Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

“Nine hundred feet. That’s about ninety stories down.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “A long time.”

  Webster became silent. The lift scraped and growled its way into the earth and then broke into the light and noise and foul air at the bottom of the shaft. A motor swayed over the rocks at the shaft’s entrance. Its fumes blew into the lift. Owney stepped out into a puddle of water.

  “Hold it.” Webster was rooted to the lift and he reached out for Owney. Now the motor threw more fumes and Webster covered his mouth. Suddenly, his eyes went to the rock roof. His mouth opened in pure fear. His legs took him backward. Bells began ringing, and as the lift started up, Webster’s head jerked straight up, exposing a chicken neck, giving the appearance of a man being hanged.

  Owney rode through the tunnel from the Bronx to the face, which was hundreds of feet under the sidewalks of upper Manhattan. As the motor ran through the tunnel, the rock overhead became mean and the steel supports on some places were only a couple of feet apart, but in others, with similar dirty white lines shooting through the rock, there appeared to be too much space between supports. When Owney got off, he found his father walking along the tunnel and muttering about uncovered hoses running along the walls. “These things are supposed to be covered. We’ll shoot and the rock’ll break the lines.”

  Owney just walked away, going under an area where a shaft went up hundreds of feet, to 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where it was sealed on the street with a large metal hatch. Past the shaftway, the tunnel was wet and strewn with rock and much of the walking had to be done sideways. He moved to the face, where they were loading it for a shot. Rolling up the fatigue jacket, he shoved it as far as he could into the large center hole, the burn hole, his hand feeling the gun inside. He stepped back. The blaster came up and began stuffing the holes with explosives. Owney became wary: he waited until he saw that the hole was loaded. He was the last man to leave the face, walking behind the others up the tracks, where he stayed until there was the pop-pop-pop of explosives going off in sequence. As it was the end of Friday, and there was no night shift coming in, all along the tunnel things were being shut off and Owney complained loudly about air and water hoses that were left uncovered by plywood.

  “Why don’t the men do it?” Owney said to his father.

  “Because men today are too lazy. I asked three people to do it today.”

  “Where are the three? In your head?”

  His father looked at him blankly and turned and walked up the tunnel. “I’m going to sit here until you tell me something,” Owney called after him. He sat down on a bench along the wall. His father came back carrying wood. Owney’s eyes drooped; he stretched out on the bench. “Go ahead, keep fooling around. For once, I’m not going away,” Owney said. His father began dropping wood over the hoses. He kept walking back and forth nervously. Owney fell asleep with the wood the only sound in the empty tunnel.

  Until the rock overhead made its sound. Caw. Owney’s father dropped the wood and began to run. Owney was behind him, the two of them moving along the side of the tunnel, half sliding along the rock, half stumbling. Caw. Now they were past the sealed shaft and at the section of the tunnel where the rail tracks began. Now they were running along the tracks, splashing through water in the darkness, and for a moment Owney remembered that he had done this once before with his father, when he was a kid, only that time the father was running behind him, and it was fun, and Owney was thinking that he was too young to have life repeating itself on him, and then the gray rock with ugly white lines screamed.

  Tons of ancient rock crashed onto the floor of the tunnel, forming a pile that was a small pyramid. The rock crashed and then there was total silence in the tunnel, except for the loud, endless moan from Owney’s father.

  “It’s very nice here today,” her mother said. “Beautiful.”

  “Nicer than there.” They were at one end of Rockaway, where there are houses on the beach. She was pointing to the boardwalk, which was twenty blocks down and whose sands attracted Puerto Ricans who cooked on the beach.

  Then her mother said, “It would be nice if it was like this all year.”

  “It is in Florida. Go there.”

  “Oh, I don’t know yet.”

  “Sure you do. You know I’m going away in September,” Dolores said.

  “When will I see the baby?” Her mother lifted the baby from her.

  “You will.”

  “And what about Owney? Did you tell him yet?”

  “No.”

  “When are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I guess.”

  “You’re taking her away from everybody. I never said I didn’t like the baby.”

  “I just recognize that sometimes it is hard.”

  “What’s the poor child going to do in the snow?”

  “She’ll be well taken care of.”

  “Where? In this care place?”

  “Day care.”

  “I don’t like day care. The mother is supposed to do day care.”

  “The mother can’t be there all day.”

  “Then the grandmother does care. I don’t like day care.”

  “Do you like being in a strange place with six feet of snow and ten degrees below zero better than you like day care?”

  “Weather don’t make no difference when you’re inside.”

  Her mother put the baby down. Christine was on her stomach in a gulley that the water had formed in the sand alongside the old rocks. The last of a wave ran over the sand and the water lapped at the baby’s side and then enough of it got under her to lift her. As the water ran out of the gulley, ran swiftly out alongside the rock jetty, it carried the baby with it. Christine was in water that was only ankle deep and her small hands could still clutch wet sand. The water, however, was pulling her out. Dolores took two long steps and had her baby, swooping her up from the water, and Christine gave a delighted cry. And Dolores looked at the rock jetty, at rocks with white lines showing through black glistening sea moss.

