Twelve Men Part 28

As I learned that morning, Rourke was the foreman-mason for minor tasks for all that part of the railroad that lay between New York and fifty miles out, on three divisions. He had a dozen or so men under him and was in possession of one car, which was shunted back and forth between the places in which he happened to be working. He was a builder of concrete platforms, culverts, coal-bins, sidewalks, bridge and building piers, and, in fact, anything that could be made out of crushed stone and cement, or bricks and stone, and he was sent here and there, as necessity required. As he explained to me at the time, he sometimes rose as early as four a.m. in order to get to his place of labor by seven.

The great railroad company for which he toiled was no gentle master, and did not look upon his ease, or that of his men, as important. At the same time, as he himself confessed, he did not mind hard work--liked it, in short. He had been working now for the company for all of twenty-two years, "rain or shine." Darkness or storm made no difference to him.

"Shewer, I have to be there," he observed once with his quizzical, elusive Irish grin. "They're not payin' me wages fer lyin' in bed. If ye was to get up that way yerself every day fer a year, me b'y," he added, eyeing my spare and none too well articulated frame, "it'd make a man av ye."

"Yes?" I said tolerantly. "And how much do you get, Rourke?"

"Two an' a half a day."

"You don't say!" I replied, pretending admiration.

The munificence of the corporation that paid him two and a half dollars a day for ten hours' work, as well as for superintending and constructing things of such importance, struck me forcibly. Perhaps, as we say in America, he "had a right" to be happy, only I could not see it. At the same time, I could not help thinking that he was better situated than myself at the time. I had been ill, and was now earning only twelve cents an hour for ten hours' work, and the sight of the foreman for whom I was working was a torture to my soul. He was such a loud-mouthed, bl.u.s.tering, red-headed ignoramus, and I wanted to get out from under him. At the same time, I was not without sufficient influence so to do, providing I could find a foreman who could make use of me. The great thing was to do this, and the more I eyed this particular specimen of foreman the better I liked him. He was genial, really kindly, amazingly simple and sincere. I decided to appeal to him to take me on his staff.

"How would you like to take me, Mr. Rourke, and let me work for you?" I asked hopefully, after explaining to him why I was here.

"Shewer," he replied. "Ye'd do fine."

"Would I have to work with the Italians?" I asked, wondering how I would make out with a pick and shovel. My frame was so spare at the time that the question must have amused him, considering the type of physique required for day labor.

"There'll be plenty av work fer ye to do without ever yer layin' a hand to a pick er shovel," he replied comfortingly. "Shewer, that's no work fer white min. Let the nagurs do it. Look at their backs an' arrms, an'

then look at yers."

I was ready to blush for shame. These poor Italians whom I was so ready to contemn were immeasurably my physical superiors.

"But why do you call them negroes, Rourke?" I asked after a time.

"They're not black."

"Well, bedad, they're not white, that's waan thing shewer," he added.

"Aany man can tell that be lookin' at thim."

I had to smile. It was so dogmatic and unreasoning.

"Very well, then, they're black," I said, and we left the matter.

Not long after I put in a plea to be transferred to him, at his request, and it was granted. The day that I joined his flock, or gang, as he called it, he was at Williamsbridge, a little station north on the Harlem, building a concrete coal-bin. It was a pretty place, surrounded by trees and a gra.s.s-plot, a vast improvement upon a dark indoor shop, and seemed to me a veritable haven of rest. Ah, the smiling morning sun, the green leaves, the gentle fresh winds of heaven!

Rourke was down in an earthen excavation under the depot platform when I arrived, measuring and calculating with his plumb-bob and level, and when I looked in on him hopefully he looked up and smiled.

"So here ye arre at last," he said with a grin.

"Yes," I laughed.

"Well, ye're jist in time; I waant ye to go down to the ahffice."

"Certainly," I replied, but before I could say more he climbed out of his hole, his white jeans odorous of the new-turned earth, and fished in the pocket of an old gray coat which lay beside him for a soiled and crumpled letter, which he finally unfolded with his thick, clumsy fingers. Then he held it up and looked at it defiantly.

"I waant ye to go to Woodlawn," he continued, "an' look after some bolts that arre up there--there's a keg av thim--an' sign the bill fer thim, an' ship thim down to me. An' thin I waant ye to go down to the ahffice an' take thim this o.k." Here again he fished around and produced another crumpled slip, this time of a yellow color (how well I came to know them!), which I soon learned was an o.k. blank, a form which had to be filled in and signed for everything received, if no more than a stick of wood or a nail or a bolt. The company demanded these of all foremen, in order to keep its records straight. Its accounting department was useless without them. At the same time, Rourke kept talking of the "nonsinse av it," and the "onraisonableness" of demanding o.k.s for everything. "Ye'd think some one was goin' to sthale thim from thim," he declared irritably and defiantly.

I saw at once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who would relieve him of this d.a.m.nable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all this. In fact, as time proved, this was my sole reason for being here.

