“Three,” said Bill.
Before I could get in another stroke the man on the pole shouted:
“Let 'er go, Bill.” And Bill let 'er go, and buckled down again to his job.
“Gee, but it's hot,” said he.
In the country there are not so many people passing our way that we cannot be interested in all of them. That evening I could not help thinking about Bill, the lineman, wondering where he came from, how he happened to be what he was, who and what sort were the friends he made, and the nature of his ambitions, if he had any. Talk about going to the North Pole! It is not to be compared, for downright fascination, with the exploration of an undiscovered human being.
With that I began to think how I might get at Bill, the lineman, and not merely weather talk, or wages talk, or work talk, but at Bill himself. He was a character quite unusual in our daily lives here in the country. I wondered what his interests could be, surely not mine nor Horace's nor the Starkweathers'. As soon as I began trying to visualize what his life might be, I warmed up to a grand scheme of capturing him, if by chance he was to be found the next day upon the town road.
All this may seem rather absurd in the telling, but I found it a downright good adventure for a quiet evening, and fully believe I felt for the moment like General Joffre planning to meet the Germans on the Marne.
“I have it!” I said aloud.
“You have what?” asked Harriet, somewhat startled.
“The grandest piece of strategy ever devised in this town,” said I.
With that I went delving in a volume of universal information I keep near me, one of those knowing books that tells you how tall the great Pryamid is and why a hen cackles after laying an egg, and having found what I wanted I asked Harriet if she could find a tape measure around the place. She is a wonderful person and knows where everything is. When she handed me the tape measure she asked me what in the world I was so mysterious about.
“Harriet,” I said, “I'm going on a great adventure. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow.”
“Nonsense,” said Harriet.
It is this way with the fancies of the evening—they often look flat and flabby and gray the next morning. Quite impossible! But if I'd acted on half the good and grand schemes I've had o' nights I might now be quite a remarkable person.
I went about my work the next morning just as usual. I even avoided looking at the little roll of tape on the corner of the mantel as I went out. It seemed a kind of badge of my absurdity. But about the middle of the fore-noon, while I was in my garden, I heard a tremendous racket up the road. Rattle—bang, zip, toot! As I looked up I saw the boss lineman and his crew careering up the road in their truck, and the bold driver was driving like Jehu, the son of Nimshi. And there were ladders and poles clattering out behind, and rolls of wire on upright spools rattling and flashing in the sunshine, and the men of the crew were sitting along the sides of the truck with hats off and hair flying as they came bumping and bounding up the road. It was a brave thing to see going by on a spring morning!
As they passed, whom should I see but Bill himself, at the top of the load, with a broad smile on his face. When his eye fell on me he threw up one arm, and gave me the railroad salute.
“Hey, there!” he shouted.
“Hey there, yourself,” I shouted in return—and could not help it.
I had a curious warm feeling of being taken along with that jolly crowd of workmen, with Bill on the top of the load.
It was this that finished me. I hurried through an early dinner, and taking the tape measure off the mantel I put it in my pocket as though it were a revolver or a bomb, and went off up the road feeling as adventurous as ever I felt in my life. I never said a word to Harriet but disappeared quietly around the lilac bushes. I was going to waylay that crew, and especially Bill. I hoped to catch them at their nooning.
Well, I was lucky. About a quarter of a mile up the road, in a little valley near the far corner of Horace's farm, I found the truck, and Bill just getting out his dinner pail. It seems they had flipped pennies and Bill hod been left behind with the truck and the tools while the others went down to the mill pond in the valley below.
“How are you?” said I.
“How are you?” said he.
I could see that he was rather cross over having been left behind.
“Fine day,” said I.
“You bet,” said he.
He got out his pail, which was a big one, and seated himself on the roadside, a grassy, comfortable spot near the brook which runs below into the pond. There were white birches and hemlocks on the hill, and somewhere in the thicket I heard a wood thrush singing.
“Did you ever see John L. Sullivan?” I asked.
He glanced up at me quickly, but with new interest.
“No, did you?”
“Or Bob Fitzsimmons?”
“Nope—but I was mighty near it once. I've seen 'em both in the movies.”
“Well, sir,” said I, “that's interesting. I should like to see them myself. Do you know what made me speak of them?”
