3stalwarts

by Unknown

  “It will be hard to go away from them,” he said. “Ma’s been good to you.”

  “Ma has. She didn’t want to let me pay her for our keep. But I didn’t want for us to owe her anything that way. I’ve helped her in the house, and I’ve made money weaving, too.”

  He caught her meaning. She was an independent person, coming back to him of her own free will.

  He said humbly, “Maybe George will take us down to Newport. We can find a boat there maybe.”

  “Yes.”

  “If we could get a boat starting early in the morning it would get us home that night.”

  He glanced at her.

  “Or maybe a night boat would be better.”

  “Either one.”

  “There won’t be much for us to carry.”

  She said almost shyly, “Jerry, I’d like to take along my weaving loom, if I could.”

  “Why, yes. We’d take that along surely. Only you won’t have to weave any more unless you want to.”

  “It’s been a comfort, weaving.”

  “Yes, surely. On a boat it won’t take up much room.”

  “It would be nice to have it.”

  “We’ll take anything you’d like.”

  “There isn’t any other thing— only our clothes.”

  “I’ll ask George if he knows of any boats.”

  “Maybe he’d know.”

  “It would be nice if one of our own boats was hauling up this way— to go back on it. In Rochester they fetch the best price of any boats made there. They’re allowed to be good boats anywhere along the Erie.”

  He saw her smile.

  “I’ve never seen a canal boat, Jerry.”

  “Ours are grey boats with white trimming.”

  “I’d like to see one.”

  “I’ll find out if one is here. It’s longer than by wagon, but it’s nice to travel on them.”

  In the farmyard a shrill whistle sounded. Toby backed out of his woodchuck hole, cocked his ears, and bounded off across the meadow.

  “Joe is whistling him to get the cows,” Mary said.

  They watched him dash into the yard. The big team was turning the wagon up to the corncrib. Joe jumped over the wheel and the two dogs waved their tails in front of him.

  “Maybe we’d better be going back.”

  “Maybe,” said Jerry. He hesitated. “Mary, if there’s a boat tomorrow, shall we go on it?”

  “Yes. Whenever there’s one.”

  The sun was westering; it threw their shadows forward side by side upon the clover. The white walls of the barn gleamed golden. They saw Ma Halleck passing the shed to the spring house with a butter firkin cradle on her hip. Her dress made a vivid splash of scarlet over the green, and as they drew near she spied them and waved her hand.

  “I’ll tell her,” Mary said.

  He watched her move away to intercept the fat woman. She had not changed. Himself, he went to seek out George.

  ”‘Bless and prosper”

  The men’s eyes were embarrassed to see Ma Halleck press against the wheel.

  “I can’t bear to let you take them off me, Jerry.”

  Her round red face looked almost woebegone.

  “Shucks, Ma. Ain’t you got enough ones left?” Joe kicked the dust with his boot. “Here’s me, to begin with; there’s George and Prue; and Abijah and Angy; and Abel and Esther; and the young ones that I’ll name, if you’ve forgot… .”

  Ma whirled.

  “Fresh! There isn’t enough for me in all the world. And anyway she’s growed my fav’rite child— so there!”

  But she had begun to smile again.

  “Good-bye, dearies. I’m coming down to look at you real often now.”

  George shook hands.

  “Leave Prince in the Eagle barns, Jerry. I’ll boat down with my season’s shearing and drive him back.”

  George had laughed at the idea of their taking a boat. “You’d not get in till late, and Prince can take you down by dark.”

  Jerry said, “We’ll keep him in our own barn.”

  “Use him all you want, then.”

  Halleck faces thronged the yard. At the rise they looked back to see them waving. Then the ground rose up behind the wheels and shut them off.

  The two children, on a straw bedding in the back, were tied to the loom. Jed prattled contentedly at things they passed; and Polly looked forth with eyes entranced at the thought of this long journey. Jerry stared past the trim head of the little Morgan, his thoughts already reaching ahead to Rochester.

  “We’re going home at last,” he said.

