“This is the place, huh? You can tell by the markings on the rocks?”
He did not look up, he did not expect the voice, but it made no difference.
Ralph came closer to him, his breath hard, short puffs of moisture shooting from his nose and mouth. “Those are five minute fuses on these little babies, slow burners, so we have plenty of time for running. They’ll give about the same blast as the ones we used a couple of years back. Not enough to rip this mountain open and start a big slide below, just enough to blow to bits all those cozy rattlers coiled around one another, their bellies popping with eggs jammed full of more little snakes and …”
Birdsong lit the fuse. It fizzled slowly, the bright smouldering head giving off traces of black smoke.
“Don’t wait around to find a birthday cake to stick it in,” Ralph shouted, stepping back from the lit explosive.
Birdsong held the red stick over the open chasm, let it slip through his fingers. The lit fuse illuminated the darkness as it plunged, its wan light flickering, reflected off the close stone walls, then gone, deep into the darkness, plummeting, twirling and flashing into the center of the mountain.
He leaped over the chasm, going away from it, around behind a boulder, sat down with his back flat against it, rigid, the sound from the falls rushing into the void about him, singing in his ears, pressing him even more tightly against the stone, giving way only for a moment as the new sound of the blast mounted it, terse, fleeting, and was gone, thundering up the short distance to the top of the mountain, into the snowy air. He waited, his back still and close as if it grew from the stone. He closed his eyes to the mountain, to the sound that had just passed him, then opened them, stood up and went back to the split earth. Ralph was standing at the edge, wisps of smoke rising at his feet, drifting into the wind in front of him, distorting his figure behind the ethereal haze.
“No good,” Birdsong stood over the narrow chasm, straddling it, looking down.
“No warm little babies in there, but we’ll get them, that’s a fact of sight,” Ralph shook his head slowly, the brim of his hat slicing at the air.
Birdsong moved up to the next chasm. He got down on his hands and knees, looked closely at the rocks smooth and flat, jerked up and took three sticks of dynamite from the pack, struck a match, the wind blew it out, he struck another, lighting all three charges and dropping them, one, two, three into the earth, watching them descend, watching for the last light. A hand was on his arm, the fingers pressing through the jacket, clamped down, digging into the bone, shaking him. “Don’t you know!” The shiny red face screwed up in pain. “Damn man! Don’t you realize there’s a road down there! You want to slide this whole mountain down, and us with it!” The face was close to his; Birdsong could feel the heat from it on his own, the hot breath on his skin. He stared into the tight blue eyes, said nothing, heard nothing, except the falls.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
He listened to the crushing sound of water, could see the flame tumbling in the darkness between the damp rocks. The hand pulled at his arm, yanking, moving him a few steps away from the chasm, tugging fiercely as if it were going to rip the arm from its socket. Then it was released, the hand was gone, he stood alone in the sound, moved a few more steps down the steep incline, the bulky snowshoes catching on jags of rock, twisting him, tumbling him to the ground, his knee striking the snow, a trigger of pain setting off the blast deep in the earth, the ground beneath giving only a slight tremble as the power slashed up through damp, deep rocks, pushing the blood of a hundred blasted bodies between them, a wash of crimson spewing out of the crack into air, bits of reptile flesh raining down the swirling sky, touching his body, falling lightly on his face.
