The Trainmasters (32 page)

Henneberry broke in then for the first time. “The men don’t do what you tell ‘em to do,” he said. “They don’t obey orders.
You can’t get anything done if you don’t get obedience.”

Collins gave him a benign, knowing, condescending smile. “That’s exactly the way it is,” he said. “As a result, we have tightened
up on our rules and regulations.”

“Yes,” John said. “I’m aware of those. We’ve talked about them several times.”

“Talk” was a mild way of putting the kind of discussion he had had with Collins, for John had nothing but contempt for these
rules, and he had made that clear to the contractor. John was convinced the rules were more than misguided. They were a recipe
for a tragedy, worse than the tunnel cave-in in April.

John had no illusions about the kind of men who had construction jobs with Collins. They were hard, rough, violent men, and
together they were more like an angry street mob than a Methodist congregation. They required order more than gentleness,
discipline more than freedom. One had to rule them with firmness and strength, or else they would rebel. But they were men
and not slaves, and when they were wisely led, they obeyed loyally, eagerly, and with devoted dedication.

But Collins’s new work rules were not designed to lead, direct, and inspire. They were instruments of oppression. As in a
prison, the men were separated from their friends and set against one another. The men from Cork or Galway or Tipperary or
the other counties were no longer allowed to form their own work gangs. The work gangs were now made up by lot; the men were
now simply mixed together, dumped together without acknowledging or taking into account any bond that had previously united
them. Often, in fact, there was ancient hostility among the men who were forced to work side by side.

The gangs no longer worked as a team; it was every man for himself. Each man was now responsible for accomplishing his own
daily task according to a rigid timetable. In doing so he was required to follow a baffling array of finicky regulations.

He was ordered—on pain of dismissal—to inform on any of his companions who failed to carry out these regulations. Loyalty
and dedication were neither encouraged nor rewarded. The informer became the new nobility among the laborers.

Naturally, the men resisted Collins’s new regime. But they were powerless to change it. So their resistance went undercover.
There were more accidents, more fights and other incidents of violence, more acts of sabotage against company property, more
drunkenness on and off the job, more whores in the camp, and more men simply walking off and vanishing into the vast, open,
znAfree
countryside.

This kind of resistance was bad enough. But John feared that it would grow into active rebellion. He feared an explosion among
the men.

“The new rules will have a positive effect on the men,” Collins promised, “in time.”

“That’s interesting,” John said. “It is, in fact, a surprising interpretation of events, when you think a little about it.
Your new rules have been in effect for close to two months, and work has slowed down. At this rate, there’ll be no work on
the tunnel at all by July.”

“Ah yes,” Collins said blandly, “one could look at it that way, if one did not have all the facts. But, as I said, there’s
more to it than—apparently—meets
your
eye, Mr. Carlysle.”

“Yes?” John said.

“There’s a bad bunch of men festering among the good. Soon, I’ll be rid of the bad ones. The work’ll proceed as fast as you’d
ever desire once I’ve managed to weed out the rotten element.”

“It’s the bad apples that’s makin’ all the trouble,” Tom Henneberry said.

Collins gave him an approving look, as though he were a seal who had just successfully balanced a ball on his nose.

“Some of the men dream extravagant dreams,” Collins said in the tone of a pastor delivering a homily. “They encourage the
others who are weaker and more easily led to expect for themselves privileges that they have no right to desire. If we allow
these ringleaders to go on unchecked, you’re liable to find yourself with a strike on your hands, Mr. Carlysle.”

“Yes, go on.”

“It’s bastards like Egan O’Rahilly that’s causin’ all the trouble,” Tom Henneberry said. “We got to get rid of him and those
like him if we’re gonna finish the job on time.”

“If they’re out of the way,” Collins added, “the others will be as docile as you’d ever want, and you’ll see your tunnel built
in no time, I can promise you that.”

“Egan O’Rahilly is a leader,” John said. “I agree with you there.”

“He’s a pernicious influence,” Collins said. “And he has to go.”

