Bucking the Sun, page 20
The object of his and Sangster’s irritation could be seen in the boatyard, most of a mile away: the white speck of pump boat which Medwick kept telling them was being built as fast as it could, which wasn’t anywhere near fast enough for them.
“You’ve tried, I’ve tried,” Owen mused. “I think let’s sic Major Santee on Medwick.”
“Oh, you bet. Why don’t you toss a spitwad at Medwick from up here and do about as much good,” Sangster expelled.
“I figured I’d sic the colonel on the major first.”
Sangster chewed that over. “Go in to the colonel and piss and moan about not being able to meet your schedule the way things are, you mean?”
“That’s what I had in mind, yeah.”
“Only problem with that is, you don’t want to get them believing you’re in too much trouble on the schedule.”
“Max,” Owen said tightly, “it’s about half true.”
• • •
Darius went up onto the east bluff to watch the pump boat be moved to the core pool. He had asked Owen how they were going to get this famous vessel up the considerable slope of the earthfill and into the core pool. “We’re gonna walk it,” Owen had replied absently. And be damned if that wasn’t precisely what they were doing. Fourteen bulldozers, the big crawlers called Caterpillars, were hitched by cables to the square bow and now the pump boat, the size of a respectable hotel, was going up the road behind its column of clanking Cats as pretty as you please. He shook his head. Americans seemed to operate on the principle that they could solve anything if they could get enough traction.
“Making it sail on dry land, aren’t they.” The unexpected voice made Darius spill a bit of the tea he was pouring from his thermos.
“Neil, sunbeam, I didn’t know you were anywhere about.”
“Had to come see what they’re up to at Ownie’s lake.” The younger man helped himself to the other half of the little shale cutbank Darius was sitting on. “You too, huh?”
“The craft, there”—Darius nodded toward the pump boat still advancing up the side of the damfill in a cloud of dust and clatter—“does bear my tool marks, you know.” Crude a tub as it is. But there was no bringing the Clydeside and the true ships with me, was there. He glanced aside at Neil, who had not been a boatyard participant but was the one who showed up to witness this odd crosscountry launching. “Bruce’s thumbprints on the bonny boat, too, of course.”
“Mmm hmm.” Neil had opened his black lunchbox and was doing fast damage to a peanut butter and honey sandwich. The sandwich was fine—product of the cookhouse of Jaarala and his mother, it was better than that—but Neil wished he was having for lunch what Bruce usually had. Rosellen’s noonhour at the Ad Building, though, and his on the dredgeline trestle gang didn’t quite work out right for getting together.
Taking his tea sip by sip, Darius mulled the Neils and Bruces, the young men working here by the thousands. Empires, armies, crusades had been built on lads such as these. A willing set of hands, durability, availability—those were the pegs history made use of, if Darius knew anything about it.
“What was it like,” he was suddenly brought to by the sound of Neil’s voice again, “being brothers back in Scotland?”
“In what respect do you mean?”
His nephew swallowed away on the last of a second sandwich before specifying:
“Fight much?”
“Mostly around the tonsils,” Darius mused. “Your father likes a good argument. And I suppose I’m not averse to one either, now and again.”
It seemed to be Neil’s turn to muse. “If you’re kind of alike in that, how come you turned out so different? Him, over in this country, and Mother and us and all, and you staying the way you were?”
“Well, your mother hadn’t a sister,” Darius smoothed past that with his instantaneous smile, “and so I evidently was cut out to be bachelor uncle to the world.”
Sudden quiet at the core pool made them turn their heads in that direction. The Caterpillars had been throttled down to lowest idle, a barely audible diesel throb. The pump boat was afloat in Owen’s lake.
• • •
“How you doing?” Rosellen always felt like an awed delegate to a maharani when she visited Kate these days.
“Pretty pukey,” Kate reported. “I don’t see why they call it just morning sickness.”
“Nhn. When you say ‘pukey,’ though, is that sort of an all-over feeling you have or more of a stomach thing?”
