Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

Walker watches as two boys throw a baseball back and forth. The ball thumps in their catching mitts. Walker smiles to himself, thinking this is probably the first sub-aqua pitch in the history of the world. He steps between the boys and ducks the flying ball. The boys cheer.

“Spitball!” says Walker, and he goes further into the tunnel.

A few of the women, including Carmela Vannucci — heavily built with a pile-up of hair at her neck — carry rosary beads that leak through their fingers. They whisper to Saint Barbara, the patron of miners. There is melancholy in the movement of the women — they are praying for the tunnel dead — and yet a relief that it wasn’t their own men who were spirited away. Long dresses swishing, hair in bonnets, the wives slip their arms through their husbands’ elbows as they walk down the side of the track.

In the candlelight, Walker finds Sean Power limping along, holding his nephew’s hand. Power turns and puts his hand on the boy’s head.

“Meet Mister Walker.”

The boy stretches out a grimy hand. “Hello.”

“Mister Walker was around that day God farted,” says Power.

“Huh?” says the boy.

“The day we got blown from the tunnel.”

The boy chuckles but still holds tight to his uncle’s hand. Walker follows behind them. He listens as his fellow mucker points out parts of the tunnel to the boy.

“That’s where the foreman with the glass eye sat,” says Power. “His hair went on fire one day.”

“Did his eye melt?”

“’Course not,” says Power. “And the welder went on fire here. Tomocweski. Up in a ball of flames. Smelt like roast beef.”

“Really?”

“The doctors saved his ass, though.”

“Did he have a glass eye too?”

“No.”

“Pity.”

They stop and look up at the sheet of gray concrete that coats the ceiling. Power leans on his cane and takes a flask of bourbon from his pocket. He sips at it, passes it back to Walker.

“Unc, is the river up there?”

“Yeah. Right above us.”

“Wow! Can I go fishing?”

“None of your wisecracks,” says Power. “See here? A guy called Sarantino broke his finger in the bolt fastener right there. Popped it in, almost lost the damn thing. After wiping sweat off his forehead. His finger slipped. You can’t imagine how hot it was every day.”

“It’s cold now, Unc.”

“I know it’s cold now, but it was hotter than hell.”

“Can I put a penny on the tracks?”

“Why?”

“To make it flat when the train comes.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“When the train comes we’ll be gone.”

“Awww.”

“We’ll have some silence now.”

“Why’s that?”

“Someone’s going to say a prayer.”

“A prayer, Uncle Sean?”

Power points at Walker. “Yeah, a prayer.”

“The nigger?”

“He ain’t a nigger, son, he’s a sandhog.” Power coughs. “Hush up now, son, and listen.”

A few of the men and their families drift off and form their own prayer groups.

“Go ahead, Nathan,” says Power. “Hit us with some holy stuff.”

Walker clasps his hands together, asks the people to bow their heads and, instead of saying a prayer, to silently remember all the dead.

Walker unclasps his hands and puts his fist over his heart. Vannucci stands stockstill. Power closes his eyes. A two-minute silence is interrupted only by Power’s nephew scuffing his shoes on the track until he is smacked on the head by his uncle. The boy lowers his head sheepishly.

The remainder is like the silence of having forgotten something very important, then remembering it and reliving it all at once.

Once the prayer is finished with a loud “Amen,” Power moves down the tunnel, sipping from the silver flask as he goes. His limp is more pronounced now as he moves, and he is happy to have the other men’s wives look at him with sympathy.

The baseball pitching resumes. A bottle of sarsaparilla is shared among the children: a great treat, they swish it around in their mouths before swallowing. Some women place flowers at the edge of the tracks, and more candles are lit beside the bouquets. Midway in the tunnel the men shake hands, welders searching out other welders, waterboys chatting with other water-boys. The muckers know each other from the day the two halves of the tunnel met. Bottles of champagne were smashed against the Greathead Shield that day. The men share cigarettes — no compressed air now, so the smokes last a long time.

Power’s nephew goes running up the tunnel to throw the baseball with the other boys.

After a while the three muckers are left standing alone. At eye level in front of Walker is the spot that was once riverbed, where he was stuck before he was blown free. He reaches his hand out and tries to catch air in his palm, as if he could hold it, taste it, stop it, re-create the moment. Vannucci stands beside him. Above them somewhere, they are not sure where, is the body of Con O’Leary.

“Wish Con could see that baseball flying,” says Power. “He sure’s hell would like that. He’d get one helluva kick from that.”

“He sure would.”

Another silence and they stare up at the ceiling, each of them with their hands in their pockets.

“Y’all know why pirates used to wear gold earrings?” says Walker.

“Why’s that?”

“So’s they could buy a plot of land from God.”

“That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard,” says Power.

“Well, be that as it is, but it’s true.”

“I hope I don’t go to no watery grave,” says Power. “Or if I do, at least let it be bourbon.”

Walker steps away toward the side of the tunnel, then says, “Hey, you two! Come over here.”

As the muckers come forward, they watch Walker dig down deep in his pocket and take out a ring of hammered gold. Walker rolls the ring between his thumb and forefinger for a moment, holds it to his eye, spies the tunnel through it, and then tosses it to the side of the tracks. The three muckers watch it roll and settle in the pebbles.

“Maura O’Leary gave me that to leave here,” says Walker.

“She what?”

“She wanted it left here.”

“Well, I’ll be,” says Power. “She just gave it to you to throw away?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s hers, ain’t it?”

“It is the ring of Maura?” asks Rhubarb, the Italian having learned some rudiments of the language since the accident.

“Sure is. Her wedding band. She took it off her finger this morning and gave it to me. Said she didn’t have the strength to come down here herself. Asked me to do it for her. Leave it here for Con. So’s he can buy his land from God.”

“Well, knock me over,” says Power. “That’s a fine woman.”

“Sure as hell is.”

“How’s what’s-her-name? The youngster?”

“Eleanor,” says Walker. “The child’s growing like a weed.”

“No kidding?”

“She’ll be up and walking soon.”

They stand complicitous in the silence and nod awkwardly, then glance away.

“My God, look at that,” mumbles Walker.

“What?”

“Look at them candles,” he whispers.

“Which candles?”

“Look at them candles moving.”

At the end of the tunnel, the boys have tucked away the baseball and are tossing lighted candles. One by one the lights go out and then flare again with struck matches, all throwing deep-walled shadows in the distance. Power’s nephew stretches out his arm to catch one of the candles. Walker watches as the lights dance back and forth in the distant darkness. The workers and their families are lit by the shimmers. Slowly the lights fade. Randall stands stockstill at the head of the tunnel, fuming. One of the sandhogs snips the red ribbon as he walks past. Randall reties it himself with shaking hands. The last few yellow lights wink. The final candle gets thrown and is gone. Walker grips his thighs through his threadbare pockets, coughs, and whispers to his two friends.