  The Hallecks had insisted that they spend another day at the farm; to Jerry it seemed the longest day he had ever spent. The women monop-olized Mary every hour; the men had left off work to sit and talk interminably with him. It might have been a second wedding that they were arranging. “When we’re alone,” he thought, “it will be easier. It’s all them watching her that makes her act this way.” But now, driving the Morgan at a spanking trot, he thought, “When we get home.”

  They had made an early start, and the sun was fresh against their eyes, drawing mist from the streams and putting jewels in the dew.

  “Yes,” said Mary.

  Her face was turned to the road, with its familiar lift of the chin. The sight of it carried him back to Albany, to the post road and themselves sitting under the poplars, when for all her silence she had seemed so ready to meet his thoughts. A flush crept under his tan, and he dropped his left hand to the seat between them.

  “Do you remember, Mary, how I said once that some day I’d buy you a wheel?”

  “Yes, I remember that.”

  He spoke quietly.

  “I’ve not bought it, but I’ve left the money with Mr. Burr so you can pick out any one he has.” He did not look at her. “You won’t need to do any spinning now if you don’t want to; but I’d be pleased to see you buy one.”

  He found an unaccountable sadness in her voice; but she met his eyes with a smile.

  “I’ll buy one, Jerry. I’ve always wanted one of my own.”

  He put his eyes back to the road, and in a little way his hand returned to the reins. Prince jogged them rapidly through Newport and on to the Ridge Road, where he swung right.

  To the left a line of pines lifted their crests. Suddenly from the highest top a crow cawed. Raucously he cast his call over the grove; the cry stole down upon the fields, over and over, the same note. And as if to answer him, the pines stirred— one shape after another hopped free and spread its wings, and the branches in the still air rocked from their black disburdenment. The sky was filled with milling crows, cawing, wheeling, lighting, vaulting off against the risen sun. Then, as one bird, the flock beat their wings, and in a thin line headed south.

  As they rode on, they saw the farmyards cleaning up for Sunday, the herds gone forth, and men easing themselves upon their stoops, and watching the rig go past with incurious eyes.

  Jerry said, “It was my fault, Mary.”

  She held her silence for a long while. A milepost passed. When she spoke, it was gently.

  “I don’t know whose fault it was. When such a thing happens, I think now that you can’t say this person or that person was to blame. I’d rather we forgot it.”

  He could not touch her.

  The little Morgan maintained a handsome gait. He held his head high and pricked his ears. He eyed a maple stub as if he had never seen a maple stub before in all his life. He shook his head when the breeze fluttered his mane; and when he saw a wagon of churchgoers on the road ahead he seemed to take delight in spanking past and raising all the dust he knew.

  But people were in a good humor and hailed the passing wagon cheerfully. Jed had learned to wave a handkerchief, and he waved back to them. He waved at everything, at pastured cows, at horses, at the people. When a man got out his best bandanna in return, he shrieked at his mother to look.

  “We’ll get into town early this afternoon. We’ll go straight
home.”

  “Yes.”

  He drew his breath. Looking at him, she saw a ludicrous dismay come over his face.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s nothing in the house. Not so much as a dipper to drink from, Mary.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “I guess we can hire a room for one night anyway.”

  He apologized abjectly.

  “I didn’t get anything to put in the house. I’d planned for it to be your house— the way you wanted it.”

  She did not laugh.

  “I’ll like it better for your having thought of that.”

  She drew a deep breath. She too was thinking of coming home. She had not planned it so, but her thoughts went forward as they spun along the road. It was enough for now to watch the pale blue sky.

  As they rolled down on Clarkson Village, they saw rigs hitched along the street. The meetinghouse was a plain frame building with a double door. Jerry slowed down, not to disturb the horses, and they took the crossing at a walk.

  Through the open windows the exhorter’s voice came to them pro-foundly nasal in the closing prayer, and as they went by the door Jerry looked in.

  The upright figure of the preacher, garbed in black— the white hand outstretched above the bowing people— the closed eyes in the lifted face with the sunlight full upon them— the voice, sonorous down the tilted nose, came out to the passing wagon: “… bless and prosper …” They carried the words with them… .

