Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series) (16 page)

“Whaddaya think about the structure? I thought the footings looked fine.”

“Depends upon geology,” Frank said. “Sand’s good, but they say there’s shifting they hadn’t counted on. And who knows what else they’ll find down under there.”

“The beams looked okay,” Gino said. “The jacks.”

“How do you think they get a level?” Larry said. “As simple as I imagine?”

“You got it,” Gino said. “A plumb line. Nothing more than that.”

“Well a few instruments, I’d think,” said Frank.

“Of course, of course, but it comes down to that. A plumb line.”

“I’ve been thinking about a job when I was just a kid,” Larry said. “It was on a farm one summer, when I was toughening up. To become a man I guess.”

“When was that?” said John.

“Nineteen twenty-one. I was just fifteen.”

“I was down in Kentucky then,” said Frank. “Not long before I left.”

“What ever happened to that kid?” Gino said. “The one in the chicken house?”

“Adam? I told you that. He left. He wasn’t part of the story at all, not my part.”

“Well, I would have thought, your mother and all.”

“Look,” Frank said. “The guy left. That’s it!”

“There’s a guy in my story too,” Larry said.

“Let’s consider the erosion, then,” John said. “There’s been a good many storms in the last month.”

“There’s erosion in my story,” said Larry.

“Well, the local rag says it’s still safe. To have the equipment behind the thing I mean. But it looked pretty fucking close to me,” Frank said. “Didn’t you think?”

“About fifty yards or so,” said Gino. “But what’s the soil quality under the cliff face? That’s the question.”

“I’m sure they’ve looked into that,” John said.

“They drilled test holes as well,” said Frank. “But they didn’t find that river. Not until now.”

“I’ll give you that.”

“What about this guy got whacked in the head down there?” Gino said, glancing to where the screen had been.

“What about him?” said Frank.

“Do you think it had something to do with the site, some earth shift? It could have.”

“Christ knows.”

“I doubt we ever will,” said John.

“Somebody passed out in my story,” Larry said, and they all turned to him. Then Gino turned to John and spoke again.

“Did you hear about the Ivory soap? I heard it from Carolyn. They grease the rails with it.”

“Not too surprising,” John said. “You should have seen what they used on oil rigs, when they ran out of grease? Chicken fat once, and even rancid tarpon. Smelled to high heaven.”

“I thought I was there once, in Tampico,” Gino said, lighting his pipe again.

They heard the squeak of tennis shoes in the hallway, a click of metal. Then Carolyn stepped in through the solarium doors, a vision of loveliness, early to work this evening, in her starched A-line, white cotton stockings, and cute little hat. Her hair touched her ears in blond ringlets, and she was carrying a tray, a plate piled high with sugar cookies, and her keys jingled against each other at her hip.

“Hi there!” Gino said, his pipe in his hand now and his shoulders squaring up.

She moved to Larry’s small table, bent over and set the tray down, then rose and turned to each of them, smiling in anticipation and concern.

“Everything’s just fine,” John said.

“The cookies. That’s good!” said Gino.

“It’s all in order,” said Frank, and Carolyn nodded, then turned and headed for the doorway, her steps light and the A-line twitching from side to side, and they listened for the hushed whisper of her stockings as she headed down the ward.

“That little hat,” Gino said. “I
like
that!”

“In your dreams,” Frank said.

“Like a nun’s hat,” said Larry.

“Oh, my!” said Gino.

“Let’s not get blasphemous, now.” It was John, and he was laughing lightly, tapping another cigarette on the can.

“There’s one in my story,” Larry said, and they all turned to him, then Frank spoke.

“She’s two hours early. At least that.”

“Do you think it’s Kelly?”

“Kelly
was
upset about something.”

“Maybe it’s the dead guy,” Gino said. “Something about that. I mean, to get things in order you know?”

“What’s to order?” Frank said.

“One less to be sucking,” said John, “to be cleaning. Just the one guy out there now.”

“For the time being,” said Gino, then Larry began.

It was Salt Lake City and the Mormons still dressed in the last century. But it was the start of the Roaring Twenties, and there were those coming out from the East in fine clothing and roadsters, stylish, and the women revealing themselves and the Mormon men with their heads down under their hats. And to be a Catholic child then in that oppressive city, but in view of the actuality of alternatives, was the burden that got him away from home and into the country, one summer, to a Catholic farm near Oakley.

