"Ready, hunh."
"Hunh," Wash, Ben, Willie, Nose, Turner grunted as they heaved. The shell hesitated, rolled a quarter-turn, hesitated, rolled a quarter-turn. The wet timber creaked. "Bo, keep 'at line taut. No slack," grated Turner, shoulders bunched intimately against the curving metal.
"Ready-and-a-hunh."
"Hunh."
The grunts grew higher in pitch, took on a rhythm as the men shoved, gathered themselves, shoved. The shell rolled, paused, rolled. The brass bands gleamed gold-dull in the wet mist.
"Turner—"
Leo, standing in the mud. He didn't answer. She called down, "Leo, stand over by the truck. Don't stand under there."
The Railroad man retreated and stood by the idling truck, watching, looking worried. JAMES G. GILL COMPANY GOURMET TEAS AND COFFEES / GILLS HOTEL SPECIAL loomed behind him, lettered on the side of the truck.
"Hold it." She looked back. The shell was poised menacingly almost at the gunwale. Almost underneath it, Turner muttered, "Ben. Can you reach to slip a keeper under here?"
"Yeah… there."
"Ease off." The men stood back, wearily eyeing the thing. It seemed undecided, ready to roll either backward or forward, ready to recoil back on them or to plunge forward and bury itself in the waiting mud. Finnick frowned, looking at that mud.
"Johnny, tide's comin' in."
"Shit. You boys ready?"
They breathed, flexed their arms, nodded. He pointed. "I want three of you behind her to start. Bo, you keep aholt of your rope, but get ready to shift to the other side when she come over the rail. Wash, Nose, want you down there, ready to take the weight as she come down. Watch your hands."
They moved into position obediently, faces wet with drizzle and the first sweat, serious, concentrated. Nose murmured, "Comin' down always worse than goin' up."
"Okay, boys. Three on the ass-end. Shove!"
The gray-green cylinder seemed for a moment to resist them.
"Shove, you black bastards!"
… Then it turned, rotating almost imperceptibly. One of the men groaned, caught himself, and shut up.
"There she come," said Finnick, soft. The little man leaped suddenly for the rail, whipping his momentarily slack rope to a cleat on the other side of the boat. The men grappled sweating with wet slick metal. Then its center of gravity shifted ever so slightly on the gunwale.
"Stand clear below!" shouted Turner. "Them beam ends—"
She caught her breath at the sight. Delicately, gracefully, the long heavy timbers were shifting, the boat ends coming up, the outboard ends coming down, rolling gently and with a weird squeal about their fulcrum under the breathlessly poised shell. The men waiting in the mud reached up, guiding the ends as they came down, as the shell shifted again, beginning the yield to gravity, the downward roll. Finnick's line came suddenly taut. He doubled and tripled its coils about the cleat and set himself, back cat-arched, against the weight. The shell moved. The rope went lean and straight and drops of brown water oozed out from it and pattered on the deck.
"I got it," he said between clenched teeth.
"Sammy, move round to the downhill side. Bo, give it to us a couple inches at a time."
"Yo."
Fascinated, she felt the tension in her own muscles. The ends of the beams were gone, burrowing deep into the sucking mud. The advancing tide sent little wavelets over the one nearest the water.
"Gimme slack, Bo!"
"Yo."
"Hold that. Wash, careful your footin', you going to go ass over teacups—"
"Teacups shit! He got his foot on mine!"
"Slack, Bo."
She looked east. Perhaps twenty minutes had passed since Finnick grounded the boat. The sky was growing lighter by the minute and the drizzle seemed to be easing off.
Soon, she thought, they'll be after us. They'll know. When this boat don't show up where it supposed to be they'll start to look. Airships, like the one that had passed over them on the journey out, would fly low, searching the miles of river and inlet and swamp that veined the Tidewater. The police, the soldiers, the patrollers — they'd call them all out for this. There'd be searches everywhere. Searches….
She remembered bodies floating silent in the decaying Elizabeth at dawn.
"Little more, Bo."
"H' she come."
The men holding the shell back from its downward urge were breathing well now, wheezing explosive pants of effort. They grappled with its massive weight, hugging it, wrapping their arms into it, pressing their bodies into its slow descent as if to merge themselves into it. An almost sexual striving with its terrific potency of mass. Their feet trampled the mud, seeking better footing for the weight they transferred through their straining bodies. She watched Turner. His shirt was torn so that the massive neck and blood-swollen hairy-bristled pectorals showed, and his neck was taut, and his legs set like concrete posts, deep in the mire.
"Slack—"
"Comin' to the end, Johnny. Got maybe four feet left."
"Awright. We 'most there. Ben, I'll hold it, shove that cradle over thisaway. Yeah. Now, let her down — little more, Bo—"
The shell rolled, stopped, rolled. The cradle of wooden beams, crudely but strongly lashed together with mooring rope, received its weight and began immediately to sink into the mud.
"Get on the handles now. We'll need you all. Hey, Leo!"
"What?"
"You can't back that truck no closer?"
"Got to stay on the grass. If I get the rear wheels off it—"
"Okay, leave it an' come on down here. Gon' sweat your half-white ass for a change." The men laughed, stretched, wiped sweat with on hand, the other braced against the shell.
"You want me on it too, Johnny?" she called down. He looked up at her voice. She felt anxious as he met her eyes. The work — he seemed so much better, so much more sure of himself, at his work. Seemed to lose whatever was tormenting him.
"Don't need no women to do my longshorin'. Leastways, not yet." That, too, drew a laugh, even a smile from Leo.
"Lots of handholds here. Space yourselves out, like. Get a good grip. Goin' to take her all, now."
Ranging themselves along the sides of the thing, they reminded her now of pallbearers, the carriers of a mighty corpse.
"Couple deep breaths — ready—"
"Hunh." They grunted together, hoisted viciously, backs straight, thrusting with muscle-pillared legs. The cradle sucked up from the mud reluctantly, with little smacking sounds like parting kisses.
"Hunh." And they moved forward a step, in unison, like marching soldiers, like Hebrews struggling with the Pharaoh's granite. Arms rope-taut, necks corded with effort. The shell surged forward, swaying.
"Hunh." A second step. She gripped the rail till pain crimped her fingers. Their bodies were drawn down with the effort. It was too much for them, she could see that, too much even for these brawny men.
But not for Johnny Turner. The biggest, he seemed to be taking the weight of the whole base of the shell, alone. She saw his agony in the rigid upward angle of his head. But he held on — held on —
"Hunh." Another swaying step. For those in the lead the grassy verge was only a few feet away. Another step. Then another. The cradle tilted, dipped, and dragged along through the mud. Leo's side. The thin man, boylike among the massive longshoremen, jerked himself upright and she heard his breath whistle, a long-drawn-out inspiration of anguish.
It happened, then, as she watched. The front dipped again, dragged, and Leo went down. As he dropped the cradle fell too on that side and the shell rolled, moving with the casual deliberation of great mass, and its nose slid a little to the right and blotted out his upper body.