9
We were shooting the latrine area. Part of the ground structure was soft and could be mucked without blasting. The rocky area took twenty-four shot holes, twelve on each side.
While Four Trey measured off fuse lengths and cut them with his shooter’s knife, I brought down the dyna case and opened it. Then, working opposite each other, we dropped a stick of dynamite into each hole. As a rule, they went down easily until they rested on the bottom of the hole. When they didn’t, we poked and tapped them down with tamping sticks.
I didn’t mind this part a bit, since it takes a twelve-pound blow to explode dynamite. But that was only part of the job. We had drilled two-shot holes, which meant that another stick went on top. And that second one took the little black cap.
Four Trey began capping the sticks on his side, clamping a fuse to the top of each cap. I waited a moment, hoping ashamedly that he would cap for me also. But he stuck strictly to his own side, dropping the fuse-sticks into the holes as fast as he capped them, then tamping them down firmly whenever they required it.
He whistled softly as he worked. Not once did he look at me, seemingly taking it for granted that I was holding up my end of the job. I waited a moment or two longer, clearing my throat nervously, and he still didn’t give me a look or a word. So, finally, I took a cap and a fuse and went to work.
I worked fast. A lot faster than I should have, since I wanted to get the job over with. Despite the stall I’d put up, I was finished ahead of Four Trey, and this did get a look from him—a long, thoughtful look. Then, lowering his eyes again, he began tying the unattached fuse ends together.
“Got ’em all tamped down good, Tommy?”
“Well, sure,” I said. “Hell, yes.”
“You know what could happen if you didn’t.”
“I got ’em in good,” I said. “Real good. I mean, hell, you can check ’em yourself if you want to.”
“Why, thank you, Tommy,” he drawled. “Thank you very much.”
He went down my line of shots, testing them with his tamping stick, occasionally bending over to examine one. I watched him, not quite sure which I was most afraid of—the blowup from the dyna or the one I’d get from him if he found something wrong. But he didn’t find anything, no thanks to me. I’d been lucky, and the shots were all in tight.
“Very good, Tommy.” He gave me a cocked brow look of approval. “I’ll make a shooter out of you, yet.”
He hunkered down, took the tied-together fuse ends in his hand. With the other hand, he struck a match to them, setting them all to burning evenly, so that the shots would all go off together. (If they didn’t, a live shot might be buried under the dirt and rock.)
The twenty-four fuses sputtered; began to burn black-red toward the shot holes. Four Trey stood up.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted, and I echoed his cry:
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!”
I ran, then, a good long way back into the sage. Four Trey didn’t run at all. He just walked, not dragging his feet, of course, but not working up a sweat either. And he stopped before he was back even half as far as I was.
He stood facing the shot, as the day seemed to blow up around us. Tons of rock and shale soared up into the air, some of it splashing out sidewise like water from a leaky sprinkler. Big chunks of it veered toward him, began to drop down around him. But he stayed where he was, weaving a little to let it go past, sometimes batting at it with his tamping stick.
At last, everything was quiet again. The blown-up sky had sealed itself, and the air was clear of dust. We walked back to the latrine site.
Four Trey walked around it, looking it over carefully. Examining the depth of the blasts. It was all okay apparently; no buried shots. So we picked up shovels and mucked out the loose earth and rock, banking it high in front and low in the back.
It didn’t take long. Not nearly as long as I would have liked. We finished with work time still left and with a job still left to do. Four Trey said we’d better get to hell at it.
It—the slop pit—was somewhat closer to camp. It had to be, since the cook and kitchen staff simply wouldn’t carry slops very far. Four Trey and I worked as before, one to each side. I put my shots down as before, by guess and by God, and hoping for the best.
Again I finished ahead of him, but this time he didn’t ask if I had the dyna down good. He didn’t check the shots to see that I had. He simply fired them.
I ran. I turned to find Four Trey running with me.
The blast went off.
