This Side of Brightness (7 page)

Happy enough, unhappy enough, lonely enough, alone enough, Walker is apt—like a man who spends a lot of time with himself—to laugh out loud for no apparent reason.

Occasionally he ends up in a tunnel fight that is not of his making, and he only fights if he absolutely has to. Still, he flings a powerful punch, puts muscle into it. On the street, cops sometimes shake him down and he just lets it happen, knowing better than to say anything; they will beat him to a pulp if he opens his mouth. He puts money away in a Negro bank—it gains less interest, but at least it is with his own and he feels it is safe. On his twenty-fifth birthday he splurges on a Victrola in a Harlem store owned by a famous trumpet player, pays two dollars more than he would elsewhere, but no matter. Let it roll. Let it sound on out. Two years later, he buys an even finer model with a special stylus. He carts it home and winds the handle carefully. Jazz music erupts around him, and he does wild solitary dances around his room.

Women come and go, but mostly they go—they cannot live with the idea of Walker dying in the tunnels, and besides he is shy and quiet and, although handsome, insists on wearing his ridiculous red hat and the overalls.

Only his rooms change through the years: the hotel in Brooklyn; an attic in southern Manhattan at the edge of the old Five Points tenements, bird shit obscuring a skylight; an apartment near a slaughterhouse in Hell's Kitchen, with taunts ringing out in brogues around him; a clapboard house off Henderson Street in Jersey City, with the smell of bootleg liquor seeping out from a shack next door; back to Manhattan, to a Colored rooming house around the corner from the Theresa Hotel bar; then further north to a cold-water room on 131st Street. The one and only constant in his life is his Sunday visits downtown to Maura and Eleanor O'Leary. Walker notes the passing of years by the way the tunnel dust settles down in his lungs; by the wrinkles that appear at Maura O'Leary's eyes; by the deepening curiosity of Eleanor as she leans forward and touches his elbow lightly while he tells his stories.

*   *   *

“See,” he says to them. “See. They was building the very first tunnel in the city way back in the 1860s. A man by the name of Mister Alfred Ely Beach was in charge. Businessman. What's that they calls it? Entrepreneur. Bow tie up around his neck. Fatter than Randall, even. And Mister Beach got to thinking that maybe the thing to do was to put trains underground instead of upground. No more trains in the air, only in the earth. And nobody in the city had ever thought of that before excepting this here Mister Beach. He was pretty goddamn smart—'scuse me, ma'am, but he was.”

Walker tips at a hat that isn't there, and the two women smile.

“So he tried to get a permit for digging a tunnel under Broadway, down there by City Hall. Right under their noses. But he can't get a permit no matter which way he tries, no way in hell they gonna give it to him. They're making money from the El. They don't wanna lose that. This is the 1860s, like I said. They say ol' man Beach is crazy. And maybe he is. But he goes ahead anyways. He's the sort of man who knows the only things worth doing are the things might break your heart. So he got himself some workers and they dug in secret right underneath Devlin's clothing store down there on Murray Street. At nighttime they'd go smuggling the dirt back through the rows of clothes. Wheeled the dirt down the street while everyone else was sleeping. Nobody except the crew knew what was going on. Story is, the foreman was called the Tapeworm. They called him that 'cause he once cut out a digger's stomach with a knife after the digger told the secret that they was building the tunnel.”

Teacups let out steam on the kitchen table while Walker talks.

“Anyways, they put in frescoes and tiles and all sorts of beautiful paintings and made that into the loveliest tunnel you ever did see. Just about the most gorgeous thing. That's no lie. And right at the front they put in a fountain in the waiting room, a great big fountain with water piped up. They'd never seen nothing like it before. And ol' Alfred Ely Beach he decided they needed a grand piano so they could welcome the customers. Just like this one here, I s'pose.”

He nods across the room at Con O'Leary's piano.

