The Kingdom of Ohio (3 page)

“There's a lamp.” The foreman hands him a paraffin lantern, its glass charred nearly opaque with use. “You want to buy gloves?”

“Gloves?”

“They'll cost your first week's pay.”

Peter hesitates, clutching the lantern. “All right.”

The foreman looks away. “Better if you don't,” he says gruffly. “The skin'll come off your hands anyway. With the gloves it's only slower and hurts worse. And the glove will stick when your blisters burst.”

Peter nods.

“All right. You'd better light now.”

Peter kindles his lantern with a coal from the fire—the glowing ember tracing an arc like a momentary shooting star in the dimness of the shack.

“Put the lantern on the rack by the gate before you go,” Flocombe instructs. “The guards'll search you every night when you leave. Sometimes in the morning as well.”

The first of these facts is unsurprising to Peter: in the silver and copper mines he has known, desperate workers sometimes tried to supplement their wages by stealing equipment. “In the morning too? Why then?”

The foreman stares at him. “Not everyone wants this project to happen,” he says shortly, then turns away. Trying to digest this statement, Peter follows Flocombe into the morning gray. The sound of traffic, the early smells of bread baking, sewage, smoke. They descend into the tunnel-works, ducking under the broken girders and plumbing that protrude like teeth around the maw of the hole.

The half-finished subway tunnel is thirty-five feet wide and twenty feet tall, a dark corridor downward. The excavation is lit by widely spaced lanterns whose orange flames cast shifting shadows on the jagged rock walls. The floor underfoot is covered with outcroppings and rubble: the only clear space is near the center of the tunnel, where rails for a handcart have been laid down. And the air under the earth is a heavy, living thing, the continual roar from dozens of echoing hammers drowning out thought and speech. Beside Flocombe, Peter stumbles and the foreman catches his elbow, steadying him.

At the end of the tunnel, Flocombe stops and says something to Peter, his lips moving silently. Peter shrugs helplessly, and Flocombe shrugs as well—gestures to another man, his back turned, drilling at the wall with a pneumatic hammer clutched to his chest. He points to the side of the tunnel, and Peter follows him to where a second hammer is resting.

Peter watches as the foreman explains with exaggerated motions—a lever for speed, a valve at the base of the air hose that snakes away down the tunnel. Then Flocombe hands the tool to Peter and is gone, back toward the surface.

Uncertainly, he shoulders the hammer—it has a leather harness that wraps around the waist, binding it to the body. It is an unwieldy machine, powered by a coal-driven steam donkey chugging away somewhere above. The pressure hose that leads toward the engine on the surface can come loose with dreadful force, the metal fittings smashing ribs and teeth. The head of the hammer is a blunt chisel blade, scored deeply by the rock. Taking a breath, Peter braces himself and sets it against the granite wall.

When he starts the hammer, its vibration nearly knocks him off his feet. It jars his bones like beans in a rattle, making his vision swim. He glances over at the man next to him—a head shorter than himself and broader, teeth clenched, given entirely to the work. It seems impossible to last a full ten-hour day at this, Peter thinks, let alone come back for another and another. But he leans into the hammer and tries to clear his head except for the rock, its crevices and crystalline structure. Darkness and the roar of hammers like a forge beneath the earth. The next breath and the next.

 

 

 

 

AT A CERTAIN POINT, Peter realizes that he's lying on his back and that the other man is stooped over him, the hammer unstrapped. He doesn't want to move, but the man slaps his face and pulls at him until he is standing. On wobbly legs, Peter allows himself to be led out of the tunnel into the sudden morning above.

After the incessant roar of echoes belowground, the relative quiet of traffic passing and open air is startling, incomprehensible. Near the mouth of the tunnel Peter pulls away from the man and leans against a stack of scaffolding planks. The sun bright and distant in the pale winter sky. The other man stands next to him, hands in his pockets, breath steaming in the chill air. He says something that Peter doesn't hear, his lips moving soundlessly.

“What?” Peter knows his voice is too loud but has no way of quieting it.

“You first day?” the man shouts back.

