by Jim Thompson
He was serious; they all were. They were convinced I knew something they hadn’t foreseen. I hesitated, trying to think of a way to use the advantage, and Longie spoke again.
“How about it, Tommy, hmm? You tell us, an’ I’ll let you see Carol.”
“Sure you will,” I said. “Like you did the other night, huh?”
“I mean it, Tommy. We had her out ridin’ with us, an’ she ain’t more’n a hundred yards from here, right now.”
“Maybe,” I said, my pulse suddenly pounding. “Maybe I go out to see her, and that’s the last anyone sees of me.”
“So don’t go out,” Longie shrugged. “We bring her in here. You just give us the straight dope, and we’ll have her here in no more’n a minute!”
It was my turn to laugh. I said I didn’t doubt his word of course—oh, no!—but I was getting kind of dizzy from all the hot air.
“You bring her in now,” I said. “Just for a minute or two. I’ll want to see her longer after I talk, but I’m sure going to see her for a minute or two before I talk.”
They scowled, staring from one to the other. Bigger said that maybe Tommy-boy would talk without seein’ her at all, but Longie curtly gestured him to silence.
“All right, Tommy. You got a deal. An’ if you don’t keep your end of it…!”
He jerked his head, and Doss arose and moved up to the front flap of the tent. Bigger went out the rear, and he did not return. Or, at least, he did not come back inside. When the flap opened again, Carol came through it.
We had no chance to talk, with Longie standing by, and we couldn’t have said anything, anyway, in the time we had. She was hardly in my arms, barely long enough for a quick kiss and a hug, before Longie was pulling her away and shoving her back out through the rear flap. Then, he and I and Doss sat down again, and I began to talk.
“Well, in the first place you made a big mistake in coming here at all,” I said. “You don’t know pipelines. You couldn’t know what you were getting into until after you were in it.…”
I went on from there, building it up, repeating myself. Stalling while I dreamed up ways that the robbery would give them trouble. It wasn’t to help them, of course. I guess you know what could happen to them, for all I cared. But if I could convince them that there shouldn’t be a robbery, then they would have no need for Carol, and she and I.…
“Look, Tommy.…” Longie fidgeted impatiently. “We know all that. We know we can’t get the money after it hits the camp, so we got to grab it on the way here. What.…”
“You can’t get it on the way,” I said, and I pointed out exactly why. “It looks easy to do, but when you.…”
“Goddammit!” Longie snarled. “Knock off the stalling! We made a bargain, and by God you ain’t backin’ out on it!”
“Who’s trying to back out?” I said. “You asked me to tell you what I knew, and I’m telling you.”
“Now, Tommy, boy.…” He made his voice amiable again. “Let me pin it down a little for you. We’d need a hundred men to take the dough after it reached camp. But takin’ it on the way here; well, how many men do you need for that? A different story, ain’t it? You shoot one man, the guy that’s drivin’ the money wagon, an’ you’re home free. So here’s what I want to know, Tommy.” He leaned forward on the bunk. “Why did Four Trey tell us the job would take every man we had?”
“Four Trey? What’s he got to do with it?” I said.
“Ahh, come on, Tommy. You know his part in the picture. You’n him is best friends, an’ he just naturally had to spill to you after he took you away from my boys. Now why did he tell us the job would take all our men when a blind idjit could see that it won’t?”
“Well.…” I hesitated. “Maybe he didn’t tell you everything. You see one way of pulling the robbery, he had another one in mind.”
“Uh-hah!” Longie exclaimed. “Our way has some big holes in it, and not knowin’ pipelines, we can’t see ’em. But his.…Why you reckon he didn’t tell us what his was, Tommy, boy?”
“To have an ace in the hole, why else? He’s made it clear that you need all your men. What you don’t know is why, and he can keep you walking damned straight until he tells you.”
