Dark Tide (2 page)

PROLOGUE

Boston, Late July 1918; 2:30 a.m.

Isaac Gonzales knew what a terrible thing it was to be afraid at night. Night fear had robbed him of sleep and drained him of rational thought. Tossing and turning in the dark, his wife asleep beside him, he was unable to block out the horrible images that flooded his mind and wracked his body with terror. And, once again, his fear drove him from his bed, from his home, and into the night.

Now he was running hard through the darkness of Boston’s North End, his heart pounding, sweat rolling between his shoulder blades even in the early morning hours. Summer was strangling the city this last week in July, and the cramped tenements and narrow streets threw off heat long after sunset. Isaac threw off fear—it pulsated from his body in waves—and he felt an odd mixture of shame for his inability to conquer it and satisfaction for his willingness to fight it.

He could feel the buildings pressing in on him, his legs becoming heavier and his breathing more ragged. Sprawling warehouses, cheap wooden storefronts, and dilapidated tenements stood shoulder to shoulder, snuffing out the moonlight from Isaac’s path. He saw no other people, but he could hear scattered coughing from the flat rooftops where families had dragged their bedding, escaping the stifling confines of their tiny apartments in search of sleep. He could feel their presence, and he imagined these rooftop guardians watching him, as his rubber-soled boots thumped against the cobblestones.

Isaac ran past Paul Revere’s house, into historic North Square, turned left and crossed Hanover Street. Then he stopped and bent over to catch his breath, his throat burning as he gulped the thick, humid air. The smell of oil, salt, and seawater filled his flaring nostrils, carried by a hot, wet wind that blew in from the harbor.

Isaac had run more than two miles across town from his St. Germain Street home in the Back Bay, running to overcome his fear by running
toward
the source of it. The vision had come to him again, not a dream, but what he called his “semi-conscious mind pictures,” terrible images that burrowed their way into his brain despite his best efforts to shut them out. This was the fifth time that Isaac had made the cross-town run in the middle of the night, and each time it was the mind pictures that had forced him to the streets. They had become his private demons, taunting him in the blackness of his own bedroom, the images too awful to ignore.

Each time, the pictures flashing through his mind showed the monstrous steel tank near Boston Harbor collapsing, its more than 2 million gallons of molasses smashing into buildings and engulfing hundreds of people. He envisioned a huge molasses wave crashing against brick, splintering wood, and shattering glass. The tank, fifty feet high and ninety feet in diameter, stood in the middle of Boston’s busiest business district and at the edge of its most densely populated residential neighborhood, dominating the narrow strip of land between Commercial Street and the inner harbor. As a matter of commerce, Isaac knew that it was an excellent location. Ships from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the West Indies could conveniently off-load their thousands of gallons of cargo, and the molasses could be transported by railcar to the distilling plant in Cambridge, where it was converted into industrial alcohol. Isaac’s employer, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, owned the tank and the distilling plant, and had agreements with the Boston Elevated Railway and the Bay State Railroad to ensure the swift movement of its molasses.

Each day at work Isaac marveled at the efficiency of the operation, but his admiration for the logistical precision was overwhelmed by the fear that gnawed at him—that the tank would soon collapse. He had felt the tank vibrate and heard it groan each time a new shipment of molasses was pumped into it from one of the big tanker ships. He had watched flecks of steel peeling off the inside walls, falling into his hair and settling onto his jacket like brittle confetti as he climbed deep down into the tank to check the outflow pipes just prior to a molasses delivery. Isaac had seen molasses leaking from the tank in at least a dozen spots, pooling on the ground around the concrete foundation. Small children trespassed on his employer’s property to scoop up molasses with their pails or to dip their sticks and slurp the sweet liquid.

He had reported the leaks to his supervisor, Mr. White, and to White’s boss, Mr. Jell, who twice ordered the tank recaulked shortly after its construction. After that, the leaks had continued, but White and Jell ignored Isaac’s pleas, accusing him of exaggerating and overreacting. Isaac had persisted, even traveling to the Cambridge headquarters to see Jell, a true risk for a lowly manual laborer with no union protection. He had carried rusty shards from the tank’s walls into Jell’s office to provide hard evidence of the potential danger. “I didn’t come here to make these complaints about the tank because I wanted you to consider me efficient, or to try to make myself any bigger or greater than I really am,” Isaac had said to Jell. “I am here from pure necessity.” Jell looked at the rusty steel flakes and had replied: “I don’t know what you want me to do. The tank still stands.”

