The first extract is taken from the Chicago Daily Tribune of March 7, 1867. It reports a disturbance said to have taken place in the Tunnel the previous evening.
Nobody saw the cow enter or leave the Intake Tunnel, but it is presumed the breach must have occurred because a gate to the new pumping station on the lakeshore had been left open. The Chief Engineer, Mr. Ellis Chesbrough, was carrying out a final inspection of the brickwork before the Tunnel’s opening when he and his team heard the cow ‘mooing furiously.’ They went to investigate. The cow, doubtless maddened by its confinement, kicked out with such savagery at the oarsman, Mr. Michael Molloy, that the attack brought about his demise. Cracks were also sustained in the Tunnel’s brickwork that have since been repaired. Mr. Molloy’s death brings the number of lives lost in the building of the Tunnel to eight.
The second item Mrs. Hunter found was written many years later, in the early 1880s. I suspect she brought it to my attention more for my sake than hers, in that its news element was slight.
Strange goings on were reported last night inside the Intake Tunnel that feeds fresh water into the Waterworks at the foot of Chicago Avenue. It appears that a large unidentified animal may have entered the Tunnel and become trapped inside. The night watchman reported that, around midnight, he heard sounds consistent with ‘a distressed beast’ coming from somewhere inside. A rescue team was dispatched but, although they confirmed hearing an animal’s cries, they failed to find one inside the Tunnel. They did, though, discover a section of damaged brickwork. This led rescuers to speculate that the beast, thinking itself trapped, may have tried to force its way out. The mysterious visitor, then, appears to have entered and exited the Tunnel without detection.
Whilst baffled officials continue to pursue their inquiries into the incident, it is perhaps worth mentioning in this context an old Potawatomie myth. According to the Potawatomies, a creature called Nambi-Za lives beneath our Lake. Nambi-Za is one of the most terrifying creatures in Indian mythology. A large beast, he is said to have the face of a cat and the tail of a dragon. He lives underwater. His realm encompasses the Lake and the shore, and he punishes intruders and those he considers to have ‘abused Nature’ by luring them beneath the water, from whence the victims’ bodies are never recovered.
For worried readers who fear they might become Nambi-Za’s next victim, there is protection to be had. The creature’s scaly dragon tail, the legend goes, is made out of copper and the dragon would never attack anyone it perceived as one of its own. Wear a copper charm and you will be perfectly safe. And one more piece of advice. Avoid the Lake on nights of a full moon. That is when Nambi-Za is said to be at his most active.
1871
THE PERILS OF COMPROMISE
ELLIS STRUGGLED TO get to sleep and, when he did manage to nod off, he had the nightmare again. He woke to find himself standing by the window, short of breath. His nightshirt was damp. The last moments were achingly vivid. All at once, the doomed oarsman thrusts his pole down the beast’s throat, the Tunnel brickwork cracks open and the Lake comes rushing in. He wakes up drowning. The details of the dream varied, but that was how it always ended.
In her bed, his wife stirred. He heard her turn over. “Ellis?” she murmured. “Are you all right?”
“Quite well, dear.”
She was soon asleep again, snoring gently.
Ellis lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. A shiver ran down his spine, even though it was a warm, humid morning. Why had that dream started to recur? Was it anxiety that, despite preparing for every possible contingency, something had to go wrong at the last moment because something always did go wrong? Was the dream a warning? In which case, should he do what his mother would have done and go out to find a haystack he could stare at for good luck? Staring at haystacks was her remedy for everything. It was an old Welsh custom, she said, that never let her down. Even if it did not give her luck, at least it always gave her courage.
He lit a candle and went downstairs to the water closet. Mrs. Molloy insisted on closing the window at night. He flipped the latch and enjoyed the feel of fresh air against his face. Leaning over the basin, he turned the tap. There was a gasp from somewhere in the pipework, like a clearing of the throat, and then, after a moment’s delay, it came. The pressure was strong. Water slooshed into the basin. He stopped the flow when it was half-full. Bending forward, he inspected the clarity. There were little particles, visible even in this poor light. He sniffed. All summer, the smell had been getting worse. Today, he thought, today that would change.
