7

The port was a marvel of disorder. For two miles the river was barely visible from the road, cut off by a string of warehouses and sheds. The road swarmed: trucks, donkeys, dockers, on the landward side shops and markets; thousands of men, women and children toting, shouting, buying, selling. A white man, mustachioed, in a pith helmet: Morrison stared unbelieving. Twice, grade crossings. They pushed along in low gear, declining manslaughter time and again; before them and behind them were trucks and wagons enduring the same slow pilgrimage. Their goal was government wharf number one, the last of the line and the deepest anchorage. The crowd thinned toward the end, and they drove the last half mile in second gear. Tall Boy was strangely courteous, gesturing in courtly fashion at pedestrians, clucking at menaced fowl, laughing with children. Just before the sea-wall they turned left, and there was the mouth of the muddy river, a hundred yards off, and when they had rounded the sheds and were on the waterfront itself, Morrison saw the straight line of railroad tracks, and freights and engines, running back the full two miles. And at that too he caught his breath: ten or a dozen freighters of all sizes, and the tracks and cars, and longshoremen shuttling and chanting, and the sheds of odd shapes, and trucks and jeeps, and the smell of the river, of oil, of wood, all that in the hot yellow morning light—why should that be less beautiful than a sunset, or mist at dawn on a mountain stream? It was not less beautiful. More beautiful, perhaps, because it was human. Men, accomplishing. Taking sun, wood, muscle, steel, human need, and making of them a manscape in dull browns and bright yellows and gleaming silver-whites.

The Xenophon rode low in the water before them, a small Liberian flag hanging limp astern. Her forward hatches were open and booms and cables strained; the air was thick with whirrings and groanings and clickings. A small, cocky, bright-red automobile hung high, swaying and then still, and began its descent. Two more like it stood shaded by a wooden overhang. Clean wooden crates filled a corner of the vast shed.

Tall Boy backed into the shade and they stepped out and stretched. “How long it take to get her off?”

“All day,” Morrison said. “So you take it easy. That’s fifty tons, don’t forget. Will there be a telephone here?”

“Oh yes. Telephones all up and down here.”

“Good. Stick around. I’ll try to find Goray.”

Tall Boy squinted out at the light, and found a post to lean against. He cocked his fez and examined the scene carefully, his eyes shifting and his mind absorbing, and then he concentrated on the hoists and the man in a small box who was making them work. Morrison liked him. Morrison wanted to see that broad, open face when they gave him his crane.

Goray was in the dockmaster’s office on the second floor of the shed. When Morrison came in, Goray grinned mischievously and roared welcome. His shirt was scarlet today, and a broad-brimmed Panama hat gave him an overseer’s air. “Engineer Morrison! How delightful! This is Dockmaster Hartog. I am afraid we have no banana brandy.”

Morrison shook hands with Hartog, a skinny man all in white, and then with Goray. “I can still taste the last bottle.”

Goray heaved and rippled, laughing. The room was musty and cool.

“Everything is in order,” Hartog said.

“Yes,” Goray said. “This is quite a day. I cannot wait to see this machine.”

“Neither can I. Or to make it work. It’s been a long trip, and things go wrong. How soon will they have it off?”

“You must ask the captain, or the master of cargo. But the clearance is here, thanks to Mister Hartog.” He waved a sheaf of papers, and slipped them into a folder as Hartog smiled. A cock crowed outside, close by, startling, and they all laughed.

“Fanfare,” Goray said emphatically. “A good sign.”

“Is there a phone? May I call my office? I’ve ordered a truck for the boom.”

Goray was interested. “You cannot leave it on the crane?”

“Not at forty miles an hour. It’s long and heavy, you know. We’d tip at the first curve.”

“Ah. And on the job?”

“Maximum speed five miles an hour on the job. Better still, three.”

“I see, I see.” To Hartog he bubbled, “Technology, my friend. Salvation in a homicidal world. Nuclear energy, next. Power-plants. Our great need.”

“And stability.”

Goray blinked.

“General Ros.” Morrison was showing off.

Goray’s face told him not to pursue it. Of course. He felt foolish.

“Anyway, is there a phone?”

“There is a telephone downstairs,” Hartog said. “On the street side.”

“Then you’ll excuse me.”

“Yes, yes, go ahead.” Goray waved him off. “I shall join you shortly.”

“My pleasure,” Hartog said, and they shook hands again.

