“I knew you’d say that…”
Fecory dipped a finger up and down like a teacher. “This isn’t a chow line, you know. You need to sign your receipt, sir, just like—”
“Everybody else,” Morris finished. “Shit,” he muttered to Poltrock after the paymaster crossed the track toward the camp.
“We’re in no hurry, Mr. Morris,” Poltrock reminded.
“I know, sir. It’s just that we’se rail men—we live for our Fridays, and I can tell you that I am all riled up for some drinkin’ and carryin’-on.”
Poltrock was no different from any man, but since he’d signed on with Gast, he seemed to notice some conflict within himself. He barely drank on Fridays—hadn’t in months—and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d solicited a whore. Even during the three-day respites Gast granted them the first of every month—sometimes Poltrock would retreat to the bunkhouse and recheck his inventory book, leaving the revel to everyone else. Guess I’m just gettin’ old, he told himself too often, or was it something more? Behind his spirit, something glowered, as if to whisper, This is all wrong and you know it. You ain’t the Christian your fine upright parents raised. They’d be ashamed…
Would they? What was it?
Morris’s mood was feisty as always, but his eyes looked dark. Poltrock didn’t know if it was his imagination but sometimes the eyes of the other men shined in a dull brown-yellow cast…
“And you can bet,” Morris continued, “that I am lookin’ forward to the next respite.”
“Ain’t even been two weeks since the last one,” Poltrock reminded him. “Honestly, Mr. Morris, you’re like a kid in a rock candy shop.”
Morris’s grin sharpened. “Yeah, but it ain’t candy that this rail man needs to get his hands on.” Morris was about to say something else, but then his eyes shot wide. “What the hell?”
“Something wrong?”
“Look at that there—that strong-armer—”
One of Gast’s big security men seemed to be rousting the four squaws, waving them off and yelling, “Not tonight! Get your asses out’a here!”
“What the hell’s he doin’ runnin’ off our whores!” Morris exclaimed. “Hey, you there! Don’t run them Injun girls off! We need ’em for tonight!”
The strong-armer held his long rifle out like a barricade. “Mr. Gast’s orders, sir,” he shouted back. “No whore tents tonight, and no whiskey…”
Morris was outraged, his anticipations punctured.
“You heard him,” Poltrock said.
“Well—damn it all! It’s Friday! It ain’t like we don’t deserve it, hard as we worked this week. Why’s Mr. Gast cancelin’ our fun?”
“’cos he’s the boss, so the reason don’t matter.”
The squaws jabbered back in their own language, clearly irate.
“I said get out!”
Another security man rushed to assist. “Dahdeeya!” he yelled at the women, and pointed back to the range. “Nahah!”
Finally, the women got it, and began to skulk back the way they came.
“Aw, ain’t that a bust in the chops,” Morris lamented. “Now I might not never have a turn with that bigtitter…”
I wonder why Gast ordered them off, Poltrock thought. The sound of slow hooves grabbed his attention; Cutton was walking his horse over. “Here she is, sir.” He dismounted and passed the reins to Poltrock. “Too bad ’bout Mr. Gast callin’ off the Friday cookout’n all. Hope he ain’t disappointed with our work of late.”
“So you heard about it, too,” Poltrock said. “I’m a bit curious myself. It’s looking to me like this might’ve been one of our most productive weeks.”
“Feels like it in my bones, at least.” Cutton smiled forlornly. “Sure you don’t want me to help ya count rail, sir?”
“No.”
“Okay, then, Mr. Poltrock. I’m off to get my pay, not that I got anything to spend it on with no whores or whiskey tonight.” Cutton flagged Morris. “Come on, Morris! Let’s get in the pay line less’n we’ll be standin’ at the end of it!”
The two men departed. Poltrock could see across the track where Fecory and his security bulldog had set up the pay station. A rowdy line formed fast.
Poltrock walked his horse off. Was there something strange in the air tonight? In a sense, there always was; he could never put his finger on it.
Two younger white laborers bantered as they unloaded boxes of spikes from a ten-foot handcar. “So he told me he could see her up there in the window, prancin’ ’cos stark nekit.”
“Yeah?” the other kid said with a pervert’s leer.
“Said it looked like she were talkin’ to someone in the room, but he knowed that Mr. Gast was down South on the line—’bout the same time we startin’ laying the first track across the border—so he got to thinkin’—”
“If her husband ain’t in town, who’s she talkin’ to?” the second kid calculated.
“Yeah, and nekit ta boot!”
Poltrock hadn’t been listening at first, but as the boy yakked on, he halted the horse and canted an ear.
“And he already had a few in him when the shift broke and went to Cusher’s, so’s next thing he knowed, he’s climbin’ the trellis up to the balcony.”
“No!”
“Ain’t lyin’. Then he get up there’n looks in.”
“Well, damn, come on! What he see?”
The storyteller lowered his voice behind a sharp grin. “She’s buck nekit, all right’n; then she sits down in a big fancy armchair drinkin’ some wine and she’s sittin’ there with her legs spread, and ya knows what?”
“What? What!”
“She was all shaved down there. Not a single hair on her pussy nowheres.”
“You’re lyin’, Jory!”
“’S’the truth, so help me! And whiles she’s sittin there talkin’ to whoever it were she was talkin’ to, she gets to playin’ with herself a bit…”
“Aw, shit, man, I can’t stand it—”
“Then finally—” He leaned closer. “Finally, she walks over to the bed’n gets to fuckin’ a fella, like, real hard…and that’s when he seed that it was one’a the slaves.”
“Oh, man…What he do? Did he tell?”
“HELL, no, ya dimwit! If he done that he’d have to ’splain what he was doin’ up on Mrs. Gast’s balcony in the first place.”
“They’d put him in a pillory fer that, fer a week at least.”
“Think he didn’t know that? So, shit, he couldn’t say nothin’. But he did stay’n watch a whiles, and the—”
“You men!” Poltrock yelled. Both laborers looked up in dread. “You stop that trash talk right now, and stop it for good, you hear me?”
“Yuh-yes, sir, Mr. Poltrock. We was just—”
“Bullshit. You’re spreadin’ dirty, undignified talk like a coupla crackers, you were.” Poltrock jabbed one in the chest with his finger. “You don’t talk like that ever again. You don’t say nothin’ like that, to no one! Never! Things’re hard enough out here, and we don’t need no slander’n barroom talk. You boys are bein’ paid well so don’t you be disrepectin’ the fine man who’s payin’ you. Less’n you want me to tell him myself.”
One boy looked close to tears, while the other stammered, “Oh, no, no, sir, Mr. Poltrock, please don’t do that—”
“I’ve a mind to.”
“Please, please, by God we won’t never say nothin’ like that ag—”
“The strong-armers’d put a nine-tails across both your backs, then ya’d be fired and banished with no way to get back to Tennessee. You’d have to go live in the woods with the Injuns’n eat dog meat and grubs, and that’s only if they decides not to scalp your dumb white ass and eat you.”