Jell and White had made it clear that any further complaints could lead to his dismissal, and he needed the job. He worked hard, was terribly overworked in fact, but he was well paid. He called himself a “general man,” and his responsibilities ranged from helping to off-load the molasses ships to checking gauges on the tank to filling train cars, trucks, and wagons with molasses for transportation to the distillery. He was good at his work, but it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

As he plodded up the hill in front of the Old North Church, Isaac wondered how much more he could take. The visions of the tank’s destruction came to him almost every night and he was frightened all the time now. He believed he had done all he could to prevent a disaster. Not only had he alerted his managers, he had even
slept
in the little office next to the tank for several months, believing he could sound a warning if the tank began crumbling. One of those nights he had received a phone call that still made him shudder. A man with a raspy voice had said that the tank would be blown up with dynamite and anyone who worked there would be killed.

The call had terrified Isaac because he believed it was plausible, even likely. The tank and the surrounding property were designated as a federally protected area by the government since most of the molasses stored there was distilled into alcohol to produce munitions for America and her allies for the war in Europe. Isaac did not know much about politics, but he knew enough to deduce that the tank could be a prime target for the antiwar Italian anarchists who had been operating in the North End. After he received the phone call, Isaac reported the incident to Boston Police and decided that sleeping next to the tank would be a bad idea. He believed that the tank would eventually collapse under the weight of the molasses, but the thought that a bomb could hasten such a calamity was enough to scare him back into his own bed. Still, the visions continued, driving him to the streets in the wee hours to do
something
to prevent a catastrophe that he was convinced would occur soon.

Isaac knew that if anything was to be done, he would have to be the one to do it, however inadequate his actions might be—and at whatever the cost. He had already risked his job, and his marriage was suffering, too. His wife was overwrought by his flailing and frightened cries when the images appeared to him in their bedroom, and equally perplexed by the reasons for his nighttime runs. “What
good
can you do?” she had asked him earlier as he dressed in the dark. “If it is going to collapse, what good can you do?” Isaac didn’t respond to her question directly. “I just don’t think the tank should be left alone,” he said. Then he had kissed her quickly and bolted out the door.

Now, a half-hour after that kiss, he had reached the top of Copp’s Hill, the highest point in the North End, and, as the wind swirled around him, he surveyed the scene below. Silence everywhere. Tank-ers and freighters were moored in the inner harbor. No movement at the blacksmith shop, carpentry building, or stables in the city-operated North End Paving Yard. The elevated railroad trains that traveled over Commercial Street carrying people from South Station to North Station had finished their final trips for the night, as had the freight trains that ran directly beneath the trestle on Commercial Street. The Engine 31 firehouse was dark and peaceful, firefighters asleep inside, its fireboat tied alongside the pier, rocking gently with the swell of the harbor.

And looming over all of them like a silent steel sentinel was the molasses tank. It reminded Isaac of a black mountain, towering above the landscape, its dark outline clearly visible against the starlit sky.

That the tank was still standing was a relief to him, but he needed to take further precautions. He started down the other side of Copp’s Hill, crossed Commercial Street, and flashed his access pass to the security guard. Then he entered the property and made his way to the back of the tank to the pump-pit, where the inflow-outflow controls were located. He was alone and he remained motionless for a moment, adjusting to his surroundings. The only sound was the soft lapping of the waves against the retaining wall 150 feet away. The oily smell was stronger now and he caught the pungent whiff of decaying sea animals that had washed up under the nearby pier and dried out among the pilings.

Working quickly, Isaac twisted open a valve and began releasing molasses into the harbor, and along with it, any gasses that had built up inside the tank. After ten minutes, he closed and tightened the valve. He had no idea how many gallons of molasses he had dumped, and practically speaking, knew it would make little difference in the overall capacity of the tank, which held more than 2 million gallons when it was full. Isaac also knew that he would be fired, prosecuted, and most likely sent to jail if Mr. Jell ever found out about these late-night visits. But dumping the molasses helped clear his head and made him feel less helpless.

He slipped out of the pump-pit, bid goodnight to the guard, and walked quickly off the property. He turned once and looked up at the tank. Had it groaned, or was that a foghorn from a tugboat in the harbor? The early-morning summer wind blew warm off the ocean, but Isaac shivered as he crossed Commercial Street and began the long run home.

For another night at least, he had banished the demons.

A Monster in Our Midst

Map shows Boston’s North End and proximity of the molasses tank, paving yard, and firehouse to Paul Revere’s House, the Old North Church, and the Salutation Street police station, which was firebombed by anarchists in December 1916. This was part of a pattern of violent anarchist activity in Boston that USIA argued was responsible for the destruction of the molasses tank. (Map by Sarah Gillis, based on Boston Redevelopment Authority maps)