'Hot Behind Me'

ALWAYS Benson had hated the Duke; that is, almost always. Men divide time by experience. For Benson everything before the night of Harry’s death had sloughed away. And everything since then was a dark blur, lit only by the smouldering of his slow anger.

I

With their bellies full and the sharp heat of the open fire baking their faces and overalls, most of the linemen lolled contentedly through the last minutes of the lunch hour. On top, in the web-like maze of poles and wires, the afternoon wind would bite, but under the lee of the track fill there was warmth even in the pale November sun. Cantrell, the foreman, had just won a hard struggle with the formal polysyllables of a Safety First bulletin from the railroad’s Electrification Department. He thrust it into his overall bib with relief.

’So, all that really means is we get fifteen minutes more to eat — and ride the local home instead of the express. That about hazards means for you linemen to use your safety belts all the time and not drop no tools nor bolts on the grunts. . . . And that about energization means that all four track circuits and that signal circuit on yonder side is still hot, savvy?’

The linemen nodded. Most of them had arisen and were buckling on belts, examining safety straps, and loading their helpers with tools and rigging for the afternoon’s work.

One of them had not arisen. There were hard-lived years in his face and eyes. Older than the others, older even than Cantrell, he was the only man among them not smoking. He chewed with a savage flexing of ridgy jaw muscles. At the conclusion of the safety orders he had only quenched an ember disdainfully. Two of the younger linemen had nudged each other and stolen furtive glances at him.

‘So there’s the new orders and it’s time to go back to work. These orders’ — Cantrell hesitated — ‘they’re put out by some of them brass hats in the office. I could n’t rightly read the man’s name what signed ’em no way. But the Duke says they ’re all right and we ’re to follow ’em just like they was his’n.’

At the mention of the general foreman’s nickname the man by the fire exploded blasphemy. The quality of his rage electrified the trite familiar oaths. The commotion stopped and Cantrell faced the cursing.

‘Shut up, Benson, and listen to your orders! ’

A helper who had been standing between the two stepped back quickly. But Benson subsided and Cantrell continued.

‘Kendall and Reynolds, put on that cross arm. Braithewaite and Benson, drill these holes under the beam. Kennedy and . . .’

Benson did n’t hear the rest of it.

He arose, swung his big belt around him, and buckled it. His skates were at the pole base. He walked over and buckled them on without looking back. He did n’t even look up or stand out from under as Braithewaite, with the handline dragging from his belt, clanged his skates harshly into the flanges of the pole and began his perpendicular ascent. He knew Braithewaite would n’t fall on him. The boy could flutter up and down a pole like a hummingbird. Steel skates seemed to be a part of his feet.

Braithewaite did n’t fall. Forty feet above Benson he stopped his swift ascent, whipped his safety belt around the pole, and buckled it. Then, leaning back trustfully in the leather harness, he stepped onto the first of the steel steps and took off his skates.

As he climbed after the boy, Benson’s rage did not abate. He was not resentful of the foreman’s curt rebuke. He’d been a foreman himself. Once he would have fired a man for arcing as he had just done. But he was no longer a foreman. He was just a lineman again now, and an old one at that. He was thirty-eight.

For twenty years he’d been climbing poles and towers, spending most of his life within reach of high-voltage electricity. And now some young fool in the Safety First Department had discovered that line work was dangerous. And so he was to take his working orders from a man that likely as not had never even climbed a pole, let alone lowered dead linemen down off one.

He’d lowered plenty and he’d live to lower plenty more of these young fools that called him Old Benson. Yes, and get drunk the night after and go in to work drunk the next morning and slap the general foreman’s face if he fired him for it. He’d done it all before and he could do it all again. Not slap the Duke’s face, of course; much as he’d like to, he had n’t done that. No one else had, either. But he’d shown other general foremen in his time. And even if they put you in jail they had to feed you.

’If the Law was to see your face like it is now, Benson, they’d make you wear a muzzle. How come you’re so grouchy?’

His rage had carried him, unconscious of the climb, to Braithewaite’s level. Benson liked his pole buddy. Braithewaite neither avoided him cautiously nor whispered behind his back as the others did. He kidded him impudently about the seventeen years’ difference in their ages. And he was the only man in the gang fast and sure enough to team with Benson. The older man respected him, but to-day he was not in the humor for trifling.

