3stalwarts

by Unknown

  The others were mostly strange to Jerry. Another gang, he supposed, to try their luck with fever. Or else they had come from the marsh, it being Saturday. As he drew closer he supposed they had come from the marshes. Their eyes were angry, their faces tightly drawn. Then he saw that one of the two men between whom Linas Barley stood was Cosmo Turbe. His squat figure was quite still. He looked like a man ready to sleep. Only his eyes were staring at the other.

  “What’s doing?” Jerry asked.

  “That timber-beast squashed Henry,” said Piute.

  “What for?”

  “He beat his own bug in a race.”

  Cosmo had a cockroach that he used to race against all comers; or if there was no racing competition, the bug was used to play roulette with. Cosmo called it Henry.

  Piute took Jerry’s arm.

  “You can see him if you are a-mind to, in the bar.”

  Jerry stared at the other man. He stood close to six feet. In front of him, Cosmo was a little boy. The man’s eyes glittered. He had put his week’s pay in a lump on his own bug; he had no drinking money left.

  “Stand back, Mr. Fowler,” Linas Barley said. He addressed the two men. “It’s rough-and-tumble to a finish, open all. I introduce you Cosmo Turbe, the runtish man, and Noble Eddy out of Pompey.”

  “Wait,” said Jerry.

  Piute whispered, “Leave him be. Cosmo is an active man.”

  Hung from the doorpost a lantern threw a gleam out against the sifting rain. The eaves were dripping slow big drops. The faces of the two men stood out like masks. And as Barley stepped back, and said confidentially to Jerry, “I ain’t seen a rough-and-tumble wrassel in nine years,” Jerry saw Cosmo’s flat mouth grin and his long tongue lip his mouth.

  The other men were breathing hoarsely. Marsh digging roughened a man’s breath.

  Then all at once the big man moved; and Cosmo ducked; and the porch shook under their feet. They slid in and out so quickly that in the dim light Jerry’s eyes were dazed. He heard a blur of voices, “A French lip… . Gouge him… . There’s a Buffalo-roll, by God … the little feller’s neat… . Four shillings to a fip on Noble … a butt … I’ll cover them four shilling.” The last was Piute’s voice, confident, ready to laugh. Jerry could see no mark on either man; but their boots stamped; the porch shook as one fell to dodge a groin kick… . Then, as quickly as it had begun, the thing was over.

  Cosmo had missed a thrust at Noble’s nose, to catch the nostrils with hooked fingers. He rolled over the other’s upthrust knee, and kept on rolling over the boards. Noble pounced with a hoarse roar. But as he would have landed, Cosmo seemed to rise on his stiff elbows, head and shoulders on the floor, and his heels flashed their nails in the lantern, and Noble Eddy crumpled like a rotten stick. He lay still on his face, his hands under it, making no sound. Cosmo got up and turned him over.

  Blood was oozing through Noble’s fingers, but Cosmo took his hand away. One boot had caught the mouth, opening the lips raggedly. In the misplaced bloody hole, Jerry saw a yellowish tooth. The other heel had sunk into the cheek. Cosmo touched the marking with his fingers. A star with a jagged line. He shrugged his shoulders.

  Jerry felt sick. He went inside. He heard Piute collecting his four shillings. “Champion of the trace. An active man. His name is Cosmo Turbe.”

  Jerry ordered a glass of Devereux whiskey. As he sat down at table with it the men came trooping in. They were silent, sullen-eyed, and they did not look at Cosmo.

  On the table was a squashed brown cockroach.

  Irondequot .

  Bates was a matter-of-fact sort of man.

  “Fowler, Mr. Bouck.”

  The commissioner shook hands with Jerry.

  They sat down together on the steps of Linas Barley’s porch. Bates, the assistant engineer, opened the conversation.

  “Mr. Bouck and I’ve been out along the line to Rochester. Most of the way the digging will look easy when we get this marsh done.”

  Mr. Bouck nodded.

  “It looks pretty hopeless. If there was some way to drain them.”

  “Well, it’s Dancer Borden’s worry.”

  “He doesn’t care. He’s got money to spend, as much as he wants. It’s a game to him.”

