Ages of Wonder Page 21

  “Of course they would, Paddy lad. Of course they would. That’s why I’ve come to see to you and the boys. You’ll be needin’ my help.”

  “And what is it you can do that won’t make things worse? You with your worthless magic and promises of fairy gold!”

  “ ’Tis the likes of me who make the worthy among the Irish rich, and did you not come here to America to get rich?”

  “I came here to America to keep from bloody starving. Not that I had much choice. The landlords packed the ships with us and piled us higher than a long winter’s stack of turf. Where were you to help us when me old mammy died and then me sisters and their children? Leprechauns help no one. Everyone knows that. You lead us on with false hope and then run off leaving us with hands full of dust and potatoes too diseased to feed to any livestock unlucky enough to still be alive.”

  The little man clucked his tongue reprovingly, “Now, now, Paddy, I know it’s been hard. We’ve not had it easy ourselves. We’ve had to stay hidden these many years while their lordships were in charge—too Irish, you see, promotes nationalism, you know. That being the case, it should be clear to you that I am here now to help you and your crew get what you have coming to you and give you the edge you’ll need when the Celestials arrive with their dragons.” He hissed like a teakettle. “Nasty things, dragons. We’ve none of their row in Ireland and who do you think it is saw to that?”

  “You can’t take credit!” Finnegan says. “Sure everyone knows it was me own name saint, Patrick, drove the snakes from Ireland and everyone knows as well that your dragons are nothing but great bloody serpents.”

  The little man took a pipe from his waistcoat, and a very fine waistcoat it was to be out here in the middle of nowhere among the great unwashed company of railroad men. Finnegan’s own hair was as red as the little man’s own but you’d never know it for the grease, the dirt, the sweat, and the soot clinging to it. That fine waistcoat wouldn’t stay fine for long if the little man made even a pretense of doing the least of the jobs Finnegan and his boys had been working.

  Which brought him to the business at hand. “Now then, are ye going to work or are ye going to blather about serpents and such all day?”

  Someone yelled at him. “Finnegan!”

  He turned his head and hollered back, “What is it you want?”

  “Who the divvil are ye talking to, man? We need you here to sing us that bloody song again so we can line the bloody track again. The bleedin’ thing goes wanderin’ off the very moment we try to lay some new.”

  Finnegan glanced behind him before he rejoined his crew, and was not at all surprised, given the nature of his recent visitor, to find that he was quite alone in front of the tent and not a soul in sight under the height of the normal man. Paddy’s lads, starved as boys in the famine and aboard ship, were not large fellows but none of them was as small as all that. Good scrappers they were, and most of them good in a fight, but they were not large and there was nothing out of the ordinary about their strength.

  “If we were to have a supernatural about the camp, why could it not have been the giant Finn McCool?” Finnegan muttered. “We could have used him on the crew.”

  He joined his boys while the bosses looked on critically. “They’ve just been standing here, Finnegan. We’re not paying your men to twiddle their thumbs while they stand around waiting for you to show up. I hear the Celestials organize themselves and never take a moment’s rest until the day is done.”

  “Right you are, Mr. Throckmorton,” Finnegan said, setting his face in a chagrined expression and tipping his cap. “Sorry I am about that, Mr. Throckmorton, but it was a bit of a personnel problem I was after dealin’ with, sir.”

  Inserting himself between Maloney and O’Hara, he growled out the side of his mouth, “And may the first engine to run on this track roll right over you, Mr. Throckmorton, sir.”

  Then he commenced with the truly foreign part of the job, something his background as the descendant of generations of Irish harpers and shanachies had ill prepared him to do. He started the track-lining song he’d learned from the black fellas he’d met when he finally got his first job in America after making his way from New York to Georgia. The “No Irish Need Apply” signs were out in force then. There were men from home a fellow could approach about jobs and places to live and such, but there was a price to pay for such influence as they wielded. Heartsick from the losses of home and kin he’d suffered in coming to America, he was in no fit frame of mind to put on a yoke for a fellow Irishman when he’d escaped that of the landlords at such great cost. He thought if he got away from where there were so many of his countrymen in the great cities, he might have a better chance at proving himself for the clever and able fellow he was.

