caulks off.”
Preston gave his shipmate a benign look. He was perhaps an inch taller. In weight and visible strength they could have been a matched pair.
“I will pull like a mule,” Preston said gently. “Looking at you, Brewster, I won’t find it hard to imagine I’m hitched with one.”
Waiting behind the improvised plow as Singer proceeded with his complex ritual of lashings and knots stood Jerome Hardy, a mere seaman apprentice and a farm boy who would be their driver. He was not much more than half the size of either man in his two-man hitch. None of this stopped him from putting in his word.
“Now, men,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’m going to permit you men in the ranks to talk. Might interfere with your pulling power. A little discipline here, if you please. Chief?”
“Yep?” the gunner said, hardly hearing any of this, engaged as he was with getting the operation underway. “What is it, Hardy?”
“In Georgia, if mules don’t pop along proper, we give them a little tap on the hind end with a stick or switch. I take it we can do the same here. Only if necessary of course.”
Preston and Brewster turned and looked balefully at Hardy, rather like real mules in harness rotating their heads to regard the human being behind them, to size up whether he knew what he was doing, and above all whether he knew about mules.
“We not anywhere near Georgia, son,” Preston said. “Pay heed you remember that.”
Singer was finished with his hitch.
“All right, men,” Hardy said with loud authority. “Mind your rudder. Let’s look alive there.” And they were off.
The team started forward, Hardy skillfully dug in his grapnel plow, the soil under the willowy grass turned, and the first smell of parturience leapt from the earth. It was like attar. A distance away the same thing happened with the second team; then with the other two. Meanwhile Delaney, wasting no time, had put other men to following the plows, carrying off the grass, leveling the earth with their entrenching tools, used like hoes now, working backward so as not to trample the soil, the men bent over under the climbing sun. The stoop labor had begun.
Those sailors stripped to the waist, showing even more how much their bodies were weakened and wasted, their white hats perched at jaunty angles, some inverted in protection against the sun, their bodies pouring sweat as they moved slowly down the meadow, turning up the soil, and rearranging it: they seemed to me actually to be enjoying these labors, almost exuberant in the chance to commit their bodies to a useful purpose after the months of being cooped up on the ship, though as the day wore on enjoyment became determination; exuberance, doggedness. Some were farm boys and some city boys who knew almost nothing of how food was brought into being, but whichever, to a man they seemed eager to do their share, the only difference being that Delaney had to show what and how to the latter group. Some of these seemed if anything more zealous than their farm-boy shipmates. It was killing work. The figures of the seamen stooped repeatedly. Now and then a man would pause to mop the drenching sweat from his face, with a handkerchief, his hand, or his sailor’s hat. Farm boys and city boys, I said. Meaning as well, of course, farm girls and city girls, for a half dozen of these were out there among the farming detail, men and women all, volunteers. No complaints rose from the field, even the cherished sailor’s bitching missing. It would surely come later. At one point I was standing at the end of a row when the Preston-Brewster mule team approached before making a turn. As they strained and struggled forward, I could make out on one Nelson at Trafalgar, the tattooed sea wet as with waves real; on the other, an equivalent sweat gleaming from that majestic black chest; Preston from the deck crew, Brewster from the engineroom: they seemed determined to outdo each other in effort as
Preston gave his shipmate a benign look. He was perhaps an inch taller. In weight and visible strength they could have been a matched pair.
“I will pull like a mule,” Preston said gently. “Looking at you, Brewster, I won’t find it hard to imagine I’m hitched with one.”
Waiting behind the improvised plow as Singer proceeded with his complex ritual of lashings and knots stood Jerome Hardy, a mere seaman apprentice and a farm boy who would be their driver. He was not much more than half the size of either man in his two-man hitch. None of this stopped him from putting in his word.
“Now, men,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I’m going to permit you men in the ranks to talk. Might interfere with your pulling power. A little discipline here, if you please. Chief?”
“Yep?” the gunner said, hardly hearing any of this, engaged as he was with getting the operation underway. “What is it, Hardy?”
“In Georgia, if mules don’t pop along proper, we give them a little tap on the hind end with a stick or switch. I take it we can do the same here. Only if necessary of course.”
Preston and Brewster turned and looked balefully at Hardy, rather like real mules in harness rotating their heads to regard the human being behind them, to size up whether he knew what he was doing, and above all whether he knew about mules.
“We not anywhere near Georgia, son,” Preston said. “Pay heed you remember that.”
Singer was finished with his hitch.
“All right, men,” Hardy said with loud authority. “Mind your rudder. Let’s look alive there.” And they were off.
The team started forward, Hardy skillfully dug in his grapnel plow, the soil under the willowy grass turned, and the first smell of parturience leapt from the earth. It was like attar. A distance away the same thing happened with the second team; then with the other two. Meanwhile Delaney, wasting no time, had put other men to following the plows, carrying off the grass, leveling the earth with their entrenching tools, used like hoes now, working backward so as not to trample the soil, the men bent over under the climbing sun. The stoop labor had begun.
Those sailors stripped to the waist, showing even more how much their bodies were weakened and wasted, their white hats perched at jaunty angles, some inverted in protection against the sun, their bodies pouring sweat as they moved slowly down the meadow, turning up the soil, and rearranging it: they seemed to me actually to be enjoying these labors, almost exuberant in the chance to commit their bodies to a useful purpose after the months of being cooped up on the ship, though as the day wore on enjoyment became determination; exuberance, doggedness. Some were farm boys and some city boys who knew almost nothing of how food was brought into being, but whichever, to a man they seemed eager to do their share, the only difference being that Delaney had to show what and how to the latter group. Some of these seemed if anything more zealous than their farm-boy shipmates. It was killing work. The figures of the seamen stooped repeatedly. Now and then a man would pause to mop the drenching sweat from his face, with a handkerchief, his hand, or his sailor’s hat. Farm boys and city boys, I said. Meaning as well, of course, farm girls and city girls, for a half dozen of these were out there among the farming detail, men and women all, volunteers. No complaints rose from the field, even the cherished sailor’s bitching missing. It would surely come later. At one point I was standing at the end of a row when the Preston-Brewster mule team approached before making a turn. As they strained and struggled forward, I could make out on one Nelson at Trafalgar, the tattooed sea wet as with waves real; on the other, an equivalent sweat gleaming from that majestic black chest; Preston from the deck crew, Brewster from the engineroom: they seemed determined to outdo each other in effort as
Similar Books
