DOG OF SKY-ALLEY
A Story
I by
Maur ice Rowdon.


DogSb-A
We started our huge project in a valley with
golden leaves, called Sky-Alley because it was so wide,
flat and open to the sky, with a black rock towering up
at one end. Usually this rock was hidden by mist, but on
clear days, when the trees on either side of the valley
were utterly still and it was like one of those muffled
summer days again, the rock's flat top was visible, with
terraces in shining granite, and into this thing we would
bore a hole eight metres tall, when the next spring came
round.
Our valley had no curves. On either side there
were straight long wooded hills where we had crawled during
the summer for shelter against the heat. The leaves were
all golden or yellow or russet now, thick to the very
summits, inches deep, with a warm steam rising up. All
day and all night Sky-Alley echoed with our work.
The
camp extended its whole length, about. three kilometres.
A pistol-shot went up and down across the valley in echoes
five or six times, jumping from one side to the other,
sharp now and then a moment later made clement by the
cushioning leaves.
The hooter, blowing short blasts,
was answered further and further back, until it gave forth
its own increasing harmony, like vast melencholy reeds
being blown across the sky, one wood-note growing on
another, emerging huskily from the woods.


The drills when they started were like a burst
of machine-gun fire, and they filled the valley with a
great roaring, a square block of sound, darkly metallic,
deafening everybody.
The hammers sounded out aga inst
the stones and the occasional white boulders, tractors
grinded and heaved across the wired paths laid down on
mud, and always, especially when a fearful hush fell on
the valley for no reason at all, the bells of the field-
-telephones could be heard, like hidden birds mechanically
cheeping, near the sodden pits and among the te nts.
At night the great arc-lamps shone over us, some
of them at regular intervals in the flat, behind the tents,
some spaced out near the top of the hills on either side,
shining diagonally into the girdered, pitted lawns, and
others at the top of great pylons every half-kilometre.
One never needed a light in one's tent, except to read or
write letters. The tent-walls glowed white, and the echoes
outside seemed to be longer and more luxuriant than by day,
with bigger tremolos, the notes falling down to the most
secret and quiet places at the very edge of the lighted arena
where everything went woody and in dim.
I shared a tent with a young, man called Johnsonk.
The skin round his eyes was drawn tightly back, ma king them
long and narrow, their gaze calculating. He was always
neatly dressed, and it struck me again and again that he
never made mistakes as the rest of us did, but always seemed
ready for the chance visit of an inspector, - or for a
sudden call by telephone to bring up more wire-netting for
the tracks or an extra pump. The result of this was that he
was liked by the overseers and given some of the most
difficult jobs. He had a kind of clever
energy: using


it suddenly and rarely, only where it would have the best
effect. Other men would start in at one of the pits with
the usualy instruments the moment the order came down, but
he would sit at the telephones, perhaps for an hour, and
have the best drills sent up, calmly arranging things, in
that cripe, jarring voice, so that the work would take half
as long. All his work was tidy. The lights were always
properlu placed, there ware ne ver too many hands, wa ter was
always quickly pumped away, the drills thoroughly tested
before they were used, the electrical batteries checked,
the vehicles waiting one behind the other to carry off the
soil, the canteen ready with coffee at precisely the times
he had arranged, the tracks clean and dry, the pit-walls
carefully propped.
The overseers never ga ve him a dead-line. They
never interfered with his t eams, of which he was always the
unofficial leader, and they sent the inspectors down to himi
as little as possible. Men liked working with him because
he never shouted at them, and because the work was always
quicker if he supervised it. He was quite a cheerful man,
withdrawn and quiet, ne ver giving too much of himself or
laughing too long, but affable, listening carefully to
everything that was said. And he was fair. He never
slipped extra work on to a man, as punishme nt or out of spite,
though he had all the cunning necessary for doing that kind
of thing.
Nor did he take his problems to the overseers.
If a man disagreed with him and wanted to go to work in a
different way I which he had every right to do, since Johnson
K. had no official position 1 he simply bided his time,
became especially quiet, until at last the man made the
mistake for which he had been waiting.


