Bucking the Sun, page 17
Second Friday of the month. Rosellen’s day was rat-a-tat-tat at the oversize Blickensderfer typewriter, turning out paychecks. Every maxim of the Lewis & Clark Business School applied. Her chin up. Her spine straight as could be but not rigid. Her backside (which, seated or otherwise, was thoroughly admired by the male contingent of the Ad Building) snuggled against the back of the chair. Fingers downpoised into “tiger claws,” as the L&CBS typing teacher sang out a dozen times every class. Steady rate of typing rather than fitful bursts. Kersplickety splick. Typewriter keyboard deliberately qwerted and yuioped by its inventor to slow down matters and prevent jamming, but Rosellen’s fingers flew nonetheless. Dollar-sign number number decimal-point number number. Keynes crooning in the keys. The quick green wage jumps over the lazy Wall Street claque. Out the checks roll, deft translation by Rosellen’s fingers of the Fort Peck Dam project into alphabet and dollars and cents, to be cashed at the New Deal Grocery or the Rondola Cafe or the Blue Eagle Tavern.
J.L. Hill, wages for his percussive tunnel work . . .
John B. Hinch, wages for dredgeline carpentry . . .
Charles S. Siderius, wages for resolution of land titles . . .
• • •
Kate slept. Night shift at the Rondola provided her the schedule where she stayed in bed until noon when Bruce trotted home, scooted under the covers with her, they deliriously went at each other, then climbed out for a bit of lunch.
The dream she was having was an old one, out of that story of her grandmother. Kate was on the Fort Peck ferry. The river kept moving past, the ferry was slow to go. The man she was with, who was not Bruce, told her he was sorry but she had to be tied up for her own safety. Not both hands, Kate told him. One hand then, Not-Bruce told her. He took out a little rope like a piggin’ string, such as was used to tie a calf’s legs together during branding, and tied her wrist to the rail of the ferry. There, you can’t fall off now, Not-Bruce said, like your grandmother. My grandmother never fell off, Kate insisted. That’s because she was tied up, he said patiently. But by now Kate was looking down, into the river, and there was Bruce, walking along under the ferry. Not in any diving suit, just Bruce as nature made him, walking along under the water as if he was having the time of his life. Kate in her dream tugged against the hold on her hand—which in her sleep had got caught between the mattress and the beaverboard wall—and told herself, These people. I could be down there walking with Bruce if this other gazink would only let me. Who does he think he is?
Kate resentfully rolled over in bed and her hand popped free.
• • •
Charlene was madder than a wet hen or any other comparison that could be drawn.
This had been the day of the colonel’s wife’s social get-together; just a little Kansas Street do, as it had been described to Charlene. She changed into her best frock and promptly at ten that morning set off across the horseshoe to join the other wives flocking into the King’s House. It wasn’t until they were seated, circled like a spruced-up wagon train in Mrs. Parmenter’s acreage of living room, that Charlene realized not all the other wives were here. These were the Corps officers’ wives, from along the east loop of Kansas Street: bing, bing, bing, a major’s wife, a captain’s wife, a lieutenant’s wife, you could go right down the roster of who lived where in the row of Permanent Residences. Except for her. So, she was here solely by dint of Owen and his job rank as fill-master, was she not, was she ever. Which, she knew in the loyal fathoms of her heart, ought to make her unstintingly proud. Instead it panicked her. Already, first bite into a mysterious pastry with goop inside it, she was aware of steep graduations, mountainous social contour lines, in this gathering.
“—My Raymond is staying with my sister back there. We hated so to have him change schools and come out here where—”
“—No, we only hear from them at Christmas anymore. Poor him, he was passed over on the last promotion list again. You know what they say, the feast of the pass-over is no diet for a Pointer—”
It pretty quickly grew apparent to Charlene that a prior existence in Kansas City, headquarters of the Missouri River Division of the Corps, favorably colored a person’s status here. Intermixed with that, though, was West Point or not. If your husband’s career lacked cadet gray, you probably sat resignedly like Captain Haugen’s wife, Minnie, and brought your petit point sewing with you. In contrast, Colonel Parmenter having graduated from Choate and West Point, and been a high-ranking Kansas City officer, Mrs. Parmenter sat there with an entire deckful of aces. And this was just what rubbed off from the men. There was a pecking order of the women’s backgrounds, too. Being from the South, for instance, seemed to count for a lot.