“Then let him go,” John said calmly. “He works for you.”
And I can find plenty of work for Egan O’Rahilly to do
, John thought to himself.

“I have your approval,” Collins asked quietly, “to do that?”

“Why do you need my approval?”

John asked the question with apparent innocence. But he was beginning to see what Collins was up to. Collins wanted the railroad
management to back his actions. He wanted all such responsibility shared.

“We all need to be united in this matter,” Collins said innocently. “Don’t you think? Shouldn’t we all hang together?”

John had had enough of the game; he now removed his mask of calmness. “We don’t need to be united, Mr. Collins,” he flared.
“We need to be on time. I’ve told you this before, so it won’t come as a shock to you: Your work rules have been the chief
cause of the delays we are now experiencing. And I want the madness you have started to stop. Instantly.”

Collins smiled his cherub’s smile. “I really must disagree with you,” he said reasonably. “Totally.
Totaliter
, as they say in Latin. The rules—if properly administered and applied— will bring you the order that you hope for.” He paused
to let that sink in, and then he resumed in his sermon-maker’s voice. “But the bad seeds have been allowed to take root. They
must be weeded out.”

“The men you want to dismiss, Mr. Collins, are the very men I would put in charge of the work. You want to throw the best
men out.”

“How long have you been in this country, Mr. Carlysle?” Collins asked in his most kindly and condescending voice, fastening
onto a logic that had bothered John earlier. “It’s not yet three months is it? And you have been given great responsibility…
I won’t say it’s more responsibility than you can handle,” he said with a knowing look toward Tom Henneberry, “you bein’ a
smart man with a university education and all. But you are still new in this place, and I’ve been here for over twenty years.
I think I should know my way around much better than you.

“What I’m tellin’ you is that you should watch over your engineerin’ and your surveyin’, and I’ll take care of the men.” He
paused and gave John a bland look. “Isn’t that fair?”

“Absolutely not,” John said, spitting the words out. “You keep doing what you are doing, Collins, and there’ll be an explosion.
And I can’t allow that to happen.”

“Ah well, then, Mr. Carlysle, so you say. And what are you going to do about it… if you are correct?”

“I’ll destroy you,” John said.

Collins smiled. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

John shook his head. “Madness,” he muttered, wanting to take control yet knowing there was nothing he could do for the time
being. Collins had his contract, and he had not yet violated any of its terms.

John rose to dismiss the two men. “I donT think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this conversation. But I do want
to make one final thing clear. You can do as you please with the men now. I won’t back you; but I won’t stand in your way,
either.

“However, according to your agreement with the railroad, your time is running out. If you remain significantly behind schedule
at the end of July, the contract becomes void. Do you follow me?” John knew that it was to Collins’s advantage to finish the
work on time. If he was deliberately slowing it down, it was for a reason he did not want Carlysle to know.

Collinsstoodup withoutanswering John’s question. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” he said, smiling. “I know
how busy you are and how many worries you have.”

Then he reached over and pinched Tom Henneberry’s shirt at the shoulder. “Let’s be off then, Tom,” he said, pulling Henneberry
to his feet.

“I’d like a response from you before you go,” John said. “I asked you a question.”

“I suggest, Mr. Carlysle,” he said, his voice unusually abrasive, “that you stick to what you do best and leave to me what
I do best.” Then he and Henneberry left the room.

After the two men were gone, John went again to the window. “Damn!” he said to himself softly, quietly, for he was in a place
where it would not do to release the scream that was building up inside him. His fists were clenched and his stomach was in
knots.

Why?
he asked himself over and over.
Why does he do it? What drives this man Collins? What makes him move?

John had known hard taskmasters, oppressive foremen, capricious superiors, but Collins was different. Something out of John’s
ken wound Collins’s springs.

What is it?
he asked himself.
Or who
..
.is it? Could that person also be behind
…? The thought trailed off, but it remained pregnant in his mind.