3
CAPTAIN REX stood riding the flatbed car of the Train singing the songs Birds sang long ago that he had learned in dreams. He liked to sing. He liked to open his mouth wide, his lips wet, letting the music come from deep within, to hear its ancestry in his ears, to hear it get up into the air rushing past, whistling about his head, through his blowing black hair, out into the open spaces between the mountains. He liked to stamp his boots hard against the split oaken planks beneath his feet, he liked to stomp them with a rhythm, the same slick, pumping rhythm the iron wheels made storming over the tracks. He liked those boots, he got them off a dead miner, they were almost a perfect fit, almost new when he pulled them from the dead body; the miner must have bought them in Folsom Town, maybe Placerville, couldn’t have walked long on them, barely a scuff mark, must have been green, one of the ones pouring into and all over the Sierras, searching, no ’timer would be caught dead in a pair of boots like that, and wasn’t. Now the boots were worn down, cracked, split, but comfortable. He liked their feel as he pounded them down. He hopped on them, worked into a bounce, then a skip, finally he held his own dance, hopping, skipping, jumping in wide arched lengths on the bed of the car, moving up and down its length, its width, sucking the air that smacked his face into his lungs, screaming out his feathered song against the metallic roar of the slicing wheels on the slot of track, his lungs aching, bursting, burning his tight throat in a flame of pain. His head thrown back, he tried to best the sound of the screeching steam whistle blowing up front of the bulky, slamming cars, he tried to push his music above it, shatter it, leaving only his song implanted in the mountains, the trace of its memory, but it was a worthy opponent, a true opponent, and as always, it beat him down, triumphed, he held the last note against it as long as he could, then let it go, in defeat. He beat his boots down in such crashing violent thuds of anger that he lost his balance, tripped into the motion of the Train itself, his body tossed flat on the coarse wood, scraping the skin of his chin away from the face, stopping his head at the edge of the thick wooden platform. He stared straight down. The hot air from the friction of churning wheels blowing hard into his face as he watched the rocky ground flashing by with such gray speed it seemed to merge into the smoothed intricate surface of the baskets his mother used to weave in the winter. In spring all his people would gather up the pinenuts and drop them into the baskets, heaping them into tall hard brownshelled mounds. He could see beyond the tight strip of ground running next to the track, over and down the side of the canyon split perfectly open like a redwood, at the bottom a bright blue streak shot in a straight fierce line, the blade that split the Earth. He watched the river speeding in the opposite direction of the Train, but always running even with it, the river that they call Truckee; hah, his laugh came back in his ears, Truckee, an old quick-eyed slow handed Paiute who was shot at Sutter’s Fort by a bartender from the place called New Orleans the year the big Railroad machines first crossed the mountains, they named it for him because he showed it to them, led them to it first and they thought they discovered it from him, when everyone knew it was in this part of the Sierra a Washo river, always had been, always would be. He laughed again, it made him feel the pain of his chin, he lifted his head and could see a smear of crimson on the rough wood. He touched the wound gently with his fingers, the sudden sting made his head flinch. He pushed himself up, reached into the frayed pocket of his checked jacket that was given to him the night he got beat up in the town of Reno and pulled out his pocket-pistol, raised the thin glass bottle to his lips, sucked thickly at the warm whiskey until it was gone, then threw the bottle across the car into the cliff of mountain that banked closely on the opposite side. The Train lurched, he swore and spit some brown juice in front of his boots. The Train was slowing, braking down to take the sharp curve of track in front of it, the mass of steel and wood straining, swaying as it made the curve. He waited, watched until his car rounded the curve and he could see where the mountains opened up, set deep within them, the cold heart of a lake, flashing bluer, closer and deeper than the Sky above, the lake they called Donner, the lake he called Winiaho, the lake that caused the ghost of his father to walk the hard land of his dreams, for it was there that Gayabuc saw them eat of their own flesh and taught of t
heir ways to his son so that he would always beware. He gave a great laugh as he watched smoke rising from the cabins through the trees on the clear lakeshore below in the sharp distance, the laugh boiled in him, brought out the strange melancholy of the ancient Birds, their sweet, tonguebeaked voices bubbling up through his lips, leaping into the virgin air in joyous direct attempt of a simple triumph. The sound was strong now, again the iron challenge of the Train had been taken up and the implacable rhythm of its natural opposite sought its equal in a place now foreign. The battle raged as the Train continued rambling on along the cut of track etched high up on the edge of the plunging mountainside, the man’s eyes sunk in the water off to the side far down in front of him, then both funneled into darkness, taking their sounds with them as the Train moved forward into the snowsheds, the planks of timbers boxed over the tracks for protection, anchored against the mountain, a forest of cut and constructed wood built by countless men, stretching for miles where the snow is piled fiercely, driven in crushing slides during winter, shutting out almost all trace of day, of Sky. The cold air in the confined horizontal shaft thundered with the sound of the train, the man’s song stabbing in bursts of echoes against the boarded walls, each successive wave becoming weaker, ebbing through the chinks in the towering ceiling where slices of light broke through, dissolved in the obscure interior. When the Train broke from the tunnel into the sudden flare of Sunlight it pointed down the mountain toward the lake and the man did not notice that he was once more in the open. He sat, his large body hunched in the middle of the exposed platform, the song gone from his lips.
