3stalwarts

by Unknown

  The weather continued warm and dry. Working on a roof, Jerry could see out over the town to the fields that were becoming green. A haze hung over the valley. Under it the travel of the road was indistinct. At times a fierce impatience uprose in him.

  After work hours, he hitched Bourbon to the rig to exercise him, and he and Mary took long drives together. They would head out with a supper in a bag and sometimes cover fifteen miles. Mary was quiet on these drives, as she was always, watching the land, admiring Bourbon when Jerry called her attention to the horse. She seemed in her placid way to have accepted her new life. Her eyes had completely lost their look of fear, and Jerry had less and less often that memory of her standing among the other redemptioners on the sloop deck by the Greenbush Ferry dock.

  Sometimes they took the Charleys with them— Bourbon made nothing of the extra load— and Mrs. Charley would dress herself in her Sunday clothes, regardless of the appearance her family made at her back. Mr. Charley would direct them out to Clinton to examine the college, or they would drive out to Paris Hill, where a few carrier pigeons still nested, and Mr. Charley would tell about the great flocks he could remember as a boy.

  An era of prosperity had started for the Charleys. Mrs. Charley was getting a reputation for washing linen. Jerry had erected new poles for her in the yard. Once he had remonstrated with Mary for helping her, but Mary said that she needed something to occupy her and she only helped occasionally.

  July came hot, and on the evening of the third, Hammil, who had returned the week before, said, “We’re going out to Rome tomorrow morning— making an early start, Jerry. I want you to hitch Bourbon up at two o’clock.”

  “That’s Clinton’

  Jerry had borrowed a clock from Mr. Charley, a queer little brass affair with a noisy tick, and placed it on a chair beside the bed. He had left the glass open so that he could feel of the hands in the darkness. And now when he woke again and touched them the minute hand pointed to six, and the hour hand was a little way off twelve. He lifted the bedding to slide out; and, from the dark, Mary whispered, “Is it time?”

  “It’s thirty minutes after one,” he whispered back.

  She slid out on the other side like a conspirator to help him dress. She had pressed out his homespun coat after supper and washed and ironed his best shirt. The little Charley boys had stood around to watch him oil his boots. Fine people, the papers said, were going to attend the breaking ground of Mr. Clinton’s Canal. It would be a ceremony with cannon and speech-making; all the northern country would turn out. Jerry had gone down to Samuel Stocking’s in the afternoon to buy himself a hat— six shillings, a dark-grey felt, flat-crowned. It hung on the back of his chair where all the family could admire it.

  Mr. Charley had drunk his beer and read out excerpts from the paper. In its last two numbers the Columbian Gazette had given considerable notice to the canal project, and people in Utica had begun to talk about the possible effect of a canal on the town, should such a canal ever be completed.

  “Mr. Clinton is going to make a speech, and maybe Simeon DeWitt. A regular party, by the sound of it.”

  And Mrs. Charley had sniffed a little as she said, “If you was half a man you’d be there, too.”

  “Nobody asked me, my dear,” said Mr. Charley calmly. “And any-way I never did like the noise of cannon… .”

  Jerry felt a shiver as he put his shirt over his head.

  “It’s cold, Mary,” he whispered. “You’d better get back to bed.”

  She was standing in her nightgown, barefooted, holding out his coat.

  “I’m not cold.”

  He held back his arms for the sleeves and she drew the coat onto his shoulders. He took his hat from the bedpost and put it on and looked a moment at the white blur of her face. In the window beyond, the stars were dim.

  “Good-bye.”

  He kissed her and left her standing there. The ladder steps creaked under his weight. No sound came from Mr. Charley’s room, but one of the boys was snoring in his sleep.

  Outside the door, Jerry took a deep breath. The town was absolutely still. He began to run, keeping to the road, to. deaden the thud of his boots.

  Bourbon scrambled up as he opened the stable door. He blew a shuddering blast to open his nostrils. Jerry’s hands trembled in buckling the bridle latch. As he led the horse into the yard, Hammil’s back door opened and the fat contractor sneaked out.

  “Shhh! Mabel’s sleeping sound. How be you, Jerry?”

