3stalwarts (140 page)

Down by the shanty, she found Jerry in the moonlight sitting on the dew-less grass. She sat beside him. There was a little wind that drew across the flat of the meadowland.

Jerry turned his head in the darkness.

“Do you mind if I come down and visit with you, Jerry?”

“No.”

“I brought my crochet along.”

“What are you making, Dencey?”

He saw that she had put on shoes and stockings— low-heeled black shoes, and stockings of white cotton.

Her head was bent.

“Oh, I’m crocheting.”

“Can you see to do it in the dark?”

“Finely.”

“It’s a wonderful thing the way a woman can crochet out of light.”

“A woman gets able to do it after a while.”

He looked away. The hillside sloped against the sky.

“It’s pretty down here tonight. The bugs are all after Pa, where the light is.”

“Yes, I come down away from the buzzing of them,” said Jerry. “Back home in Uniontown we don’t have flies so thick.”

“Is that where your girl is?”

Dencey spoke with a soft huskiness, a slurring of her words, as if a pulse were beating in her throat.

“No. That’s where I was born. No. My girl’s in Utica. We’re wedded, Dencey.”

Dencey’s strong hands plied the needle.

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes,” said Jerry. “She’s pretty.” He stopped.

“Don’t fear to tell a girl.” Dencey’s voice was low.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“How tall is she?”

“Not tall.”

“Not so big as me?”

“No. She’s not small, neither.”

“Not so big as me,” repeated Dencey. “I’m big. I look most like a man.” Her bitterness hushed them both.

Jerry stirred uneasily. She was giving him something to read, under the bitterness, and the kindness.

He saw her chin against the western luminance. The world was still. Crickets were fingering the harvest strings.

“I’m going to miss you, Jerry. It’s been pleasurable here lately. More pleasurable than I can remember, but I guess you’ll be anxious to get back home.”

“Yes.”

Dencey was still.

“Jerry, hear that bird? What do you name it?”

“It’s a thrush.”

“Thrush. That’s a pretty name. Out here, we call it ‘brown-bird.’ “

“That’s pretty, too, Dencey.”

“I hear it nights this autumn time of year. Did you ever listen to it, Jerry? Didn’t it make you have thoughts in yourself? A kind of pain?”

“No. Not pain.”

“Plain people have got pain more easily, I guess.”

Jerry looked down to the dark trees.

“What do you think about, Jerry?”

“I’m thinking I would get back home inside the month, maybe.”

“And then?” Her voice was resigned now, muted, slow.

“Then I’m building a lock for Caleb out by Cossett’s. Maybe.”

“All alone again?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m going to miss you, Jerry.”

Silence: the tick of insects in the grass; the stars beyond the hill-back; the girl still, her face bent, her hands working.

Jerry sat there, with his thoughts on Mary, fingering grass. The night stirred him, and Dencey’s voice in the sultry hush. He raised his shoulders. Tomorrow he would be going on. He asked her, “Dencey?”

“Yes.” Her hands were quiet and her face was turned. Between them in the little space each heard the other breathing.

“You ain’t told me what your crochet was.”

She laughed; close, hard laughter.

“Just a pretty. Just a private pretty.”

Suddenly she bundled up the work in her hand and rose strongly to her feet.

“Nighttime for sleeping, Jerry.”

He got up with her. They started for the one lighted window of the house. A cowbell clanked.

“What for?”

“Just for myself. A little dainty, Jerry. It gives a girl an ease to make her one.”

“It’s a wonder,” Jerry said. “A crochet in the dark’s a wonder to me.”

“It’s easy enough with practising, Jerry.”

They came to the house. Dencey went to bed. By the light of her own candle she looked down at the hopeless snarl of white cotton thread.

Lock-site

They stood together in the swamp. A haze was low over the grass. October smells of woods fires somewhere made it heavy. The young engineer shook Jerry’s hand.

“When you get started next week, I’ll come along from time to time. But it seems to me you know about as much as I do in this line. I’m just beyond my prentice surveying days myself.”

“I read those plans,” said Jerry. “I’ve got them memorized.”

“None of us know anything about locks or aqueducts. Till Canvass White gets back from England, I guess we’ll have to work them out as we go along. All I can do is see the work is done honestly.”

“You’ve got quite a lot of ground to cover, Mr. Roberts.”