The yellowmen were everywhere. All along the track in straight lines as far as his eyes could see were the yellowmen, their bare backs bent in silence, building in the glare of mountain Sun. They did not look up as the Train rolled slowly between them, they paid no attention to the Indian sat hunched in the middle of one flatbed car, watching their every move through squinted eyes deep in his face, they noticed nothing as the Train moved along the shore of the lake, through the open rolling meadow, into the tall pine, then where the pines had been cut to build the town, passing the boarding houses, hotels, saloons, and shacks clumped together in the sheltered canyon of the river, the town that fed the men to the Railroad yards. The Train slowed to a stop, was switched to another track, the air was thick with shouts, the heavy metal sound of machinery, boxcars stood, square and bulky, men moving to and away from them, the noise from the town drove into and above all other sounds, roaring completely over the rush of water in the river on the far side of the tracks. The Indian sat, he had not moved in the motion around him, he waited, he waited in the Sun until a man made his way along the Train, a blue-billed cap on his bald head, a gold badge on the collar of his blue shirt, at each car he paused, studied it, then wrote hurriedly in a notebook, when he came to the Indian he slapped the back of his neck and spat a thick brown syrup into the weeds sprouting from under the iron rail of track and grinned.
“How’s bout it Cap’n, your lil pic-a-nic about over and done?”
The Indian stood up. “Mr. Dolay, you got a drink for the Cappin. That’s one long dry, dirty, dusty haul clear to up here from Dutchflats.”
“Shore is now Cap’n, a man would have to be three parts dead in the head or have the brains of a muleass to be goin about workin in it with a heavy jacket like that on his back.”
“It’s the only one I got.”
“Why don’t you leave it up to the hotel?”
“Somebodied steal it from the Cappin.”
“Hah!” The man’s laugh flew into the air with wet bits of tobacco, “That there is your one big downfall Cap’n, no trust, you ain’t got no trust in your fellow man, noblest creature that’s ever sat down to a bar and you got no more trust in ’em than your own self. You’ll never make it along in this world with that there idea, I’m tellin you the straight side of it Cap’n, you got to change your ways if you aim a whole lot to get along with civilized men.”
“You got that drink for me Mr. Dolay?”
“Like I was continuin fore you broke me off Cap’n, rudeness is another bad trait you got, men has to know polite conversation, give and take, I was sayin when you took instead of give that it’s just about break-time for me. I been goin pretty hard at it all day about and I was just sayin to myself fore I spotted you siesta’in up there in the sun, ‘Arthur, Arthur Dolay,’ I was sayin to myself. ‘Why don’t you take it easy and quit drivin yourself, have a sit-down in the shade of the next car and take a little refreshmint.’ How’s that idea peal to you Cap’n?” he stared up, one eye closed to the sun, the other fixed on the Indian.
“Peals to me ’bout the same way it peals to you. You got your pocket pistol?”
“Have you ever knowed me not to pack it?”
The Indian leaped down, “No I ain’t never Mr. Dolay. Let’s get at it.”
“Hold on there,” the man took a step’ backwards, the other eye popping open. “Nother thing you got to learn is politeness, can’t you never get that fixed in your mind right? You ain’t never goin to be fit for the society of this here town of Truckee, let alone nowhere else.”
“But I ain’t goin nowhere else.”
“Shore you’re goin somewheres else, every man goes somewheres eke, even Indians, it’s natural, you’re young, you just don’t know it yet. You’re goin somewheres else.”
“The only place I want to go right now is in the shade to have a drink.”
“Dammit, ain’t you ever to learn, that’s just like an Indian, invitin hisself right into your own house for Sunday dinner.”
“Forget it then Mr. Dolay,” the Indian shoved his hands in his pockets and turned. “I’ll go get my own pay and drink it.”
“Hold on now Cap n,” the man spit loudly, the juice hitting into the dry weeds, clinging. “I didn’t say I wasn’t goin to invite you, I just wanted to point out some education missin out of your background, it’s that an Indian’s got so much educatin to be done on him that sometimes it takes a whole long while before things get done. Here,” he pulled a bottle from beneath his belt, took a long slow drink and held it out, wiping his mouth.
The Indian took the bottle and tipped it to his lips. “Thanks Mr. Dolay.” He handed it back.
“Why don’t we sit down in the shade of that car over there, it’s a bit out of the way, maybe none of the boys’ll spot us and come a bummer.”
They sat down, resting their shoulders against the cool thick iron wheel. The man took a steady, hard drink, the Indian watched the flesh of the adam’s apple bob up and down in a throb as the liquid passed through the throat, then he took the bottle and gulped at the clear whiskey.
