The Walking People Read online

  The men left their plastic lunch bags and mini-coolers on the damp and mold-freckled picnic table that had been lowered into the hole six years before. They boarded the mining train—a single car, no doors, no roof, like a ride you might see in the littlest kids' part of an amusement park—that would take them to the dead end two miles away. As Michael took his seat, he reminded himself that it was his last trip to the end of the tunnel. It didn't feel like his last time; it felt like every other time, no better, no worse. As the train began to move, he saw that someone had used the chalk meant to mark drilling points to draw a huge yellow sun on a dry section of the rock face. Drawing on the rock was common, and if you picked a good spot it might last for days before being erased by the constant dripping and the wet air. Farther down the tunnel were more drawings: a shamrock, the flag of the Dominican Republic, a series of stick figures. Strung along the mesh wire that covered the sides of the tunnel was the occasional lightbulb. As one bulb flickered and then went out, Michael thought about his first day, and how he thought he'd last just a few weeks. The job was in the Bronx then, in Woodlawn. It was good money, he and Greta kept reminding each other at the time, but the money meant far less when he went down the shaft for the first time and realized he'd have to arrive in the dark, work in the dark, eat in the dark, finish his day in the dark, drive home in the dark. And when he arrived home he was too tired for supper, too tired to talk, too tired to touch Greta for weeks at a time or even to sense her body curled up against him all night long until the alarm went off again and he discovered her behind him, the small spoon holding the big.

  Throughout his shift, Michael kept searching for some part of his day to feel different, kept waiting for a feeling to come over him as it had some others who were surprised to find themselves torn about leaving. As always, the mud below sucked him deeper while the mud above kept dripping until it ran down the sides of his hard hat, down his cheeks, his neck, under the collar of his shirt. What was there to miss? Not the muck, these men insisted, not the work, but the strange life lived so many stories under the sidewalk, too deep and dark even for the city's rats. For a lot of men, it didn't hit them until the very end that the job they'd done for so long was actually important. They were the men who were building the new water tunnel—number 3. Tunnels 1 and 2—dilapidated, vulnerable—were built more than a century earlier and could fail at any moment. They were already leaking, crumbling, propped up and patched so crudely that Michael couldn't see how a disaster had not already happened. Failure of the first two tunnels before number 3 was complete meant that there would be no water for eight million New Yorkers. No water to drink, to bathe, to boil for tea, to put out fires, nothing. "Any moment" was the phrase that had been used for decades to describe the impending disaster. These men were so busy scrubbing behind their ears, cleaning their fingernails, washing the filth off their skin so as not to be embarrassed when they reentered the world at sidewalk level that they never took the time to stop and think: this project is crucial to this city's survival, and I am a part of it. Michael wasn't one of these men. He'd known all along how critical the new water tunnel was and how that need was, in a way, the city's biggest secret.

  By the time Michael took the train back to the picnic table and ate his lunch, listened to the usual arguments about whether it was better to work fast or work slow, about which shift did the least work, about how many of them probably had silicosis, about whether or not there would be a strike, he decided he just wasn't the sort of person who got affected by things like leaving. After lunch, he and Powers had to weld five large pieces of rustproof sheeting together. It was a difficult task because of the position of the sheets—mostly overhead—and because the seams had to be absolutely perfect or they would leak. As they worked the blowtorches back and forth across the edges of the metal squares, applying constant temperature and speed, the sparks rained down around them like fireflies flaring, disappearing, flecks of light erupting in an arc over Michael's head, over Powers's head, and landing somewhere behind them. Taken together in the otherwise dark tunnel, the storm of light and the blue glow of the torches' flames seemed like a celebration.

  It didn't hit him that he wouldn't be back, didn't honestly become a circumstance he felt for certain, until the very end of his shift when he took his turn on the buster. The muck train went out with the bulk of the rocks, but the men had to use the buster to break the bigger rocks into smaller pieces before loading them onto the conveyer belt that would bring them up to street level. Michael sighed as he approached the buster, bigger than the jackhammers used at street level. He braced himself for the noise, as loud as dynamite explosions even through his earplugs and his one buzzing ear, and he was surprised all over again at just how loud it could get. And then there was the actual shaking, the lights trembling against the tunnel wall, his joints, his neck, the disks of his spine, his brain vibrating inside his skull. Fuck this, Michael thought. I should get them the cake, not the other way around. I should get the lady in the store to write on it FOR THE GUYS WHO HAVE TWENTY YEARS TO GO.

  At 3:00 P.M., as the rest of the men made their way to street level and a hot shower, the walking boss kept Michael back. "It'll be impossible to replace you," the boss said, and shook Michael's hand until Michael felt he could be back on the buster. Behind him, he could hear the cage begin the ascent to the street, and he knew it would be at least fifteen minutes before it returned. By the time he finally got to the hoghouse, rinsed off his slicker and boots, rolled up his muddied clothes, put them in a black plastic bag, retrieved his loafers from the storage room and took a shower, only Powers was around. Michael tried not to be disappointed, but he couldn't help but think they'd all left unusually fast.

