Tom Grogan | Page 7

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, "or I'll bu'st yer jaw, ye sneakin' rat!"
Cully came out, but not in obedience to McGaw or Lathers. Indeed, he paid no more attention to either of those distinguished diplomats than if they had been two cement-barrels standing on end. His face, too, had lost its irradiating smile; not a wrinkle or a pucker ruffled its calm surface. His clay-soiled hat was in his hand--a very dirty hand, by the way, with the torn cuff of his shirt hanging loosely over it. His trousers bagged everywhere--at knees, seat, and waist. On his stockingless feet were a pair of sun-baked, brick-colored shoes. His ankles were as dark as mahogany. His throat and chest were bare, the skin tanned to leather wherever the sun could work its way through the holes in his garments. From out of this combination of dust