Read Online South of Heaven by Jim Thompson - Free Book Online

meal was sent out to the job, we ate almost by ourselves in the big chow tent. I put away a great deal more food than I should have, and when we went back out in the sun I had to make a sudden run for the bushes. I came back out of them weak and headachy and wanting nothing so much as to go to bed, and Four Trey pointed to the sixteen-pound sledge hammer.
    I picked it up. He picked up a rock drill. He jobbed it around in the rock, marking out a shot hole, then held it upright and nodded to me. I swung the sledge, bringing it down on the head of the drill. Each time I hit it, Four Trey shook and twirled it, forcing out the ground-up rock. My sledge blows had to be timed with this, striking when he had the drill upright. And, of course, it was my job to swing the sledge.
    There was a strict protocol to this. The powder monkey handles the drill, and his assistant does the heavy work. Four Trey had done a lot of things during the morning that I should have done, but I couldn’t let him go on doing it. For that matter, he was obviously of no mind to, being very tired and hot himself.
    We were working on the last hole when I swung the sledge out of time. Just a little, but that was enough. It grazed the head of the drill, zipped down the side where Four Trey was holding. He jerked his hands back with a howl, clutching them between his knees as he did a doubled-over dance of pain.
    “Jeez-ass Kee-rist!” He glared furiously at me. “What in the name of the living God is the matter with you, Tommy?”
    “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m sure as hell sorry, Four Trey.”
    “Sorry! A hell of a lot of frigging good it does to be sorry! Just come out of your goddam daydreaming and you won’t have to be sorry!”
    I began to get sulky and sore and I said it was all the fault of the bosses. They should have given us a jackhammer, and we could have drilled every hole we needed in an hour. Four Trey told me to stop talking like a damned fool.
    “It takes power to run a jack, doesn’t it? How the hell they going to give us a generator when they need ’em on the line?”
    He went on cursing and scolding me, and finally I lost my temper and started yelling back at him. “Just what the hell do you want me to do, anyway? I said I was sorry. I apologized all to hell over the place. Now what else do you want me to do?”
    “I want you to snap out of it! I want you to stop acting like a Goddamned dreamy horse’s ass! I…” He caught himself, swallowed heavily. “Sorry, Tommy,” he said quietly. “It was my fault as much as yours.”
    “Well, no, no, it was my fault,” I said. “It really was, Four Trey. But.…”
    “Never mind,” he gave me a quick grin. “Never mind, Tommy, boy. It’s been a sour day, but sweet night’s a-comin’. So let’s shoot some powder.”

9
    W e were shooting the latrine area. Part of the ground structure was soft and could be mucked without blasting. The rocky area took twenty-four shot holes, twelve on each side.
    While Four Trey measured off fuse lengths and cut them with his shooter’s knife, I brought down the dyna case and opened it. Then, working opposite each other, we dropped a stick of dynamite into each hole. As a rule, they went down easily until they rested on the bottom of the hole. When they didn’t, we poked and tapped them down with tamping sticks.
    I didn’t mind this part a bit, since it takes a twelve-pound blow to explode dynamite. But that was only part of the job. We had drilled two-shot holes, which meant that another stick went on top. And that second one took the little black cap.
    Four Trey began capping the sticks on his side, clamping a fuse to the top of each cap. I waited a moment, hoping ashamedly that he would cap for me also. But he stuck strictly to his own side, dropping the fuse-sticks into the holes as fast as he capped them, then tamping them down firmly whenever they required it.
    He whistled softly as he worked. Not once did he look at me, seemingly