by Mary Gordon
“Oh, God, Vincent, you must think I’m an awful baby.”
Sister Roberta gets up on her heavy legs. Wipes her wide face.
“We’ll meet again,” he says, and memories of songs come to him. He is glad of the memories, they allow him to show this girl, for all she is a nun, some gallantry.
She kisses him on the top of the head and suddenly runs away.
He lets the room be quiet for a second, makes himself be still, not to forget too quickly what seemed to be her grief.
Could she have felt real grief, and then got up and gone away like that so fast?
Slowly he gets up from his chair. But that’s all right, he knows about it, they can no longer surprise him, these small failures of his body. He goes into his wardrobe with its built-in mirror and four drawers where he keeps the books he doesn’t want out on the shelf.
He runs his fingers up and down the leather cover.
You’d never see that kind of cover now.
He opens to the first page.
Rules and Regulations
for the
Government
of the
Operating Officers
and
Employees
of the
Engineering Department
Interborough
Rapid Transit Company
Manhattan and Subway Divisions
To Take Effect July 1st 1924
This book is the property of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, Engineering Department, and the Employee holding it will not receive his final pay until it has been properly returned to the company.
One of the few instructions in his life he hadn’t heeded: one of the few laws he had not obeyed. He’d drawn his final pay and had not given back the book.
The rules themselves (he thought) were really like Commandments. He thought of Moses with his beard holding the tablets and the people waiting. Grateful. Knowing now what was the right thing to do.
He’d liked having those exact rules in his work. They made things seem nailed down. Specifications—“specs” they called them, the same nickname as for eyeglasses. But they were like Commandments he was happy to obey. No, more than that, or less. Not happy. It let him know who he was.
He turns now to the section of the fragile book entitled “General Signal Rules.” It is page 107. Small pictures of the signals indicating section breaks. They bring his youth back to him. Representations. Stop and Stay. Proceed. He is a young man once again who loves his work. He is a young man who came over and in terror took the first job that he heard of. Digging, although he’d been a skilled machinist. But he’d never thought of waiting, he’d preferred to get a job alongside Martin Ferris. The year was 1913. Men were needed to construct a great tunnel, to join up Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Whitehall Street-Montague Street Tunnel it was called.
Terrible work he hated. He did not want to be that young man now. Not now, on this last day in the place where he has been happy, he doesn’t want to be the young man doing filthy work he hates and is ashamed of. Or working all day beside the German. He wants to have his good work life, the first job in America that was his pleasure and his pride: signal repairman. Though he was not that at first, of course, he was assistant, starting at the bottom like you had to then.
He turns the pages of the book to the “Rules Governing Signal Repair.”
Repairmen shall make frequent detail inspection of all apparatus under their charge and must make renewals of defective parts before a failure may occur.
They shall take up lost motion and see that no studs, pins, or holes are allowed to become worn more than V32 of an inch in any direction.
They shall see that cotter pins are in place and that they are in good condition and properly spaced.
They shall see that signal blades are securely fastened and kept bright and that all lenses and roundels are kept clean.
They shall keep the bearings of all moving parts free from grit. Care must be taken to use just the right amount of oil and not flood the parts with oil. Old oil must be removed and the parts wiped before re-oiling.
They shall inspect switches in operation every day, and shall see that the locking bars are not worn more than 8/36 of an inch in any direction. Plungers on facing-point locks shall clear the locking bar one inch when withdrawn and shall have a throw of eight inches.
They shall not permit any foreign wires or any attachment foreign to the apparatus to be placed on signal apparatus.
They shall keep all exposed contacts clean and in perfect adjustment.
They must not break series of relays.
If waste paper collects about switch or signal apparatus, they shall report it immediately to the supervisor.
He did all this, and all the words are objects to him. They bob up now, they swim up in his mind, he has no need to send for them. “Lens,” “roundel,” “cotter pin,” “plunger,” things called “frogs” and “dogs.” Maintenance. Repair. Keeping up. Holding back. All the things that life took away, ground down. He loved the thought of this.
He worked his first section of the track as assistant to Charlie Weaver, then with Dan Clark, the boy who assisted him. He won’t think of Dan Clark now. Not now. Later.
Now he’ll think about his area of track. The Broadway Line, the IRT, of course. He never would be anything but IRT. The oldest line, the most outstanding. His area was between 103rd Street and 125th. Each day inspecting, oiling, keeping free of oil, of grit, replacing, and reporting. And you had to have your wits about you every minute. Every minute there was something that was your responsibility that might, while you had been away, have taken it in its head (the things had minds and natures, he was sure of it; some wanted to please you, some took pleasure only in your defeat) to grind itself down, smash, or turn useless.
Those signal fellows were some bunch. Thought themselves the elite of the whole system, and perhaps they were. Terrific skill. Quick-minded. They had to be, and they knew it, and would hold it over you, but that was all right, you felt they had a right to it. You’d hear stories about near misses, terrible catastrophes. Great tragedies averted by a fellow’s wits and speed. You didn’t hear their names, of course. Catastrophes averted never made the papers, but the men knew among themselves. It gave them pride, they liked the danger, the signal fellows, the aloneness, in the towers or the tunnels. By themselves in darkness, everything depending on their wits. If they didn’t like that sort of thing they didn’t last in Signals; they moved on.
