I’ll admit I walked with a swagger after that. Ten miles of rail had been laid in one day, and every ounce of it—every ounce and pound and ton of it—had been hoisted and set in place by an Irishman. I was clapped on the back and included in the commendations, which put a decided spring in my step. Blind Thomas, too, was celebrated as a hero. Instant genealogies traced him (through willful fancy and whiskey reckoning) back to solid Irish stock. No horse could have pulled so tirelessly without a few drops of Irish blood coursing through his veins. And wasn’t “Thomas” itself a good Irish name? The very next day, a trio of high-spirited men delivered a pint of beer to him at supper and, proving his loyalties, he licked his bucket clean.
Less than half a dozen miles to Promontory Summit now, and we were eager to finish the work begun five and a half years ago: daunting, backbreaking work that had crossed five hundred desert miles, bored fifteen granite tunnels, and survived countless storms and snow slides. But word came down that the bigwigs from the two railroads were arguing about the details of the joining-up ceremony, and so, incongruously, the rail construction—so close to the finish—slowed.
The other thing putting a gimp in my swagger was the presence of Ducks. We were living in neighboring camps again, and sitting on the gold that had once been the Celestials’ wages was poking at me harder than ever. More and more, when I happened upon him during the day, I flinched like I was seeing a ghost. He always nodded acknowledgement, but his flat, emotionless mask aggravated me. I wanted to shake him! I wanted to lift a fist and demand, “What are you thinking? What, if anything, do you know?”
Nothing, I calmed myself. He knew nothing. I was fairly sure of it.
But he looked thinner, bonier. Was his peaked appearance my fault?
No, it wasn’t. Not when you examined the particulars. If he and his fellow Celestials had agreed to eat the boiled beef and beans that the railroad served, then they wouldn’t need extra money for food. To my mind, anyone who demanded to eat pickled fish parts and dried roots and tinned oysters, and had to have such delicacies sent all the way from San Francisco, should have to pay extra. So his condition wasn’t my fault. What it came down to was, you had to look out for yourself these days. Every man did. Root, hog, or die.
But then in my mind rose the image, as bold as brass, of him holding the knife and the cut rope, when he’d saved Blind Thomas and me from likely disaster. He’d been looking out for us, when he certainly didn’t have to.
Yes, well, that was a choice he’d made, so that needn’t change my reasoning. It wasn’t my fault.
It seemed, though, that each time I merely nudged my haversack, the coins hidden inside clinked accusation. Every ear in the car pricked, too, I was certain, and every head solemnly nodded agreement: guilty.
My torment grew such that one afternoon when I was walking along the tracks, my footsteps began crunching a rhythm that carried me back to the kitchen of my childhood—the kitchen where my ma instructed us in the Ten Commandments, our recitations accompanied by the sharp clang of her spoon against the soup pot. Thou shalt not steal, I heard her say. Thou shalt not steal, I heard myself repeat, innocently and earnestly, with no real understanding of the ways of the world. Clang. Thou shalt not steal, she said again for emphasis. Thou shalt not steal, I repeated, unaware at that youthful age that looking out for yourself and your family meant pocketing what happened to come your way. Clang.
It wasn’t my fault that Ducks had been blamed.
Yet that day, the spikers seemed to hammer home the identical message, with each ringing clang of the sledge echoing a stroke to the soup pot: Thou . . . shalt . . . not . . . steal. Thou . . . shalt . . . not . . . steal. Bolts spilled to the ground with the clatter of enormous coins, and I flinched.
I got knotted inside because the litany bored into my brain and wouldn’t give over, and every time I turned, it seemed, I came face-to-face with Ducks. There was Ducks helping align the rail ahead of me. There was Ducks reaching for the same bucket of nails, our fists knocking atop the handle. There was Ducks heading toward his camp, crossing my path as I headed toward mine. Always wearing his emotionless mask.
So twisted and sleepless did I become, early one morning I plunged my fist to the bottom of my haversack, ready to hand over the coins to him and be done with the matter, and my fingers closed instead around the latest letter from my ma: The rent was two months overdue; Dr. Flaherty was still owed $2.60; Sean needed new boots—again; and don’t worry about her, the lingering cough was nothing really, her cross to bear, nothing, she was sure of it, to worry about. That pile of gold I was holding on to would certainly deliver some much-needed sunshine to my family.
“What’s gnawing at ye?” Patrick asked on the way to breakfast. I only gave him a shrug and walked toward the meal line, certain that every head marked my passing. The relief of the confessional was not to be mine.
What I was thinking was this: Wasn’t the commandment about stealing near the end of the list, number seven or eight, at least? Certainly it wasn’t God’s most important rule. Certainly he knew his people had to pay rent, pay the doctor, pay the grocer and the seamstress and the coal man. He knew I had a family to look after. It was a man’s job. And it wasn’t as if I’d killed anybody. That commandment was much higher on the list.
In striding toward my food, eyes to the ground and not paying attention, I plowed full on into someone: Ducks, of course. I scrambled for balance and to recover my falling hat, finally found my feet, and continued. The irritating impression I carried with me was that he wasn’t anywhere near as shaken as I was.