The construction delays and the growing labor troubles weren’t the only crisis pressing on John that afternoon. There was
trouble all down the Pennsylvania line with the roadbed, the tracks, and with the equipment. Such was not unusual; they were
the kinds of misfortunes every railroad encountered. Switches jammed, rails worked loose from the ties, gravel washed away
from the roadbed, and locomotives broke down. This was all normal wear and tear, and coupled with the third law of thermodynamics,
it accounted for much of what was going wrong. But there were too many of these “normal” occurrences to be explained easily
as the processes of dissolution and disorganization and decay.

Yet there was no evidence of any deliberate damage.

John remembered his first careful inspections of the Philadelphia rail yard and the equipment there soon after his arrival
in the United States.He remembered well how impressed he was with the way things were managed on the Pennsylvania. Machinery
and tracks were all impeccably cared for and kept in good repair.

John had seen no recent evidence of any change in the way such things were done on the line. Yet now the trains were breaking
down; daily it seemed. And if the machinery of the locomotives and cars was operating normally, the trains still met delays
from bad track or jammed switches or empty wood lots and drained water towers.

John had traveled back and forth several times along the entire length of the line and had inspected everything, but he had
been able to arrive at no firm conclusions about the cause of the destruction.

Still, he felt he knew what was wrong. He knew that there were people somewhere who, for some reason, were causing setbacks.
There was too much destruction and chaos for either chance or the third law of thermodynamics to explain. So much chaos required
a destroyer.

Fortunately for John, there was a quiet escape for him within all the turmoil where he could restore himself and gather his
strength
and
his wits. He had his family with him. Alex, David, and Graham had remained at Gallitzin after the runnel disaster was over.
John had found an engineering job for Graham. And the two younger boys had been given over to Teresa O’Rahilly, who had in
the months since the cave-in become very nearly a fifth Carlysle.

Soon after Kitty Lancaster and her party had arrived at Gallitzin, John had hired Teresa as governess for Alex and David.
And Teresa had succeeded better than splendidly with the two youngest Carlysles. They adored her, and she adored them.

Her relationship with the two youngest Carlysles had carried with it an unexpected benefit for John. It kept her in Gallitzin
to be with the eldest of his sons, caring for Graham when he most needed someone. She gave him the strength and love that
allowed him to pull himself out of the deep melancholy he fell into as a result of the wounds the Keans had inflicted on both
his body and soul.

During the first days of his recovery, all of Graham’s life energy seemed to have been sucked out of him. Nothing interested
him. No one mattered to Graham but himself and the pain he was suffering.

Later, as the injuries to his body mended, the injuries to his soul festered. Without Teresa, these would have healed only
with great difficulty, if at all. But Teresa did not permit Graham to feel sorry for himself or indulge in the pleasures of
despair. Graham didn’t fall into the traps and enchantments that the groggery and the card tables offered.

And so in his family, in the unexpected but much welcome strength and womanly skills of Teresa O’Rahilly, and in the recovery
of Graham from all his injuries, John Carlysle had found at least some rest from the distress brought on by the labor troubles,
the construction delays, and the apparent sabotage to the line.

After Collins and Henneberry had left, John paced restlessly and uneasily around his office, reflecting, brooding, trying—and
failing—to fix his mind on the enigmas that besieged him.

He could not concentrate now. He could not focus. His brain did not want to function.

He slammed the palm of his hand against the top of his desk in frustration and anger, for this was not the first time in recent
weeks that the power of thought escaped him. It had happened before, with increasing frequency, as the problems mounted.

It was not as though his intelligence was failing him, and he was sure that he was not going mad. Rather, when these moments
struck him, it was as though there was a dark gulf, an emptiness, between himself and the problems with which he was grappling.

It was the dark emptiness that disturbed him more than anything else.

John was not aware of it, or at least he could never have admitted it to himself, but the source of the emptiness was his
own loneliness. He was new in a strange land among strange people and customs, and he had only himself to turn to. He was
alone and at the same time beset by more crises than most men have to handle in a lifetime. Collins’s barbs earlier had jolted
him, not because John was unsure of his competence, but because he was lonely.