3stalwarts

by Unknown

  “You ain’t told Jerry yet,” said Dorothy. “Isn’t it time you should?”

  Mary seemed preoccupied as she replaced the small wheel in the corner.

  “There’s no doubt to you now, is there?”

  “No,” said Mary.

  “He should know, I think, before he goes on making plans.”

  Mary said, “I’ll tell him soon.”

  She went to bed in the still warmth of the loft. She left her candle burning on the stool. Her heart was tremulous tonight. She could trace Jerry’s movement entering the house; his boots crunching through the fight, frosty snow, the opening of the door, its closing causing a flicker in the candle flame, his low voice and Dorothy’s as they banked the fire together, and their soft good-nights. He came quietly upstairs.

  She watched his head come through the opening, the candle pooling in his eyes. Beyond, on the windowpanes, frost was drawing fern leaves.

  “It’s getting cold,” he whispered.

  She watched him take his stand beside the chair and undress swiftly. He always stripped as if it were a business to do, like work, quickly and thoroughly. He tossed the clean nightshirt over his head, and stood a mo-ment, luxuriating.

  In the past months his dark, pointed face had gained a confidence— it had changed mightily from that of the self-conscious boy who bought her papers, even the eager boy who wedded her. She wondered if her own change showed to him.

  He was whispering, “It smells sweet here. There isn’t any smell of men. It’s funny how men living together smell different from a man that lives with a woman. A queer thing.”

  His eyes brightened suddenly; and in the instant he stooped to blow the candle out.

  Mary always felt the birth of darkness in the loft in a way that she had never felt it before. She knew that wherever time might take her with her husband, darkness would be a different thing. Here it was warm with the fire and sweet with herbs; it came upon her like a downy quilt —comforting, protective, rich in quiet. Here it was full of happiness, where her being had first been opened to her. She had awakened in this darkness from a sleep that all her life had lain like a mist upon her senses.

  Jerry was a part of it. The stealth of his opening the blankets; the stir of feathers under her back; the rush of air past her face bearing her own scent; his movement stretching out beside her and searching for the channel underneath her shoulders; and the slow settling down of blankets, like soft hands, on her breast, her knees, her thighs, her ankles, round her neck, until she was completely wrapped and his face came into the hollow on her shoulder.

  Outside, the frost was settling on the shingle roof; in the marsh the powdery afternoon snow was fluffed with crystals and the feet of moving shrews made ladder tracks. The new moon was going down, and from it, on their velvet cloth, the facets of the stars caught pricks of light. The strange green northern lights would breathe.

  Jerry said, “Do you like Hunter?”

  She heard her body saying, “Yes. He’s got an honest face.” But her heart was dwelling deep inside of her, and her real hearing was turned inward.

  “It would be better, beginning in a new town, Mary. A man like me would go much farther, I should think.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “It seems more likely.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Mary, you seem a more unspoken girl all the more I see you. Do you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Jerry.”

  “Sometimes, lately, it seems there’s something on your mind. Is there something?”

  “Something, Jerry?”

  Now the stillness.

  “What is it, Mary?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you, soon.”

  “You aren’t unhappy?”

  “No.”

  She wondered why he couldn’t see, or feel? There must be difference for a hand to trace, she felt so changed.

  He leaned on his elbow to kiss her. His face lingered. She felt his breath steal down her face and throat and rest upon her breast.

  “Sometimes when I kiss you, Mary, your mouth tastes of milk. That’s a queer thing, isn’t it?”

  He stayed half raised, thinking this queer thought. And Mary felt herself sink down in humbleness, and then her body surged and filled and her hands and her breasts and her legs were charged with life. She held her breath.

  But he was saying, “Lewis is setting the cap tier tomorrow. One side’s done and I have got the gates built. Caleb’s bringing up the casted waste-gates in the morning.”

  She felt his breathing close against her side.

  He tried to laugh.

  “I’ve got this thing in my head, I guess. I can’t get it out. If I couldn’t come down here to you, every week, I don’t know what would come of me.”

  She said nothing.

