Free South of Heaven by Jim Thompson

mingling with the racket of muck sticks dropped and flung aside. And then the big flatbeds began their barking roar, hogging out all other sound but their own, thundering and fuming and groaning.
    The first day’s work was over. The men were coming in from the line.

10
    T he welders and machine men rode the first truck. This was protocol; the best men got the best, were entitled to first place, and I never heard anyone complain about it. The succeeding trucks carried the common working stiffs, seated around the outside edges of the flatbeds or squeezed squatting in the inside. The truck swampers stood on the running boards, while the strawbosses rode with the truck drivers. This, too, was accepted protocol; a strawboss outranked a swamper and was entitled to preempt him.
    The machine men, the welders and strawbosses were hungry and exhausted—who wasn’t?—but there was something in their expressions, the way they carried themselves, which drew a sharp line between them and the working stiffs. Quite likely, they were even more tired than the working stiffs, since their jobs demanded more of them and it was impossible for them to dog it as a muck-stick artist could. But still they didn’t look as tired; they didn’t show it as much. They had come from somewhere, not nowhere, and they were going somewhere, not nowhere. They had something to live for, in other words, something to look back on. And having it put starch in their spines; it gave them a look that you could note without being made uneasy, without wondering uneasily whether you looked the same way and hoping to God that you never did.
    As for the working stiffs.…
    They climbed down from the flatbeds, and every bit of their weariness and hunger was apparent; this day’s and all the bitter days before this. All the emptiness of all those days and all the days that lay ahead of them. And the bad part about it was that they didn’t seem to mind. They had got through a day. Getting through a day, getting through it any way they could, was the sum total of their lives. Worn out as they were, they did a lot of joking and laughing. Why not anyway? They laughed at all the things they should not have laughed about. At their general worthlessness, the filthiness of their clothes and bodies—clinging with mud made of mingled dust and sweat.
    Their ancient garments had given way under the strain of their first day’s work. Pants showed great rips, with dirty flesh peeking through. Shirts had split into shreds, and many had been discarded, the men going naked from the waist up. Head kerchiefs instead of hats were common, dirty bandannas tied around the head pirate-style.
    Most of the men made a stab at washing, but it was something they didn’t have to do so they didn’t do much of a job of it. The general effect was of smearing the dirt around instead of getting rid of it.
    I wondered how I could have been around these men for weeks while waiting for the job to open without realizing how terrible they truly were. How I could have put up with them for even a day. But I suppose it was because I had been out of work so long, because I had lacked better men to compare them with.
    Four Trey gave me a little nudge, pointed to the entrance flap of the chow tent, where the welders and other skilled workmen were already gathering.
    “We better get up there, Tommy.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “we sure as heck had.” And we did.
    The eating-early privilege didn’t apply at night. Actually it wasn’t a privilege, being more a means of speeding up the work. At night, it was more convenient for everyone to eat at once—more convenient for the pipeline, that is—so everyone did.
    There was a mob behind us by the time supper was served. It swept us forward, carrying us almost all the way back to the end of the tent before the pressure eased off and we were able to sit down.
    Pipelines always fed good and this was no exception. The keynote was plenty—plenty of variety and