3stalwarts (109 page)

On the Sarsey Sal, Molly gave Dan a letter from Butterfield. It ordered him to report to Rome as soon as the canal opened.

“It’ll be good to get free,” she said, her eyes dancing.

That evening she and Dan roamed here and there over the boat, trying the stable hatch and gazing at the heavy coil of the towline.

“I’ll order feed tomorrow,” he said.

“I wonder where we’ll haul to first?” she said. “I’d like to go west again.”

“We’d likely meet Klore out there, Molly.”

She looked at him.

“We’ll have to sometime,” she said, her face brave.

He felt the spring growing in him.

“Yeanh.”

He had beaten out the blizzard; he could take a chance at Klore.

He worked over the towline next morning.

A voice hailed him from the dock. He looked up to see a fat man in a dark suit and pot hat and high cowhide boots smoking a cigar.

“How be you?” asked the fat man.

“Good,” said Dan. “How’re you, Mr. Henderson?”

The Department of Justice man grinned.

“Fine. I’m back at work now. Say, I’d ought to thank you for fetching me out of that house to Denley. Spinning’d never have gone down that night.”

“It’s all right,” said Dan, affably. At that time he could not help feeling a liking for the fat marshal. The sun was too warm in him.

“How’d you come to find me?”

Dan glanced down.

“A man I was hauling with figured Calash might be there,” he said.

“I wish I’d knowed as much as you seem to.”

“He just guessed,” Dan said. “I didn’t know he’d be there.”

“I don’t believe you did. But you’re friendly for him, ain’t you?”

Dan said nothing.

“I can see why,” said the fat man. “But don’t you get mixed up with him. I’m going to get him this time,” he said grimly.

Then he smiled, taking his cigar out of his mouth to do it.

“I heard how you brought Palery down. It was a fine thing. I’ve been looking at your team. They must be extraordinary good ones.”

“They be,” said Dan.

“Well, good luck.”

The fat man put his cigar back and waved his hand.

That night the Sarsey Sal began to groan. Now and then the ice cracked in the bed of the canal. Dan and Molly lay awake, listening, feeling the boat shift under them. Now and then the timbers squealed as she lifted.

“It’s the water,” Molly said. “They’re letting it in, Dan.”

Then there was quiet, until they began to hear a thin ripple washing the side of the old boat. They seemed to feel it themselves, a slow soothing touch, and their bodies relaxed, as if it were taking the winter from them.

On the planks over their heads a gentle sound increased to a whisper, a mutter, and they heard rain falling, loud drumming rain, grey rain washing the air.

Dan found Molly’s hand in his.

“I wonder if Fortune’ll be back in time,” she said… .

But when they were eating breakfast in the early morning the old ex-preacher put his thin head through the door,

Molly jumped up with a cry of delight, and Dan pumped his hand. Fortune lifted his thin nose to the smell of the coffee.

“I guessed I’d get here before it got cold,” he said. “I needed it. My luck’s been bad at cards.”

There was an affectionate pucker at the corners of his eyes as he looked at them.

“Bad at cards?” The fat woman’s voice broke out beyond the door. “My land! I like to hear that. Mine’s just dandy.”

She bustled in, bringing a breath of spring air with her in the swirl of her skirts. Her laughter was gay and warm as the morning sunlight.

Solomon, in a new grey flannel shirt, stepped in behind her.

“I’m hauling for Rome in an hour,” he said.

“So’m I,” said Dan.

7

THE LAST HAUL

Open Canal

It was a typical March sky; grey clouds on the rising edge of the valley to the south and east, with the sun breaking through in golden showers. There was a sweep of wind upon the hills, so fresh that it seemed to acquire visibility and color— a wind of silver in the morning.

It blew upon Dan and Molly on the stern of the Sarsey Sal, whipping her skirts toward him, until he felt them brushing his ankles. She had turned her shoulder to the wind; she had the sun and the wind in her hair; she had a warm light in her eyes, like the glow of the sun in the open sky; and the spring warmth brought the color to her cheeks, after winter’s paleness.

The valley stretched westward under a still white carpet; but on the edges of the woods the balsam pitch had made the snow black; and they saw it black and old on the white feet of a hound trotting home after a night of chasing rabbits. It was old snow, dying, and it put its own peculiar sour smell on the wind; a tang like vinegar, urging the lungs to deeper breaths.