  The wagon squeaked as he climbed over the wheel. Neither of them spoke until they had turned into Genesee Street.

  The windows of Bagg’s Hotel were dark. In the faint light the high brick walls were insubstantial. Out across the river, mist covered the alders, and the causeway seemed to float upon it. Somewhere underneath, a cow was floundering in swampy ground.

  Caleb still whispered.

  “It’s going to be fine, praise glory!”

  He was rubbing his hands together. Jerry shortened the left rein and turned the horse into Whitesboro Street.

  “Unloosen him,” cried Hammil. “We’re late, Jerry. Let’s see what he can do! By daggit, I’m notioned now to see him race!”

  The sound of his voice set the cob flying. In a moment they had whirled by Jones’s smithy, with its old hoof smell strong in the dewy air, and were heading for the open country just ahead.

  “Do you feel kind of queer, Jerry?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Me, too. It’s starting things for us.”

  “Yes.”

  Jerry found it hard to speak. For a moment they were both absorbed in the hard dry thuds of Bourbon’s slashing hoofs and the rattle of the spinning wheels.

  “It’s fifteen miles,” said Hammil. “Do you reckon we’ve allowed time enough?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ve got to get there. Sunrise is a queer time. More special if a man has got to travel to it. Me, I’ve got to stand alongside Esquire Forman— right in back of Mr. Clinton!”

  Bourbon had laid himself down in his trot. The hind wheels of the wagon were weaving slightly on the road-crown. It seemed strange to Jerry that there were not more rigs on the road.

  Their flying passage reechoed from the Court House wall in Whitesboro; in a flash the village lay behind; and they were out again in farming land with the mist over the flat valley rolling uneasily above the fences.

  All of a sudden, Hammil cheered up. He began to laugh over nothing at all, that Jerry could see.

  “By daggit, Jerry, it’s like going to a party. It makes me feel like a young lad sparking… .”

  He leaned out to peer along the horse’s side.

  “Ain’t that a couple of rigs up there, Jerry? I seen a tailboard just skittle round that bend.”

  Ahead of them as they took the bend in their turn, a couple of wagons were scudding through the duskiness. Bourbon pricked his ears and laid himself down. Foot by foot he gained. Hammil roared with laughter.

  “It’s the Bagg boys racing Dr. Sweet.”

  Jerry saw them now.

  “Every time those rascals get a new horse off their pa they lay around to race the doctor. They’ve never beat him yet. Nor will they while he drives them chestnuts.”

  The Bagg boys were driving a pure-white stallion with a long, combed mane. Jerry saw them draw abreast, but the doctor was coolly holding his course just off the middle of the road and the boys lost nerve.

  “He ain’t put on real steam,” said Hammil. “Jerry, do you dasst race the doctor?”

  “Sure.”

  Jerry felt his heart beat time to Bourbon’s hoofs.

  “He gives a man fair road room, but not an inch extry,” Hammil said. “Bourbon ain’t a sprinter, you say, but what can he do in five miles?”

  “Let’s try it out!” cried Jerry.

  “I’ve got money on it then,” bellowed Hammil. “Bring me up in hearing distance.”

  Jerry did not speak to Bourbon. There was no need. Somethi
ng had infected the cob that morning. He was really racing. No flash of blinding speed, but little by little he was adding to his stride. It was still dark. An angry dog barked at their passing. As Jerry let the reins creep in his fingers, he felt the dew in his face and a rising breath of wind.

  He lifted the whip from the socket and just touched Bourbon’s flank. And Bourbon understood. His head dropped a trifle. There was no visible addition to his effort, but the wheels began whining in their boxes.

  “I didn’t think a horse of his build could do this,” shouted Hammil. “Boy! Did I do a deal on him?”

  Bourbon’s head and tail were joined by his back in a straight line. He began to rock a little to his stride. He went up and up; and the wind thrust against Jerry’s teeth, and all at once he noticed that Hammil was holding on with his hands between his legs, standing in an effort to spring his weight from dead to live by the bend of his knees. The rig seemed stationary now, and the road a streaming ribbon, ash-grey in the dusk. Then the Bagg boys became aware of them— but it was too late. Jerry had stolen in on the off side and put Bourbon’s nose against the doctor’s tailboard. The white stallion broke stride and Jerry swung Bourbon across and caught the key position beside the doctor’s nigh hind wheel, and the Bagg boys were shut out for good.