They drank a terrible amount, they were known for it. They called themselves the cowboys of the system. And their talk was terrible. The names they called each other: Ragass, cheeseballs. They were famous for their drinking and their talk. They said he had lead up his ass when they thought he couldn’t hear them. They were like soldiers among themselves, like desperadoes. You’d see fellows missing fingers all the time.
They loved the life.
He’d loved it too until the thing happened with Danny Clark. Now he must think of it; he owes Dan Clark that much.
Danny Clark was his assistant. An assistant kept an eye out: that was his whole job. The trains came rushing by, they weren’t going to stop for you so you could do your job. That was the point of it: you did your job and you didn’t stop the trains from going. That was what it was all about. So the assistant kept an eye out for the trains and secondarily on the equipment.
You could say that Dan Clark hadn’t done his job. But you would never say that. Dannyboy, a good boy, a joking boy. His jokes were the death of him. Now Vincent must live that again, must not dishonor the young boy who’d been cut down in his prime by a joke. He must not dishonor the boy by his refusal to relive his death.
Vincent arranges his mind. First I will remember the year. The year is 1925. And the month: August. It is steaming hot, the tracks are hot as hell and black, the worst time of the year to work, the summer months. They are repairing signals on the local tracks. Vincent is removing a crac
ked lens. Dan has the replacement in his hands.
Dan was a Dublin boy, a city boy. Vincent had thought perhaps that was the problem: city life could breed unsteadiness. Too much excitement for a young person.
He remembers a song that Danny sang.
I left me ould mother wid one little brother
And came to this country when scarcely a boy
And though I am Irish and lived on the parish
I’m first cousin German to Patrick Molloy
I came in short breeches that often lacked stitches
Had nails in me shoes fit for horses to wear
My mother’d not know me, but if you would show me
I’d quick know me mother and Dublin of yore.
He even remembers the name of the song: “Teddy McGlynn from the Town of Dublin.”
Danny had liked bragging about the things he did with girls, though Vincent never did believe him. He was such a boy, Danny, with his arms too long for him, his legs as skinny as a stork’s, his popping Adam’s apple. Girls would not be taken by his looks. Vincent was silent when the boy said dirty things about what he did with girls, hoping to indicate he didn’t like that sort of thing talked about. Though he didn’t want to hurt Danny’s feelings. He suspected Danny talked that way because he thought it made him look manly, and in fact most of the other fellows working Signals would have liked the talk and joined him in it. But Vincent had never gone in for that himself as a young man, and now, Ellen having been to him what she was, he could never. He was fond of Dan, although he lost his patience when he saw Dan’s mind wander. He could have bitten his tongue off for what he said to him once: “We’ll both pay with our heads for your daydreaming. Is that what you’re after? The two of us in coffins? Is that your plan?”
He shouldn’t have been so impatient with him. He could have taught him better if he’d had more patience.
What was Dan Clark thinking at the moment of his death?
They were repairing lanterns on the local track. Dan held the lens. He was still holding it after he was dead. He was singing some song, Vincent remembers that. It could have been the one about Teddy McGlynn or something different. Vincent tries to remember the song’s name as if remembering will make things turn out different. He gives up.
Danny Clark is holding the lens, singing. And what happens next? Does he lean back? Or lose his footing? Why hasn’t he been looking for the train? It was his job to keep his eye out for the train, not just the local, the express as well, he knew that, he’d been told. Vincent asks God, whom he no longer is sure listens: Why would a boy be cut down?
He is weeping for a boy sixty years dead. He weeps as much for this as for his own son, dead in the trees of France.
Vincent remembers: he is taking off the old lens. All his mind is fixed on loosening the screws that have grown tight as the devil. Then, in one second, he sees the boy fall back. He sees the train that can’t stop. No time between when it is not happening and when it has happened. It is over in a second. It never began.
The train stops, too late, at the next station. It switches to a local track. Too late. 110th Street. Vincent is alone with the smashed body of the boy who never knew he died. The smashed glass of the lens lies all around him, sickeningly colorful, like scattered candy on the track. Vincent knows you do not move the body. He stands still. He waits, stands watch until the proper people, the authorities arrive. They all suggest that he go home.
Obedient, he goes back to his locker, changes clothes, washes at the small filthy sink, and goes home. He never in his life felt so alone as that day on the train, the Flushing Line, thinking: Not one of these around me knows about it.
He can’t remember telling Ellen about Danny Clark. Perhaps he never did. Or perhaps he told her later and didn’t make much of it. He knows two things: that he did not describe it to her, and that she gave him no comfort. What did that mean about the things he could not have told her? Did it mean that there was nothing between them? Only living beside each other for a long time in a house? Perhaps it meant he could have lived with any woman. Or was it Ellen’s scornfulness that kept him from telling things to her, that made him keep things to himself? Did it mean she’d never loved him? Or that he had not loved her? How did you live beside a person and not say things?