Downstairs the smell of hides was stupefying. Bales of hides. Rows of bales of hides. Morrison did not envy the longshoremen, or even the crew of the Xenophon. Bags of coffee, then, much better, and rice. Timber. A huge crate labeled WORKS OF ART bearing an address in London. Bags of sugar: he stepped closer to sniff, but backed away quickly: bees swarmed.

Utu answered, and Morrison instructed him to have the truck there at noon. Two drivers, and they must plan to spend the night at the camp. And the small crane should leave immediately. Utu was crisp and confident: it would be done.

“One more thing, sir.”

“What is it?”

“We have been wondering, the three of us, if … if we might, ah, come to see the unloading.”

Behind the casual words, perhaps in that brief hesitation, was an intensity that shocked Morrison; an intensity not heard, not even felt in an ordinary way, but registering violently upon some new sense, unused and unsuspected before now.

“Yes.” Morrison was flustered. “Yes, sure. Take a half holiday. Come down after lunch.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, sir, thank you!”

“Well, sure,” he said. “See you later.” He hung up.

Good God! One little old fifty-ton crane!

And yet he understood.

Goray and he boarded the Xenophon and were led to her captain, a man of forty or so, unlined and cheerful and blond, who glanced briefly at the clearances and poured three tots of whisky and sent for his chief mate, a man of thirty or so, also unlined and cheerful and blond, who said that the boom would come off at one, the carrier by three, and the upper cab by five. The cables were off already, and there had been no damage whatsoever, not a scratch, a smooth crossing. A crate of parts was on the dock.

“Thank God,” Morrison said.

“I thank you in the name of the government.” Goray raised his glass. “With whisky before luncheon. That is a most valuable machine.”

“It’s a pretty one, too,” the chief mate said. “I’d join you, there, but I’m working. Cheers anyway. The kind of machine you get fond of.”

“Just get it off in one piece,” the captain said.

“Will do,” he said. “Where do we put it?”

“There’ll be a truck here for the boom,” Morrison said. “A forty-foot flat trailer. Just drop it gently, the long way, the inserts too. If you could get that crate of parts on afterward I’d appreciate it.”

The chief mate said, “No sweat.”

The captain’s cabin was like a room at a motel. There was even a print of Old Faithful. But the maple chairs were bolted to the floor.

“Drop the upper cab on the carrier. There’s a hole in the bottom, and a post in the carrier that goes up through the hole. I’ll position it for you.”

The chief mate said warily, “You know about this kind of work?”

“No. But I’m an engineer, and I know this machine. I won’t touch anything. Or you can come down and do it.”

“We’ll do it together,” the young man said agreeably.

“Good. Then I’ll set the flanges and we’ll be off your dock in half an hour.”

“Lovely,” the young man said.

“How do you unload the carrier?”

The captain was bored. Goray was bright-eyed and alert.

“We drive it right down a ramp.” The chief mate smiled. “Same ramp we drove it up.”

“Good old American know-how,” Morrison said.

“Yes sir,” the chief mate said with vigor. “That Liberian flag didn’t fool you for a minute. What are you going to do with this machine, anyway?”

“Build a bridge,” Morrison said.

“Great,” the chief mate said, and then, “Where you from?” and that killed the next few minutes, and then Morrison towed off a reluctant Goray and went to find Tall Boy.

Tall Boy stood among sweaty dockers, and was offering cigarettes. The dockers wore ragged pants and nothing else. Some bore hooks and some shoulder-pads. “Oh, that is a bridge,” Tall Boy was saying. “People going to come out there just to look at that bridge.”

Goray and Morrison lingered in the shade and did not interrupt. From here, at the bows, they could see the river, a mile and more across, sluggish, brown, implacable; and a barge, and half a dozen dugouts, pirogues, one deep under coconuts. The far shore was surprisingly bare: one wooden building, many shacks, a fringe of palms. The land lay flat along the coast, and there was no forest, only a long flat sweep of green and dun to the far horizon. “There is a ferry,” Goray said, “and a road, for about thirty miles, to a settlement called Himmel’s Creek. In between, a few farms.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned Ros. That was stupid.”

Goray shrugged. “It was only that we do not know how Hartog feels. A certain discretion is valuable.”

“Yes. How are things? Politically, I mean. The radio scares us and then says everything is all right.”

“Yes. Officially, all is well. But I worry. It is so easy, you see, when you have a general to give orders. Your George Washington was not the father of his country because he conceived it, but because he took care of things. The children came to him with their troubles and he resolved them. Though I will admit that he was an unusual man. In spite of his slaves. A Yorkshireman, I believe. With big feet. Do you know what I have never understood about your country?”

