One Way Out Part 7

"But I don't intend they shall look like this on your way to the ladder," she answered.

"All right," I said "then let me have them. I'll do it myself."

"Have you shaved?" she asked.

I rubbed my hand over my chin. It wasn't very bad and I'd made up my mind I wouldn't shave every day now.

"No," I said. "But twice or three times a week--"

"Billy!" she broke in, "that will never do. You're going down to your new business looking just as s.h.i.+p-shape as you went to the old. You don't belong to that contractor; you belong to me."

In the meanwhile the boy came in with my heavy boots which he had brushed clean and oiled. There was nothing left for me to do but to shave and I'll admit I felt better for it.

"Do you want me to put on a high collar?" I asked.

"Didn't you find the things I laid out for you?"

I hadn't looked about. I'd put on the things I took off. She led me back into the bed room, and over a chair I saw a clean change of underclothing and a new grey flannel s.h.i.+rt.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"I bought it for a dollar," she answered. "It's too much to pay. I can make one for fifty cents as soon as I get time to sew."

That's the way Ruth was. Every day after this she made me change, after I came back from my swim, into the business suit I wore when I came down here, and which now by contrast looked almost new. She even made me wear a tie with my flannel s.h.i.+rt. Every morning I started out clean shaven and with my work clothes as fresh as though I were a contractor myself. I objected at first because it seemed too much for her to do to wash the things every day, but she said it was a good deal easier than was.h.i.+ng them once a week. Incidentally that was one of her own little schemes for saving trouble and it seemed to me a good one; instead of collecting her soiled clothes for seven days and then tearing herself all to pieces with a whole hard forenoon's work, she washed a little every day. By this plan it took her only about an hour each morning to keep all the linen in the house clean and sweet.

We had the roof to dry it on and she never ironed anything except perhaps the tablecloths and handkerchiefs. We had no company to cater to and as long as we knew things were clean that's all we cared.

We got around the rock all right. It proved not to be a ledge after all. I myself, however, didn't accomplish as much as I did the first day, for I was slower in my movements. On the other hand, I think I improved a little in my handling of the crowbar. At the noon hour I tried to start a conversation with Anton', but he understood little English and I knew no Italian, so we didn't get far. As he sat in a group of his fellow countrymen laughing and jabbering he made me feel distinctly like an outsider. There were one or two English-speaking workmen besides myself, but somehow they didn't interest me as much as these Italians. It may have been my imagination but they seemed to me a decidedly inferior lot. As a rule they were men who took the job only to keep themselves from starving and quit at the end of a week or two only to come back when they needed more money.

I must make an exception of an Irishman I will call Dan Rafferty. He was a big blue-eyed fellow, full of fun and fight, with a good natured contempt of the Dagoes, and was a born leader. I noticed, the first day, that he came nearer being the boss of the gang than the foreman, and I suspect the latter himself noticed it, for he seemed to have it in for Dan. There never was an especially dirty job to be done but what Dan was sent. He always obeyed but he used to slouch off with his big red fist doubled up, muttering curses that brought out his brogue at its best. Later on he confided in me what he was going to do to that boss. If he had carried out his threats he would long since have been electrocuted and I would have lost a good friend. Several times I thought the two men were coming to blows but though Dan would have dearly loved a fight and could have handled a dozen men like the foreman, he always managed to control himself in time to avoid it.

"I don't wanter be after losin' me job for the dirthy spalpeen," he growled to me.

But he came near it in a way he wasn't looking for later in the week.

It was Friday and half a dozen of us had been sent down to work on the second level. It was damp and suffocating down there, fifty feet below the street. I felt as though I had gone into the mines. I didn't like it but I knew that there was just as much to learn here as above and that it must all be learned eventually. The sides were braced with heavy timbers like a mine shaft to prevent the dirt from falling in and there was the constant danger that in spite of this it might cave in. We went down by rough ladders made by nailing strips of board across two pieces of joist and the work down there was back-breaking and monotonous. We heaved the dirt into a big iron bucket lowered by the hoisting engine above. It was heavy, wet soil that weighed like lead.

From the beginning the men complained of headaches and one by one they crawled up the ladder again for fresh air. Others were sent down but at the end of an hour they too retreated. Dan and I stuck it out for a while. Then I began to get dizzy myself. I didn't know what the trouble was but when I began to wobble a bit Dan placed his hand on my shoulder.

"Betther climb out o' here," he said. "I'm thinkin' it's gas."

At that time I didn't know what sewer gas was. I couldn't smell anything and thought he must be mistaken.

"You'd better come too," I answered, making for the ladder.

He wasn't coming but I couldn't get up very well without him so he followed along behind. At the top we found the foreman fighting mad and trying to spur on another gang to go down. They wouldn't move.

When he saw us come up he turned upon Dan.

"Who ordered you out of there?" he growled.

