3stalwarts (181 page)

“Well, I don’t see what they got to celebrate for. It’s done, ain’t it?” He let out a deep breath. After a moment he spat in the canal. A frog by the dock gulped and dove. When he came up, he swam cautiously with only his eyes out of water. “Me,” said the farmer, “I’ve got milking to get home to.”

He moved slowly away. One of the young women pulled her jacket collar up over her neck,— a provocative small collar that served no useful purpose,— and took the farmer’s place. The man who had answered him stole a glance sidewise at pinked cheeks. The crowd jostled them. When the crowd moved back his arm was through hers. The hair under the shawled bonnet was golden and smelled of Rose Cardine.

“So long, Mamie.” The other girl moved down the bridge.

Jerry, come back from the wedding of his assistant, Collins, turned for home. The sun was down behind the western hill. Shadows were moving towards the Exchange Street bridge, shadows of boats, of the other bridges; they were clear-cut enough to show the peeled white maple stick with which a skinny old tatterdemalion fished aimlessly from the butment of the Sophia bridge.

“Hello, Mr. Fowler,” he said as Jerry came abreast.

Jerry grinned at the impudent old face.

“Evening, Randy. Caught anything?”

The old man twitched his improvised rod, and eyed the cork bobbet halfway down the cotton twine.

“Not exactly,” he said.

Jerry sat down beside him.

“I don’t see what you expect to catch here, Randy.”

“It ain’t so much what I expect as what I might catch.”

He eyed the cork sagaciously.

“Of course, you know there’s sunfish, Mr. Fowler. And I’ve heard tell of perch. It ain’t exactly that, though. They tell me the canal’s been opened up to Erie. There’s fish in them lakes— muskallonge and catfish— big around as a man’s leg. One of them might want to take a trip this way.”

“What are you using for bait?”

The old man drew up his line. There was a yard of it below the bobbet, then a hook, and tied to the hook with a piece of thread a monstrous white-headed beetle.

“That’s a funny thing to use for bait,” Jerry said.

“Fishing’s like getting wedded. It ain’t so much what a man uses fishing; it’s how the things go together.”

He tossed the beetle back into the water, laid down the rod, and looked round. His sharp old eyes twinkled.

“You look kind of bothered. How’s business these days?”

“More than we can handle. Right now I’ve got three boats building.”

“Any packets?”

“No. Hunter and I’ve decided to stick to freight. Two of these new ones are for us.”

“Where’s Hunter these days?” asked the old man. “I ain’t seen him around the town for quite a spell.”

“He’s in Troy. He’s making connections for our line. It’s our idea to carry through-transportation— nothing else.”

Randy slapped his skinny knee.

“You’re right, by grummit! That’s what I’d do was I in the business. Thank God I ain’t. A man in business ain’t got time to think.”

He touched his pole again with sensitive fingers.

“Now I calculate, Mr. Fowler, you don’t never get no time for fishing, do you?”

Jerry grinned.

“I guess you don’t get any time for work, do you, Randy?”

Randy cackled.

“No. Never did. Never had the knack for it anyway.”

Jerry’s face sobered. He stared down the canal. The color was fading on the water. At the mouth of the aqueduct he saw the Young Lion of the West tied by for the night. The riflemen were filing off. Over the river the pale green light was dying out of the sky as if it were being sucked through an invisible flue in the zenith, and a purple shadow was slowly mounting.

The old man followed his gaze.

“They’ve gone home to supper.” He hawked a spit into the canal. “Here they go making a noise and taking off their hats, just in practise! It makes me sick. Even if there was a fish here, what chance would a man have with it?” He paused.

“I don’t deny it’s a great work; but I wish they wouldn’t keep a-hammer- ing it against a man’s ear-leather. I’m getting so’s I can’t digest my food. Every time I get me a meal I come outside and somebody says it’s the longest canal in the world, or it’s got the most locks. A man says the pyramids don’t compare to it. Hell— it ain’t what a man makes counts; it’s how he uses what he’s made.”

The Montezuma, packet, coming in from Schenectady, swung into the basin on the left, and the swirl of its rudder caught a final gleam from the sunset.

Randy said, “You going to be in on this-here celebration, now? You done a lot towards this-here ditch, that ain’t even got fish into it.”

Jerry looked at his hands. The palms were calloused, the fingers hooked from gripping tools.

“I’m not going.”

“I’ll bet they never asked you,” grumbled the old man.

“They did, though, Randy.”

“Did they? Well!” The old man stared incredulously at Jerry. “And you sit here and mean to tell me you don’t want to go to it? By grummit! You’re a queer one. Nobody would have to ask me twicet. Shaking celebrated people by the hand. Getting into the paper. And you say, No!”

He lifted his pole and slapped it down again.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “I didn’t feel like it. It didn’t seem to count.”

