“Not good, but better?”
“Not good, but better. This is one of the reasons I’m cautious and not yet fully optimistic. I know what it took. And that was before the landslides.”
“The what?”
“Oh, yes,” Ben said. “We at Army Corps told everyone to beware of the landslides. Gaillard was very afraid of them. But the International Board of Engineers overseeing the project decreed we had nothing to worry about. They had deemed the Divide sufficiently stable. Except they didn’t count on water from the rains infiltrating a previously impregnable mountain. This, of course, caused a weakening and then a mass wasting of half a million cubic yards of clay.”
“Ben!”
“Oh yes. And this clay was too soft to be excavated by our steam shovels.”
“Like a mud volcano.” Gina recalled the mighty and fearsome Etna, what it was like living under the volcanic threat her entire childhood. Yet she didn’t feel as afraid then as she sometimes felt now in her folk Victorian on Summer Street.
Ben glanced at her approvingly. “Except we can’t have a tropical glacier made of mud lying in the path of our ocean liners, can we?”
“Mud lying in the path of civilization? Certainly not. So what did you do?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “What could we do? We climbed the mountain, sluiced the clay down with water from great heights, and continued detonating.”
She was thoughtful. “But won’t water keep getting into the rock? How are you going to keep the torrential rains from coming? Are you going to control the skies as well as the seas?”
“Clearly we’re not. This will continue to be a problem.”
“I read that just last month the canal closed for a week because of another landslide.”
“Yes, the canal will continue to close intermittently so the falling debris can be cleared. No way around it.”
She patted his arm affectionately, and quickly withdrew when she realized that etiquette had been breached.
“I heard the valley is going to be renamed after your general?”
“Colonel.”
“What’s the difference?”
Ben laughed. “Right. But yes, next year it’ll be called the Gaillard Cut.”
“Such a shame he didn’t live long enough to see the canal completed,” Gina said. David Gaillard died of a brain tumor in 1913.
Ben stopped smiling. “I even grew a bushy mustache in his honor. I shaved it before I returned home,” he added when she stared at the smooth skin between his nose and mouth. “He was a West Point man. Which may explain why he succeeded where others had failed.”
She resisted the impulse to touch him again, though he looked exhausted by the exertions of his memories. “You certainly did make the dirt fly, didn’t you?”
They walked on, lost in their thoughts. They were headed back to the Wayside after a three-mile excursion to buy a few apples.
“So was it worth it?” she asked.
“Was what worth it?”
“The toil, the sacrifice of blood and men, time away from home, sickness, misery. Are you crowned in glory? I mean, from my perspective, it seems a monumental achievement, almost like a miracle. But what do you think?”
“From an engineering and technological standpoint, without a doubt,” he said. “And no one but us could’ve done it, by the way. It was the American heavy machinery that made it happen, and we only had the steam shovels and the trains and the excavators because we spent the last sixty years building railroads across this nation. So in that regard, to build the canal through fog and mountain, to dam rivers, to raise the seas, to divide the Divide, it is a feast of civilization. But we didn’t build it just to build it. We built it so it could change the path of mankind. And perhaps it’s too soon to answer your question—was it worth it? First we must gauge the impact it’ll have on the world, on war, on the world at war, on the economies and standard of living of distant countries, on the living conditions and life span of sailors and navies. Clearly I hope that the answer is yes. But ask me again in fifteen years. If I haven’t keeled over by then from the mosquitoes and the sandflies.”
“Let’s shake on it,” said Gina. But she did not extend her roughened hand, even in jest. And he knew she wouldn’t, for he made no movement toward her. Only his eyes gleamed at the possibility of being in touch with her in fifteen years. Well, why not, reasoned Gina. It was over fifteen years ago when they had first met, and here they were, though under vastly different circumstances.
“Why don’t we take a drive to a pumpkin farm next Sunday afternoon?”
“Why would I want to go there?”
“Because it might be an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. We can go pumpkin picking. There might be hot mulled cider. Sometimes they have sack races. We could race and beat the very small children. You get to weave your own basket. You learn to make pumpkin butter.”
“Ugh.”
“Apple butter?”
“Better.”
“There is a corn maze.”
“I don’t like mazes. I always get lost.”
“I never get lost. You can come with me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I have so much work at Rose’s. We’ve taken too long today as it is. We walked nearly to Walden Pond! We haven’t been very good workers on Sundays, I’m afraid.”
“You’re right. But even the good Lord rested on Sunday.”
Feebly she protested. “But even on the Sabbath you have to take care of the sick. The Lord didn’t rest when there was work to be done, did He? And … Rose has been chiding me for my absent-mindedness, for my derelictions. I don’t want to displease her. It’s like displeasing God.”
“Come on,” Ben said. “The world is not a sad and solemn place.” He took hold of her calloused hand. “Don’t fret. Be glad like the belle of Belpasso. Be glad in the trees and the silence. Come to the maze with me.”
“You know there is nothing like that we can do except dream it.” She had been soaking her hands in milk every night to lessen the visible hurt of her work. Perhaps Ben didn’t notice they still felt like sandpaper.
“We can do anything,” he said. “For a few hours on Sunday, even the weary can sing in the trees. Even monkeys eat red bananas and have bliss.”
“Ben …”
“Don’t Ben me. Just say you’ll come with me.”