Peter nods. Since arriving in New York he has avoided conversation, secretly afraid that the intimacy of being known by anyone in this place will make his new life real in a way he isn't ready to accept, but the other man seems intent on being friendly.

“I been here six month.” He grins at Peter.

“Six months?”

The other man nods. “Six month on the subway crew. What is your name?”

“Peter.”

“Paolo. You are from where?”

“Idaho.”

Paolo shrugs. “I don't know about that.”

“Where you from, then?” Slowly, the sounds of the world are beginning to return. The back of his head hurts, and reaching up Peter feels a wet spot near his ear. When he looks at his fingers they are red with blood.

“Roma.”

“Italy?” he guesses, half recalling a long-ago school lesson.

“Yes.” Paolo smiles. “I came here twenty years ago, when I am twelve.”

Both men stand silently for a moment.

“You can go back to work?” Paolo asks. “Or you want water?”

“Water.”

Peter follows the Italian to a corner of the construction site, where a broken pipe trickles into a barrel beside the wooden fence. Paolo hands him a metal cup and he drinks. The water tastes acrid, like copper.

“How long you have been here?” Paolo asks.

“New York?”

“Yes.”

“A week.” It takes Peter a long moment to calculate this, and when he does the figure doesn't bear any resemblance to the scattered span of hours that have passed since his arrival.

“When I am here one week, I start work on the bridge.”

“The bridge.”

“The big one. You don't know?”

Peter shakes his head.

“I will show you, someday.”

Peter nods. “Thank you. For helping when I—”

“Don't worry. Everyone does this, the first day.”

Peter nods again, looking up at the rising walls of buildings, the distant blue pull of the sky. The smallness of his presence in this place.

“Now,” Paolo says.

Peter follows the Italian back into the pit. Somehow, despite having fainted, the din of the tunnel seems less overwhelming now, the weight of the hammer more bearable. He is about to start the machine when Paolo taps his arm, motioning for Peter to put the hammer aside.

“Tomorrow,” he shouts into Peter's ear, barely audible, and then points to the handcart. Peter nods and begins to load the broken rock.

 

 

 

 

THE DARK of the city, after work. As Peter follows Paolo out of the tunnel and into the dusky evening aboveground, he stumbles, half drunk with exhaustion, feeling the grit of crushed rock chafe against his skin. Near the gate of the excavation site a group of men has assembled; Paolo crosses to join them, motioning for Peter to follow. He stands silently as the Italian does a round of introductions: “Jan”—a giant man with the face of a battle-scarred Viking. “Michael, Tobias”—smirking brothers, lean and wiry. “Saul”—bald with a barrel chest and massively callused hands. “Stephen, Hans . . .”

They all have the same look about them, Peter notices. Beneath a film of grime each face is strangely alike, taut and tired, blinking shortsightedly away from the subterranean realm. And he realizes that his expression must match theirs—a thought that brings with it a detached sense of wonder.

“Peter. From Idaho.” Paolo slaps his shoulder.

“Welcome,” one of the brothers—Michael—says, his greeting echoed in turn by the others.

“So,” the other brother, Tobias, announces, “my brother and I are headed for Malarkey Hall. Marie Le Boudoir is dancing tonight.” He winks at the group in general. “You boys care to accompany us?”

Paolo shakes his head. “My money is spent before I make. Give Marie my love.”

“My pockets are empty.” Peter shrugs apologetically, thinking of a warm bed and the bone-deep ache all through his body.

“How long've you been here?” Tobias asks.

“Week, two days ago.”

“You're in a boardinghouse?”

“Ropehouse.” Peter glances around, at the emptying streets and the confusion of New York twilight, wondering if he'll be able to find his way back to his lodgings.

Tobias nods. “I've lost a few nights' sleep in one of those bloody hammock-nets myself. Come, then—we'll call this a welcome gift.”

“I—” Peter begins, thinking to excuse himself, but the other man anticipates his move.

“Come. You'll hurt in the morning, sleep or no—as you will for the next week. Isn't that right, Mikey?”

“True enough.” Tobias's brother grins. “I'd not an unbruised muscle in me my first month in the tunnels.”