  “That’s it,” said Bates. “He takes it as a sporting proposition, and he’ll finish it.”

  “Well, maybe. But here it is in late September. Back at Rome they’ll soon let Mohawk water into the Utica section. Next spring boats will be moving out to Montezuma. But here we haven’t a thing to show yet. Digging all the way to Erie won’t help things if we can’t dig out across that marsh. We’ve got the stones laid for the trunk, but if we can’t empty out the muck and puddle it with clay, next high water will wash in what little we have dug. It did before.”

  “Leave it to Borden,” Bates said. “What we wanted, Fowler, is to see you about Irondequot. Do you know that place?”

  “No.”

  “Out there Irondequot Brook cuts through the Rochester level. There’s high land on each side. We can’t lock down to the creek because there isn’t water to make another high level between there and here. We’ve got to open a straight flow for Erie water to these marshes. See it?”

  Jerry nodded.

  “How deep is the creek under level?”

  “Eighty feet,” said Mr. Bouck.

  “There’s just one place to get across,” said Bates. “Geddes found it on his first survey in 1809. The creek loops a small round hill there, then there’s another cut it must have dug in Indian times, but dry now. That’s easy to fill. We’ve got to trunk across the top of that round hill, and luckily its top is wide enough. But the creek crossing is another pullet. What do you think? Could you make an aqueduct of wood that high?”

  “How long?”

  “Five hundred feet.”

  “There’s too much weight of water,” Jerry said.

  “Geddes thought so,” said Mr. Bouck. “I think so myself and so does Bates. But back in Albany, the Tammany delegates are getting nervous of the money we’ve been spending. Every time a thing crops up they tell us to try it in wood.”

  “If we make an earth embankment,” Bates said, “we’ll need a culvert for the creek. What we want to know is whether you’ll be free next spring.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Will you hire on to the state to build that culvert floor? We don’t dare contract it out. It’s too ticklish. One waving pile would start the whole embankment washing.”

  “What does the state pay?”

  “What do you get from Dancer Borden?”

  “A hundred shillings flat a week.”

  “Will you take that for this job?”

  “Yes.”

  Wild Irish

  Edwin Brown had cooked the breakfast for the new gang. In the main room he heard them stirring in their bunks. O’Mory, the boss, with his thick black beard stuffed inside his shirt to drink his tea, was asking for more bacon. Crazy Tom was scuttling in and out. But Edwin Brown was not worrying. This morning marked an era.

  It seemed to him that, like the wandering Jew, his life moved under a curse. He had tried every lottery available in these two years, but never yet had he found the lucky number. And here he was stuck down at his old job, in a marsh ten times as big as any he had worked in yet. He hated the cold, he hated the getting up on a morning to cook for heavy-smelling men. And he had come into a fever-ridden shanty, just in time to see a weary gang go out and these new brown horrible outlandish men come in with their jabber of strange talk. Gaelic, the big boss said it was; himself was New York Irish.

  But this morning things looked better to Edwin Brown. For in the interval between the old gang’s going out and the coming in of these queer creatures with their lathelike arms and legs he had provided himself with a winter comfort. From the timber leavings of the marsh lock he had been given by Mr. Fowler, he had constructed himself a privy. He had laid it up himself. Three by five, and six feet high, it had a sloping roof
. As he surveyed it yesterday evening, he thought that he had seldom seen a better-constructed piece of work. The fit of the door was just as good as any carpenter could have made it. The inside walls were papered to keep out the wind. It would be cold, of course, in winter, but the wind was what he had minded most these two years past.

  Luxuriously he emptied the last drop of tea from his own cup. In the main room, the men were talking softly. Now and then he caught an English word, ignorantly mispronounced, as one or other of the men attempted conversation with the boss. He supposed he ought to take a look at them to see if crazy Tom had done his job, but he wasn’t going to spoil the gentle ecstasy of this initial morning. He put his cup down.

  Slowly he got to his feet and took his stiff hat from its peg. He rolled his sleeves down and took off his apron. Then he worked his arms into his coat.

