The Outcasts (6 page)

Still they rose, and soon the road curved gently, and curved again, and again and again in a soothing alternation. Before them were green hills, with nests of purple shade, and reddish outcroppings, and soon they were rising again. Then he saw the carrion crows, fifteen or twenty of them, high and circling, remote and patient. He had missed them. They were good company.

At first he saw only one man, just this side of a bend. For three hours he had seen no human being: this was the first. The man was still, leaning on a tamp. He was tall, black, thin, barefoot, in a pair of tattered pants, and weary; he raised the tamp in salute, as if witnessing man's bondage to tools and to work, as if he ate nor slept nor loved, lived nor died, but only tamped. As they rumbled by, Philips waved, and the man waved back, and Morrison saw that he had lost one eye.

Then Philips pressed the horn, one long blast, and they were home, sweeping around the last bend. The crew was startled into a Greek immobility, and stood like a frieze in the spanking sunlight: the digger, the chopper, the sifter, the tamper, the pounder, the roller, shovel and basket, pick and barrow, tall men and round, clothed men and naked, hats and caps and one beret and one scarlet fez.

Then they moved, downed tools and swarmed toward the car, and Morrison saw the roadbed beyond them, the wide swath through trees and grass, still rising pale and dusty, steeper here; and closer he saw three small trailers and a steamshovel and a steamroller and a back-hoe, all off the road and in the shade, and three ancient trucks powdered and gray. And a donkey and chickens and a grinning brown dog. And a blue butterfly darting.

He stepped out of the Land-Rover and stretched beneath the molten sun, and was happier than he had ever been before.

“This is Ramesh,” Philips said. “Mister Bernard Morrison.”

Ramesh was surely sixty, slight and wiry, barefoot. His khaki shirt was fresh and carefully buttoned, which marked him, Morrison supposed, as foreman. That, and the great silvery wrist-watch with its complication of dials and sweeps. Ramesh had a large nose and large ears, sleepy liquid brown eyes and long black hair salted gray. He was a shade less dark than Philips. Palms together, he bowed, and then held forth his right hand. “Mister Morrison,” he said softly. “Welcome to the works. I hope you have approved of the road.” His voice was like his eyes, deep and liquid and sleepy.

“I have. The men must have worked well.”

“Yes. It took almost two years.” His tone was judicious, as though he were considering for the first time the quality of his men's work. “Mister Van Alstyne left them to me, you see. We lost only one. He fell off the lorry on a Saturday night, going to the capital, and broke his head. They work well because the job here is a good one to have. There are many unemployed, as you know.”

“Yes.”

“That is because the big city attracts so many, but we have no money for capital expenditures, for great projects. Yet no one now wishes to farm. Only my own people, who are more industrious than most. The sense of exile, you understand. In the big city there is not sufficient work, and most of the newcomers become a burden to their relatives, who cannot turn them away. We have great troubles, as you know.”

“Mister Morrison needs rest,” Philips said lightly. “I think you can tell him later about our history and geography and economics.”

“Yes, yes. You must forgive me.” They walked toward the trailers. The crew had been shown their new boss, and nodded and waved now and melted into the shade. The man in the scarlet fez, a giant, stood longer than the others and stared at Morrison.

“Where do they sleep?”

Ramesh waved carelessly. “Back under the trees we have hammocks. Also the cooking truck. Are you hungry?”

“No. Thirsty.”

“Ah, yes. Here we are. This is your home and office, Mister Morrison.”

At first he could see nothing; after the glare of the road his home-and-office was a lightless cave. Then he made out a bed, cabinets, a hinged desk-top. “Fine. Hot, though.”

“Yes,” Philips said. “An oven, I am afraid.”

“Damn and blahst,” Ramesh said in obvious excitement. “Wait,” and left them.

“I hope I can sleep in this thing. Let's get out.”

“Yes. By noontime the temperature will rise to about one hundred and ten degrees.”

Morrison grimaced. “Is there a stream?”

“A quarter-mile off. Down that slope.”

“Good. We can wallow.”

“Yes. We all do. Um: I have a suggestion.” Philips scratched his head, smiling, promising mischief.

“Make it.”

“Would you like a bottle of beer?”

“Yes.”

“Four hours ago you took the pledge.”