It wasn’t like the first one. It didn’t sound like it, somehow. And it was ragged, to use a shooter’s term. A chunk of rock as big as a man’s head shot right toward the rear flap of the kitchen-tent. It struck against the tent pole, almost knocking it over. There were shouts and yells from inside, and the cook stuck his head out and shook his fist at us.
Finally, the dust settled and Four Trey crooked a finger at me. I followed him to the site of the slop pit, my head hanging like a beaten dog’s.
“Well, let’s see,” he said musingly, after he had finished his inspection. “Let’s just see. I figure you laid the second stick on two of your shots practically on top of the ground. You hardly tamped them down at all. So that means.…Can you tell me what it means, Tommy, boy?”
I nodded miserably, unable to meet his eyes. “Yeah, I guess I do, Four Trey. I guess so.”
“Guess, Tommy? You don’t guess with dyna—not more than once.”
“All right!” I said. “All right, damn you! It means I’ve got two sticks of dynamite buried under the rubble!”
“And, Tommy? And? I suppose you expect me to dig them out for you?”
“I don’t expect anything such of a damned thing!” I said. “I wouldn’t let you do it for all the tumblebugs in Texas! I’m going to do it myself, so you just get the hell back out of the way!”
He did, and I did. When I found the buried shots, I clamped caps and fuses on them and blew them. And I acted like he did when he shot powder. I stayed in fairly close, weaving my body to dodge the fill, even batting at a little clod of dirt with my hand when it sailed close to me.
That one little clod was all that did come close. With only two one-stick shots and both of them deep, I was in no danger at all. None from flying rock, that is. There’d been plenty of danger in digging out the shots.
Four Trey and I scooped the pit out and banked it. Then, our day’s work was done. The men hadn’t come in from the line yet, but their time began when they got there and ours started here.
We gathered up our tools and equipment and checked them in at the supply tent. At the wash benches we stripped and took baths, taking turns at pouring pails of water over each other. All this in silence. Neither of us said anything, even when Wingy Warfield started yelling about us wasting water.
Wingy wandered away, mumbling to himself. Four Trey and I finished washing and got dressed again. Our eyes met, and I tried to look stern and haughty; just why I don’t know. But somehow everything suddenly struck me ridiculous, and I almost broke into laughter.
Four Trey gave me a deadpan look, but his eyes were twinkling. “Something on your mind, Tommy?” he asked.
“N-no, no,” I said. “No, I j-just—ha, ha—I was just—ha, ha, ha.…”
And then I doubled up laughing, whooping and hollering and wheezing like nine kinds of a damned fool. I laughed and laughed, while Four Trey looked on, grinning and nodding as if I were doing exactly what I should have. And maybe I was, I guess, because it seemed to straighten out an awful lot of things inside me and to put me into perspective with myself. Without quite knowing that I was doing it, I could see Tommy Burwell as he was and accept him: his fears, his pretentiousness, his preposterous strutting and posing, his bad as well as his good. Without knowing that I was doing it, I met maturity and accepted it.
I washed my face again, washing away the tears of laughter. Four Trey gave me a full dipper from the drinking-water barrel, and we lighted up cigaret
tes. He crimped up his hat brim, fore and aft, and I did the same with mine. So we stood there smoking and talking quietly and sniffing the good smells of supper; man and boy—man and man—late in the afternoon of the Far West Texas day. The sage suddenly turned golden; the shortgrass, perpetually leaning with the wind, seemed abruptly to catch fire.
Out on the line, the chattering of the jackhammers came to a stop, and the ditcher gasped a final chug-whush and was silent. One by one, the firm throbbing of the generators dwindled into sobs, growing weaker with lengthening distance between them until they were gone entirely. For a brief space, then, there was nothing, no sound at all—an immeasurable hiatus of silence, a tiny void in a universe of noise. Then there was the hail of a man’s voice, reedily thin with distance but coming clear in the clean air. “Eeeyahoo!” Then another hail and another, hundreds of them doubtless, smothering and mingling with the racket of muck sticks dropped and flung aside. And then the big flatbeds began their barking roar, hogging out all other sound but their own, thundering and fuming and groaning.