He took hold of the soap and worked up a strong lather. As he plunged his hands into the basin and washed his face, scrubbing vigorously, the anxiety that had kept him awake began to feel overblown. Through the open window came the sound of birdsong. To his surprise, a warbler was singing to the new morning even though its natural habitat was no more. As a boy, that was the sound that would wake him on the farm in far-off Baltimore County. He sighed at his own contribution to the razing of the warbler’s habitat. How much simpler life was, without cities. Well, it was too late now. The bird’s final call was interrupted by a distant squeal of brakes, the city’s answering cry. That would be the first train coming through on the Milwaukee line. He used to travel it himself when they lived out that way. After Fullerton, the train would cross North and Division and Chicago and come to a final stop at the station on Kinzie. At this time of day, it would be packed with laborers on their way into the city looking for a day’s work at one of the construction sites in the downtown area.
Some of them might even be his own Canal workers, though most of them came from the shanties on the South Branch of the river near Bridgeport. He paused his ablutions. The soap slipped out of his hands, and he did nothing to stop the trickle of water down his beard. Eight men, including Molloy on the final inspection, had died in the building of the Tunnel. He remembered the words of his early mentor, Mr. Stephen Long. The death of the few will always be justified by the improvements we make. The Tunnel had worked in the beginning and would work again—would work again from today—once the Canal extension was opened and the sewage driven away from the Lake. Even so, wholeheartedly accepting Mr. Long’s argument had always troubled him. Mr. Long used to say something else, too, about the duty of an engineer, but Ellis preferred not to think about what that was.
He picked up the soap. He thought and worked in numbers all the time. But people were different. Could he really be absolved of responsibility on the simple basis of an arithmetical majority? And how robust did it look now, when they found themselves back at square one? He dried his face. Eight men had died building the Tunnel, but he had no idea how many had died in the construction of the Canal extension because the contractors deliberately hid the information from him, and from everyone else too. Ten, twenty, thirty? Even if the Canal did exactly what it was meant to do, could one say the death of the few justified improvements made for the many? And if the Canal did not work? That did not bear thinking about.
In the dressing room, Mrs. Molloy had prepared his clothes. His best black coat, satin waistcoat, pantaloons and a boiled white shirt were waiting on hangers. On top of the chest of drawers were his bow tie and a folded white handkerchief for his top pocket. He would be too hot, but he had no choice. He hated attention, but today it could not be avoided. They would all be there. If it worked, the city boosters and bigwigs and politicians, most of whom had criticized him for taking so long to put forward his proposals, complained at the expense and dismissed him as a “well-meaning but impractical dreamer,” would forget their hostility and pretend they had always been behind him. Fueled by beer and bourbon, they would use big, fine-sounding words. And he would have to stand in front of the crowds and pretend he felt honored by their attention. God knew what exaggeration they would find today. Mayor Rice had used an excruciating expression, the day the Tunnel was opened, back in ’67. The wonder of America and the world, he had called it.
He went downstairs into the d
ining room. On the table, there was an apple on one plate, two thick slices of bread coated in butter and ham on another. He could hear Mrs. Molloy moving about in the kitchen, muttering to herself. There was the welcome odor of freshly ground coffee. He called out a greeting, sat down and pressed the two slices of bread together to make a sandwich.
She was talking even before she came in. “And it shall be a gran’ day iv speechin’, an’ hailin’ ye a janius, Mr. Illis, that it shall. I tell ye everything, an’ I tell ye this. Wurruk is the enchantriss of a janius, now isn’t that so?”
The coffeepot struck the mat and she took up her usual position, standing on the opposite side of the table, arms folded, watching. She wore a faded apron and bundled her hair in a net to “keep itsilf to itsilf.” Woe betide should he fail to retrieve every last crumb off the plate. She would remind him of the war years, and the starving soldiers she had seen when she was cleaning for the Union troops at Fort Pickering. With Mrs. Chesbrough, Mrs. Molloy was a great deal more reticent.
