The Walking People (38 page)

Ned gave Michael a guilty look, but he didn't answer.

 

The thing about a lot of these guys, Michael thought a half hour later as he stepped up onto the back of the huge pneumatic drill, is that they react to things before things actually happen. There might be a layoff, but there might not. And here they were getting worked up already. Ned stood beside the drill with a ten-foot wooden pole and waited to tamp in the dynamite when the holes Michael drilled were ready. There was a word for that kind of person, Michael thought, and he told himself to ask Julia what the word was when he got home. She knew the names of everything, and the two little ones—Eavan and James—were quickly catching up. Someone behind Michael switched on the power, and he felt his bones knock against each other each time the tip of the drill touched the ancient rock where the engineers
had marked it with a blast of bright purple paint. He drilled one hole, slowly drew back, drilled another, drew back, kept at it for almost two hours, reaching and drawing away until there were forty holes in all.

The thing about Ned in particular, which was not true for the other guys, was that something had happened to him. So while he was reacting in advance to a layoff that may or may not happen, Michael had to remind himself that his friend was also reacting to a tragedy he never saw coming. Who am I to say what should help a person get through these things? Michael thought, and then cringed at the idea of "these things," as if all tragedies—in this case, the death of a child—could be swept into the same drawer and labeled. After the dynamite was planted, Michael and Ned worked together to wire the web of fuses. Michael double-checked the placement and the length of Ned's work while Ned stood by and pretended not to notice.

"You'll be fired before you're laid off anyway," Michael mumbled when the web was almost complete.

"I know it," Ned said, hugging himself tight in the damp air. "Jesus Christ, don't I know it?"

For a second, Michael was afraid he would look up to find Ned crying, and this too reminded Michael of the camps of home. Sentimental men, all of them, brawling one minute, crying the next, while the women looked at each other and rolled their eyes. In Ned's case, it had happened once before, and Michael wouldn't know what to do this time any more than he'd known then. But it was only for a second, because next thing Michael heard the train approaching and the men climbing out and Ned saying "Lazy sons of bitches" under his breath.

A few minutes later they covered their ears and closed their eyes for the blast. As planned, the wall in front of them collapsed in on itself, and an area sixteen feet wide and eleven feet deep was reduced to a pile of rubble. As always, Michael's eyes began streaming as soon as the dust cloud reached him. Even though he'd made sure to press his lips together, he could taste the dust on his tongue. He took off one of his work gloves and held his palm out to catch some of the water that never stopped dripping from the top of the tunnel. Once his hand was wet enough, he wiped his eyes. Ned, who had just done the same,
began the noisy process of clearing his throat. When he spit, his saliva was darker and dirtier than the rock it landed on.

As Michael and the others began the long process of clearing the rubble from the blast and loading it onto the train that would transport it down the tunnel to the belt that would carry it up to the top, Michael thought about the house he and Greta had settled on. They'd seen bigger houses for the same price, but this house had a big square yard that disappeared into rough brush and bramble. The brush extended only about thirty feet and then faded on the far side into another stretch of manicured lawn—their neighbor at the back. Their plump and powdered real estate agent suggested that they could clear it and cultivate it to blend into their lawn so they wouldn't lose those thirty feet of acreage. "Yes," Michael had said to the woman. "The yard is bigger without it." But when he and Greta asked for a few minutes to talk it over, they walked up to the top of the yard and took a closer look. Greta reached down and pulled apart some of the bushes that had grown into each other. "Blackberries," she said, drawing her hand away and popping her finger into her mouth. She looked at him over the top of her glasses as she sucked at the thorn.

"Careful, Mrs. Ward," the real estate agent called out from the kitchen window, which looked out over the deck and into the backyard. "They might be poisonous! I haven't identified them yet!" She shouted this in the most pleasant tone of voice. It no longer sounded strange to either of them to hear Greta called Mrs. Ward. They had long ago decided that it felt exactly the same as it would have felt had there ever been a ceremony to make it official.

