The Outcasts (15 page)

Their three engineers stood like bridesmaids as they descended, and Goray insisted on an examination of the dashboard. He inspected the wheels and the platform and pronounced himself pleased. Morrison was meanwhile checking the oil and water. Lookoe joe oilie nanda watra befosie joe start na wagie. Yes sir.

And so it went: a perfect day. The upper cab emerged as promised, toward five, and they worried some more because it was immense, and full of beautifully complicated mechanisms; one good jolt would have drawn hot tears and keening sobs from all of them. But the mate knew his job, and won their hearts, setting down thirteen tons like a fisherman dropping a fly on a leaf. Morrison felt for a moment what he had felt often before, that any man who did his job well was a man to like; and then remembered General Ros, who was presumably doing his job well and whom he did not think he would like at all. A fleeting thought. He thanked the young man. Then he went aboard and thanked the captain. Then he thanked Goray. Then his three engineers thanked him. Morrison had Tall Boy give them the keys to the Land-Rover, and said he wanted one of them to run it out to the camp tomorrow and hitch a ride back on the flat-bed. They went away squabbling. “Utu,” Morrison said. “One dollar.”

“A bet,” Tall Boy said. “Isaacson wins. He been longer with the company.”

Before Goray left he said, “A good day's work. The bridge is important. I told you that.”

“Yes. To me too. You'll get a beauty. Just stay in office a while, will you?”

“Oh yes,” Goray said. “There is much to be done after the bridge.” He was teasing solemnly.

“I know. Farms. Food. Timber. People who can hope to live past thirty.”

“Oh well,” Goray said. “That is exaggerated, you know. Those averages include infant mortality, which is high.” Everything at his fingertips; Morrison marveled. “If a man reaches the age of ten here he can expect to see sixty.” Then his eyes went blank, and a wry smile plucked at his lips: “That is, if he wants to.”

So Morrison and Tall Boy proceeded in stately array toward the capital, the sun vanishing behind them and pedestrians paying homage before them, staring, clumps of them turning like sunflowers at the smooth and almost silent approach of this new monster; but a peaceful monster, and it seemed to Morrison that they sensed its benevolence and welcomed it. Romance, he supposed, deriding himself gently; and yet, and yet. The man who has never driven a fifty-ton crane through a tropical capital at nightfall has no right to laugh. Tropical capitals exist only in dreams, anyway, and when you are there you do too; the overpowering scent of flowers at twilight in an unrelieved slum, and then you turn a corner and the whole next block is one flaming flower-market, and a barefoot girl in a yellow dress lights the dusk with her smile, and her arms are full of blue and red blossoms. Then the next block is an outhouse, and the next a swamp of alcohol, and then an illuminated sign blares
CHARLIE CHAPLIN,
or a brightly lit black dummy stands in the window of a department store sporting a set of tails. With a medal in the lapel, and if you come closer the medal reads
JORROCKS HUNT CLUB.
And the night closes in, lamps glow, music floats and twangs. A policeman stops traffic for you, and salutes your passage. Tall Boy answers the salute. And when you arrive at Serpa's, the darkness envelops you and only your own beams light the way, and it is best that they be bright.

And then silence, and stars, until Tall Boy turned to him and said, “I think I ought to sleep here, boss. I really do.”

“No. We're going to eat some good steaks and drink all the beer we can hold, and sleep like babies.”

“Very good,” he said. “Yes, very good. Eh, one thing, boss.”

“What's that?”

“Will they let me in this hotel?”

Not since he came here had Morrison been so angry. “For Christ's sake, Tallie!” Morrison could have throttled him. “This is
your country!”

“Oh, no, boss,” Tall Boy soothed him. “No, no, no,” and set a hand on his shoulder again, “I just meant I got no necktie,” and patted him.

And now who was the ass?

In the morning Morrison stopped off to buy half a dozen machetes, and said that he wanted them wrapped, any sort of package, which astounded the wizened, ferrety Hindu in his open wooden stall. So Morrison took them as they were and went to buy a gunny sack. At Serpa's he hid them under the driver's seat. Serpa was all over the crane, nodding and muttering, tugging at his mustache—he looked like a lover in an Italian opera—and calling on his gods. “Beautiful, beautiful! Some machine! Some machine! Capital!”