‘You ain’t old enough to understand if I told you!’

‘Well, now, that’s a right pert answer for a old man. And a answer no one could n’t never throw back at you, neither!’ He grinned as he rigged the handline. ‘But I would n’t let that grouch eat you too hard. You’ll be dead before long and then the company won’t bother you like this!’

‘They don’t bother me. They don’t bother me at all. They can all go to hell! I ’ve worked for plenty companies and I can work for plenty more, and if they bother me I’ll tell ’em!’

‘So it ain’t the company? I expect now maybe it was your rich uncle left you out of his will?’

Braithewaite, always a fast worker, had already slipped up onto the beam and walked its narrow surface out over the first of the four tracks it bridged. Still belted to the pole, Benson watched their ladder rising in regular jerks as the grunts pulled the handline.

‘Hold it, hounds!’

The handline held the ladder swinging idly at his shoulder while he studied the prerequisite problem of rigging.

II

Below Braithewaite and eleven feet across empty space from Benson, the wire over which they must work sagged from the supporting beam. It was hot, but Benson could n’t think of it in terms of peril. The peril in it was too familiar and too incomprehensible. There was nothing in the appearance of that sooty copper thread to indicate the dimension of its power, power that could pull a hundred-car freight train. And his mind avoided its recollections of that power accidentally unleashed.

No. He thought of it calmly. It was fourteen thousand volts; it was hot. They had to work on the under side of the beam from which it hung. There would be four feet of copper strap and eighteen inches of porcelain insulators between the beam and the live wire. In that narrow clearance they must suspend their ladder for a scaffolding, high enough to be out of danger of the wire and low enough so that they could drill holes through the under side of the beam flange. It would be a cramped place to work.

‘ Open that grouchy mouth now, old man, and I’ll throw this sling right in it. Then you can lash it to the ladder and I’ll pull it right to me.’

He nodded approval. He was too much used to catlike grace to admire the way Braithewaite had walked the twelve-inch beam. And he was too much used to coolness and agility to admire the way his partner was now hanging in his belt from the under side of the beam, three feet above the live current, ten feet above the smokestacks of the occasional steam locomotives which the electrification was antiquating, and thirty-odd feet above the steel rails of the track level. That was all just routine for a good lineman. But Braithewaite’s rigging was n’t routine. It was expert.

He watched the boy coil the dry rope. He raised his hand and nodded. Miraculously the rope uncoiled in sure flight across the hot wire and into Benson’s big hand. For the second it took Benson to lash it, Braithewaite held the line taut. Then steadily and surely he pulled his end of the twelvefoot ladder over the hot wires and balanced it easily on his knees while he lashed it to the beam above him.

‘Got her, old man. Hook your end a hair higher and the one of us on the top side’ll get a better pull on the ratchet.’

Nimble still for thirty-eight, Benson slipped up onto the beam. His hand signaled once; the grunts bent on the handline, moving the ladder into place for him. His gloves flashed in and out among the lash lines, and then, without even stopping to look at the knots, he slipped down under the beam and eased his weight gently onto the ladder. It scarcely swayed beneath his sure balance.

‘You better hook that belt onto something or grow you some wings, Benson. These ladders been known to break.’

’I’ve seen more of these ladders break than you’ve seen kindling wood. When I want advice about using a belt I’ll ask for it!’

‘All right, ask. And they’ll tell you to belt yourself right to that pearly gate — on the outside!’ Braithewaite’s grin softened his sarcasm. ‘It won’t break none of my bones if you take a dive!’

Benson buckled his belt, but his voice stung. ‘Bunch of damned foolishness to worry so about belts. When I begun climbing, the Man ’d fire you if you knowed what a belt was. Linemen used their butts for shock absorbers instead of hanging harness on ’em. We used to work where you had to hold onto a piece of lashing with your teeth!’

‘Sure you did. And where are the guys that done it? I figure to use a belt and save my teeth for the meals they never got.’

But Benson was bawling to the obedient grunts.

