Follow Me Down

by Gordon MacKinney

  But her eyes held no happiness for Becky Livingston or anyone else. I sat on the edge of the couch. “It’s bad right now, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes glossed with moisture but she said nothing.

  “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  She hesitated.

  “What are you feeling right now?”

  “Scared.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “Sometimes I imagine scary things.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “But sometimes they seem real.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll think I’m a crazy person.”

  “Crazy? I’m the one who crawls around in the city’s digestive system. Tell me.”

  She fixed her gaze on the dark ceiling. “I feel hands on my shoulders, dozens of hands. I know they’re not really there, but still.”

  I nodded.

  “I know who’s attached to every hand. Mother and Daddy. Your Aunt Janie. The first boy I loved… I know that’s silly but it’s important to me. My best friends from high school. You’re there, of course, and your father.”

  “We’re all there because we care about you.”

  Her eyes suddenly widened. She lifted her head off the cushion. “But every hand is dying. I don’t see it happen, but I feel them turn brown and shrivel up. And then they lose their grip and slide away, and I feel dizzy, like I’m going to fall down. See?”

  “Keep going.”

  “The hands were holding me up. And eventually I will fall down. It’s only a matter of time before every hand is dead and there’s no one there to hold me up anymore.” Her head settled back. She took a deep breath.

  “You stand on your own two feet.”

  “No I don’t.”

  Cold swept the skin of my arms. I imagined her in her slippers on the Roebling Bridge, nightgown billowing, staring down into the black water a hundred feet below, a sparrow teetering on the rim of hell. “Do I need to worry about… you being safe, Mom?”

  She understood. “I would never do that to you.”

  I clutched her words like a lifeline.

  The magazine slid from her belly and slapped the floor. The cat’s head popped up.

  Mom thought a moment, her brow creased. “What if I’m still like this after all the meds are gone from my system? What if this is the real me?”

  I produced a reassuring smile, as if the answer were obvious. But drugs or no drugs, she changed after Dad died. “This is not the real you. Your brain is getting used to life without chemicals.” I gripped her hand, cold and damp. “You’re sweating again.”

  “At work my legs felt like there were a thousand pins stuck in them. I wanted to kick the chair across the room, I was so angry.”

  “At what?”

  “Nothing you haven’t heard before.”

  “Maybe it helps to say it anyway?” I was a lousy psychotherapist.

  “I’m angry at that company… and your father.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “For going to work that day.”

  I had no reply. Venting my own anger wouldn’t have helped.

  “I’m not happy with you either, Lucas. You take foolish risks. Why go near those people?”

  I remembered getting into a fight on the muddy banks of the Ohio River when I was thirteen or fourteen. No clue what started it. Maybe a turf dispute, maybe a contest to find out who was toughest, me or the other guy, a zit-faced redneck who lifted homemade barbells under their carport for the neighborhood kids to marvel at.

  When some other kids picked me up from the muck, my lip was split, my nose was bleeding, and my left ear felt packed with sawdust.

  But I launched myself at the kid again, a puppy fighting a battle-scarred pit bull, even though it meant more of the same punishment. I had to, because going on day after day, tail tucked between my legs, would’ve been worse than any damage that hillbilly could’ve done.

  CHAPTER 7

  The following morning, I emerged from the revolving door precisely at nine a.m. The lobby of the Drax building buzzed with employees on their respective missions. Just beyond the bustle, Alfred stood rail straight at the receptionist’s desk, a thin leather portfolio between his slender fingers. He seemed puny amidst the high walls and gigantic propaganda photos suspended overhead.

  I dodged cross-traffic and halted alongside Alfred. He wore a tweed sport jacket, necktie, and breast-pocket kerchief, all in earth tones and burnt orange. His tie was perfectly dimpled, his sparse white hair oiled and secured in neat crop rows.

  “You’re late,” he said without emotion, and then returned his attention to the receptionist, a stunning young woman with bound-up hair and a muted gray suit.

  She flashed me a fleeting smile of sympathy and then said to Alfred, “And you don’t have an appointment?”

  “Regrettably, that is correct, Miss Danielle,” Alfred said with broadcast-quality enunciation. A brass rectangle on her lapel proclaimed her name in capital letters, enough information for the old man to dial up the charm.

  “Your timing is a bit awkward,” she said. “There was an accident at one of our construction sites. The management team is quite occupied.”

  “Oh yes, we read about that in the newspaper. Very tragic,” Alfred said, his expression now appropriately grave. “While we’re visiting with Mr. Drax on another topic, I hope to offer my counsel regarding this unfortunate event.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Miss Danielle punched four touchtone numbers and rotated her chair for privacy. Thirty seconds later she turned back and replaced the handset, smiling professionally. “Very well, Mr. Blumenfeld, you and your associate may go ahead. Mr. Drax will be waiting for you in room four three zero five.”

  Forty-third floor. I was moving up in the world compared to yesterday’s face-off with Tony Drax, and now I was an associate.