Greta smiled, looked back at Michael, popped a single blackberry into her mouth. "I like it," she said finally. "It's time these little ones of ours learned a bramble from a briar."

"Yes, it is," he said, wanting to put his arms around her but conscious of the woman observing them. Greta chewed her blackberry, picked another, held it out to him in the palm of her hand.

"Ah, go on," she said, her teeth black with juice.

 

At lunch, Michael unwrapped his sandwich—a thick slab of ham between two slices of brown bread—and tried not to get goaded into the
conversation shouted around him over the roar of the fans and the pant of the water drainage system that never stopped pumping. Who was good for nothing. Who was injured. Who was faking. Who was stepping out on his wife. They brought up this last for the benefit of Mick Twomey, who was a Catholic in the old style and who Michael had never thought would last as long in the tunnels as he had. He prayed as he swung his pick, he prayed as he plunged his heavy rake into the gravel, he prayed as he heaved sandbag after sandbag over his shoulder to keep the underground streams at bay. "You shouldn't talk that way about a man and his wife," Mick said, as they knew he would, and they cupped hands to ears so he would say it again.

The wood benches that had been lowered down the shaft years before were slowly rotting in the damp and the dark, and Michael, who was at the very end, could feel the wood plank under him begin to soften and give way. He wondered what kind of evening it had turned out to be up top.

"Aren't you eating, Powers?" Michael asked. Ned had taken a bite of his sandwich, turned it around in his mouth a few times, and gagged as he swallowed. He's getting worse, Michael thought. Maybe a layoff would be good for him. Maybe he'd do better if he went home. Maybe I should say it to him. Later, when the shift has ended. Maybe I should say, Ned, have you really thought about going home? Maybe I should say, Ned, you're not getting on here at all anymore. He would have said something, definitely, if they were still at home and Ned were one of his camp, but they were not at home and Ned was not of his camp, and this was something Michael had tried to explain to Greta recently—the question of how to behave toward a friend who is nothing more, no blood, no ties beyond having the same employment and looking forward to seeing him in the morning when he got to work.

"I forgot something," Ned announced suddenly, standing up. "Anyone need anything from the top?"

"You're going to the top?" Michael asked, and then felt his cheeks burn as the others glanced at him.

"I am," Ned said, speaking only to Michael. "I'll be back in a minute." There was no such thing as being back in a minute if you had to go to the top and back down again, so the whole row of men watched
as Ned sloshed off through the mud to ask the bellman to signal for the cage. The bellman shook his head, pointed up the shaft, jerked his thumb toward the belt that was still transporting the rubble blasted out that morning. Michael looked away as Ned put his shoulders into the request, stepping up close to the bellman and nodding toward the phone that only reached one destination, the cage operator on top.

 

After lunch Michael and the three others who were charged with fixing the mighty mole—the engineering miracle that promised to bring tunnel digging into the twentieth century—rolled up their sleeves and decided to get on with it, no use in putting it off any longer. Ned was supposed to be with them but had not yet returned from his errand. The mole, a monstrous machine that weighed three hundred and fifty tons and was nineteen feet in diameter and seventy feet long, had changed the way the tunnels were bored. Shaped like a cylinder, like a rocket turned on its side, it excavated twice as fast as the drill and blast method, but it had been broken now for more than a week. The engineers had glanced at it, said it was "on their list," but the walking boss told Michael and the others that since they used the machine and knew it best, they should have a look at it that afternoon. Maybe it was something as small as a loose hunk of granite jammed between the blades. It had taken a full week of twenty-four-hour shifts to lower the mole down the shaft in its many parts, and another week to assemble it below.

The train, sounding its horn three times to signal a man load, brought them to the opposite end of the tunnel from where they'd blasted that morning, and there sat the mole, the sleeping beast, its trailing gear eerily silent and empty of rock and dirt, its lights blinking red in a rhythm that reminded Michael of a pulse. It filled the tunnel so completely that they could walk beside it only in single file, and even then they had to suck in their bellies and press up against the slippery rock face. Michael, first in line, inched his way around to one of the giant arms that gripped the rock in front as the machine's head drove forward. Attached to the head were twenty-seven cutting blades of three hundred pounds each.

