This is a short story from our new release, RANDOM AMUSEMENTS, Quick Reads Collection #1. For more short stories and flash Fiction, get your copy here from Amazon.
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SWEAT RAN FROM EVERY PORE as Truman stepped to the next tie and planted his size fourteens firmly. He raised his spiking maul for the next drive; his heavy triceps and shoulders bulged to the task. His back and stomach muscles contracted as he drove the eight-pound maul onto the head of the spike.
How he hated working on the railroad. He had been a freed slave from before the war, wandered to Boston, and got a job on a ship. Torturous work. He ended up in California, loading ships at the docks. Brutal work. He heard about the railway going east and joined. That was a mistake. Worst job he ever had. He dreamed of going back west again. But not many wanted to hire a black man. He was a freed man now. But was he really?
Without looking up, he shouted, “Water boy, get me some water!” and slammed his maul unerringly onto the head of the spike again, driving it into the oak tie. His second swing seated the spike full length, gripping the rail tight to the tie. He could drive a spike with only two swings instead of the usual three it took most men.
Truman stopped for a moment and wiped his forehead with his sleeve as he looked toward the supply cart. It was only a hundred feet away. The Chinese boy was nowhere to be seen. Only the foreman supervising every movement of the men on the line was standing in front of the cart.
“Where is that boy?” Truman muttered to no one. “Water boy!” he bellowed. “Where the hell is my water?” He wiped more sweat from his face and flung it to the roadbed.
“You ain’t goin’ to get this track laid by standin’ around yellin’ for that no-account kid,” groused the foreman. “Get your black ass back to work.”
Truman ignored him. He dropped his maul and headed for the supply cart and the foreman, who stepped back a bit as the huge, intimidating, six-four black man made long strides toward the much smaller foreman.
Truman passed him, saying quietly, “Yeah, well, you won’t get too many more spikes outa me if’n I keel over in da roadbed.”
“Now see here, Truman, we don’t pay you to walk around and chase after those boys. We’re behind today. We pay you to drive spikes, and the noon meal is over.” He stood with his left hand on his hip and shook his right forefinger at the man walking away. He glared at the man and said no more.
Carter threatened workers with being fired at his whim, but in truth they were hard to find, and he needed every man he could get. It was a backbreaking, dangerous job, and even though it paid well, there were few takers. The great race was on between the Central Pacific Railroad, charged with laying track eastward from Sacramento, and the Union Pacific Railroad, which had started laying track westward from Omaha. The contest was to see which railroad company could lay the most miles of railroad track before the two railroad lines joined up. And now the Central Pacific Railroad was bogged down with the nearly impossible job of spanning the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The federal government subsidized at least sixteen thousand dollars for each mile of railroad laid, so they had a strong financial incentive to lay as much track as possible.
The laying of a railroad had the rhythm of a complex dance. A light cart, drawn by a single horse, galloped up to the front with its load of ties and rails. Ties and rails were stacked on the cart, and teams of men carried the oak ties forward and laid them out on the roadbed. They were followed by a team that aligned the ties nine and a half inches apart and centered them. Two men seized the end of a rail and started forward, the rest of the gang taking hold by twos until it was clear of the car. The rails weighed 540 pounds. They came forward at a run. At the word of command, they placed the rail in its spot with care, right side up and abutting the previous rail, while the same process went on in tandem at the other side of the ties. Less than thirty seconds to a rail for each gang. Next, the strappers bolted heavy straps in predrilled holes to the previously laid track, thus ensuring a continuous, ridged rail.
Lastly, a crew with a measuring pole exactly aligned the distance between the rails. Then came Truman’s spiker team. The starter pounded a spike just deep enough into the oak tie to hold it straight up, and Truman, in his mechanical manner, buried the spike into the oak tie with but two powerful strokes.
They were working on a four percent grade on the side of a granite mountain. The roadbed had been blasted from the solid rock, so one side of the roadbed was almost straight up, and the other side dropped off sharply into a white-water river canyon three hundred feet below.
Truman got to a second water cart that sat downside of the roadbed. The water barrel’s lid was off, and the tin ladle lay on the ground. He leaned down to pick it up, and as he did, he saw movement. About three feet away from him, in the shade of the cart, a diamondback was coiled. It was not rattling but alert and testing the air with his quick-jabbing black tongue. The huge black man backed away carefully, moving closer to the edge of the cliff.
“Hey, Carter!” he yelled at the foreman. “There’s a rattler under this here cart!”
“Yeah, I’ll get someone to handle it. Just get back to work, you lazy slacker.”
Of course, Truman was not a slacker. He was the hardest working man on the crew and could drive more spikes in an hour than any two men there. He gazed at the vista of mountains and sky. The cool airstream felt good and dried the sweat on his skin.