"The gas," answered Dan.

"Gas be d.a.m.ned," shouted the foreman. "You're a bunch of white livered cowards--all of you."

I saw Dan double up his fists and start towards the man. The latter checked him with a command.

"Go back down there or you're fired," he said to him.

Dan turned red. Then I saw his jaws come together.

"BeG.o.d!" he answered. "_You_ shan't fire me, anyhow."

Without another word he started down the ladder again. I saw the Italians crowd together and watch him. By that time my head was clearer but my legs were weak. I sat down a moment uncertain what to do. Then I heard someone shout:

"By G.o.d, he's right! He's lying there at the bottom."

I started towards the ladder but some one shoved me back. Then I thought of the bucket. It was above ground and I staggered towards it gaining strength at each step. I jumped in and shouted to the engineer to lower me. He obeyed from instinct. I went down, down, down to what seemed like the center of the earth. When the bucket struck the ground I was dizzy again but I managed to get out, heave the unconscious Dan in and pile on top of him myself. When I came to, I was in an ambulance on my way to the hospital but by the time I had reached the emergency room I had taken a grip on myself. I knew that if ever Ruth heard of this she would never again be comfortable. When they took us out I was able to walk a little. The doctors wanted to put me to bed but I refused to go. I sat there for about an hour while they worked over Dan. When I found that he would be all right by morning I insisted upon going out. I had a bad headache, but I knew the fresh air would drive this away and so it did, though it left me weak.

One of the hardest day's work I ever did in my life was killing time from then until five o'clock. Of course the papers got hold of it and that gave me another scare but luckily the nearest they came to my name was Darlinton, so no harm was done. And they didn't come within a mile of getting the real story. When in a later edition one of them published my photograph I felt absolutely safe for they had me in a full beard and thinner than I've ever been in my life.

When I came home at my usual time looking a bit white perhaps but otherwise normal enough, the first question Ruth asked me was:

"What have you done with your dinner pail, Billy?"

Isn't a man always sure to do some such fool thing as that, when he's trying to keep something quiet from the wife? I had to explain that I had forgotten it and that was enough to excite suspicion at any time.

She kept me uneasy for ten minutes and the best I could do was to admit finally that I wasn't feeling very well. Whereupon she made me go to bed and fussed over me all the evening and worried all the next day.

I reported for work as usual in the morning and found we had a new foreman. It was a relief because I guess if Dan hadn't knocked down the other one, someone else would have done it sooner or later. At that the man had taught me something about sewer gas and that is when you begin to feel dizzy fifty feet below the street, it's time to go up the ladder about as fast as your wobbly legs will let you, even if you don't smell anything.

Rafferty didn't turn up for two or three days. When he did appear it was with a simple:

"Mawnin, mon."

It wasn't until several days later I learned that the late foreman had left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a small ham.

On Sat.u.r.day night of that first week I came home with nine dollars in my pocket. I'll never be prouder again than I was when I handed them over to Ruth. And Ruth will never again be prouder than she was when, after she had laid aside three of them for the rent and five for current expenses, she picked out a one-dollar bill and, crossing the room, placed it in the ginger jar. This was a little blue affair in which we had always dropped what pennies and nickels we could spare.

"There's our nest-egg," she announced.

"You don't mean to tell me you're that much ahead of the game the first week?"

"Look here, Billy," she answered.

She brought out an itemized list of everything she had bought from last Monday, including Sunday's dinner. I've kept that list. Many of the things she had bought were not yet used up but she had computed the cost of the amount actually used. Here it is as I copied it off:

Flour, .25 Lard, .15 Cream of tartar and soda, .05 Oat meal, .04 Mola.s.ses, .05 Sugar, .12 Potatoes, .20 Rice, .06 Milk, 1.12 Eggs, .24 Rye bread, .10 Sausages, .22 Lettuce, .03 Beans, .12 Salt pork, .15 Corn meal, .06 Graham meal, .05 b.u.t.ter, .45 Cheese, .06 s.h.i.+n of beef, .39 Fish, .22 Oil, .28 Soap, .09 Vinegar, salt and pepper, about .05 Can of corn, .07 Onions, .06 Total $4.68

In this account, too, Ruth was liberal in her margins. She did better than this later on. A fairer estimate could have been made at the end of the month and a still fairer even than that, at the end of the year. It sounded almost too good to be true but it was a fact. We had lived, and lived well on this amount and as yet Ruth was inexperienced. She hadn't learned all she learned later. For the benefit of those who may think we went hungry I have asked Ruth to write out the bill of fare for this week as nearly as she can remember it. One thing you must keep in mind is that of everything we had, we had enough. Neither Ruth, the boy, nor myself ever left the table or dinner pail unsatisfied. Here's what we had and it was better even than it sounds for whatever Ruth made, she made well. I copy it as she wrote it out.

Monday.