  Alfred stopped us halfway to the elevators. “I hope you were taking notes back there.”

  “Sir?” But I knew what was coming.

  “The power of respect and decorum, with that looker at the desk. If you’re going to be useful to me, you should remember that diplomacy works far better than punching someone in the nose.”

  Useful to him, perhaps. Diplomacy was pointless in the lab. Sweet talking the dip ‘n dunk machine wouldn’t spare any wedding photos or Alfred’s wrath. “Which Drax are we seeing?” There were three possibilities: company founder Walther, his son and current CEO Rudolph, and finally, my former classmate. I both desired and dreaded the prospect of facing Tony.

  Alfred held his words until a triad of staffers passed by. “We are seeing the Drax most likely to return my camera if we demonstrate respect and decorum, which I expect from you.”

  I was dying to make a smartass comparison between Alfred and an etiquette columnist, but I swallowed it. The old man’s five thousand dollars stood between me and a jail cell.

  “There is something else.”

  I waited.

  “About what happened to your father.” He turned the portfolio over in his hands. “We’re here with a specific goal. Would you agree?”

  “To get your camera back. And the film.”

  “And the film. Fine. But we’re not here for certain… other purposes.”

  “Sorry, I don’t get it.” But I did. He was issuing a gag order.

  “Look, you have plenty of reason to pick a bone with Drax.”

  I sighed. “What do you want, Mr. Blumenfeld?”

  “Contrition.”

&nbs
p; “What happened to respect and decorum?”

  Alfred stuck out his chin. “Don’t be difficult. You can accomplish a great deal by appealing to another person’s sentiments.”

  “If you’re so worried about how I’ll behave, why’d you bring me along?”

  “Contrition by proxy doesn’t work.”

  “So you need me to stand there and shut up and look wracked with guilt so they’ll cough up your camera.”

  Alfred nodded. “Exactly.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said through my teeth.

  We walked side-by-side and boarded an empty elevator car. The moment the doors closed, Alfred flipped open his leather portfolio, plucked a single sheet of paper, and handed it to me. On it was taped a newspaper clipping with a photo and about six inches of copy. “I need you to do some speed reading so you don’t embarrass us in front of Mr. Drax.”

  “What’s this?”

  “I said speed reading. While you were sneaking around the train station yesterday morning, this appeared in the Enquirer.”

  The headline read Excavator Crashes into Abandoned Subway; Worker Killed.

  I moved to the photo. An I-beam skeleton of a five-story building appeared in the background. New construction.

  The foreground grabbed me by the throat. It showed a large piece of construction equipment, the modern-day version of a steam shovel, halfway submerged in a massive hole in the ground. The bucket and its pneumatic attachment stuck awkwardly in the air like the arm and hand of a movie ghoul escaping from the grave. The operator’s cab appeared crushed, wedged against the earth as the equipment slid down.

  The elevator stopped to receive more passengers.

  I reread the headline. The subway. Regardless of the grim circumstances, the idea of breaching the long-sealed underground accelerated my heartbeat. Gravity and tons of steel had accomplished in seconds what urban adventurers had failed to accomplish in years. Would the hole provide an access route? I glanced up. Alfred was studying my reaction. I kept reading.

  The accident happened in late afternoon. The excavator wasn’t digging at the time but rather was crossing a small field to reach the worksite, a new hotel parking garage on Race Street. According to an onlooker, a young mother with her child, “Toby and I were watching from the playground. All of a sudden, the tread thing on one side vanished and everything tipped. Sounded like a car crash in slow motion. Just horrible.”

  The elevator doors opened again. Thirty-second floor. More passengers squeezed in between Alfred and me. I scanned the remaining text for one word: Drax. I found it in this passage: “The equipment operator, Mr. Delbert Turkel, an employee of Drax Enterprises, was pronounced dead at the scene.”

  So this was the accident mentioned by the receptionist. This was what would preoccupy the Drax management team and potentially everyone in the company, including the employees in our now-cramped elevator.

  I checked out the blank faces, none engaged in typical workday banter, because this day was not typical. But how many of them knew what I knew, that Drax Enterprises was not only responsible for the hotel parking garage project, but also for pouring the subway’s concrete some forty years earlier?

  The concrete that had just failed, claiming a life.

  An on-the-job death reflects horribly on a company’s reputation. In retrospect, any headway Mom and I made against Drax after my father’s death, however small, had been because the company feared for its reputation.

  But why had Alfred shown me the story? This was about more than keeping up on current events to avoid embarrassment. About more than respect and decorum. As Tricia had said, he’s a devious old fart who never does anything without a good reason.

  The elevator hissed open to the forty-third floor.

  A small plate numbering room four three zero five was dwarfed by a large placard that said Inspiration Archipelago.

  We entered a room as big as a basketball court, the ceiling twice normal height. I’d expected a cubicle farm, but instead workers stood around one of four islands of activity. Yes, islands, forming an archipelago. Each island was a sprawling work surface covered with the accoutrement of design: angled drawing platforms, sliding straightedges, tins of lettering stencils and X-Acto knives, and sheet after sheet of oversized drafting paper in various stages of use, from blank to blueprint.

