3stalwarts (170 page)

“Fine. Fine. Getting a tooth, that’s all.”

“By docket, is he?”

“Yeanh. Upper… .”

The voices swam farther and farther apart.

Another lock, a light on the right beyond: Cossett’s. Then Jerry saw shapes of new houses. A canal opened north.

“Salina side cut,” said the steersman. “Since your time, I expect. There’s a salt boat now.”

More houses and a warehouse. All dark. Time for a man to sleep. But Jerry stayed out in the warm stillness. He wouldn’t have to dream tonight.

“Next year this time,” the steersman volunteered, “we’ll be giving you a ride as far as Irondequot. Maybe into Rochester if they get the embankment laid up.”

“That will take another year,” Jerry said. “We only laid the culvert this summer.”

“That so?”

The steersman leaned against the stick. He seemed to steer by instinct. His narrow face was hard-cut in the faint light.

“Jake’s got a handsome boy.”

Jerry said nothing.

“I only just got married myself, mister. But I reckon I’ll be cutting teeth afore long, too.”

They went on, and on, meeting a boat now and then, with the night against their eyes, moving with a silence as earthless as the wheel of the stars over their heads… .

Boat-builder

Roger Hunter looked keenly at Jerry.

“Colonel Rochester took a shine to you.”

“He’s a fine-looking old man.”

“Yes, he is. As fine as they come. It’s a great thing for Rochester. We won’t be held back the way Rome was by Lynch. But it was handsome of him letting us have the land for our yard on such an easy mortgage.”

The silver-haired, keen old gentleman had given Jerry an understanding look. “We old fellows have laid out this town,” he said. “But it’s you young ones who’ll make a city of it. Good luck to you.”

“What are we going to do now?” Jerry asked.

“What we want to do is get the jump. We want two boats ready anyway by the time they open the Feeder and the Embankment. It seems to me you’d better get after the plans and models. I’ve collected a few. Order timber. John Biden’s ready to give us good prices. You’ll have to set up your cradles.”

Jerry grinned.

“What’ll you do, Roger?”

Hunter laughed.

“Sounds kind of one-sided, don’t it?”

They were standing on the lot of ground the Colonel had assigned to them. At their feet the wide-dug channel for Hill’s Basin showed a surface of baked mud interlaced with cracks. Eastward the diggers had left the shape of the canal in their wake.

“I’ve got to get ready for business. I’ve seen Ely— we can handle his flour if we have the boats ready. But I’ve got my Pennsylvania horses. And I’m trying to do a dicker with the Navigation Company to share their barns. They’ll have a chain from Rochester to Albany. They haven’t planned on further west yet.”

Behind them the river roared towards its falls. The first attempt at an aqueduct had been washed downstream. Brittin had died, and Hovey had taken over the contract. The state had offered him convict labor at a nom-inal price and Nathan Roberts was the engineer in charge.

Jerry looked back at the town. A low site, a cluster of frame buildings, its one beauty the river with its falls; and even these were obscured by the gaunt sides of the mills. A perpetual thunder lay over the town, mingled of the falling water and the grind of wheels. But it conveyed a sense of excitement, of a power for growth completely disproportionate with its newness.

“Rochester’ll never be a town in the right sense,” Hunter said. “To-day she’s an overgrown village and tomorrow she’ll be a city.”

Townsmen spoke of their village as a city already. “Give us a bank and a city charter— that’s all we need.”

The sun was setting beyond the river. It had passed down the line of the serpentine hill; but as it vanished long arms of crimson began to spread across the sky. As they reached up they began to open, fanwise, until from north to south the whole sky was made vibrant.

As Jerry looked at it, his heart shook off its deadness. He saw it as an omen. In the time of waiting, he would work.

“I’ll have the boats for you, Roger. But along with it there’s something else I want to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Buy land and build a house.”

Four ERIE WATER

1

“To build the double flight”

An easterly breeze was springing up, bending the smokes of the village away westward after the setting sun. Storekeepers were shutting up their stores. Along the river, the mills were slowing down; the race mouths ceased to froth; the wheels clacked slower and slower over their ratchets. A slight evening mist was playing over the swift slide of the river, and the roar of the falls was gaining strength.

