Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith
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F. Hopkinson Smith >> Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith
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9 Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith
I
BABCOCK'S DISCOVERY
Something worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient
gesture with which he turned away from the ferry window on
learning he had half an hour to wait. He paced the slip with
hands deep in his pockets, his head on his chest. Every now and
then he stopped, snapped open his watch and shut it again quickly,
as if to hurry the lagging minutes.
For the first time in years Tom Grogan, who had always unloaded
his boats, had failed him. A scow loaded with stone for the
sea-wall that Babcock was building for the Lighthouse Department
had lain three days at the government dock without a bucket having
been swung across her decks. His foreman had just reported that
there was not enough material to last the concrete-mixers two
hours. If Grogan did not begin work at once, the divers must come
up.
Heretofore to turn over to Grogan the unloading of material for
any submarine work had been like feeding grist to a mill--so many
tons of concrete stone loaded on the scows by the stone crushing
company had meant that exact amount delivered by Grogan on
Babcock's mixing-platforms twenty-four hours after arrival, ready
for the divers below. This was the way Grogan had worked, and he
had required no watching.
Babcock's impatience did not cease even when he took his seat on
the upper deck of the ferry-boat and caught the welcome sound of
the paddles sweeping back to the landing at St. George. He
thought of his men standing idle, and of the heavy penalties which
would be inflicted by the Government if the winter caught him
before the section of wall was complete. It was no way to serve a
man, he kept repeating to himself, leaving his gangs idle, now
when the good weather might soon be over and a full day's work
could never be counted upon. Earlier in the season Grogan's delay
would not have been so serious.
But one northeaster as yet had struck the work. This had carried
away some of the upper planking--the false work of the coffer-dam;
but this had been repaired in a few hours without delay or serious
damage. After that the Indian summer had set in--soft, dreamy
days when the winds dozed by the hour, the waves nibbled along the
shores, and the swelling breast of the ocean rose and fell as if
in gentle slumber.
But would this good weather last? Babcock rose hurriedly, as this
anxiety again took possession of him, and leaned over the
deck-rail, scanning the sky. He did not like the drift of the low
clouds off to the west; southeasters began that way. It looked as
though the wind might change.
Some men would not have worried over these possibilities. Babcock
did. He was that kind of man.
When the boat touched the shore, he sprang over the chains, and
hurried through the ferry-slip.
"Keep an eye out, sir," the bridge-tender called after him,--he
had been directing him to Grogan's house,--"perhaps Tom may be on
the road."
Then it suddenly occurred to Babcock that, so far as he could
remember, he had never seen Mr. Thomas Grogan, his stevedore. He
knew Grogan's name, of course, and would have recognized his
signature affixed to the little cramped notes with which his
orders were always acknowledged, but the man himself might have
passed unnoticed within three feet of him. This is not unusual
where the work of a contractor lies in scattered places, and he
must often depend on strangers in the several localities.
As he hurried over the road he recalled the face of Grogan's
foreman, a big blond Swede, and that of Grogan's daughter, a
slender fair-haired girl, who once came to the office for her
father's pay; but all efforts at reviving the lineaments of Grogan
failed.
With this fact clear in his mind, he felt a tinge of
disappointment. It would have relieved his temper to unload a
portion of it upon the offending stevedore. Nothing cools a man's
wrath so quickly as not knowing the size of the head he intends to
hit.
As he approached near enough to the sea-wall to distinguish the
swinging booms and the puffs of white steam from the
hoisting-engines, he saw that the main derrick was at work
lowering the buckets of mixed concrete to the divers. Instantly
his spirits rose. The delay on his contract might not be so
serious. Perhaps, after all, Grogan had started work.
When he reached the temporary wooden fence built by the
Government, shutting off the view of the depot yard, with its
coal-docks and machine-shops, and neared the small door cut
through its planking, a voice rang out clear and strong above the
din of the mixers:--
"Hold on, ye wall-eyed macaroni! Do ye want that fall cut? Turn
that snatch-block, Cully, and tighten up the watch-tackle. Here,
cap'n; lend a hand. Lively now, lively, before I straighten out
the hull gang of ye!"
The voice had a ring of unquestioned authority. It was not
quarrelsome or abusive or bullying--only earnest and forceful.
"Ease away on that guy! Ease away, I tell ye!" it continued,
rising in intensity. "So--all gone! Now, haul out, Cully, and
let that other team back up."
