3stalwarts (153 page)

After dinner, when they had gone into his library, a maid brought brandy in a small glass bottle. Borden explained that it was old French his father had brought back from Quebec, when he was a prisoner there (“Seigneur’s Brandy”). And only then did he ask about the progress on the lock.

“My job’s done except for the gates,” Jerry said. “Your mason’s putting in the tiers.”

“That’s fine. I knew when I laid eyes on you that you would do the trick.”

“I’ve had experience by now.”

The firelight beat on the still, pale face of Dancer Borden like small hands. His profile, turned to Jerry, offered clear-cut lines. His dark eyes had grown velvety, woman-like, Jerry thought. Though here was no woman-like creature; but a man who could mark his buck at forty paces from a galloping horse.

The brandy grew in Jerry, blossomed inward, and turned his thoughts from digging. Through the curtained windows, where the night was still and cool and clean on the neat lawn, he looked back to Montezuma. Mary would be in her cabin. She seemed happier now. It was a counterfeit of the small home she hungered after. She would have put the baby to bed by this time, and would be spinning, maybe, or sewing at his worn-out clothes, or making herself a dress out of the stuff they had bought together at the store. This summer she had worked a little garden patch. She had had daffodils in spring, and planted rhubarb. She moved about her daily round with a placidity that sometimes Jerry longed to break, but could not move against.

And all at once he tried to think why this strange gentleman had invited him to dinner; for he had caught some of the same restlessness, half reckless, and half bitter, like a distillation from all these beautiful luxuries. But when Jerry looked up to meet the dark, cool eyes, Dancer Borden laughed. “Go lightly,” his laughter seemed to say. “Look about you, see, and have. But do go lightly.”

“I was thinking,” Dancer Borden said, “that we’ve been digging through that swamp for twenty months. And there hasn’t been any real progress. One Galen and three Mentz contractors have been broken by it. What was done was done in winter. It’s not the men’s fault. They’re pretty faithful, but the fever weakens them. Poor devils.” He laughed lightly. “I suppose I’m a fool, but I’ve taken up the contracts.”

Jerry stared.

“I see you agree, Fowler. But you know the marsh involves just one thing. That’s human toughness. Now they’ve tried our local peasantry that ought to be inured to ague and the intermittent fever. They went down south for Pennsylvania Dutch, strong shovelers, but the fever poleaxed them. Just about every race under the sun was tried except the yellow men from China— where that table came from that you were admiring, by the way. Then I got interested. My own niggers have kept healthy. So I sent down into Virginia for a hundred negroes. I bought them. When they got up here I set them free under the recent act, but put them under contract to work for me two years. They still work like slaves under that big buck, Jay-Jay. You’ve seen him. The fellow with the earrings. But they’re chilled; they can’t stand that wet muck. It seeps right through their black hides.”

He made a little gesture with his hand.

“Two months ago when I was in Albany I fell to talking with a sailing master. I put the problem up to him. And he said right away there was one race to dig it— the Irish bog-trotters. I commissioned him to get a shipload of them. They ought to land at Hudson before long. We’ll have them here next month.”

Jerry said nothing. He wondered vaguely what a bog-trotter would look like; but he felt no interest. The brandy blurred his senses, and Dancer Borden’s face hung like a medallion beyond his mazy stream of thought… .

Rough-and-Tumble

“She’s done,” said Piute. Nodding his head, Cosmo Turbe swung a gate back and forth. Jerry looked out over the marsh. Work was where it had been, for all that an eye could see. The cook came forth from the first barrack to clang his gong for supper. The three lock builders gathered their tools.

“Cosmo,” said Piute, “she’s done, and me, I’m going to get drunk.”

The little man examined his partner, with popping eyes.

“How about it, Cosmo? How do you feel?”

“Real active, Piute.”

They trudged together up the hill, along the Canal Boulevard of Linas Barley’s Independenceville. Jerry remained to pack his chest. He heard the dinner bell ringing in the tavern. A fine rain was sifting through the dusk.

As he walked up the hill, half an hour later, he saw a group on the tavern porch. Old Linas Barley in his tricorn hat stood right between two men, like a master at a ceremonial.

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.