‘Are you going to send them drilling tools up here, or wait till rust makes these holes?’

The drilling tools hopped upward as the grunts bent again on the handline. Braithewaite stopped the pulling and untied them while Benson, lying at ease on the ladder, marked out the drill lines with a steel square and a screwdriver which his big hand dwarfed into a pencil. Still on his back, he made, with a centre punch and hammer, two tiny indentations in the hard, steel.

‘Check ’em with your brains, kid, and let’s set up the old man and punch ’em through.’

Braithewaite checked the indentations with his rule. ‘O.K., but it’s going to be hard to feed oil to it under this beam. We better get some water up here and spit on it.’

Benson produced a plug of tobacco. ‘This’ll keep it wet and cool too,’ said he. He looked warily up and down the track that ribboned endlessly away below their perch. ‘How long we got, flagger?’

The flagman below them consulted his watch. ‘Twenty-one minutes on the eastbound without there’s a extra.’

‘All right. We’re setting it up. Any one of you grunts that fools around under this ladder’s just growing him a headache!’

The helpers moved ostentatiously back. Braithewaite stood up on the ladder, leaned back hard on the belt that held him to the beam, and for a tense few seconds juggled the heavy rack into place. The ladder swayed crazily and then, as he found his balance, steadied. His torso flexed hard, his patient strength forced the rack into position. Benson adjusted the clamp and tightened it with glinting strokes of his wrench.

‘Outa your strain, kid. I got it.’

Braithewaite relaxed and eased himself down onto the ladder again.

‘I never do set that dern thing up without wondering what kind of a card game it’d spoil if we dropped it through a Pullman roof.’

Braithewaite swung the ratchet drill into place, plumbed it with a critical eye, and locked it into the rack. Now he took one of Benson’s gloved hands and folded it gently over the handle.

‘It just fits,’ he drawled. ‘We got about ten inches of steel to drill this evening and if you can’t work your grouch out on that you better reach down for that wire under us and burn it out! Let’s see you get hot or go home!’

Benson got hot. He shifted once for position on the rocking ladder, splashed a brown trajectory of tobacco juice on the drill point, and his massive shoulder began to move with easy rhythm to the tune of the ratchet’s clicking. Tiny threads of steel shaving and red lead appeared like antennæ at the drill point. The antennæ became respectable shavings, razor thin, shiny and clean, that danced and shimmered about the disappearing point. Braithewaite tightened the compression screw, lit his pipe, and waited his turn.

III

A hundred yards down the track the flagman waited to warn them of locomotives that would blast them with smoke and soot. Below them at the pole base their grunts waited to pull up the new fittings when the holes were drilled. And below them less than three feet, passive, implacable, unrelenting, waited always the fourteen thousand volts that were their peril and their livelihood.

Of the voltage Benson thought, as he drilled, no more than usual. It was there, it was hot, they must keep out of it. For him that consciousness had assumed the proportions of an instinct. In emergencies it took on the simplicity of a reflex. The monotony of drilling released his mind for more complex thinking.

Anger still inflamed his thoughts. His hatred for the Duke had spread to include all authority. They were all against him, against him just because he was old and could remember the good old days — the days before blueprints and careful accounting and this new, everlasting Safety First. It was just like the Duke to take up with these new ways and preach about Safety First. It had probably been his idea to lengthen the lunch hour. His mind groped for the phrase: ‘to provide a longer period of rest and relaxation.’ Something like that, anyway. But it did n’t fool Benson. It was just another sneaking company trick to keep them from riding the express home. It would mean an extra fifteen minutes of winter noons huddled by a fire in the swirling cinders of the track fill. Missing the express would rob them of forty minutes — forty minutes waiting in the cold instead of the comfortable saloon that had become Benson’s habitual refuge from days aloft in the winter wind. Yes, it was the Duke’s fault. The Duke would n’t even have given him this job if he had recognized . . .

‘Gimme at that drill, Benson. You ’re too old to punch ’em through at one shot!’

Braithewaite’s voice startled him. He buttoned his overall jumper, flooded the half-drilled hole with brown foam, and relaxed. He did n’t feel restful, though. The exertion had only warmed him. He would n’t be tired for hours.