“—Eula, did you hear that awfulness on Ma Perkins the other day? The whole passel of them were caught out in a blizzard and the young man from the lumberyard, whose-his-toes, Lester I think it is, said right there on the radio, ‘Ma, you walk behind me and I’ll break wind for you!’ For two cents I’d write in to Oxydol and give them a piece of my—”
By watching feverishly and saying precious little, Charlene sorted out the basics of what was going on around her. Of all things, calling cards regulated these people. She had peeked when the major’s wife placed the major’s card on the hall table with at-home hours for next Friday morning penciled in, and it did not take much to deduce that a captain’s wife would lay down the captain’s card for the Friday after that. She was able to figure out, too, that the other engineers’ wives, such as Pam Sangster and Shirley Nevins, in all likelihood were going to be invited to these next Friday soirees one by one, like rotated orphans. Somewhere a list existed and she, wife of Owen Duff, had merely been plucked off first by Mrs. Parmenter. Worse, what she was beginning to suspect was that Colonel Parmenter had done the list-plucking, not stuffy Mrs. Parmenter at all.
Charlene, younger than the rest and more striking in her sunflower-yellow frock and as usual coiffed as if with black lacquer, thought she was coping reasonably well until the cookie platter came around, at last favorably laden with Jaarala’s cookhouse golden-and-sugared finest.
“I’ve always liked ballinacrunchers,” she announced, glad of something recognizable to eat.
Not a full minute passed, however, before she heard Mrs. Parmenter say with enunciation too distinct:
“Wouldn’t anyone like some more berlinerkransers?”
Hours now after the so-called party, Charlene still had her mad on, and in fact was expanding it from Mrs. Parmenter to the whole kit and caboodle of officers’ wives. The big-shot Missourians acted like they’d invented the Missouri River. Married to the elite of dambuilders, hooey; bunch of mud-daubers here. This brought a guilty twinge in her, for Owen’s sake. He would know what she meant, though. The time Owen had taken her into the Blue Eagle, when she’d said once she wanted to see what it was like, he did that imitation of the Duke of Wellington entering Parliament: “I have never seen so many bad hats in my life.” Well, this morning she, Charlene, had never seen so many bad heads of hair in her life. All those moppy old frumps who thought they were somebody; the “when we were in Kansas City” attitude of the Corps wives still incensed her. Most of them, anyway. Minnie Haugen seemed nice, but you couldn’t spend all your life talking about petit point, either.
She gazed at the clock. Two hours yet until Owen would be home. Three or more years yet until Fort Peck Dam was done.
Face it, kiddo.
She sat herself down, beaverboard Temporary Residence walls around her, and for the next two hours did just that.
• • •
Owen came home practically cross-eyed from calculations on fill ratios of four different dredges operating at four varied distances from the axis of the dam. Charlene met him with a kiss that included a heated dart of her tongue. He visibly perked up.
“If that’s what’s for supper,” he said, going to hang up his hat, “I have room for several helpings.”
“There’s something else, first.”
He turned around still holding the hat. “Why, what’s up now?”
Charlene drew a statewide breath and told him she thought the thing for her to do was set up shop in Wheeler, as a hairdresser.
• • •
Meg had plans for the house—with sunshine blasting in through the window this was the kind of day when you could not help but have plans. Paint was a priority. She was pretty sure she could get Hugh to paint the house by threatening to ask Owen to do it. Flowers, the place screamed for flowers, color of any kind to break the prairie-and-shack monotony of the dam site and Wheeler. How soon now could she put in marigolds? Petunias, geraniums? Tiger lilies, hollyhocks!
She sang a few bars of “Gammer Gammon’s Needle” before catching herself at it and puckering up, amused at the day’s menu of distractions. Resolutely she swept out the woodbox, not because it wasn’t going to be used anymore but because it wouldn’t be used quite as much, which today seemed a sufficient reason. The rest of the place required a general attack. Remembering that this was Friday, water day, she decided to splurge and set the pointer on the water card at fifteen gallons instead of the usual ten, the extra for scrubbing this place down.
