Suspension

by Richard E. Crabbe

  Lincoln shrugged. “Suppose. Can’t do nothin’ about it anyway,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Ready to do the other stays?”

  As the two had clambered down the trusses to the train tracks, they heard voices from off toward the New York tower. Dropping down, they called softly to Matt and Earl, who were about twenty feet to either side of them, setting charges on the roadway beams.

  “Get back under the promenade, someone’s comin’,” Pat called in a hoarse whisper. Silently each man slipped like a ghost beneath the cover of the promenade. They balanced on the roadway beams, nine and five-eighths inches wide and with nothing but air to the river.

  Voices approached above their heads. Footsteps rattled and squeaked the decking. They were drunk, whoever they were. The talk was loud and boisterous. The footsteps pounded in uneven staggers.

  “You’d break yer neck, you fuckin’ fool!” one voice said.

  “That’s for damn sure, Bob. You wouldn’t be sayin’ that if not for the pints. If the fall didn’t kill ye, the water, an’ the currents would.”

  “Ach! This fuckin’ bridge ain’t so high. Could be done, I tell yez. The man what does it’s gonna be famous too … mark me words.”

  “Sure that’s the beer talkin’, Odium. Ye’re a crazy bastard, but not that crazy.”

  “Nah, Gil, here’s how I’d do it …” the one called Odlum said as they passed out of earshot.

  They all looked at Sullivan for the okay to get moving again.

  “Ain’t enough money in the whole damn city could make me jump off here,” Jus said, looking down at the oily black water.

  They’d lost valuable time and were behind schedule now by at least five minutes. After checking for traffic on the roadway and promenade, Pat and Justice sprinted across and scrambled up the upstream cables as far as they could. Again they swung down from the main cable, close to the granite of the tower and down the bar, where the stays were anchored. They worked steadily, the height and their precarious positions not hampering them as much as the darkness. Up there the lights from the promenade below cast only a feeble glow. It was like flying among the stars. Pat had to stop for a moment to savor the feeling. It would be his last time in the cables, just as it was his first time up there at night. The stars were bright in the blue-black sky. He craned his neck, scanning the heavens. The stars wheeled above his head. Could God somehow see what he was about? He believed it was so. The heavens seemed hopelessly cold and lonely without that small comfort. He hoped that God could see the choice he’d made.

  Jacobs looked at his watch for the sixth or seventh time. It was almost three.

  “Just about the halfway point,” he whispered to his idle team. He stretched his shoulders to ease the muscles in his back, groaning in the process. “Little bastards,” he cursed. He was so sore he could hardly move, and he had so many small cuts on him his shirt looked polka-dotted with blood. The bruise on his back was the size of a melon, and he’d been pissing blood since last night. He grumbled to himself once more, then glanced at the bridge and was astonished to see a cop, striding up the approach, heading toward New York.

  “Christ!” He whipped his team, setting them off at almost a run. He slowed and flipped his toll to the sleepy-eyed collector, slapping the reins, urging the team on. He passed the cop just before the Brooklyn tower and tried to get as much speed as he could without being too conspicuous. “Shit! Not supposed to be a patrol for another thirty minutes!” Jacobs pulled into the left lane, closest to the trusses over the train tracks. They blocked the view from the promenade at that angle. As he neared the center, he slowed to nearly a stop. At first he couldn’t see anyone, but he whistled and Matt’s and Earl’s hands popped up from behind the upstream main cable. Jacobs pointed back toward Brooklyn and called “Cop!” then drove off.

  Matt Emmons and Earl Lebeau had been working faster than they had anticipated. Using clay to anchor the charges was working better than they had hoped. They had their charges set and wired on all thirteen beams on the upstream center cable before Pat and Jus were down from the stays. They moved over to the upstream cable after the drunks had passed but found that to be slower work. They had to work hanging on to the outside of the roadway railing, using whatever handholds they could find on the cable and beams. They started to fall behind immediately. Matt was more terrified than he’d ever been. Not even the caisson scared him so much as clinging like a fly to the edge of the bridge at night. A ship hissed by below him, its side wheels churning the black waters into a milky gray wake. He looked down at it and was almost sick. He reeled and clutched at the cable, holding on till his panic passed. He and Earl worked their way slowly toward the middle. They had to keep climbing back over the side to get more explosives and clay.

  Earl and Matt had just run back with a third sackful when they heard the wagon coming at a run. Not knowing who it was, they ducked down behind the cable to wait. The whistled signal brought them up like gophers from their holes. They couldn’t see the cop but there was no doubt he was coming. Earl saw Matt looking at him questioningly. To stay put, or risk a run across the roadway to the cover of the promenade? Earl figured it was better to stay put, as uncomfortable as it was. The main cable concealed them pretty well, and they could actually sit on the very end of the beams until the cop was gone. It seemed the better choice. He held his hand out, palm down motioning Matt to stay put.