Diagonally below the linemen on the highroad that paralleled the railroad tracks was a steady stream of cars — open cars with the tops down and furred young people in them speeding to the football game. He cursed aloud.

‘What’s eating you now, old man?’

‘Look at them young idiots!’

‘ I been looking at them. I could do more than look at some of them girls. What’s wrong with ’em?’

‘Wrong with ’em? What’s wrong with ’em? Riding around the country like a bunch of hoodlums and us up here working our guts out while they go to a football game!’

‘Well, if I wanted to go to a football game I’d go. I would n’t just set here and crab about it.’

‘I would n’t go if they was to pay me!’

‘They won’t. I been to one and that ain’t the way they work it. It ain’t so much at that. You’re better off to save your money and then get drunk on it.’

Benson grunted. He’d get drunk, all right. It was pay night and he had n’t been drunk for a week. He’d get drunk at Clancy’s and then go beat up that bartender at Kelly’s who’d refused to put it on the cuff for him on Wednesday. He’d take his pliers and they could have all the bung starters they wanted. Habit slipped his hand to his plier scabbard, and his grip compressed their tensioned handles. Yes, by God, he’d take his pliers! He had smashed his way out of barroom brawls with them before. If he’d had them on Wednesday night when those three bums ... or if he’d had Harry Kilvain.

He shivered a little, and not from the rising November wind. He’d thought of Harry more in this week than in the last eight years. No good came of it, either. But he did think of it and his glove unconsciously traced the furrow of scar under his hair. But for the blow that left that scar, he would be as dead as Harry.

He’d known it even before he started for Harry. He’d known it before he’d seen the flame burst from his shirt. He’d been watching his partner from the deck of the wire train twelve feet below the maze of wire that Harry was climbing through on that fateful winter night. He’d seen the wind hit him, seen the lurching roll swing the long leg past the protecting insulators, seen his partner writhe and stiffen with horror frozen forever into his last expression. He had sprung for the ladder, but the Duke, who was only a train foreman then, had been quicker.

‘He’s dead! You can’t help him! You’ll just kill yourself!’

He knew it, but that madness of the sight was in him and he’d swung to knock the Duke out of the way. He’d awakened days later with a skull cracked by the foreman’s ruthless pliers. And afterwards, when the other men came and told how the Duke had held them at bay till the wire burned through, he only sneered.

The foreman had been right. He had proved his capability by saving the others and his courage by extracting the body from the lethal tangle with his own hands later on. But Benson had never forgiven him, and never would. There had been one chance in a thousand (Benson knew it was not more) that Harry might have been knocked from the octopus grip of the hot wire and might have survived the forty-foot fall to the rails of the track below.

After that Benson had wandered the country alone, working when he had to and drinking hard when he was flush.

Habit still took him to work sober, but his reputation had fallen. There had been a night, and he was cold sober too, when he had awakened again and again from that nightmare of flames around Harry and the blow on his head. The next day he had dropped a thousand dollars’ worth of insulators and smashed them into talcum powder. Luckily no one was under them. He’d been fired and he’d beaten up the general foreman. The story had spread among the scattered line gangs of the country and made him a redoubtable figure. But it had spread among the companies too, and he had had to change his name and grow a moustache to get jobs after that. And he did n’t have the friends he once had. Some of his contemporaries had been killed and some had drifted out of line work. Some had been promoted and remembered him all too well. Only hunger had nerved him to risk his disguise against the Duke’s memory for this job.

‘Come out of it, old man, and wet that hole for me before I burn this drill off!’

He shook himself and sat up. He had n’t spat in the hole for an eighth of an inch. The drill was hot; a wisp of steam arose from the brown foam. His legs and feet were cold and the sweat had dried on his shoulders.

‘Feed that ratchet, kid, and I ’ll show you how a man heats a drill.’

‘ I was just studying whether to wake you up or fold one of them paws over this handle and let you drill in your sleep.’

‘Sleep! ’ with scornful anger. ‘I could do more work in my sleep than you do the best waking day you ever had!’

