The Sand Pebbles (28 page)

“I won’t lose it, if I can help.”

“It’s not yours to lose! You’re government property and I’m responsible for you!” Jennings said sharply. “You stay out of that engine room, understand? Or I’ll ship you over to the mission hospital!”

“I’ll stay out. I got patrol today, Doc,” Holman soothed him.

It was rather quiet in the Red Candle. Scharf was not there. Holman asked Maily to have supper with him again, at the German table. She was wearing the same brown dress. They ate fried pork bits with sweet peppers in a gingery sauce, a dish Holman especially liked, and fluffy white rice. He had to eat awkwardly, with his left hand. She was worried and solicitous about his hand. He told her about the job
and how it was going and she worried about that too. He could not understand how anybody in a spot such as she was in could possibly worry about anyone except herself. But her whole face and the scared brightness of her eyes were softened, and she was not thinking about herself.

“Hell, Maily, you’re in worse trouble than I am,” he said. “I wish there was something we could do about you.”

Her voice turned bitter. “No. I’m a mistake in the world. I was meant to be eaten by pigs,” she said. “I’m an American in a Chinese body. I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Maybe we could get you out of here. Frenchy would help.”

“Frenchy. He’s nice.” She smiled sadly and shook her head. “No one can help. It’s God’s will. My punishment.”

“Punishment!” Holman hated that word.

She was twisting her handkerchief. “I ran away from a … a place. I stole some money. I was going to Shanghai and find work and return the money as soon as I could save it. But bandits in the hills robbed me.”

“Well, if bandits—”

“God moves in strange ways. I prayed and He told me to go into Changsha and find work and return the money.” Her voice was low and toneless and she was not looking at Holman. “The first office I went into was Mr. Shu’s. I know God led me there, because Mr. Shu advanced me the money and I could sent it back right away.”

“Did Shu tell you what you had to do?”

“You mean go upstairs, when someone could pay?” Her face was very pale. “Yes. That is how I know God guided me to him. Because it fits so perfectly the … the reason I ran away.”

He was glad she did not raise her eyes. Anger boiled in him. All he knew about God was that you could not talk about God to people who believed in that stuff without hurting their feelings.

“How do you know you ain’t been punished enough already? How much do you owe Shu?”

“Nearly a hundred dollars, gold.”

“We could raise that much in time, me and Frenchy,” he said.
“We’ll buy you out of here, Maily.” She was blushing. “I mean without touching you,” he added.

“It would be evading God’s will for me.” She was blushing even more. “But I had hoped it might be….”

She could not go on. Holman didn’t know what to say. He was glad to see Scharf come in.

“May I join you?” Scharf asked.

“It’s your table,” Holman said. “I was hoping you d come in.”

Scharf wanted to know about the hand. Holman told him about the job and how it was with engineering on the
San Pablo
and about Lop Eye Shing’s boycott. Scharf sipped whisky and kept nodding.

“I hear all the talk, Jake,” Maily said. “They think you brought your trouble on yourself. Bronson is the worst, but I think they all want you to fail. Or at least don’t care.”

“I know. I ain’t going to fail, though.”

“Bronson and some of them really hate you,” she said earnestly. “They think you want to change things and get yourself out of military duties and you don’t care enough about how they feel.”

“Why should I? I don’t give a damn how they feel!”

“Please, Jake. Don’t push them too far.”

“They can’t help resenting you. You cheapen the thing they live by,” Scharf said. “How do you really feel about the martial spirit?”

“I think it’s stupid!” Holman stretched out his leg and patted the holstered pistol on his hip. “I couldn’t close my fingers enough to fire this thing. But here I am with it.”

“I do not know how you get away with it,” Scharf said. “You would not in a German uniform.”

“They got to have the machinery. So they got to take guys like me along with it.” Holman chuckled. “They’d like it better if all they had to have was a piece of sharp rock to cut throats with.”

Scharf smiled. “Be careful of your own throat, with thoughts like that. You are pretty much alone, with thoughts like that.”

“I got machinery.” Holman nodded. “I know what you mean, though. You got to have a gang. A man alone ain’t got a chance.”

“I think if you have just one person,” Maily said.

“Then what?”

“Then you’re not alone.”

“It’s a somewhat relative term,” Scharf said.