“Right, Tommy! Right! But he ain’t told us an’ he obviously ain’t goin’ to, so you just come clean like you promised.…”
“Look,” I said uneasily. “I just made a guess, and you’re taking it as fact. You’ve had plenty of chances to question Four Trey. Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because we all of a sudden run out of chances a couple of weeks before we figured to. There didn’t seem to be no big hurry about it, and there wasn’t no reason to think.…Yeah, Tommy, boy?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at,” I said. “You seem to think Four Trey is pulling a double cross on you. If he is, he’s got damned good reason to in my book. But that’s not my problem. Iron it out with him, for God’s sake! Go ask him your questions!”
“Ask him. Did you say to ask him, Tommy, boy?”
“What the hell do you think I said?”
Longie stared at me; exchanged a curious glance with Doss. “Now, Tommy, you can trust us. What have you got to lose, anyways?”
“Now, hear me!” I said. “Listen good! There’s not a damned bit of use in coaxing or threatening me, because there’s nothing I can tell you! I wouldn’t tell you anything anyway if I thought it would help you, but.…”
“But you don’t know,” Longie said softly. “You don’t know anything.”
“He sure don’t,” Doss said. “Tommy Boy don’t know from nothin’.”
Longie squinted at me, thoughtfully; on the point, it seemed, of saying something else. Then, his eyes flickered, and his mouth twisted in a sudden grin.
“Well, what d’ya know,” he drawled. “Right out in front of me, an’ I didn’t even see it.”
He laughed, slapped me on the thigh and stood up. He jerked his head at Doss, and without another word they went out the back flap of the tent. I looked after them uneasily, wondering if I hadn’t been a little out-of-line in talking to them about Four Trey. Offhand, I couldn’t think of anything I’d said that might hurt him, but.…
Higby came in and gave me a curt nod as I stood up. There was a dried streak of blood at one corner of his mouth, and the pocket of his shirt was hanging by a thread. He sagged against the tent pole for a moment, then brought himself erect again.
“Putting you on powder in the morning, Burwell. Think you can handle it?”
“I’ve been doing it,” I said.
“The head job, I mean. You’re taking Four Trey’s place.”
“Take his place!” I said. “What…?”
“Didn’t know, huh?” He gave me a wryly shrewd glance. “He dragged-up a couple of hours ago. Rode out with the supply truck.”
“B-but…why?” I said. “Why did he…?”
“His business, Burwell. It’s mine when they work; theirs when they quit.”
The racket of the drunks roared suddenly to a deafening crescendo. Higby winced, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment, then turned savagely toward the entrance flap. “Pipeliners!”—it was like a cuss word, and yet there was something more. A kind of pride, maybe; a kind of affection; a doubletough father discussing his likewise children. “The ornery bastards! I wish every mother’s son of ’em would die of the bleeding piles!”
He went out, gripping his pick handle like a ball bat.
I sagged down on my cot and buried my aching head in my hands. Baffled, wondering, the sickishness spreading from my stomach to my heart. I didn’t know what to make of things. All that I could think of was that everything was getting to be too damned much! It had been too damned much from the moment I set foot in camp; hell, even before that!
I’d been slugged, I’d been jailed, I’d been fired. I’d almost been blown up, and jackhammered loose from my guts, and baked with pipe-dope and mormon-boarded to death. Everything that could be done to a man ha
d been dished out to me from trying to bury me alive on down, and…and…!
And you showed ’em Tommy Burwell! You took it all and laughed at ’em and asked ’em where their men folks were. But enough is enough, by God! Enough is a plain big plenty! So if they try to hand you any more—just one more thing…!
“Heard about Four Trey, huh? Well, I could have warned you, Tommy.” Wingy Warfield sat down in front of me, nodding his head wisely. “I been around since they spudded wells with rag line and a spring-pole, an’ there ain’t nothin’ I couldn’t tell you about Four Trey Whitey ’r anyone else. Why.…”
I raised my head from my hands and looked at him.
“Wingy,” I said, “you better get long-gone from me.”