“No. But it’s nice of you to admit there’s something.”

“Touché.” Goray was genuinely delighted. “I have never understood how, with so much power to be grabbed, your early politicians declined it. Not merely Washington refusing the monarchy; but all of them so busy making a good country that they forgot to assure themselves lifetime jobs, and salt monopolies, and whole counties.”

“They’d just rebelled against all that.”

Goray was astonished. “My dear fellow. You cannot be so naïve. Name one other—any other, anywhere, any time—group of revolutionaries who did not immediately assume the privileges of the deposed.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that much history,” Morrison said. “I wish I did. You and Philips make me feel illiterate.”

“We don’t mean to.” Goray smiled. “It is desperation on our part. There is so much to learn—so much being forced upon us so suddenly—that the few of us who can read and write are permanently drunk with knowledge. Most of it, I must say, useless. This machine, now—that impresses me.”

“Me too. I don’t know how a machine can make a man so happy, but when they told me it was undamaged—”

“I noticed,” Goray said. “I felt somewhat the same. The life of the government depends not on intentions but on accomplishment. On other things too, maneuvering and deals and so forth. But also accomplishment. Statistics. So much more rice grown. So many miles of road put down. So many telephones. Housing, bridges, hospitals. If we slacken, the people will feel cheated and will fall in behind some general—like Ros—who will tell them to win the world’s respect by being strong; even making war. Horrible. That man is the real savage.”

“Well, the bridge will be a good one,” Morrison said. “You can promise them that. It will also be one of the most beautiful bridges in the world.” Morrison nodded seriously. “In the world. Tall Boy is right: people will come to see it. And it took no genius. Only technique.”

“Good.” Goray’s smile was faintly like Bawi’s; a pale copy. “Maybe it will keep us in power for another week or two.”

Morrison laughed. “My boss told me to stay out of politics.”

Goray arched in glee, eyes and mouth wide. “You were—wait, wait, there is an American phrase.” Finger raised, eyes glittering behind his glasses, he sought. “Yes! You were arse-deep in politics the moment you landed.”

They laughed together, and Goray slapped him on the back. Tall Boy heard them, and broke away from the dockers.

“Tall Boy,” Morrison said. “This is Mister Goray.”

“Albert Goray.” He shook hands with Tall Boy, who was uneasily respectful and tipped the fez with his left hand.

“Tall Boy is the heavy machinery man,” Morrison said. “The best in the country. This crane is for him.”

“Ah.” Goray bowed slightly. “You are an important man, Tall Boy. Take care of your toy.”

“I will.”

“We’ll have it on the road by six,” Morrison said. “We’ll take it to Serpa’s tonight. He has that big lot. We’ll stay at the hotel and start out in the morning. If nothing bad happens.”

“I could sleep in the crane,” Tall Boy said.

“Nobody’s going to make off with it. There’s only one man in the country who knows how to run it.”

“You,” Goray said.

“Me. By tomorrow night, me and Tall Boy.”

Tall Boy took on the look of a new father. “Lord Jesus,” he said.

“You are a Christian?” Goray asked.

“Yes sir. You, sir?”

“No,” Goray said mournfully. “I am a politician.” Then he grinned his quick grin and said, “Let us go and eat.”

They ate rice and beef and peppers and shards of coconut, all heated up in one pot, and drank tea. When they returned to the dock, the truck was there, the long flat-bed trailer, and there too were Utu and Isaacson and Vieira-Souza, all in white, short sleeves, no hats, like cricketers at the tea-break, but they were drinking beer from bottles. They greeted Morrison almost timidly, and he introduced them to Goray, whom it seemed they had met, and there was nothing to do but stand in the shade and chat.

After a while a hatch opened, and blocks swung and cables stretched and twanged. The chief mate joined them, sweating through his khaki shirt, and Morrison presented him. “Why don’t you take off your shirt?”

“Company rule,” the chief mate said blithely. “Tell the men from the boys,” meaning nothing special, but he did not see the look that crossed five faces, and Morrison did.

A monstrous lattice of steel emerged from the hatch. Their boom. The sun danced off it in a hundred blinding glints.

“Where do you want the truck?”

“Right where it is,” the chief mate said. “We took care of all that while you were gone.”

Morrison asked Utu, “Where are the drivers?”

“Gone to buy a drink,” Utu said, and Morrison was so taken with the music of “byee ah dreenk” that he was almost not angry.

