Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  “I have been offered a new position, sir, in a field of engineering in which I have no experience. I think it might be one of the most important decisions I ever make. I wanted your advice as to whether I should accept the post or not. I thought it better to speak in person.”

  The position, he explained, was that of chief engineer for the western division of the Boston Water Works. As Mr. Long was aware, he had no experience of hydraulic engineering. Since their days on the Allegheny Portage Railroad, whenever he had been able to find some work, it had always been on railroads. He had never surveyed for a canal, never built an aqueduct, never designed a sewage system. He probably knew less about water than most of the men on this boat.

  “I take it you are afraid of failure?”

  “Not only failure. I fear that leaving the railroads to start as a beginner again with water might be a backward step. In your view, sir, will we rely more on our canals or on our railroads in the future?”

  “It depends where you are,” said Mr. Long. “I hear a group of local speculators have bought up ten thousand acres because Cairo is to become the southern terminal for an Illinois Central Railroad. But railroads cannot do everything and cannot go everywhere. Where would we be without water? Building a canal is a marvelous enterprise. One of the great regrets of my life is that I was never given the contract to construct the first canal I ever surveyed. I did that survey in 1816, in Chicago, but it’s taken them till now, thirty years on, to start digging. It will be one of the most important canals in America.”

  “Sir?”

  “For the first time, ships will be able to pass from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Just imagine what that will mean.”

  Ellis did not know much about Chicago, other than what he had seen on passing through. It was a small, nondescript town, but he could see how such a canal might help to boost its fortunes.

  “What did I always tell you about becoming an engineer?” said Mr. Long. “That it’s not about the schools you go to but about the depth and variety of experience you accumulate.”

  “Though you would not believe that, the way some people talk.”

  Mr. Long sighed. “I learned more in a month’s work on the Baltimore and Ohio than at Dartmouth College and West Point put together.”

  “I am encouraged to hear you say that, sir.”

  “I have shared my frustrations with you, Mr. Chesbrough. There is no new challenge or experience to be derived from the work you find me doing here. I have been thwarted by the government in Washington in my ambition to destroy the Red River Raft and condemned, instead, to managing ten minor projects in ten different places.” His gaze was level. “You have been offered a fine opportunity, Ellis. Now, do you understand the second Long test?”

  The captain’s whistle blew. The break was over and it was time to swing the grapple and remove more obstructions. Ellis looked forward to the afternoon’s work. He drained his coffee and smiled. “Thank you, sir. Yes, I understand.”

  1847

  THE CLOCHAN

  This chapbook was believed to have been in private circulation in Chicago during the 1890s. Who transcribed the monologue, and when, remains unknown. The trustees of the Chicago Historical Society have declared it to be an artifact of cultural importance. It should be noted, by way of introduction, that more Irish immigrated to the United States during the 1840s, when the potato famine was at its height, than any other nationality.

  YERRA, IT’S NO surprise you want to hear about Mochta. Everyone always does. I shall do my best, though God knows it opens fresh wounds in my heart each time I tell the tale. That great ruffian was different from the rest of us, and not only because he stood tall and strong as the rock of Teeraught. I swear God’s grace surrounded him like a smothering of Blasket mist. There was nobody that didn’t feel it, even when the big dolt was dizzy with drink and his speech was wandering. I saw more souls flee the living hell of that Canal for the Blessed Isles than I could count, but Mochta should never have been one of them. That brother of mine was a force of nature. He should have lasted to be old, and the shame is that I could have saved him, the day fate came looking for him.

  Mochta was born in ’22, my elder sibling by three years, and he was the strongest man on Great Blasket. I worshipped him. He could charm a crab with his crack-toothed grin, and if I hooked a big pollack and he fetched me a friendly clout on the ear, I was in Heaven, so to speak. We were the eldest two of nine, though only five of us survived. My parents named me Dubhaltach Bruaideadh, and you can write that down as you will, for I’m not the one to tell you how. There was a school in the Lower Village, but it did not often see a teacher. In any case, the younger ones in the litter were sent to learn the chalk marks, not Mochta or me. Our work was with my father. We went fishing and hunted seals, we grew potatoes and cut the turf.

