The Old Man

The Old Man

I spent yesterday at the river digging gravel for more road construction.  There were only two trucks running so I had quite a bit of extra time to stockpile and watch other activities along the gravel bars. 

Last week I had met Pierre and his sisters throwing rocks into piles.  This day I saw his father doing the same.  I recognized him along with two of his daughters, one being the same sister that had worked with Pierre the prior week.  He was an older man, probably my age.  He walked stiffly and his face was weathered like leather left in the sun for too many years.  I only saw a couple of teeth when he talked to his daughters and he had a stern look similar to one whose outlook on life was grim.  He wore an old orange tee shirt, faded blue dungarees and an old farmers cap on his head. He didn’t move fast but was consistent in tossing rocks into piles.

I watched him for a little bit then moved the loader up to one of the piles so they could load rocks into the bucket.  There was little room to help as there were now four people tossing; I think Scotty must have beamed the other one down from somewhere else.  I moved the rocks out of the large cavernous hole that I had dug and unloaded it across the river as high up on the bank that I could get; that was where the father was pounding the rocks into crushed stone. 

When I returned my two trucks were back so I loaded them up.  In between bucket loads some other Haitians had come around and were dancing in and out of the gravel mounds I was making to pick out more stones and toss them into piles.  I looked over my shoulders and noticed four more people in the hole tossing sand into small volcano like mountains.

After the trucks left two Haitians motioned me to come move their stones out of the crater.  I had enough gravel stockpiled so I did.  In the meantime a single axle dump truck pulled up next to one of the rock piles.  Four or five more Haitians jumped out and started tossing rocks into the back of the truck.  I dumped my load on the side of the bar and started to cut a better access in for my trucks.  The Haitians loading stones motioned for me to pull up so they could toss stones in my bucket.  I reluctantly did.  After dumping them I returned to smoothing my access road.  As I backed up for another cut they once again motioned me to pull up.  I shook my head, ‘no’, and resumed my excavating.  On the next pass back they did the same, this time with the outstretched arm motion that says, ‘why aren’t you helping me?’

I took a time out, stopped the loader and looked around.  I saw two groups chugging sand in the hole, another group making two rock piles in the same locale.  Above on the rim, there were five guys waiting on me to load their truck, another two groups had materialized tossing more stones with the expectations of me moving them since they were in my working area. 

I thought about what Travis had told me about not being too eager to work on behalf of the people.  He said that, ‘before you know it, there’ll be thirty trucks lined up to be loaded.’  He was right, though instead of trucks, there suddenly were around fifteen people in five or so groups working feverishly in my way.  His additional comment was that if you help one person, the others will expect it, too.   And if you don’t help them they will get angry at you for not helping them.

I looked at the man waving at me, put the loader in gear and moved downriver about 50 yards with the front of the loader away from them.  After ten minutes a man walked down to where I was, looked at me and pointed to his pile of rocks.  I sadly shook my head and looked away.  Another ten minutes went by and a little girl was on my other side staring at me.  When I looked at her she pointed back at someone else’s load and motioned for me to come.  I slowly shook my head and looked away.

Fifteen minutes later I looked over my shoulder and saw that everyone had dissipated.  I saw my trucks coming so I moved back over to the pit to start loading them.  I noticed the old man and one of his daughters still pitching rocks at the bottom of the hole.  After loading my trucks I cautiously looked around but saw no one else in the immediate area. 

My loader disappeared into the cavernous hole I had dug and, together, the old man, his daughter and I tossed rocks into my bucket.  Shhhh, don’t tell ANYONE.