In the four years she had been with them, he had never seen Mrs. Molloy smile, but he did not put that down to grief. Ellis wondered what their life had been like together. Mrs. Molloy peppered her speech with references to her husband that revealed nothing. So even now he hardly knew anything about Molloy, other than the feel of his limp, wet body in the dark of the Tunnel. He remembered how tightly he’d held on to the poor man, arms underneath his shoulders to keep his head above water as if there were a chance he might still be alive. His corpse had seemed heavy, as though waterlogged, and he was surprised to discover that Molloy had, in fact, been short and slim. Of how he actually dragged him back to the Crib that night, he had only the vaguest recollection.
Mrs. Chesbrough had been opposed to their taking Mrs. Molloy into domestic service. He said it was their duty. She asked whether it was their duty to take on the wife of every man who’d been unfortunate enough to lose his life while working on one of his projects? That struck him as a cruel thing to say. He insisted Mr. Molloy was a special case and that his decision was final. Sometimes, though, he wondered if it was pathetic, this attempt to assuage his sense of guilt by employing the dead man’s wife.
Even though the house was small, Mrs. Molloy bustled in and out of rooms and up and down stairs as though short of time. She slammed doors and dropped plates and did everything with more noise than was necessary. She might irritate his wife but Ellis tolerated her behavior benignly. Her puzzling contradictions amused him. You never knew whose side she would take. She would either love the Irish for being poets in their hearts “evry list one of them” or hate them for being lazy, drunken dreamers. One day she would be against Republicans, the next day against the Democrats. Even in religion she was a puzzle, a devout Catholic on Sundays but prone to moments of outrage during the week against a God that could permit so much evil to go on in His Name.
She asked if he had planned his speech already because there were some things she thought he should say. He was saved from her suggestions by the cries of the paperboy. “It’ll be the Chicago Daily Tribune then, Mr. Illis?” she said, as she always did. Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared, the front door banged shut, and he could hear her telling the boy that if he knew what was good for him he’d bring a newspaper for Mr. Chesbrough, fast as greased lightning.
Her return was slower. She would be trying to read the article that he knew would be in there. She was not a good reader. She “hidn’t the patience for letters.”
“Frint page, no less, Mr. Illis. Three columns or I’m a leprechaun.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Molloy.” He took it from her. CHESBROUGH VERSUS NATURE, read the title.
A battle of giants will take place today at noon when the South Branch of the Chicago River meets the Illinois and Michigan Canal. At a cost of $3 million, the Canal has been deepened and extended, and is now powered by the largest pumps ever seen in the West. It will be the crowning achievement in the illustrious career of Chief Engineer to the Chicago Board of Sewerage Commissioners, Mr. Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough (or Mr. “Sewage” as he has come to be known) if the river does indeed change direction and flow back into the Canal, heralding a new era of safe, clean water for the city.
“And will ye be takin’ bacon ’n eggs this mornin’, Mr. Illis? It shall be a fine long day, ye kin be sure, and ye don’t know the nixt time ye might find the good Lord’s fodder.”
He thanked her, but he would not.
“As ye will. Now don’t be forgittin’ to tell them that if it wasn’t for ye, we’d all be living like savidges in this city.”
He turned over the paper. “Oh, now I think that’s an exaggeration, Mrs. Molloy.”
“Is that so?” She looked at him defiantly. “If we left it to politishins and bisnessmen, where would we go? I’ll tell ye. Back to the bottom of the fens. That kind don’t care for nothin’ unless it’s a rattlin’ inside of their purses and I don’t mind who tries to say different. Tell me this, Mr. Illis. Tell me if ye ever seen one of that kind walk straight. No, you hav’int. And ye know why?” She stamped her foot. “Because only hon’rable men put the right foot in the right boot, only hon’rable men like you, Mr. Illis.”
