John Casey - Compass Rose

Eddie yelled, “Whoa!” and drove off to dump a load. Deirdre said to JB, “You’ll ruin your back if you don’t bend your knees. Watch how Tran does it.”

JB said, “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” and May laughed. JB, encouraged by this, said, “This kind of work is in my blood. Listen, O’Malley, I’ll bet you don’t know who’s the second-most-important man in Irish history.”

“I’ll bite,” Tom said. “Who?”

“The man who invented the wheelbarrow and got the Irish up on their hind legs.”

“Oh, God,” Deirdre said. “Not that old wheezer.”

Eddie came back, shut off the engine, and rearranged them in pairs. May with Tom, Deirdre with JB, Elsie with Tran.

It was satisfying, more satisfying than weeding Miss Perry’s garden. Deeply satisfying to probe with the crowbar and find the edges of a big rock. Dig under it and then have at it with the bar. If it didn’t budge, Tran would get another crowbar and the two of them would pry at it until it tore loose from the earth. All shapes and sizes. Some the size of a loaf of bread, some as big as a car tire. Elsie probed around one that turned out to be long and narrow, a piece of granite shaped like a mummy sleeping bag, the foot end angling up. Eddie dumped a load and came back. He lowered a corner of the front scoop under the lip of rock that Elsie had dug free. He drove forward a half foot, gave a delicate pull on the hydraulic control. The rock tipped up a few inches. Eddie yelled, “Oh, boy! You found the granddaddy!” Another grunt of the engine, another twitch on the hydraulic, and another and then another, until the rock reared up as tall as a man. They all stood admiring it, admiring Eddie, admiring themselves — looking back and admiring their wake of trampled grass and empty pockets of dark earth.

Eddie shut off the engine. “I thought for sure she’d break in two. Let’s eat lunch and think what to do with her. Won’t fit in the bucket. Maybe put a chain on her and drag her. Make a hell of a tombstone.”

They sat in the shade and ate their sandwiches and drank from their thermoses. Elsie was savagely hungry and thirsty. She should’ve brought two sandwiches.

May said, “Is Rose going to come?”

“She said she would,” Elsie said. “She’s sleeping in. She had a show last night. Deirdre left her a map.”

“That’s good,” May said. “Thank you, Deirdre.”

Eddie came back from walking around and shaking his legs out. He said to Deirdre, “I see you got a ball on the back of your jeep. I should’ve thought of that. You think you could go back to my place and hitch up a wagon? We could put the little rocks in it. Save me going back and forth with the tractor every ten minutes.”

“Sure. I’ll pick up Rose on the way.”

“You might see if Dick’s at a stopping point with that skiff he’s building,” May said. “He’s over there in Eddie’s shed, the big one with the tin roof.”

Elsie lay on her back and pulled her knees to her chest. Three hours of digging, tugging, and lifting had knotted her up some, but as she let her back relax, she felt light and hollow. She heard JB say, “I’ll come along. I’d like to see what a boat looks like half done.” Out of nowhere, out of the sky, out of the ground she lay on, a ferocious desire filled her. It was as unasked for and as real as a dream. She hugged her knees closer to her, she saw Dick working, she smelled wood shavings, she felt herself coming into the shed, not a word, just the air between them growing so dense they could sense each other through it.

She rolled onto her side, pressed her cheek into the ground to stop her trembling.

Deirdre said to JB, “You’re just trying to get out of work. Never mind. Hop on in.”

Elsie listened to the jeep jounce and rattle away.

“I doubt Dick’s going to come,” May said. “If he’s got to wait on something for his skiff, he’ll go over to Wickford, look at a lobster boat might be for sale. He say anything to you about that?”

Tran said, “Maybe Wickford. Maybe New Bedford. He’s looking all over. Lot of things on his mind, but finding a boat is number one.”

Eddie walked around the upright slab of rock, came back, and asked Tran to help him put a chain around it. “I’ll keep her propped up, you get the chain on snug, then you back off and I’ll tip her over. Then you come back and fasten the chain to the cable from the winch. Then I’ll go over there and snake her in.”

Elsie propped her head up on her elbow. She hoped what they were going to do would be brutal enough to distract her. She said, “How come you just don’t drag it with the tractor?”

“That winch there could move a house. The tractor’d either rear up or spin. You’ll see. In fact, come on — I’ll let you run it.”

Eddie had Tran twist the chain around so the hook would end up on top. He gave the rock a little shove, and over it went. Elsie had expected more of a seismic thud. Eddie moved the tractor; Tran unreeled the cable and fixed its hook through a link on the tail end of the chain. Eddie climbed down beside Elsie. He pointed to a red plastic knob on an upright lever. “Okay. Give that a pull. Just don’t run that rock up onto your toes.” Nothing much at first, just taking up the slack. Then the cable went taut and the chain scratched into the rock. Elsie left her hand on the knob, a light buzz in her palm. The reel turned steadily. There was a visible but surprisingly noiseless tension on the cable, no thicker than her little finger. The enormous rock began to move. It wagged a little at first, as if trying not to come, then gave in and swam straight toward her, thick end first, like a whale.

This was wizardry; this was hands-on witchcraft. She’d used a walkie-talkie, seen radar and sonar screens, wondered a little at invisible waves, but now it was her hand pulling a ton of rock across the ground she stood on.

Eddie said, “Whoa, there. Close enough. Now you want to push that lever the other way, just a touch. Give us a little slack so we can unhook her.”

She thought she ought to feel her own physical strength dwarfed, she ought to feel put in her place. In a whole morning of poking, prying, and lifting, she hadn’t moved as much weight as this winch had in the last minute. So what a puny little thing she was … Didn’t feel that way. The morning’s work had got her blood up — she’d flushed every muscle in her body with blood and oxygen, and that rush reached every capillary and nerve in her skin. She’d moved rocks; she’d moved a boulder; she could drink a pond dry; she could run all the way through the woods, kick open the door to Eddie’s shed, and make Dick hold on to her furious body.

The hook on the chain was wedged tight in the link. Eddie tapped the next link over with the ball of his ball-peen hammer, and everything popped open. The chain slid down either side of the rock into two puddled heaps. Eddie turned the tractor around, eased the lip of the front scoop under the rock, and lifted it a few inches. Elsie pulled the chain free. Even through her gloves, she could feel the heat in the links.

Eddie said, “Let’s see if we can get another couple of hours out of this crew. This isn’t work you can do all day. If we push too long someone’ll end up dropping a rock on their foot. I’m kind of worried about that old fellow. Maybe you can get him to talking every so often; that’ll give him a rest. Least if that girlfriend of Charlie’s doesn’t get after him. When they get back, you might let her know to go easy.”

Sweet, mild Eddie. A universal donor. Another kind of man might have sensed the state she was in.

They heard the jeep before they saw it. The rattling was louder with the empty cart in tow. Just the three of them. May said, “I didn’t expect you’d get him. Was he there?”