“Mormon women,” the man spat in front of him, leaving a brown stain on the earth. “Mormon women,” he spoke the words louder and spat twice as hard.
“What about Mormon women?” the Indian asked, passing the bottle back.
“Mormon women,” the man took another swig as if to wash the words down. “Mormon women stink.”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Dolay,” the Indian took the bottle back. “I ain’t never snuck up close enough to one to get in a good smell, but if you say it’s so I’ll take your word for it.”
“Word on it hell, I’m a thority on it.”
“You know a lot of things alright.”
“But I know Mormon women best of all.”
The Indian drank again, shook his head in agreement, decided to ask why but didn’t.
“Because I married one Mormon woman, that’s why.”
“And she stinks?”
“Don’t you offend my wife, Indian,” the man grabbed the bottle back and hugged it to his chest.
“I ain’t Mr. Dolay, I was just askin a question,” the Indian dropped his hands in his lap with a moan.
“Oh, questions is different, education is a fine thing, specially for an Indian. How old are you anyways?”
“How old?” the Indian’s face went blank.
“Yah, how
many years you been alive?”
“I don’t know, I never thought about it.”
“Well when was you born? You remember that much do you?”
“No, I don’t remember it.”
“Indian, what do you remember?”
“I don’t know, I never thought a whole lot on it. What I done I done, I guess.”
“How old do you think you are? Here, gimme that bottle back fore you hog it all down.”
“You mean in years?”
“I shore don’t mean in coon’s age.”
“Twenty-five, thirty maybe.”
“Twenty-five or thirty, you can’t never be too young to learn boy, never too young. I’m not such an old man myself you know, fifty-two this winter past. I seen a bit in my time though, went through alotta country, some places civilized man never even seen before. This here country is the worst I ever been in, desert on one side, big ocean on the other, so a man ends up stuck in the middle on mountains so steep you almost fall on your face soon as you take a step. Lotta money in this country though, big money. I come here with the first, in ’48 believe it was, headed this way before that but got sidetracked over in Salt Lake town, you ever been there Cap’n? No, I wouldn’t think so. Terrible place, nothin but salt and muck and Mormons. Mormons say they developed that place, hah, developed, I think they grew right up out of the sea that dried up there years back in time. They’ve developed that place so well a man can’t find a drink even if he was to hock his hide, and no gamblin, no money either, not one penny to be made, people all live like Diggers, scroungin and pokin around in that dry dirt praying for a miracle of somethin to grow, and when it finally do they got to eat it up quick as you like and say another mouthful of prayers just to keep alive so’s they can scrounge around some more. I come into that town from Dakota country, just passin through as quick as I could, big storm was blowin up, blizzards whoppin everythin for a hundred miles around, I barely come through the Rockies with my skin in one piece, couldn’t see the town when I come to it, snow was so thick, if I had I would a kept on goin blizzard or no, but anyways I put up in a hotel there, hah,” he slapped his knee and spit. “Hotel! Some folks’ house; had put up a sign in the front window, Rooms To Let By Night Or Day. So I went on in to dry my bones and gives em my cash for the night. Weren’t no other boys puttin up there cept one of these kind we’re gettin from I-talie, can’t hardly speak no more than a half word of English like most Indians up around here. Well, when I get in there the whole family is sittin down to dinner, the I-talie boy with em, and the father is prayin, they’re all there with their heads bowed for the longest time, the father goin on about this and that thing, thankin for the meal, and it weren’t nothin to be prayin up that much about I’m here to tell you, about two seconds worth of prayer would have covered that meal for thanks and for shore the next twenty to come, but the father kept on mumblin, wantin to make shore there were no one last thing left on that table that would be hot, and me I’m gettin cramps in my legs and my neck got a big crook in it from being humble and still he goes right on ahead as if God hisself were sittin right across the table from him; it weren’t, it were the I-talie, and when the father finishes up he shouts out AMEN and starts makin funny signs all over his face and chest like he was salutin his Pope and the father shouts out even louder than the I-talie boy had, Ain’t no Cath-O-Lick prayers lowed at Mormin table, this here’s Mormin food, got from a Mormin God and growed by Mormin hands and Cath-O-Licks ain’t got nothin to do with it, his whole head done burned brighter than the coals in the fireplace and he was jabbin his fork in the air as if he were gonna stab and run every Cath-O-Lick ghost outta the room that the I-talie boy brought in with him, and his wife come over and begun talkin in such a low voice that I had to strain my ears to hear and if what she said made any sense atall it would never be heard noways, finally she got him sat down, his chest heavin in and out