  They passed through Parma after lunch, through Ogden Village; and then they dipped off the ridge and turned southeast. For a way they ran along the canal, overtaking a line boat. Jed, who had waked after a long nap, got out his handkerchief, and the steersman answered with a shattering blast of his horn; and Jed was so surprised that he made no other move or word throughout the afternoon.

  Jerry reached into his pocket and pulled out a fold of paper and handed it to her. “We’re nearly there,” he said, “and I want you to take this before we get back home.” Puzzled, she opened it. She did not need to look at the sheaf of paper money.

  She held it for a long time in her lap, watching the houses growing nearer.

  “Jerry,” she said at last, “I can’t take it back.”

  “I can’t either, Mary.”

  “It doesn’t belong to either one of us,” she said.

  Jerry was silent.

  “Shall I throw it away, then? But it wouldn’t be right to throw that money away.”

  “I won’t keep it. Not any more.”

  She tapped the edge against her thumbnail.

  “I’ll keep it, then. But I’ll keep it for Polly and Jed. It belongs to them in a way— more than either of us.”

  He nodded. He had not touched her yet, but she was closer. “… bless and prosper …” Given time.

  6

  “It’s the water coming through’

  At Lockport, in the long barrack set up to house the Irish gang, jouncy little Hogan was darning the toe of his sock. He was sitting tailorwise on his bunk behind the central stove, his right foot propped against his left knee, his flat mouth pursed. At every stitch his hands trembled; they were extraordinarily calloused hands— the palms worked stiffly as rhinoceros hide. Drilling hands, O’Mory had said, as soon as he laid eyes on them.

  The gang sprawled desultorily in their bunks along the forty-foot walls, except for two groups playing filch and blackjack at one of the two long tables; and a few were gathered close to Hogan to watch his machinations with the needle. It was an interesting process when a man darned with the sock on his foot.

  “Reach me down me old Hissian, Peter,” he said at last.

  A dark-faced, lanky boy unhooked the wooden flask from its nail and gave it to the little man.

  Hogan had broken off the wool. He took the Hessian in both hands and sucked a mouthful of corn whiskey, rinsing it about his uneven teeth. His lips flattened behind the swallow and he sighed and handed back the flask.

  “Hang her up again, Peter, will yez?”

  He stretched out his foot and admired his toe artistically. The darn was yellow on a grey foundation. Sighing, he lay back upon the bunk and closed his eyes. As if the room had kept silent from a nice appreciation of the delicacy of his operation, voices now loudly broke out.

  “I wisht I was home again,” said the young lad, Peter.

  “What do you wish that for, Peter?”

  “I do,” said Peter.

  Hogan raised himself on one elbow. His bright blue eyes examined the boy.

  “Did ye ever come by such good money annywhere in the owld counthry?”

  “No.”

  “Did ye ever foind betther whiskey?”

  “Just as good,” said Peter surlily.

  “Did ye ever find more, now?” Hogan pointed a thick finger. “Did ye ever have whiskey come with yer pay, and over and above it, too?”

  “No.”

  A one-eyed man with grizzled hair, who had watched the whole darning of the sock without a word, spat into the sandbox and said, “Is it the priest ye hone afther?”

  The boy said seriously, “Well, there ain’t anny, is there?”

  “Pho!” said Hogan. “What would ye say to the Father was he here?”

  “Nothing,” Peter admitted gloomily.

  “That’s what’s bothering the boy!” Hogan exclaimed. “He misses the girrels! Oh, Peter! Ye’re right enough. There isn’t even anny timptation in these lands. But, Peter, now the labor’s done and ye’ve got time to think, are you going back whome?”

  “I haven’t anny money.”

  “What have ye done with all yer pay?”

  “It come in whiskey and money,” said the boy. “But it all come to the same thing.”

  Hogan yawned.

  “The trouble with you is ye’re too comfortable.”

  “That’s a fact,” said the one-eyed laborer. “If he was unhappy, he could feel real comfortable.”