“I don’t have to worry about your and Caleb’s work anyway.”

He looked down at the trodden grass. Split-wands marked off the space for the well. Ninety feet by fifteen. And east and west, ghostly in the haze, the red stakes marked the line.

“It seems funny, doesn’t it? Digging a lock here all by itself. Setting up the gates and all. And no water possible for over a year. But we’ve got to practise.”

“Is there much work back east?”

“I came straight out from Rome, Jerry. Three sections are half dug. It’s awful slow-seeming work. I don’t think us Yankees are much good at shoveling. The English and Irish and even the Dutch dig better. They don’t wear themselves. But one man is using a horse scoop. That’s going to work. And the grubbing goes fast. Getting out the roots. But every time I pass a section it seems so small a way, I feel afraid.”

Jerry nodded.

“If we had machines to get rid of the stumps,” said Roberts. “We can’t afford to blast them. Powder’s high. You never know anyway how it will work on a stump.”

His face, bareheaded, touseled hair, looked boyish.

“I’d like to get back home,” said Jerry.

Roberts gave a sympathetic smile.

“Yes. I don’t wonder. Caleb told me about you. Just married, weren’t you? And he’s had to keep you way out here. He says you’re the only man he has to trust.”

Jerry flushed.

“If you like I’ll go around and see your girl,” said Roberts, “and let her know how you are.”

“I’d like that.”

“I’m coming back in two weeks’ time.”

“I’ll be glad to see you.”

Jerry looked out at the tall lines of grass. Here and there a dead cedar or a small tamarack poked up pathetically.

“I’ve got to stay to weigh the stone.” He looked at the scales beside the space marked off for the lock. Already a tier of stone, grey, squarely cut in eighteen-inch blocks, was piled there like a wall. Behind them a shanty, like all the ones that he and Self had built, raised its new walls in the haze.

They walked round to the shed, where Robert’s little sandy pony dozed under her saddle. Roberts loosened the bridle reins and led her out.

“She’s getting to know the route as well as I do.”

He mounted.

Something he saw in Jerry’s face made him linger.

“Why don’t you bring your wife out here?”

“I’ve been thinking of it. Maybe she could board at Melvilles.”

“I’d do it.”

The pony trotted off.

Dorothy Melville

Dorothy Melville, with her wispy hair knotted tight behind her homely face, greeted them cheerfully.

“I’ve milked early. Dumple didn’t like it. But I wanted supper cooked for you two traveling men and time enough afterwards to get to fixings.”

In the corner of the kitchen was the extra bed, the frame boards leaned against the Melvilles’ own. Jerry took his seat at table and glanced round. This log-house kitchen always made him comfortable.

Like many large women, Dorothy had a leaning to frills. She had frills on the gingham curtains— bird’s-eye blue— and ruffles tacked to the cupboard shelves. Her own bed had a quilt of brilliant patches and a spread in blue and white— a pattern from down south, she said, where she had come from; “Wind in the Valley” was its name. There was an old Welsh dresser to the right of the clay-and-stick fireplace, an open-hearth fireplace with the clay back, and the chimney resting on an over-jut, like a French hood. It had the biggest trammel Jerry had ever seen; and there were copper kettles, many of them, for copper shone like glass in Dorothy’s strong hands. The two wheels stood in the corner with the spinning stools like terriers crouched down on guard. The bark-clad beams that braced the loft bristled like hedgehogs with iron hooks, and the orange pumpkin discs hung up for drying, the hams, the bunches of gathered herbs— colts-foot, wintergreen and senna, camomile, euphorbia, pleurisy and blood roots— all made a spice in the air.

“Set you down, you two travelers, and eat strong, for I’m going to work you after.”

Melville came back from stabling his horse and sat down at the table. The top was made of cherry planks, but rubbed and polished from long use to a mellow shine. The tea was simmering in the black lustre pot. The mush of green corn and milk in the yellow bowls was sweet. The long twist-loaf cut through like silver fluff.

“Do you reckon Mary will keep warm enough up there in winter?”

“Shucks-a-daisy, Bob! Most time she’ll be down here with me. At nights we’ll quilt her up like a March duckling. She’ll nest herself.”

Jerry’s face warmed. Something was tickling his inside at Dorothy’s words. “She’ll nest herself.” It made a picture.