Babcock pushed open the door in the fence and stepped in. A
loaded scow lay close beside the string-piece of the government
wharf. Alongside its forward hatch was rigged a derrick with a
swinging gaff. The "fall" led through a snatch-block in the
planking of the dock, and operated an iron bucket that was hoisted
by a big gray horse driven by a boy. A gang of men were filling
these buckets, and a number of teams being loaded with their
dumped contents. The captain of the scow was on the dock, holding
the guy.
At the foot of the derrick, within ten feet of Babcock, stood a
woman perhaps thirty-five years of age, with large, clear gray
eyes, made all the more luminous by the deep, rich color of her
sunburnt skin. Her teeth were snow-white, and her light brown
hair was neatly parted over a wide forehead. She wore a long
ulster half concealing her well-rounded, muscular figure, and a
black silk hood rolled back from her face, the strings falling
over her broad shoulders, revealing a red silk scarf loosely wound
about her throat, the two ends tucked in her bosom. Her feet were
shod in thick-soled shoes laced around her well-turned ankles, and
her hands were covered by buckskin gauntlets creased with wear.
From the outside breast-pocket of her ulster protruded a
time-book, from which dangled a pencil fastened to a hempen
string. Every movement indicated great physical strength, perfect
health, and a thorough control of herself and her surroundings.
Coupled with this was a dignity and repose unmistakable to those
who have watched the handling of large bodies of workingmen by
some one leading spirit, master in every tone of the voice and
every gesture of the body. The woman gave Babcock a quick glance
of interrogation as he entered, and, receiving no answer, forgot
him instantly.
"Come, now, ye blatherin' Dagos,"--this time to two Italian
shovelers filling the buckets,--" shall I throw one of ye
overboard to wake ye up, or will I take a hand meself? Another
shovel there--that bucket's not half full"--drawing one hand from
her side pocket and pointing with an authoritative gesture,
breaking as suddenly into a good-humored laugh over the
awkwardness of their movements.
Babcock, with all his curiosity aroused, watched her for a moment,
forgetting for the time his own anxieties. He liked a skilled
hand, and he liked push and grit. This woman seemed to possess
all three. He was amazed at the way in which she handled her men.
He wished somebody as clearheaded and as capable were unloading
his boat. He began to wonder who she might be. There was no
mistaking her nationality. Slight as was her accent, her direct
descent from the land of the shamrock and the shilla-lah was not
to be doubted. The very tones of her voice seemed saturated with
its national spirit--"a flower for you when you agree with me, and
a broken head when you don't." But underneath all these outward
indications of dominant power and great physical strength he
detected in the lines of the mouth and eyes a certain refinement
of nature. There was, too, a fresh, rosy wholesomeness, a sweet
cleanliness, about the woman. These, added to the noble lines of
her figure, would have appealed to one as beauty, and only that
had it not been that the firm mouth, well-set chin, and deep,
penetrating glance of the eye overpowered all other impressions.
Babcock moved down beside her.
"Can you tell me, madam, where I can find Thomas Grogan?"
"Right in front of ye," she answered, turning quickly, with a toss
of her head like that of a great hound baffled in hunt. "I'm Tom
Grogan. What can I do for ye?"
"Not Grogan the stevedore?" Babcock asked in astonishment.
"Yes, Grogan the stevedore. Come! Make it short,--what can I do
for ye?"
"Then this must be my boat. I came down"--
"Ye're not the boss?"--looking him over slowly from his feet up, a
good-natured smile irradiating her face, her eyes beaming, every
tooth glistening. "There's me hand, I'm glad to see ye. I've
worked for ye off and on for four years, and niver laid eyes on ye
till this minute. Don't say a word. I know it. I've kept the
concrete gangs back half a day, but I couldn't help it. I've had
four horses down with the 'zooty, and two men laid up with
dip'thery. The Big Gray Cully's drivin' over there--the one
that's a-hoistin'--ain't fit to be out of the stables. If ye
weren't behind in the work, he'd have two blankets on him this
minute. But I'm here meself now, and I'll have her out to-night
if I work till daylight. Here, cap'n, pull yerself together.
This is the boss."
Then catching sight of the boy turning a handspring behind the
horse, she called out again:--
"Now, look here, Cully, none of your skylarkin'. There's the
dinner whistle. Unhitch the Big Gray; he's as dry as a bone."
The boy loosened the traces and led the horse to water, and
Babcock, after a word with the Captain, and an encouraging smile
to Tom, turned away. He meant to go to the engineer's office
before his return to town, now that his affairs with Grogan were
settled. As he swung back the door in the board fence, he
stumbled over a mere scrap of humanity carrying a dinner-pail.