“Find them,” Morrison said. “Right now. And tell them to lay off the drink until they reach camp tonight.”

“Yes. Yes sir,” Utu said, frightened, not knowing what it cost Morrison to issue an angry order.

Their boom hung high, and swung toward them, drifting and silver-black against the deep yellow sky. It passed across the sun. Morrison was dazzled, and looked down at the chief mate, who stood beside the trailer semaphoring. The boom hung still, then lower, lower, lower; the mate and his men laid guiding hands upon it, and shifted their feet. The mate waved again, and the boom settled gently on six inches of matting. The men disengaged the cables. Morrison wiped his brow.

Tall Boy poked him. “How we get that on the crane?” he worried.

Morrison put an arm around his shoulders. The boom was down, and safe. “Another crane. A small one. It went out this morning. Maybe the same one you had at Gimbo.”

“That was ten ton,” Tall Boy said. “You know about Gimbo?”

“Yes.”

“That was funny,” Tall Boy said.

“Okay, gentlemen,” Morrison said. “Show’s over for now. Nothing more till about three.” The chief mate came laughing up. “Good work,” Morrison said. “Thanks.”

“Service with a smile,” he said. “Call again.” An ass, Morrison decided.

Two hours later the hull swung open amidships and became a ramp. The boom, the inserts, the crate of parts were gone, in the care of Morrison’s tippling drivers, who had submitted indifferently to his amateurish reprimand and accepted somewhat more gracefully his promise of abundant beer at the end of the line. Which left the six of them loitering, smoking, watching other men work, dodging the sun; yawning. When the ramp came down, Tall Boy laid a huge hand on Morrison’s shoulder, and Goray flashed him a comical glance of mock terror, and the other three fell silent and gawked.

The chief mate was not an ass. He urged her out at a mile an hour, swung her right at the moment Morrison would have chosen, and brought her to a stop far down the dock, at the bows, with plenty of room to back her into place for the upper cab. He ordered the ramp up, and waited, and only when the dock was clear came to Morrison and asked, smiling, brisk and smug, if he wanted to take over.

“Yes,” Morrison said. “Come on, Tall Boy. First lesson.”

They scrambled aboard. It was not much of a lesson because the carrier was driven much like any truck, but it was twenty-five feet long and weighed twenty-four tons and was not altogether child’s play. Tall Boy whispered to himself. Morrison backed with great care. He set the brakes, cut the motor, dropped the keys into his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. “The driving is just oiler’s work,” he said. “The real work is in the cab.” Tall Boy nodded; he knew.

Their three engineers stood like bridesmaids as they descended, and Goray insisted on an examination of the dashboard. He inspected the wheels and the platform and pronounced himself pleased. Morrison was meanwhile checking the oil and water. Lookoe joe oilie nanda watra befosie joe start na wagie. Yes sir.

And so it went: a perfect day. The upper cab emerged as promised, toward five, and they worried some more because it was immense, and full of beautifully complicated mechanisms; one good jolt would have drawn hot tears and keening sobs from all of them. But the mate knew his job, and won their hearts, setting down thirteen tons like a fisherman dropping a fly on a leaf. Morrison felt for a moment what he had felt often before, that any man who did his job well was a man to like; and then remembered General Ros, who was presumably doing his job well and whom he did not think he would like at all. A fleeting thought. He thanked the young man. Then he went aboard and thanked the captain. Then he thanked Goray. Then his three engineers thanked him. Morrison had Tall Boy give them the keys to the Land-Rover, and said he wanted one of them to run it out to the camp tomorrow and hitch a ride back on the flat-bed. They went away squabbling. “Utu,” Morrison said. “One dollar.”

“A bet,” Tall Boy said. “Isaacson wins. He been longer with the company.”

Before Goray left he said, “A good day’s work. The bridge is important. I told you that.”

“Yes. To me too. You’ll get a beauty. Just stay in office a while, will you?”

“Oh yes,” Goray said. “There is much to be done after the bridge.” He was teasing solemnly.

“I know. Farms. Food. Timber. People who can hope to live past thirty.”

“Oh well,” Goray said. “That is exaggerated, you know. Those averages include infant mortality, which is high.” Everything at his fingertips; Morrison marveled. “If a man reaches the age of ten here he can expect to see sixty.” Then his eyes went blank, and a wry smile plucked at his lips: “That is, if he wants to.”

