Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

  "And you're on me."

  "We have to figure which pipe is clogged."

  "Did they check the tanks? Are the holding tanks full up? That would do it."

  "Moran must have checked the tanks first. He says it has to be the pipes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, there are probably fifty miles of cast-iron pipe—"

  "Then it's a box basin, Jack."

  "What?"

  "If the runoff is backed up everywhere, and if the tanks aren't full. A clogged pipe by itself wouldn't do it. If it was one lousy pipe, the flow would only reverse as far as the nearest junction and find another way to run. You'd get backup in one section, maybe two, but not everywhere. But if the downpipe of the box is fouled, it backs up equally through all four feeder pipes, and then you get tankage all over the place."

  "But the downpipe, that's three feet across! What could clog a downpipe?"

  "How many box basins are there under the house?"

  "Four."

  "And which one is closest to the lines?"

  "There's one at the pickle rooms."

  Dillon took his shirt off. For a moment he stared at Hanley, who touched a hand to his own bristly cheek. Dillon saw his fingers shake. Dillon wanted to say, Jack, it's not that complicated. If you'd thought about it for a minute instead of running to me, you could be there already, cleaning the thing.

  Dillon faced away to reach into his locker for his rank overalls. How he hated them and how he hated this place and how he hated, for that instant, the pull of his own unexpressed affection for this dumb bastard. He glanced at his watch where it lay on the top shelf of his locker. Still with his back to Hanley, pulling on his work clothes once again, he said, "I'll get you started, Jack. But I can't see it through. I've got to get downtown by five."

  "You said that."

  "I just want you to know I mean it." Dillon braced himself. It had been a while since Jack had given him shit about school, but he sensed it coming now. Hanley wanted Sean Dillon holding his wrenches forever.

  But Hanley said simply, "I appreciate it." And then he moved away.

  When, after dressing, he turned to look for Jack, all he saw were the other fellows who'd drifted in from the shower room. They were at their lockers, too weary to talk to each other, too indifferent. They showed no sign of the emotional lift Dillon felt at the end of every shift. Of course Dillon rarely showed any sign of such a feeling either; around the stockyards he was as expressionless as any of them. The Stone Gate, he'd often thought, turned men who entered it to stone, like Eddie Quinn there, sitting motionless on his bench, his towel across his middle, apparently unable even to reach for his clothes. Beyond him Pat Riordan was picking his fingernails with a skinner's knife, as if he were ready to turn his skill against his own parts, to carve the stench from his skin.

  Jack Hanley was at his own locker. Dillon watched as Hanley pulled furtively on a bottle of hoochinoo. Like a lot of yarders, maybe most of them, Jack needed more than a double shot at the tavern on the way in and another on the way out. The rotgut got him through his shift, but the rotgut was also why Jack was less and less able to remember on his own which way the pipe screws ran. As he watched Hanley drink, Dillon fixed on the familiar tattoo on the back of Hanley's hand, what Dillon knew to be a faded Celtic cross with a lily sprouting from its base. Years ago members of the stockyards branch of the Ancient Order of Hibernians had made the mark a sign of membership until the priest from St. Gabriel's had condemned tattoos as self-mutilation. Dillon had often fixed his gaze upon the gaudy cross while Jack used that hand to apply his wrenches. An image of the resurrection, with its lily, yet the thing always seemed full of grief to Dillon.

  When Hanley had wiped his mouth, returned the bottle to its shelf and closed his locker, he faced Dillon from across the room, ignoring the others, and he intoned, "Praised be His Holy Name." Even at that distance Dillon was struck by how bright Hanley's eyes had gotten with the sudden jolt of alcohol, and he saw his partner for an instant as one of the big-eyed animals outside, holding off panic while waiting in the crush of the pens for what it thinks will be release.

  Hanley left the changing room. When Dillon caught up with him in the dingy corridor he was at the. phone. "Give me Mr. Moran," he was saying. He looked back at Dillon, raised a clenched fist and grinned. A moment later he leaned into the mouthpiece again, turning away from Dillon, his voice excited and youthful. "Mr. Moran, I think I've got it figured. Forget the traps. Forget reaming the pipes. If the jam was one pipe, we wouldn't have backup everywhere. It's got to be a box basin, Mr. Moran ... Yes, sir. Thems where the several horizontals meet the whatcha-call downpipe. That's what runs to the cookers—" Hanley stopped abruptly and swung back to look at Sean. Alarm showed on his face, and a question.