‘You might could; but I know for a fact you don’t do. If I was twins, this job’d be done and the new wire shot hot by now!’ He stretched luxuriously on the ladder and buttoned his jumper. ‘Wake me up if you see the Duke coming.’

‘Ain’t you afraid you’ll fall off there and break a safety rule?’

‘No. What would the Devil want with a green kid like me when he could get a experienced old sinner like you right off this same ladder?’ He closed his eyes. ‘Don’t you fret about it though, old man. I believe he’s going to let you ripen up here a few days more if you just keep that belt buckled and don’t force his hand.’

IV

Round and round, half a circle at a stroke, the drill bit into the beam and the shimmering steel danced like platinum curls, broke under its own weight, and fell flashing and gleaming to the track. And back and forth Benson’s shoulder rolled, with productive economy of strength and motion. Twice he spat with unfailing accuracy into the deepening hole and occasionally he tightened the compression screw that held the drill into the beam with unrelenting pressure. But these were actions as mechanical as the roll of his shoulder. His mind was free to hate again.

If he were in a ware train he’d show them. In a wire train you got chances. You just waited for the right time when the whole train was working like mad with maybe only four minutes to finish the job and get back into the siding to clear an express. Then you’d foul something on the sly — smash some insulators — foul some blocks to an outrigger stirrup or bend a wire too short for a fitting. If you were smart, nobody even knew who ’d done it. And you could always claim it was a mistake, anyhow.

And then there’d be hell to pay for all hands on deck, a frenzy to unfoul, the flagman running for the signal tower to stop the express, the strawboss sprinting up the track to set a red flare. And the next day an investigation and the whole company catching hell for disrupting running schedules. But . . . he wasn’t in a wire train now.

The Duke had looked at him hard when he hired on here and said: ‘Ground and ladder gang, Benson. Report to Cantrell at six-thirty in the morning! ’

He’d started to protest that he wfas still young and fast enough for the intermittent frenzies of the wire trains that had to clear both hot ware and expresses on a two-minute notice. But the Duke’s eyes had stopped him. And he’d remembered that ‘Benson’ did n’t dare to be conspicuous. So he had just nodded: ‘Yes, sir.’

That was the way his linemen spoke to the Duke. And most of the young saps liked it, too. They’d call him Duke or use his first name as freely as they liked socially. But on the job it was ‘sir’ and they jumped when he spoke. And they’d work their guts out for him.

The flagman’s whistle skirled: ‘Hot rail on One. Hot, oh, hot!’

The grunts reëchoed the cry and pointed to the column of smoke that the approaching locomotive was belching. Benson glanced at Braithewaite’s safety and then kicked his partner gently.

‘She’s blowing it high, kid. Better duck your face.’

Braithewaite eyed the train disgustedly. ‘The flagger ought to make that feller cut his blower under us. I hope this ladder’ll hold the weight of all them cinders that’ll be in our clothes and hair in a minute.’

From the bolt bib of his overalls Benson produced a piece of ballast rock the size of a lemon.

‘This ladder’ll be lighter by the weight of this if that guy does n’t cut his blower. I’ve had my overalls burned three times this week and I’m tired of it.’

He curled his fingers over the rock and his eyes were evil as he juggled it expectantly. Instantly Braithewaite’s foot flashed; the rock spun harmlessly to the rails below. Benson’s hand went for his pliers and then stopped on the scabbard. Braithewaite’s pliers were already out. Benson cursed and locked his head in his burly arms.

Slowly Braithewaite raised his arms and locked them under his chin. The pliers remained in his hand; his eyes narrowed, but did not close on Benson. A long swish softened the roar of the train; the column of smoke stopped abruptly fifty yards from them. Only the deafening noise and a pale watery cloud of vapor reached them as the express hurtled below. From the corner of an eye that never left Benson, Braithewaite saw the receding engineer wave to them and then, pulling his blower, blast the skies again with smoke and cinders. Benson lowered his arms.

‘He did cut that blower this time, did n’t he?’

‘Yeah.’ And still Braithewaite did not return his pliers to their scabbard. ‘You got any more of them rocks, Benson?’

‘No.’ Benson’s eyes were on the pliers. ‘What did you kick that one out of my hand for?’