like a bellows and he begun shoutin that he may be poor and have to take in lodgers but he don’t have to stand for no Romans sayin foreign words over Mormin food, and the food were ruint for him and he weren’t going to touch it long as the I-talie boy was in the room, then it was the I-talie got up and says he is shore sorry bout being a bother and causin the trouble he had, but nobody understood him anyways and the mother was pushin him back where he begun, her mouth movin fast but the words comin slow so he couldn’t hear even if it would make sense, and the whole time I’m lookin at them and down at my Mormon dinner that’s been prayed at and fought over and if you ever ain’t looked at a Mormon dinner you ain’t missed one apple fallin. Potatoes, cold potatoes, mashed, sliced, peeled, unpeeled, cut, twisted, baked and fried. I was lookin at those potatoes knowin that if I didn’t get to them soon I would be dead of starvin, and when I took my eyes offn them I sees the Mormon mother is shovin whole forkfuls of potatoes into the I-talie’s mouth, and every time he finishes swallowin a mouthful and begins gulpin air she shoves another heap full into him. So I just figure out it’s time we could all eat now and it don’t take me more than thirty seconds of a horsetail swish to swoop up those potatoes and pack em in my stomach for later use, and I’m done for the rest hardly begun so’s when I looked up again the mother’s still pumpin the I-talie boy up, and the father’s just a-sittin there, breathin hard but with his hands folded up on his lap and the cold heap of untouched potatoes heaped in front of him. I had the first time to look about me and see who else I was eatin dinner with. Damn!” He slapped at the air in front of him, “They grow bigger hossflies in these mountains than those Egyps grow elephants. Girls, that’s all there was, this Mormon had five daughters, no wonder they got run outta so many places, all they can rear is females, then they got to marry four apiece just to keep em happy. And have you ever seen a Mormon woman? No, course not. Hah! Let me tell you Cap’n, sittin around me at that table was the most ugliest creatures that ever had a dress tied on it, uglier even than a lot of your squaw-women you bucks keep hidden up around here. A Mormon woman has the body of a potato fed ox and the face of a seagull. Mormon women bulged right up out of the salt in that Utah land like a blight rollin round like a loose barrel of molasses. And slow. Slow! It takes them a half an hour to blink. So having finished my dinner and all, I just sat around gazin at em, givin em the up and down and across, my eyes searchin all over em, tryin to find some woman beneath all that bulk, some life, but my gaze sunk like a stone in all that mud. There was this one there, probably the oldest, thirty maybe, the youngest bein about fifteen, she had all this hair piled right on top of her head like straw in wet mortar slapped on a brick, she was sittin there like she growed right up out of the chair and was about to collapse it, had the look of her father in the face, her lips were movin, just slight you know, no sound, as if she were talkin to herself what she was thinkin and didn’t think nobodied noticed, or care even. I thought that was pretty funny so I was about to give out a big laugh and all that came up was a potato burp, the mother dropped the fork right out of the I-talie’s face, it clanged down on the plate like a bell and everyone just gaped at me with their faces hangin out, cept the father and this one girl with the lips movin. Finally, I got so tired of nobody sayin nothin or doin nothin that I thought I’d just get things started. Scuse me, folks, I says, then once again the mother was spoonin into the I-talie and a couple of the girls had finished up on their potatoes and were talkin back and forth in slow voices that even they couldn’t hear. Me, I was watchin those lips movin and it got to botherin me, like somethin was agoin on that I wasn’t being let in on so I decided to see what would happen if I kicked her under the table, nothin did so I kicked her again a little harder and she still didn’t flinch, so I really cocked one and shot it out, figgered it’d register through all that hanging flesh, but it didn’t, instead the father turned to me and says nice and polite as you please, If you kick me once more I’m going to toss you out in the snow, Christians are not kickers. And once again the room got real still and they left it up to me to get the conversation rollin so I says