“And then ol' Alfred Ely Beach sent his first train through. It must have been a day! Story is, he hired a lady, all in fancy clothes, to come down and play the piano, and all the customers arrived and saw the fountain and heard the music and must have thought they about died and went to heaven. Anyways, they ran that train through the tunnel with pneumatic pressure, two big fans at each end pushing the train along. I don't rightly know, but I reckon it might have been up to quarter of a mile or so. They ran it for a few years but they didn't make no money, and ol' Beach he was losing his shirt so he decided to close the damn thing down. So he bricked it off. Eighteen seventy-something. After a few years everyone forgot there was ever a tunnel down there in the first place. Even the men who made the maps, they forgot to put it on.”

Walker looks in his teacup as if he's weighing his words there.

“Go on,” says Eleanor.

“And this is where the strangest thing happens. It about jiggers my mind to think on it, but it's true.”

“Go on, go on.”

He pauses to take a mouthful of tea and drops an extra lump of sugar in the cup.

“True as I'm sitting here and strange as that is. Only last week I heard it. A man crossed his heart on it and ol' Rhubarb he swears it's true too. They were digging again under Broadway, see. Mind, now, it's sixty years later. And everyone done forgot about that old tunnel. They're blasting away with dynamite. Doing cut-and-cover, where they put steel sheet over the street so as none of the rock flies up in the air. So they put in the dynamite and they clear the tunnel and then one of them lights the fuse. Out they go, up on the street, and wait for the blast. Not hardly talking to each other. Tired, I s'pose. Then it goes ahead, the dynamite, and does its job.
Boom!
”

Eleanor jumps back in her seat.

Walker laughs. “And the crew they all just go back down the ladders and into the tunnel. They're walking with their scarves over their mouths to stop the dust. And one of them engineers goes first to make sure it's safe, make sure there'd be no rocks falling on them. Sure enough, the tunnel's looking good, and they all start getting that rubble out of there. Five of them. Shifting the big rocks backwards. Getting ready to put in roof supports. And all of a sudden one of them ups and screams, ‘Looky here!' And he's standing with a piece of tile in his hands. And they're all thinking, Goddamn. 'Scuse me. But that's what they're thinking. Goddamn it all to hell, where did this tile come from? And then another one of them boys picks up another tile and then a piece of a face like from a building, what you call it?”

“Gargoyle,” says Maura.

“Gargoyle, yeah, he picks up a piece of gargoyle, and now all of them are saying that word as loud as can be too. Goddamn. 'Scuse me, ma'am. But that's how they musta been talking.”

Eleanor, fourteen years old, leans forward with her elbows on the table and her face propped up in her hands.

“Then that crew reaches in to pick off more rocks, and suddenly they hit air. Nothing there! Not a thing! So they crawl their way through that gap in the tunnel until they can stand and stretch! Now, these men, they're used to bending all day long and back again, and here they is, standing up! Tiles and paintings all around them and a train track at their feet! So they go, all five of them, walking along and not a one of them believing their eyes. Deeper and deeper and then they see that ol' fountain—'course there's not any water coming from it, but it's there, that ol' fountain and way behind it, still, that grand piano! No kidding. The piano! Covered in dust. Must about have given them heart attacks. And one of them workers, he lifts the lid of the piano and commences himself to playing, and all the men they gather around, holding their lanterns up above the keys. Ain't none of them got a note in their heads, and I don't know what song they was singing, but I s'pose it don't matter. They stood around in that ol' tunnel until the inspector came down and saw them shouting and laughing and singing over that piano.”

The women sit speechless over cold cups of tea, a smile breaking at the edges of Eleanor's mouth.

“A piano underground?” she says. “My God.”

“Eleanor!” says Maura. “You know I told you not to say things like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like my God.”

“Sorry, Mom.”

They sit quietly until Walker says, “But that's something else now, ain't it?”

Maura nods. “It sure is.”

“Could fool with a man's mind if he like to let it.”

“Sure could.”

“An underground piano.”

“My God Almighty,” says the girl again.

And all three of them start laughing.

*   *   *

Eleanor writes him a note:
Meet me under the billboard for Wills cigarettes at six.