He flung a parting shot at his superior as I departed.

"Tell him that I'll sign fer thim when I get thim, an' not before," he declared.

I went on my way, knowing full well that no such message was for delivery, and that he did not intend that it should be. It was just the Irish of it. I went off to Woodlawn and secured the bolts, after which I went down to the "ahffice" and reported. There I found the chief clerk, a mere slip of a dancing master in a high collar and attractive office suit, who was also in a high state of dudgeon because Rourke, as he now explained, had failed to render an o.k. for this and other things, and did not seem to understand that he, the chief clerk, must have them to make up his reports. Sometimes o.k.s did not come in for a month or more, the goods lying around somewhere until Rourke could use them. He wanted to know what explanation Rourke had to offer, and when I suggested that the latter thought, apparently, that he could leave all consignments of goods in one station or another until such time as he needed them before he o.k.ed for them, he fairly foamed.

"Say," he almost shouted, at the same time shoving his hands distractedly through his hair, "what does he think I am? How does he think I'm going to make up my books? He'll leave them there until he needs them, will he? Well, he's a d.a.m.ned fool, and you go back and tell him I said so. He's been long enough on the road to know better. You go back and tell him I said that I want a signed form for everything consigned to him the moment he learns that it's waiting for him, and I want it right away, without fail, whether it's a single nut or a car of sand. I want it. He's got to come to time about this now, or something's going to drop. I'm not going to stand it any longer. How does he think I'm going to make up my books? I wish he'd let you attend to these matters while you're up there. It will save an awful lot of trouble in this office and it may save him his job. There's one thing sure: he's got to come to time from now on, or either he quits or I do."

These same o.k.s plus about twenty-five long-drawn-out reports or calculations, retroactive and prospective, covering every possible detail of his work from the acknowledgment of all material received up to and including the expenditure of even so much as one mill's worth of paper, were the bane of my good foreman's life. As I learned afterward, he had nearly his whole family, at least a boy and two girls, a.s.sisting him nights on this part of the work. In addition, while they were absolutely of no import in so far as the actual work of construction was concerned--and that was really all that interested Rourke--they were an essential part of the system which made it possible for him to do the work at all--a point which he did not seem to be able to get clear. At the same time, there was an unsatisfactory side to this office technicalia, and it was this: If a man could only sit down and reel off a graphic account of all that he was doing, accompanied by facts and figures, he was in excellent standing with his superiors, no matter what his mechanical defects might be; whereas, if his reports were not clear, or were insufficient, the efficiency of his work might well be overlooked. In a vague way, Rourke sensed this and resented it. He knew that his work was as good as could be done, and yet here were these constant reports and o.k.s to irritate and delay him. Apparently they aided actual construction no whit--but, of course, they did. Although he was a better foreman than most, still, because of his lack of skill in this matter of accounting, he was looked upon as more or less a failure, especially by the chief clerk. Naturally, I explained that I would do my best, and came away.

When I returned, however, I decided to be politic. I could not very well work with a pick and shovel, and this was about all that was left outside of that. I therefore explained as best I could the sad plight of the chief clerk, who stood in danger of losing his job unless these things came in promptly.

"You see how it is, Rourke, don't you?" I pleaded.

He seemed to see, but he was still angry.

"An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" he echoed contentiously, but in a somewhat more conciliatory spirit. "He wants an o.k. blank, does he?

Well, I expect ye might as well give thim to him, thin. I think the man lives on thim things, the way he's aalways caallin' fer thim. Ye'd think I was a bookkeeper an' foreman at the same time; it's somethin' aaful.

An o.k. blank! An o.k. blank!" and he sputtered to silence.

A little while later he humorously explained that he had "clane forgot thim, anyhow."

The ensuing month was a busy one for us. We had a platform to lay at Morrisania, a chimney to build at Tarrytown, a sidewalk to lay at White Plains, and a large cistern to dig and wall in at Tuckahoe. Besides these, there were platforms to build at Van Cortlandt and Mount Kisco, water-towers at Highbridge and Ardsley, a sidewalk and drain at Caryl, a culvert and an ash-pit at Bronx Park, and some forty concrete piers for a building at Melrose--all of which required any amount of running and figuring, to say nothing of the actual work of superintending and constructing, which Rourke alone could look after. It seemed ridiculous to me at the time that any one doing all this hard practical labor should not be provided with a clerk or an accountant to take at least some of this endless figuring off his hands. At the same time, if he had been the least bit clever, he could have provided himself with one permanently by turning one of his so-called laborers into a clerk--carrying a clerk as a laborer--but plainly it had never occurred to him. He depended on his family. The preliminary labor alone of ordering and seeing that the material was duly shipped and unloaded was one man's work; and yet Rourke was expected to do it all.

In spite of all this, however, he displayed himself a masterful worker.