The valley had come to life overnight. The rain had swelled the brooks; they were bursting free on the slopes and eating out their channels to the river. They made bright gleams on the old snow; and when they reached the river ice they spread out eagerly in glittering pools.

As yet the river slept; but it was stirring. Where its course came close to the canal, they could hear it muttering, taking in sobbing breaths at the air holes, like an old man struggling to wake after a long night of sleep.

But the canal, in the midst of silent farms, led straight away westward with a blue darker than the skies. The boats had rushed to meet it that morning. At the weighlock they cleared as fast as the men could put them through; empty mostly, going after cargoes, of wood, of flour, or spring machinery. Some would leave Utica later in the day with loads. But the first boats traveled light on their first haul, as if their owners had sent them off merely to see them moving on the water.

They came behind the Sarsey Sal making a tumult in the valley; horns blowing when there was no need of horns, blown merely for the blowing; long wails that went ahead upon the wind to the far southern clouds to bring the rain; men and women laughing, jollying, red-faced after then-warm breakfasts, turning their faces to the wind; children large-eyed, running in the tracks of the horses, shouting in the empty pits until the plank walls boomed. Some boats came out with bright new paint upon them, gleaming blues and yellows and colors more fantastic, nourished by the dark hours of winter and brought into the sun.

Even the horses partook of that first ungovernable flush of spirits, tossing their heads, bringing them down to snatch at the snow with vicious snaps of their brown teeth, wriggling their withers to settle the collars that later would bring sores. Solomon’s old mules, opposite the stern of the Sarsey Sal, came along with nervous lifting feet. They had had an easy winter; they were fat as butter tubs; and they twirled their ears like three-year- olds. The little man walked behind them with a sprightly step, a wide, un-meaning grin on his thin mouth. Back on the Nancy, the fat woman in a flannel petticoat more red than her dyed hair cocked her head to listen to the blowing of the man behind, grinned, and put her own horn to her lips and mastered all sound in a wail that woke the hills. Her breast rebounded after the blast; she waved her fat arm over her head, brandishing the horn like Michael’s sword, and blew again.

A flock of crows came flapping over the valley to see what had disturbed them. They lit in some poplars and watched the fat woman pass. She blew again on her horn, pointing it toward them, and they shrieked with pleasure, giving stiff-legged hops off the branches, swooping up, and turning over.

Up ahead, Fortune Friendly was walking behind the big team. They hauled on the boat as if they had done just that all their lives. They had started it easily with a handsome upward pull in the collars. The black kept looking round at first, to see what this odd wheelless vehicle might be. He pricked his ears to see Molly. But the brown kept his head forward. He had business to do. As Fortune had remarked, he took work the way a Quaker took religion.

The ex-preacher was glad to get back. His luck had held good for the first part of the winter, but with the new year had come a change for the worse. Eventually he had had to get a job on the docks— hard work. His cheeks were thin, a little hollow, as if he had had poor food, and the seat of his pants was worn through. Molly had been obliged to put a patch on them that morning. “A lucky thing,” Mrs. Gurget said when she saw it. “It wouldn’t have been polite for me to set here steering.”

Sitting by the stove drinking coffee in the early morning, Fortune, with a blanket round his bare shanks, while Molly mended his trousers, had gossiped. He had seen Henderson a month before. The Department man had two deputies with him. A big man one of them was, with a down-South way of bringing out his words. You could tell him by his long light moustache. The other had a slight limp, and a bullet scar on his right temple. He slicked his hair down like a foreigner. “Regular pomatum by the smell of it,” Fortune said; “but I’ll bet it’s lard with a drop of perfume thrown on after. Smells like violets.”

Dan had gone out to get the team and uncoil the towline. The old ex-preacher had sat there smoking a pipe, his fine smooth-skinned face and twinkling eyes turned toward Molly. He had looked her over searchingly. She caught his gaze in glancing up when she stopped to bite off her thread.

“Did you have a good winter?” he asked.

“Yeanh.”

“How was Dan?”

“He was good.”

“Oh, I don’t mean was he sick.”

“Did you hear about him bringing that jack down through the blizzard, February?”

“No.”

She told him.

“It was a fine thing to do,” said Fortune. “There aren’t many would have done it.”

“No,” she said, proudly.

The old man drew his ideas into himself for a minute. He sat there looking down at the blue socks on his feet. Molly thought he was handsome, with his white hair and red cheeks and black moustache.

After a while he raised his head.

“He’s a good lad, Molly.”

“Yeanh,” she said with a smile.

