by Unknown
“Did I ever show you my recommend for serving prentice, Nathan?”
“No. I’d like to see it.”
Jerry took a rumpled paper from his pocket. “I got it out this morning, just to look at.”
Roberts unfolded the stiff paper:
CERTIFIED BY ME TOM FAGGIS MASTER CARPENTER
At Uniontown, Renselaer County, York State,
April five in 1817:
that this day Jeremiah Fowler finished with me per contracto
He is a good carpenter. Can build a house. Has done some millwork.
Is equal to scarfing, joining. He knows his ratios and is a moderate
mechanic. Is sober, is hardworking, is honest so far as I know.
SIGNED AS ABOVE, Tom Fdggis.
witnessed: Adam Lucas
Henry Witmuller
Roberts chuckled.
“He seems to know his classics, Jerry.”
“He was partial to Latin. He considered himself a gifted man.”
“What does he mean about your knowing your ratios?”
“I guess that’s figuring out the horsepower for diameter of a wheel and fall of water.”
Jerry took back the paper.
The maid at Brown’s came out again and beat her gong with viciousness.
“I suppose we ought to go in, Jerry.”
But Roberts did not move. He pulled a pipe from his pocket, loaded and lit it, and smoked it through in silence.
“Yes,” Jerry said, “I’ve come quite a way. I’m going to be rich, Nathan.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. And I’ll be a poor engineer.”
“Things change. You’re happier than me.”
Roberts rose suddenly.
“Cheer up.” He clapped Jerry on the back. “Things will come right. I think you’ve got a lucky star.”
Jerry got slowly to his feet. The Irishers had eaten and were trailing back into the deep cut. As he crossed the locks he heard jouncy little Hogan’s voice uplift.
“Wa-a-ay up!”
It carried the same wild sadness he had heard the morning the Irish had arrived in Montezuma to devil Edwin Brown. Their joy in sorrow.
“Heavy … down!”
The sledge clapped on the drill.
3
“Youll see a barn’
He had heard that a Pratt and Meech boat was waiting in Newport for some overland cargo from Buffalo. They would probably give him a ride back to Rochester. But he was near enough to the village to take it easy now.
He stopped on the Oak Orchard Embankment to look down at the creek; a high crossing, with the embankment divided in the middle by an aqueduct of solid stone. Over on his left, the Oak Orchard feeder, that supplied the Brockport to Rochester level until they could tap Erie water, flowed into the main line with a steady purring through its splash gate.
The creek slid past the piers. A pale twilight filtered into the treetops, which were level with Jerry’s eyes so that he could see mysteriously deep among the leaves. He watched the dart of squirrels to their holes and the ruffling of birds that settled themselves for night. Far off a woodpecker was driving solid blows rapidly into a dead tree.
Jerry looked down at his folded hands.
He thought, “I’m getting old. Showing Nathan that recommend I never looked back that way before.” His heart was sore; but the night sounds, the peace of creatures coming home, brought him a kind of resignation: as if after the broiling din of long days in the deep cut the coolness were a hand laid on his forehead.
His figure gave no indication of his thoughts. It was like a shadow against the stone. “Work’s what you need,” Hammil had said. “It’s my idea if you keep going something will turn up.” “Going?” He had gone at it hard as any man. He wondered if this new peacefulness that stole over him might be what Hammil had in mind.
The slide of the water was placid as glass. Farther back in the woods, however, stones broke it; and as the dusk gained darkness and the trees became still, Jerry heard the chatter of a small rapid.
“Not mad nor nothing.” A wedded man, a widower, self-made in a fashion, a successful man likely to be rich in time; what was left?
“Evening, mister.” ?
A ragged man in undershirt, his pants rolled up to show bare feet, leaned on the coping at his side. He wore a home-woven hat of straw that had lost its crown, but carried a crow’s feather in a string. He too looked at the water.
“Evening,” said Jerry.
They stood together, feeling the silence, silent themselves as if to share its fullness.