  Dillon took his arm and whispered, "Tell him you'll check out the pickle room box. Tell him to get his fellows to the other ones. Tell him where they are." Hanley did so and then, dismissed, hung up.

  Moments later the pair of them pounded down the dimly lit stairs to the long low corridor that led to the pickle rooms where, in great foul vats of steaming brine, countless slabs of hind-cut beef were soaking. Dillon walked behind Hanley carrying the cumbersome wooden toolbox. Usually, on his way to a job, he liked to picture what they would find, but now his mind was blank. He knew that if he was right, they were about to open the lid on a car-sized pit full of blood, but he couldn't imagine it.

  They came to the cast-iron disk on the floor.

  Without a word from either, Hanley put his hand out and Dillon slapped a foot-long crowbar into his palm. With one swift jerk of the rod Hanley had the heavy cover open, and he expertly pried it up with a flip so that it twirled for a moment like a coin, then fell clear. The stink blasted out, pushing them back, the odor of death, a fetid tomb.

  Dillon tied his soiled handkerchief around his face.

  Hanley pinched his nose and craned over the hole. "Boy, oh boy, give me the light, Sean, will you?"

  Dillon slapped the flashlight into his partner's hand. When the beam of light hit the hole, they saw what seemed to be its floor, a gleaming dark asphalt surface only a foot below the lip of the basin. But it wasn't the floor; it wasn't asphalt. The utter lack of movement—no ripples, no bubbles—made the liquid look solid. They both knew at once that this was it, but as if to be certain Hanley moved his hand away from his nose and spit into the hole. His oyster splashed. He looked up at Sean and nodded.

  Sean stared back at him, understanding that Jack Hanley expected him, the helper, to hoist himself down into the pit. Each man was over six feet tall. The blood would reach at least to the level of their shoulders. In order to free the downpipe it would almost certainly be necessary to go under. Dillon shook his head, his voice muffled by his bandana. "I took my shower, Jack. Remember?"

  Hanley looked around at his feet. "What if we had a pole-and-hook?"

  "You could go up to supply and get one, maybe run into Moran, or you can get this thing over with."

  "I'm not sober enough to get in there."

  Dillon, who was too sober, laughed, but the space closed in on him. A single dim bulb protruded from a wall socket a dozen yards down the corridor. If he stretched out his arms he could have touched both walls.

  Dillon thought suddenly of the catacombs, the tunnels under Rome. Once such an association would have come into his mind with sharp alacrity. He'd have taken comfort in the sense of his own membership in the great communion, for the catacombs were the womb of the Church. But wasn't the womb what he had left? Now he thought of the tunnel-like sub-basement under the residence building at the major seminary. In its cubicles were the side altars where the faculty priests said their private Masses before dawn with cassocked boys like Dillon himself in holy attendance.

  Dillon chided himself. It wasn't the womb he'd left, but only training for the priesthood. He rarely welcomed memories from that long, futile phase of his life, and he didn't now. This one had caught him off guard, and he stood there in the dar
k corridor staring at the unseen with hollow eyes. At moments like that it seemed to him he could feel the blood moving inside his body, but now—blood!—that was an image he wanted no part of. What he wanted was some visual detail on which to fix his concentration, but he saw nothing, save the light bulb itself, with which to stave off his moroseness. The catacombs were where the martyrs lived and where they buried each other. It probably stank like this, he thought.

  "Here goes nothing," Hanley said as he plopped down onto the lip of the hole. He stared into it for a moment, removed none of his clothing and swung down feet-first. "I hate this fucking job. Oh, it's warm!"

  "I'll hold your hat, Jack." Dillon plucked Hanley's hat from his bald head. That baldness was always a surprise, and so was the recognition that gruff Jack Hanley wore his hat out of vanity.

  "Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph." Hanley had himself braced between the walls of the box basin, and was working his feet. "Something squishy is what it is. Something's there, though. Oh, Jesus, God, this is awful."

