3stalwarts (90 page)

“Hey there, you!”

A big man stood in bare feet on the deck of the old brown boat in the early dawn and stared at Dan.

Dan’s fingers caught at the planks, and he hitched himself forward, and then lay still.

“Well,” said the boater. “That’s a good thing. He ain’t dead. Hey there, you!”

Dan lifted his head and stared sleepily.

“Hey there! Wake up! What’s the matter?”

Dan rolled over and sat up and then suddenly caught hold of his head.

“What’s the matter?”

Dan groaned.

“I guess I got hit on the head.”

“Well, there’s worse places to get hit.”

“I must’ve got drunk last night.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. I did myself.”

“I feel sick.”

“Go put your head in the canal.”

“No,” Dan said. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Well, it’s a good thing to do.”

Dan let go of his head, shook it once or twice, and looked round.

“Feel better?”

“Yeanh.”

It had fallen cool during the night. The dawn wind was lean and fresh. Dan climbed awkwardly to his feet. An idea occurred to him. He felt in his pockets.

“Jeepers,” he said. “Jeepers Cripus!”

“Cleaned out, eh?”

“Yeanh.”

“You showed the signs.”

The boater fished in his pockets.

“Have a chaw?”

“No. I don’t want it.”

“Well, I find it’s good like this. Gives a man to set his teeth again.” He bit off a chew, got his jaw going, spat onto the dock. “Well, now you’re down to hardpan, what you going to do? Got a job?”

“No.”

“Want to hire on to my boat?”

“Maybe.”

“Regular wages. Twelve dollars.”

“All right. I guess I will.”

“She’s old, but she’s a good boat. I got the best cook on the canal down in the cabin. I’m pulling right out,” said the boater. “I’ve three pair of millstones and mill machinery for Butterfield to Rome, and I’ve got to get ‘em through quick. Cholera or no cholera. I never was scared of no disease. What’s your name?”

“Dan Harrow.”

“Me, I’m Samson Weaver,” the boater said, and held out his hand. “Come aboard. We’d ought to make good time. There won’t be many boats till the scare’s gone. We ought to get through quick. I ain’t scared of cholera.”

He turned to the cabin door.

“Annie!” he bellowed. “Hey there! Annie!”

There was no answer.

“Hey, there! Annie! Wake up.”

“She’s a good cook, but she does sleep hard,” Weaver said to Dan. “I’ll have to shake her out.”

He clattered down the steps shouting, “Annie! Hey, there!”

Dan heard him stamp back to the bunks. Then Weaver swore.

“She’s cleared out. She’s cleared out clean. Run a regular rig on me. I didn’t notice last night, coming aboard drunk like I was. And I got right out this morning without looking. Well, we’ll have to get along without no cook. Come on down.”

The cabin was large for an ordinary freighter; it was nicely fitted out with two comfortable rocking-chairs and an almost new stove, well blacked. Weaver was slamming wood into the stove when Dan entered.

“The old puddery punk!” he growled. “Well, she stocked up anyhow yesterday.”

He poured a handful of coffee into the kettle and put the frying pan over to heat, and cut bacon. The fire caught with a roar and snapped briskly. A bit of sunlight found a bright nasturtium on the wallpaper. Weaver bent over to pull on a pair of socks.

“What do you know about that!” he exclaimed. “She went and darned my sock afore she left!”

He stared at it in wonder, rubbing the back of his head.

“Maybe she was scared of the cholera,” Dan suggested.

“The hell she was. I seen she’d took a notion to a tug captain on the Swiftsure. But I never thought to beat it out of her. Well, women are kind of like that. They’ll fool you every chance they get, and if you catch ‘em, why, gol! they’ll fool you into thinking they wasn’t fooling.”

He laced his boots and went back to his cooking.

“Got any bag?” he asked.

“Yeanh. I left it at the Michigan Six Day offices.”

“Well, we can pick it up when we go by. I’m posting through to Utica on their line this time. My team needs a rest, anyway. And I can make quicker time that way. The haul on to Rome won’t take no time.”

He broke two eggs into the pan and slammed the shells into the coffee kettle.

“She made the best coffee I ever got into my mouth,” he said.

In a few minutes they sat down to their breakfast at the table hinged against the wall, with the smell of coffee and bacon filling the cabin, and the sunlight finding another window.

“Listen,” said Weaver.

Dan held his cup against his mouth.