On her way past from putting the water card in the window, she briskly confronted herself in the small square mirror hung above the washbasin. At least her complexion was back, now that her days were not spent in a wind- and sunburned alfalfa field. But she looked at herself beside the eyes and thought, Ouch. Is it possible for a person to catch wrinkles by just being around that face of Mr. Jaarala?
But after that first regret over the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, she decided she would not have repealed them even if she could, they were earned honorably enough. Charlene and Rosellen and Kate could lead the skincreamed wrinklefree life if they wanted, but her generation had these stripes of life. People are said to have the face they deserve at forty, and Meg Duff was forty-five.
Not nearly as old as the troubles of the world, she told herself and contemplated the diplomacy of paint again. If she knew Hugh, he would soon start a spring offensive, launch some idea about quitting Fort Peck. The way he had punctuated winter with sprees, after Neil went to trucking on the spillway cut, surely must be leading up to that, Meg more than half suspected. He’d had to do his spreeing only on any of his wages that he could squirrel away from her, though, and she’d firmly added and added her own wages, and any of his that she could retain, into a stash safely hidden from him. If money indeed talked, Hugh Duff was going to have less of a say than he thought.
She smiled at herself; a plethora of sunshine, after a Fort Peck winter, put a deserved face on lots of things. So, Hugh, his habitual self, and paint: ought she to wait until after they’d fought out Fort Peck one more time, or would it save time to tackle him sooner than—
She went to answer the knock, water delivery a trifle early, checking her apron pocket for enough coins as she opened the door. Not to the water delivery man. With the sun behind him, for an instant until she could shield her eyes she thought the familiar long frame was Hugh and could not understand why he would have knocked instead of simply coming in.
Oh Lord, the recognition flew into her. Darius. Oh no and oh yes.
Part Three
OTHER RIVERS
1935
You couldn’t even believe a woman when she said hello, Darius Duff reminded himself.
He was seeing Meg now across a quarter of a century, the lines at the corners of her eyes mapping that length of time and maybe something beyond. After all that Scotland had done to him lately, it somewhat surprised him that there was any wear and tear left for the rest of the world, even on a woman who had chosen to marry his brother Hugh. But Meg still had the speculation in those eyes. The nurselike sense of attention, the way of peering at you as if clerking for God. The Milnes of Inverley were that way from the reverend on down, he couldn’t help but remember: preacher and preacher spawn. They wore well, though, Meg the latest evidence of that—the set character of her face, as if certified for good and all by the nock in her chin. Not to mention the lithe build below.
And the voice, streambed of voice, deep and as dancing as ever. “Darius!” She gave his name the particular lilt, shiny crownpoint of emphasis atop the middle syllable, knowing how he hated a flat-tongued saying of it as Derry-us. “Darius, welcome!”
Don’t hear more than is there, he had to tell himself. Vast fool that you were those years ago, don’t ever put yourself through that again.
“A while, Meggie,” he spoke as if it was a discovery.
“At least that.” She still studied him in a kind of appalled thrill. His eyebrows went up inquisitively, and she hurried toward manners. “Come in, come in. But what—you didn’t let us know you’d be coming.”
“I didn’t much know, myself.” That punctuating small smile from him, as quick as if it was the last letter of the sentence. Hugh without the gale-warning flags, this brother of his. Which had led to confusions before, she more than remembered.
Darius stepped into the house and halted as if hit.
“What in stone cold Hell—? Blueprints?”
He let his suitcase drop and strode on into the second room, to the blue-papered wall.
“They . . . help keep the weather out.” He heard a swallowing sound from Meg. “Housing is a bit rough and ready here, as you see.”
Rough, he could definitely see. The two-room hutch, shanty, shack, whatever American shambles it was, showed damp-stained beaverboard at the kitchen walls where the blueprints did not quite extend, and the floor of unplaned lumber was stark except where Meg had managed to knit a rag rug for beside the bed. The bed in with the living room furniture made the room as crammed as the corner of a warehouse.