  I’ve lived without knowing letters all my life, and I am the happier for it. I’ve seen what happens. Once a thing is marked down on paper, it can’t be changed. It’s writing that landowners and bailiffs use to cheat their tenants. It’s writing that turns everything to stone. Much better, that words be left to blow in the breeze. Much better that no story is ever the same. Because that’s how life is, isn’t it? Everything is on the wheel, and always will be. O by Mary, writing is a curse, for what it fixes. But do as you will. Write down all the words you want. Nothing I tell you will be invented, for I’ve no need for anything but the truth when I speak about Mochta. I knew that rascal better than he knew himself.

  One day … it was in either ’41 or ’42 … he left the Island to find his fortune in America. The years passed, and after my wife was taken one stormy night on the rocks off Inishtooshkert—the blessings of God be on her soul—Mochta sent me the passage money for the crossing. No, I didn’t think bread grew on hedges and there were mountains made of gold, whatever dreams that brother of mine planted in my head. I only wanted me and the whelp to have the chance of a second start.

  We arrived at Deer Island in Boston, and the Yankees laughed when I told them my name was Dubhaltach Bruaideadh. They said I must be drunk. All Irishmen were bogtrotters on the bottle, to their way of thinking. My first lesson in English would be to learn my new name, which they told me was Dudley Brody. I didn’t complain, though some from the Old Country disagreed. For me, a name is only a sound that will pass soon enough, once we’re gone. So if they wanted to call me Dudley Brody, though it seemed short and ugly, I made no objection. My boy never complained either. He was three years when we made the passage, and Osgar was easy enough for the Yankee tongue, though he soon started to call himself Oscar. It made him sound stronger, he said.

  Only Mochta refused to have his name changed. None of them could say it properly. They said “Mockter,” though there should be a pocket of air and a pause in the throat, M-uch-ta. Mr. Krumpacker called him “Mucker” and thought himself a wit for doing so. I’ll tell you more about Mr. Krumpacker in a minute, for he’s the other half in this story.

  Mochta was settled in Chicago, and there was a fine job waiting for me there. That was the yarn he’d spun. So me and the boy, we crossed the bigness of America, and one misty summer morning as the General St. Clair steamed across the surface of Lake Michigan, smoother than any sea could be, I sneaked out of steerage and went up on deck toward the prow, holding the boy tight, and dreamed of throwing out a net to see what manner of fish swum beneath all that quietness. As I was looking toward the horizon, a creamy-white beach rose out of the haze and, my soul from the devil, it was the mirror of Great Blasket’s White Strand, but ten times bigger. What a comfort that was to see. I raised my eyes, blessed by God’s mystery as I gazed into the great expanse of His sky or, as Old Conn the Poet would say, “the airy skin that holds the world together and makes it one.”

  The next moment, the General St. Clair was tying up to the pier and I saw that cheerful oaf of a brother down below, shoving ahead of everyone else to greet us, arms raised and shouting like a foghorn, and at the sight of
his great head I felt a surge of joy and hope in my heart, despite that Oscar had been puking for three days and my legs were weak as feathers. My eyes were this wide when I stepped ashore that morning. The town might have been a dwarf compared to what it is today, but Chicago seemed to me the largest, finest place in the world as we left behind the crowds on the pier, traveling like English lords in a shaky old wagon Mochta had called with a whistle and snap of fingers as if he did it every day. Despite the tribulations of the voyage, I felt as lively as a trout. Mochta directed the wagon to go first down this street, then down that one, so we could admire the line of glittering stores and hotels and coffeehouses, with painted signs and fine ladies seated near the windows drinking out of china cups, and all manner of people walking about and hawking wares, and snorting horses that pulled wagons and carriages all fighting for space and, wisha, it was magic I shall never forget, because it was like arriving in paradise, and nobody can do that twice.

  Mochta told the wagon to stop outside a market square, and had a spat with the driver about the fare. The scent of spices filled the air, of mint and ginger and marjoram, and many others I did not know. When you’ve been living on hard biscuits and oatmeal, and drinking water that stinks, a market makes your stomach growl. We passed stalls packed with every foodstuff you could imagine, tables piled with fresh loaves of bread, bags of sugar and salt, tea and coffee, dried fruits and flour. We saw butchers beating flies off great sides of pork and fat plucked chickens and juicy cuts of beef.