So Morrison and Tall Boy proceeded in stately array toward the capital, the sun vanishing behind them and pedestrians paying homage before them, staring, clumps of them turning like sunflowers at the smooth and almost silent approach of this new monster; but a peaceful monster, and it seemed to Morrison that they sensed its benevolence and welcomed it. Romance, he supposed, deriding himself gently; and yet, and yet. The man who has never driven a fifty-ton crane through a tropical capital at nightfall has no right to laugh. Tropical capitals exist only in dreams, anyway, and when you are there you do too; the overpowering scent of flowers at twilight in an unrelieved slum, and then you turn a corner and the whole next block is one flaming flower-market, and a barefoot girl in a yellow dress lights the dusk with her smile, and her arms are full of blue and red blossoms. Then the next block is an outhouse, and the next a swamp of alcohol, and then an illuminated sign blares CHARLIE CHAPLIN, or a brightly lit black dummy stands in the window of a department store sporting a set of tails. With a medal in the lapel, and if you come closer the medal reads JORROCKS HUNT CLUB. And the night closes in, lamps glow, music floats and twangs. A policeman stops traffic for you, and salutes your passage. Tall Boy answers the salute. And when you arrive at Serpa’s, the darkness envelops you and only your own beams light the way, and it is best that they be bright.

And then silence, and stars, until Tall Boy turned to him and said, “I think I ought to sleep here, boss. I really do.”

“No. We’re going to eat some good steaks and drink all the beer we can hold, and sleep like babies.”

“Very good,” he said. “Yes, very good. Eh, one thing, boss.”

“What’s that?”

“Will they let me in this hotel?”

Not since he came here had Morrison been so angry. “For Christ’s sake, Tallie!” Morrison could have throttled him. “This is your country!”

“Oh, no, boss,” Tall Boy soothed him. “No, no, no,” and set a hand on his shoulder again, “I just meant I got no necktie,” and patted him.

And now who was the ass?

In the morning Morrison stopped off to buy half a dozen machetes, and said that he wanted them wrapped, any sort of package, which astounded the wizened, ferrety Hindu in his open wooden stall. So Morrison took them as they were and went to buy a gunny sack. At Serpa’s he hid them under the driver’s seat. Serpa was all over the crane, nodding and muttering, tugging at his mustache—he looked like a lover in an Italian opera—and calling on his gods. “Beautiful, beautiful! Some machine! Some machine! Capital!”

“It’s a good one,” Morrison said. “Hey, Serpa. Tell me something.”

“Anything, Mister Morrison. Serpa is at your service.” He even bowed.

“You really used the best? All the way through? Absolutely the best?”

“Mister Morrison,” he said sadly, as if Morrison had questioned his piety. “Mister Morrison.” He was a solid man, and dark, and might have spent much time in the field. That was unreasonably reassuring. “If this bridge was my own, my own private bridge, the Manoel Serpa bridge, I could not have found one kilo of material better than what I use here. For you. Listen.” He drew nearer; his eyes darted. “Now that we are a country if the material is bad you know what happens?”

“What?”

“They put Serpa in jail. You ever been to jail in a hot country, Mister Morrison?”

“Never been to jail at all,” Morrison said apologetically.

“Believe me, Mister Morrison,” Serpa said. “You just believe me.”

“I trust you absolutely,” Morrison said.

And they shook hands, and Serpa fluttered fingers at Tall Boy, and Morrison locked his door and turned the key.

Tall Boy understood the truck immediately, and they were not five miles outside the capital when Morrison yielded to him. “Forty. Never, under any circumstances, more than forty. Keep her at thirty for a while. Get the feel.”

After a time Tall Boy asked about “those things down below go in and out. They look like they go in and out.”

“They do. They’re hydraulic outriggers. You know what hydraulic is?”

“Fluid in the cylinder,” Tall Boy said, offended. “Pressure.”

“They keep you from tipping,” Morrison said.

“Tall Boy will not tip.”

“That’s not the way to think about it. You ought to worry about tipping. Look: that boom can extend to a hundred and fifty feet. That’s a long boom. You can hold sixteen tons with it. Sixteen tons, Tall Boy. That’s a lot of load. That’s thirty-two thousand pounds. What’s the most you ever lifted?”

“Two ton,” Tall Boy said grudgingly. “A long girder.”

“There,” Morrison said. “You think about this. With this you can hold sixteen tons, but only in a radius of thirty-five feet. Now suppose you have that swinging and it comes to the corner, the weak spot, and all of a sudden it’s out there forty feet.”

“I got it,” Tall Boy said. “Outriggers. I understand. I never had one so big before.”

