THE DRAINER
"Voiceless slave of the solitude, rude as the draining shovel is
rude:
Man by the ages of wrong subdued, marred, misshapen, misunderstood,
Such is the Drainer."
--From _Songs of a Navvy_.
Late in the September of the same year I got a job at digging sheep
drains on a moor in Argyllshire. I worked with a man named Sandy, and I
never knew his second name. I believe he had almost forgotten it
himself. He had a little hut in the centre of the moor, and I lived with
him there. The hut was built of piles shoved into the ground, and the
cracks between were filled with moss to keep out the cold. In the wet
weather the water came through the floor and put out the fire, what time
we required it most.
One night when taking supper a beetle dropped from the roof into my
tea-can.
"The first leevin' thing I've seen here for mony a day, barrin'
oursel's," Sandy remarked. "The verra worms keep awa' frae the place."
We started work at seven o'clock in the morning. Each of us dug a sod
six inches deep and nine inches wide, and threw it as far as we could
from the place where it was lifted. All day long we kept doing the same
thing, just as Sandy had been doing it for thirty years. We hardly ever
spoke to one another, there was nothing to speak about. The moor spread
out on all sides, and little could be seen save the brown rank grass,
the crawling bogbine, and the dirty sluggish water. We had to drink this
water. The nearest tree was two miles distant, and the nearest
public-house a good two hours' walk away. Sandy got drunk twice a week.
"Just tae put the taste o' the feelthy water oot o' my mooth," he
explained in apologetic tones when he got sober. I do not know why he
troubled to make excuses for his drunkenness. It mattered very little to
me, although I was now teetotal myself. I was even glad when the man got
drunk, for intoxicated he gave a touch of the ridiculous to the scene
that was so killingly sombre when he was sober. In the end I became
almost as soulless and stupid as the sods I turned up, and in the long
run I debated whether I should take to drink or the road in order to
enliven my life. I had some money in my pocket, and my thoughts turned
to Norah Ryan. Perhaps if I went to Glasgow I would find her. I took it
in my head to leave; I told Sandy and asked him to come.
"There's nae use in me leavin' here noo," he said. "I've stopped too
lang for that."
The farmer for whom we wrought got very angry when I asked him for my
wages.
"There's nae pleasin' o' some folk," he grumbled. "They'll nae keep a
guid job when they get one."
The last thing I saw as I turned out on the high-road was Sandy leaning
over his draining spade like some God-forsaken spirit of the moorland.
Poor man! he had not a friend in all the world, and he was very old.
I stopped in Glasgow for four weeks, but my search for Norah was
fruitless. She seemed to have gone out of the world and no trace of her
was to be found.