Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

He knew them, some of them, from the map in the schoolroom. There was the Great Horse. There was the Hunter. There, so faint he could not be sure, but there, he thought, were the Pleiades, a cluster of minor stars, the seven, a circle of phosphorescence.

He stood for some time, watching. He had never imagined this star-specked stillness. Had the farm in Dingle been like this? He couldn’t know, for the farm was the past; it had existed before he was born. He knew it from his parents’ memories as the place where the hens had died, where the potatoes had died. It was what his mother meant by heaven: Dingle with the hunger removed. He wondered now if it had stood under stars like this. If it had, she would naturally believe that the dead went there.

A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind, that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.

He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he’d thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this.

At the apartment, his parents remained behind their door. Lucas didn’t venture in. He thought it would be better to let them rest. With rest, they might yet become themselves again.

He went into his bedroom and read the book.

Lucas lay in his bed with St. Brigid above him and Emily across the way, eating behind her curtain. He slept. If he dreamed, his dreams were lost upon awakening.

His parents were still quiet behind their door. He decided it was better to leave them. He couldn’t help them anymore. He could help only Catherine.

He was waiting before her building when she emerged in her blue dress. She was not glad to see him. Her face settled into an expression of sorrowful blankness, like the angel’s in the park. She said, “Hello, Lucas.” She turned and started off in the direction of the Mannahatta Company. He fell in alongside her.

“Catherine,” he said, “you must not go to work today.”

“You’ve used up my patience, Lucas. I have no time for you anymore.”

“Come away with me. Let me take you away.”

She walked on. In a fury of desperation, before he knew what he did, he took her skirt in his hand and tugged at it. “Please,” he said. “Please.”

“Leave me, Lucas,” she said, in a voice more awful for its measured calm. “You can do nothing for me. I can do nothing for you.”

He stood still and watched helplessly as she went east, to her machine. He waited until she had traveled a distance, then followed. As they neared the sewing shop, other women in the same blue dresses gathered in the street. He watched as Catherine went among them. He watched as she went through the door. He remained a while. More women in blue dresses passed him and entered the building. He imagined Catherine mounting the stairs, going to her machine. He saw her work the treadle. He knew the machine would be gladdened by her touch. He knew it had been waiting patiently through the night, singing to itself, thinking of Catherine.

She could not be allowed to remain there. She had no idea of the danger she was in. He stood helplessly before the building as the last of the women entered. He was too small and strange; he could do nothing more to intercede.

No. There was something he could do. There was one thing.

The trick would be to stop his machine before it had eaten more than his hand. He had to figure stealthily as he worked. He couldn’t let the others see him in his calculations. He knew he could not put one hand under the wheel and pull the lever with his other hand. The distance was too far. But he thought that if he stretched himself forward, if he lay half upon the belt, he could pull the lever with his foot, and stop the wheel in time.

Lucas put off from moment to moment that which he had to do. It was easy, it was fatally easy, to keep on working. Even now, the waking sleep of his work life wanted him. He aligned and clamped. He pulled, pulled again, inspected. Even now he felt his resolve slipping away, and not only his resolve. His self was diminishing. He was becoming what he did. He began to think, as an hour passed, that he had dreamed of Catherine and her plight, had dreamed of everything that was not this, and was awake again, in the only world. To rouse himself, he thought of her putting stitches into blouses and shirts. He thought of the pressing machine, its rollers raised and waiting, exhaling draughts of steam.

He was ready. If he didn’t do it now, he might not do it at all. He glanced around. The others were at their labor. He took a plate, dropped it on the belt. He placed it perfectly against the line. He was expert at that; he was proud of it. He put his left hand the left would be better along the plate’s upper edge. He aligned his fingers against the edge and in so doing was calmed. This was his work. He reached over with his right hand and pulled the lever.

The belt started. He felt the movement of the rollers that turned the belt, their sure and steady rhythm. This was how the iron felt, going in. His left hand rode along with the plate. He felt graceful, like a dancer.

He passed through a moment of beauty. He was partner to the iron and the machine.

His hand was conveyed along. His body was gently stretched, and stretched further. His toe slipped away from the lever. He scrambled to find it again and lost his grace. He was a foolish thing, struggling. His foot touched the lever, though he couldn’t be sure it was the right one. He glanced back. He couldn’t be sure. When he turned again, his fingers were going under the wheel.

He watched it happen. He saw that his hand was positioned between two teeth. His fingers slipped into the space between them. The teeth bit into the iron. His fingers went under. His knuckles went under. The drum of the wheel touched his fingertips. It was warm, warmer than he’d expected it to be. It was as warm as his mother’s mouth had been when he reached in to retrieve the bit of potato. He felt it crushing his fingertips. There was no pain. There was a high pale nothingness. With its warm implacable patience the wheel crushed his knuckles. There was no pain and no blood. There was no sound but that of the machine.

Then he returned to himself. Then he saw what he did. He saw the larger body of his hand going under. He tried to pull the lever with his toe. He lost his purchase. He cried out. He didn’t recognize the noise he made. He fumbled with his boot, and found the lever again. For a moment it didn’t yield. And then it did. With its little clicking sigh, the wheel stopped turning.

Lucas could not remove his hand. There was still no blood. There was still no pain, but there was something. A tingling. A newness. He remained where he was, looking at his arm and his vanished hand with numb fascination.