Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

The mud was sometimes knee deep, the ceiling of the vault dripping, the shoring timbers in constant creaking danger of collapse, the noise level shattering, jackhammers and drills pounding and stuttering, steel carts rumbling on rickety makeshift tracks, hauling dirt dearly paid for shovelful by shovelful, laborers sweating and coughing and belching and farting, foremen shouting orders in the lamplit gloom, half a dozen different languages and dialects creating a harsher din than that of a thousand picks striking sparks from granite. There were many fistfights, sometimes three and four a day, that might not have occurred had the men been working aboveground in the bright sunshine. But the tunnel was a tight, crowded, restricting place, and a closed crowd is a dangerous crowd because it cannot explode outward and can only turn upon itself.

Francesco was thinking only of home when it happened.

He was thinking that in April the wintry muddy waters of the Ofanto in the valley below rushed clear and sweet with torrents from the mountaintops. The banks rolling gently to the riverside would be covered with buttercups and violets, lavender and...

The voice that sounded beside him was intrusive. It brought him back to the dark reality of the tunnel; it made him conscious of the pick handle irritating the fresh blisters on his palms; it drowned the murmur of the river, allowed the reverberating noise of the tunnel to come crashing in again. The voice was Irish. I shall make no attempt (see, Rebecca?) to try for the brogue, or to counterfeit Francesco’s labored English. In the end, the men understood each other. On a level more basic than language, they finally understood each other.

“What are you doing there?” the Irishman said.

“I’m working,” Francesco answered.

“You know what I’m talking about, you fucking dago. What are you doing there with my pick?”

“This is not your pick.”

He looks at the pick. It is surely his own pick. The handle is stained with mud and sweat, and the water from his blisters, and the blood from his hands. It is his pick. It is not the Irishman’s.

“It is my pick.”

Actually, the argument is academic. It is neither Francesco’s pick nor the Irishman’s. The pick belongs to the Belmont-McDonald syndicate, the subway’s contractors. Each morning the workmen’s tools are issued to them, and each night they must be returned. They are not debating actual possession, they are merely attempting to ascertain which of them has the right to work with this tool, this pick, this day. But the pick has not been out of Francesco’s hands since seven o’clock this morning, he knows it is the one he has been working with all day long. So what is the matter with this Irishman? Is he crazy?

“It’s your pick, is it, dummy? And what are those initials then on it?”

He does not understand the word “initials.” What is initials? He looks at the handle of the pick again.

“I don’t understand.”

“No capish, huh, dago? Give me the pick.”

Francesco hands the pick to the Irishman unresistingly. He knows there has been some misunderstanding here, and he feels certain it will be cleared up the moment the Irishman can feel the pick in his own two hands. He watches as the Irishman carefully examines the handle of the pick, reddish-blond hairs curling on the back of each thick finger, hair running from the knuckles to the wrists, turns the handle over and over again in his hands, searching, eyes squinched, what is he looking for, this man? The eyes are blue. They glance up momentarily from the scrutiny of the pick, look directly into Francesco’s eyes, piercingly and accusingly, and then wrinkle in something resembling humorous response, but not quite, the mouth echoing the expression, the lips thinly pulling back, no teeth revealed, a narrow smile of eyes and mouth that strikes sudden terror into Francesco’s heart. He knows now that there will be trouble. The man is twice his size. He contemplates kicking him in the groin immediately, here and now, this instant, strike first and at once — before it is too late.

The Irishman is taking a knife from his pocket.

The lamps flicker on the steel blade as he pulls it with his fingernails from the narrow trench in the bone handle. The blade is perhaps four inches long, honed razor sharp, glittering with pinprick points of reflected light. Francesco is certain the Irishman intends to stab him, but he does not know why. Is it because of “initials”? Unconsciously, he backs against the wall of the tunnel. Muddy water drips from above onto his head and shoulders. He feels naked. He feels the way he felt at Ellis Island when the doctor poked his finger into his rectum, rubber glove slippery with jelly. He is very afraid he will soil himself. The Irishman squats on his haunches, laying the pick across his knees, tilting the handle toward the light. With the blade of the knife, he scrapes an area free of caked mud, up near the head of the handle, where the curved metal bar is fitted snugly onto it. Then, slowly and deliberately, he begins digging into the wood with the tip of the knife. Francesco cannot yet fathom what he is doing. His fear has dissipated somewhat, he is beginning to realize he was wrong about the Irishman’s intent; he does not plan to cut him. But what is he doing to the handle of the pick?

And then Francesco understands. The man has carved a letter into the wood, the letter P, and after this he gouges out a small dot, a period, and then begins to carve the letter H, meticulously digging out each vertical bar, and then the crossbar, and then uses the point of the knife to gouge out another period. Rising, standing erect again, he closes the knife and puts it back into his pocket. Then he brings the pick close to his mouth and blows into the carved letters, sending fine minuscule splinters flying, and then passes his hand over the letters caressingly, and looks at Francesco, and grins.

“P.H. Patrick Halloran. My name, my initials, and my damn pick.”

The Irishman continues to grin. Is there some humor here that Francesco is missing because of his scant understanding of English? There are so many words in English which sound the same, but mean different things. Is “pick” one of those words, and has he missed the entire thrust of the conversation from the very beginning? But no. “Dago” he understands, and “fucking” he understands, and yet he has heard these men jokingly calling themselves big fucking micks, which he knows is derogatory, so perhaps fucking dago was meant in the same way, perhaps a joke was intended, after all; perhaps the man was only being friendly, is that a possibility? He misses so many nuances because he does not understand; the subtleties of this land are overwhelming. But if it was all a joke, if the man is smiling now because a joke was intended, then why did he put his mark on a pick belonging to the company? Francesco knows it is the man’s mark, he knows he is not mistaken about that because now that he has seen the letters gouged into the wood, the word “initials” makes sense to him, it is almost identical to the Italian word iniziali . Is it possible that the man was only trying to introduce himself? Trying to tell Francesco his name? Carving his initials into the wood handle to facilitate communication? This appears ridiculous to Francesco, but so many things in this new country seem foolish to him. Would the man have damaged a pick belonging to the company merely to have his name be known? Does he not know the company rules? Does he not realize... and here a new fear seizes Francesco. This is the pick that was assigned to him this morning. A workman was responsible for his own tools, and had to pay for any damage done to them through his own negligence. Would he now have to pay for the damage this man has done to the pick handle by carving his initials into it?