He had spread down a newspaper and was taking the luncheon out of his “bucket,” as he called it, including a large bottle of coffee; but he paused and looked at me with keen interest.
“Well,” said I, “when I saw you dragging that wire yesterday I took you to be a pretty husky citizen yourself.”
He grinned and took a big mouthful from one of his sandwiches. I could see that my shot had gone home.
“So when I got back last night,” I said, “I looked up the arm measurements of Sullivan and Fitzsimmons in a book I have and got to wondering how they compared with mine and yours. They were considerably larger than mine—”
Bill thought this a fine joke and laughed out in great good humour.
“But I imagine you'd not be far behind either of them.”
He looked at me a little suspiciously, as if doubtful what I was driving at or whether or not I was joking him. But I was as serious as the face of nature; and proceeded at once to get out my tape measure.
“I get very much interested in such things,” I said, “and I had enough curiosity to want to see how big your arm really was.”
He smiled broadly.
“You're a queer one,” said he.
But he took another bite of sandwich, and clenching his great fist drew up his forearm until the biceps muscles looked like a roll of Vienna bread—except that they had the velvety gleam of life. So I measured first one arm, then the other.
“By George!” said I, “you're ahead of Fitzsimmons, but not quite up to Sullivan.”
“Fitz wasn't a heavy man,” said Bill, “but a dead game fighter.”
I saw then that I had him! So I sat down on the grass near by and we had great talk about the comparative merits of Fitzsimmons and Sullivan and Corbett and Jack Johnson, a department of knowledge in which he out-distanced me. He even told me of an exploit or two of his own, which showed that he was able to take care of himself.
While we talked he ate his luncheon, and a downright gargantuan luncheon it was, backed by an appetite which if it were offered to the highest bidder on the New York Stock Exchange would, I am convinced, bring at least ten thousand dollars in cash. It even made me envious.
There were three huge corned-beef sandwiches, three hard-boiled eggs, a pickle six inches long and fat to boot, four doughnuts so big that they resembled pitching quoits, a bottle of coffee and milk, a quarter of a pie, and, to cap the climax, an immense raw onion. It was worth a long journey to see Bill eat that onion. He took out his clasp knife, and after stripping off the papery outer shell, cut the onion into thick dewy slices. Then he opened one of the sandwiches and placed several of them on the beef, afterward sprinkling them with salt from a small paper parcel. Having restored the top slice of bread he took a moon-shaped bite out of one end of this glorified sandwich.
“I like onions,” said he.
When we first sat down he had offered to share his luncheon with me but I told him I had just been to dinner, and I observed that he had no difficulty in taking care of every crumb in his “bucket.” It was wonderful to see.
Having finished his luncheon he went down to the brook and got a drink, and then sat down comfortably with his back among the ferns of the roadside, crossed his legs, and lit his pipe. There was a healthy and wholesome flush in his face, and as he blew off the first cloud of smoke he drew a sigh of complete comfort and looked around at me with a lordly air such as few monarchs, no matter how well fed, could have bettered. He had worked and sweat for what he got, and was now taking his ease in his roadside inn. I wonder sometimes if anybody in the world experiences keener joys than unwatched common people.
How we talked! From pugilists we proceeded to telephones, and from that to wages, hours, and strikes, and from that we leaped easily to Alaska and gold-mining, and touched in passing upon Theodore Roosevelt.
“I was just thinking,” I said, “that you and I can enjoy some things that were beyond the reach of the greatest kings of the world.”
“How's that?” said he.
“Why, Napoleon never saw a telephone nor talked through one.”
“That's so!” he laughed.
“And Caesar couldn't have dreamed that such a thing as you are doing now was a possibility—nor George Washington, either.”
“Say, that's so. I never thought o' that.”
“Why,” I said, “the world is only half as big as it was before you fellows came along stringing your wires! I can get to town now from my farm in two minutes, when it used to take me an hour.”
I really believe I gave him more of his own business than ever he had before, for he listened so intently that his pipe went out.
I found that Bill was from Ohio, and that he had been as far south as Atlanta and as far west as Denver. He got his three dollars and a half a day, rain or shine, and thought it wonderful pay; and besides, he was seein' the country “free, gratis, fer nothing.”