“Both. Why? You taking a census on ways to throw up?”
“Hey, I don’t even need to ask if an owly mood is one of the symptoms too, do I.”
“Speaks for itself, I guess,” Kate relented. “So does my middle.”
“You’re not showing much yet.”
“On me, it doesn’t take much.”
Rosellen mildly pooh-poohed that, her mind obviously racing for ways to find out all about childbearing from the resident expert, peaked-looking Kate. “When do you start being a lady of leisure?”
“End of this week.” Although what the Rondola’s customers were going to do without her there to joke with about being bitten by a trouser worm or finding a surprise in the oven, she didn’t know.
“Oh, already?” Rosellen let out without thinking.
“Listen, I don’t care how they do it in China, I’m not.” The part in The Good Earth where the woman worked in a rice field all day until it was time to pop into the house and have a baby was, according to Rosellen, certainly interesting. That was one word for it, Kate thought. She stated from experience thus far, “Getting started on a kid is no picnic.”
“At least you’ve managed to,” Rosellen flared.
Kate drew up in surprise. Who’s the owly one now? “If Bruce were here, he’d tell you it’s just a matter of doing it until you get it right.”
That only reddened up Rosellen even more. Quickly they changed the subject, and their squall passed. But Kate still wished she could take that back about practice making perfect in a family way.
• • •
The day already had been about a week’s worth of contentious hair. In came a naturally curly, not too bad to start on although too much curl will fight the set, and Charlene managed to push in enough wave, with liberal use of the marcel iron, to make the woman’s head of hair stay reasonably calmed down. But then in walked two women together whose hair behaved like porcupine quills. It dawned on Charlene that these had to be Cactus Flat residents, showing the effects of the sulphury wellwater in that particular shantytown; and worse, the duo inevitably wanted only a wash and a wave. She forbore from informing them that the only hope for doing anything at all with the broomstraw condition of their hair was to chemical the bejesus out of it, and instead put it that they were in luck, the A-1 was offering bargain permanents today.
Watching the pair of them, happily permed, go out the door several hours later, Charlene wondered what follicles she was going to encounter next. By now it was interesting, though, what she could tell by her customers’ hair. Who used rainwater to wash in at home. Who was sickly even if they otherwise didn’t look it. Who had seen the latest Jean Harlow movie and who held on to the creed that Theda Bara’s was the hairstyle forever.
She hadn’t even started on Meg yet.
Their two faces stared at each other from the oval captivity of Charlene’s wall mirror. Meg spoke up first:
“Anything short of a scalping, please, Charlene.”
“Meg, as it is, you always look . . . nicely put together.” As she was saying so, Charlene’s fingers exploratorily lifted a tendril of her mother-in-law’s sunned-brown hair. Plenty of life to it, if not much snazz in how it was worn. “Do you want to keep it that way, with just a wash and a wave? Or—”
“I want this,” Meg stated with what seemed to be some difficulty, “to be a, a kind of treat for myself.”
Charlene came around the chair. Directly in front of Meg, she put her hands on her knees and leaned down and in, looking in Meg’s eyes and then around the verges of her face and the waiting frontier of hair. Halfway through her inspection, Charlene began to grow excited. “Meg,” she blurted. “Let me give you the works.”
“Whatever are . . . those?”
“This is going to sound like the dog’s dinner, but it’ll all fit together on you, I just know it will.” Rapidly Charlene outlined the plan of attack. First, a croquignole permanent. Building on that, a marcel wave swooping to one brow. For a finale, antoine pincurls down the side and back. “Meg, I guarantee you’ll scarcely know yourself.”
Meg peered past Charlene to the mirror again, as if to give her reflection a last say in this. After a bit, she announced: “Bang away, Charlene.”
She confronted herself again in that mirror when Charlene was fussily finishing up with the pincurls. Under Charlene’s ministration her hair now looked like fine-carved teak, its scrolls of perfect wave and curl making the little nock in her chin fit right in, sculpturally. If she did say so herself, Margaret Milne Duff looked like a new woman, royal make.