When somethkng was beginning to annoy him his
11ps would purse together, and the only sign of his anger
was the slight flush that rose from his neck to just below
his cheeks. He never swore like the others. He would
simply say, calling ast to one of the Italians, "Come
over here, Saladino", 3 then hu would raise one of his long
fingers, staring at the place where the man had been at
work, and point, - "Look at that."
Our names were always put together in the work-
lists, since we lived in the same tent, and he often used
me as a kind of assistant, running messages for him or
arranging what routes were to be used by the vehicles,
for the tracks were narrow and therefore one-way, involving
a complicated traffic-system. My work was sometimes the
best in the team, surprising him, and at other times it was.
so bad that the other nine men had to work hours longer to
repair it. A blindness and stupidity took hold of me,
though the previous day I might have been brisk and alert.
After a time he was no longer annoyed when I did something
wrong; he only sighed as if to tell the others, "Look, he s
J has had another reglapse." He thought of me as a bit of
a Joke, trustworthy and not at all a fool, but rather
pathetic, lost. He never laughed in an outright way, 9 but
sometimes he would stand and chuckle at me, his harrow eyes
quite still, watching the Nax absent-minded way I did things
and moved about.
But we got on well together, and lived rather
separately from the others.
Our tent was the only one in
the compound where overseers sometimes came and discussed
projects over a drink, sitting on the beds or the
canvas


chairs.
Johnson K. was too young to be an overseer, but
it was easy to imagine him one, and already there was a
separateness about him which even some of the overseers did
not have.
There was so much work in the camp, and time was
so short before the valley iced up, that we vary rarely went
into the city. Each man in the camp was allowed two trips
a week, and usually he only took one of them. Every evening
at the north end of the valley there was a convoy of ten or
fifteen lorries with the words SKY-ALLEY PORJECT printed above
the driver's cabin. Ap part from a few of the workers who
had bought old machines locally, only the overseers had cars.
We thus spent most of our time in the camp, and during our
free hours we usually went to one of the cafes which were in
marquees placed at intervals the whole length of the valley.
We were all getting a lot of money; the rates were very high
and apart from this more than a quarter of our work was overtime
at time and a third. We all had an itch to spend. There
were no women in the camp, and we seldom went to the city-
brothels more than once a week. But there were two bazaars
tind
with wlich
in the valley, and there we coulae great variety of things A
to decorate our lives.
Fashions took hold of the camp, going swiftly from
one end to the other.
Hundreds upon hundreds of men began
to wear coloured scarves, and then heavy silver or golden
rings became the fashion, sometimes two of them on one hand,
burning fabulously against the rough skin, and then light-grey
whipeord trousers, and then rainproof jackets with linings of
white fur al nd hoods which could be clipped round the
head so


that the neck and ears were protected, Then men bought
magnificent polished chess-sets in deal boxes inlaid with
caypets
l: C7 ivory, Persian/maroon and russet for the tents, eiderdowns
of flashing pink silk, cork-screws designed as postern-keys
or the tails of black cats, corks for sherry and port bottles
worked up into grimacing hob-goblins and humped old men
with tasselled hats, long red hoses and spectacles, I so many
grotesque and shining things stood about the tents, surrounding
each man with his legend.
But the possessions about which there was the most
ceremony were the pets.
In every compound there were Siamese
oats, dogs of every breed, A ngora rabbits, and tortoises.
There wa 8 a mediaal post for these animals at one end of the
camp where a Vetarinary surgeon was on duty all and every day o
After the first signe of the pet-fashion a camp-order was
issued that no man could have more than one pet, and that a
pet-tax was to be instituted, the price differing according
to the size and breed of the animal. Between the woods and
the tents on either side of the valley, running the whole
length, there were wire hutches and kennels. Perhaps the
best pets were the Siamese cats, because they were intimate,
of noble and fastidious temperament, and clean. Moreover,
they could sleep in the tents, usually curled up at the foot
of the bed. But one day I went up to the nearest hill-village,
where there was now quite a trade in animals for the camp,
and bought a pointer, 1 a stocky, soft-footed creature with
drowsy eyes. When I took him up into my arms he showed no
terror at leaving the rest of the litter, nor did he show any
interest in me. I took him down to the valley, bought a
large box at one of the bazaars, prepared soft food in bowgls,
put a collar round his neck and fixed the lead to the
centre


