“I still can’t get over it,” ’ said Chub. “Not more’n a year ago we’d a had two hundred men on a job like this.”
Tom smiled. “Yeah, and the first thing we’d have done would be to build an office building, and then quarters. Me, I’ll take this way. No timekeepers, no equipment-use reports, no progress and yardage summaries, no nothin’ but eight men, a million bucks’ worth of equipment, an’ three weeks. A shovel an’ a mess of tool crates’ll keep the rain off us, an’ army field rations’ll keep our bellies full. We’ll get it done, we’ll get out and we’ll get paid.”
Rivera finished the ramp, turned the Seven around and climbed it, walking the new fill down. At the top he dropped his blade, floated it, and backed down the ramp, smoothing out the rolls. At a wave from Tom he started out across the shore, angling up towards the bluff, beating out the humps and carrying fill into the hollows. As he worked, he sang, feeling the beat of the mighty motor, the micrometric obedience of that vast implacable machine.
“Why doesn’t that monkey stick to his grease guns?”
Tom turned and took the chewed end of a matchstick out of his mouth. He said nothing, because he had for some time been trying to make a habit of saying nothing to Joe Dennis. Dennis was an ex-accountant, drafted out of an office at the last gasp of a defunct project in the West Indies. He had become an operator because they needed operators badly. He had been released with alacrity from the office because of his propensity for small office politics. It was a game he still played, and completely aside from his boiled-looking red face and his slightly womanish walk, he was out of place in the field; for boot-licking and back-stabbing accomplish even less out on the fields than they do in an office. Tom, trying so hard to keep his mind on his work, had to admit to himself that of all Dennis’ annoying traits the worst was that he was as good a pan operator as could be found anywhere, and no one could deny it.
Dennis certainly didn’t.
“I’ve seen the day when anyone catching one of those goonies so much as sitting on a machine during lunch, would kick his fanny,” Dennis groused. “Now they give ’em a man’s work and a man’s pay.”
“Doin’ a man’s work, ain’t he?” Tom said.
“He’s a damn Puerto Rican!”
Tom turned and looked at him levelly. “Where was it you said you come from,” he mused. “Oh yeah. Georgia.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Tom was already striding away. “Tell you as soon as I have to,” he flung back over his shoulder. Dennis went back to watching the Seven.
Tom glanced at the ramp and then waved Kelly on. Kelly set his housebrake so the shovel could not swing, put her into travel gear, and shoved the swing lever forward. With a crackling of drive chains and a massive scrunching of compacting coral sand, the shovel’s great flat pads carried her over and down the ramp. As she tipped over the peak of the ramp the heavy manganese steel bucket-door gaped open and closed, like a hungry mouth, slamming up against the bucket until suddenly it latched shut and was quiet. The big Murphy Diesel crooned hollowly under compression as the machine ran downgrade and then the sensitive governor took hold and it took up its belly-beating thud.
Peebles was standing by one of the dozer-pan combines, sucking on his pipe and looking out to sea. He was grizzled and heavy, and from under the bushiest grey brows looked the calmest grey eyes Tom had ever seen. Peebles had never got angry at a machine — a rare trait in a born mechanic — and in fifty-odd years he had learned it was even less use getting angry at a man. Because no matter what, you could always fix what was wrong with a machine. He said around his pipestem:
“Hope you’ll give me back my boy, there.”
Tom’s lips quirked in a little grin. There had been an understanding between old Peebles and himself ever since they had met. It was one of those things which exists unspoken — they knew little about each other because they had never found it necessary to make small talk to keep their friendship extant. It was enough to know that each could expect the best from the other, without persuasion.
“Rivera?” Tom asked. “I’ll chase him back as soon as he finishes that service road for the dipper-stick. Why — got anything on?”
“Not much. Want to get that arc welder drained and flushed and set up a grounded table in case you guys tear anything up.” He paused. “Besides, the kid’s filling his head up with too many things at once. Mechanicing is one thing; operating is something else.”
“Hasn’t got in his way much so far, has it?”
“Nope. Don’t aim t’ let it, either. ’Less you need him.”
Tom swung up on the pan tractor. “I don’t need him that bad, Peeby. If you want some help in the meantime, get Dennis.”
Peebles said nothing. He spat. He didn’t say anything at all.
“What’s the matter with Dennis?” Tom wanted to know.
“Look yonder,” said Peebles, waving his pipestem. Out on the beach Dennis was talking to Chub, in Dennis’ indefatigable style, standing beside Chub, one hand on Chub’s shoulder. As they watched they saw Dennis call his side-kick, Al Knowles.
“Dennis talks too much,” said Peebles. “That most generally don’t amount to much, but that Dennis, he sometimes says too much. Ain’t got what it takes to run a show, and knows it. Makes up for it by messin’ in between folks.”
“He’s harmless,” said Tom.
Still looking up the beach, Peebles said slowly:
“Is, so far.”
Tom started to say something, then shrugged. “I’ll send you Rivera,” he said, and opened the throttle. Like a huge electric dynamo, the two-cycle motor whined to a crescendo. Tom lifted the dozer with a small lever by his right thigh and raised the pan with the long control sprouting out from behind his shoulder. He moved off, setting the rear gate of the scraper so that anything the blade bit would run off to the side instead of loading into the pan. He slapped the tractor into sixth gear and whined up to and around the crawling shovel, cutting neatly in under the boom and running on ahead with his scraper blade just touching the ground, dragging to a fine grade the service road Rivera had cut.
Dennis was saying, “It’s that little Hitler stuff. Why should I take that kind of talk? ‘You come from Georgia,’ he says. What is he — a Yankee or something?”
“A crackah f’m Macon,” chortled Al Knowles, who came from Georgia, too. He was tall and stringy and round-shouldered. All of his skill was in his hands and feet, brains being a commodity he had lived without all his life until he had met Dennis and used him as a reasonable facsimile thereof.
“Tom didn’t mean nothing by it,” said Chub.
“No, he didn’t mean nothin’. Only that we do what he says the way he says it, specially if he finds a way we don’t like it. You wouldn’t do like that, Chub. Al, think Chub would carry on thataway?”
“Sure wouldn’t,” said Al, feeling it expected of him.
“Nuts,” said Chub, pleased and uncomfortable, and thinking, what have I got against Tom? — not knowing, not liking Tom as well as he had. “Tom’s the man here, Dennis. We got a job to do — lets skit and git. Man can take anything for a lousy six weeks.”
“Oh, sho’,” said Al.
“Man can take just so much,” Dennis said. “What they put a man like that on top for, Chub? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know grading and drainage as good as Tom? Can Tom stake out a side hill like you can?”
“Sure, sure, but what’s the difference, long as we get a field built? An’ anyhow, hell with bein’ the boss-man. Who gets the blame if things don’t run right, anyway?”