  While Mochta talked with a fishmonger, I compared the catch with those on Great Blasket. There were bass and perch and a browner shade of trout than I had ever seen, slithering about in full baskets. They must be easy to catch, I thought, as easy as those mackerel off Beginish three summers past. As we walked on, I said to Mochta, “Now I know why it’s a grand job you’ve found me.” I could already imagine our canoe pulled up on those dunes that looked like the White Strand, but ten times bigger. “It will be the same as in the old days.” There was no reply. My brother was talking to Oscar. Maybe that was why he did not hear me. Was I afraid? Never. Dingle might have been a minnow compared to Chicago, but why worry when Mochta was with me? You never saw a man more at ease, my trunk under one arm and Oscar under the other—he had adopted the boy at first sight—and greeting half the people we passed, though whether he knew them I could not say. He was that kind of man, who had a cheery word for everyone, friend and stranger alike.

  We stopped at a food stall and were soon eating off plates piled high with batter cakes and beans, our glasses brimming with ale. It was the best meal I had ever tasted in my life and I felt the world was back in tune. Church bells were ringing somewhere, and each stroke was like a chime of freedom. The Great Master had indeed brought us to the Promised Land. I was convinced of it, seated with Mochta that morning in the middle of the market. Oscar looked better already, and was holding down a bowl of bread and milk.

  My brother did not bide to start his questions. We became lost in the lives of our far-off Island as I gave news of every member of the family, and of the friends we had left behind. What exquisite pleasure that conversation gave me. How much I had longed for this moment when we two brothers would be reunited somewhere beneath God’s “airy skin.” And how wonderful that we needed no ships or long, perilous voyages to transport our hearts back to the Old Country, for that past was private and particular, it was in us and of us, ours and ours only.

  Yerra, that would be the first and last time since I came to America that I’ve heard any bells of freedom chime or fairy music go a-playing in my head.

  * * *

  After the welcome at the pier, and the celebration in the market, there were no more wagons. No canoe was waiting for us on the Lake’s shore. Mochta did not have lodgings in Chicago. He was not even “settled” there. He bought a loaf of bread and some dried fish before announcing that we had to walk. Off he strode, with Oscar now hoist on his shoulders, merry as a bottle of the best, whistling with the joys of life. He did not tell me how far we had to go.

  After leaving town we followed the cutting for a new canal and were seated on the towpath, taking a rest as we fought off blackflies big as hurley balls, when Mochta described the “fine job” waiting for me. We were to dig out sod for this same canal, armed with only a pick and shovel, starting another fifteen miles along the line. When he saw my disappointment he tried to froth the truth, saying we could earn enough in a few months to buy a canoe. So the rascal had heard me, when I talked about a canoe. That changed my mood. We could soon be out at dawn, hauling our nets through that fish-filled virgin Lake. But who shall care for Oscar? I asked. The cook’s wife, he said, “who has a boy the same age.”

  And how much would we be paid for this work? Seventeen dollars a month, he said, minus the three dollars they deduct for food and lodging. I did not know the cost of things in those days. It seemed a grand sum, but it wasn’t. We worked from dawn to dusk, every day but Sunday. In summer, you can imagine the hours. But “the newcomer sees only the sun,” as Old Conn used to say. I was happy. I slapped Mochta on the back and spoke another line from Old Conn, for good measure: “Honest labor feeds the belly, an honest heart feeds the soul.” He smiled, but he did not smile much. I thought I understood why. He had never given the Old Poet the respect he deserved.

  It was dusk when we arrived at the camp. The rain was coming down and we were soaked. My feet had come up in blisters. For the first time since stepping off the steamer, I felt the stirrings of despair. I had never seen a place more desolate than this. There were a dozen leaning shacks knocked together from old planks, each one marooned in a pool of mud. The rain fell in flurries as we squelched toward the shed Mochta said was ours. The door hitched open. Half a dozen men were inside, four playing cards, each one looking glum and red-eyed from exhaustion as he took his turn and swore and swatted at mosquitoes, two more racked out asleep on splintery wooden bunks. There was a stench of feet and sweat. The roof was leaking. The earthen floor was covered in spit and stains, another burst of rainfall struck the roof like gunfire, and we had missed supper. Oscar began to bawl.