“Look at him, Bob. Poor boy, it’s hard awaiting, ain’t it?”

Jerry nodded. These were like his own people, and tonight it seemed he loved them more.

Dorothy emptied her bowl and leaned against her chair-back. She looked fondly at her husband’s long nose. It always quirked her lips to see it —ever since she could remember.

“Hard awaiting! Honey, don’t I know? Hard for you, Jerry-boy. But harder for a girl. It tickles a girl to have a man await her, but when she is awaiting him, it stretches things inside of her. Especially me, that had my Yes all ready long afore poor Bob had even any idea.”

“You don’t know half of it!” Melville pushed back his bowl, and fished out his tobacco. His eyes were bright. “I was plumb terrified to ask a pretty girl.”

“Oh, lordy! A pretty girl!”

“Still are.” He nodded, tamping down his pipe. “I see with my own eye, Jerry. Can you see it, too?” His large mouth was agrin.

Jerry, looking, could see. For a trace of flutter in her eyelids and a flush in her hard, tanned cheeks still made Dorothy young. She laughed uneasily, within herself.

“To think I got that bed out! Years and years we’ve had it; ain’t we, Bob? I never thought to see it used, when we first come here, with the land so wild. There was a bobcat lingered in the buttonwood to catch our piglets.”

Melville nodded, balancing the hot coal on his pipe.

“He come at night. I placed the moon behind the tree and got him.”

“That ‘stead’s a plain thing, but the cords are easy. And this noon I sorted out the feathering of the bed. It used to be my Uncle Henry’s when he lived in Williamsport. It’ll be warm for Mary— a nest for her and maybe for a little girl, some day. I’d like to live and see that.”

Something passed between the two that Jerry saw was not for him.

They took the bed upstairs and placed it in the loft. Dorothy held the candle to superintend. It was clean, and the smell of herbs rose sweetly. The candle flame was pooled in four glass panes set in the gable end.

“You’ve made a window for her,” Jerry said.

Melville smiled. Dorothy said, “There was a chink. It was as easy to enlarge as stuff it.”

They went down again and sat before the fire. One of the sticks burned bluely.

“Won’t you night it with us?”

“No, thanks,” said Jerry. Speech came hard to him.

Melville nodded.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Since July sixth.”

Dorothy said, “A long time.”

Outside the moon was shining dimly over the marsh mist. Jerry took the new-made track for the new-made shanty.

Mortar

“My name’s Lewis, Hayward Lewis. Pleased to know you, Fowler. I’m masoning this lock. I come around to have a see at this-here stone.”

“That’s all that’s come.”

“There’s time enough to get the rest afore the lock is dug and timber laid. I wanted to see was Cossett cutting it even. It’s good cutting. I didn’t know the old bezabor could so fashion stone.”

“It’s clean,” said Jerry.

“Don’t take any course under nine inches. There’s a weight of water to stand off. But stone has got to be heavier than that to handle frost. Measure it, mister. Measure it every doubtful course, will you?”

“I’ve got my eye on it.”

“You don’t have to take what’s thin. Do you know what the boring brought up?”

“Hard pan at eighteen feet.”

Lewis, a grey man, bent-backed, sat down on some of the new timbers.

“They haven’t bored for the wood foundation, then. I hope you don’t strike nothing underneath. These are flaw-free-looking beams.”

He folded his hands upon a knee.

“I’m troubled over mortar. English plaster costs too high. And quick-lime mortar ain’t designed for water. It won’t hard itself except when dry, and there’ll be leaching in this swamp.”

“Ain’t they trying something new in Utica?”

The mason nodded.

“I’ve heard tell Canvass White’s got hold of something back in New Hartford. They’re trying it out in a cistern there. But he ain’t no mason. I won’t trust it till I’ve got my own trowel into it. And anyway I don’t believe we’ll get it in time for this-here lock.”

He leaned back, rocking himself.

“I don’t know much about canals; but laying stone is something I can do. There ain’t anything to beat finishing a job of laid stone. It’s a thing a man can see and put his hand against and think it’s going to last a time. Most of any job, it depends on the commencement. You lay me square foundations, boy, and I’ll lay you up two walls that won’t come down like Jericho’s.”

He stared away across the swamp. A hawk, swinging low, pounced and came up with something furry. He lit on a dead cedar to open up his catch.