He looked at the little old man, but the back was turned to him, rigid with disgust.

“I’ve stayed too long.” Jerry smiled. “I want to get home. Good night, Randy.”

“Good night,” said Randy. “Guess I’ll stay here a spell. I might as well drowned this beetle anyways.”

As Jerry walked slowly through the shadow, he lifted his face to the west, where the afterglow was rising in its curious fan. His face wore a strange sadness— the work was over, all done. He was doing his own work now.

As he passed a boat beside the towpath, he heard a woman humming a tune, and he peered through the cabin windows. The woman was sitting before the little stove, her head bent under the yellow light of the lamp. Though her face was hidden, he could see that she was young. She was all alone. He paused a moment to watch her, and the tune floated out to him, old and wistful in this new town.

“O Missis Mouse, are you within? Singsong paddy woncha ky-me-o! O yes, kind sir, I sit and spin. …”

She shifted her right shoulder enough for him to see the baby on her lap, the small pink legs entirely naked, froglike, drawing up at her touch. She was changing its cloths. In spite of himself, Jerry lingered.

She finished putting on the clean cloths, and with her left hand unfastened her dress. Her face bent lower as she lifted the child. Her shoulders seemed to stiffen. Then they relaxed. Her head came up, and her lips opened, and she sang with closed eyes.

“There has been a fine young man. Singsong paddy woncha ky-me-o”

She had a broad, homely face, strong with youth. Her shoulder jerked as the child wrenched the nipple; but her voice gained fullness.

“And I will have him if I can.”

Her lids lifted heavily and her eyes met Jerry’s. He started to draw back, but her face was so placid that he realized she had not seen him. The cabin was impregnable, and she saw his face without knowing what it was. And then she smiled, and her head bent down, and she shifted the burden against her breast, and he saw the thin black hair of the baby’s head.

He drew carefully back and tiptoed on his way. He had finished his work on the canal, but people were living on it already. People were being born on it. They did not notice his work, any more than he noticed the culverts under the streets. Aqueducts, marsh-trunks, they took for granted. Traffic had taken possession of his building. He felt tired, and yet vaguely comforted. He was going home.

When he climbed the steps from the towpath to the Washington Street bridge, he looked back. The boat was invisible against the dock, for the curtains were drawn over the outside windows; the only mark of its existence were the two faint gleams of light upon the towpath planking. The woman was alone there, with her child; the man and the driver no doubt had gone off for a night’s carouse in Parthy’s house or Billy Lusk’s saloon. The business was done, and yet the business was just beginning; but it was what he had worked towards.

He ought to be getting home. It was late. The children would be asleep, and Mary must have been saving supper for him for two hours. Two months had passed since he had brought her home from Halleck’s; two months of uneventful living. He had not been away from home one single evening till last night of dancing at Young Collins’s wedding. He drew a long breath. Time he was home.

He turned down the street, House lights on Spring Street shone dimly behind curtains. At the corner of Eagle, he saw his own house through the trees. A lamp was burning in the kitchen window. As his heels rang against the new boardwalk, the kitchen door opened. Mary was looking out. She knew his step.

His hand on the fence railing trembled under his weight as he vaulted over. The light was a guide to him across the lot.

“The boat was late, Mary.”

“I’ve saved supper,” she said quietly.

They went in silently. While he washed at the sink she put the food upon the table. They sat down together. The kitchen seemed quiet and peaceful to him after the last night’s dancing. He watched her face as she ate with him.

“Was it a nice wedding, Jerry?”

“Yes. A nice girl. I wished you could have come.”

“The house seemed lonely.”

Her voice trembled.

He pushed his plate back on the table.

“What did you do all yesterday?”

“I went down town.”

“Yes?”

“To Mr. Burr’s.”

She looked at him.

“I bought something. Have you finished, Jerry?”

“Yes. I’ve finished.”

“I’ll show you what I bought.”

He rose slowly. She took his hand to lead him into the little parlor. She had left a candle lighted there, and as he looked at the new spinning wheel he felt her fingers stir on his palm.

He turned to her then. The color came up in her cheeks. Her lips curved, the upper trembling a little.

“It’s a fine wheel, isn’t it, Jerry? It was hard to pick it out, but Mr. Burr was pleasant, helping me get the very one I wanted.”

He could not speak, but he felt her draw close.

“Jerry, I never told you. But back in Albany that day I saw you long before you saw me. I saw you clean across the river, getting on the ferry. I saw you talking with Mr. Bennet. It seemed yours was the only face I saw I wasn’t feared of. And when you looked at me, I felt my heart rise up. And all the time you stood near by with the ferryman, I held my breath for hope. Hoping you would buy my papers, Jerry. And when you went away I wanted to cry. And when you came back along the dock, I didn’t dare to look at you. …” His hand squeezed hers, but the hurt gladdened her.