  “You remind me of different things. Of late, I keep remembering the barley field where we got wedded. Do you mind, he was ploughing it for barley? And that little boy fetching us trout? Some way, the minister looked troubled to me.”

  His voice was whispering.

  “When I go back in the morning the work seems smaller to me. Lifting is an easy thing. And the westward end don’t seem so great a way to reach.”

  His hands were trembling. Her outside self became aware of his quest and she knew that she was empowered to fulfill it. But her being was still inward. This was the darkness; and she could not bear to lift it.

  The rattle of wheels woke the farmhouse early the next morning. Jerry slid out of bed. The loft had the chill night smell of a sleeping house. Beyond the sash, Mary saw a faint greyness beginning in the east.

  Jerry stood still, listening to the sharp slap of the horse’s hoofs.

  “That’s Bourbon,” he said suddenly. “Caleb’s come with the castings.”

  He reached for his clothes.

  “You stay abed, Mary. He’ll want to get right out to the lock. Now he’s got up here at last, he’ll be impatient to get out there. I could have used them castings six days back.”

  As he threw his shirt over his head, the wagon rattled into the yard and stopped. There was a complete silence. Then they heard the wheels squeaking slightly as the wagon jerked to the deep breathing of the horse.

  “He’s wondering if I’m here,” said Jerry.

  Downstairs Dorothy was getting up. At the first sound of her boots across the puncheons a mighty knocking shook the door. Dorothy crossed to the window. Laughter shook her voice.

  “Just a minute, Mr. Hammil, while I decent myself a little. Robert’s out.”

  “Is Jerry Fowler inside there?” bawled the contractor’s voice.

  “Yes. He’s getting up.”

  “Tell him to hurry up. Slug-a-bedding this way, and a whole lock to be completed! It’s terrible cold out here, Mrs. Melville. Can’t you let me in? I won’t look nowhere.”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Hammil. I’ll just hike on a petticoat.” She opened the door. “There, come in. You do look cold. I’ll boil you up some tea.”

  “Can’t wait, thank you.” He blew out a tremendous breath. “That cold has got me breathing like a bellows, Mrs. Melville. Just point me at your fire and I’ll have it blazing up in no time.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Jerry up?”

  “Yes. I hear him moving.”

  Caleb sat down before the hearth and raked open the bedded coals. Mrs. Melville dropped a stick upon them.

  “By daggit! When a man like me gets cold there’s a lot of him to feel it.”

  Jerry came back to the bed.

  “I’m going. He’s left Bourbon unblanketed out there. Why don’t you come out to the lock this afternoon if it grows warmer? You’ve not seen it now in quite some time.”

  “I will, maybe.”

  She was glad to be left. She felt miserable again this morning. The cold grey dawns seemed always clutching at her. She lay still, heard Caleb’s greeting, boisterous, full of simulate
d anger, the door closing in the face of Dorothy’s protests, Caleb saying, in what he took to be a whisper, “Well, if I was you, and you was me, you’d have to wait a danged sight longer, boy.”

  Inside Dorothy chuckled.

  “The old he-sheep! He considers that he’s lusty.”

  The wagon sped away.

  When she went down a little later, Mary met Hunter coming from the barn.

  His hands and face were ruddy from the icy washing, his leather clothes smelled strong of hay.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Fowler.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Hunter. It’s a cold morning.”

  “It’s snappy.”

  She saw his knowing eyes upon her face drop swiftly. In spite of her sickness she colored. He looked away, and let her go in peace; but when she came into the kitchen again, his eyes greeted her with half a smile.

  He did not talk much, but, on leaving, his thanks touched the two women. They watched him striding off beside his chunky horses, his boot heels raising clods from the road. The bells twinkled in the sunlight and the notes were clear.

  Dorothy said, “He noticed you this morning. He asked me. I told him.”

  “Oh,” said Mary.

  “Shucks-a-daisy, dearie. You couldn’t hide nothing in that line from that man. He’d notice things a boy like Jerry’d miss. He must have had his own high times.”

  “He doesn’t look like that.”

  “Why should he? He’s an honest man, and he’s handsome. There’s plenty of girls would visit with him by a fence, I reckon. Withouten even asking. Why shouldn’t he?”