She arrives early, in a yellow muslin dress once worn by her mother. Passing men eye her long red hair. She avoids their stares and looks along the street. When Walker shows up she takes his hand, but he quickly lets it go and steps behind her at two paces, tentative and nervous, saying nothing. He walks in her shadow. The streets are grayed by fog. Motorcars throw fumes into the grayness. At the head of the tunnel the foreman—his face fretted with acne—says she shouldn't be accompanied by a Negro into the darkness.

“Ain't no saying what those kind'll do, ma'am.”

Walker steps aside, his hands in his pockets.

The foreman takes her down the shaft and along the tunnel to show her the piano covered in dust. She lifts the lid to play a few notes, and he leans over her, holding the lantern near her head. Slyly, he puts his hand on her lower back and spreads his fingers across her hips and squeezes.

“Don't do that!” she says, pushing his hand away.

“Aw, come on. Just a little kiss.”

“Leave me alone!”

She steps away and runs from the tunnel, but Walker is gone, and she searches frantically, running back and forth through Battery Park until she finds him, shy and head-hung, standing behind the billboard.

“It's true,” she says.

“Of course it's true.”

“I knew it was.”

“Then why y'all so surprised?” he asks.

She shuffles her feet. “That man, he tried to touch me.”

“Did he hurt ya?”

“No, but you should say something to him.”

“Huh?”

“He shouldn't be allowed to do that. That's not right. You should say something to him.”

“Y'all serious?”

“'Course I'm serious.”

“I'm stupid, girl, but I ain't that stupid.”

“Why not?”

“Girl.”

“What?”

“Take one good look at my face.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”

Walker turns away when she leans up to try and kiss him on the cheek, and he mumbles, embarrassed, “Y'all shouldn't do that. It ain't right.”

Although once he saw a famous middleweight boxer emerging from the Theresa Hotel with a French actress. She wore a short skirt, high heels, and perfume and held a long thin cigarette elegantly at the tips of her fingers. At the door of the hotel, she brushed her lips against the black boxer's cheek. They moved to a waiting car. When the couple was gone, young girls on the street held popsicle sticks in the exact same manner as the Frenchwoman's cigarette, and her perfume hung on the air like stigmata.

“It just ain't right,” says Walker.

But for years he takes her down to the bank of the East River anyway. The eyes of strangers cause him to hang his chin on his chest. He knows what they think. Sometimes he even gets violent glares from his own people. He walks way behind Eleanor to make it seem like they aren't together, and he even ignores her if people stare for too long.

At the water's edge, Eleanor says, “Tell me that story about my father again.”

“Well,” he says, “it was early morning. We all came down and we was just working, normal like. Digging away like we always done.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We was sweating and loading and loading and sweating.”

“And then it happened?”

“Yeah. I had my shovel in the air just like this. And Con, he was behind me somewheres. And Rhubarb too. He was the one let the shout. First time he said something full in English. It like to broke my ears. ‘Shit! Air go out. Shit!'”

Walker points toward the middle of the river.

“We rose up right out over there.”

chapter 5

so slowly time passes

Across from his nest an icicle hangs near the metal grate, held in static, a shaft of ice one foot long exploring its way down toward the tunnel floor. It looks like a stalactite, although he knows stalactites aren't made of ice, but of mineral deposits. No matter, he will call it that anyway: a stalactite. He wonders how long it might grow. Maybe ten, maybe fifteen feet, maybe all the way down to the ground. He nods to the piece of jagged ice. “Good morning,” he says. “Good morning.” The world, he knows, can still spring its small and wondrous surprises.

*   *   *

She arrives on the morning of the third snowfall.

A black handbag is all she carries. He is amazed to watch her from the safety of his nest. She moves under his catwalk, a huge fur coat wrapped around herself, open at the buttons, so she looks like an animal that has been sliced longways, from neck to belly button. The coat is old and tattered and yet vaguely beautiful. Underneath, she wears a red miniskirt and high heels. Her hair is threaded with multicolored beads. Some of it stands out in obscene shafts as if it hasn't been washed in years. She walks in the center of the tracks and, when she gets to the grill facing his nest, she stands in the shaft of cold blue light beaming through from topside. He can see, even from his height, that there are streaks of dried mascara on her face. She shivers in the freezing cold and pulls the fur coat tight.