The mite was peering through the crack and calling to Cully at the
horse-trough. He proved to be a boy of perhaps seven or eight
years of age, but with the face of an old man--pinched, weary, and
scarred all over with suffering and pain. He wore a white
tennis-cap pulled over his eyes, and a short gray jacket that
reached to his waist. Under one arm was a wooden crutch. His
left leg was bent at the knee, and swung clear when he jerked his
little body along the ground. The other, though unhurt, was thin
and bony, the yarn stocking wrinkling over the shrunken calf.
Beside him stood a big billy-goat, harnessed to a two-wheeled cart
made of a soap-box.
As Babcock stepped aside to let the boy pass he heard Cully
shouting in answer to the little cripple's cries. "Cheese it,
Patsy. Here's Pete Lathers comin' down de yard. Look out fer
Stumpy. He'll have his dog on him."
Patsy laid down the pail and crept through the door again, drawing
the crutch after him. The yardmaster passed with a bulldog at his
heels, and touching his hat to the contractor, turned the corner
of the coal-shed.
"What is your name?" said Babcock gently. A cripple always
appealed to him, especially a child.
"My name's Patsy, sir," looking straight up into Babcock's eyes,
the goat nibbling at his thin hand.
"And who are you looking for?"
"I come down with mother's dinner, sir. She's here working on the
dock. There she is now."
"I thought ye were niver comin' wid that dinner, darlint," came a
woman's voice. "What kept ye? Stumpy was tired, was he? Well,
niver mind."
The woman lifted the little fellow in her arms, pushed back his
cap and smoothed his hair with her fingers, her whole face beaming
with tenderness.
"Gimme the crutch, darlint, and hold on to me tight, and we'll get
under the shed out of the sun till I see what Jennie's sent me."
At this instant she caught Babcock's eye.
"Oh, it's the boss. Sure, I thought ye'd gone back. Pull the hat
off ye, me boy; it's the boss we're workin' for, the man that's
buildin' the wall. Ye see, sir, when I'm driv' like I am to-day,
I can't go home to dinner, and me Jennie sends
me--big--man--Patsy--down"--rounding out each word in a pompous
tone, as she slipped her hand under the boy's chin and kissed him
on the cheek.
After she had propped him between two big spars, she lifted the
cover of the tin pail.
"Pigs' feet, as I'm alive, and hot cabbage, and the coffee
a-b'ilin' too!" she said, turning to the boy and pulling out a tin
flask with a screw top, the whole embedded in the smoking cabbage.
"There, we'll be after puttin' it where Stumpy can't be rubbin'
his nose in it"--setting the pail, as she spoke, on a rough
anchor-stone.
Here the goat moved up, rubbing his head in the boy's face, and
then reaching around for the pail.
"Look at him, Patsy! Git out, ye imp, or I'll hurt ye! Leave
that kiver alone!" She laughed as she struck at the goat with her
empty gauntlet, and shrank back out of the way of his horns.
There was no embarrassment over her informal dinner, eaten as she
sat squat in a fence-corner, an anchor-stone for a table, and a
pile of spars for a chair. She talked to Babcock in an unabashed,
self-possessed way, pouring out the smoking coffee in the flask
cup, chewing away on the pigs' feet, and throwing the bones to the
goat, who sniffed them contemptuously. "Yes, he's the youngest of
our children, sir. He and Jennie--that's home, and 'most as tall
as meself--are all that's left. The other two went to heaven when
they was little ones."
"Can't the little fellow's leg be straightened?" asked Babcock, in
a tone which plainly showed his sympathy for the boy's suffering.
"No, not now; so Dr. Mason says. There was a time when it might
have been, but I couldn't take him. I had him over to Quarantine
again two years ago, but it was too late; it'd growed fast, they
said. When he was four years old he would be under the horses'
heels all the time, and a-climbin' over them in the stable, and
one day the Big Gray fetched him a crack, and broke his hip. He
didn't mean it, for he's as dacint a horse as I've got; but the
boys had been a-worritin' him, and he let drive, thinkin', most
likely, it was them. He's been a-hoistin' all the mornin'."
Then, catching sight of Cully leading the horse back to work, she
rose to her feet, all the fire and energy renewed in her face.
"Shake the men up, Cully! I can't give 'em but half an hour
to-day. We're behind time now. And tell the cap'n to pull them
macaronis out of the hold, and start two of 'em to trimmin' some
of that stone to starboard. She was a-listin' when we knocked off
for dinner. Come, lively!"