I have never seen a better. He preferred to superintend, of course, to get down into the pit or up on the wall, and measure and direct. At the same time, when necessary to expedite a difficult task, he would toil for hours at a stretch with his trowel and his line and his level and his plumb-bob, getting the work into shape, and you would never hear a personal complaint from him concerning the weariness of labor. On the contrary, he would whistle and sing until something went wrong, when suddenly you would hear the most terrific uproar of words: "Come out av that! Come out, now! Jasus Christ, man, have ye no sinse at aall? Put it down! Put it down! What arre ye doin'? What did I tell ye? Have ye no raison in ye, no sinse, ye h'athen nagur?"

"Great heavens!" I used to think, "what has happened now?"

You would have imagined the most terrible calamity; and yet, all told, it might be nothing of any great import--a little error of some kind, more threatening than real, and soon adjusted. It might last for a few moments, during which time the Italians would be seen hurrying excitedly to and fro; and then there would come a lull, and Rourke would be heard to raise his voice in tuneful melody, singing or humming or whistling some old-fashioned Irish "Come-all-ye."

But the thing in Rourke that would have pleased any one was his ready grasp for the actualities of life--his full-fledged knowledge that work is the thing, not argument, or reports, or plans, but the direct accomplishment of something tangible, the thing itself. Thus, while I was working with him, at least nothing that might concern the clerical end of the labor could disturb him, but, if the sky fell, and eight thousand chief clerks threatened to march upon him in a body demanding reports and o.k.s, he would imperturbably make you wait until the work was done. Once, when I interrupted him to question him concerning some of these same wretched, pestering aftermaths of labor, concerning which he alone could answer, he shut me off with: "The reports! The reports!

What good arre the reports! Ye make me sick. What have the reports to do with the work? If it wasn't fer the work, where would the reports be?"

And I heartily echoed "Where?"

Another thing was his charming att.i.tude toward his men, kindly and sweet for all his storming, that innate sense of something intimate and fatherly. He had a way of saying kindly things in a joking manner which touched them. When he arrived in the morning, for instance, it was always in the cheeriest way that he began. "Come, now, b'ys, ye have a good day's work before ye today. Get the shovels, Jimmie. Bring the line, Matt!" and then he would go below himself, if below it was, and there would be joy and peace until some obstacle to progress interfered.

I might say in pa.s.sing that Matt and Jimmie, his faithful henchmen, were each between forty and fifty, if they were a day--poor, gnarled, dusty, storm-tossed Italians who had come from heaven knows where, had endured G.o.d knows what, and were now rounding out a work-a-day existence under the sheltering wing of this same Rourke, a great and protecting power to them.

This same Matt was a funny little Italian, soft of voice and gentle of manner, whom Rourke liked very much, but with whom he loved to quarrel.

He would go down in any hole where the latter was working, and almost invariably shortly after you would hear the most amazing uproar issuing therefrom, shouts of: "Put it here, I say! Put it here! Down with it!

Here! Here! Jasus Christ, have ye no sinse at aall?"--coupled, of course, with occasional guttural growls from Matt, who was by no means in awe of his master and who feared no personal blows. The latter had been with Rourke for so long that he was not in the least overawed by his yelling and could afford to take such liberties. Occasionally, not always, Rourke would come climbing out of the hole, his face and neck fairly scarlet with heat, raging and shouting, "I'll get shut av ye!

I'll have no more thruck with ye, ye blitherin', crazy loon! What good arre ye? What work can ye do? Naathin'! Naathin'! I'll be shut av ye now, an' thin maybe I'll have a little p'ace." Then he would dance around and threaten and growl until something else would take his attention, when he would quiet down and be as peaceful as ever. Somehow, I always felt that in spite of all the difficulties involved, he enjoyed these rows--must fight, in short, to be happy. Sometimes he would go home without saying a word to Matt, a conclusion which at first I imagined portended the end of the latter, but soon I came to know better. For the next morning Matt would reappear as unconcernedly as though nothing had happened, and Rourke would appear not to notice or remember.

Once, anent all this, I said to him, "Rourke, how many times have you threatened to discharge Matt in the last three years?"

"Shewer," he replied, with his ingratiating grin, "a man don't mane aall he says aall the time."

The most humorous of all his collection of workingmen, however, was the aforementioned Jimmie, a dark, mild-eyed, soft-spoken Calabrian, who had the shrewdness of a Machiavelli and the pertness of a crow. He lived in the same neighborhood as Rourke, far out in one of those small towns on the Harlem, sheltering so many Italians, for, like a hen with a brood of chicks, Rourke kept all his Italians gathered close about him.

Jimmie, curiously, was the one who was always selected to run his family errands for him, a kind of valet to Rourke, as it were--selected for some merit I could never discover, certainly not one of speed. He was nevertheless constantly running here and there like an errand boy, his worn, dusty, baggy clothes making him look like a dilapidated bandit fresh from a sewer. On the job, however, no matter what it might be, Jimmie could never be induced to do real, hard work. He was always above it, or busy with something else. But as he was an expert cement-mixer and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh!

Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye fox," but more than that nothing was ever done.