Was this a compliment? “Thank you, sir,” Nathan said, uncertainly.
“Mind it doesn’t interfere with your doing the work set out for you, though.”
“I won’t, sir.”
Nathan stood arrested at the door, unsure what to say further. The head engineer turned a page over on his desk. “Say goodnight and go home, Mr. McReaken. We’ll need you rested for tomorrow’s tasks.”
“Goodnight, sir,” Nathan said, and went out.
Only when he was out of Maufrais’ sight and safe from being called back did he stop to fish a cigarette from his crumpled pack. Since his first day, he’d been maneuvering with Fitzsimmons, trying to get around him, to get noticed by Maufrais, but the man had been watching him all along.
He climbed out of the valley towards the hillside lot that held a few cars, and beyond that the empty road that led through the trees. The truck carrying workers back to Dawsonville had been gone more than an hour. Dinner would already be underway at the boarding house. He checked the sun’s position over the river, gauged his chances of making it back to the boarding house before dark. It didn’t look good.
He greeted the few men who were drifting into the lot with “Dawsonville?” None were going that way.
The north side of the river was quiet, his alone. The sun setting over the valley was orange shifting to red, its double reflected on the oily surface of the river in its western course. From his vantage on the hill he could see the smoke rising from the cook stoves on the south bank, a dozen or so in the main camp, half as many from the Negro camp to the east. The men were moving between buildings, gathering for their evening meals. Between Nathan and the camp lay the dam’s foundations. The concrete now stood twenty feet above the open floodgates. Nathan paused on the broken shale of the hillside, letting his eyes play over the works. When the main wall reached a hundred feet, they’d close the gates. By July, Maufrais would have his second stage.
Another pickup came now from behind him, climbing the hill. He turned to look as the truck strained, the engine roaring, unmuffled. It was an old model with wooden slats along the bedside pieced together out of scrap, and a paint job that said that the vehicle had been revitalized with parts from other trucks. The truck’s engine died back and it slowed beside him.
“Dawsonville?” a fat, gray-haired man inside yelled. Nathan nodded and approached the truck. A snarling came from the bed when he got close, and he pulled back. Through the slats of wood, he could make out black eyes, a boxish head snapping back as the beast barked at him. From the sounds, there was more than one.
“Come on,” the man said, waving him in.
It took three tries to get the door to open.
“Just lift it straight, boy,” the man said. Nathan worked it this way and that and with a clunk, the battered door opened. He climbed inside.
“Thanks,” he said.
“When I seen you was a city boy, I figured you must be heading for town,” the man said, smiling at Nathan with tobacco-browned teeth. “Just the same as a duck heading for water.” The man poked Nathan on the arm to show it was a joke, then set himself to getting the truck back into first gear.
The truck had a narrow, padded bench and a bare dash. A collection of coffee cans crowded around the floor at Nathan’s feet. They were filled with a burned brown stew of fleshy patches.
“Pig’s ears,” the man said, following Nathan’s eyes. “I feed it to the dogs. Get the ears for a penny a pound, cook them in coffee. Makes dogs fight like hornets.”
Looking back through the rear window, Nathan could now see the cage. The dogs had their blunt muzzles shoved against the enclosure’s wire, scenting as the truck rolled along. The man took up a length of pipe that sat on the seat beside him, passed it to his left hand and, reaching out the window, beat it against the animals’ cage. The dogs snarled and snapped.
“Got some bull dog in them. Fightingest dog I ever seen.” Again the brown flash of teeth. “You work on the dam? One of them government boys?”
Nathan nodded. The cab of the truck smelled of exhaust. Nathan’s head buzzed with it. He shifted closer to the open window. Outside, houses were passing with people sitting on the porches. Some waved. The grizzled man waved at all of them.
“So, whereabouts in Dawsonville you staying?”
“Boarding house,” Nathan said.
The driver considered this. “Any lice?” he asked.
“How’s that?”
“In the beds. Any lice? I stayed at a hunting camp once that was full of them. Had to shave myself bare head to toe to get loose of them.”
“No,” Nathan said. “It’s a nice enough place.”
“Well,” the man said. They passed a few Negroes walking along the roadside and the dogs began to bark, thrashing in their cages. The old man grinned, took the length of pipe up once again and beat it against the cage. The dogs snarled. “They hate the blacks.”
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