He felt fury toward Hugh, putting her in this hovel, and with it vindication. She could have done other. I made that clear enough. But then the thought swarmed in that if Meg had chosen him, she’d right now be existing out of the pasteboard suitcase at his side.
“Here, let me—we’re still getting squared away,” she said, quite near him now, as she swept a pile of clothes off a chair. “But sit yourself down. Please, do.”
Instead he waded through the clutter to the topmost roll of blueprint Owen had papered across the back wall. Fingers out as if finding Braille, he traced the white lines of the plan of the dam. Meg saw a frown come on him, his fingers pausing at the dam’s midpoint and then moving professionally down to the lower right corner of the blueprint, the title block that revealed the scale of the dam.
“My God, they’ll be moving dirt for an eternity!”
“That’s what they intend, yes. Tons—well, tons of tons. Just how much, you’ll need to ask Owen.”
“I’ll do that,” he murmured as if to himself. “ ‘Pyramids and tall memorials, catch the dying sun.’ ”
“Darius. What’s brought you?”
“It came to seem time.” He kept his eyes away from Meg’s, restudying the walls of the shack. After a moment, he went on: “Scotland’s used up. You and Hugh long since decided so, didn’t you.” His smile flashed again, showing the short square tooth, bottom left, that had been chipped off in a shipyard accident. Meg had thought at the time that nicked part somehow made this smile of his even more appealing, gave him a dimple in his mouth, and she thought it again now. “You remember me, Meggie,” she heard him say. “Takes some while for me to catch up with the way of things.”
But when you do . . . she recalled, too. “You’re here for good?” She couldn’t keep the alarm out of her face.
Darius simply appeared amused. “I’m a pair of hands that knows tools, and they must need those here. Hugh, now, he’s a man of the plow if there ever was one and they’ve even hired him, haven’t they?” He was giving her more gaze than she wanted. She took it as a relenting when he nodded toward the dam blueprint and asked: “And the rest of the family—Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are they all at this, too?”
“They are, yes. Even I am. I help the—I’m on at the cookhouse.”
“Ever an ambitious tribe, ours,” Darius bestowed, and then was watching past her to the front door.
Hugh had halted in the doorway.
“Unfair,” Hugh stated. “I’ve just had a day that would curdle holy water, and now here’s this.”
• • •
Courting Margaret Milne, he’d had his work cut out for him. None of the situation (except the extraordinarily blue-eyed Margaret; Meg as she was becoming whenever conditions seemed to permit) suited Hugh Duff at all. The manse where even the doorknocker sounded basso profundo to a gawky young farm laborer coming to call. The dispiriting strictures of when and where courtship of a reverend’s daughter could be in session. And, vague but ever-near, the dousing personality that was the Reverend Milne himself. Those were only the start of the odds against Hugh, too. The Duff brothers were what was left of a railwayman’s family, whom the Reverend Milne seemed to peg even lower on the social ladder than they already were. Stroppy young man that he was, Hugh did not take well to being looked down on.
“Were I you”—counsel by Darius, more veteran in the ways of the world by an entire year, was never in short supply—“I’d stuff the poorbox in thanks for the old spouter.”
“What’re you talking of? The man will barely let us graze our eyes across one another,” Hugh reported bitterly. “He’s got his religions confused, thinks he has nunnery charge.”
“What better way to convince her,” Darius pointed out, “that you’re worth breaking down all walls for?”
• • •
Hugh ran in streaks, she had known that from early on. There would be all his obstinacy, such as the Gibraltar’s worth it took to withstand her father’s campaign of discouraging him, then suddenly here would come a veer, so that you had to look twice to be sure this was the behavior of the same Hugh Duff. The differentiation made him a lively suitor, more so than Meg had ever quite imagined. Nothing in Hugh’s life became him like the weaving of that romance. Meg’s breath, and much of the rest of her self-possession, literally was taken away by his ploy of enlisting Darius, lookalike from a little distance, to dawdle around within view from the Reverend’s study window while Hugh and she were at the back of the house in extensive forays of kissing.