  That was how he’d come to work on the railroad for the first time. A displaced Paddy, while less familiar to the drawling employers in the South, was of the right complexion to be put in charge of the blacks, at least for appearance’s sake. The truth was, Paddy saw from the beginning that he had more in common with the blacks than the bosses. For their part, they treated the young fellow with the amusing voice with surprising kindness, rough lot though they were. They’d taught him the track-lining song, even the dirty verses that made the men work harder and got the work done quicker.

  Now he began it, mimicking the drawling bawl of the work crews, and trying to get his lads to sing with him.

  “Woke up this mornin’ ”—he sang and then all of them threw themselves against the handles of the flat gandy shovels they had inserted beneath the errant tracks and grunted, “Huh!”

  “Looked like rain’ ”

  “Huh!”

  “Pick and shovel’ ”

  “Huh!”

  “This track again!”

  “Huh.”

  You started off with the more socially acceptable verses and then as the men got tireder added in the dirty ones to make the work more interesting. The problem was, although he and his black coworkers had shared many of the same kind of sad stories of separation and privation, the black men he’d learned the song from were great big fellas, strong from all kinds of work, and his lot ran more to the stringy and wiry, quick on their feet but without the same stamina for the heavy labor.

  Still, once he got the way of it and learned the railroads were taking on crews for the great railway to the west, he’d taken his skills along the tracks, and when there was an opening for a man or one could be made, sent for one of his own to come join the work party. That was how it was done and it was the right thing to do. Once you had enough of your own together, you could set terms more to your liking. This far along in the job, and so far out west away from the big eastern cities, there’d be little enough the bosses could do, they’d thought.

  But then someone in California got the bright idea of bringing in shiploads of Chinese from the west. They were small too, but they were strong and there were millions of them and they never got sick from the dysentery that had his men weak from the runs or too cramped to swing a hammer much of the time. The little bastards never seemed to get tired either, just sipped their tea now and then and they were good to go. They also worked for even lower wages than the Irish crews.

  But he’d have bet a month’s pay, and in fact was doing just that, that even the Celestials couldn’t get the hang of the work song for track lining, each “huh!” grunted by five men moving the track only a wee little bit. Oh, his boys could sing the song but they couldn’t make it move the bloody track the way the black fellas he used to work with could.

  This was the sort of thing that made him and the boys look bad and the bosses think them ineffectual. So it came as no surprise when the powers that be made good on their threat and the Celestials walked down through the pass and into the camp. There they set up their own tents where they cooked their strange-smelling food and smoked their strange-smelling pipes and talked their lingo faster than a Dubliner. It had always been a question of when, not if, they would arrive, to Pad
dy’s mind, but that did not cause him to walk over and welcome them.

  The next day they were swarming all over the cliffs, lowering each other in baskets and exploding the hell out of the hills making way for the tracks while his boys were still trying to line the ones they’d already laid.

  When Finnegan went to turn in that night, he was seriously disturbed by what he’d seen. Sure if this kept up, he and his boys would be sent home without their pay and then where would they be?

  He found his cot occupied by the leprechaun, who was enjoying a peaceful smoke. “Ah, Patrick me boy, and what did you think of your Oriental brothers now they’ve come to show you how it’s done?”

  “The little divvils surely know how to work,” he said. “And they’re good with the explosives and have no fear of heights.”

  “You’re not sure how to beat them, are you, lad? Well, I tell you, their secret is that dragon of theirs. Keeps ’em safe from falling and makes them explosions for ’em any time they ask at all. They just point to the spot, clear out, and the dragon does it for them.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Finnegan asked. “I’d have sworn it was dynamite.”