  * * *

  Mary Virgin! I have run away with myself. You want to hear about Mochta, not about the whelp and me. But we had to reach the Canal, in any case, because that’s where the story happened. It started like this. One day, a foot beneath the surface of the soil, we hit a bedrock …

  Yerra, if you insist. Before I tell you about Mochta and the bedrock, I’ll describe the work we did each day, though I don’t know I have the words to do it justice. At dawn the ganger, Mr. Krumpacker, clanged the bell loud enough to shatter the deepest dreams, and we’d rise in clothes dried and stiffened while we slept and grope about in darkness for our damp, rotting boots. I’d shake Oscar awake where he lay beside me. There’d be yawns, and curses as we got in each other’s way. My fingers caked with yesterday’s soil, I’d feel for the swell of new mosquito bites (I was known as “walleye” for a while, for the number of times the overnight bites bigged up sideways on my blinkers) and after a breakfast of bacon strips and cold potatoes washed down by a mug of lukewarm coffin varnish (as we called that version of the beverage), we would be marched off to the worksite. I’d leave little Oscar with the cook’s boy, Dermot.

  There were about eighty or a hundred of us in the camp, working in teams of eight. Each team had three picks, three shovels, two wheelbarrows and one plank. The plank was used to run a full wheelbarrow up to the top of the ditch and take it past the towpath to dump the soil. Mr. Krumpacker also used the plank to avoid dirtying his breeches when he came into the ditch to measure its width and depth. The Canal was forty feet wide at the top, six feet deep and twenty-eight feet wide at the bottom. He barked out the numbers, over and over again: “Forty, sechs, und zwenty-eight! Forty, sechs, und zwenty-eight.”

  The first part of the day seemed the longest (though it wasn’t, according to the clock) and it was the worst. Our bones jarred from the day before, and
with every movement muscles ached and old pains came out of hiding. The bottom of the ditch was underwater. Our feet were always wet and numb, the skin wrinkled and blue and swollen, and we lived in constant fear of gangrene. Time moved like a snail. It seemed impossible, in those first few hours, that we could survive another day. Everyone had bites, blisters, cuts and bruises. Everyone was sick, some more, some less. In those summer months, the mosquitoes and blackflies were the happiest hunters and we hated them for it. The only thing bad as their bites was to strike a hidden rock with the pick. Every nerve in the body jumped.

  After the cook had brought beans and bread, our minds slowed down and the body’s exhaustion numbed the pain and the heat of the day lashed down and we stopped with the idle chatter and our mouths became parched, and it wasn’t long before we stopped thinking at all. Our shirts clung to our backs, but we dared not remove them for the mosquitoes. We were too tired not to drink our own sweat as it rolled off the brow. Even if we had set off that morning with an idea of where we were, raising another shovel of soil somewhere in America, the notion had passed. We no longer knew where we were or why, or how it started and whether it would ever end. Our bodies kept working only because they knew what to do and there was no choice. If they stopped, Mr. Krumpacker would notice soon enough and come swanking across to flick at us with his cowhide whip. He had a mean little pus to him and a buck goat’s wiry bush cut to a triangle beneath the chin. And those boots on which he swaggered were soled high off the ground, as if he lived a step nearer to God than the rest of us. He liked to pick on the weakest among us, and if that doesn’t show the coward, I don’t know what does.

  The top boss wasn’t Mr. Krumpacker. It was Mr. Goodman. He held the contract from the Canal Commissioners for the section between Saganashkee Swamp and Lockport. At least, that was how I understood it. When the Canal was finished it would run from Canalport in Chicago to La Salle in the west, and join Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. It sounds grand, when you say it like that, but there was nothing grand about the way we dug it. We’d never seen or heard of Mr. Goodman till one morning we hit a bedrock one foot beneath the surface that made our picks spark. We’d dug out rocks before, and big ones too, a curse because of how they slowed us down and put Mr. Krumpacker into a temper. But this was a shelf of rock, stretching nearly two hundred yards in front of us. And that meant the Canal would either have to change direction, or we’d be told to drive our way through.