Hardcastle by John Yount Page A

a stranger; power, for the moment at least, in the eccentric and unforeseen rig. He could see the effect of it written across Cawood’s unintelligent face and protuberant eyes, as if deep inside him something had just said, “Whoops!”
    Not Grady, however. He had seen the pistol grip too, the vague outline of its size and shape; and upon his long, scarred, horse face there was no expression whatever. He merely swapped the stump of his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and chewed it solemnly, speculatively. What was he thinking? Music wondered. Whether the weapon was some sort of sawed-off shotgun or an outsized pistol? How quickly Music could get the thing unholstered? How willing he was to use it? You sons a bitches, Music thought.
    Grady and Regus had begun to talk about something, but it was as if Music’s frustration, the machinery of his own thinking, were making so much noise he couldn’t hear them. What in God’s name, he asked himself, was he doing here? Cawood had begun to speak too. Music understood only that Cawood was talking about not having let anyone run off with the tipple during the night, and he caught the flavor of Cawood’s new tone—a kind of deference toward the five pounds of iron strapped to his chest—but he did not hear enough to be able to answer. It didn’t matter. Regus and Grady had finished whatever they were saying to each other, and Regus had started off toward the powerhouse. Music followed, merely nodding to Cawood in passing.
    “Hey, Regus,” Music said, as the Burnsides were crossing the plank bridge and Regus was about to enter the powerhouse. Regus turned with his eyebrows inquisitively and somehow humorously raised. “I don’t like the goddamned job,” Music said.
    Regus looked at him a moment longer before incredulousness gave way to laughter. “I wish I’d thought to time ye,” he said. “What ails ye, man?”
    Music knew exactly what ailed him until he tried to phrase it and found that it had no name. There was merely a hollow feeling in his chest touched somehow with the cool breath of shame.
    “I reckon so,” Regus said, as though he understood. “Come on, now.” The two of them entered the powerhouse, where the hum of the steam turbine and the windy whir of wheel and belt seemed to make Music’s uncomfortable feeling more complex. It wasn’t just the badge and pistol, or even the arrogance of the Burnsides. It had something to do with him, personally, as though, long ago, when he had decided to leave Shulls Mills, Virginia, he had dared just such a situation as this. It was as though the thug in Chicago who had found the twenty-dollar bill hidden in his shoe, called him a low son of a bitch, and jumped into the middle of his chest had somehow guessed him capable of it.
    “This here’s Big Cigar Green,” Regus was saying, introducing Music to the nigger who kept coal shoveled into the boiler.
    Beneath the black man’s rag of a shirt, sleeves missing at the seams of the shoulders, his chest swelled in perfect proportion like the breastplate of a Roman soldier. His arms were massively sculptured and black as pitch. He and Music nodded to each other. “Cap’n,” Big Cigar said.
    The thug with the stone in the sock knew something, Music was thinking. Knew that when he had hidden the twenty in his shoe, he had anticipated the robbery and therefore somehow participated in it. There was a kind of collusion between him and the robbers in that act, a brotherhood; but what was more, he had tried to cheat them at their own game.
    “This here’s Too Sweet,” Regus was saying, introducing the nigger who kept the wheels and belts greased.
    Music nodded, and Too Sweet—all elbows, knee joints, and angles—nodded back. “Boss,” Too Sweet said, his eyes like knobs of porcelain in his black face as he tried not to look at the pistol grip and the lump under Music’s coat.
    “And yonder’s Tom Harmon, chief head-knocker around the powerhouse,”