“You’ve changed.”

“Getting old already?”

“Don’t nonsense,” he said. “You’re just as pretty. You will be.”

“Fat?”

He looked at her again.

“Not a mite.”

“No,” she said.

“I’m like your pa,” he said.

“That’s what you always say when you been hungry.”

“You’ve changed,” he said. “He has, too.”

She caught in her lower lip against her teeth.

“Oh, no, he still’s keen after you. Not that way. He’s catching on, that’s all. He looks more like he knew what he was doing.”

“Yeanh. He’s been that way more since he come out through the blizzard.”

“Molly, do you still love him like you did?”

Her stitches were careful, very neat.

“Did you have a good winter?” he asked when she did not answer.

“He was real good,” she said in a low voice. “He was good to me, Fortune. He’s a good boy.”

His face was sober.

“Are you going to marry him?”

Her head lifted like a doe’s and there was a sudden flight of amusement through her eyes.

“Gracious me! You ain’t preaching!”

“No,” he said, “I ain’t preaching. I’m just asking.”

“Why do you ask it?”

“I think he’ll ask you to marry him.”

“Land!” she said, and dropped her eyes.

“There ain’t any hiding it in you,” he muttered. “It isn’t bright on you the way it was.”

“No,” she said, her eyes following her swift needle. “It ain’t that I don’t love him, Fortune. Only he’s just a boy. He’s handsome to see; I like to go out with him. But he don’t talk. He’s a farmer. He’s close with money, not like—”

“No,” said the ex-preacher.

“Maybe when we get to moving on the canal it’ll come back.”

She said it without hope.

The ex-preacher sighed.

“You’re like me, Molly. You just want to move around. You’ll never want to owe nothing to anybody.”

“No,” she said seriously. “It ain’t that, Fortune. I’d as lief owe myself to a man. But I don’t want it way off on a farm. I can see it coming in him. Last night he was late coming to supper, so I went to the stable and the man said Dan was to the granary. They’d been bagging seed oats and he was setting there by himself with a lantern just picking up handfuls and then letting ‘em run out through his fingers. I could see it in the set of his shoulders.”

“I don’t think he’ll get off the canal if you stick with him. I wouldn’t if I was Dan— or any other man. By gadger, I wouldn’t, not even if I was Fortune Friendly himself.”

“Go on,” she said with a slow smile. “Go put your pants on.”

She handed them to him.

“Then what’re you going to do, Molly?”

Her voice had a note of plaintiveness.

“I don’t know, Fortune. I love him, that’s the truth; but the burn’s gone out of it.”

“Yeanh. But no burn, less scorch. You might marry him, at that.”

“Wouldn’t he get tired then? It wouldn’t be right for him.”

“Maybe. What’re you going to do? If he stays, he’s bound to run foul of Klore. Then what?”

“He’ll lick him. I’ve been hoping for him to do that. That was one reason I wanted him. He could have licked Klore to Hennessy’s if he’d had a mind to. He’s got it now.”

“Molly, what’re you thinking about Klore?”

Her lips sprang open, then changed to the square grin the old man was so fond of. She tilted her head and laughed. “Go put on your pants, Fortune.”

Holding the blanket up with one hand, he had shuffled in to the cuddy. She had done it well, he said to himself. He peeped at her through the curtains. She had gotten herself into something beyond her strength of heart; getting out of it would leave a mark on her, “he was afraid; and he was very fond of her.

She was braiding her hair and putting it in a coil round her head… .

Now, standing beside Dan on the stern deck, she drew deep breaths of the bright March wind. Her breast arched finely. The loose man’s shirt could not hide the strength of her figure, but it made her seem more slender, brought out the suppleness of her hips. Above the upturned collar the feminine lines of her face had a quaint softness, appealing to Dan. As he watched her breathing in the wind, her frank blue eyes on the far western notch of the valley, he felt himself older and stronger. For all the long winter together she had not been so intimately near to him as she was now, with the boats before and the boats behind, the rush of the coming spring in the air, the rising and falling notes of the horns. She breathed deeply through her nose, her lips equably closed, giving her an added appearance of vitality. It stirred him; he took the air in quietly and felt it in his lungs. It had a mysterious intoxicating quality that traveled to all parts of his body, until he felt it in his fingers, and his toes curled in his boots to grip the deck. There was no need of speech for him; it was enough to be out at last, with the blue water coming towards them, with the hurry in the sky, with the white banks passing on either side.