“Ain’t hardly a sound,” Weaver said. “There won’t be such a lot of boats pulling out to-day. They’re scared. It’s funny how people’ll think they’re better off with a few boards round ‘em, hiding the sky. Me, I never was scared of cholera or any damn disease; but I wouldn’t want to wait for it to come in a door.”

He ate and drank hurriedly. And every now and then he lifted his head, as if he were listening, his square red face, with its night’s stubble, hard.

But when they got up to do the dishes his mind came back to the cook.

“If I had the time, I’d go after her,” said Weaver. “But she’s probably laying low. The Sarsey Sal was a fine boat with Annie on to it.”

When he went on deck, Dan recognized other boats; and he realized that Weaver was the man he had overheard Henderson talking to, and that the absent Annie must be the Irishwoman who had been washing clothes on the deck and who had wished for a house and a man to come in for his dinner; and, glancing at Weaver’s back and sturdy shoulders, all at once Dan felt sorry for him.

The Burning Boat

At the Troy relay on the Michigan Six Day, they had trouble in getting a driver to take them up to the next change. But Weaver had paid for through horse-and-driver service, and he insisted loudly that he get the full service or have his money back.

He pulled a paper from his pocket and waved it an inch from the man’s nose.

“Here’s the bill— horse-and-driver service through to Utica. Where’s the clerk?”

“I act as such,” said the hostler. “There ain’t a driver here’ll go. Wait a minute, though.” He turned and shouted a question into the barn. A voice whined back at him. “Roy’s upstairs. Roy’s in liquor. He might go if you was to offer him an extra dollar.”

“Call him down.”

“Roy!” yelled the hostler. “Hey, Roy!”

After a minute a seedy individual, wearing a hat which had lost its crown, appeared in the door, and languidly leaned against it.

“Roy,” said the hostler. “This feller wants to go on up. You drive him?”

“Cholera?” asked Roy in a faint voice.

“There ain’t much chance,” said the hostler. “He’s going to give you a dollar extry.”

Roy took off his hat and looked into it, as if he used it to keep his thoughts in. Then he spat through the hole.

“A dollar don’t show up every day,” he said in his thin lazy voice. “So I got to feel it in my pants pocket first.”

Weaver snorted.

“That’s a hell of a notion. Why, how do I know you can walk that far?”

Roy lifted his eyes mournfully at him, then pointed to the waiting team.

“The off mule’s got a tail, ain’t she?”

“Yeanh.”

“I can hold on to it, can’t I?”

“Yeanh. I guess you can do that.”

“All right.” He reached in the door for his snake whip. “Where’s the dollar, mister?”

Weaver gave it to him.

“We make good time with Roy driving,” said Roy. “A mule can stand to be licked, but she can’t stand to have a man pinching her tail.”

Weaver jumped aboard and Dan heaved in the plank.

“You steer first lick,” Weaver said to him. “I’ve got to find where things are. A woman keeps a boat looking neat, but they haven’t no sense at all where they put things. A man can’t hardly find a thing where a neat woman lives.”

He went below, and from time to time as they went on Dan could hear him grumbling to himself.

The boat hauled heavily. But the mules kept up a fair pace, and the walking seemed to be having a good effect on the driver. After the first two miles he was able to get along without holding to the mule’s tail; and the animal showed her pleasure by switching it for several minutes with extraordinary rapidity and complication.

At the combines, Weaver came up again.

“Where’s the boat?” he asked the lock-keeper.

“Which one?” said the keeper.

“The cholera one.”

“Oh. Why, it’s half a mile up on the left. You know the Wat cove, set back, where the towpath crosses on a bridge. They took up the bridge and drawed it into there. The doctor said it was best off the canal.”

“Disease ain’t a thing to be scared of,” Samson remarked after a time. “I never had no notions about disease.”

“No sense in it.”

“No sense at all. Annie used to laugh at it.”

“Sure,” said Dan.

“I had a cold once into my chest. Regular constricter, but she minded me real handy. She was a queer gal some ways. Knowed a lot. Used to say she thought the Lord loved a drunken man. She said a drunken man never died of no disease. Maybe that’s why Roy come along— maybe he knew that.”

“Maybe.”

“I just had me a good stiff ration of rum. Figure the cholera won’t touch a man that’s well washed up with liquor.”

“Yeanh. I’ve heard that.”