  “What’s the matter?” her mother said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You shivered:”

  “I guess just thinking about the snow made me cold.”

  Owney was up on the pile of rocks in the tunnel and trying to work his way down to his father, who was in there somewhere, and whose moans filled the tunnel. Owney felt that he was climbing high and that his father was on the far side of the rock pile. He started to lower himself. Now there was the sound of men coming on the other side of the rock pile. Suddenly, through a space in the rocks, Owney could see flashlight beams jerking in the darkness as the men holding them stumbled over rocks. Then he heard the voice of Wozniak, one of the Poles from Greenpoint. With it, the singsong of a West Indian. Maybe Lazarus. Peering through the rocks, Owney saw that there were three men. They had their flashlights on his father’s face. Now the face was gone as they were throwing clothes over him to prevent shock. Hands dug under the shoulders of Owney’s father and tried to move him. The face under the pile of clothes screamed.

  Wozniak was talking in a whisper. Then the whisper grew to a shout. “We can’t move as long as his foot is here. The foot is wrapped around the rocks.”

  “We’ll have to wait for a doctor,” one of them said.

  “Wait? Nobody waits here,” Wozniak said. He threw a flashlight up at the roof. There was a great cavity left by the rock that had fallen. The cavity was shot full of white.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Wozniak said.

  Owney yelled through the hole in the rock. “Wait until I come around.”

  “Come around? Take you all day to get here. We got to go.”

  “What about the foot?” the West Indian said.

  “Comes off.” Wozniak scrambled forward on his knees and put his face against the pile of clothes covering Owney’s father. “It’s all gone, anyway. I can see it. You can’t. I hate to say this to you, but it’s got to
come off so we can get out of here.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Owney’s father said.

  “They could sew it back on,” Owney called. “You take it off, he never has a foot again. Why don’t we get him out with the foot?”

  “It would take weeks to get his foot out of here,” Wozniak said. “We’re going now.”

  “They got surgery,” Owney said.

  The cavity in the rock roof settled the argument by squeaking.

  “We’re going!” Wozniak shouted. He had the flashlight on the father’s foot. Owney crept through the hole in the rock. He could get part of his face and one arm through. He looked down into the light and saw a band of skin on the outside of the rock. It was holding the father’s foot to the leg. It was also holding the father to the rock. Owney could reach down and touch the band of skin.

  “It goes,” Wozniak said. Suddenly, in the light, his hand held a penknife.

  “Give it to me,” Owney said.

  Wozniak gave him the penknife. Now Owney’s nerves went down, down, and his voice was flat and low.

  “There’s no way?”

  “None,” Wozniak said. “You see for yourself.”

  “Pop. No way, Pop.”

  “Just do what you got to do.”

  Owney’s hand reached down as Wozniak held the flashlight right on the band of skiri. The rock under the skin served as a cutting board and the small penknife went through a band of skin that was much thicker than it appeared.

  And now the skin was gone as Wozniak and the others were tugging and they had Owney’s father out and were carrying him away in a basket. Somewhere overhead, there was a sound in the cavity of the roof and something small dropped and then the cavity screamed and Owney dived into the blackness. A slab of rock fell. It had to be an enormous slab, for its thud was exceptionally loud.

  As the accident occurred at three in the afternoon and rushing a footless man to the hospital was the first duty, it took an hour before a search could be organized for Owney Morrison. The first people to reach the cave-in shouted through a bullhorn and flashed lights. There was no sound. A wall of rock stood between them and anybody on the other side, if there was anybody. Moving the rocks could be done only with dynamite and then only over many days.

  The only chance, they decided, was to open the shaft at 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue and send a bucket down. As the shaft at that point was five hundred feet deep, a crane with that much cable on the reel was needed.

  At this hour, four-thirty on a Friday afternoon in the summer, the New York construction trade was on the highways going to Hampton Bays and Lake George and Breezy Point. Sitting in his shack, Chris Doyle called two construction equipment yards and in each found only a watchman. Both watchmen made calls, and a half-hour later, Doyle heard from Al Bessing, who had a construction equipment company in Yonkers and was starting his weekend in Sea Bright, in New Jersey. It took Bessing almost two hours to round up drivers and equipment.

  Dolores Morrison arrived at 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue at eight o’clock. There were lights turned on inside the fence. The yellow metal door covering the shaft had been pulled open. Sandhogs stood at the top and looked down.

  Navy took Dolores by the arm and led her to the edge of the shaft. She looked down into the darkness.

  Navy said, “We have to drop a line down. Just like we’re fishing. I think we’ll have a catch for you today.”

  Dolores said nothing and walked slowly out onto the street. Queens, she told herself. She must have seen a hundred pictures on television of Queens wives being hustled through crowds to the hospital where dead police husbands or firemen were. She walked down the hill alongside a gloomy stone church, turned the corner of Broadway, and climbed the church steps. It was closed. A Presbyterian church. She walked down the stairs. A woman was arguing with a cab driver. Going back up the street, she passed a man walking a sheepdog, a woman struggling with supermarket bundles, and a young boy on a skateboard. She crossed the street to another church. This one was almost opposite the shaft. These doors, too, were locked.