The first day’s work was over. The men were coming in from the line.
10
The welders and machine men rode the first truck. This was protocol; the best men got the best, were entitled to first place, and I never heard anyone complain about it. The succeeding trucks carried the common working stiffs, seated around the outside edges of the flatbeds or squeezed squatting in the inside. The truck swampers stood on the running boards, while the strawbosses rode with the truck drivers. This, too, was accepted protocol; a strawboss outranked a swamper and was entitled to preempt him.
The machine men, the welders and strawbosses were hungry and exhausted—who wasn’t?—but there was something in their expressions, the way they carried themselves, which drew a sharp line between them and the working stiffs. Quite likely, they were even more tired than the working stiffs, since their jobs demanded more of them and it was impossible for them to dog it as a muck-stick artist could. But still they didn’t look as tired; they didn’t show it as much. They had come from somewhere, not nowhere, and they were going somewhere, not nowhere. They had something to live for, in other words, something to look back on. And having it put starch in their spines; it gave them a look that you could note without being made uneasy, without wondering uneasily whether you looked the same way and hoping to God that you never did.
As for the working stiffs.…
They climbed down from the flatbeds, and every bit of their weariness and hunger was apparent; this day’s and all the bitter days before this. All the emptiness of all those days and all the days that lay ahead of them. And the bad part about it was that they didn’t seem to mind. They had got through a day. Getting through a day, getting through it any way they could, was the sum total of their lives. Worn out as they were, they did a lot of joking and laughing. Why not anyway? They laughed at all the things they should not have laughed about. At their general worthlessness, the filthiness of their clothes and bodies—clinging with mud made of mingled dust and sweat.
Their ancient garments had given way under the strain of their first day’s work. Pants showed great rips, with dirty flesh peeking through. Shirts had split into shreds, and many had been discarded, the men going naked from the waist up. Head kerchiefs instead of hats were common, dirty bandannas tied around the head pirate-style.
Most of the men made a stab at washing, but it was something they didn’t have to do so they didn’t do much of a job of it. The general effect was of smearing the dirt around instead of getting rid of it.
I wondered how I could have been around these men for weeks while waiting for the job to open without realizing how terrible they truly were. How I could have put up with them for even a day. But I suppose it was because I had been out of work so long, because I had lacked better men to compare them with.
Four Trey gave me a little nudge, pointed to the entrance flap of the chow tent, where the welders and other skilled workmen were already gathering.
“We better get up there, Tommy.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we sure as heck had.” And we did.
The eating-early privilege didn’t apply at night. Actually it wasn’t a privilege, being more a means of speeding up the work. At night, it was more convenient for everyone to eat at once—more convenient for the pipeline, that is—so everyone did.
There was a mob behind us by the time supper was served. It swept us forward, carrying us almost all the way back to the end of the tent before the pressure eased off and we were able to sit down.
Pipelines always fed good and this was no exception. The keynote was plenty—plenty of variety and plenty of it. There were at least two kinds of everything, all served family style; two kinds of meat, potatoes and beans, and three of green vegetables. There was pie, cake, cookies and doughnuts. There were pitchers of tea, coffee and milk. We drank from metal pint bowls, instead of cups, and the “plates” were big metal trays.
All through the meal, flunkies were running back and forth from the kitchen, carrying in food and carrying out empty dishes. At the end of the meal, boxes of apples and oranges were set at the entrance to the tent, and everyone was allowed to take one of each.
Four Trey and I went out together, helping ourselves to fruit. I remarked that the chow was up to standard, so maybe the line’s backers wouldn’t turn out to be so chinchy after all. Four Trey shrugged.
“They have to feel good. The men would be dragging-up right and left if they didn’t.”
“A lot of ’em will drag-up, anyway,” I said. “Some will quit in the morning, as soon as they’ve scoffed, and there’ll probably be fifty by the end of the week. I wonder why that is, Four Trey?”