He got his coat out of the truck and took from the pocket a many-coloured folder.
“Say, Mister, have you ever been to the Northwest?”
“No,” said I.
“Well, it's a great country, and I'm goin' up there.”
He spread out the glittering folder and placed his big forefinger on a spot about the size of Rhode Island somewhere this side of the Rockies.
“How'll you do it?” I asked.
“Oh, a lineman can go anywhere,” said he with a flourish, “A lineman don't have to beg a job. Besides, I got eighty dollars sewed up.”
Talk about freedom! Never have I got a clearer impression of it than Bill gave me that day. No millionaire, no potentate, could touch him.
The crew came back all too soon for me. Bill knocked the ashes out of his pipe on his boot heel, and put his “bucket” back in the truck. Five minutes later he was climbing a tall pole with legs bowed out, striking in his spikes at each step. From the cross-arm, up among the hemlock tops, he called out to me:
“Good-bye, pard.”
“Stop in, Bill, and see me when you come by my place,” said I.
“You bet,” said he.
And he did, the next day, and I showed him off to Harriet, who brought him a plate of her best doughnuts and asked him about his mother.
Yesterday I saw him again careering by in the truck. The job was finished. He waved his hand at me.
“I'm off,” said he.
“Where?” I shouted.
“Canada.”
CHAPTER XIV. ON LIVING IN THE COUNTRY
“Why risk with men your hard won gold?
Buy grain and sow—your Brother Dust
Will pay you back a hundred fold—
The earth commits no breach of trust.”
Hindu Proverb, Translated by Arthur Guiterman.
It is astonishing how many people there are in cities and towns who have a secret longing to get back into quiet country places, to own a bit of the soil of the earth, and to cultivate it. To some it appears as a troublesome malady only in spring and will be relieved by a whirl or two in country roads, by a glimpse of the hills, or a day by the sea; but to others the homesickness is deeper seated and will be quieted by no hasty visits. These must actually go home.
I have had, in recent years, many letters from friends asking about life in the country, but the longer I remain here, the more I know about it, the less able I am to answer them—at least briefly. It is as though one should come and ask: “Is love worth trying?” or, “How about religion?” For country life is to each human being a fresh, strange, original adventure. We enjoy it, or we do not enjoy it, or more probably, we do both. It is packed and crowded with the zest of adventure, or it is dull and miserable. We may, if we are skilled enough, make our whole living from the land, or only a part of it, or we may find in a few cherished acres the inspiration and power for other work, whatever it may be. There is many a man whose strength is renewed like that of the wrestler of Irassa, every time his feet touch the earth.
Of all places in the world where life can be lived to its fullest and freest, where it can be met in its greatest variety and beauty, I am convinced that there is none to equal the open country, or the country town. For all country people in these days may have the city—some city or town not too far away: but there are millions of men and women in America who have no country and no sense of the country. What do they not lose out of life!
I know well the disadvantages charged against country life at its worst. At its worst there are long hours and much lonely labour and an income pitifully small. Drudgery, yes, especially for the women, and loneliness. But where is there not drudgery when men are poor—where life is at its worst? I have never seen drudgery in the country comparable for a moment to the dreary and lonely drudgery of city tenements, city mills, factories, and sweat shops. And in recent years both the drudgery and loneliness of country life have been disappearing before the motor and trolley car, the telephone, the rural post, the gasoline engine. I have seen a machine plant as many potatoes in one day as a man, at hand work, could have planted in a week. While there is, indeed, real drudgery in the country, much that is looked upon as drudgery by people who long for easy ways and a soft life, is only good, honest, wholesome hard work—the kind of work that makes for fiber in a man or in a nation, the kind that most city life in no wise provides.
There are a thousand nuisances and annoyances that men must meet who come face to face with nature itself. You have set out your upper acres to peach trees: and the deer come down from the hills at night and strip the young foliage; or the field mice in winter, working under the snow, girdle and kill them. The season brings too much rain and the potatoes rot in the ground, the crows steal the corn, the bees swarm when no out is watching, the cow smothers her calf, the hens' eggs prove infertile, and a storm in a day ravages a crop that has been growing all summer. A constant warfare with insects and blights and fungi—a real, bitter warfare, which can cease neither summer nor winter!
