Tom Grogan | Page 7

nothin' for
you, but I told him next time you come down I'd fetch him over. Say,
Dan!" beckoning with his head over his shoulder; then, turning to
Babcock,--"I make you acquainted, sir, with Mr. Daniel McGaw."
Two faces now filled the window--Lathers's and that of a red-headed
man in a straw hat.
"All right. I'll attend to you in a moment. Glad to see you, Mr.
McGaw," said Babcock, rising from the keg, and looking over his
bookkeeper's shoulder.
Lathers's friend proved to be a short, big-boned, square-shouldered
Irishman, about forty years of age, dressed in a once black broadcloth
suit with frayed buttonholes, the lapels and vest covered with
grease-spots. Around his collar, which had done service for several
days, was twisted a red tie decorated with a glass pin. His face was
spattered with blue powder-marks, as if from some quarry explosion. A
lump of a mustache dyed dark brown concealed his upper lip, making
all the more conspicuous the bushy, sandy-colored eyebrows that
shaded a pair of treacherous eyes. His mouth was coarse and filled with
teeth half worn off, like those of an old horse. When he smiled these
opened slowly like a vise. Whatever of humor played about this
opening lost its life instantly when these jaws clicked together again.

The hands were big and strong, wrinkled and seamed, their rough backs
spotted like a toad's, the wrists covered with long spidery hairs.
Babcock noticed particularly his low, flat forehead when he removed
his hat, and the dry, red hair growing close to the eyebrows.
"I wuz a-sp'akin' to me fri'nd Mister Lathers about doin' yer wurruk,"
began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks, his elbow
on his knee. "I does all the haulin' to the foort. Surgint Duffy knows me.
I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye wuz put back fer stone. If I'd had
the job, I'd had her unloaded two days befoore."
"You're dead right, Dan," said Lathers, with an expression of disgust.
"This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to be over her
tubs."
"She does her work, though," Babcock said, beginning to see the drift
of things.
"Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough; but thim
b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h--ll all the toime."
"And then look at the teams," chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of his
thumb toward the dock--"a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks you
couldn't sell to a glue-factory. That big gray she had a-hoistin' is blind
of an eye and sprung so forrard he can't hardly stand."
At this moment the refrain of a song from somewhere near the board
fence came wafting through the air,--
"And he wiped up the floor wid McGeechy."
McGaw turned his head in search of the singer, and not finding him,
resumed his position.
"What are your rates per ton?" asked Babcock.
"We're a-chargin' forty cints," said McGaw, deferring to Lathers, as if
for confirmation.

"Who's 'we'?"
"The Stevedores' Union."
"But Mrs. Grogan is doing it for thirty," said Babcock, looking straight
into McGaw's eyes, and speaking slowly and deliberately.
"Yis, I heared she wuz a-cuttin' rates; but she can't live at it. If I does it,
it'll be done roight, an' no throuble."
"I'll think it over," said Babcock quietly, turning on his heel. The
meanness of the whole affair offended him--two big, strong men
vilifying a woman with no protector but her two hands. McGaw should
never lift a shovel for him.
Again the song floated out; this time it seemed nearer,--
". . . wid McGeechy-- McGeechy of the Fourth."
"Dan McGaw's giv'n it to you straight," said Lathers, stopping for a last
word, his face thrust through the window again. "He's rigged for this
business, and Grogan ain't in it with him. If she wants her work done
right, she ought to send down something with a mustache."
Here the song subsided in a prolonged chuckle. McGaw turned, and
caught sight of a boy's head, with its mop of black hair thrust through a
crownless hat, leaning over a water cask. Lathers turned, too, and
instantly lowered his voice. The head ducked out of sight. In the flash
glance Babcock caught of the face, he recognized the boy Cully, Patsy's
friend, and the driver of the Big Gray. It was evident to Babcock that
Cully at that moment was bubbling over with fun. Indeed, this waif of
the streets, sometimes called James Finnegan, was seldom known to be
otherwise.
"Thet's the wurrst rat in the stables," said McGaw, his face reddening
with anger. "What kin ye do whin ye're a-buckin' ag'in' a lot uv divils
loike him?"--speaking through the window to Babcock. "Come out uv
thet," he called to Cully,