"See anything?" one of the others called from the back of the line.

Michael reached up to run his hand along one of the blades and used it to pull himself forward. He reached around for his flashlight and, switching it on, ran the light over the rest of the blades. Standing on tiptoes, he shone the light over his head at the pointed nose of the machine and in the central lock where the blades came together. Turning, he swept the light up and down the front of the mole and then at the wall of rock that faced it. If the mole was truly stuck, they'd have to build a second shaft directly over her to bring her out. This would take weeks. Whatever Michael found, he'd have to discuss it with the rest of them before they reported to the engineers. Would the company be more likely or less likely to lay off men if the mole was stuck and needed to be brought out?

"Nothing," Michael answered finally, ducking his head as he pushed around to the far side of the machine. "Why don't you clear out and try starting her up. I'll take a look at what's stopping her."

"You sure?" Mick Twomey asked as the rest of them edged backward.

"Is it you these lazy fuckers stuck in there, Ward?" Ned Powers shouted from the way back. He had finally caught up.

Michael and the rest ignored him. "I've seen the engineers do it a hundred times," Michael assured Twomey. "I know where to stand."

A minute later, once the other men had cleared out from beside the machine, the alarm sounded, and Michael could hear them running up and down the trailing gear and calling out to one another, shouting instructions. Just as it should, the mole began to vibrate, first gently and then with more speed. Michael, his palms pressed hard against his ears, could feel the rock at his back trembling as the enormous cutters started to spin. The head drove the nose forward, and sparks flew as it made contact with the granite. Michael, already in a crouch, tried to make himself even smaller and listen to what the machine was telling him. Something in the rhythm of the cutters' spin did not quite match the vibration coming from the body, and after a moment the whole contraption sighed and began to slow down.

"Turn her off," Michael shouted when the noise subsided enough for him to be heard. He made his way forward on all fours. Using his hard hat as a shield, he kept his head down against the bits of rock that
might chip off and fly at him. He heard his instruction shouted down the line like a game of telephone.

"The head is fine. The nose is fine," Michael shouted. "It's the cutters." As he shouted, the spin of the cutters came to a complete stop.

Michael's legs ached from crouching. His left calf muscle began to cramp, and he put his hand on the now still machine to pull himself up. "You there, Twomey? I said it's the cutters. There's something wrong with the spin. Powers?"

He could hear voices in the distance, one of the advantages of being so far down the tunnel and away from the roar of the fan, the generators, the constant bells and whistles signaling what was going up the shaft, what was coming down. The mole hummed gently, as if to remind them that she was still alive. Michael could hear that the men were arguing and getting louder. "Goddamn it," he said aloud, and wondered what could be keeping them. After a minute or so of trying to make out what they were saying, he decided it wasn't his problem. If they could waste time, so could he. He straightened his legs, first the left, then the right, as far as the tight space would allow. He stretched his arms. He tucked in behind the blades and rested against the head where they were rooted. The head alone was more than ten feet around, weighed more than two tons, and felt smooth and comfortable against his back. He leaned back farther and let his spine match the gentle curve of the solid steel cylinder. I could go to sleep right here, he thought, brushing away a drop of water that landed on his cheek.

A moment later he heard the purr before he felt the vibration, like a car engine switching gears. Too surprised to call out, he jumped up to scramble back to his corner, but something stopped him and the shock made him stupid and slow. He tried to reach behind himself, over his shoulder, to swat at whatever was caught. The hood of his rain slicker, he realized, hurrying to unzip it. A split second later, in a mighty display of power, the mole did its job exactly as it was supposed to, exactly as it had not done just a few minutes before. The accumulated strength of three hundred and fifty tons drove the nose forward toward the granite, and the two tons of steel holding the blades in place—and against which Michael had decided to rest—became the axis at which all that power was transformed from something indefinite and haphazard into
a driving force, centered and efficient. Michael envisioned the terrible spin before he felt it, and a single breath later, body limp as a rag doll, he went along for the ride.