  Mary said nothing; and she and Dorothy began their morning tasks.

  The sun shone bright all morning; all the swamp was glittering white. A few pinched clouds were hanging in the piercing blue of the sky. After noon, Mary said that she was going to walk out to the lock.

  “Do you feel equal to it, dearie?”

  Dorothy’s homely face was bent solicitously.

  “It’s cold, you know. And I could go out with you, if you’re bound to do it.”

  Mary laughed.

  “I’m bound. And I feel fine now.”

  “Dress warm.”

  Dorothy superintended dressing. She stuffed a pair of Melville’s boots with swamp grass dried before the fire and pulled on over Mary’s feet an extra pair of woolen socks. She had forced her to dress in one of Jerry’s heaviest red suits of underwear, both of them giggling at the figure Mary made.

  “Good land!” cried Dorothy. “You’re image to a boy! You’ve got no business getting big. It’s scarcely decent.”

  Mary laughed.

  “I expect it will look queer.”

  But now she was bundled up from the top of her head to her small toes nesting in the grass in Melville’s boots. She had a sheepskin coat over all and a heavy flannel skirt of dark red-brown, and a deep-blue woolen shawl upon her head, pinned close beneath her chin.

  Her face was pink. The shadows under her eyes brought out their depth of grey.

  “She’s going to tell Jerry,” Dorothy said to herself. “It’s troubling her.”

  She watched Mary along the road to the beginning of the corduroy. The stuffed boots made her shuffle and the erect figure moved very slowly. Her short shadow, flickering along the ruts, was vivid blue.

  Mary took her time. She thought that if she arrived when they were nearly finished at the lock, Jerry would let her wait and come back with her.

  The sun had peeled the snow from long stretches of the corduroy, leaving the scarred logs bare. Where the snow lingered, she could make out Bourbon’s tracks, blurred by the slight noon thawing. She looked about her as she walked. The cold lacked fierceness and the air was clean to breathe. From time to time she stopped to view her shadow.

  In half an hour she came into view of the shanty. A thin smoke from the stovepipe vanished just above the roof, as if in the cold air it could no longer live. A few of the men had been living on there of late, and yet the shanty wore a look of utter desolation. Then she saw that no more dish towels hung on the wash-line, and that the kitchen window had been boarded over. That meant one thing: tonight the rest of the men were going to move on down to Number Two, and Jerry would come home with her.

  Two week-day nights together, she would have him. Suddenly she felt the cold. She shivered, and for an instant she felt ill. Then she turned to the lock. She could see it now; there were two walls of grey stone rising side by side. The mason was working at one end of the near wall. Caleb knelt upon the other shouting down directions. She heard Jerry’s voice answering. Then the odd little man, whose name was Cosmo Turbe, bawled loudly for helpers. In a moment half a dozen men were lifting up a great square frame of planks. They had a pulley on a tripod to let it slowly down, and Cosmo’s sleepy helper was gripping the rope in monstrous red chapped hands. Their figures were all tense, their voices brittle with excitement.

  Mary stayed where she was to watch. Left and right she saw a line cut through the marsh grass, alders rooted up and dragged aside— a broad av-enue, like the commencement work up on a turnpike. But the red marking stakes stood just where they had been. As far as she could see, the ground lay open, torn and uneven, black with frost, ready for the bite of shovels. It was like a wound from a gigantic ragged knife, and the marsh was white and deathly. But the men’s voices, their red sweaty faces, dripped with life… .

  “There,” said Lewis, cutting the mortar cannily along the outside corner of the capstone. “You can dog that gate in now.”

  His pointed trowel tinkled where he dropped it. He fished in his pockets for tobacco and slowly stuffed a pipeful.

  “That mortar’s all set solid. She’ll hold frost. I’d like to have the water cement, but even so them walls will not fall down like Jericho’s.”

  Jerry, walking the board floor of the pit, moved to the southwest corner. On either side the light-grey walls of stone rose twice his height. The edges fitted true, each stone had settled neatly; a monument could be no smoother.