  “That’s on accounta you only have mortal eyes, me boy. You can see me because you’re of the kind of folk that see my kind of folk. But you can’t see the dragon cause she’s Chinese. But I’ve seen her and a fine slinky lady she is too. All red and gold and breathin’ fire. Very focused she is, to be sure, on helpin’ her kinfolk.”

  Finnegan wasn’t about to stand around jawing with the little man all night. He knew his rights. Quicker than he thought he could possibly move, he leaped on his bunk and pinned the little man to it by his coat-tails. “Enough of your row, praisin’ Chinamen and their fire-breathin’ dragons. I’ve got you now. Give up your pot of gold and we’ll leave this miserable job to them and go to San Francisco and live like kings.”

  The leprechaun merely chuckled. “It’s not that easy, Paddy boy. Not that easy by half. I left me old pot of gold in Ireland. All the gold I can give ye is at the end of this railroad, and well enough ye know it’s not got an end as yet. That’s up to you and your lads. Now let me up.”

  “Do you take me for a fool? I know better than that! You owe me that gold or at least three wishes.”

  “One wish.”

  “Two then.”

  “One and a half. Me final offer. You can’t stay here and hang onto me forever and work tomorrow as well, so what’ll it be, Paddy?”

  “Very well. One and a half it is then.” He was thinking fast and hard what his wish and a half should be. They’d need to be attached wishes, as it were, and he’d not be selfish, being as how the gold was not for the immediate taking anyway. “Here’s the thing. We need to keep this job and if you say it’s this dragon makin’ the Celestials look so good and only you can see the dragon, how about you get it to go away?”

  “Be reasonable, lad! She’s a dragon! She breathes fire and flies through the air like a bloody great bird! How am I to make her go away, and me just a poor wee man without his pot of gold or so much as a rainbow to ride on to get there if I had it?”

  “Hah!” Paddy said. “Try usin’ your blarney on her instead of me. That seems to be the strong suit of your kind. I’d think you’d do it for free so as to keep the Celestials from outshinin’ the Irish.”

  “There’s your half a wish then,” the little man said, easily extricating himself from Paddy’s grip by vanishing again.

  The next day, by midday, the Chinese had cleared a mile and started laying the gravel bed for the track while Finnegan and his boys were still trying to line up what they’d laid two days before.

  He thought they’d never quit and then, suddenly, a storm blew up and the men in baskets bounced against the cliffs until they had to be hauled up again. Meanwhile, their explosive sets fizzled ineffectually and the Celestials took a tea break and jabbered among themselves, frowning. If they were Irishmen, or even English, he was sure they’d be scratching their heads and asking, “What the divvil?”

  He knew it was the leprechaun’s doing, but had the little man not reckoned that when the Celestials had to stop for the storm, so were his boys delayed by it, so where was the good in that strategy? Finnegan said as much that night when he found the little man once more puffing away on his pipe while lying on Finnegan’s own cot.

  “Have a bit of patience,” the leprechaun said, stroking his beard with the hand not holding the pipe. “These things take time, but you leave it to me. They’re fiery passionate creatures, dragons, and the Chinese ones are crayturs of the wind—”

  “Well, then, someone as full of hot wind as yourself should be very attractive to the beast,” Finnegan said.

  The leprechaun winked one green eye. “I see you take my point, lad. I’m slowed up a bit that she speaks no Irish and I speak no Chinese but then, the language of love is universal and I’ve no doubt that by tomorrow she’ll be eatin’ out of me hand.”

  “Mind she doesn’t singe it clean off,” Finnegan said. “Now get off me cot and go back to yer courtship.”

  He thought no more about the leprechaun in the rigors of the day. The wind blew in great moaning circular gusts, whipping the gravel against them, blowing the dust into their faces so that they had to wear kerchiefs over their noses and mouths to breathe.