  He moved softly to the door. But just there he remembered something. He returned to the sink and got the latest newspaper. It had the lottery draw-ings which he had read in misery two days ago. A little smile spread his small mouth. He put the paper in his pocket and stepped out. It was a misty morning. Down the line for the river, the driver, piling on the causeway, had begun its work. The thuds came to him in a kind of muffled drum-beat for a fine slow march.

  Edwin Brown followed the path through the wet, silvered muck. He saw the structure sitting there with a sublime aloofness. It was as he had left it, door closed, the latchstring hanging forth. That, he considered, had been his consummating inspiration. A privy with an actual latch.

  He paused a moment to take in the lines with all the pride of real achievement. Then, smiling half modestly, half bashfully, he pulled the string, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  For a moment the scene was one of utter quietude. The marsh mist lifted silently to the sun’s drinking. The morning was brought in with peacefulness.

  Then, in the thinning mists, some shapes began to move. They were men, walking in bare feet, single file behind their leader. The damp was pearled in his black beard. His shirt was open to the waist, showing his bright red undershirt.

  “Hogan.”

  His voice whispered incredibly soft and hoarse, but a little bat-eared fellow with jouncy steps moved up beside him, and cocked his face to get his orders.

  “Yis?”

  “Ye’ve got the hammer and the big spike wid ye?”

  “Yis, O’Mory.”

  “Then it’s you for nailing the door.”

  Hogan grinned. As he began stealing for the door, O’Mory motioned up his cohorts. The rush-men carried two fifteen-foot poles.

  “As soon as Hogan dhrives his spike, you bhoys rush up and belabor on thim two-by-fowers.”

  He moved with them cautiously. The latchstring was drawn in. From the inside of the privy no sound came, and outside the Irish crept with an unholy stealth.

  Suddenly Hogan’s hammer banged. It banged again— the sound of a heavy spike being rammed in. And then as the mist swirled under the sun, the marsh was made alive with shrieking. A dozen men nailed on the two-by- fours. Along behind them came the stamp of running feet. They screamed with laughter, but the privy remained as still as death.

  O’Mory roared above them all. His teeth glistened like porcelain through the black hairs of his beard.

  “Lift it up, me bhoys. It’s in an unconvaniant place. Just bring it round until I’ve found it out a dacent spot.”

  A dozen men put shoulders under the bars. The privy swung aloft. It teetered as they took their first step forward. Then a dark-faced boy named Peter started singing. He sang in Gaelic, a hero’s song, how his most faithful soldiers carried him to his bier. The others caught the tune. Their faces lighted with a kind of melancholy joy. Their feet moved into time, and like a palanquin of a queen they bore the privy towards the shanty.

  The other shanties had been built on reasonably dry ground farther along the marsh. Singing still, they started down the berm. Half of them went before and half followed after. From the peg over his bunk O’Mory had brought forth the fire helmet he had worn to fires with his company back in New York. Bright red, its varnish sparkled in the rising sun. He marched before the palanquin with the strut of a queen’s bed-master.

  A quarter of a mile they bore it down, and at each shanty other Irishmen lit up their eyes and joined them till they had a hundred strong. And they all sang.

  They turned about, and slowly came back along the marsh. At Independenceville, old Linas Barley in his tricorn hat first heard them. He called for Jerry.

  Bates and Jerry caught the wild swirling of voices. The singing was like nothing human they had heard. Without music, it had music in its heart; it had no beauty, but it was sad with a desire. They forgot, in hearing it, the letter from Utica that Bates had just begun to read, and they came out with Linas and looked down on the brown procession winding serpentwise along the berm.

  O’Mory came marching up to them. He stopped beside the wall of the finished lock. He spied there two eighteen-foot planks left over from the gate planks. He lifted them up alone and cast them over the well. Then, motioning his men, he had them inch the privy out so that it stood in the middle of the lock, ten feet over the bottom flooring, with the door flush with the outside edge of the front plank.

  He raised his hand for silence.

  “Here’s a place, me bhoys.”

  In the sudden hush of those wild men, a frantic hammering sounded from inside the privy. O’Mory’s jaw fell open.

  “God deliver me, there’s someone in it!”

  “Hey!” came the muffled voice. “Hey! Hey! Let me out.”

  “Oh God,” wailed the jouncy little Hogan— “I think it’s Mister Brown.”