After a while the man said, “Traveling?”
“In to Newport.”
“That right?”
Jerry did not answer.
The man asked, “Getting a boat?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a Washington Line boat there.”
“Pratt and Meech? That’s the one. I heard she’d haul some time tonight.”
The man spat over the coping.
“Not her. Wagon’s got broked back up near Johnson’s. Hell of a thing to have to haul, cannon be.”
“Cannon?”
“Yeah. Cannon. All kinds. Commydore Perry left them up in Presque Isle and they’re spreading them out all along the ditch. What for I don’t know, unless it is the way they tell me.”
“How’s that?”
“Why, they’re a-going to stick ‘em all along the line, ten to fifteen miles apart. They’ve put a thirty-two pounder up in Buffalo, they say. And these others they’re taking along down. They’ll put them all the way down to New York City. Then when the water is all let in, they’ll fire the first one. The noise of it will travel that way, from one gun to the next, right out to the ocean. People out there will notice that Mr. Clinton has got started.”
He scratched his head.
“Quite a lot of work involved to make a noise, it seems to me. But it is coming to Clinton, the way I think. What with the Bucktails knocking him off the Commission and all. Yes, it’s coming to him. I’ll be listening for it. You come from Lockport way? How soon do you figger, mister?”
“Better say October.”
“That’s quite a time. But it don’t seem long to me, mister.”
Jerry said, “Well it’s time I moved along.”
“What’s your hurry, mister? The boat ain’t going to haul till morning at the soonest. Come back to my house and have some supper.”
“Thanks. Where do you live?”
“Right handy.”
Down the canal Jerry saw that a light had been lit in a window.
“You live here?”
“Yes, I’m tender to the feeder gate. They built me that house to live in. Come back with me, mister.”
“I will, and thanks.”
They walked a hundred yards to the end of the embankment. A small house, painted salmon pink, stood next to the towpath. A lamp on a table poured light through the open door.
“My name is Birdnut, mister.”
Jerry took his diffident hand.
“Mine’s Fowler.”
Birdnut dropped his hand and stepped into the house.
“Kind of a small house,” he said apologetically. “But as they was building it for me, I felt no call to complain. And it’s comfortable for a man alone.”
“You’re alone?”
“Yes. I’m by myself. You set there, mister, and I’ll dish out my pork, and tea. Ain’t much of a supper, mister; but I wasn’t counting on no visit.”
Jerry sat at the table.
“Ain’t much of a house,” said Birdnut again. “But it’s comfortable for me. I like it all right.”
There was a single room with a window on each side, and the door with its tiny stoop in front. In back, another door led to a woodshed and a privy.
“Ain’t much of a privy,” said the tender. “I built it for myself. They said they couldn’t build a privy for me the legislature wouldn’t vote expenses for Oak Orchard privy so I built it. But
I don’t complain.”
There was a solid bunk in one corner and a cookstove opposite. Shelves over the cookstove held pans and dishes. A table and a chair and a rocker, in which Jerry sat, filled the front of the room. In the ceiling a trapdoor opened into an attic.
“Ain’t much of an attic, the way it’s fixed,” Birdnut apologized. “I’m a man alone so they didn’t give no ladder for it. They had to build the attic because the legislature voted an upstairs room on Oak Orchard. Voted me that room, but not no privy, but I don’t complain.”
Jerry watched him. He was a thin, stooped man, smooth-shaven, raggedly but cleanly dressed. He had long-haired, curving eyebrows that shaded dark eyes singularly still. He moved as slowly as he spoke.
He dished out pork and potatoes into two plates.
“This one has got a crack into it, so I’ll use it, mister. Here’s your tea. Ain’t much of a cup, being chipped. But it don’t burn your mouth like metal.”
It was utterly still in the cabin. They could not hear the rapids at that distance, and the water just outside the door flowed quietly.
“What do you do all day?” asked Jerry.