  They laid another few feet of track and then came the time to line it and they pushed their shovels under the steel in the prescribed method and positioned themselves for the heave when the bit came around in the song for them to do it.

  “Bein’ as how the weather is so inclement today, lads, I think we’ll start with the dirty verses this time,” Finnegan told his crew.

  “Ah my Colleen-huh!”

  “Love you well-huh!”

  “I can make your-huh!”

  “Belly swell—huh!”

  They sang some even more risqué than that. By the third verse the track still lay about where it had and was only a bit wetter from the drizzling rain that had begun soaking through the men’s clothing.

  Then on the final “huh!” the leprechaun popped into view a ways down the finished track, running for all he was worth toward them. Behind him a trail of dust hoisted by the wind wound after him.

  “Save me, Finnegan!” the leprechaun cried. “She’s after me! She’ll be after makin’ me the faither o’ her eggs, a job for which I am unsuited altogether!” He was in a right lather to be sure and he raced straight for them, lined up behind their upright shovel handles.

  “I thought you said you could handle her,” Finnegan said, pushing the little man off him as he tried to cling to his shirttails.

  The leprechaun danced back up onto his shovel handle and along it like a tightrope walker. Looking behind him with great trepidation, he hopped from one foot to the other; dancing a regular jig he was.

  Watching the comical fellow, a tune popped unbidden into Finnegan’s head.

  “Saints preserve us, Finnegan, how are you doing that?” Maloney asked him, pointing to the shovel blade, which scooted the rail up and down with the wild bouncing of the handle.

  Finnegan looked down and saw what was happening and quick as a wink began shoveling gravel under the shifted rail to hold it in place.

  “What are ye doin’?” the leprechaun cried. “While you play with the rocks the great beast will have me!” He leaped to the next shovel handle and performed the same dance. Maloney joined Finnegan in scooping gravel into the depression left by the shifted rail.

  The leprechaun moved on to the next and the next but then there were no more shovel handles and he was away like the wind, down the opening the Celestials had carved into the mountain until Finnegan could see him no longer. The rain whipped after him and disappeared. A rainbow stretched over the tracks, the end beyond the pass in the mountain blown by the Celestials.

  “What was that all about then?” Maloney asked.

  Without missing a beat, Finnegan winked as if he were telling a tall tale a
nd said, “Sure and wasn’t it the little people come to Amerikay to show us the proper Irish way of linin’ the track. We’ve been doin’ it all wrong, you see, trying to use foreign music and all that. Here, you lot, clap for me while I show you how it’s done.”

  And as if he were showing his mettle to the prettiest girl in all of County Cork, he leapt onto the handle of the set shovel the way he’d seen the little man do it and jigged his way up it while the boys clapped except for Maloney, who quickly shoveled the gravel under the track to hold it in place.

  The boys thought this was a fine game, and each was eager to demonstrate his agility and fine footwork to outdo the others, who clapped, whistled, and shoveled the gravel in to hold the track in its new position. One man on the end of a shovel handle could move the track easier than five men grunting and pushing and singing those slow songs that belonged to men of a different race and place.

  The crew ahead of them kept laying the track and they kept lining all that day.

  The boss came over to see what it was Finnegan’s crew were doing. At first he was skeptical but he couldn’t argue with the results they were getting, and by the end of the day he declared that he was more impressed than he ever had been with their work and that there would be a bonus in it for them if they could do as well when it came time to lay the last ten miles of track.

  Their method of gandy dancing spread to all the Irish crews working on the railroad, but none were as quick or light-footed as Finnegan’s team, who had been inspired, whether they knew it or not, by the leprechaun, who had in turn been inspired by the Celestial dragon. When the railroad ended with the golden spike, Finnegan and his men received their golden bonuses. Not long after, hordes of other men took the great trains West to join the rush to the California gold fields and beyond, but Finnegan and his lads, having worked their way there to be Paddy on the spot, as it were, had already laid claim to some of the richest digs.