On the aqueduct sounded the chisel and hammer as the grey-clad knot of workers placed the last post for the iron guard rail. The engineer and the contractor were walking back and forth over the length of the empty trunk. The sunset brought out the pink sandstone, coloring it like blood. Solid stone, ten arches, nine of fifty feet, one of thirty, set twelve inches in the solid rock to stand the worst the Genesee could do against it: their two faces were quiet and their eyes expressed a kind of wonder at the massive creature they had wrought.

Over in Hill’s Basin, Roger Hunter asked the yard foreman, “Where’s Fowler gone, Self?”

Self Rogers leaned himself against the hull of the last new boat.

“I guess he’s gone back to his house.”

He took hold of the helves of his long moustache and looked sad.

“He clears out every evening about four. Leaves me a list, he does, for the completion of the day. He ain’t bothered with no toothache. All he thinks about is finishing that house.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Me? Well, just the outside. It ain’t a bad piece of work. But he won’t let me touch so much as a one-inch board inside of it. Why, Mr. Hunter, ‘tweren’t so long ago I was his boss. What does he know about building?”

Hunter looked serious.

“You know what I’d do if I was you, Self?”

“No. What would you do if you was me, Mr. Hunter?”

“I’d have my teeth pulled out.”

Self Rogers stroked his jaw.

“Well, Mr. Hunter, that ain’t a bad idea at all. But it’s only got one trouble with it. You ain’t me.”

Hunter grinned.

“That’s so.” He stepped back a moment to look the boat over. “She’s a nice boat. I’m glad we picked on white with grey for the line colors. It makes a boat look speedier.”

“Well, white or grey or red or yeller all look pretty much identical once one of them dock wallopers gets to dragging barrels over it.” But Self Rogers took a look himself.

The boat rested on her carriage, ready to slide into the filled basin. For a month now, the canal had been open over the Irondequot. The two sister boats of the new Rochester six-day line were somewhere east, one traveling for Schenectady, the other probably in Utica waiting for a load of beer, whiskey, and cloth, a pick-up haul.

“This boat,” said Hunter, “is going to be the first to travel west. I’m picking up a load of cattle in Brockport, Self, and taking them down to Albany. We’ll be the farthest western boat into Albany when they open it up next month. It ought to make them take some notice of us down there.”

“Oh, they’re going to open up down there, be they?” Self Rogers slapped the hull. “Well, it’s all the same to me. It just means I’ll have to build another. It’s just about as bad as raising shanties.”

But the old man’s eyes were proud. The boat was a good job. Sixty-one feet by seven and a half, to draw three and a half feet when she was loaded up to thirty tons, she had the general lines of a packet. But the cabin took up only twenty feet of her. The rest was cargo space.

She had two windows on each side of her cabin, and sliding doors and a top-hatch for loading freight.

“She’s a dandy. I consider you and Fowler turn out the best freights on the canal, Self.”

“I guess that’s right,” old Self said modestly. He gathered up his tools.

Hunter grinned.

“Good night, Self.”

The old man did not answer, and Hunter strode off. He crossed the river by the Exchange Street bridge and then turned up Spring Street. This was the newer section of the town. The house foundations wore a bare, earth look; the roadway still was roughly crowned in dirt; and the footwalk was a path that wound where the going was easiest.

A robin in a maple called for rain, over and over, showering the stillness with his liquid notes. A couple of dogs were getting together for a night’s philandering. Two little boys stopped by a hitching post to feel each other’s shirts.

“How’s the water to-day?” Hunter asked them as he passed. They started guiltily, paled, then grinned.

“Not so bad, mister.”

“Warm enough for a fast swimmer,” said the other.

As he crossed Fitzhugh Street he heard the brass band playing on the

Corners to advertise Mr. Bishop’s latest waxwork. It had been announced that morning. A lively presentation of the notorious Love Duel between Commodore Barron and Decatur, complete with seconds. The brasses of the band came in strong to the tune of “John Bull Caught a Tartar,” and Hunter hummed as he went along. Crossing Sophia Street, he saw Jerry’s house ahead on the corner of Eagle. He had chosen the lot because the slant in Spring Street gave him an uninterrupted view straight west.