Maily had to go back to her hostess duties. Another German came in. He could not speak English, but he made it plain enough that he resented Holman’s presence at that table. Holman moved off alone and thought about things. When he said goodnight to Maily, he tried to express his thinking.

“Try to stop believing that God stuff, Maily,” he said seriously. “Look where it’s got you.”

She was shocked. “Oh, don’t say such things, Jake!” She looked around nervously. “If I couldn’t believe in God, I’d just have to kill myself,” she whispered.

They drilled all day. Banger came aboard. They would not let Holman work, although his hand felt much better. He was miserable, just watching. It was going to take a week of steady drilling, and he could not spare that much time.

“Ho-mang, come up! You got a visitor!”

It was Crosley, yelling from the quarterdeck. Holman went up. Scharf stood there, beside the biggest sledge hammer Holman had ever seen.

“George!” Holman said. “Jesus, that sledge! I didn’t know they made ’em that big!”

“In Germany. We use it at the smelter to break up molds,” Scharf said. “It weighs about fifty of your pounds.”

“Well, God bless you for it!” Holman picked it up with his left hand. “Come on down.”

“Hold it!” Crosley said. “I ain’t so sure that’s regulation.”

“I’m acting chief engineer, while Lynch is gone,” Holman said. “I’ll be responsible. Come on, George.”

“Beetle!” Banger yelled, when he saw the sledge.

He and Po-han took turns with it. They swung with clenched, bared teeth. Po-han had become a master sledger. Bolt by bolt they came out shrieking, with little clouds of reddish dust. All the men
hated the bolts, and they jeered each one’s defeat. A fever was on them all and when the bolts were out they went on to lift the main bearing caps and rig to lift out the cranks. Scharf worked as hard as any. Holman worked left-handed at whatever he could do. He had the driving, joyful feel again, as on that first day. About ten o’clock they had the cranks out, and only then they rested. They sat around the edge of the L.P. crankpit with their feet dangling, because that was the only clear space left in the engine room. Scharf’s thin, sad face looked almost merry. He had a smear of grease on his long nose.

“Well, Banger, you can take your old man home again,” Burgoyne said. Banger looked blank.
“Old man,”
Burgoyne repeated. “Your drilling post.”

“Oh!” Banger grinned. “You mean my drilling
pillar
. Now
we
call that a j
ohn bull.”

They began kidding Banger about the words he used. A key was a
feather
, the reversing shaft a
wyper
, and a bearing pedestal was a
plummer block
. Po-han was taking it all in. He was always anxious to learn new names, but he could not make much of their joking talk. Holman held up a monkey wrench.

“What do you strange people call this thing?” he challenged Banger.

“The only proper name for that there tool—” Banger paused, his gray eyes twinkling—“is a
Clyburn spanner.”

“It’s a Spanish open-end wrench,” Burgoyne said.

“In Germany we call such a wrench an
Englishman,”
Scharf said.
“Ein Engländer.”

“What’s it in Chinese, Po-han?” Holman asked. “Chinee man, what name speakee?”

Po-han said it was a
turtle beak
because “no have got teeth.” He clashed his own white teeth to illustrate. They had a good laugh at that. While they were laughing, Jack Dusty came down with a tureen of food and some bowls and forks. He uncovered the tureen and it was steaming ham and rice and onions and it smelled very good.

“Big Chew makee you chow,” he said simply.

Holman and Burgoyne looked at each other. “Big Chew’s breaking
the boycott!” Burgoyne said. It was the first time anyone had mentioned the boycott. “Well, they say of all of ’em aboard, he’s least afraid of Lop Eye.”

“God bless Big Chew,” Holman said. “Fall to, guys. We all earned it.”

They were all hungry. Sweaty and unwashed, they sat around the edge of the crankpit and ate bowl after bowl of it until it was all gone. They were feeling good and happy and satisfied together. They talked about what came next. It would take time and patience and some very skilled work and judgment, but it would not be a man-killer, like breaking those coupling flanges. When they were ready to go up, Po-han stopped them. He held up the monkey wrench.

“What name this? What name
plopah?”
he asked.

Burgoyne laughed and laid an arm across Po-han’s shoulders. “You’re an American, Po-han,” he said. “You’re supposed to call it a monkey wrench.”

“Monkey lench! Monkey lench!”

They all went up laughing.

