3stalwarts

by Unknown

  He turned his back on it to lean on the rail and looked over the lower level to where the canal channel turned due east. Water came to the lock-gates. One boat was tied up, the boat that had brought in their last provisions. It was lovely to look at, the still boat sleeping on the water, like a chip caught by a grass blade, in the shade of the forest.

  The stars could almost talk. On the height to left and right clustered the village lights. That upper lamp in Eseck Brown’s came from Mr. Roberts’s room. He was still making out his accounts. He did not know what the real work felt like; there was no ache in his hands. Hogan’s palms tingled.

  He leaned over the rail to spit from his quid and listened for the fall on the plank bed of the lock. It came. At the same instant his wide ears caught along the Deep Cut the scrape of boots, and, peering into the darkness, he saw the shapes of men strung out along the towpath.

  “That’s Jay-Jay,” he said under his breath. “I wish O’Mory was whome.”

  He cast another look down the canal. The bhoys were no good in a shindig without O’Mory’s voice to compel them. Then his heart lifted. From the other direction, low down under his eyes, another man was coming. There was no mistaking the swift length of that stride. Without a sound, Hogan turned and ran for the barrack. The Irishers lay round the room as he had left them.

  “Boys!” They looked up. “Jay-Jay’s coming.”

  Instantly their faces brightened.

  “Give me me pants,” cried McCarthy. A man laughed.

  “What’ 11 we do with them?”

  “I wisht O’Mory was home,” said Peter.

  Hogan said, “He’s just coming round the bend. He won’t be here for five minutes or more. But just set round nat’ral and easy, like ye’d expected them in for a pot of tay.”

  Round the room the men disposed themselves easily. Conversation broke out on the weather, on whiskey, on girls. Their troubling was forgotten. A couple in the corner by the kitchen door started a song:—

  “Rory’s scowlding wife is dead, ‘Heigho!’ cries Rory. ‘Me dearest duck’s defunct in bed; ‘The devil’s cabbaged her; she’s fled! ‘With her roly, poly, gammon, and spinnage, ‘Heigho!’ says Rory.”

  Hogan started to laugh. He laughed at the boy Peter, winking at him, making faces. And then, still laughing, he turned round to the door and wiped his eyes.

  “Good evening, Misther Jay-Jay,” he said. “Shtep into me poor house and meet me bhoys. Is it very cold tonight?”

  Through the door stepped Jay-Jay. He was not very tall, but he was built with tremendous weight. His barrel chest showed through his thin shirt as plainly as if it were naked. It arched from his collarbone to his high, thick stomach. His arms were smooth, showing the muscle by their shape. His legs were thin and flat, and for all his weight he moved lightly. His thick lips, his brown eyes with the yellow whites, his kinked, close hair, his tight-set ears, and his broad, flattened nostrils had an almost aboriginal cast. His neck appeared to bulge outward from the base of his ears. With his shining black skin and the flexing of his nostrils, he appeared among the slender Irish like some tremendous stallion. But when he returned Hogan’s greeting, his voice was gentle and husky: “Evenin’, Mistah Hogan. Mistah O’Mory heah?”

  “He is not,” said Hogan. “But he’s coming. Shtep inside.”

  “Brought along some mah boys, Mistah Hogan, if it ain’t no bothah to yo’”

  Hogan licked his lips. He giggled suddenly again. “No trouble at all, Jay-Jay.”

  Thirty negroes trooped through the door. Most of them were black as Jay-Jay, and they brought with them an outlandish, tropic odor. Hogan indicated tables and benches.

  “Set down,” he invited them. “We was just talking about you black bhoys when you came to the door.”

  “Was yo’?” said Jay-Jay, rolling his eyes round at the little man. “What was yo’ sayin’, Mistah Hogan?”

  “We was just saying we kind of expected yez. Here we’ve been waiting all this time for yez to finish up back there and it was getting lonesome. It must have been hard,” said Hogan pityingly, “but maybe it was the wet. Ye never could stand the wet.”

  “Say so?” said Jay-Jay, folding his thick hands.

  McCarthy, buckling his pants, took the wink from Hogan.