Because you didn’t much believe in the good of it. Because there were certain things you did believe about life, things you learned when you were young that you didn’t forget. To others, words, tears, lamentations, crying out, refusals shouted, accusations flung upon the ground could represent relief—“It was a weight off my heart to tell him,” “I felt a stone lifted from me”—Vincent had always felt it was better to leave the stone in place. You didn’t shift the weight, because the movement could bring danger and the weight had goodness to it in that it pressed things down.
Though he and Ellen had never said things to each other they felt the same way about life. It wasn’t that they hadn’t loved each other; it wasn’t that they were nothing to each other. It was that they believed the same things about life. You took the things that you were given. You did not cry out.
There was the one time that she did and he had tried to stop her. He’d been wrong then, he’d seen it immediately. She had lost her son. She was right to cry out, to take the pins from her hair and try to rip the hair of her head out, thrash like the wounded creature that she was. He should have let her. After that, she’d closed down something to him and had kept it closed. He’d not stopped her in anger or in shame. He’d just felt the danger for her, in opening herself up like that.
He’d done nothing to expose his grief. My son. My promise. The promise he’d never kept. He had never been a father to his son. He’d been no better to his son than his father had been to him. Worse. He’d never felt any closeness to John. He’d always wanted to keep him at arm’s length. Something about his son was irritating to him. He felt things came too easily for John. He pleased his mother doing nothing. And, later on, the business with the girl. Ellen had been right about her. He wondered what had ever happened to her. Once he’d seen John empty a full ashtray from his car right onto the pavement of the church parking lot. The time he’d hit him it was for coming home drunk. He’d hit him for having worried his mother. Ellen had paced up and down the house that night like a starved animal. She’d been reading something. She’d put it down; pretended to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. But she’d been looking out the back window for John. When Vincent went into the bathroom, she went out to the sidewalk to look up the street. Finally John came back home, singing under the front-porch light. A nonsensical song, Vincent remembers. “Mairzy Doats.” The nonsense of it made him hit his son in the face.
Only after he was dead did Vincent realize that John had been a good boy. It was only that he was lighthearted, and none of the rest of them was. That was why Vincent had never understood him, he hadn’t let life press him down to a shape Vincent could recognize.
But when John died, Vincent felt it was he who should have died. He’d never known his son. His son had died a stranger to him, never having lived his life. At night he’d wake up in the dangerous moments before first light and think, “No sense to go on living now.” It had seemed easy to him, letting himself go into death. Now that his son was dead. His son that he had never known. His son whom he had struck for singing underneath the front-porch light.
Vincent puts down his book. He can’t read any more about the signals. After Dan Clark he left the Signals. Left his pals that were good to him, including Martin, who had felt let down. But he could never take pleasure in the job again. The fellows in the signals, who were used to things like this, had a way of talking about it he couldn’t be a part of. They said, “A boy dying like that, in one way, it’s a blessing. A song on his lips, weren’t you after saying that, Vincent? That’s the last he knew of life, a song on his lips. He never knew what hit him; he never felt a thing.”
How did they know? He’d never say that to the
mother. Mrs. Clark. He felt she blamed him: You were older, you should have been looking out. She never said that but he felt she thought it. He knows that he went to the funeral but he can’t recall a thing about it. He remembers Ellen went. That means he must have told her. But what? She must not have asked him much about it. That was good of her. She loved knowing things usually, wanted to know everything about the world, wanted to know about it without going out into it. She feared direct living of a life. It was the life she lived as a girl beside those parents that had done it to her. She grew up thinking that if you went out to the world, if you rubbed up against people, they might know your shame. One word could do it, cause the edifice to collapse, the edifice you’d built so carefully to keep the shame hidden. A look, an indication: everything could go to smash. Better to stay inside the edifice you’d built. Keeping watch; keeping people out.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in the world. She always wanted to be one who took things in, but from a safe seat in the house she never loved but hated leaving. The only things that made her break out were political. When she was all het up on politics, you couldn’t keep her home.
She was most alive in those days when the union was beginning to be formed. He’d bring the newspapers to her. A lot of people were giving out a lot of different newspapers at the shop gates. He brought her home the Daily Worker.
They were good times for him too. After the death of Dan Clark he applied for what he had been trained to all along, machinist’s work, at the Kent Avenue Power Plant. He remembers talking about those days recently. When was it? He remembers. It was when Sheilah was doing that thing for the night-school class, when she was supposed to be getting him to talk into her tape recorder and then she’d write it up. They gave her a mark for it, too. “Oral history” they called it. He thought that was amazing. Then she got a raise at her job for taking that course. He had a hard time following the line of that. But it sounded good for her and so of course he said he’d go along. He’d tell her what he could remember, but he said he didn’t know what good it would do her, an old man telling his life story. “Not your life story, Granddaddy. It’s oral history. Just tell the truth. Tell me about your job,” she’d said, “just wait one second, let me test this thing.” She pressed the buttons on the machine; then she was glad she did. One time she’d forgotten to check and a whole tape was lost. A black family she counseled. Of course she couldn’t ask again. “All right, Granddaddy, talk about your job.”