Gwen, in Green

All that shit. He thought she was going to try to kiss his hand. He ushered her out and got on the phone to the office and gave the supervisor hell, wanting to know how much longer they were going to be held up by some fucking government red tape. And on top of that, Cramer’s wife calling every hour wanting to know why Cramer hadn’t come home from work on Monday. Well, hell, Flores wanted to know, too. Cramer was a good man. If he hadn’t had a thing for a whiskey bottle, he’d have moved up in the company, like Flores. He didn’t tell Mrs. Cramer that the bastard was probably off shacked up with some local slut, dead drunk. No. And he didn’t want to do old Cramer in. The man had been with the company as long as Flores had, and when he wasn’t on the bottle he was one hell of a heavy equipment man. But the sonofabitch had picked a bad time, right after Daniels and Peebles had bugged out without a word. Goddamned construction bums anyhow. Flores wished he could dig it all by hand, bring in a thousand hungry wetbacks and get the job done. To hell with construction bums.

Well, there was not much harm done. He’d given Cramer his chance. He’d put another man out there and let the bastard have his fling, but when he came back, hung over and sick, he was going to get hell. Flores would put him onto the hottest, most back-­breaking piece of machinery on the job.

Late that afternoon, just ahead of the whistle, he left the job, pushed the Scout as fast as it would go, and to hell with the local fuzz, drove to the island. The new kid on the dozer there was an eager beaver. He wasn’t neat and he wasted a lot of motion, but judging from his progress he’d had the Cat moving all day. He was still at it after four o’clock when Flores arrived. The kid had to be waved down.

“How’m I doing?” the kid asked, coming up to Flores.

“You ain’t gonna get no prize for neatness,” Flores said.

“Well, I was going to go back and clean it up after,” the kid said.

“Clean it up as you go,” Flores said. “And be here at seven tomorrow, O.K.?”

“Sure,” the kid said.

“You drink?” Flores asked.

“I’ve been known to take a drink,” the kid said.

“You don’t drink until you’ve finished this job, O.K.?”

“Well, hell, Flores.”

“You wanta work for me, or anyone else in this fucking business, you are a goddamned teetotaler until you knock down every mothering tree in this cut, you hear?”

“I hear,” the kid said sullenly.

“You got a girl?”

“Now look,” he began.

“I asked if you got a girl. You don’t like my questions, there’s the road.”

“Well, shit. No, no one special.”

“Just pick-­ups, like the rest of these bums,” Flores said. “Well, until you get that cut clean, you’re also not interested in girls, you understand.”

“You’re coming on strong,” the kid said, bristled up.

“I had three good men walk off this job,” Flores said. “We ain’t pushed, but I’m gonna see to it that we’re not. We are going to put diggers on this cut in a week and you are going to have it as bald as a whore’s cunt after a case of crabs in four days, you understand?”

“Sure, sure,” the kid said glumly.

“You wanta pile up a little time and a half, you work on for a while. Just turn it in. Take Saturday, if you want. That is if you’re interested in making a buck.”

That was different. The kid grinned. “Hell, yes. Thanks, boss.” He went back to the dozer and was neatening things up when Flores left.

The kid who had been ordered not to drink or chase girls obeyed part of the order. He didn’t drink. He didn’t care too much for it anyhow, unless it was at a party. But about the other, well, hell, when a gal comes out to the site in a set of hotpants and promises you a little if you’ll go down into the woods with her, well, hell.

And while the kid was dying, (he died badly, the shot missing his throat and knocking off his lower jaw, leaving him screaming through gurgling blood, and then he wasn’t dead, after the second shot, but smothered under wet sand and leaves), George was having a talk with Dr. Irving King. He’d gotten involved on the previous Friday and hadn’t taken the machine back to King, but this Friday he had to go into town for supplies and he carried the polygraph in the pick-­up, and delivered it to King, and then demonstrated that it was working. This led to long, involved experiments with the equipment, and he found that King was one sharp fellow and knew a lot about poly­graph work. After a complete rundown on the machine and its various functions, and after they’d called in the grumbling office assistant, hooked the electrodes onto her aging carcass and played around for an hour, well into the doctor’s nap time, George started telling King about his experiments with the plants. King was fascinated. He asked technical questions and examined the tapes, which George had saved. They hooked into a rubber plant which was kept alive in the outer lobby by the office assistant and got some interesting readings.