Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/191

Rh ordinary coats they wore old jerseys. Some didn’t even have that. Before they knew it the snow soaked in through their coats, through their shirts until they were wet to the skin.

“It’s cold. Damned cold.”

They forced themselves to pass casual remarks from time to time, as if it was a jolly lark. Otherwise they’d feel too wretched altogether. It was pitch dark, but they couldn’t walk carefully; they had to shine the light on the wires above and then stagger along with their necks craned up to discover where the break was. It might be anywhere between here and the next twenty miles.

Their outfit consisted of a ladder, a bamboo pole, a portable set, and copper binding wire to join the wire on to the porcelain insulator. On the end of the pole was a nail bent like a hook. They hitched this on to the wire and it scraped off the snow as they walked.

In weather like this there were all kinds of accidents. Crossed wires; earth leakage; snapped wires. When two wires got into contact through the wind—that was crossed wires. When the pole got blown down, you had not only crossed wires but a break as well. When the snow collected too heavily on the wires, the current leaked to the ground and that was earth leakage.

Soroku and his gang had been walking for two hours. The poles seemed to stretch for ever along the highroad. It was dawn. The wind had died down and the snow was subsiding. White fields,