‘So I would n’t have to beat your brains out with these.’ He shook the pliers gently. ‘You was going to throw it, was n’t you?’

‘ Hell, yes, if he did n’t cut that blower. They got orders to cut them blowers. They just singe us for meanness. If you bounced a rock off one of ’em you’d cure that nonsense. I’m fixin’ to do it, too.’

‘Not off no ladder I’m working on, you ain’t.’ The pliers moved gently again. ‘If you got to kill you a engineer, take the number off his train and do it in the evening. But don’t never let me see you throw nothing heavier than a bucketful of water at one with a load of passengers behind him!’

Benson laughed unnaturally, but his eyes never left the pliers.

‘All right, kid. Keep your shirt on.’

V

Benson’s hand moved with disarming deliberation to the handle of the ratchet. The steady clicking resumed its even sound, and Braithewaite’s pliers reëntered their scabbard with a negligent thrust. Now he grinned at Benson.

‘Dern if you don’t hate the whole world to-day, old man. You been arcing like a wet switch all afternoon. You reckon I’ll be that mean when I get old and feeble like you?’

Benson only snorted and stuck to his drilling. He was angrier than he had been, but there was fear in his anger now. Braithewaite’s jocularity had relieved the tension, but both of them had felt it — both knew that Benson had backed down. Braithewaite’s clemency emphasized his victory.

Nor did Benson’s rage focus on the no longer watchful boy. His inner mind knew that Braithewaite had been right, but his liking for the kid could forgive even that. No, his rage would not focus; he liked Braithewaite. He had forgotten the engineer. And yet his world was askew. He had no clear remembrance of conflict. The actual circumstance was blurred in his rage. The appalling fact that he had been dominated by a kid of twenty-one, that for the first time in his life he had backed away from a plier fight, was too new, too sharp. He could n’t assimilate it. And so he snarled and transferred the heat of his brain to the twirling drill point.

Abruptly the drill wobbled and slipped from the rack.

‘First to-day, kid.’

Braithewaite sat up and scrutinized the hole. ‘Good hole!’ he pronounced. ‘I rigged the rack so we could get the next one without moving. Run the screw down and we’ll punch another.’

They set the drill again and Braithewaite loosened his jumper.

‘Cool off a spell, old man, and keep your legs out from under. They’s going to be shavings come out of here big enough to bust a leg if they fell on it!’

Benson grunted noncommittally and sank back on the ladder to rest. It was after two now and the heavy traffic on the road had found its way to the football game. One of the grunts was rebuilding the luncheon fire to warm their long wait. There was cold moisture in the sharpening wind.

VI

By four-thirty they had drilled eight holes. Three times they had moved rigging and ladder safely across the beam, four times they had removed dull bits. Four ounces of Benson’s tobacco had evaporated from the under side of the beam. Their overalls were covered with shards of fresh-cut steel already browning with rust. And gleaming silver cored through the red lead of the beam in evenly spaced pairs was the result of their expended strength and skill. The linemen were tired now — not spent with exhaustion of great effort, but tired with the inevitable fatigue of a fair exchange of strength and time for the holes that showed behind them. Four hours of their lives — an incalculable but definite part of their expendible strength. . . . It seemed oddly irrelevant to the arrival of the paymaster and the checks that had fluttered up the handline to them.

They were good checks, over a hundred dollars for a week’s work. But the week was gone, and by four o’clock of any hard day now Benson’s body reminded him that the weeks to come were not unlimited. His anger, however, was not weary; it had been refueled by the Duke.

That august man had stopped on his endless rounds of the job, chatted briefly with Cantrell, and then walked over the tracks until he was just below them.

‘On top!‘

‘Sir?’ Benson had snarled at Braithewaite’s respect.

‘Going to finish this beam to-day?‘

‘Just about, if it goes all right.’

‘If you can’t get it all, skip Track Three and get those holes over Track Four first. I want that done so the night train can work on Four tonight.’

‘Yes, sir. We’ll get it for you.’

‘Remember, when you go over there, that signal circuit next to Four is hot. You’ll have to get pretty close to it, but you’d better both stay on the cold side of the drill.’

This time Benson’s snarl was audible. Of course the signal circuit was hot — any lineman knew that.

