Noonan understood that Keighley was trying to placate him; and he
was willing to be placated. He was not shrewd enough to see that the
captain was playing on him. He smoked, somewhat mollified.
“Ol’ Dolger,” Keighley said, “the may’r--er whatever he is--he’s got
all the boys with him. They elect him to ev’rythin’ up there.... D’ yuh
remember the Red Crows?”
Noonan made an amicable sound of assent in his throat.
“Dolger’ll remind y’ o’ Nip himself.”
The memory of the past--the past that has always such a poetical appeal
for the Celt--twisted Noonan’s lips in a pleased, reluctant smile. “Nip
was a great boy,” he said. “A great boy!”
The boat was then darting and dodging through the cross traffic of
the lower river. By the time the railroad terminals were passed and
the breeze began to come, less bituminous, from open water, Noonan was
laughing and talking, with his hat on the back of his head and a blur
in his eyes. “D’ yeh mind,” he would say,--“d’ yeh mind the time I put
th’ ash-bar’l over the hydrant, an’ the boys o’ Big Six went by it?
Ho-ho! They near broke ev’ry bone in me body!” Or: “Will y’ ever ferget
the night we run Silver Nine into the ditch at the foot o’ Chatham
Hill?” Or: “Hurley, was it? Well, any way, he put his fist into me
mouth, just as I opened it to yell ‘She’s over!’ an’ I set down in the
road an’ coughed up teeth be the hand’ful.”
Keighley nodded and coughed, puckered his eyes appreciatively, and
cracked his finger joints behind his back. He did not laugh; it was
as hard for Keighley to laugh as it is for most men to sing--when
sober. Besides, he knew enough of Noonan to understand that although
the politician’s joviality was not all assumed--although even the fond
moisture of his eye was not from the eye only--old friendships would
not change present policies, and Noonan did not intend that they should.
When Keighley caught the warm odors of fields and orchards from the
Nohunk shore, he reached mechanically for the pilot’s glasses. “Them
was wild days,” he said, focusing the binoculars.
“We ust to hang together well enough _then_, Dan,” Noonan insinuated.
Keighley studied a mist of light smoke that lay along the water’s edge,
and worked his lips in the twitching of a dryly contemptuous smile.
Then he dropped his cap on the chair beside him--without lowering the
glasses--and with one hand began to loosen his necktie. “Looks like
Dolger’s got his work cut out fer ’m,” he said.
The boat went throbbing through the water at a “fourteen-mile gait.”
There was silence in the wheelhouse.
“Take us in south o’ th’ ol’ pier,” Keighley ordered. He caught the
heel of one boot with the toe of the other, and jerked off the elastic
gaiter; the glasses did not leave his eyes. “If yuh’d like to come in
with us, Tim, I can give y’ a turnout,” he said to Noonan. A fireman
passed under the window. “Bring me me rubbers,” Keighley ordered him,
without looking down. “Yuh’re allowin’ fer the current, are yuh?” he
said to the pilot. Lieutenant Moore came to the doorway. “Get the
starboard lines out,” Keighley directed, without turning. He kicked off
the other gaiter, after loosening it with the toe of his stockinged
foot. “It’ll remind y’ of ol’ times,” he said to Noonan. And his orders
and his remarks were all given in the same absent-minded voice of a man
who has his eyes fixed and his mind busy on another matter.
Noonan laughed admiringly. “That aint the way Nip ust to give his
orders, Dan,” he said.