“Beer is medicine. Where do you keep it?”

“Well, we have a generator. So we have a small fridge.”

Ramesh scuttled up. “Here you are, sir. Welcome.” He handed Morrison a broad straw fan with a three-inch fringe of whiskers. Horsehair. “The fan will cool you. The hairs are to whisk flies. Welcome, welcome.” He stepped back and made a leg like the Lord Mayor of London.

“The flies can be bad,” Philips said. “We call them lion flies. They raise great welts that itch fiercely. We also have insect repellent.”

“Do they …” Morrison hesitated, and then met his eye: “Do they bother everybody?”

“They bother all men alike,” Philips said coldly.

Ramesh seemed puzzled.

“Time for a beer,” Morrison said.

“Two a day, only,” Philips said.

“All men alike?”

“No,” Philips said flatly. “Officers only.”

Morrison smiled at him, and Philips looked away.

When the sun was high and cruel, the crew surrendered. They came in a slow snickering hubbub and stacked their tools, and drifted into the dark woods, their voices velvety. The dog, the donkey, and several chickens shared torpid peace in one patch of shade; the chickens twitched uneasily, staring out at the ring of brightness. Morrison yawned and stretched. “Why don't these animals go to the water?”

“Because they are fed here,” Philips said. “No need to have them dunging along the banks. The dogs and donkey go by themselves to drink, and always come back to this spot. What the chickens do I am not sure. They seem to be teetotalers.”

“Do they lay eggs?”

“Of course. One egg per man every third day. Small eggs.”

“And nothing comes to kill them.” He was fighting to keep awake.

“Not so far. Not here. Back in the lowlands we kept no chickens because there are mongooses. Chiefly in the sugar cane but also in the bush. But not here.”

“Mongooses.” That pleased him. “What about snakes? And what about the big cats?”

Philips dismissed his exotic fantasies. “No. Here and there a viper, more afraid of you than you are of him. Though they can kill. Constrictors taste like chicken, by the way. And back where the forest and the savanna meet there are a few cats. They eat the wild pigs and the dwarf deer. But here it is too open. They are not like those haughty African lions you read about; no, these are something else. They live in pairs and not in prides. They are mangy and sullen and keep to themselves. At any rate they never come here. And see who is lecturing on the fauna.” With a droll face. “Former egg-thief. Now professional man and city-dweller.”

“Do you keep arms here?” The men had scattered down many faint tracks through the forest; they followed along. Hammocks hung limp among the trees. The beer had lulled Morrison and last night was remote. The crowded city and the foolish arguments were remote. Philips and he stepped slowly; even in shadow the heat was thick and sticky.

“A couple of rifles and a revolver. So far not used. I suppose a cat might come. An old one, an outcast.”

“I thought you might hunt your own meat.” A tangle of roots thick as your arm. Then a clearing of dry yellow grass crackling underfoot, and the sun like a hammer.

“No. If something came along I suppose we would shoot it. But nothing comes along. Animals do not like men. And we have no time to go chasing them.”

There was the water, a friendly and easygoing river, light green with scales of gold. Dappled and spangled, purling and licking. Twenty feet wide, and gliding sixty or seventy feet from one bend to another. Its banks were overgrown by heavy brush, leafy and dense like stunted alders, shady. In a copse on the near bank stood a half-ton truck, and beside it a grill about six feet square. “You burn wood.”

Philips laughed, short, scornful: “No. Gas. From a tank on the lorry there. All very civilized. But at midday we eat cold meat and biscuits. The stream is clean, by the way. Potable. Go downstream to relieve yourself.”

Which some of the men were doing. Most were sitting along the banks waist-deep. Some were naked, some in shorts. There was the one in his red fez, a huge man and wearing only the fez. Morrison trailed after Philips to the cold grill and took up a tin mess kit. Ramesh bowed like a head waiter and indicated a small vat. Morrison spooned cold lamb and took biscuits from a tall can. Sweat ran down his arms. “Breakfast is the best,” Ramesh fluttered. “Hot meat and good coffee, made by me, the best, and sometimes cold tomatoes from a tin. In a week you will hate the food. Oh yes. If not sooner. We all do.” Cheerfully.