“Truman!” Carter screamed. “What the hell?”
Truman was wondering what had happened to the Chinese boy and was about to ignore Carter’s temper and go about asking men on the line when he heard a moan. He listened for a moment. Nothing.
“Truman!”
He decided it was just the wind blowing through the deep canyon. Truman knew that the cliff side was so steep that if someone fell over, they would hit the side several times during their inexorable fall to the rushing river below.
He looked back up the roadbed to where he had been working. He and his starter had been working one side of the rails. The other side of the rail was manned by another two-man spiker team, who were working and about to catch up with Truman and his starter. He was going to go back to work, but on impulse leaned over a bit and glanced to where some of the road material had scooted over the edge. He noticed some scrape marks on a protruding boulder about fifteen feet below.
He blinked his eyes at the scene before him. About twenty-five feet below the edge of the roadbed, on a rock outcropping, lay the Chinese water boy. He was not moving. He lay on his back, arms spread with his face to the sky. There was a little dark spot from under his head, probably dried blood.
He ran to fetch a rope. Rance Carter stopped Truman’s run down the roadbed. “What the hell is going on?”
He quickly told him what he had seen and said he was going down the cliff face to get the boy.
“Let me see.” Carter strode over to the spot and peered down. “Truman, the boy is dead. No movement, and see the blood under his head? He probably cracked his skull open. He’s gone.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Truman said. “Don’t matter. We got to get the body back. Can’t leave him to a bunch of buzzards. That just ain’t right.”
“We done lost a lot of Chinese down that ravine, went clear to the bottom. It happens, but we just keep goin’. You pick up that maul and get back to work if you don’t want to lose your job.”
“Look, you heartless bastard, that boy is a friend a mine. I like him. And even if I didn’t like him, I can’t just leave him there like you.” Truman leaned in, got in the foreman’s face, and said, “The boy’s hardworking, honest, and clean, which is a lot more than people kin say about you white bastards.”
In the past, he would never have used that kind of language with a white man. Even as a freed slave, it would have gotten him killed. But Truman got away with it working on the railroad, and he got bolder every day.
“I’m roping down there to get him. And you know yer not goin’ to fire me. I pound twice the spikes as anyone else on your team, and I don’t never hit the rail.” Hitting the rail with the heavy spiking maul could damage a rail enough that it would have to be replaced before continuing.
Truman walked to the back of the supply cart and pulled out a thick hemp rope. He set the brake and tied the hemp to a wheel spoke and, without looking, started to back down the mountain. Scree and dust flowed with him down the face of the mountain as he kicked more rocks loose.
By this time, all work had stopped, and the entire crew lined up on the edge of the cliff, chattering with each other as they watched Truman carefully lower himself down the cliff face.
The rail operation had come to a dead halt. They all ignored Carter, who shouted, “You black boys are getting too uppity for me!” He was spitting as he yelled, face red and sweating. “I’m going to take all of you down a peg or two. All of you bastards, white, green, blue, red …” He leaned over to shout down at Truman, “I can get another striker, five of ’em, any day of the week. I’m the boss! You just watch me, Truman!”
The huge black man ignored him. He had wrapped the rope around his waist and back through his left hand and was carefully inching down. He could easily control the speed as he let it out, so he didn’t lose his grip and end up in the river. The rest of the men paid no attention to Carter, either.
“Truman, did you hear me?”
Foot by foot he let himself down, passing the scraped bolder as he went, and soon he could see the boy lying on the outcropping. There was not much room, and it was a miracle that the boy had landed there.
He eased down with one of his feet on the outside edge and straddled the young Chinese boy. He was still breathing. He yelled up to the observers above, “Pass me a canteen. Now!”
It was just a minute later when an old goat bladder came skidding down the face of the cliff on a light cotton line.
Truman knelt down by the small boy’s body. The man poured a little water in his huge calloused hand and patted each side of the boy’s face. He dripped a few drops onto the boy’s lips. The boy’s little pink tongue popped out, retrieved the water, and disappeared back inside his mouth. His eyes fluttered slightly and came open. He started to move, but Truman told him to stay still, putting his hand on the boy’s chest.
“You know,” said Truman, “I thought I told you to get me water, and here I am gettin’ it fa you. How’d you manage to do dat?” He smiled.
“It was a lattlesnake.” His voice sounded parched and raspy. He took a deep breath. “He struck at me.” He coughed.
“Easy.”
“I jumped back and landed on nothing. So solly. This not happen again. I need job. My ma need the money.”
Truman laughed out loud. “Well, that’s a fine story. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Hai. It mean the sea. I was born on ship coming to America.”
“Where are your folks, Hai?”
“Saclamento. My ma and little sister. Father killed.”
