The Shadow of the Storm by Kurt R. A. Giambastiani

Author:Kurt R. A. Giambastiani [Giambastiani, Kurt R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-15T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Sunday, September 15th, AD 1889

Westgate

Yankton

Cesare jumped down off the wagon and spat into the dust.

The dust, always and ever, the dust. Yellow, gritty, dry as stone in a man’s mouth, sharp as glass in his eye. He hated the dust as he hated few other things. It rose with the morning’s breeze, flew with the noonday air, and settled into a man’s every crack and orifice by the evening calm. It was a dust so dry that when it rained, water beaded up on it and ran off, seeking easier ground. And now, returning from another back-cramping day spent digging trenches, hauling dirt, and wrassling foot-thick ties; now, with the sun nearly set and the first stars winking down upon his pain; now, the dust covered him, covered every man head to toe, skin and clothing, turning them all into men of dust and clay. They descended from wagons and cars, each man alike regardless of his birth: pale and pasty, red-eyed and stoop-shouldered, beaten and bitter, golems of exhaustion.

He and several other men went to the trough and splashed water on their faces, revealing skin beneath the grime. The water sluiced past ears crusted with sweat and dirt, over brows gritty with salt. From moving statues, Medusan warriors, they emerged: African, German, Irishman, Swede. Men they became again, and human.

Cesare unhooked the tin cup he carried on his belt and dunked it into the water. He did not care that the trough was already foul with dirt, for the water was not for him to drink. Someone shouldered against him, causing him to spill. It was Murphy. The broad-faced Irishman had taken Cesare as his own personal whipping boy, and stinted no opportunity to use him. He sneered, silently inviting violence, but Cesare had learned many lessons since his own tragic Spring, not the least of which was to choose his battles with care. The obvious fight was usually most easily lost.

He dunked the cup again and turned away without meeting the Irishman’s challenge. Murphy chuckled and said something audible only to those still washing at the silted trough. Laughter, derisive and cruel, followed Cesare as he walked toward the tents.

The railworker camp was a few large tents surrounded by a sea of small ones. The large tents—the mess, the stores, the infirmary, and the bosses’ barracks—glowed in the early evening with yellow lantern light, the canvas walls alive with shadows of men. The tents stood close together, facing inward toward each another, as if to deny the existence of Cesare and the throng of workers at their backs.

But they did exist. Men from a dozen countries walked from the wagons and railcars toward the unlit canvas shells where they would lie, crammed four or six to each Army surplus tent, through a short and dreamless night only to rise sometime before dawn—voluntarily or with encouragement—to begin another day of toil.

The men of the camp were built for labor—rough, uneducated, and poor as the dust that coated them. There were hundreds of tents; over a thousand men.

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