There was another boy his age on the farm, from another school, and there was a nun on the farm, daughter of the owner, who had arranged for the boys to be there, to learn the ways of hard work and to toughen into Catholic men who could stand up in the face of the Latter-day Saints for the true religion of Jesus. She was young and beautiful and passionate, and though she had no idea of boys or even of the finer tenets of her religion and was a fool for Christ, she was an immaculate vision in black and white on the farmhouse porch. She’d look out over the dusty yard, hands on her hips, to where the boys worked at the greasy undercarriage of a tractor, rancid in the ooze of their adolescence.

She came, and then she went back to the city, then she came out on the porch again, and the boys abused themselves in the night thinking of her, unsuccessfully, then turned to a search for other visions. And when she came back for a whole week of summer vacation and followed out behind them, lifting her black skirts, the beads of her long rosary clacking, to watch them at work, they stiffened up as if they were men and focused to handle their tools with complete ease and sophistication.

“His name was Matthew, a beautiful boy as I remember, lean and articulate in his bony structure, smooth-chested, a mop of blond curls like a city flapper. He had a delicate nose, a sweet disposition, and the voice of an angel in the singing of comic nursery rhymes in our nights.”

The work was to dig up stumps in a meadow where trees had been cut, and the farmer had brought out the tractor and chain the night before and had left them there. The boys carried the axe and the shovels, and Theresa the nun followed them with the wicker basket, water and sandwiches, oranges and a few bananas.

They had to climb a rocky rise in the dawn light, and when they looked back to the nun struggling up behind them in her habit they imagined they
were enacting the passion, she Mary Magdalene following the soldiers carrying the tools of crucifixion. She wore a half moon of immaculate white over her breast, sweat fell from her brow to stain it, and her hat was an archway over her beautiful girl’s face, her veil a silken banner on the breeze.

The meadow opened into a broad field of wildflowers under the hill, its horizon defined by a low cliff at the edge of a river that in flood rose up to the meadow’s edge. But the river was in recession now, though swollen and carrying pieces of quick-moving flotsam in morning mist and licking at the clay bank.

The tractor was there and the chain, and the stump was a massive old oak, a tree fed by the coursing river through more than a century, the flat surface left by the cutting the size of a dining room table, or a circle drawn in the dust for mibs. The stump rose up to the boys’ shoulders, and they could imagine Theresa kneeling upon it, hands clasped over her full breast, Our Lady of the River. She sat down on the tractor’s step, her hem dragged up to her black ankles, and watched them work.

They dug down into the earth to expose the roots, moving out and away from the stump as their shovels clanged into them. The roots seemed hard as iron, and when Larry sent the axe down into one and it bounced away they thought they saw sparks fly up. They dug, their shovels slipping between thick tuberous snakes, casting the dirt up behind them, and the sun rose and soon they were sweating and the pit they were making under the stump was growing, and soon the hole was a good twenty feet in diameter, ten deep, and the exposed root system was a massive basket rising above them, the stump and the roots a giant petrified spider, still as some odd prehistoric monument at the river’s edge.

“She was watching Matthew. He’d climbed into the root chamber, and I’d seen her creep up to a higher step so she could see over the hill of cast-up dirt. She had her hands in her lap up there, and her face was back in shadow under the archway of her hat and veil and I couldn’t see her eyes. But she was watching him, and so was I, jealous of her watching.

“He’d taken his shirt off and his curls were pasted to his brow with sweat, and his arms and chest were sweaty, slick and hard as the roots he was climbing among and blond as the nicks our shovels had gouged into their surfaces. He was reaching out for the taproot, deep in the twisted thicket of others, a straight column descending, and his body was limber as he slipped among
the roots, and his bare arms were rootlike. He carried the axe against his chest, and at times the roots seemed to be piercing him. I saw his extended arm, the taproot near his fingers, then the earth moved.”

The nun rocked a little on her step, and he saw the tractor’s fender vibrate in the sun, then he looked back over at Matthew and saw the hole opening through the roots below his suspended body, years of hidden erosion, the whole far side of the chamber’s earth floor falling away, the cliff side gone, and he could see the river through the shaking roots as the stump settled and the axe fell, and Matthew caught in the roots looking out at him, the hint of a quizzical smile on his delicate, thin lips.