  She turned and walked deliberately across the street and over to the shaft, and peered down again. If there was a way out, she knew, Owney would find it. Maybe that’s what he’s for, she thought, big emergencies. What good is all the courage if it’s something you can use only in a great emergency? You’re supposed to place your hands on life every day. Then she told herself, Maybe that’s what it’s for. Big emergencies. So his life floated from one calamity to another. What about most people who could handle nothing and would clutch his arm if something went wrong? Maybe I should have realized that and tried to fit it all in. She shook her head against the brooding thought.

  As she was thinking of this, somebody ran up and took her picture. She felt strange being alone. It’s true, she told herself, you don’t feel comfortable in a picture unless you have a husband standing next to you.

  Navy stood alongside her arid said nothing for awhile. Then he said in a low voice, “How have you been doing in school?”

  “Fine. I’m making it on my own.”

  “In the meantime, your husband is the first in the family to practice medicine. His father’s foot.”

  She said nothing. A few paces away, she could hear Danny Murphy saying to somebody, “Geez, these accidents are terrible. Billy Kennedy died six months ago from a massive heart attack. Down in Long Beach. He was at a fire. His wife got married four months ago. Jesus, she didn’t give him time to turn in his coffin.”

  Horn blaring, the flatbed truck carrying a crane pulled around the corner. The truck backed up and the crane was placed over the shaft. A motor sounded and threw fumes into the hot evening air. A guy with light curly hair and a red face jumped off the crane and held his hand out as a bucket lowered. The curly-haired guy and two sandhogs got into the bucket. The crane dropped them down the shaft. Chris Doyle held up a lamp.

  Dolores watched the lamp drop down the shaft, the light turning into the smallest match flame. The cable slowed and the crane became still. Somebody said that they would be trying to signal with a horn from the bottom, but the traffic on the street made it impossible to pick out the sound. Everybody concentrated on the small light.

  Dolores prayed. Around her was silence and still air. Then a light wiggled. Dolores looked at the light as it grew in the darkness. She prayed and hoped that Owney was alive for himself, and her daughter, and yes, for her too.

  If he’s dead, I am not going to let myself feel guilty. She stared down the shaft. At her back, the crane motor made a racket and the cables squealed. No one talked.

  The men around her leaned farther out over the shaft, trying to pierce the darkness, and they still said nothing and the wires squealed and then the breath and prayer caught in her throat. There was no sudden movement or sound. The cables just smoothly pulled the bucket into the light. She saw the curly-haired man first, because he was laughing and he had most of his body around Owney’s in a hug. Owney stepped off and pushed through to Dolores. He covered her mouth with his and pressed her against him. She felt nothing. Then Owney let go of her and quickly turned and began accepting grabs from the other men.

  It had not been an embrace, she realized, for there had been no passion. It had been a thanksgiving kiss. He walked over and took her hand, gripped it, and started walking her away, and she felt the hand trying to wrest the future from her. One moment she had been filled with compassion and now fear whirred in her. Had she, by standing still at the edge of a pit, abandoned the chance to change her life?

  At Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, at four in the morning, they were with Owney’s mother, seated on wooden chairs outside the intensive care unit.

  “You eat anything?” the mother said.

  “I don’t even remember,” Dolores said.

  “I left pot roast on the stove,” the mother said.

  “It’ll still be there when you get home.”

  “I left a whole pot roast just sitting th
ere.”

  A doctor the size of a jockey came down the hall. He looked at Owney, indicating he wanted to talk to him, but Owney shook his head. “It’s all right,” he told the doctor, indicating he could speak in front of the mother.

  “He lost the foot, you know,” the doctor said.

  “I was hoping they found it—and maybe sewed it back on.”

  “Afraid they didn’t.”

  Without looking at his mother, Owney put a hand on her arm. The mother stared at the wall.

  “Can’t do anything about it?” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then I guess you can’t.”

  The mother stood up.

  “Where you going?”

  “Just for a little walk down the hall.”

  Dolores said, “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, I’ll just take a little walk by myself.”

  The mother’s step was firm and she seemed relaxed as she walked.

  “She’ll be all right, won’t she?” Dolores said.

  “Yes, she will. That’s her way. She can take things. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. She just can take things.”

  They sat in silence. Dolores put her hand over his. She wondered if by touching him she was merely trying to give comfort, or if she was also actually expressing remorse, confirming to herself what had already happened, that a sudden tragedy was decreeing that she should return to the life for which she had been raised.

  “So we wind up here,” Owney said.

  She did not answer. Nor did her hand move. Did it remain because it was obeying a heart that had decided that it no longer had redress?

  “I know I figured out one thing,” he said. “We should have had another baby.”

  Her hand raised. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what I know about myself.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.” She stood up. “I know that I best be home to take care of the one I’ve got.”

  “We’ve got.”

  She nodded.

  “What do you think I did sitting six hours in a cave maybe I wasn’t going to get out of? Sit there thinking that I wanted to live without my wife and daughter?”