“I know, I know how you feel, Tommy. You thought he was your friend, an’ a fella’s got to stick up for his friends. But I could tell you he wasn’t no friend to no one! You know how I know? Well.…”
“Beat it,” I said. “Wingy, if you don’t get out of here…!”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Tommy. I’ll tell you God’s truth. All the time you thought he was your friend, he…he, uh.…”
His voice trailed away as I stood up and lifted the end of my cot. I began unscrewing the heavy leg, and he licked his lips nervously.
“Uh, Tommy, what was you studyin’ to do?”
“You got a bray like a jackass,” I said, “so I figure maybe you are one. An’ the only way you can get through to a mulejack is to hot his butt. You hot his butt real good with a club, an’ he stops brayin’ and starts listening. An’ I’m going to have a first-rate hotting-club in just about a second!”
That second was about an hour longer than he needed.
He whipped out of there so fast that the breeze almost blew the lantern out.
29
So I became head powder monkey of the big line, maybe the last of the big lines, from furthest Far West Texas to Port Arthur on the Gulf. We were just bending the third week of the job, and I was the head shooter. Blasting a trail through a world where no man had gone before.
In the beginning, I worked in behind the jackhammers or we worked together. Then, we hit so much rock that it was better to have it cracked up a little for the hammers. So I moved out in front, cutting trail with rock-drill and Dyna and that cute black hat she wore, leading the long way to the Gulf.
Sometimes when the fire was in the hole, and I was taking distance from the blast, I’d look back down the line behind me. And it seemed like as long as I looked I could never look enough. There was so much to see, so much that would never be seen again. Pasó por aquí—passed by here. And then no more.
Men and machines, stretching endlessly into the distance. Men and machines, only a thin almost invisible rivulet at first, a tiny thing lost in the horizon. It seemed to come up out of the ground like a puny spring, back there at the start; a near-nothingness amidst nothing. And then slowly it grew larger, the men and machines grew larger, and the sound of them grew greater; the rivulet became a river, and its thunderous surging shook the earth.
The long thin line of burnt-black men, their shovels glinting as they caught the sun….
The yellow-painted generators, peering down into the ditch, periodically breaking into fits of chugging and coughing as though startled by their surroundings.…
The mammoth ditchers rocking to and fro, grunting and quavering like fat old ladies.…
The jackhammers jouncing and jigging as they pounded the hard rock.…
The razzle-dazzle of sparks raining upward where welders’ torches pencilled fire against the pipe….
Throw out the lifeline,
Here comes the pipeline.
Somebody’s going to drag up!
A lot of ’em would drag up, I reckoned. Paid off with money or the ditch for a grave. Pasó por aquí—and then no more.
But it was something to see, something to remember. The men and the machines—dying, smashing up, wearing out—but always moving forward. Creeping through a wild and lonely world toward Port Arthur on the Gulf.
I kid you not when I tell you the powder still scared hell out of me. My grandparents, the only parents I’d ever known, had gone to heaven in little pieces, and a thing like that you never get over. But being scared doesn’t need to paralyze a man, unless he lets it. Being scared is about the best way I know of being healthy.
Dyna was a touchy girl, but she was absolutely predictable. You knew how she had to be treated, and as long as you treated her exactly that way you got along fine. But never slight her, or it’d be the last time you did. Never let your mind wander when she demanded your attention.
Dyna was a good girl, but jealous, and any two-timing would get you killed. So I was scared of her and glad that I was. We got along, Dyna and I did, despite me having the world’s dumbest helper.
He was always making talk instead of keeping his mind on his job. Sometimes, it looked like, he didn’t have any mind to keep on it. A hundred times I told him how to tamp his shots down, and he’d do it the same damned way every time. Like he was tickling rattlesnakes with a short feather. Then, when the shots got buried, he’d hang back and wait for me to dig ’em out.
Finally, he buried Dyna for the second time in a morning, and that was just one time too many. So while he was hanging back and sort of scuffling his feet and mumbling that he was sorry, I picked up a rock drill and motioned him over to me.
“You got a choice,” I said. “You can either dig this drill out of your tail or you can dig those shots out of the ground.”