  “It was the lizyards,” he said. “Back the first day in Montezuma, whin I jumped into the mud, a pair of thim came up against me belly. I could feel thim niddling their mouths against me stummick. They niddled up and niddled down and then one of them got to me pip. ‘Hello, Alice,’ he says as plain as me father in Gaelic. ‘This don’t look right. There’s no milk in this bhoy.’ Then I seen Alice sticking her eye out of the mud be me arm and having a look. ‘No, Michael,’ she says. ‘This bhoy’s got a white skin. Come along, maybe we can find a nigger.’ “

  The Irish stamped and roared.

  Some of the negroes looked up hotly, turning from the Irishmen to their leader. But Jay-Jay was sitting with perfect calm, staring at the liver-colored nails in his folded hands. Hogan tossed a look at the door and came forward with his Hessian and two glasses.

  “Have a dhrink, Jay-Jay?”

  “No, suh.”

  But Hogan’s heart patted his ribs.

  “Then I will,” said a voice behind them. O’Mory in his Sunday suit was closing the door. His boots were muddy from his long walk, his bright eyes dry, his mouth soberly closed in his black beard; but Hogan could tell by the way his hands took hold of the insides of his pants pockets that his friend had been drunk and had brought the devil back with him.

  He walked forward easily and reached a hand over the negro’s shoulder for the full glass.

  “Well,” he said, “if nobody else will drink, bedevil, I will annyway. Here I come back from putting a boy to bed with his girrel and find ye all glooming like crows come home to a clean roost.”

  He held the glass to the light as if measuring his swallow. “I seen Misther Fowler in Newport and he tells me the wather’s coming through tonight. Peter, me lad, run out and take a look at it.”

  Peter went forth reluctantly. O’Mory turned to the negro. His eyes glittered.

  “Here’s spit in yer eye, Jay-Jay,” he offered for a toast. “I believe it’s a custom of yer counthry.”

  Hogan started. Something was eating the man. It was the wedding, of course: O’Mory had been bottled up the two whole days and he wanted to rouse the negro.

  But Jay-Jay continued to sit silently, and the smacking of O’Mory’s lips was like breaking sticks in the long room. His mocking eyes roved over the black faces.

  Jay-Jay at last looked up. When he spoke his voice was full.

  “Brought mah bes’ boys, O’Mory, to lick your bes’. But they ain’t no sense in them fightin’. They’d on’y spoil it fo’ us. Goin’ lick yo’, instead.”

  O’Mory’s savage grin grew almost friendly.

  “Me bhoy, it’s time ye said something. I need the exercise.” His eye took in the black, massive torso. “Maybe I’ll get it.”

  “Mebbe yo’ will,” said the negro, calmly, eyeing the Irishman. In his own way, O’Mory was something to see. He was built leanly. His long arms were muscled hard as whips; under the skin on his forearms the cords moved like strings as he stretched his hand out to grasp Hogan’s Hessian.

  “Here’s a glass to ye, Jay-Jay. You and yer men wasn’t much in the marshes, but perhaps you can fight.”

  The negro brushed the glass aside. His loose lips pursed and he spat full into O’Mory’s beard.

  “Is a custom of mah country,” he said softly. And suddenly his brown eyes were lively.

  O’Mory roared. He opened his hand, drew back, and struck the negro a tremendous swat upon the cheek. The sound echoed behind the stove, and the negro’s head snapped back. His neck stiffened. He got up from the bench slowly and said, “Try it again.”

  “Annything to oblige,” said O’Mory, and he struck again.

  The negro took the blow without a sign; but t
he crack sounded like a blacksnake whip on hide.

  The door opened and the lad, Peter, came in.

  “I couldn’t tell was the wather anny deeper. It’s too dark.”

  He stopped. Nobody had heard him. And as he stopped, the negro knocked O’Mory down.

  There was a roar from the men that made a wind to shake the lantern flames. Tongues of smoke leaped out.

  O’Mory jumped to his feet.

  “Get them tables out of the way. Hogan, hold me shirt.”

  The stamp of feet filled the room, the scrape of table legs upon the puncheon floor. But the Irishers were watching Jay-Jay with a new light in their eyes. No one had ever knocked O’Mory down.