  "Will we go for a pint?" Powers asked. Powers was two years younger than Michael, and was the only person, aside from Greta, Michael had known since he first came to New York. They never went for pints after work. They were tired. They were hungry. Greta expected Michael home. He and Powers saw each other often enough outside of work. Powers, who was from Mayo, was first drawn to Michael because he heard he was from Galway. When they first met, Powers had asked Michael what town he was from, what village. He knew every village in Connaught, he claimed, or at least the ones worth mentioning.

  "We moved a lot," Michael had explained. "But I liked Greta's place. If I could pick a place to be from, I'd pick there."

  "Moved a lot," Powers had repeated, drawing his eyebrows together. The year was 1963, they were both working as furniture movers, and Michael had not yet considered how he'd answer the question from other Irish. Ned looked at his new acquaintance for so long that Michael scolded himself for not taking Greta's advice, for not just making up a place and sticking to it. And then Powers had nodded, a single, conclusive dip of the head and thrust of the chin, putting an end to some dialogue he was having inside his own head. "An Lucht siüil?" Powers had asked.

  The walking people. Travellers. Wanderers. Tinkers. Thieves. An Lucht siüil was a country person's way of putting it. They were all walking people now, Michael had considered pointing out. They were all travellers. Instead, he crossed his arms and waited for whatever Ned would say next.

  "I understand completely," Ned said finally. And then: "We're all Americans now anyhow, isn't it true?"

  Now, decades later, Ned waited for Michael to make a decision about going for a pint. "An Lucht siüil,"Michael said out loud, shaping the sounds to fit the old language. Michael had been thinking of home a lot lately, and now, remembering the Irish for what he once was, his thoughts tripped away once more. Greta said he'd been talking about ponies in his sleep, but Michael knew he'd been awake on the night she referred to. Daydreaming at night, he guessed, though he couldn't remember ever dreaming so vividly. He'd been instructing Greta to pull out the pony's wisdom teeth so she could be sold as a two-year-old, and he only realized how little sense he was making when Greta said, "Wake up, Michael. You haven't any ponies in America. Wake up." He'd lifted himself on h
is right elbow to look at her, and she'd lifted herself on her left to look right back. They'd been through every phase of their lives together, and that night, for the first time, it felt as if change was in the air again. Greta could feel it too. He could tell by the way she watched his mouth and waited for him to speak. She seemed different to him that night, apart from him in a way he'd never felt before, and he felt a chill run through him that he couldn't understand. Greta, who he'd known since childhood. Greta, the girl who'd seemed so hopeless back then and who never would have believed herself capable of making the life she ended up with.

  "I met you fifty-one years ago," he had pointed out after doing the calculation in his head.

  "Lord," Greta had said, finally turning her eyes away from his face and letting her head fall back on the pillow. "Don't tell me you're getting sentimental."

  "A quick one," Ned Powers urged his friend now, and Michael was pulled back to the present, to the city, to the construction yard that was busy with the arrival of the afternoon shift. "For myself, really, or else I'll have the guilts all summer that we didn't make a fuss over you."

  Michael smiled. "Do I seem like the fuss type to you?"

  "Well, you never know now, Ward. You just never know. Come on, you'll be bored silly in a week's time."

  So they went up the street to The Banner—south for three blocks along Tenth and then a left onto Twenty-seventh—and had exactly one pint. When they finished, the froth still sliding down to the bottom of their empty glasses, they stood, lifted their chins in the bartender's direction, and walked back to the lot at the site. They shook hands, and at four-thirty in the afternoon they said good night.

  Part I: 1956–1957

  1

  AT HOME IN BALLYROAN, in the single-story cottage that stood beside the sea, in the bed she shared with her older sister, eight-year-old Greta Cahill woke before dawn to a sound that was not the ocean, was not the animals bawling into the wind, was not a slammed gate, a clanging cowbell, or the rain beating on the gable. The sound was different, it was a first, and to hear it better Greta pushed the layers of blankets away from her shoulders and sat up.

  "You're letting in the cold," Johanna said into the dark without whispering, and tugged at the blankets Greta had pushed away. As they struggled, a faint whiff of salmon stopped Greta's hands. She had forgotten that part of last night's catch was lined up on a shallow tray and resting in the emptied top drawer of the dresser she and Johanna shared. Greta pictured the six flat bodies in a neat row—tails to the back, heads to the front, all split along the backbone and buried in salt. The smell was barely noticeable so far, but Greta knew that in a few more hours the delicate tang of the drying fish would be like an itch inside her nose that could not be scratched. The salt would pull the water from the salmon's river-logged bodies, and it would be Johanna's job to drain the brine with Greta looking on and their mother standing behind saying, "Are you watching, Greta? Are you seeing how your sister does it?"

  "Christ," Johanna said, and pressed her face to her pillow. Greta knew what her sister was thinking. Last night, late, after listening to the usual activity at the back door and then in the kitchen, and after following the tsk-tsk of their mother's slippers as she scurried around the cottage to the other hiding places, Johanna had sat up in bed just as Lily opened their door and said she'd not have any fish in her room, thank you very much.