“You better go down and get a drink, Dan.”

“Guess I won’t just yet. I guess I’ll hold off it for a day.”

“All right. We ought to be coming up to Wat’s cove pretty quick.”

They rounded a bend.

“There it is,” exclaimed Weaver. “Right there where them people are standing on the bridge. You can see the boat over against them balsams, right there where that cloud shows in the water, see? What in nation are they a-doing?”

“Seems like that man was setting fire to it,” Dan said.

“That’s right, that’s right. Setting fire to it. Good idee. He’s got some rags he’s putting a light to. Oiled rags by that yeller smoke. They’ve soaked the deck. See it ketch, Dan?”

A queer, white-faced silence hung over the little group of four men on the towpath as their companion jumped into a rowboat and pushed away. Their eyes followed the heavy smoke upward. Blue-and-yellow flame licked delicately at the planking, ate in, and then caught hotly.

“Hey there!” Weaver yelled at the driver. “What’re you stopping for? Lay into them mules there! We’ve got to get on.”

The men on the towpath paid no heed to the passing boat.

“See them three boxes?” Weaver caught Dan’s elbow. “Reckon they’re burning ‘em right on the boat. Ain’t that an awful way to have to be buried?”

Another bend; but they could see the flames spouting up against sombre dark balsams. A little farther, and they saw only the smoke mounting up, a bright cinder or two in the midst of it.

“Gol,” said Weaver gustily. “Gol, Dan. I’m going to get me another drink.”

Poor Samson Weaver

All during the day Samson continued to drink. He would come on deck red-faced and sweaty and bothered with a new worry.

“Dan, I’ve drank down a terrible lot,” he would say. “I’ve drank more’n a man can to keep sober. But it don’t do a thing outside of making me sweat. It ain’t right, Dan.”

At night Dan could hear him tossing in his bunk. Once he lay still for quite a while, talking to himself, telling Annie about the burning boat. Two things kept eating at him, his fear of the cholera and his lonesomeness. When the cook left, the Sarsey Sal had become a strange boat to him. His continual drinking made even the familiar sights beyond the towpath vague and unreal. Quite suddenly his thoughts had been turned in upon himself, unnerving him.

Halfway through his third turn at steering, he stamped for Dan to come up. His eyes shone feverishly.

“What’s the trouble?” Dan asked.

Weaver passed his left hand over his eyes and down his nose.

“Dan,” he said, “I like you. That’s a fact. There’s something wrong with me, Dan. I’m kind of nervous. It ain’t like I was scared of being sick. I ain’t never been sick, only for that chest-cold I told you about. But it don’t seem like I see very good.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

“Set down, set down,” Weaver said irritably. “With you standing up there cutting into my sight, I get nervous— Dan, I wanted to speak to you. I aim to raise your pay, Dan. You’re a good lad. You and me ought to get along good. You’re satisfied, ain’t you?”

“Sure.”

Weaver let out a long breath.

“That’s good. Just the same I aim to raise your pay. You’re doing a steersman’s work. I’ll give you twenty a month, for this trip, anyhow. Only I got to get you to spell me more. I don’t breathe very easy, Dan. If Annie hadn’t ‘ve cut along like she did, she could spell you.”

“Surely, that’s all right, Mister Weaver.”

“Just Samson, Dan. Just Samson, to my friends. Plain Samson Weaver. You don’t mind taking on for a spell now, do you, Dan?”

“No,” said Dan. “I don’t mind any.”

“All right. I’ll go get some sleep.”

It was a still night, cold, close to freezing. The stars were mere glittering points. The moon had not yet risen.

The old Sarsey Sal stretched out ahead of Dan in the light of the night lantern, blunt-ended, moving beside the towpath with a faint sibilant whisper against the water. The thin thread of the towline curved on ahead to the mules, plodding patiently with nodding ears, now and then visible over the skyline. A little way behind them walked the driver, his hands in his pockets.

Dan did not call Samson till the sun was up. He was no better; his hands were getting jumpy.

“I dreamed,” he said. “I didn’t get no sleep at all. Things kept coming in the door.”

Dan went forward to tend the team, a thin pair of bays. They were enjoying their vacation and they nuzzled at Dan’s hands. He slapped them hearty whacks, and swore at them, though they made all kinds of room for him as he took in their oats. It was good to feel them under his hand, to shove them over with his shoulder when he cleaned the stalls.