  Clotted blood, Dillon thought. A slimy concretion had blocked the downpipe. Coagulation.

  But he dismissed the idea. The diameter of the pipe was too large.

  Hanley sank deeper into the ooze.

  But what was it? Nothing solid could come into this basin. Not unless it came, instead of through the feeder pipes, through this hole here.

  Dillon looked up when he heard the men barreling down the corridor toward them. Moran was in the lead, a short, fat man with a cigar in his face, a man Dillon had made a point of staying clear of. Behind him were two others, each wearing a bandana around his nose, like holdup men. They were dressed in business suits—the boys, therefore, from State Street.

  Hanley said, "Keep the light on me." Then he ducked into the hole, disappearing in the black liquid.

  "What'd you find?" Moran demanded.

  "This is it, all right," Dillon said. "Jack had it figured."

  "So is it clear?" Moran peered down into the hole. The liquid swirled now with Hanley's movement. The two Swift's executives stood warily back. Each man's eyes above the stretched material of his kerchief danced wildly.

  Hanley burst from under with an explosion, and the foul liquid splashed up onto all of them. Hanley collapsed onto the lip of the pit, gagging. "It's a carcass!" he croaked before a fit of coughing overtook him.

  "A carcass?" Moran stooped down to him. "What do you mean? A whole carcass?"

  Hanley ignored Moran for Dillon. He stared right up into the beam of the flashlight, and once more Dillon saw his eyes as those of a near-panicked animal. "It's whole," Hanley gasped. "A hog, I think. Really jammed. I can't get it out alone."

  Dillon stepped back, thinking, Hell no. But Hanley's eyes held him.

  And Moran swung to look up at him. "Get down there, you. Help him haul the goddamn thing out of there."

  "How would an entire hog get in this pit?" It was one of the boys from downtown. No one answered his question or acknowledged hearing it.

  Nor did Dillon acknowledge Moran. As always, it was something in Hanley's mute plea that tore at his defenses. Still he did not move. He thought of the stupid cattle following their Judas to the slaughter.

  "What's your name?" Moran demanded.

  Now Dillon looked at him, and he saw that this crisis was his excuse, only his latest, to lash out at underlings. Stuff yourself, Dillon thought. He felt the freedom of a man who was quitting soon anyway. But Moran would hold Hanley responsible for the impudence of his helper. Hanley wasn't quitting, and Dillon knew he'd be a fool to make enemies at Swift's.

  "Who me, sir?" Dillon said, Charlie Chaplin coming to.

  "I said get in there and help him."

  "Oh yessir, I see, sir," he said, fluttering the handkerchief that covered his nose and mouth. Dillon handed the flashlight to Moran and indicated the toolbox at his feet. "Watch me tools, would you kindly?" He spoke with a stagy brogue, suddenly one of those Irishmen who clothed his hatred thinly in mock ingratiation. He stooped to untie and remove his boots, then quickly unbuttoned his overalls and slid out of them, abruptly naked. When he'd removed the handkerchief from his face, he grinned stupidly at Moran. "Whatever you say, sir." And he climbed into the pit gingerly, like a lad into the lake on a cold spring morning. In fact, Dillon hated going into water.

  Dillon's feet nearly slipped out from under him when they landed on a soft squishy mass. He looked at Hanley. "This is one you owe me, Jack." Then he gulped air and went under. Despite his tightly closed mouth, the sharp taste of blood revolted him beyond what any foul odor had done.

  Together they tugged at the beast that was jammed head-first into the downpipe. Blood had coagulated around the head in the ring of the pipe, sealing off the tankage flow completely and holding the animal fast. They had to force it loose.

  "Animal" was the word Dillon used in his mind, but he knew better. He knew better when his feet first touched the thing.

  "Oh, Jesus," Hanley gasped when they broke into air again.

  They had to work to maintain the hold they had on the slippery carcass. The pit full of blood had become a whirlpool, sucking the liquid downward and out at last through the opening below. They had only to stand there, straddling the downpipe, as the level of the blood dropped, exposing them and the naked white hulk they were holding.

  "A man!" Moran gasped.