“Well, Hai, I’m gonna get you out of here, but first ah need to know if anything is broke. First put your two hands together and interlace your fingers. How does that feel?”
“Elbow sore, but guess okay. You seem to know a lot.”
“Learned a lot from my ma and my pa. And some kind white folk helped me. Taught me to read and write. Ah ain’t no dummy. Now raise your left foot then pull it back to your butt and let me know if it feels okay.”
“Leg real sore, but okay.” He proceeded to do the same thing with his right foot on his own and yelled. “Really feels bad. Hurt bad.”
“Okay, Hai. I can’t look at it here, not enough room, so I’m goin’ to stand you up, and you put your weight just on your good foot. Here we go.” Truman lifted the boy and set him on his left foot. With the additional space on the rock, he shuffled back with the boy against the rock face. He took a couple of yards of rope and cut it loose with his sheath knife. Next he threaded the rope loop between the boy’s legs and tied it with a square knot and then said, “I’m going to need both hands to climb the rope back to the roadbed. I need you to hold onto me. I’m going to lift you up against my chest and put the rope around my neck. You have to put your arms around my neck and hold on tight. You will be sitting in the rope loop, so all you have to do is sit there and hold on. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir, won’t let go.”
There were tears in the boy’s eyes from the pain, but he looked determined. Truman swung over from the outcropping and began to walk up the cliff face, hand over hand up the rope. Hai clung to his neck with his face buried in his chest.
Truman talked to him as he climbed the rock, to keep the boy calm. “So, Hai, what happened to your pa?”
Hai seemed to slacken his grip a bit and replied, “Got killed by white people jealous of our gold mine.”
“Your folks own a gold mine?” he asked incredulously. “And you’re here?”
“Many Chinese come to find gold on Gold Mountain.”
“Gold Mountain?”
“California, the land of the Gold Mountain. We are good miners, finding gold when the white man cannot. A lot of white miners sold mines to our people. Abandon claims, thinking Chinese are just stupid people, stupid enough to take over mines they think worthless. But we worked them, and they were not worthless. Very good mines. They think not much gold anymore, but we mine a lot of gold. They hate us.”
“A lot of gold. Then why on God’s good Earth are you here?”
“I need money. Need to pay tax.”
“Tax?”
“Foreign miner tax for Mexican and Chinese miners. To get rid of us. Twenty dollars a month.”
Truman gasped. “That’s as much as a laborer makes in a month. That’s a fortune.”
“My family can pay because we mine plenty gold. Then father killed. Workers leave. We hire a man to run the mine, but he is a bad man. Stealing our gold. Mother and sister have store in Sacramento. Cannot leave to run mine. Bad man still there. Mine make no money, he say. We have trouble to pay tax. I work here.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve. Soon I will work with the blasting here. Big money.”
“Yeah, big money, but not many make it out of there alive. Very dangerous, Hai.”
Truman kept slowly moving up the rope, making sure of his footing on the granite rock. “Well, sounds like your ma could use a little help. I done a little hard-rock pick work and blastin’ too. Think your ma be interested in a little help? Maybe help gettin’ rid of the crook? Get the mine doing good again?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Truman. Seem like a good thing. You sure always treat me okay. Now it look like I cannot work. No pay. Maybe I go home. You could help get rid of bad man?”
“Sure. That would be the first thing.”
Truman’s mind was on the possibilities. He was from Alabama. With scars on his back from whippings because he just never could learn to “behave” like a proper slave. However, now he was a freedman. But he was not free. He hated the railroad. And hated the mistreatment he saw of the Chinese. They were treated like slaves. Mistreatment that hit a raw nerve.
Truman tried to understand why the men hated the Chinese. The answer: Damn coolies, not even Christian, and they wore those strange clothes, long pigtails, and wide hats. They stayed to themselves, as if they thought they were better than the white man.
Truman pointed out that nobody wanted the jobs on the new railway. The Chinese took the jobs no one wanted, just as he had. So what was the problem? The answer he got was, well, when the railway is finished, they’ll be taking jobs from good white folk.
Right. So he supposed he would be taking those white-folk jobs, too. One more reason for people to hate an “uppity black man.”
Truman cleared the edge of the roadbed. Carter wouldn’t meet his eyes and hustled around trying to get his crews back to work.
The sun would set soon.
He set Hai in the back of the supplies cart and got a drink of water. “You stay there. I’ll be done soon. And we’ll see to that foot. Probably broken.”
Truman walked to his maul and went back to work with increased speed and a smile on his face as evening quickly approached. Yes, he could do that. He could go back west and do that.
I won’t be a spiker much longer. He swung and his muscles rippled. He swung with enthusiasm as he smiled to himself.
Looks like I could have a new future with some real decent folk. I could help some folk who would respect me. They need me.
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