“Why, I clean my house in mornings, and do some fishing maybe. Ain’t much fish in the canal yet. Maybe when Erie water comes along I’ll get some bass. They’re big fish in Lake Erie, I’ve heard tell. A body of water that is.”
“That’s all you have to do?”
“Why, no. I’ve got to read the level on the guard lock. If it’s too high I get up to the creek lock and shut down. Too low, I go up there and open up. ‘Tain’t hard, mister.”
“Going to stay here through the winter?”
“Maybe. There’s a muskrat bounty. Maybe I’ll trap rats.”
“How did you happen to get this job?”
Birdnut dropped his eyes.
“Why, mister, I guess I thought I wanted it. I was a settler back there in the Purchase.” He nodded his head at the open door. “Came west, I did, for fame and fortune as the books say. Yes, I bought a parcel and cleared and burned it and made ashes. Then the first winter I went east and got my girl. Her mother didn’t want for her to come, but I persuaded of her and she was willing.”
His eyes faded, and he reached for a black pipe. He put back the table cover and slowly whittled the load off the plug. He seemed to want to talk.
“I got her in the woods with me and seemed she pined somewhat. She was right young, I guess, mister; I guess as how she missed the sight of neighbors. She couldn’t stand to see a bear.” He looked down at his hands. “I labored hard, and she did too, but she pined. But we made a place of it with likelihood of good farming. I couldn’t stand her being lonesome. Seems it made me short with her. I’d laugh. I told her it was better being in the woods. One day we got word they was surveying for this canal. I didn’t believe it. But it perked her up some little. She used to talk about it. When would it come? Where would they put it? But it took years, I guess, to get things going. I can’t remember how long it was. I got right sick of hearing her talk about it. I didn’t believe in it myself. But she was always running over to our neighbors for the paper. Every month she would run over. It got so I shut her in the cabin.”
He looked down at his hands.
“Yes, I shut her up sometimes. I was right fond of her, but it seems I couldn’t stand to hear her talk. Our farming wasn’t so good. We didn’t have no boys coming along to help me. Wheat dropped down and my land was just against the swamp.”
“Tonawanda?”
“Yes. Seen it? It’s big; thirty miles from end to end. There’s some marsh timber, but mostly flags a-growing round in islands, cacktails and such. Birds nested into it all summer.” His eyes stared against the wall. “People got unneighborly towards us. Seems now as if maybe I was afraid to quit and just hung on there while she pined. I don’t know. Maybe, I guess. She got the fever two years past. Word come then they was letting a feeder ditch into the swamp from Tonawanda creek on the other side. The swamp dreens through a rock cleft into Oak Orchard here. But when I was told that it made me laugh. I didn’t hardly believe it until one day I heard her crying. I hadn’t noticed nothing except that some of the birds was stirred and moving. But a little after she hollered there was a terrible noise in the swamp. Seemed like all the birds in all the world was there in all the sky. Screeching and hollering, rising up and dropping down. She said they’d let the water in. But I wouldn’t believe it till I saw it rising in the grass that night. It had covered up the nests.”
He stopped and looked down.
“Then I went inside and told her, T guess they have built it and you was right all along.’ She said she was glad. Seems something in me gave out then. She said we’d best go home. I said it was all right, we would. She died on me a week later. So I come out. My farm, it was half covered over.”
“Didn’t you file for damages?”
“Damages? I don’t know. I didn’t appear to consider anything. But I come out here to notice the canal. I seen them starting this-here house. I asked them what for, and then I got the job.”
A rat slopped into the water.
They sat silent.
The man looked over at Jerry’s plate.
“Ain’t much of a supper,” he said. “I don’t usually have visits. Sometimes the cobbler drops in. Generally folks go by. But when I seen you, I thought maybe I’d ask you.”
“Cobbler?” Jerry asked. “A friend of yours?”
“Kind of a friend, mister, by the way I look at it. He’s a lonesome man. He’s got a girl, but she won’t marry him.”
“He don’t come by often?”