‘All right, sir. We’ll keep out of it good.’

It made Benson sick to hear men nursed like that. He could remember when . . . Braithewaite kicked him sharply. The Duke was shouting: —

‘Wake up, Benson! I’m talking to you!’

‘Well?’

‘ Do you understand those signal wires are hot?’

‘Hell, yes.’

‘Well, keep your mind on your business and see to it you keep clear of them! ’

It was too much.

‘What the hell did you think I was going to do — light my pipe on it?’

‘I think you’re going down the road talking to yourself the next time I have to arc at you, Benson. Want it to be now?’

He thought of throwing something, but he knew he could n’t hit the Duke, and even if he did, there would be Braithewaite and the rest of them. No. He’d wait and get him alone.

‘All right. I’ll keep out of it.’

The Duke had walked off without further word. Braithewaite looked at Benson curiously.

‘Dern if you ain’t a sight, Benson. A body’d think the Duke had been rawhiding you instead of trying to keep you from committing suicide.’

‘I’ll commit — ’

Something in the level perplexity of Braithewaite’s stare warned him. He’d been talking too much that afternoon. Part of the hot confusion in his mind coalesced slowly into a vague stratagem. He twisted the mouth that wanted to bite into a grin.

‘I guess you’re right at that, kid. Always makes me kind of hot to have the Man arc at me, though. Forget it.’

Braithewaite’s face relaxed. ‘He does n’t mean nothin’ by it ’cept for us to stay alive, and I don’t never mind no man astin’ me to do that.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Looks to me like we better skip Three and do that pair over there by the signal circuit right off. If we was to bust a bit or suthin’ we’d need all the time we got to finish up like the Duke wants us to.’

It gave him a chance to regain his composure, and, without wording the need, he knew that composure was what he must have. Yes, he would act just like he’d forgotten all about the words with the Duke. If he saw the general foreman again to-day he’d speak to him civilly. For all his acid impatience, the Duke was notoriously forgiving. Then the Duke and everyone else would think their little tiff was all over. And then to-morrow . . . he closed his hand hard on the pliers.

VII

The setup, he now saw, would be tricky. If they drilled as usual from the opposite sides of the drill, one man would have a narrow clearance— probably less than fifteen inches. And that hot signal wire would be just behind him where he could n’t see it. If he forgot and leaned or reached back, it would just be flowers. It would be smart to work it as the Duke had ordered.

He estimated it thoughtfully. Hot, yes. But it was possible. He’d worked ’em closer than that. And it would be a fitting gesture to spend his last working day for the Duke in disobedience. If he had time he might even taunt the Duke with it to-morrow before . . . He crushed his plier handles. And then he nodded and, turning easily, walked the narrow beam back to Braithewaite.

‘Gimme my end of it, kid, and then when we get over there you can hold it and I ’ll lash my end first.’

Together they silhouetted slowly across the beam, moving now with a uniformity of step and balance that made them seem component parts of a single figure joined by the heavy burden of the ladder. Not until Braithewaite had assumed the whole of this burden, while Benson slipped down astride the beam preparatory to lashing it, did the boy realize his partner’s intent. Benson saw him gasp.

‘You better pick them feet up onto the beam and then slide this way a bit, Benson. You come within a foot of backin’ your heels into that signal wire when you set down.’

He admired the boy’s self-control. Some men would have screamed. The signal circuit was n’t as hot as the fourteen-thousand-volt track circuits, but no man had ever touched it twice. Benson let no admiration into his voice, however.

‘Why don’t you go tell Mussolini how to boss Wops? Don’t you think I know what I’m doing?’

‘If you do, you’re crazy. That’s 7700 behind you!’

‘It’s still behind me, ain’t it? What do you want me to do — stand in a rubber tree somewhere and work it from there?’

‘ Get far enough away from that stuff so if you do forget yourself you won’t reach back into it. You can’t drill safe there.’

‘ We can’t drill at all without you give me that ladder. What do you care if I do back into it? I’ll be the one it burns up. It can’t hurt you where you ’ll be.’

‘ I know it can’t. But they ain’t no need for it to hurt neither of us. Get up and let’s rig it like the Duke said.’