, Scuse me folks. They then all turned away and took up where they left off. I was tired of speech makin so I settled back in my chair and studied real hard on what the movin lips were sayin, figgered if I had the answer to that I’d learn a whole lot bout Mormon women and their workin insides, but I couldn’t and everybody was gettin up, the women clearin off the table, cept the father’s plate, and me and the I-talie was just standin around, there weren’t bein but the one room, all the others had been made into bedrooms. I saw the movin lips had got up too, takin up a big portion of the room, towerin over all the other girls, her hair almost touchin the ceilin and spendin ten minutes to pick up a knife and carry it away, so I decided I’d go over and give her a pinch and see if she would budge or give out a sound, so I mosied in her direction and when I come up on her with her back to me I says, Scuse me folks, but do you have one of them checkerboard games or is that against Mormon thinkin? At the same time I had a hunk of her behind between my thumb and finger and squeezin with all I had like one of them oranges. No human bein makes a sound like the one that blasted out of them lungs, it just knocked the whole sound of the blizzard outside back up where it came from, almost tore the roof right off the rafters and throwed me and the I-talie boy flat up agin the wall. When the blast was gone and me and the I-talie couldn’t hear nothin but ringin like church bells there came four words that even drove that sound out of our heads. Daddy! I been spoiled! Well I don’t have to tell you Cap’n that I was a bit out of line being how the situation was, but I hadn’t ever ruint any girls before and I was to be shore I wasn’t about to begin then, a little bruised flesh maybe, but that ain’t never spoilt the fruit. So when everything quieted on down, cept movin lips, she was set down at the table with her face in her hands blubberin on so it sounded like waves slappin up agin a ship. I said nice and loud so ever one could hear good, even her, Scuse me folks, I musta slipped. Stranger, the father stood up slow, his hands still folded and hangin in front of him like a net. Stranger, he says, like the word was stokin up the red in his face, I don’t have no notion where you hail from, nor who your folks are, or what your religious ways are about, but I do know where you are now. Mormin country stranger, and case you ain’t heard the word yet we treat our women with Christian respect, respect for their feminine ways an sex, an the act you just done violated upon the Godgiven right of purity bestowed for every woman in His Kingdom an is a sin of the highest degree agin His very own. His fingers was turnin white he was pullin that net so tight, an because we’re Christian practicing folk we believe in just punishment for wrong doings. Stranger, you better come along with me peaceful like to the town jail so’s you can await trial for the ugly deed you performed in my house, this is a wholesome community and wild animals like yourself are usually locked up for fifteen years of hard labor to the benefit of all mankind. Well Cap’n, what you think I said to that, it was a tight fit all right Scuse me, I says, beggin your humble pardon Mister, but I’m a Christian boy myself, not like this I-talie boy here, but A-mer-i-can Sunday school kind, an I see your ways clear as the Light Itself, but Mister, you raised a batch o the most pretty gals this wanderin boy has ever had the privilege of feastin his eyes on, an when I sees your older daughter my heart bout jumped right up through my mouth and I was so lightheaded with what I seen I just lost all natural control of decent behavior! So Cap’n, I stayed around in that Salt Lake town for five years with my new wife, each year she’s a ploppin out another girl for me, you cain’t beat down that Mormon blood, Cap’n, it’s too thick, sucks the life right out of your hide. What happin then was in ’48 ol movin lips hears bout John Marshall an she says, Arthur, lets us pull up stakes and move on over to California an get some that gold lying around over there, we got a head start on most folks. You bet I tore outta that Mormon town in two days, thought I’d be pullin potatoes out of that country for the rest of my life. I pretty near galloped our wagon clear cross the desert tryin to get to where I was going to begin with. Thing is when I finally got out to this country I realized it weren’t no prize neither. I never seen so many people runnin round bumpin into one nother, shootin one nother, cheatin. I got out, let me tell you Cap’n, I got right out of that game, didn’t have a penny, hiked roun all these Sierras for two years waitin to catch a big one by the tail, but I got out, moved the family down to Placerville and worked in the new Im-porium store they put up there, then they started up this here big railroad, Trans-Continental they said it was going to be and I hired on as a whipjack over the coolies they was sailin in here from China country, did that for many years, makin shore ol John would work his tail, then they decided I was a promotion an give me this official number job with a badge, one of the highest up I am Cap’n, give the boys around here somethin to shoot for, even so it ain’t enough to feed eight women on. Ah, that’s a shame, now there’s a cryin sight,” he held the bottle out top down, staring through the murky brown glass. “That’s all there is for a hard workin man, our vacation time is up.” He threw the bottle, watched it smash into the track across from him, the glass shattering on the iron rail. “Cap’n, let’s you and me get on with our work,” he stretched his arms quickly in the air as if he was ready to flap off. “Still on the Comp’ny’s time y’know. Got to watch out for the Comp’ny Cap’n, always watch out for your better interests. Where’s your people?”
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