  "Oh, Christ!" one of the boys from downtown muttered, while the other one fell back against the wall, then down to the floor in a dead faint.

  Moran aimed the flashlight beam at the figure slumped between Hanley and Dillon. He stooped down for a handful of the dead man's matted hair, to pull its head back, to see the face. But when he laid eyes on the swollen black mass into which all of this body's blood had run, he gagged. He straightened up and stepped back. "Get him out of there."

  Hanley and Dillon had to lock their arms around the corpse to heave it up to the floor. The side of Dillon's face pressed into the dead man's buttock. Hanley seemed to be in shock, and Dillon had to lift him out too. Hanley collapsed on the cold concrete next to the carcass, gasping. It was Moran, the cigar still in his face, who then reached a hand down for Dillon. Moran hauled him up easily, and Dillon understood for the first time that the superintendent's toughness was real.

  While Dillon got back into his overalls, Moran satisfied himself that the blood pipes were running freely now, then he slid the heavy iron cover back into place without help. It clanged shut.

  In the silence it was Jack Hanley's inability to catch his breath that the others focused on. The front-office man who'd fainted came to slowly and got to his feet, leaning on his colleague. Moran ignored them, waiting for Hanley to compose himself. Finally he said, more to Dillon than Hanley, "You two wait here. I'll send a wagon down for..." He looked at the maggot-like corpse and winced. "...this thing."

  Dillon asked, "Who is he, do you think?"

  Moran shook his head. "His own mother wouldn't know at this point. Whoever he is, he crossed the wrong people, that's sure." He shifted his glance to Dillon. "He was flogged."

  Dillon looked again and saw the grid of slivered skin on the corpse's back. Drained of blood, the welts were white, like the slats of Venetian blinds.

  "You know whose mark a flogging is, don't you?" Moran seemed to be testing Dillon. When Dillon only shook his head, Moran said, "You wait here until my blokes come." He turned abruptly toward the pair in business suits. When he pointed along the corridor they went obediently, as if they too were his inferiors. Here—and at this—they were.

  When the others were gone, and when Hanley was sitting up against the wall, having put some space between himself and the cadaver, Dillon said quietly, "I have to go, Jack." He began wiping his hands on his kerchief.

  Hanley looked up at him helplessly.

  "I told you before. I have to get downtown. It's not just a routine class tonight. It's an exam."

  "Exam?" The word had reference to a world Hanley had nothing to do with.
r />   "I have to go right now."

  Hanley made his plea with his eyes.

  For once Dillon had a plea of his own, if no way to make it. The exam was the last thing standing between Dillon and the other man it was long past time for him to be. This was the end of his fifth year of night school. He was nearly thirty years old, and if he didn't get out of the pit soon, the blood was going to swallow him. He said quietly, "Moran's people will be here before you know it, Jack. You'll be all right with . . . "Dillon's voice trailed off.

  "Who is the guy, do you think?" Hanley had roused himself to stare blearily at the corpse.

  Dillon shook his head, but his eye fell upon a blue mark. The pasty, wrinkled body was lying face-down, but its puffy arm, clearly out of its socket, was bent perversely back across its own shoulder blade. Instead of the palm of that hand, such was the break that the back of it was showing. And that was where Dillon saw the mark, a blue tattoo. The taste of blood shot into his mouth again, and he retched violently, as if, finally, he was going to vomit. The tattoo was of a Celtic cross with a sprouting lily. Whatever the creature was now, once he'd been a man; once he'd been one of Jack Hanley's boys at St. Gabe's.

  Dillon looked back at his partner. The dumb bastard's clothes were soaked through, and now he was shivering. Dillon reached down to the tool chest onto which Hanley's hat had fallen. He picked it up and crossed to him, wishing it was a bottle of booze. "Here's your hat, Jack."

  Hanley took it and put it on. Dillon saw something in the way he did so—covering himself, hiding his baldness, hiding his face—that seemed as hideous as anything he'd seen in that grotesque hour. His old friend, to whom in fact he had never spoken the word "friend," felt ashamed.

  Dillon leaned his shoulder against the rough cinder wall and slid slowly down it, to sit by Hanley, to wait with him who said nothing.