“Right. You won’t have to handle anything near sixteen tons. But you have to know the limits. As the weight goes down, the radius grows longer. I have tables here.” He hesitated. “Can you read and write?”

“I read some,” Tall Boy said. “Numbers okay. And anything on a machine. Ig-ni-tion. Brake. Overdrive. And I can write my name. Print. Tall Boy. T-a-l-l-b-o-y.”

“We’ll go over the tables together. You ought to learn to read and write.”

“Not much need.”

“Just the same.”

“Well why then?”

They had a long day ahead of them, so Morrison slumped and crossed his legs comfortably and told him. He felt silly preaching, and could not remember just where he had learned this, but it was a thing he had been taught and had never forgotten. “Well. In some countries you have two kinds of people. The ones who can read and write and never do any work with their hands, and the ones who work with their hands and never learn to read and write. And it doesn’t take long before the first ones decide not to let the second ones even learn, and right there you get masters and slaves. Happened in many places a long time ago. China. Black countries, right here, some of your neighbors. Other places it didn’t happen because there were enough men who learned to do both. Maybe there were not so many people to start with, so some men had to do two jobs. So there were men who could read and write and weren’t too proud to work, and men who worked and had the chance to learn more. That’s what a foreman is, Tall Boy. A sergeant. A gang boss. An independent farmer. That’s what an independent country is, when you think about it. Anyway the more people can do both, the better for the country. Where I live you have to go to school until your seventeenth birthday.”

“Who pays for that?”

“Taxes.”

“Who pays taxes?”

“Everybody. Almost everybody. Rich people get around it.”

Tall Boy grinned. “I pay no taxes, boss. That make me a rich man.”

“You will,” Morrison said. “Believe me. And if there’s nobody around who can read and write, who’s going to do the arguing? Fight the tax collector?”

Tall Boy fell glum.

“Cheer up,” Morrison said. “It isn’t hard. You have a good start. And then you can read the Bible.”

“I thought of that. Many times I wanted to read in the Bible. They say some hot stories in the Bible.”

Morrison reproved him roundly.

They rolled in well after noon. The camp was deserted—Morrison saw the Land-Rover, and the trailer with the boom, and the small crane—so Tall Boy beat on the horn half a dozen times and then held it down. Morrison barely had time to dash to his trailer with the machetes. Shortly men raced out of the forest, and shouted when they saw, and ringed the crane, pounding the carrier and kicking all twelve tires—universal!—and caressing the white metal of the cab. Philips and Ramesh were the last out, and when Philips saw what was happening he ran forward and flung the men away, roaring and cursing. They stood silent. They could hear him breathing. His fists were clenched against his thighs.

“What the hell,” Morrison said gently. “They just wanted to see the new machine.”

“Yes,” Philips drawled, “and snap off a handle. Or jam a switch. Or piss in the engine to cool it.”

“Well.” Morrison was back on the carrier, looking down at him, and made the most of it. “This is a new Philips.”

There was no humbling him. “No. This is the same Philips. It is a new machine, though. And you have not seen what can happen.”

“Tall Boy,” Morrison said, “take it into the shade. Ramesh, can we get something to eat and drink? It’s been a long morning.”

“Immediately,” Ramesh said. “Jacob!”

Philips and Morrison walked quietly to the trailers. “You’d better explain,” Morrison said.

“It is the same old story,” Philips said. “We had irrigation pumps inland—at an experimental station, mind you—and they were gone in a month. Why? No one oiled them. Why? Because there was no oil. Why? Because the appropriation for pumps included no money for oil. Why? Because no one thought of it.”

“All right. But they want to look. We told them they’d work better if they knew more. Let them. Stay with them if necessary. You can’t treat them like that.”

“Sometimes you have to,” Philips said.

“Not on my job.”

And then Philips said, as Morrison had known he would, “You are the boss.”

They spent a hot afternoon rigging the boom, and by five no one was talking to anyone else. Only Tall Boy chuckled. Isaacson had returned the Land-Rover, so after they had sent back the crane, and the truck, and Isaacson with it, Morrison paid Tall Boy his dollar. He wanted no other man’s company—Philips had blasted a perfectly fine day—so on a quick impulse he asked Tall Boy to the trailer for a bottle of beer. Philips stiffened even more.

“Sergeants too,” was all Morrison said.

Before Tall Boy went off to dunk himself at dusk, he asked, “Boss, you remember what you said about foremen? Well what kind of country you got when everybody is a foreman?”

“I never thought about that,” Morrison said. “But I will.”