Theresa was a farmer’s daughter and she knew the tractor, and Larry climbed up and got the chain, then slid down again and stood at the edge of the root basket and reached the thick links in to Matthew. The roots held him at his hips and shoulders, but his arms were free, and he grinned at Larry and winked and then hooked the chain around the taproot. Then he reached out and gripped Larry’s arm at the wrist and they both looked up into the dark canopy of dirt and fiber. The stump had slipped a few feet down, blocking the sun, and Matthew’s blond limbs had grown darker, his chest and face deep in shadow, but Larry could see his blue eyes, his hair turned to amber, and could feel desire in his quick pulse. They said nothing, just smiled at each other, then Larry scrambled up the embankment again, dragging the heavy chain behind him.

Sister Theresa sat on the high seat, then fired up the tractor’s engine, its lung pulsing to life over the rush of the river, then worked it into gear and pulled ahead until the chain lifted from the ground and was taut and shaking in the air. Then she pressed the pedal down slowly, and the huge tires guttered and the chain vibrated, but the stump didn’t move. She backed off and looked over her shoulder at Larry, and Larry looked down at Matthew. His arm thrust out through the roots and his thumb was up, and Larry waved at Theresa, and she turned again, geared down, and pressed the pedal, and Larry stood there watching.

The tractor roared and the nun shook in her seat. The wheels guttered again, then began to turn, and the small tires at the front of the tractor rose from the ground and her veil lifted and waved in the air behind her. The chain hummed and Theresa rocked in her seat, and Larry saw Matthew shaking, the roots vibrating, and when he looked up the veil and the stiff white hat were drifting away over the river, and her dark hair was unfolding, pins popping
free, and it blew out to stand where the veil had been, a dark wave riding the summer air, billowing, as were her black garments, and she was a nun riding a crazy horse or a hurricane.

The tractor bucked, the tires dug down reaching for purchase, and the stump growled in the earth, then Larry saw it shake and settle, and when he looked down Matthew was gone under a flood of dirt, and when the tractor stopped and the dust settled, the taproot was bent like a bow, the others twisted and flexed, and Matthew’s eyes were closed, his body impossibly entangled.

Theresa leapt from the high seat. Larry was sliding down the embankment, and they met at the edge of the root basket. She’d grabbed the bag, and Larry saw her hand disappear into the dark folds at her hip, then emerge again, dragging a white handkerchief. He had the bag open, the water jar on the ground, and while she wet the cloth, he looked in at Matthew, whose brow was dirt-streaked, his closed lids awash in dust, a few tiny pebbles at the corner of his mouth. He’d reached to push at the roots as they’d grabbed him, and his arms were extended, his palms open now in his unconsciousness, and Larry saw the place where a spur hooked his pants at the buttons, pulling them down, the beginning of a narrow stripe, tiny blond curls descending. Then he saw the sister’s bare arm and hand, the soaked cloth as she reached into the root tangle, and when he looked over at her, the black robes were gone and he saw the white, horizontal ribs in her binding, black hair spilling over ivory shoulders, and a mole near the crease at her sternum. Something shuddered, and he looked back, and it was Matthew. She’d flooded his lids and cheeks, and now the wet cloth was over his brow and he was stirring, coming awake and moaning. His eyes opened into clear focus and a moment of bewilderment. Then he was smiling, knowing it was she there, and Larry thought he was looking at her shoulders, the dark mole, then he was looking at him, a slight blush in his grin. He was okay, just stuck there, and for moments they were laughing. Then they felt the earth shudder as the stump settled again, and through the roots and below his suspended body they could see fans of earth fall across the opening, obscuring the coursing river beyond.

It was impossible. Roots at his ankles and knees, the small of his back, his armpit, the taproot pressing against his chest. And the roots were thorny and rough, and when Larry tried hacking away at them with a shovel the whole basket shook and a root pressed down onto Matthew’s neck and he looked up, his eyes wild for a moment, gasping for air. His pants were ripped, the fabric pierced
by sharp spurs, and filamentary runners had woven their way into his hair.