Philips and Morrison sat upon the ground. Ramesh joined them and was silent. They were in shade but the air was like wool. Breathing was not easy, and the food was dry and tasteless. Morrison went to the stream and drank from cupped hands. The men were lined beneath the banks now like a guard of honor, dull of eye and inert, save a few cleaning their kits with mud. A very young fellow collected the kits and carried them to the truck, making many trips and glancing skittishly at Morrison as he passed. “That is Jacob,” Ramesh said softly. Jacob wore khaki shorts and a cloth cap like the homespun caps of India. He was black, and gleamed. He waited at the truck, and when the three men had eaten he took their kits. Philips led Morrison to the stream and they stripped and stepped into the cool water, and then to a small cove where half a dozen fat rocks, stippled gray and white, broke the surface. There they sat, and leaned back against the rocks, and were cool and sleepy. The stream lapped at Morrison's belly. High above, the carrion crows planed, and the sun flashed off their white faces. “No one talks,” Morrison said.

“About what?” Philips spoke lazily and wanted no answer. Morrison rolled forward, went under, and swam a few strokes.

“Lord Greystoke,” Philips said.

“Who?”

“Tarzan.”

Morrison laughed and sat back. A blue butterfly, and then another, piercing, luminescent blue, skittered along the glinting waters. Morrison drank again; the water was sweet, and warm to the mouth, but a blessing on the skin.

After a time he was restless. “I'm going on up.”

“What for?”

“I don't know. Look around. Guard the trucks.”

Philips smiled sleepily. “There is no one. For miles and miles.”

“It's too new. I can't sit still.”

“All right. While I think of it, if you are ever lost, move east. Sooner or later you will find this stream.”

“It's only a quarter of a mile.”

“Now or later,” Philips said.

Morrison's kingdom. A harsh, bare, flat, dusty roadbed, and the slopes beyond, and the rash of termite hills. Patches of dry, leafy forest, black and silver and a haze of dark green. Three trailers, six trucks in all, the bulldozer, the roller. The machinery was clean and well greased. Drums of petrol. Three days, and he thought of it as petrol. Lookoe joe oilie nanda watra. Spark plugs. Filters. Dynamite. The generator, silent on a caisson; wires. Power. A surveyor's rod.

A junkyard. Plus men, equaled miles of road. Where nothing had been.

He walked out upon the crushed rock; then slower, as the heat bore him down; then stood, bathed in gold. Alone. Above him the sun, and below him his own road. The silence of noon.

A king. A silly man in a silly purple hat.

First man back was the big fellow with the red fez. By then Morrison was sitting sensibly in the doorway of his trailer, and fanning. Shorts and sandals and a fan, and the flies be damned. Welts. The big man came quietly up one of the faint tracks, and the first Morrison knew of him was a barrel voice intoning, “Hello, new boss.”

Morrison stilled the fan. “Hello. What are you called?”

“Tall Boy,” he said. He was that. Six feet six inches and an eighth of a ton. An open and amiable face, roundish, and the fez sitting cocky and scarlet.

“They call me Morrison.”

Tall Boy nodded as though this was important information. It might be just that. In some parts of the world names were of the first importance.

“What work do you do?”

Tall Boy squatted on his heels. “I move the earth.”

He could have, too. Archimedes: give me a Tall Boy tall enough.

“Any machine you have, I can run.” It rolled out of him like poetry:
an
-y
mah
-shin
you
-hov
I
-con
rawn
.

“Then you're the craneman.”

“Oh yes. I run the cranes too.”

“I heard you were the best craneman in the country.”

A grin. “You heard that.”

“Yes.”

“That is true. I know where you heard that, and it is true.”

“Good. You know we will have a new crane. The biggest and best. Fifty tons, and with a boom that we can run out about a hundred and fifty feet.”

“Ah.” He gleamed.

“With a full-circle swing. And it can lift thirty-three thousand pounds if it has to.”

“Ooo.” Moon-eyed.

“You and I and Philips will get to know it before we put it to work. It costs a hundred thousand dollars, and it's all yours.”

“Lord Jesus,” he said. He was a big man and the crane was right for him. A jockey could operate it, but Tall Boy and the crane would be a love affair. He seemed to speak with great solemnity, but perhaps it was only the deep voice. “I saw a picture of the bridge. Philips told me about the work.”