“Go,” Paolo says, clapping him on the shoulder—and relenting, Peter allows himself to be led.

Around a corner and another corner, Peter soon realizes that he is lost. Tobias and Michael trade jokes; one of the brothers produces a flask of whiskey, which they pass between the three of them as they walk. At first, Peter has the sense of tunneling deeper and deeper into an endless maze—a suspicion that grows when he spots what seems to be the same sidewalk vendor for the third time. Just as he's about to ask if they're walking in circles, the street ends and he finds himself gaping upward at the brilliance of Times Square.

Lights flash everywhere and above the square he sees steam-powered messenger dirigibles
putt-putt
ing in narrow circles, advertisements spelled out in colored lights on the underside of each balloon:
P. G. Eustis Playing Cards, $
17
.
50
per gross, Used on Burlington Route RR; Acme Folding Boat Co., Miamisburg, Ohio; Be Brilliant and Eminent! Use Cosmo Buttermilk Soap
—

They jostle through the crowd down a set of steps to an underground tunnel, lit by crackling electric filaments on the tilework walls. Lining the tunnel is a kind of baroque summary of the past and present age in novelty form, with marquees for one attraction after the next—and it's all there: kinetoscope shows, exhibitions of Man and Nature featuring Lady Jewel, Champion Egg-Hen of the World, the Alligator Girl, the Talking Dog and Two-Headed Serpent, lectures on the subjects of Aeronautics, Magnetospherics, Psychology and Phrenology, genuine tintype pictures of Bryan's Oration and the World's Fair, boxing demonstrations, cockfighting, hashish parlors with dimmed lights, a miniature galaxy of detritus and vice.

Malarkey Hall proves, on arrival, to be less a hall than an alcove, a door near the center of the tunnel where miniature stalactites of nicotine and coal dust have accumulated overhead. Inside, the single room of the Hall has been done up to resemble an English pub. Thick oak beams hold up the ceiling, above rows of mismatched tables and chairs that seem to have been plundered from the sitting rooms of various flophouses. At one end of the room is a low stage with a crudely painted backdrop, intended to represent a Far East harem. The brothers push their way toward the front, where, somehow, a table stands empty amid the raucous crowd. Peter stumbles into a chair behind them, dodging a wave of beer sloshed from one of a dozen raised glasses.

Michael snags a mustachioed waiter by the arm and shouts something into his ear, and the man vanishes into the throng. The Hall is dimly lit by paraffin, shadows playing along the walls. A spotlight consisting of a gas flame between polished mirrors directs a sudden beam onto the stage and Peter turns as a roar of approval sweeps the place, mugs and pitchers clashing over tables. A young woman in frilled petticoats minces across the platform and launches into a drama that involves a key dropped into her bodice for safekeeping, only to slip . . .

He notices that she has dark hair, slender hips, and an open sore beside her mouth before he's distracted by other things: layers of clothing peel away to reveal small, milky breasts and pink nipples, stomach, thighs—until finally the key is discovered, wedged intimately some distance below its original location. Cheers and howls in the smoky air as she extracts the key and flourishes it overhead. The waiter reappears and sets down three glasses of clear greenish alcohol, one of which Tobias pushes toward Peter. Another skit begins, revolving around a mosquito and two young ladies of tender and much-exhibited flesh.

“Marie always comes on last,” Michael shouts into Peter's ear over the din of the room, leaning across the table.

There is a ritual that goes along with the clear drink, Peter discovers, sugar melted in a spoon. Imitating the brothers, he sips the liquor: it tastes bitter, like something dredged out of a cave. Soon his head is swimming, flickers of color at the periphery of his vision.

“Absinthe.” Tobias smiles and taps the glass. Peter sees, in a moment of lurid detail, that both his front teeth are false, a stained porcelain bridge.

Peter nods. For a moment, sitting there in Malarkey Hall, he has the terrifying sensation of being misplaced in his own life. He remembers one of the engines that he glimpsed at the subway excavation site: the interlocking of its gears, the mindless regularity of its lurching motion, the steam hoses leading away into underground darkness. An image that feels at once frightening and strangely reassuring. Belatedly he realizes that the others are waiting for him to say something.