He told me I could screw it; he’d set in on another job or drag-up. I told him he could go suck hind titty from a tumblebug, but not until he got those shots out. So we had a few more words, and I had to bust him a couple of times, but then he saw it my way.
I was sitting back out of range while he uncovered the shots when Higby drove up and asked me what the trouble was. I explained that there wasn’t any trouble; I was just trying to teach the guy a lesson. Higby said he guessed it was the only way.
“Want to get rid of him, Tommy? Say the word, and I’ll give you another helper.”
“Aw, naw, he’ll make it all right,” I said. “He’s not a bad kid as kids go these days.”
“Kid? Kids must have grown a lot older since the last time I looked.”
“That’s it exactly,” I said. “They get older but they don’t get any smarter. Why, I’ll tell you, Mr. Higby.…”
I broke off because he’d all of a sudden got a bad fit of coughing and had to turn his head. After a moment or two, he turned back around, his face red from coughing.
“Uh, yes, Tommy? You were saying?”
“I was saying I don’t know what’s going to become of the world,” I said. “But, by God, I fear for it, with this new generation of kids that’s coming along! Now, back in my day.…”
Higby started coughing again. He drove away coughing, waving me so-long over his shoulder instead of saying it.
I’d decided I liked Higby. I still didn’t know whether he was a crook or not, but I knew he was a man and I liked him.
Somehow, I found out that I didn’t know a lot about a lot of things I’d once known all about. Not so long ago, I’d felt that I had to know everything about everything and I was afraid to admit that I didn’t. But now it didn’t seem to matter. Being ignorant isn’t the same as being stupid, and I knew I could learn when it was time to.
There was all the difference in the world between being head powder monkey and an assistant. The difference of responsibility. Time and money and life itself was being bet on me, on the belief that I would blow clean ditch with no costly delays and without endangering lives. Living up to that responsibility kept my days so crowded that they seemed more like weeks than days, even though they rushed by. Living up to responsibility gave me confidence that I had never had before.
I knew that I was worthwhile. Knowing it, I no longer had to try to keep proving it.
Sometimes, riding into camp
at night, I would stand up on the jolting flatbed and look off across the prairie to where Carol was or where I thought she would be; occasionally, if I had gauged things correctly, getting a glimpse of her and her camp down in a little hollow as it had been before. I would stand there in the late afternoon sunlight, rocking and swaying with the truck, my hat brim cocked up front and back and my bare torso gleaming brown through the gray powder of rock dust, and over the rolling expanse of sage and short-grass, I would send her a message. Telling her to sit tight and take it easy. Telling her that I would work things out some way, and there wasn’t athing for her to worry about.
I knew that I would work them out, too. She was my responsibility, so I’d do it.
No, I didn’t know how. How was jumping the gun, and before I could get to it I had to know something else. At one time—only a short time before—I wouldn’t have bothered with it. But now, at last, I was thinking, looking at a problem from all sides before I jumped in and tried to solve it. Now I was being responsible. So I knew I had to know the why of things or I’d never live to get to the how.
There was no way that I could see that the Long gang could pull their robbery. Rightly or wrongly, however, Longie believed that there was a way. But if there was, he himself had practically admitted that it would require no more than one or two of his men.
It seemed to me that he should have been glad of this. The fewer men required the easier the job. But he wasn’t glad. He was alarmed. Why?
Longie seemed virtually convinced that Four Trey had deliberately misled him into bringing his entire gang for the robbery instead of the one or two that were needed. Why? What could Four Trey have gained by such a deception?
To move back a little bit, what had been Four Trey’s motive in acting as fingerman for the gang? Why had he wanted the robbery? Any cut he could get from it would be far less than he would make by working and gambling. So, why…why, when he never needed money…?
Well, yoú see? The answer to one question was the answer to several.
If Four Trey’s motive wasn’t money, as it obviously wasn’t, then it could only be one other thing. Revenge. That accounted for Longie’s suspicions, his alarm. Four Trey had gotten the whole gang here, because he meant to take revenge against them all. He had no faith in Texas justice, with the pardon-selling Parkers in power, so—