II
A BOARD FENCE LOSES A PLANK
The work on the sea-wall progressed. The coffer-dam which had
been built by driving into the mud of the bottom a double row of
heavy tongued and grooved planking in two parallel rows, and
bulkheading each end with heavy boards, had been filled with
concrete to low-water mark, consuming not only the contents of the
delayed scow, but two subsequent cargoes, both of which had been
unloaded by Tom Grogan.
To keep out the leakage, steam-pumps were kept going night and
day.
By dint of hard work the upper masonry of the wall had been laid
to the top course, ready for the coping, and there was now every
prospect that the last stone would be lowered into place before
the winter storms set in.
The shanty--a temporary structure, good only for the life of the
work--rested on a set of stringers laid on extra piles driven
outside of the working-platform. When the submarine work lies
miles from shore, a shanty is the only shelter for the men, its
interior being arranged with sleeping-bunks, with one end
partitioned off for a kitchen and a storage-room. This last is
filled with perishable property, extra blocks, Manila rope,
portable forges, tools, shovels, and barrows.
For this present sea-wall--an amphibious sort of structure, with
one foot on land and the other in the water--the shanty was of
light pine boards, roofed over, and made water-tight by tarred
paper. The bunks had been omitted, for most of the men boarded in
the village. In this way increased space for the storage of tools
was gained, besides room for a desk containing the government
working drawings and specifications, pay- rolls, etc. In addition
to its door, fastened at night with a padlock, and its one glass
window, secured by a ten-penny nail, the shanty had a flap-window,
hinged at the bottom. When this was propped up with a barrel
stave it made a counter from which to pay the men, the paymaster
standing inside.
Babcock was sitting on a keg of dock spikes inside this working
shanty some days after he had discovered Tom's identity, watching
his bookkeeper preparing the pay-roll, when a face was thrust
through the square of the window. It was not a prepossessing
face, rather pudgy and sleek, with uncertain, drooping mouth, and
eyes that always looked over one's head when he talked. It was
the property of Mr. Peter Lathers, the yardmaster of the depot.
"When you're done payin' off maybe you'll step outside, sir," he
said, in a confiding tone. "I got a friend of mine who wants to
know you. He's a stevedore, and does the work to the fort. He's
never done nothin' for you, but I told him next time you come down
I'd fetch him over. Say, Dan!" beckoning with his head over his
shoulder; then, turning to Babcock,--"I make you acquainted, sir,
with Mr. Daniel McGaw."
Two faces now filled the window--Lathers's and that of a
red-headed man in a straw hat.
"All right. I'll attend to you in a moment. Glad to see you, Mr.
McGaw," said Babcock, rising from the keg, and looking over his
bookkeeper's shoulder.
Lathers's friend proved to be a short, big-boned,
square-shouldered Irishman, about forty years of age, dressed in a
once black broadcloth suit with frayed buttonholes, the lapels and
vest covered with grease-spots. Around his collar, which had done
service for several days, was twisted a red tie decorated with a
glass pin. His face was spattered with blue powder-marks, as if
from some quarry explosion. A lump of a mustache dyed dark brown
concealed his upper lip, making all the more conspicuous the
bushy, sandy-colored eyebrows that shaded a pair of treacherous
eyes. His mouth was coarse and filled with teeth half worn off,
like those of an old horse. When he smiled these opened slowly
like a vise. Whatever of humor played about this opening lost its
life instantly when these jaws clicked together again.
The hands were big and strong, wrinkled and seamed, their rough
backs spotted like a toad's, the wrists covered with long spidery
hairs.
Babcock noticed particularly his low, flat forehead when he
removed his hat, and the dry, red hair growing close to the
eyebrows.
"I wuz a-sp'akin' to me fri'nd Mister Lathers about doin' yer
wurruk," began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks,
his elbow on his knee. "I does all the haulin' to the foort.
Surgint Duffy knows me. I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye
wuz put back fer stone. If I'd had the job, I'd had her unloaded
two days befoore."
"You're dead right, Dan," said Lathers, with an expression of
disgust. "This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to
be over her tubs."
"She does her work, though," Babcock said, beginning to see the
drift of things.
"Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough;
but thim b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h--ll all the
toime."
"And then look at the teams," chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of
his thumb toward the dock--"a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks
you couldn't sell to a glue-factory. That big gray she had
a-hoistin' is blind of an eye and sprung so forrard he can't
hardly stand."
At this moment the refrain of a song from somewhere near the board
fence came wafting through the air,--
"And he wiped up the floor wid McGeechy."
McGaw turned his head in search of the singer, and not finding
him, resumed his position.
"What are your rates per ton?" asked Babcock.
"We're a-chargin' forty cints," said McGaw, deferring to Lathers,
as if for confirmation.