  “What are we waiting for?” cried a man down the room. He wore a small, pointed hat on the top of his head and a dirty bandage on his left foot; and between the two he was naked.

  “Put on yer pants, McCarthy,” said Hogan. “Ye’re no dacent sight.”

  “Well, what am I going to do next?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “I don’t know what I like.”

  “Maybe I’ll go out to Ohio,” said another man. “They’re digging a ditch out there, they say.”

  “That’s an uncivilized counthry.”

  “They’re digging another in Delaware.”

  “They’ve seen yez dig,” said Hogan, “so they flatther yez and come over yez. But digging ain’t the nat’ral state for anny wan of us. Me, I’m going to wait till O’Mory gets whome.”

  “Where’s O’Mory, annyway?” asked a new voice.

  “At a wedding?”

  “Yis,” said Hogan. “At young Collins’s wedding. The young lad who helped Misther Fowler on the lock-gates.”

  Silence fell over the long room. But all at once Peter asked, “And was she the one O’Mory went round with in the spring? Her that had black hair?”

  “Herself the same,” said Hogan.

  “I thought he had his own hone for her.”

  “He did so,” said Hogan. “But I wouldn’t remind him of it whin he gets whome.”

  “Then I don’t undherstand.”

  “Maybe the girrel asked him over. I guess she did, and what is one girrel the more or less to him?”

  “What is?” asked a skeptical voice.

  “That’s what I said,” said Hogan, unruffled. “What is?”

  “To be sure,” said the skeptical voice.

  Hogan asked for his Hessian and the boy handed it down. It was made like a very shallow barrel with a strap round the drum and a spigot to draw from. Hogan sucked noisily. He wiped his mouth.

  “All the blather,” he said. “Annyway we beat the black bhoys to the mark, didn’t we? And the work’s done, ain’t it? Well, me,
I’m going to wait until O’Mory gets back, I am. And if me Hissian gets empty with waiting, I’ll just fill it.”

  “What will O’Mory know about what we’re to do?”

  “He knows the counthry,” said Hogan, and he pointed overhead. O’Mory’s bunk was over his own, and, hung from a nail, his red fireman’s helmet, with the golden Phoenix, No. 22, glistened like an outrageous jewel. All their eyes turned to it, and the trouble went out of their faces.

  “I wonder will Jay-Jay come over?” said McCarthy, the naked man.

  “Let him come,” said Hogan. “He hasn’t the numbers we have.”

  “We’ve been laid off three days,” said somebody. “What are we waiting for?”

  Silence fell on the room. Through it they could hear the stoves, the clatter of the metal ware as the cooks washed up. Hogan got up and with a bored face went over to the door. When he opened it a cold draft swept in.

  They could all see him against the night sky. The stars were white and the young moon silver with frost. The barrack stood on the lip of the ridge just west of the locks, and the new timbers in the gates shone white as bone. In the cleft of the rock they saw the dipper low down.

  “To catch the wather if it comes,” said a man.

  “When is it coming?” asked Peter.

  “Any time,” said Hogan over his shoulder. He stepped through the door.

  As the little man breathed the cold air and stared across the miles of wilderness, broken only by the line of the canal and the lights in the few buildings of this new village, it came upon him that that was what they were waiting for. They wanted to see the completion of their work, the water from Lake Erie filling the lock-wells. Not one of them had seen Lake Erie. Roberts had told him it lay to the southwest, a body of water endless as the sea, where real ships sailed. Behind him he heard the boy Peter say, “What do they want this canal for annyway?”

  It was the first time they had ever asked such a question. He had never asked it himself. It had been enough for him to shovel, to devil boulders, to feel the blister of the hot drill in his palms. To beat the work of the other gangs. They had licked them all, even the niggers.

  The door swung to; and he went out on the bridgehead over the top lock. From there he could see the canal bed behind him in the deep-cloven rock, four miles in length, thirty-six feet deep. The cranes had been taken away. There was just the clay, the black gleaming stone, the trickle of leakage in the bottom, the straight wall of the towpath.