The wire was a long, bright gleam through the empty archways and above the gaping crankpits. It marked the true axis of the crankshaft and they had to reposition the L.P. soleplate section to line with it. They unbolted the section. They strained and hauled at it with chain hoists and screw jacks and turnbuckles and steel wedges, checking the bearing beds with straight edge and calipers, and discussing how much to file off which chocks. Scharf and Banger were just as careful as Holman to make sure Po-han understood what they were doing. They would let the weight back down on the filed chocks and take more caliper readings from the wire. The readings would be changed, but they would not be right. So they would do it again. They filed too much off some of the chocks and had to shim them.

Patience was the word. Holman’s hand grew steadily better and he could use it for light work. The time came when the soleplate rested true and Po-han wanted to dance and shout, but Scharf stopped him. They tightened a few bolts, and it pulled off skew. Out came
the chocks again, cast-iron spacer squares with holes in their middles, shiny with filing, each one familiar as an individual human face. It would be another long cycle of trial and error.

Every night near midnight Small Chew or Jack Dusty brought down covered bowls of the spicy Hunanese food Holman liked so well. They all sat around the crankpit and ate and were happy together. After that first time, Holman had gone to the galley to thank Big Chew. Big Chew had grinned, burly and bold-eyed, and patted his ample belly under his soiled white apron.

“Suppose workee too much, any man mus’ have chow,” he said.

Nobody on earth ever had better chow than Big Chew could make, Holman thought. It was like a pat on the back every night. It helped a lot.

Then one evening, after a week of steady work, they tightened a few bolts and checked and it was still in line. They looked at each other, no one wanting to speak, and took all the bolts up snug. It was still in line. Dumbly they went back into the bilges and slugged every nut up full due, until each one
pinged
to a hammer blow. Holman handed Scharf the calipers. The German checked gravely, interminably, and at last turned with his face impassive. Then his smile broke through.

“You may dance now, Po-han,” he said.

Holman and Banger danced too, grinning and bashing each other’s shoulders, while Scharf and Burgoyne smiled at them.

All next day they bedded the cranks, scraping or shimming main bearings to bring the coupling flanges fair and true, and before they ate chow that night they had the coupling flanges bolted up again. Po-han seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful as he ate.

“Chiu-pa, oddah man, come back workee now,” he said.

“How do you know?” Holman asked him.

“I know.”

Banger put down his bowl and patted his stomach. “Well, it’s been a bit of a go, mates, hasn’t it?” he said. “George, we needn’t stop by for the rest of it, I suppose.”

“I want to thank you guys. I don’t know how to say what I feel,”
Holman said. “If I can ever help one of you guys like you did me, I sure as hell will.”

“Wanted to try my hand … learn a bit….” Banger was very red. “Oh hell, Jake. They say blood’s thicker than water.”

“If I can ever help
anybody
the way you helped me, I’ll do it!” Holman said. “I think that’s how I feel.”

He was afraid he was going to cry. It was a strange, almost forgotten feeling. It would not do at all. He got up hastily and went to make a pot of coffee so that he could snap out of it.

Pai, Chiu-pa and Lung went calmly to work as if nothing had happened. Before the first day ended, they were laughing and joking. Holman led them in refitting each bearing as they rebuilt the engine, pointing the conn rods to meet each crank fair and central, and day after day the heaped engine parts went back to their appointed places. The empty archways filled up with piston rods and bulky crossheads and connecting rods. Between them, eccentric rods forked up to either end of the double-bar links that curved across like steel rainbows to carry the slender valve spindles. Holman worked in a driving fury and he carried the others with him. All the heaped and rusting confusion moved back into place and order, with every nut snugged up and locked and every part fitted easy and true to every other part.

Ping-wen moved in his coolies to clean and polish and paint and the engine stood bravely new. On the evening of their last day of grace, Holman put steam on the engine to test it. He and Po-han and the watch coolie were alone in the engine room.

It tested out beautifully. It did not stick in any position. It was instantly responsive to light finger pressure on the control lever. Light gleamed and glanced as the shining tons of metal moved smoothly and silently. Holman showed Po-han how to control it. Po-han trembled with fear and eagerness. Holman brewed a pot of coffee and drank a cup and smiled to see Po-han get the hang of it. It was a sense of the engine as an extension of your own body, a feeling that you could close your eyes and still know where every part of the engine
was, the way you knew that about your body. You felt a joyful, enormous, tireless power in yourself, and there was nothing on earth to match the first time you felt that. It was coming over Po-han. His face was shining.