‘To hell with the Duke!’

‘ Cantrell’d fire you if he seen you fixin’ to work that close to something hot.’

‘Cantrell’s down the track a mile, figurin’ out to-morrow’s work.’

‘He may get back before we get it drilled.’

‘ If you don’t give me the end of that ladder, we ain’t even going to have time to get it drilled.’ He played his trump card cunningly. ‘It’ll look good for you to have to tell the Duke you could n’t finish his drilling ’cause you was so busy telling a lineman twice your age how to rig, won’t it?’

Braithewaite handed him the ladder end without a word. Throughout the careful lashing Benson was nervous. It was a risky job. The wind was wetter — he could hear the lethal whine in the wire behind him. Once his hand slipped a trifle. He just barely remembered to stop the balancing swing of his foot. Sweat streamed from his face and he dared not look at Braithewaite. With an effort he steadied himself, and in the silence of his mind he began whispering over and over again: ‘Hot behind me, hot behind me, hot behind me.’

The rhythm of the warning steadied him. He finished the lashing and, gulping hard, swung down onto the ladder. He had n’t felt like this since he was just beginning. The ladder rocked not at all. But, even with a heart full of gratitude, Benson could not voice his thanks for the herculean effort with which Braithewaite had steadied it. ‘Hot behind me, hot behind me, hot behind me . . .’

He locked his teeth and forced himself to survey his new position. It was a fresh shock to see the green corrosion on the copper strands less than two feet behind his shoulders. For a second he thought of backing down — of slipping back up to the beam and safety while they readjusted their rig. That would relax the tensity of Braithewaite’s face and quiet the queer ringing inside himself. But as he hesitated some of his fright abated. He tried his throat silently and judged that his voice would not betray him.

‘All right, kid. Let’s set up that rack and I’ll show you what kind of shavings a man makes.’

Braithewaite grinned nervously, but there was admiration in his young voice for all the callousness it affected.

‘ Well, if that man can make shavings like he slides around them kilowatts we won’t be long here. But if he goes to forgettin’ where he is he won’t make nothin’ but smoke and ashes from now on.’

Why did he suddenly think of the smoke bursting from Harry’s shirt? Sweat poured from him. It was a full minute before he could resume the cadence of what had become his prayer: ‘Hot behind me, hot behind me, hot behind me.’ Slowly it steadied him.

Drilling steadied him, too. He felt better with the even pull of the ratchet restoring its rhythmic regularity to heart and respiration. He did n’t reflect now on the panic through which he had passed, but only on the familiar resistance of the handle and the bite of the twirling bit. Slowly his chant of ‘Hot behind me, hot behind me, hot behind me,’ blended and disappeared into the metrical clicking of the ratchet. And then, not until Braithewaite spelled him did he think of anything but the drilling.

Idle, he buttoned his collar again, keeping his elbows well in front of him. That was all there was to hot wire after all. It would n’t come and get you if you did n’t bother it. Maybe now Braithewaite would quit singing the blues and quoting the Duke about it.

Heat surged through him again as the Duke reëntered his thoughts, and he locked his left hand over a copper suspension strap to steady his shaking rage. ‘. . . down the road talking to himself.’ Yes, he’d go down the road, but it would n’t be talking to himself. It would be laughing to himself at the way he would have seen the Duke crumple up. He could see it already, see it so clearly that unconsciously his hand closed over his pliers. He would get drunk to-night and stay drunk. He would shave off his moustache, pack his other belt and his good suit and take them all with him in the car when he went to the yard in the morning. He’d take his tools home to-night and pack them too, all but his pliers. He’d have them in his pocket to-morrow. Unconsciously he eased them out of their scabbard. He’d go into the yard with the pliers in his pocket and he’d go straight for the Duke. No. He’d wait outside the office door till the Duke came out with his head in the blueprints the way he always did. Then he’d step up, tell him who he was, and curse him. He could see now the surprise and rage coming into the hard face that seemed to be just before him. His hand began to crush the plier handles. Yes. He’d curse him until the Duke swung at him. And then . . . his plier hand, following the fury of his thoughts, swung upward and back. . . .