  “That’s driving, Jerry boy,” howled Caleb. He was rocking with excitement, springing his knees where there was no call for it.

  The little doctor heard him and looked back. He had been sitting back with an evident sense of his reputation being comfortably in his hands. Now Jerry saw him eye the new horse, eye the flared nostrils and the splendid forward thrust of the front hoofs, with their steady rhythm, as easy as flowing water.

  “Free road, Doc!” Caleb bawled. “Free to the river bridge! First over for five dollars!”

  The doctor nodded, faced his horses, and began to drive.

  Almost at once he opened the road.

  “That gives you five miles, Jerry— four and a half maybe. Can you do it?”

  “Let’s try,” said Jerry again. He ate back an inch of reins with his hands and steadied Bourbon down. But even so the doctor had to whip it. “They’ve been racing quite a ways.”

  Bourbon chose the pace, settled himself, and went like a machine. He was behind, but he was setting the pace. The doctor didn’t dare let him up again. And yet, between applications of the whip, he saw Bourbon’s sharp ears steal up against his eye. He grinned in his small trimmed beard and drew away again.

  Caleb laughed. Way back somewhere the Bagg boys with their white stallion were eating dust. Old Bagg probably paid a hundred dollars for that horseflesh.

  The doctor was holding his side of the road. His hub-tips reached just to the middle. For two miles the seesawing of the chestnuts against the cob continued, but now their bursts carried them less and less to the front. And Jerry began to ease the reins once more.

  There was a faint light behind them when Jerry made out the dew-wet back of a barn ahead.

  “The bridge is round back. You make a slow turn,” bawled Caleb.

  Jerry nodded. He paid out leather and Bourbon took the wagon out from under them. Hammil sat back hard.

  “Set down!” roared Jerry. He was running this race. At that instant, he wouldn’t have minded Caleb’s pitching over the wheel. Two hundred pounds of extra weight.

  The doctor went to the whip, but too late. Bourbon had looked the nigh chestnut in the eye, and the horse faltered. Jerry’s nigh wheel went way down to the ditch; Bourbon lunged left and right, and snapped the wagon back onto the crown, and they had the open road ahead. Behind them the doctor was hauling in. The bridge was a single track and he was fairly beaten. Jerry felt rather than heard the thunder of the planks; and he caught a glimpse of water. The doctor pulled up beside them and the wagons rocked to the panting of the horses. The little man leaned over, passing bills into Hammil’s red paw.

  “I’d been racing those Bagg boys, Caleb, but you were carrying double. What would you take for that horse?”

  Hammil chuckled.

  “Free road and no favors.”

  The doctor sighed and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his spectacles.

  “I don’t blame you, Caleb. That means I’ve got to nose around for something faster. I can’t have the second-fastest horse in Utica. Who’s your driver?”

  “Jerry Fowler, Doc. He’s working with me on this canal contract.”

  “You’re a good driver, young man,” the doctor said with a crisp little bow. “Hammil couldn’t have managed it.”

  Jerry flushed and grinned.

  “I’ll repeat it,” said Hammil heartily. “Gospel truth. Did you see him nip the Bagg boys, Doc?”

  “No.”

  Hammil succulently described the manoeuvre and the doctor raised his pointed beard and broke out into peals of laughter.

  “That’s worth the five dollars, Caleb! Lord, they must have been surprised at being nosed out by a cob. They fancied that pacer.”

  They started on, the doctor leading the way at an easy trot. To their left the morning mist was lifting from the river. A heron broke from the bank and flopped ponderously aloft. As it topped the mist they saw the light from the yet invisible sun glinting on its crest.

  “There’s Rome.” The doctor gestured with his whip. “We’re in good time.”

  The village on their right was just stirring to daybreak. In a moment they were trotting along the southern edge of it. A moment more and they had come to James Street and turned left.

  Wagons were crowding the short stretch of road, and Bourbon had to slow down.