pole of the tent so that he could go in and out but not
wander off. It was S always advisable to chain the animals
for the first few days, until they knew their homes.
But this craeture, thick-limbed and able to spring
like a tiger, never seemed to recognise me, even after a
month.
He had always the same rather blind gaze, uninvolved.
After a time I let him off the lead, and though he always
returned to my tent, he never answered the name I found for
him, or came near me of his own accord, or looked, up into my
face.
It was of course stupid to feel such a thing, but
I think I was hurt by this indifference. Lacking love, apart
from the token love in the brothels, we were disturhed even
by the ind ifference of our animals.
Men would tell each other
about their pets every day, proudly, about how they licked
their hands, how they begged for food, how they slept at the
foot of the bed and woke them by touc.hing their cheeks in the
morning. But my pointer was S sad, and I could not console him.
I seemed quite absent to him.
The quarrel between Johnson K. and myself was caused
by the new overseer of our compound, Richter. He was a short,
rather pale man in his forties, and his small eyes had a silver
gaze, behind spectacles. He dressed in a very ordinary way
and never sported the extravagant fur-lined jackets and
coloured scarves like the rest of us. We preferred our
overseers to have some legendary quality, some prowess, or
an easy, reckless warmth. We did not like them to be simply
clever men who could be flattered or who feared for their
reputations. Erich von Schickler, on the other side of the
camp, wa 8 the perfect overseer. He was reckless, and just.
Every evening he drove a fast sports car into the aity and


sometimes brought women back to the compund. People
admired this. But. Richter seemed to us small, without
presence. He was kind and cheerful, but when we worked hard
for him he did not seem to see it; we did not. feel we
belonged to him, as all von Schickler's men belonged to him,
like retainers; we were only his technical subord ina tes,
which left us with no legend to dream, and stripped all the
work we did for him of awe. Having won his position by a
slow and dogged fight, he was always fearing for it.
At first he and Johnson K. got on well toge ther.
They had the same kind of cunning understanding. But,
though he respected Johnson K's work as everybody else did,
Richter began to supervise his teams and interfere with his
excellent preliminary arragg eme nts more and more. He would
visit the pits at all hours of the night, trying to talk
robustly like the other overseers, but he made us feel
uneasy, standing at the edge looking down at us while he
asked unneceasary questions.
He was always on the look-out
for the slightest signs of insubordination, especially among
the Italians, who behaved very naturally, unaware of the
kind of cap-touching respect he expected from. his inferiors.
So the rest of us, trying to help him, were always most
polite, using many Sirs and Herrs, though this only
encouraged him in the 1llusion that he was bec.oming popular
and thus ind ispensable to our work at the pits.
J ohnso on K. dealt with him very calmly and answered
all his questions, but his work was being spoilt.
The
overseers had little to do in the camp compared with us,


but Richter was always importantly poring over maps in his
tent, or taking useless compass bearings, or calling
conferences where nothing was decided.
He lost his temper
easily, and swore at people in his thin, grating voice.
I knew that Johnson K. would work slowly to get him sent
away and replaced .
One night J ohnson K. and I came in from the city
on the last convoy, at about two or three ocbock.
Our
compund was working on the day-turn, and we had been
drinking
in the bars since early evening. We put up the light in
our tent, and he began to undress at once. But I was
excited and wide-awake from the drink and wanted to play cards
or take anether bottle into one of the other tents.
I went
outside, behind the hutches and kennels, at the edge of the
silent, leafy wood, to pass water. I stood there in the
dark and then, when I looked up suddenly, I saw Richter coming
towards the rear of the tents, still in the blinding light
and
from the arc-lamps.
He had no hat aad was walking unsteadily,
humming to himself.
I was happy to see any man, especially
if he were drunk, and I called out to him from the darkness
where I was standing. He could not se e me, but he recognised
my voice and shouted back, "Hullo, there!" I told him to
wait for me, then I came out into the light and toot his a rm.
We stood rolling about, our arms locked together.
It 1s odd,
this love one suddenly feels towards a man one talks against,
as if to make up, in quick bounty, for the shame that secretly
means.
He whispered into my ear, "Where's Johnny?" and,
feeling it was wrong, I drew him towards the
tent without