  Holding the tray flat so the salt wouldn't spill, Lily had set the lantern on the floor, placed the tray in the drawer, and reached over to give Johanna a lug. Smart, fast, her hand fell from the dark space above their bed and caught Johanna square on the cheek. There were salmon in drawers all over the cottage and in the highest cabinet of the press in the hall.

  Now Johanna flipped over to her back as Greta worked to identify the sound that had woken her. "There was blood left last time," Johanna said. "She says they're all cleaned, but—"

  Greta put her hand over Johanna's mouth and held a finger in the air. "Listen," she said. Then Johanna heard it too. Greta could tell by the way her sister's back went rigid and her head lifted from the pillow.

  "What is it?" Johanna asked. "A horse and cart," she answered herself a second later, and jumped out of bed to go to the window. "Coming fast." It was bouncing violently on the stones and dips in the road, the wood of the cart splintering as it slammed against the iron hitch. For a half second here and there the world went silent, and Greta cringed in expectation of the airborne cart landing with a clatter. The racket grew louder as it came closer, rolling toward their cottage like thunder, like a stampede. The bedroom window didn't face the road, but Johanna stayed there, hopping from foot to foot on the wood planks of the floor as she peered through the gray-green light. Just as Greta was about to shout for their mother, they heard the crash, an explosion of wood coming to a sudden halt against stone and hard ground, followed by the everyday sound of a horse galloping away.

  "Tom," Greta heard Lily say on the other side of the wall. "Get up."

  Johanna opened the door of their bedroom and the cold of the hall swept into the room just as cruelly as if they'd stepped directly outside.

  "You stay where you are," Big Tom said when he emerged from his bedroom and saw Johanna. "Don't make me say it twice." He walked over to her, looked over her head to Greta, who was still in bed, and then to every corner of the room. "And keep that drawer well closed."

  "It's something to do with the salmon," Johanna said when he left, still hopping from foot to foot. Greta didn't understand about the salmon, so she didn't answer. She suspected that Johanna didn't understand either but liked to pretend that she did.

  In another minute Lily came out, tying the belt of her long cardigan, and told Johanna to either get back under the covers or get dressed. "You too," she said to Greta. She lit the paraffin lamp in the hall, twisting the knob to raise the wick and make the yellow flame higher. The boys—Jack, Little Tom, and Padraic—were already outside with Big Tom; Greta could hear the low hum of their voices traveling on the heavy air of dawn. As her much older brothers, they existed for Greta as a unit, all roughly the same age—twenty, nineteen, eighteen—all tall, black hair, black stubble on their cheeks by the end of each day. The only thing that kept them from being three identical spokes on the same wheel was Little Tom, who was born with his top lip attached to the bottom of his nose and something wrong with the inside of his mouth.

  Greta squinted to find Johanna. "What's happening? Did Mammy go out too?" She felt for the lump of wool stockings she'd tied and left beside her bed the night before, and then for the navy cardigan that hung alongside Johanna's at the back of the door. "Johanna?" she said, turning around and stretching her neck toward the shadowed corners of the room. "Are you there?" She felt a draft from the front door opening and closing, and she heard the other doors in the cottage shaking in their frames.

  "Well, look it—" Big Tom shouted from outside a moment later. His voice was big, full of tobacco, turf smoke, and crushed seashells whipped up by the wind. "Get inside, girl. Lily! Get this child inside!" Lily had just plunged her hands into the water pail in the kitchen when she heard him and rushed out of the house to catch Johanna, who'd taken off in a run across the yard to the field, where a woman's body lay in the grass.

  "It's the tinker from yesterday," Johanna shouted as Lily hooked her around the waist and pulled her back toward the house. "Greta, remember your tinker from yesterday?" Johanna kicked as she was pulled. She put both heels into the dirt and drew tracks.

  Greta stood framed in the open cottage door, pulling the sleeves of her cardigan over her hands. It was the kind of day that wouldn't get any brighter, gray upon gray in every direction. She could feel the dampness on her skin, weighing down her clothes and making her shiver. She put her knuckle in her mouth and began to suck.

  "Greta?" Lily said. "Come in now, will you? Like a good girl? Like two good girls, you'll both wait by the fire." Lily blessed herself. "Lord to mercy on the poor woman."

&n
bsp; "It's an awful day to be dead in a field, isn't it, Mammy?" Johanna said, her breath ragged, the heat of her body coming through her sweater, cutting through the cold and the damp so that Greta could feel it as her sister brushed past, flicking her hair this way and that as she looked back and forth between her mother and the field, where Big Tom had gone down on one knee to lift the woman into his arms.

  "I'd say so, love," Lily sighed. "Greta, take them fingers out of your mouth."

  Ballyroan sat at the very western edge of Ireland. Once, when the book man came to the Cahills' door selling volumes on all subjects, he'd taken Greta on his knee and told her to find her village on the map he unfolded and unfolded until it was the width of their kitchen table. When she couldn't do that, he told her to find Connemara. When she couldn't do that either, he used his finger to find Galway for her and covered the whole west of Ireland in the process. She was surprised to learn that at the end of all that ocean that began at the end of their lane was a piece of land a hundred times the size of Ireland, and that someone over there might be standing at the end of her own lane and looking back toward her.