  “Come on,” cried the doctor. “I’ll clear for you, Caleb. You’ve got to be up front. Stick to my tail, Fowler.”

  In one last smart burst they swung to the outside, and, crowding the wagons over, made for the Arsenal, whose cream-colored brick walls were faintly washed with pink.

  The sun was rising through the eastern notch of the valley— placid, large, and red.

  “You tend to Bourbon, Jerry.”

  Caleb sprang out and trotted heavily for the little knot of men who stood together in the swale grass.

  One of them was speaking, a man with collected eyes and an uncon-querable squareness of shoulder. Jerry caught some of his words over the heads of the other listeners.

  “Canal … as to the countries it will connect … as to the consequences it will produce … without a parallel in the history of mankind.”

  There was a disturbance in the gathering of onlookers. Heads turned angrily and people split apart and Jerry caught a glimpse of Caleb’s gleaming black straw hat. Then the people closed behind it like water be-hind a boat, and Caleb’s fat face, triumphant as the sun, solemnly composed itself behind the speaker’s back.

  Another speaker addressed them.

  “We have assembled to commence the excavation of the Erie Ca-nal… .”

  He held a shovel in his hand. Now he passed it over to the first speaker; and once more Jerry was impressed by the man’s square shoulders, and strong, still eyes.

  “That’s Clinton,” said the doctor.

  The man with the square shoulders was setting the point of the shovel in the sod. He stood back, leaving the shovel upright. An older man stepped from Hammil’s side. “That’s Judge Forman,” said the doctor. He put his shoe upon the shovel’s edge, he grasped the handle with a laborer’s hand. As he paused a moment, looking eastward, Jerry caught another glimpse of Hammil, grinning, and still blowing, and wiping off the sweat with a gorgeous handkerchief in red and yellow.

  The shadows of the men were born suddenly upon the grass. The outline was defined. They reached westward through the crowd, and the crowd’s shadows stretched westward over them. The sun was up.

  Judge Forman leaned upon the shovel with his heel, lifted it loaded with black muck. Water dribbled from the point. He tossed the load aside. It was lost in the grass.

  From the Arsenal wall a cannon boomed. The muscles jerked in Bourbon’s
loins; his head sprang up. The doctor’s pair no more than lifted their slim heads. A flock of crows flapped out of a meadow with raucous indignation. The Baggs’ white pacing stallion reared, whirled, and set out for home. The mist rose and the heat of the sun struck on them all.

  Standing on the wagon, Jerry looked out over the heads of the people, —perhaps a hundred men and women in their Sunday clothes,— and his hands made fists; for east and west, as far as he could see, the red marking stakes stood perpendicular upon their shadows. And the little knot of men grouped about the tiny shovel hole were shaking hands.

  Interlude “Just this one passway”

  The Shanty

  Adelphus Burns left off cradling his wheat. The scythe rested upright on the cradles, the snathe curving its back like a snake. The wheat-piece fence enclosed eight acres; there was a morning’s mowing left to do along the south boundary. The farmer stretched his stiff arms overhead, and then let go his muscles and looked down upon his farm— a double log house near him, and a new frame barn built into the hillside. The shorn meadows wore a fresh green; there was a rank grass smell in the still air; and all day he had found the ripe wheat pliable before the scythe edge.

  His grown daughter came up behind him and her shadow fell back as she bent to bind the last armful of wheat. Adelphus Burns did not look around. His burned Yankee face was turned, with its grey eyes, to where two men were hammering in the last sheath of a bark roof on a building forty feet by twenty wide. The bark was lovely silver grey, but the new planks shone yellow in the evening sun.

  Behind him his daughter bent up stiffly and eased her loins. At the new building, one of the men climbed down and went inside. Presently, through the roof hole, a smoke pipe was stuck up and the man remaining steadied it.

  The farmer said, “They’ve got it finished.”

  “Yes.”

  She moved slowly to his side. Her height matched his to a hair. She had the same lean face, the same still passion in the eyes, but there was a strong repression in her mouth.

  “Ralph’s gone after the cows,” said the farmer.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, I’m going down to see it.”