a word. I pulled back the flap, and we stumbled inside
together. Johnson K. was standing by his bed, bare-footed
and in pyjamas. He was gazing at us, having already heard
ourvoices outside, and said nothing when Richter, his voice
unet ven and 1ifeless, called out, "Hullo, Johnny!" He simply
stared at him, his eyes very narrow and his lips tight together.
Richter left me and went towards him, hardly able to stand up. e
Johnson K. gave me a very quick, unforgiving glance. Richter
was just about to hug him round the shoulder's, laughing, when
he slipped on the carpet and fell forward, clinging to him.
Them, too lazy to hold himself back, he pushed Johnson K.
heavily down on the bed. They fell together, the thin wooden
legs cracked underneath them, then the whole bed sank in the
middle towards the floor. Johnson K. called out, "You 1 !"
then he j umped up, flinging Richter off, and pulled him to his
feet.
They stood panting close together, Johnson K. staring
furiously into the other man's eyes.
Richter said again and
again, quietly, "I'm sorry, now, I'm sorry". He looked down
at the bed, broken and in a heap on the carpet, then he shrugged
and walked towards the exit-flap. "I'll fix that," he
murmured. But he never came back. Johnson K. strolled
over to me, one of his fists clenched, and I waited for him.
He came closer and closer until his face was touching mine,
his untender eyes boring into me. He was just about to hit
me when he lowered his hand, murmuring, "Why..." I began to
undress while he pulled a low box under his bed to make a
support for the middle. When he had finis hed I put out the
light, and we said nothing more to each other. But I knew
that his will was all the time burning furiously against me,
and in a way I felt I deserved that.


I had been detalled to take a vehoale to the
maintenance-point at five o'clock that morning, and when I
left the tent, just as dawn was coming up across the white
illuminated valley, Johnson K. was still asleep. I worked
at the maintenance-point for three hours, assembling the
vehicles of our compound, then led them in a convoy back to
the tents.
When I went to the edge of the woods to give my
pointer fresh food, I saw at once that he had been wounded.
I found him lying by the kennel, one leg strecthed out
helplessly, keening a little, a faint whistling noise from his
throat, his head down on his paws, as if he were in terrible
pain. I tried to raise him but he squealed each time, his
left hind leg hanging limp from his haunches. I ran back to
the tents, and there one of the men told me that the dog. had
been barking at the exit-flap of my tent soon after dawn and
that Johnson K. had thrown one of his boots at him from his
bed. Then the animal had run yelping away. I could not
find Johnson K. But for three weeks a fterwards we said nothing
to each other about this incident. We lived as before, only
I did less bad work now. I was more vigilant, determined to
give him no excuse to show his fury.
The dog's foot was twisted outwards, badly, and above
1t the leg was broken in several places. Johnson K. must
have thrown the boot with all his strength, staning up from
his bed in a sudden vengeful passion. After three weeks the
leg still had not mended, the plaster was useless because the
dog usually tore it away with his teeth, and the surgeon told
me that he must be destroyed.
When Johnson K. passed by the
kennels he never looked in the animal's directiom, but seemed


quite cool, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his stride confident
and slow.
At night I went with a torch to the edge of the wood,
at the rim of the light from the great arc-lamps on the pylons,
and watched the dog. But it never turned at my touch.
Its
stomach had shrunk, and the ribs were showing. I had asked
the surgeon to feed it. with a tube, but he told me tihis was
a waste of time. Nor did the sharp grinding and drilling sounds
rising and meeting toge ther in echoes along the valley se em to
startle the dog. Even at the sudden detonations by day the
ears did not prirk.
At dawn one morning in the fourth week I took my
revolver out of its case, then carried him into the woods, up
the hill, among the sodden, brown leaves, where wa ter dripped
down from the branches, so that we would be hidden. I loaded
the revolver, all six chambers, and while I was doing this he
stirred for the first time and looked up at me.. He tried to
move from the soft place where I had put him down, but he was
too weak and the pain from his leg was too great. But he was
vaguely troubled and kept turning. his head this way and that,
his eyes brooding, dark and half-closed. At first I bent. down
and put the barrel against his ear, but he started back and with
a last great effort against death turned himself over and
managed to leap away, falling on his side close by. And each
time I bent down he did the same. I - could not bear to fire into
his ear, bending over him in that way, holding him. down with my
free hand, so that he would know what I was doing. So I took
two paces back and held out my revolver at arm's length, closing
my eye and levelling up the sights, my legs astride. I waited
until he was absolutely still again, and took the front of his
head as target. He wa s hardly aware of danger now because I