  The negro had drawn back a pace before his men. His great closed fists swung by his sides in little jerks. His feet were flat on the ground, his knees slightly sprung, but his back was straight, and his barrel chest heaved with a quick easy breathing and his nostrils went in and out like the flutter of a stallion’s.

  O’Mory’s shirt was off and his chest shone a lively white through the black mane upon it. The structure of the man showed beneath the skin. His breathing eased again.

  When the room was cleared, he said, “Whichever one of us two beats the other, lave the black bhoys be.” He turned to Jay-Jay, “Come on, me bhoy.”

  He sprang.

  His arms cracked in. The two blows were lightning, striking like bolts, a flat, hard crack to the head, and a dull thud to the belly. The negro met them like a rock, and then he was in motion. So quickly, so lightly, did he move that he seemed scarcely to change his place. His feet did not step high and briskly like the Irishman’s, but they moved, instead, flat and close to the floor, with a faint shuffling sound, putting him here and there with ugly swiftness.

  His round smooth black arms were like the pistons of a steamboat’s engine. And when his fists struck, they thundered on the Irishman’s chest. And when they came away, the others saw that they had left their color on the skin, as if the white could breed to black, octoroon, quadroon, mulatto, black.

  O’Mory’s body whipped before the blows and his teeth showed in his beard. He seemed far quicker than the negro, with his lithe strides, the grace of his arms, and the snakelike lashes of his fists.

  Hogan screamed, “Go afther him, O’Mory! Bhoy! Bhoy! Don’t let him grasp ye!”

  “Watch his feet!” cried the one-eyed man.

  “Look out he doesn’t grasp yer lip!”

  “Mind yer eyes, O’Mory!”

  A roar of voices swelled. The Irishers were all upon their bunks. The negroes were lining the wall by the doors. They were silent. Their dusky faces made a line of intensity against the yellow of the planks. Suddenly one jabbered in an outlandish tongue, as the two men came together.

  “O God!” shrieked Hogan. “Stand off from him!”

  Each had his chin on the other’s right shoulder, and out of sight between them their hands interlocked like antlers.

  There was not a breath of movement.

  Suddenly the Irishman’s left hand shot round the black man’s waist, slipped down behind his thigh, and his foot slid forward. He strained heavily, his muscles crackling. The negro lifted; the flat feet shuffled suddenly in air; and then slowly they came back to the floor and the two men snapped apart. The negro had broken the hold; but he spun as he came free and went against the table. With a roar O’Mory was on him and bent him back upon the board. The Irishman’s knees pressed into the negro’s crotch, keeping his legs vertical, while, with both hands reached under the black man’s armpits, he caught his chin and forced the neck back… . The eyes in the black face swelled. The whites became bloodshot. A strange moaning broke from the negroes, and jouncy little Hogan began to jibber with delight. “O’Mory, O’Mory, O’Mory, ye darlin’!”

  And then the negro’s hands drew back and his foot lifted. The blow seemed futile from that angle, but it found the Irishman’s chin. The black hand was lost in the black beard, the head snapped back, and the white hands broke from the black chin like limp straps. At the instant, the negro’s feet found room and kicked the Irishman away.

  O’Mory reeled. The walls swam in front of him, a dizzy line of faces. He heard a shout of warning. He heard a weird, high-pitched kind of moan. “He’s butting!” He heard the pad of feet. It seemed to be behind him. He tried to whirl, but the black head caught him on the thigh and he spun away and fell.

  As he fell he heard the crash the negro made. He had been hurt, he knew he had been hurt, but he could not feel it. But it was a hurt that gave something into his hands. He wasn’t lonely any more. The wedding was out of his mind now and he was a man, and he found that he loved Jay-Jay, loved him as a precious object for his hands to destroy. A grin broke his lips apart. His hands found the planks and he was on his feet.

  As the negro faced him, O’Mory knew that he also was hurt, and he put back his head and laughed with pure joy. Nathan Roberts, who had come to the door when the hullabaloo broke loose, with the clerk and the cooks, and the axemen and rodsman, understood why someone had called this gang the Devil’s Angels. For the rest of them had caught O’Mory’s laughter and laughed with him, and the long room heaved with roaring.

  But the negro had become a travesty of the human thing. The purpose of the human brain was behind him now, but the face was bestial.

