the other boarders. The second is no drinking. I don’t like it, and I’ve got enough troubles with a household of men without trying to wrangle a bunch of drunks. You think you can remember those two rules?”
He ducked his head. “Yes, ma’am. I believe I can.”
“Well, good,” she said. She went to the doorway and peered at the grandfather clock that stood in one corner of the dining room. “Now, get going and I suspect you’ll be able to still catch that truck.”
After his night arrival, the street was altogether new to him in the light of morning. A line of oaks reached for each other from either side of the lane, the brightening sky filtering here and there through the canopy of leaves. It was a warm, damp morning, portending a hot day, and his shirt clung to him as he walked. His new shoes had bitten his feet hard the day before, and he was only a little way down the street before the stiff leather was digging into the raw spots in new, painful ways. He kept on.
At a curve in the road, the crumpled shape of a sedan was mounting a large tree, front wheels in the air. The pavement around the car glittered with shattered glass. A group of school boys had gathered. Two stood closer than the others, looking in the blood-spotted window.
“When he hit that tree, the steering column come clean through him into the back seat.”
“You tell it like you was there,” another said. “You know your mama had you in your bath by half past seven.”
“Shut up,” the first said. “The deputy told me about it. Said he was so drunk you wouldn’t have wanted to smoke a cigarette for fear the blood might catch fire.”
Nathan whistled at the mess wrapped around the scarred elm. “Looks like it must have hurt.”
The boys turned their eyes on him, wary of an adult.
“Can either of you boys point me toward the drugstore?”
The nearer boy, a redhead, stood open mouthed, studying Nathan.
“There’s a truck,” Nathan added. “I hear it runs out to the dam site each morning.”
“You working on that dam?” the boy asked.
“I’m supposed to be, but first I have to find the drugstore.”
The boy gestured. “The drugstore is just up yonder there.”
Before Nathan could go, the other boy pressed him. “You’re really going to stop up the whole river?”
Nathan took off his hat, and wiped his hair back. Half past seven, and he was already sweating. “Oh,” he said. “We let the water through well enough. We just hold it up a little first.”
They tag-teamed him with their questions now.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Where are you from?”
Nathan smiled. “Lots of places, I suppose. I’ve been at school up in Illinois.”
The red-haired one had heard stories of Illinois.
“You a gangster?” the boy asked eagerly.
Nathan smiled. “No, I’m an engineer. They build better dams than gangsters.”
The boy was undeterred. “But I’ll bet you’ve seen them shoot people.”
“No,” Nathan said. “Sorry, but I must have moved in the wrong circles. You say the drugstore is up that way?”
Both boys nodded.
Nathan fished out a coin from his pocket and tossed it to the nearer of the two. He left them, their heads bent together over the coin, and made his way up the street.
WHEN NATHAN REACHED THE DRUGSTORE, A BIG, TWO-TON Henley coated with a fine layer of red dust was already there, men crowded onto its flat bed. Nathan waved for them to hold up, and the men in the back yelled for him to hurry. He ran the last twenty yards, the leather of his shoes chewing into his feet, his hat clutched to his head. A half dozen hands reached out and pulled him up, then the truck was off, trailing a black plume of exhaust.
They were rough faces, some pleasant, scrubbed clean and red that morning in their rented rooms. Others were still shaking off the sleep, their crusted eyes lost while a callused finger worked idly in an ear or scratched a rib as the truck rode the track out to the river. Nathan took off his hat and held it between his knees when the air coming across the open bed of the truck nearly took it off. The others had their ragged farm hats tugged firmly about their ears, or else wore scarred and nicked hardhats from the site. Some sat on theirs like low stools. Nathan watched the faces for a while, waiting for someone to question him. One or two dug out breakfasts they had packed away. One nearer Nathan took out what looked to be a raw potato, which he didn’t eat but only spent some care cleaning before tucking it away again.
Three miles outside of town, the way split off from the road, became a gravel track that led to an open gate in a tall chainlink fence. To either side of the fence entrance men clustered, and the truck threaded slowly through them.
“Shouldn’t be in the way like that,” complained a man standing near the front. “They’re supposed to wait over there by them trees.” Nathan followed his gesture and spotted a larger group of ten or twelve sitting in the pine needles and leaning against trunks.
“What are they waiting for?” he asked.
“For one of us to die,” said another and the men laughed.
“Jobs.” A pinched-faced man on his left spat the word out at Nathan, his tone betraying how foolish he found the question. “Isn’t that what everyone is after these days?”
The truck pulled through the gate and followed a winding path through the trees. At the top of a rise, the river came into view. Nathan shifted up onto one knee. He caught only glimpses of the works through the leaves at first, but then they broke from the trees and it all came visible at once.
The cofferdam was huge. It spanned the entire middle section of the river, holding back the water to create a dry place, and into it men poured. From high on the hill, they were a thousand fretting specks coursing over the site. Ten thousand spires of rebar thrust up from the dam, their lower ends buried in concrete casings that were sunk to the bedrock. The length of the dam curved its back against the flow of the river as it spanned the channel. This would allow it to bear the weight of the water, like a Roman arch. Everywhere he looked, more concrete glowed dull white in the mid-morning sunlight.
The truck halted behind a row of low buildings. Someone had scrawled a list of obscenities across their back walls, the lettering running downhill as if the writer had grown tired. The men lurched into motion, rising in pairs and groups and dropping off the rear of the truck to walk down the hill. Nathan put his hat on and went around to the driver.
“Engineer’s office?” he asked, and the man moved his short cigar around in his mouth before pointing to a huddle of structures in the distance.
The front