Charlene couldn’t hold back a giggle at the thought. “Hugh is going to be thrown for a loop when you walk in that door tonight.”
“No, he won’t.”
“Well, whyever not? Meg, take it from me, you look absolutely—”
“It’s his time of the month,” Meg said caustically.
Charlene’s hands halted. After a moment, she went on with fixing Meg’s hair, determined not to be dragged into Duff family matters any farther.
• • •
“So, business lady, how you doing?” Owen greeted her when she at last managed to close up shop and deposit herself home.
“Busy says it.”
“What you wanted, right?”
“Mmmhmm.” She went directly over to the easy chair where he was tallying daily dredging timesheets, sat on the chair arm and hugged the crown of him to her chest while telling him, “This is the head I was wishing for all day.”
“Hey, you do know some pretty interesting things to apply on hair,” he answered comfortably as his head inclined there between her breasts. Charlene bit her lip, and did not tell him that his father was off on a binge again.
• • •
“Hnnfp? What’re you—don’t, mmpf—”
“Shh,” came a soothing whisper, at odds with the hand clamped forcefully over Darius’s mouth. “Don’t wanna wake up the whole menagerie.”
The figure sitting on the edge of his bed seemed so dedicated to not disturbing the peace of the darkened barracks that Darius made himself lie there soundless. When the hand eased up a millimeter, he wrestled free from it and got his own heartfelt grip on the visitor. “Hugh, what to Hell?” he furiously whispered. “What’s this about?”
“Wanna give you a treat. Take you out on the town.”
“I’ve already been somewhat on the town.” The couple of payday beers Darius had downed after work seemed to have taken place innumerable hours ago, and the blackness outside the barracks windows didn’t scale down that estimate. “Entrails of Judas, man, what time is it?”
“Friday or Saturday.”
“Hugh, listen, now.” Darius tried to make himself sound more patient than gritted. “You’ve had one too many. What you need to do is merely go home and find your own tender bed and—”
“No. Gonna take my brother out on the town, if I have to skid you there.”
In the abrupt stillness after that, they could hear the breathing of each other.
“That shouldn’t quite be necessary,” Darius answered at last. “Remove yourself from the bedcovers, though, please, so I can at least put some clothes on.”
• • •
Whatever the calendar said, payday always hung a full moon over Wheeler.
Traffic, afoot as well as automotive, was thick enough to be a hazard to the two men as they dodged across the main street. Evidently the clientele was beyond local. Up from chasing sturgeon in the dredge cuts, a fat fisherman in chest-high waders arrived at one of the saloons in front of them and stood, massive rubber bulge filling the doorway, for a moment. The flavor of Wheeler seemed familiar even if he had never tasted the town before, and he exultantly clopped on in.
Good grief, Darius thought to himself, does the drink run so deep here they’re prepared to wade in it?
He did not yet know his way around town thoroughly, but Hugh could have guided the blind through his accustomed route. With much regret he was avoiding the Blue Eagle these nights, because Tom Harry had shown a tendency to waylay him while Owen or Neil or sometimes even Bruce was sent for. Thus Hugh’s current port of call during a binge was the Wheeler Inn, which met the two Duffs with a noise level that would have taken the skin off lesser men.
No sooner were they inside the door, Darius already somewhat uneasy in the press of flesh, than a hawknosed little man popped from the crowd, piping out in a high squawk, “Hey, Hugh! And, uh, Hugh’s brother! Need a lifesaver? I got extras.” He reached down to the large sidepockets of his bib overalls, where the necks of several beer bottles protruded, and drew out two.
“Church key, too, Birdie?” Hugh inquired, as if topping off the transaction.
“You betcha. Never go without.” Birdie Hinch found the bottle opener in another pocket and pried the caps off the beers for them.
“Here’s mud in your eye,” Hugh began to thank him with a toast, but Birdie was already veering out the door, clanking glassily as he went.