It was a two-story house, rather small, with a dormered roof, and well shaded by the maples. A spring welled out of some rocks behind the house, and on such a still afternoon the tinkle of water came plainly to the street. Hunter vaulted the fence, strode up to the kitchen door, and let himself in.

“Jerry?”

“That you, Roger?”

There was no sound of work, nor any sign of it in the shed or kitchen. He passed out into the small front hall with its staircase of pine and black walnut. The parlor opened on his right.

“Hello, Roger.”

“All through working for tonight?”

“It’s all done.” Jerry drew a deep breath. He had been watching the play of light through the western windows. “I set up the stove a minute ago. There’s nothing left to do to it.”

Hunter, hands in pockets, stared round him.

“It’s a dandy little house, Jerry. But it looks to me as if it needed inside painting and papering.”

“It’s not going to get it,” Jerry said.

“I thought you was.”

“I’d planned on it,” Jerry admitted after a while. “But tonight I got thinking that it would be better to leave it as it is. If she comes back, then she can choose to suit her fancy. I even got to wondering whether I hadn’t ought to have waited for that before I built the house.”

Hunter forced a laugh.

“Good Lord! She couldn’t help but like the house!”

For a moment Jerry’s face brightened.

“It kept me off of thinking about it. It sort of seemed that if I did it all complete I’d hear something about her when I got it done.”

“You haven’t heard anything?”

“Nothing.” His eyes went round the bare, clean-swept floor. “I’d been hoping she’d see my piece in the paper. But there’s nothing come into Mr. Weed’s hands either. Nothing at all. So we’ve dropped it.”

Hunter’s quick, affectionate glance took in his partner’s moody eyes. The lean face had lost its keenness; the shoulders, which had grown heavier in the past four years, were rounded; there was a touch of grey over his temples. He looked very different from the young man he had met back at Number One on the edge of Cossett’s swamp.

“You hadn’t ought to let it eat into you this way, Jerry.”

“I suppose not.”

“How long’s the advertisement been running?”

“Half a year.”

Hunter stared out of the window.

He said, “You’ve been acting worse and worse about it. When you come here you seemed to take it pretty well; but lately you’ve let it eat you. Go on with your house. If there’s anything she don’t like you can change it.”

Jerry raised his eyes.

“You don’t understand it, Roger. For four years I dragged her round-making her put up with anything that came handy. She never had anything of her own. Never a thing. And all I thought about was working and getting ahead. It seems to me in that time I missed what was under my nose. I used to feel sorry for myself not seeing it. Now, if I ever get her back, we’re going to start even.”

“But aren’t you going to buy any furniture?”

“No.”

“You ain’t going to live here?”

“No. When I go out tonight I’ll lock up all around. I won’t come into it again until I come with her.”

“But that’s just plain foolish.”

“Maybe so.”

“Then you’ll stay on with me?”

“If you can stand it?” Jerry’s eyes conveyed a grin.

“I guess I’ll have to. Come along, Jerry. We ought to be getting down to supper. I’ll help you shut up.”

Jerry answered by moving to the window. He closed the blinds. The last rays of the afterglow slanting through the cracks streaked his face with red. He closed the window. One by one they closed the blinds— upstairs as well as down— and then bolted the front door and padlocked the rear. Dusk was shrouding the maples, stealing along the street. Jerry did not look be-hind him.

“Let’s not go back to Mrs. Frey’s,” Hunter said suddenly. “Let’s have a change.”

“All right. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go down to the Summer Garden.”

Over on Exchange and Main Streets the brass band was adjourning to the Eagle Tavern for a drink. But as they passed-up State, Jerry heard the parrots in the museum shrieking.

The Summer Garden was a place to eat and drink. Sometimes a fiddler strayed there and one could hear tunes. It stood below Christopher’s on Carroll Street and was advertised by a sign on which three apple trees were painted. A notice on the door announced:—

NO LADY IS PERMITTED UNLESS A GENT ACCOMPANIES SAME. OR THERE IS A FAMILY OF CHILDREN

The garden was enclosed by a high wood fence; it had been planted for an orchard once; a long time ago, for the trees were well grown. One of the wives of Indian Allen might have set them out, the white woman perhaps. It was a quiet place now, though, with rough tables under the tree and paper lanterns strung from the branches.