was standing away from him.
I pulled the trigger and at that instant he turned
again, no wound appeared in the creature's head, but he yelped
out and turned again, I could not see where the bullet had
gone and as he writhed about, failing to understand, I pulled
the trigger once more and then a third time, going closer,
blind now in my aim, wanting to despatch him. But still no
wound came in the head, and now he cried out again and again,
in a long whining imploring cay, and at last I saw the tiny
bright red buttons appear in his flesh. He could not
understand, he was moaning dreadfully in his agony, and as he
tried to drag himself by the front paws further and further
back away from my stinging gun, he looked up at me with a
speechless appealing gaze, his eyes calling out from. the midst
of. the burning flesh, not you, not' you, and in that gaze I saw
there was recognition at last, of me as his murderer, and I
kim
could not bring him back, I wanted suddenly to bring/back into
the world, but the bullets were there in his flesh. I was
panic-stricken, standing a pace or tay from him as his terrible
ina
weeping voice rose and fell, *ae last keening appeal for the
mercy I could not give. My hands were trembling, I was dazed,
my eyes were blind. I pulled the trigger another three times,
the revolver shaking. in my hand, determined to send the creature
quickly into death, to stop him blaming me, to stop that terrible
mute beseeching look in the dark, lovely, half-closed eyes.
And each time the shot came his body Jumped a little from the
impact of the bullet, and seemed more broken, less and less
able to pull back, more bent andwithered in the position of
death. But.still the bullets were wide, and now I could see


the red quickly come to the surface on the haunches. I
could not bear this whining, the blood beginning to shine
out of his wounds, the eyes growing darker and darker with
the coming of death, and I did not know where to run, how
to put the creature out, with the bullets dona. I stood
staring down at him, my mouth open, calling out, "No, no..."
Suddenly I ran back down the hill leaping and leaping
over the cracked bra nehes and sodden brown leaves to where
the tents were, trembling all over, all my senses clogged and
muffled upf, and near the kennels I found another worker of the
compound . I palled him back with me up the hill, asking him
for bullets or something to put out my dog, and he followed me
bewildered to where we could hear the long whining cries from
out of the undergrowth. He stepped forward, saw the dog
writhing there, its mouth half-open al nd blood beginning to
tricle forth. He took up a stone the size of his hand, al nd
with all his strength he broug ht it down on the creature's head.
But still there was life there, still there was a last whining,
full of tears like a woman's, mourning all the cruelty in the
world.
Then with the second blow the small head sank, the
limbs grew quiet, the whining died, and the stircken blinded
child, understanding nothing, his one and only suffering filling
all the woods, now lay easily with the leaves, the black roots
and boulders, all the fuss stopped, the sad after-quiet slowly
calming down the wounded copse, and all the casual noises of the
day came in again from behind us, - the drills, the hammers
tapping on the stone, and the grinding of the vehicles. I
went back to my tent without say: ing anything to the man. For
nothing could put this memory out. Nothing could tal ke down
those hurt astonished eyes. I would never live aga in.
Nothing


light could happen again; there could be no word from me
or gesture without that sta in, no promise I could make
without that betrayal mocking from. behind. And as I came
down to the tents again, stumbling, my shoulders bent,
locked and stranded in my hot shame, I looked up and saw
Johnson K. standing a few yards ahead wa tching me, his
narrow eyes seeming to say as he shook his head, "This fellow,
really..." I went past him into the tent and lay down on my
bed. Day after day the ghosts of that dying moment harried
me, in the dark rim of the lamps at the edge of the wood, at
dinner in the marquee, down in the pits by day, in bed. For
a verdict on me had been taken into the grave.
I could hardly bear to meet Johnson K's eyes, so
sure and silent was he in his victory. After a month Richter
left the camp, for Johnson K. had compla ined about him aga in
and again to the overseers with whom he could takk freely.
He and I worked together as before, only I seemed younger now,
even more the servant of moods, erratic and confused, while
he became even neater, even more exact in his commands,
everything about him marvellously ordered and precise.
And I began to feel, strangely, that I had only been
the living instrument of his fury, and must bear it longer,
years longer, than he.
Bugk