“I fear I may not be quite as honorable as you think.”
Mrs. Molloy stared at him. “God preserve us! What are ye saying? If you isn’t an hon’rable man, Mr. Illis, will ye be tellin’ me who is?”
“There is something I’d like to tell you.”
She folded her arms, a quizzical look on her face.
“Your husband,” he began, “was a brave man.”
Mrs. Molloy listened in a moody silence as he told her about those aspects of his dream that seemed relevant, though he took care to refer strictly to a cow when he reached that moment in the story. The truth, he said, was that he could not really remember the sequence of events because everything had happened so quickly, but there was one matter that had long been on his conscience. He should have been quicker to go to Mr. Molloy’s assistance, and that maybe if he had been quicker he could have …
Mrs. Molloy put her hands over her ears. “I don’t belief in this kind of talk, Mr. Illis, and neither should ye. It is the divil’s wurruk and no mistake. It was God and only God that took Mr. Molloy that night … may he rest in peace. And leave conscience be. Give that worm any excuse, and it finds a way into even hon’rable men such as ye. I never heard such nonsinse about what happen’d that night. Have ye forgott’n the way you looked yoursilf when you came out? Bruised and cut to pieces by horns and hooves. It’s lucky you lived to tell the tale. And I tell ye this and I tell ye true—God be my witness—if you had been tak’n in place of Mr. Molloy, this city would be much the worse for it.”
“Mrs. Molloy, I don’t think you should say things like that.”
Mrs. Molloy picked up his plate. “I’m sure ye know best, Mr. Illis.” At the door, she stopped. “But the truth is the truth, and I do belief it will always find a way out in the end.”
Ellis felt shamed, not for the first time, by the frankness with which she spoke. It was entirely without artifice, or fear of consequences. No shield existed between her feelings and her tongue. Was it also true, then, what she said about that night? He frowned. Had he really been hurt and, if he had, how could he have forgotten? To his surprise, a faint memory did indeed begin to stir in which there were bandages and wounds and a lotion that stung.
“I bin telling people,” Mrs. Molloy said when she came back in, “what ye shall bring to pass today and they din’t belief it. They says it could niver wurruk in a month of Sundays. They says nob’dy bit God Above can make one of his own rivers go backward. I tell those Thomases it’s Tuesday today, not Sunday, so He’s not lookin’. And even if He does, He’ll see the good in it, ye can be sure.”
In anyone else, that might have been a joke.
She looked at him expectantly.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Molloy,” he said. “It will work. As long as”—he added, with a
tremor in his voice he could not suppress—“there are no surprises.”
She nodded, satisfied. “That’s all right, then,” she said. “Because I know nobody niver bicomes a janius without seeing all the surprises coming. So when they do arrive they’re not a surprise anymore, not in the least. That’s what makes ye a janius, Mr. Illis, isn’t that so?”
* * *
The buggy clipped briskly down Clybourn, took a left turn, and crossed Clark before heading south on State. They could have stayed on Clark, but he preferred State even though it was a longer ride. He was still puzzled by what Mrs. Molloy had said. Did he try to save Mr. Molloy? Had he buried the memory of the attempt simply because he failed? His father had spent his life failing, and he had vowed to be different. Was it fear the Canal would not work that had brought the nightmare back, not fear that he might once have acted like a coward?
He looked out at what had become Chicago’s widest street, following its purchase by the millionaire Potter Palmer. Even though he disliked the values represented by the imposing new edifices that had been erected—four stories, finished in Athens marble, fake porticoes—he could not deny they were a spectacle. They were nearly all stores that had transferred here from Lake Street when Potter Palmer suggested it would be a good idea if they did. Mr. Palmer was like a few other prominent gentlemen he could name whose word was more powerful than a city ordinance. Ellis did not like these men, he resented the fact that they looked down on him for his lack of education, but he had learned that if you wanted to do anything here, you had to get them on your side.
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