“It's a good one,” Morrison said. “Hey, Serpa. Tell me something.”

“Anything, Mister Morrison. Serpa is at your service.” He even bowed.

“You really used the best? All the way through? Absolutely the best?”

“Mister Morrison,” he said sadly, as if Morrison had questioned his piety. “Mister Morrison.” He was a solid man, and dark, and might have spent much time in the field. That was unreasonably reassuring. “If this bridge was my own, my own private bridge, the Manoel Serpa bridge, I could not have found one kilo of material better than what I use here. For you. Listen.” He drew nearer; his eyes darted. “Now that we are a country if the material is bad you know what happens?”

“What?”

“They put Serpa in jail. You ever been to jail in a hot country, Mister Morrison?”

“Never been to jail at all,” Morrison said apologetically.

“Believe me, Mister Morrison,” Serpa said. “You just believe me.”

“I trust you absolutely,” Morrison said.

And they shook hands, and Serpa fluttered fingers at Tall Boy, and Morrison locked his door and turned the key.

Tall Boy understood the truck immediately, and they were not five miles outside the capital when Morrison yielded to him. “Forty. Never, under any circumstances, more than forty. Keep her at thirty for a while. Get the feel.”

After a time Tall Boy asked about “those things down below go in and out. They
look
like they go in and out.”

“They do. They're hydraulic outriggers. You know what hydraulic is?”

“Fluid in the cylinder,” Tall Boy said, offended. “Pressure.”

“They keep you from tipping,” Morrison said.

“Tall Boy will not tip.”

“That's not the way to think about it. You ought to worry about tipping. Look: that boom can extend to a hundred and fifty feet. That's a long boom. You can hold sixteen tons with it. Sixteen tons, Tall Boy. That's a lot of load. That's thirty-two thousand pounds. What's the most you ever lifted?”

“Two ton,” Tall Boy said grudgingly. “A long girder.”

“There,” Morrison said. “You think about this. With this you can hold sixteen tons, but only in a radius of thirty-five feet. Now suppose you have that swinging and it comes to the corner, the weak spot, and all of a sudden it's out there forty feet.”

“I got it,” Tall Boy said. “Outriggers. I understand. I never had one so big before.”

“Right. You won't have to handle anything near sixteen tons. But you have to know the limits. As the weight goes down, the radius grows longer. I have tables here.” He hesitated. “Can you read and write?”

“I read some,” Tall Boy said. “Numbers okay. And anything on a machine. Ig-ni-tion. Brake. Overdrive. And I can write my name. Print. Tall Boy. T-a-l-l-b-o-y.”

“We'll go over the tables together. You ought to learn to read and write.”

“Not much need.”

“Just the same.”

“Well why then?”

They had a long day ahead of them, so Morrison slumped and crossed his legs comfortably and told him. He felt silly preaching, and could not remember just where he had learned this, but it was a thing he had been taught and had never forgotten. “Well. In some countries you have two kinds of people. The ones who can read and write and never do any work with their hands, and the ones who work with their hands and never learn to read and write. And it doesn't take long before the first ones decide not to let the second ones even learn, and right there you get masters and slaves. Happened in many places a long time ago. China. Black countries, right here, some of your neighbors. Other places it didn't happen because there were enough men who learned to do both. Maybe there were not so many people to start with, so some men had to do two jobs. So there were men who could read and write and weren't too proud to work, and men who worked and had the chance to learn more. That's what a foreman is, Tall Boy. A sergeant. A gang boss. An independent farmer. That's what an independent country is, when you think about it. Anyway the more people can do both, the better for the country. Where I live you have to go to school until your seventeenth birthday.”

“Who pays for that?”

“Taxes.”

“Who pays taxes?”

“Everybody. Almost everybody. Rich people get around it.”

Tall Boy grinned. “I pay no taxes, boss. That make me a rich man.”

“You will,” Morrison said. “Believe me. And if there's nobody around who can read and write, who's going to do the arguing? Fight the tax collector?”

Tall Boy fell glum.

“Cheer up,” Morrison said. “It isn't hard. You have a good start. And then you can read the Bible.”