“These’ll maybe hold us until we can fight our way to the bar anyway,” Hugh evaluated, taking a healthy swig and starting to writhe his way through the crowd, Darius more or less in his wake. Nobody took exception to their progress, elbows evidently a part of the commerce here, and Darius managed to put some attention to the sprinkle of taxi-dancers and their partners carouseling within the general mob. He and Hugh passed within an inch of one couple so snugly together he would have sworn they were lodged in each other. Next came two women dancing together while they awaited customers; Hugh and therefore he resolutely ignored their wisecracks about being in the market for a tall matched set, and passed on by. As to the Wheeler Inn’s other item of business, Darius had seen savage drinking in his time, at least by fabled Glaswegian standards, but this was bacchanalia.
When they were finally at the bar, Hugh had forged a spot and was finishing his beer by the time Darius squeezed a place to put both feet down.
“Cozy pub, this,” Darius tried to enter the common mood.
Hugh seemed intent elsewhere. He unpocketed a silver dollar and tapped it indicatively on the bar until a bartender put up two more beers in front of him. Positioning one of the bottles squarely in front of his brother, Hugh with tipsy dignity insisted: “Here, have another lift of this.”
Crawfurd, that fool Crawfurd, spun up unexpectedly in Darius from those words. Something like sickness filled him as he stared at the dark glass shape. Whyever did he . . .
“Darius?”
He was summoned back by Hugh’s swooping tone of curiosity. “Are you going to drink that,” he heard the prod sharpen in Hugh’s voice, “or admire it to death?”
“Sorry, drifted a bit, there.” He grabbed up the bottle, rattled off a toast of “Confusion to our enemies,” and tipped a sizable quantity of beer into himself, while Hugh blinked. Within himself Darius raced for the safety of a conversational topic.
“None the neverless,” he brought out sonorously. “Hugh, do you remember and how can you not?”
Hugh laughed so helplessly beer went up his nose.
“The great pulpiteer! The unstillable Reverend Milne!” The High Street church in Inverley, not to mention the extent of the town within his vocal range, had famously resounded with the reverend’s paragraphic alternations of “Nonetheless” and “Nevertheless” until the inevitable Sunday when the phrases amalgamated.
“And the time,” Darius was in fine roar now, “he caught you and Meg in the darkened room and you claimed to him, ‘This isn’t what you think it is’ and he drew himself up and said, ‘It’s going to continue not to be what I think it is, too.’ ”
They both had to set down their bottles in this quake of laughter, Darius managing to chortle out as a finale: “The man could have put in a patent on jabberwocky!”
“Eh,” Hugh said after they ran out of snorts of mirth. “I miss the old goat.”
“Your Owen,” Darius hazarded, “resembles him. Facially.”
“As long as that’s all.” Hugh was lurching a little, but seemed reflective. “Oh well, our Owen. I must have been reading Greek the night before.”
Darius stood patiently to see if there would be more, and Hugh provided it. “Brains by the pound, Owen has. The ration of sense in him is another matter.”
“He’s on his way to being a worldbeater,” Darius decided to contribute, “at this dam.”
“He’s always been on his way to five places at once.” And that Charlene wife of his has twice as many in mind for him. Hugh, confused, stopped to sort out what he’d said aloud and hadn’t.
“They’re quite a set,” he heard Darius offering, “your flock of sons.”
“Neil, now,” Hugh seemed to be counting carefully from a list, “he’d have held our name to the farm. Whereas Bruce—”
“That one bears watching, Hugh, or he’ll die facing the monument.”
With sharp puzzlement, Hugh stared at Darius. Then the saying came back to him, from Inverley. It had to do with the instructive way public hangings, when there were such, were performed in the town square, with the miscreant facing the statue of Queen Victoria, and it tripped readily off an Inverley tongue any time anyone was observed behaving like a scamp.
“He’s young and full of himself, is all,” Hugh claimed, although there were times when he himself wanted to read the riot act to Bruce. Determinedly he turned the matter, along with a fresh bottle of beer, toward Darius. “And when are you ever going to get yourself some posterity?”