  They came together.

  “Stand off from him!” cried Hogan.

  But, as though they had agreed to it, they abandoned themselves to their fists.

  O’Mory saw the black face before him, the one thing in the world, and his love for it filled his heart with the desire to feel it breaking under his hands.

  They traded great blows. They had no notion of defense. They broke each other as they would have broken stone, with the instinct of three long years in the Deep Cut to compel their arms and shoulders.

  O’Mory felt the pain growing in his body like grass. He felt the blades like arrows in his chest and the roots fingering his vitals. But his brain sang as he saw that the negro’s blood was red. He swung without moving his feet, again and again and again, until his arms had acquired a rhythm. And through the room, which had once more grown silent, he heard the voice of Hogan catching it for him, giving his hands truth. “Wa-a-ay up! … Heavy … Down! Wa-a-ay up! … Heavy … Down!” Over and over. And the sting in his forearms was like the taste of the sledge. But he was hammering rock that would not break. He knew that it would never break and his heart sang with laughter and he was glad.

  He saw in Jay-Jay’s face a change coming slowly, as if his understanding had been lighted from the same fire. All at once the broken lips of both men grinned covertly at each other. For a few blows they continued from the pure joy of it. Then, as at a word, they held back their arms, stepped together, and shook hands.

  Jouncy little Hogan laughed. He came leaping down on his bowlegs with his old Hessian high over his head. He baptized them both with stinging whiskey and gave them the drum to drink from, first the negro, then the Irishman. As the two drank, there was silence. And in the silence all men heard a different sound.

  It came from the open door, from the frosted night, from the spot where the Great Dipper was suspended over the cleft in the mountain ridge. It was the sound of water. It was the sound of a small trickle of water finding its way down the tumble bay beside the double flight of locks.

  But for a moment the Irishmen and the negroes did not understand what it could be. It was not until Roberts, the engineer who had given their labor form, cried suddenly, “It’s the water coming through!” that they knew.

  But they stood still. They heard his feet pounding down to the bridgehead, they heard the broken note in his voice, they saw the rodsman and the axemen and the cooks running after him, but they stood still, with a queer wonder in their eyes.

  Some smiled, some simply stood with open mouths. O’Mory put his arm across Jay-Jay’s shoulders and grinned at jouncy little Hogan.

  He knew.

>   It meant the end of their long initiation. Roberts wanted to see it because of the shape it would have, the form for the picture he had seen in his mind’s eye; the rodsman and the axemen because it meant the end of their stay in this piece of wilderness; the cooks because it meant that they would no longer have to wash the plates of Irishmen and negroes. To the contractors it would mean profit or loss. To the farmers in Ohio it would mean a decent price for wheat. To the merchants in the east it would mean cheap transportation. Even in New York City it would mean money in the hope chest of Tammany Hall.

  His face lengthened.

  But to himself and to these wild Irishers, who had chopped at stumps, who had shoveled where half of each shovelful ran back at their toes, who had wheeled barrows, who had had the sun on their backs, the frost in their feet, the cold wet against their bellies, the ague and fever in their lungs, who had had stumps to pull, and piles to drive in quicksand, limestone to blast, and rock to devil which no force but their own could loosen, this water meant the sweat they had dropped in labor; it meant the blood of life in their veins; it meant the end of the job.

  He looked round on them. They were staring at him hopelessly. Even jouncy little Hogan was staring at him like a miserable lost dog.

  He said to them, “It’s finished, bhoys.”

  The one-eyed man asked over his quid hoarsely, “What’ll we do now, O’Mory?”

  And he said, “In Newport at the wedding Misther Fowler said that freight boats now are wanting crews. They’ll hire ye on.” He laughed. “What more do ye want? Ye’ve built the thing. It’s whome to ye. I’ve had me offer already. I’m a captain as I stand. Hogan, will ye be a crewman? Ye’re short. Ye won’t have to duck for bridges.”

  Hogan’s flat mouth opened, stretched, and grinned.

  “Have a pull at me old Hissian, O’Mory, Captain, sir.”

  O’Mory felt a stiffness in the shoulders under his arm. He felt sorry for the black men now. They were sons of toil. It was the tradition in their blood.