“I thought of that. Many times I wanted to read in the Bible. They say some hot stories in the Bible.”

Morrison reproved him roundly.

They rolled in well after noon. The camp was deserted—Morrison saw the Land-Rover, and the trailer with the boom, and the small crane—so Tall Boy beat on the horn half a dozen times and then held it down. Morrison barely had time to dash to his trailer with the machetes. Shortly men raced out of the forest, and shouted when they saw, and ringed the crane, pounding the carrier and kicking all twelve tires—universal!—and caressing the white metal of the cab. Philips and Ramesh were the last out, and when Philips saw what was happening he ran forward and flung the men away, roaring and cursing. They stood silent. They could hear him breathing. His fists were clenched against his thighs.

“What the hell,” Morrison said gently. “They just wanted to see the new machine.”

“Yes,” Philips drawled, “and snap off a handle. Or jam a switch. Or piss in the engine to cool it.”

“Well.” Morrison was back on the carrier, looking down at him, and made the most of it. “This is a new Philips.”

There was no humbling him. “No. This is the same Philips. It is a new machine, though. And you have not seen what can happen.”

“Tall Boy,” Morrison said, “take it into the shade. Ramesh, can we get something to eat and drink? It's been a long morning.”

“Immediately,” Ramesh said. “Jacob!”

Philips and Morrison walked quietly to the trailers. “You'd better explain,” Morrison said.

“It is the same old story,” Philips said. “We had irrigation pumps inland—at an experimental station, mind you—and they were gone in a month. Why? No one oiled them. Why? Because there was no oil. Why? Because the appropriation for pumps included no money for oil. Why? Because no one thought of it.”

“All right. But they want to look. We told them they'd work better if they knew more. Let them. Stay with them if necessary. You can't treat them like that.”

“Sometimes you have to,” Philips said.

“Not on my job.”

And then Philips said, as Morrison had known he would, “You are the boss.”

They spent a hot afternoon rigging the boom, and by five no one was talking to anyone else. Only Tall Boy chuckled. Isaacson had returned the Land-Rover, so after they had sent back the crane, and the truck, and Isaacson with it, Morrison paid Tall Boy his dollar. He wanted no other man's company—Philips had blasted a perfectly fine day—so on a quick impulse he asked Tall Boy to the trailer for a bottle of beer. Philips stiffened even more.

“Sergeants too,” was all Morrison said.

Before Tall Boy went off to dunk himself at dusk, he asked, “Boss, you remember what you said about foremen? Well what kind of country you got when everybody is a foreman?”

“I never thought about that,” Morrison said. “But I will.”

8

“Oooh,” Bawi breathed, and the others murmured “Aaaah.” Dulani craned forward blinking, and spoke, and smiled, revealing sparse brown teeth.

The shadows were long and cool; morning sun sparked off the blue steel machetes. Morrison was remembering the gunny sack, heavy on his back, and the rope biting his shoulders, and the bridge of vines swaying, and his hands sweaty. And the trembling afterward.

Bawi dropped to his knees before Morrison, touched the earth with his forehead, and rose to say, “Dulani say tank. All man say tank. Bawi say tank. Dis knife—” He shook his head; words were inadequate. “Dis knife
good.”

“Yes.” Morrison nodded uncomfortably. “Good knife. Okay. No more tank.”

Dulani spoke again, and his women fanned him. He went on talking, and men stepped forward. Five of them. They were a muscular crew. But one of them had a cloudy eye like Dulani's, and another a withered arm, and a third no scrotum, only a flap of papery skin. Morrison winced.

Gravely Bawi presented the machetes; gravely the men accepted. The sixth he kept. Solemnities at an end, he grinned. “Much pig.”

“Good.”

“What you want?”

“Want?”

“You give knife. What you want?”

“Nothing.”

Consternation. “Bint?”

“Later. After.” Morrison pointed. “Sun come high then eat. Drink.”

Perplexity. “No more?”

“No more. You good man here. I want you have much pig.”

“Much tank,” Bawi said. He discussed this with the others, who muttered in disbelief.

Dulani spoke.

Bawi said to Morrison, “Dis place,” with a sweep of his arm, “you place.”