“Do you?” he said.
“Well, yeah, Here they’ve finally made a job, and they need dough so bad it hurts. But they blow-up or drag-up over a bad cup of coffee or for no damned reason at all.”
“Mmm, strange isn’t it? Of course,” Four Trey drawled, “I’ve never done anything like that myself, have you, Tommy? We’re known far and wide as the old reliables of the oil fields.”
I laughed sheepishly. “Well, all right,” I said. “But it’s sure going to be different this time.”
“It can be, Tommy,” he said softly. “It can be. We’re just south of heaven, remember, and if you reach hard enough and high enough you’re going to make it.”
“I’m going to,” I said. “You just watch and see. I’m going to stay on the job and keep out of trouble and I’ll deal blackjack for you and.…”
He yawned openly, cutting me off; it was a way of telling me something. That he liked me, but that was it. That what Tommy Burwell did was strictly Tommy Burwell’s business, and what Four Trey Whiteside did was his, and he wanted to keep it that way.
I wasn’t offended, but maybe I was just a little hurt. He’d drawn back from me on other occasions, when he’d felt himself drawn too close. But I’d felt that a change had taken place today, that a bond had somehow sprung up between us, and so I was maybe a little hurt by his rebuff.
“Well…,” I yawned even wider than he had. “Guess I’ll go sack up. Take it easy, Four Trey.”
“See you in the morning,” he nodded.
I started for my tent, crimping my hat brim front and back before he could do it and walking like I was in one heck of a hurry to get to bed.
“Tommy.…”
“Yeah?” I whirled back around. “Yeah, Four Trey?”
“Tommy.…” He bit his lip, took an uncertain step or two toward me. “I just wanted to tell you that…that.…Nothing,” he said curtly. “I mean, be sure and leave a call with the crumb boss. We don’t want another screw-up in the morning.”
“Got you,” I said. And then I went on to my tent and he went to his.
The old guy I’d talked to the night before, the crumb boss, was sitting on my bunk to hold it for me. I thanked him and gave him my morning call, then sat down and began to undress. All the other bunks had guys
sitting or lying on them, smoking or sleeping or getting ready to sleep. Hardly anyone talked with anyone else. If they were awake, they lay with their eyes open, staring vacantly up at the canvas roof, or else they sat on the edge of their sack, staring vacantly down at the dirt floor. Seeing nothing, I guess. Seeing everything.
Up near the front of the tent, a guy was twanging on a juice-harp, playing the same thing over and over, the opening bars of Home, Sweet Home. He must have played it umpteen times, and I was about to yell at him, but another guy beat me to it.
“Knock that off, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Then a dozen other guys were yelling, threatening to make him eat the juice-harp if he played it one more time. So he knocked it off, getting under the covers fast, and everyone else sacked up, too. The crumb boss dimmed the lantern hung from the ridge pole. Ten minutes later he blew it out. I waited a while longer, measuring the time by counting to a hundred by fives. Then, when everyone seemed asleep and darkness had settled in, I dressed and went out the back flap of the tent.
Clouds hung over the moon, and there was hardly any light at all. It was hard walking that way, dangerous walking in view of all the snakes and poisonous pests in the area. But I got to where she was with nothing worse than a few snags from the sage. I got to where her homemade housecar was parked, down in a little dip in the prairie.
She was sitting on a packing box outside the car. Her back was to me, and inside a protective rim of rocks she had a low fire going. For light rather than heat, I guess, since the night was only pleasantly cool.
I whistled softly, so as not to startle her. She didn’t seem to hear me, and I was about to whistle again when I heard the soft sound of her weeping. It sounded so lonely, so lost and frightened that tears came into my own eyes, and I had to gulp down a lump in my throat. Then I ran down the slope calling to her, holding out my arms. And I must have scared her out of her wits for a moment, but then she recognized my voice and came running to me like a child.