  Above each island hung more motivational posters, with quotations like From heart and mind, to steel and stone and Be the architect of your enduring legacy. The dozen or so designers in the room appeared hard at work.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Look at them,” I whispered to Alfred. “I’ll bet they’re figuring out how Cincinnati’s churches can be repurposed.”

  “This is an inopportune time for jokes.”

  “Maybe for retail. Stack up the pews to display shoes or cookware—strictly Monday through Saturday when God doesn’t need the floor space.”

  Alfred frowned. “Focus on the mission, Mr. Tremaine.”

  Hey, that was my line. Or had I picked it up from Alfred?

  He scanned the room and found what he was looking for, a silver-haired man in shirtsleeves. Standing and speaking to one of the designers, the man reached down and traced a line on a blueprint with his index finger.

  He was Walther Drax, company founder and Cincinnati institution.

  I’d never met him, but I’d seen him a thousand times. In the newspaper and on local TV he was as ubiquitous as Ronald McDonald. At every ceremony to break ground, cut a ribbon, lay a cornerstone, or seal a time capsule, Walther would be there, surrounded by local politicians and business leaders—an exclusive fraternity with a secret handshake. He’d be wearing a thousand-dollar suit and Italian wingtips, perhaps holding a polished chrome shovel, poised to scoop the first soil. But of course he wouldn’t. Showpiece shovels and gleaming executives don’t pierce the earth. The shovels go back to velvet-lined cases. The executives go back to idling cars and deferential drivers.

  In the lobby and on the elevator, I’d considered our morning excursion as something to endure and forget. I would keep my mouth shut while Alfred groveled for the return of his Leica. We would then leave with our dignity bruised but intact. And if we groveled well, the film shot inside the grand rotunda would be safe in my hand.

  But the sight of Walther, the company patriarch, brought up memories black as pitch.

  During our legal battle over my father’s death, I was desperate to meet the Drax man who started it all. We mostly encountered Drax surrogates—lawyers and staffers. Even after seeing Rudolph briefly in the courtroom, I’d wondered if he and Walther knew any more about my father than the speaking points written by Drax attorneys.

  Jack Tremaine, 45, interior trim painter, killed by falling debris.

  “A terrible tragedy. Our hearts go out to the Tremaine family.”

  “We’re working hard to learn everything we can to prevent such subcontractor accidents in the future.”

  “Any additional comment would be inappropriate while the investigation is underway.”

  I’d fantasized about confronting Walther Drax in the courthouse lobby under the TV lights. Did you ever learn more than your speaking points about my dad? I’d ask. That he was a gifted landscape artist who painted walls instead because he needed to feed his family? That he tipped even the rudest waitress because, as he used to say, “Maybe things aren’t so good for her at home”? Did you learn what happened to his wife? You didn’t take her life, only her reason for living. Did you learn these things, Mr. Drax?

  No, I’d never had that opportunity, and I didn’t have it now as I stood beside Alfred in his quest to retrieve a camera. But then I reminded myself: the Leica still
contained my photos of the grand rotunda. And however lousy the odds, those photos could deal Drax a blow.

  I felt the need to prepare for a monumental encounter. Or better yet, prepare to avoid a monumental encounter by keeping my trap shut. “Wait,” I said, but Alfred was already striding toward Walther Drax.

  I followed, an electrical storm in my veins.

  . . . . .

  Walther looked up and recognized Alfred. He raised an index finger, requesting a minute more with his rapt designer.

  I studied the business leader whose name came up constantly during my M.Arch coursework at Xavier, the man The Cincinnatian magazine had named “Queen City King” six times over the decades.

  Walther had first made local headlines as a young businessman, undercutting old-guard firms to win the subway contract. “It’s your city, your future, your money,” he said to the people of Cincinnati. “Why risk tomorrow’s paycheck on yesterday’s construction methods?” When the city’s stiff-collared elites gasped at such brazen competitive language, Walther raised his voice. “Automobiles today are sleeker, faster, and more affordable for you hard-working Americans. Should the city’s projects be any different? I say no.”

  Walther walked toward us. Like Alfred, he was in his seventies, but this was no doddering oldster. With a full head of hair, more gray than Alfred’s white, he stood erect and strode with purpose, stylish in cuffed trousers. The rolled sleeves of his starched shirt fell to mid-forearm, orchestrated to present a man of the people, never mind a net worth of fifty million dollars.

  The two elders exchanged handshakes and smiles but as perfunctorily as greeting the tax accountant every spring. Even Angelica Dawson, the bride from hell, had received a warmer smile from Alfred.

  Alfred introduced me as his employee and by first name only. Perhaps he feared Walther would recognize the name Tremaine from the lawsuit. Alfred had planned everything out like a stage performance, but I wasn’t even a supporting actor. I was a prop.