  “Why didn’t annybody tell me he was in it?” roared O’Mory.

  Every face was hangdog.

  “Don’t stand shtupiding! Let the poor man out! You, Hogan, you’re handy with a hammer.”

  The little jouncy man jumped on a plank. He reached around the corner with his hammer and clawed forth the spike. The iron squeaked through the wood. And Jerry and Bates, with laughter grasping them, managed to look soberly at the door. An instant there was silence. The door swung wide, and in the privy they saw Edwin Brown, doing up the buckle of his belt. He took one dizzy step and then shrank back.

  The faces of the Irish were very sad. They looked embarrassed.

  And then O’Mory said, “We beg yer pardon, Misther Brown. We didn’t know it was a private privy. The bhoys is very sorry. Shall we carry you back?”

  Edwin Brown had his great moment then.

  “No thanks, O’Mory. I think I’ll walk. It’s time I had my morning constitutional.”

  They carried off the privy. Handsomely, Edwin Brown stepped out. Without a word he started walking back to the shanty, and behind him half a dozen men, like naughty children, bore his privy for him.

  “Wait a minute, O’Mory,” Bates said. “It’s pretty funny in a way. But it’s time you had your gang at work.”

  “We didn’t intend no harm, sor. We wouldn’t never have done it if we’d known that Misther Brown was in it.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Bates’s voice was sober as the Irishman’s. “But this isn’t play you boys have tackled. I’ve just had a letter that I want to read you. It will show you that this is a great thing that you’re working at.”

  He fished the letter from his pocket.

  “This canal,” he said, “used to be a dream of a few men. But now there’s water in it. It’s up to you to carry it west through this marsh.” He opened the letter. “It’s from a gentleman I know in Utica. He says he thinks I’d like a comment not official. This is what he writes:—

  “On Friday afternoon I walked to the head of the grand canal, the eastern extremity of which now reaches within a very short distance of this village, and from one of the airy bridges which crossed it I had a sight that could not but elevate and exhilarate the mind. The waters were rushing in from the westward and coming down their untried ch
annel to the sea. Their course, owing to the absorption of the new banks of the canal and the distance they had to run from where the stream entered it, was much slower than I had anticipated. It was dark before they reached the eastern extremity, but at sunrise next morning they were on a level two and a half feet deep throughout the whole distance of thirteen miles. The interest manifested by the whole country, as this new internal river rolled its first wave through the state, cannot be described. You might see the people running across the fields, climbing on trees and fences, and crowding the bank of the canal to gaze upon the welcome sight. A boat had been prepared at Rome, as you probably knew, and as the waters came down the canal you might mark their progress by that of this new Argo which floated triumphantly along the Hellespont of the West, accompanied by shouts and having on her deck a military band. At nine the next morning, the bells began a merry peal, and the commissioners, in carriages, proceeded from Bagg’s Hotel to the landing.”

  Mr. Bates looked up from his reading. He saw the clustered faces watching his lips with a polite absence of expression. His voice faltered. He had moved himself tremendously, but all at once he remembered that these men spoke very little English.

  “O’Mory,” he said.

  “Yes sor.”

  “You might explain it to them.”

  “Yes sor.”

  O’Mory turned on his men. His black beard bristled as he drew a mighty breath. He roared in Gaelic:—

  “The gent’s been reading at you unlearned devils, from a letter from the governor ginral of this-here nation. He says in it for me to paste the first wan of you that disobeys me orders. Ye see that stretch of bogland? Well, he wants it dug by spring. It’s wet in there, me boys. Git back to it. Take off yer pants. There’s brand-new shovels and tin barrows for yez. Spit on your hands and dig.”

  Three NORAH

  1

  “The wood lots have a shape 9 ‘

  “She doesn’t really look like either one of us.”

  Jerry was sitting beside the hearth of the small cabin. It had become a comfortable place under Mary’s hand. The curtains at the window were a warm red woolen, heavy enough to shut out darkness. She had made closets with soft yellow cloth, and a quilt of dyed yellow for the bed. She liked the warmer, softer colors. It was a wonder to Jerry how she had made this cabin over, stamping it with herself.