"Who's 'we'?"
"The Stevedores' Union."
"But Mrs. Grogan is doing it for thirty," said Babcock, looking
straight into McGaw's eyes, and speaking slowly and deliberately.
"Yis, I heared she wuz a-cuttin' rates; but she can't live at it.
If I does it, it'll be done roight, an' no throuble."
"I'll think it over," said Babcock quietly, turning on his heel.
The meanness of the whole affair offended him--two big, strong men
vilifying a woman with no protector but her two hands. McGaw
should never lift a shovel for him.
Again the song floated out; this time it seemed nearer,--
". . . wid McGeechy--
McGeechy of the Fourth."
"Dan McGaw's giv'n it to you straight," said Lathers, stopping for
a last word, his face thrust through the window again. "He's
rigged for this business, and Grogan ain't in it with him. If she
wants her work done right, she ought to send down something with a
mustache."
Here the song subsided in a prolonged chuckle. McGaw turned, and
caught sight of a boy's head, with its mop of black hair thrust
through a crownless hat, leaning over a water cask. Lathers
turned, too, and instantly lowered his voice. The head ducked out
of sight. In the flash glance Babcock caught of the face, he
recognized the boy Cully, Patsy's friend, and the driver of the
Big Gray. It was evident to Babcock that Cully at that moment was
bubbling over with fun. Indeed, this waif of the streets,
sometimes called James Finnegan, was seldom known to be otherwise.
"Thet's the wurrst rat in the stables," said McGaw, his face
reddening with anger. "What kin ye do whin ye're a-buckin' ag'in'
a lot uv divils loike him?"--speaking through the window to
Babcock. "Come out uv thet," he called to Cully, "or I'll bu'st
yer jaw, ye sneakin' rat!"
Cully came out, but not in obedience to McGaw or Lathers. Indeed,
he paid no more attention to either of those distinguished
diplomats than if they had been two cement-barrels standing on
end. His face, too, had lost its irradiating smile; not a wrinkle
or a pucker ruffled its calm surface. His clay-soiled hat was in
his hand--a very dirty hand, by the way, with the torn cuff of his
shirt hanging loosely over it. His trousers bagged everywhere--at
knees, seat, and waist. On his stockingless feet were a pair of
sun-baked, brick-colored shoes. His ankles were as dark as
mahogany. His throat and chest were bare, the skin tanned to
leather wherever the sun could work its way through the holes in
his garments. From out of this combination of dust and rags shone
a pair of piercing black eyes, snapping with fun.
"I come up fer de mont's pay," he said coolly to Babcock, the
corner of his eye glued to Lathers. "De ole woman said ye'd hev
it ready."
"Mrs. Grogan's?" asked the bookkeeper, shuffling over his
envelopes.
"Yep. Tom Grogan."
"Can you sign the pay-roll?"
"You bet"--with an eye still out for Lathers.
"Where did you learn to write--at school?" asked Babcock, noting
the boy's independence with undisguised pleasure.
"Naw. Patsy an' me studies nights. Pop Mullins teaches us--he's
de ole woman's farder what she brung out from Ireland. He's
a-livin' up ter de shebang; dey're all a-livin' dere--Jinnie an'
de ole woman an' Patsy--all 'cept me an' Carl. I bunks in wid de
Big Gray. Say, mister, ye'd oughter git onter Patsy--he's de
little kid wid de crutch. He's a corker, he is; reads po'try an'
everythin'. Where'll I sign? Oh, I see; in dis'ere square hole
right along-side de ole woman's name"--spreading his elbows, pen
in hand, and affixing "James Finnegan" to the collection of
autographs. The next moment he was running along the dock, the
money envelope tight in his hand, sticking out his tongue at
McGaw, and calling to Lathers as he disappeared through the door
in the fence, "Somp'n wid a mustache, somp'n wid a mustache," like
a news-boy calling an extra. Then a stone grazed Lathers's ear.
Lathers sprang through the gate, but the boy was half way through
the yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always saved Mr.
Finnegan's scalp.
Once out of Lathers's reach, Cully bounded up the road like a
careering letter X, with arms and legs in air. If there was any
one thing that delighted the boy's soul, it was, to quote from his
own picturesque vocabulary, "to set up a job on de ole woman."
Here was his chance. Before he reached the stable he had planned
the whole scene, even to the exact intonation of Lathers's voice
when he referred to the dearth of mustaches in the Grogan
household. Within a few minutes of his arrival the details of the
whole occurrence, word for word, with such picturesque additions
as his own fertile imagination could invent, were common talk
about the yard.
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