“No, not often. But once in a while he drops in. He was by here last week. He was going up to Lockport, but he come back the same day. Seems like he’d scarcely gone afore I heard his wagon squeaking back along the towpath and looked out and seen his horse.”
The night, for Jerry, became very still. His hands lifted slowly until they grasped the table edge. He felt his heart beating and the blood rising against his ears. His lips were stiff, but he framed the words distinctly.
“A white-blind horse?”
The tender lifted his slow eyes.
“Yeanh. He drives a white-blind horse. Do you know him?”
“What’s his name?”
“Falk, he calls himself, I guess, mister. I never asked him.”
“Harley Falk?”
“I’m not positive. But I wouldn’t say it wasn’t, neither.”
Jerry forced his voice to be casual.
“Does he circuit hereabouts?”
“Here and there, I guess. I never asked him. Once in a while he would drop in.”
“Did he ever talk about this girl?”
“Sometimes he would, mister. Not often. Sometimes he’d talk about her. Told me she was beautiful. Told me how she was beautiful, he did. One night over and over. Seemed to me he was going to cry on me. But I didn’t say nothing. I don’t say nothing when a man gets that way. No, not any more.”
“Did he ever say her name?”
“Seems to me, he might have said her name. I wasn’t listening. Once in a while he would drop by and visit with me.”
“Tell me,” said Jerry. “I’ve got to know. Did he say where she was staying?”
Birdnut passed his hand over his eyes.
“Seems to me you’re curious about him, or her, maybe, mister?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Well, I’ve felt kind of partial to you, mister. But it’s hard for me to recollect things. Seems as how she was staying down south of Newport, maybe, with some folks. Folks of hers? No, I don’t recall. Not their names. He said it was a big farm, mister. Four farms together. Whereabouts I wouldn’t dasst to say. I though he was going to cry on me, so I didn’t ask him nothing. I felt kind of sorry for him. Loving her so long. He took her away from a man misused her, but she didn’t love him, he said; she wouldn’t go off with him. Women, he said, was feared of him. He said I was his only friend. Somet
imes it made him riley. It gave him misery, sometimes.”
Jerry waited. He held his breath. The tender was regarding him with a queer, sidewise glance.
“Mister, you ain’t the man misused her, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Was you her husband?”
“Yes.”
“I guess that’s why I felt partial, then.” He dropped his eyes to his hands. “Mister, I can’t recall names or places very good. But I recollect he said she lived in Range two. Queer to remember. Range two. There’s a list to the post office in Newport. Maybe they’d have some idea.”
He looked up again.
“Feeling sickly, mister?”
“No. Not that way. I’ve got to go. Thank you for supper. If you ever need anything let me know in Rochester. Jerry Fowler, of the Six-Day.”
“Grey boats. They’re nice-looking, mister. No. I won’t be bothering you, I expect. Good night, and welcome, mister.”
A dog was scratching for fleas on the porch. His leg thumped steadily. Then he lay down on his side and closed his eyes and sighed. In the store, Philetus Bumpus measured off some calico. He had a yard mark painted on his counter, and his practised fingers stripped the cloth.
“It’ll make you a nice Sunday apron, Mrs. Jordan. It’s a new pattern and will show up well in meeting.”
Mrs. Jordan dabbled in her purse.
“Seventy-five cents a yard, Mr. Bumpus? Three yards. Dear me. Figures do twitter a person.”
The storekeeper took a chalk from behind his ear. Stooping forward, he made figures on the counter.
75
X3
225
“Multiplying, carry your dots straight down. That makes two dollars and a quarter, federal money.”
“I didn’t know it was so high. How multiplying does mount up in figures! Three separate seventy-fives wouldn’t look half so large.”
But she nodded and smiled and bustled out.
Groaning as he rose, the dog turned his other side, and began scratching again. His leg bumped on the floor.
“Well, mister, what can I do for you?”
“I came in to see if you had a lot map of Range two.”