  One of the men shouted.

  “Here comes Roberts! There’s a feller with him.”

  “Never mind them,” said Caleb. “Put that gate in. Heave her up.” He signaled with one hand. “Way up. Easy now. A little more.” The gate shut out the sunlight over Jerry’s head. The end beams rubbed off splinters on the stone. There was a squeak of wood on stone. Then the lower edge tilted down. He put up his hands to guide it. “Lower, easy,” Caleb cried. The iron socket in the base of the hingepost slowly swung to meet the upright quoin point. Suddenly it clanged and the rope in Piute’s red hands went slack.

  Hammil was on the gate in one squat spring.

  “Hold her!” he roared. “I’ve got to get that anchor strap screwed on.”

  He passed a three-inch iron strap over the top of the hingepost and rammed the threaded ends through the sockets in the tie-straps grouted into the stone wall. His fat fingers twirled the heavy nuts.

  “Where in hell’s the wrench?”

  Cosmo came running with it. Caleb heaved the long handle till the nuts bit solid.

  “Ease off.”

  Piute sighed and let the rope go. The timbers groaned as the gate settled.

  Jerry stood for a moment in the pit. All four gates were open, and he looked eastward. The mounting courses of stone gave meaning to the floor he had laid in so many days ago. They showed the step down at the head that made the lock’s descent, their wings stretched wide as if they waited for the water. He turned to west. Again there were wings, pointing the full width of the canal, showing the track of the grubbers.

  It was his work that he had done with his own hands. Sunk in the sprawling marshland, its exactitude was beautiful. He stood quite still, till Caleb cried, “Climb out, Jerry! Here’s the Chief Engineer.”

  Jerry climbed the ladder, slowly. Roberts greeted him. Standing beside

  Roberts was an elderly man, with a wise, strong face. He was shaking Caleb’s hand, but his eyes were staring into t
he lock-well. Jerry saw them noting everything.

  “Roberts tells me it’s solid work, Hammil. He ought to know. But I can see from here the work is right. It’s fine, square workmanship.”

  Caleb beamed.

  “It’s honest, every inch. I can vouch for it. I know the man that built it under me is right.”

  He gestured.

  Mr. Wright looked up at Jerry, smiled, held out his hand.

  “It’s good work, Fowler. Roberts has told me about you.” He turned back to Caleb. “The commissioners aren’t quite so eager to come inspecting at this time of year. But I’m glad I came. We’ve got three completed sections finished west of Rome, but this is the first stone work. The whole canal will rest on the stone and timber work.”

  Caleb swelled with pride as Mr. Wright added, “I hope it all will look as well as this does.”

  A little later, the men turned away. Caleb was beaming.

  “Let’s try the gates!”

  Cosmo Turbe yelled and ran across the beams, his nailed heels leaving marks at every step. They manned the gates together, eight men, six wondering how they worked while Caleb explained to them.

  “She’s at high level for a boat from Rome.” His stout voice bellowed. “There comes the mules. Stand back, you dumb bezabor. Do you want to get kicked by a hinny mule?” A tall man ducked aside, so vivid was the sudden picture. Piute guffawed, and clapped his hand upon his mouth. “Whoa!” shouted Hammil, red cheeks all a-sweat. “Easy on that boat there. Do you want to knock her bow in? Here she comes. Right in. Sixty feet of her, loaded to draw three feet with Devereux whiskey bound for O-hio. Now we close the upper gates. You work that one, Cosmo. The water’s at high level. Open up the sluice-leaves in the lower.” They ran in two groups down along the lock walls. Only the mason continued sitting on his stone. He had laid up walls that wouldn’t come down like Jericho’s. Hammil cranked the sluice-leaf open on his side. “The water’s running out. You can hear the overflow from east commence upon the tumble bay. The boat’s going down. See her! She’s eight foot, ten foot, lower than she was. There she is at bottom level. Push round that beam, there, Cosmo!” The lower gates swung open. “Git, you hinny! Git, you mules! There she’s easing out. See her. She’s bound for Buffalo. Maybe the boater passes me a quart drawed from a keg in fair exchange for water.”