  The cop was taking his time. It was another couple of minutes till he reached center span. Instead of walking on, through, he stopped, leaning on the rail of the promenade. They could hear the striking of a match in the silence above the river. Maybe that’s why the cop loitered there. The view at night was magical. Waiting for the cop to leave, Matt hung on, his fingers stiffening, muscles aching. While the cop smoked, Earl and Matt sat, feet swinging loose over the river. Not more than twenty feet separated them. Up in the tops of the main cables, cloaked in woolly blackness, Pat on one side, Justice on the other, lay flat on the cables, reducing their profile as much as possible. Neither of them moved a muscle. Even the mask of the night wouldn’t hide movement, so they did their best to become part of the bridge.

  Matt was almost afraid to breath at first, but the longer the cop smoked, the more at ease he became. The trouble was that his hands were cramping and his feet were going numb. The hard edges of the beam he sat on were cutting off circulation. The constant grip he had to maintain had his hands burning. His seat on the edge of the beam was so precarious that he had to lean back just a bit to stay on it. The minutes crawled by and his panic slowly increased as his grip weakened. To distract himself, Matt hummed old tunes, barely audible even to himself. Tunes from around the campfires of the war and from the long marches all chorused inside his head. He needed to do something to get his mind off his predicament. He hummed softly, desperate for relief. He hummed “Lorena.”

  It was another couple of minutes before the cop continued his stroll toward New York. He went so slowly though, that it was more tortuous minutes before he reached and passed the New York tower. Earl scrambled up first, shaking the blood back into his cramped muscles. He walked unsteadily down the roadway toward Matt’s hiding place, wincing at each step on his pins-and-needles feet.

  “Shit, Matthew—thought that bastard was gonna camp out all fuckin’ night!”

  “Ooh, Christ … I’m stiff.” Matt groaned.

  “Need a hand?” Earl offered.

  “I guess. Not sure I can get up. I’m all cramped up in my hands … legs are numb too.”

  “Hold on,” Earl said, hearing the scare in Matt’s voice. “Wait till I get a grip on ye.” Earl hung over the big cable and reached down for his hand. Matt put one foot on the lower lip of the beam and started to stand. His legs felt dead. He couldn’t feel his feet at all. “Give me yer hand, partner.” Matt reached but as he did, his sleeping foot slipped from the lip of the beam. He went down hard on the steel edge, then off, into space. The one hand he still had a grip with couldn’t withstan
d the jolt. Earl stood frozen, transfixed by Matt’s eyes. They stared, wide as they would go, black holes surrounded by white. It was only for an instant, but Matt’s eyes spoke of an eternity of terror. His hands, thrown out to Earl as if throwing a lifeline, couldn’t span the widening gap. Earl watched as, in a flash, terror turned to resignation. Falling back into the blackness above the East River, Matt Emmons disappeared. Earl stared in disbelief. Matt had not screamed, as another man might. He made no sound at all, save the distant splash of black Yankee waters. Pat and Jus came running a second later. They had scrambled down too when the cop passed out of sight.

  “Oh, Christ! Oh sweet Jesus, Pat,” Earl cried. “He was right here, he was right here. I had ‘im, I was lookin’ right at ‘im, he was giving me his hand. Oh, Christ! We got to do somethin’.” Earl moaned, hopping from one foot to the other. “We got to get ’im, oh sweet Lord!”

  “Jesus! He went without a sound,” Jus said, looking over the side. A slight grayish-white foam was all there was to see on the smooth black surface. “He’s gone, boys. Just gone.”

  “Don’t we got to find him?” Earl said, looking from Pat to Jus. “We got to, right? He might be alive, he might—” Earl put his head in his hands, his fingers spread out through his wild hair as if to hold his head on. “I almost had ‘im too.” Earl said, reaching his hands out with his fingers spread. “He was just reachin’ up when he slipped. Oh, God, I saw ‘im go! I saw his eyes.” He covered his own to block out the vision. “I looked right at ’im.”

  “Earl, there isn’t a damn thing we can do. He’s gone,” Pat said softly, putting his arm around Earl’s shoulders. “Damned if he didn’t go like a soldier too!” Pat was amazed.

  “Fuckin’ right!” Jus said, the admiration clear in his voice. “Kept his tongue for fear of giving us away. Jesus, that took sand!”

  “He … set us an example,” Pat said softly. “After what he did, we can’t quit. Got to finish.” With a last look over the side, Sullivan said softly, “Let’s get moving.”

  “Time for grief later,” Justice added solemnly, suppressing the chill that went through him.

  Pat turned and headed back up the cable. He had almost been done when Matt fell. He needed to wire three more sticks then run his lead down the cable. That took another few minutes. They weren’t good minutes. He found himself clinging tighter. There was a tremor in his hands that he could not command. Within ten minutes he and Justice were done and helping Earl finish the charges on the roadway beams. Once they had been wired, there was one task left. Earl took the spool of wire, which tied in to all the charges on the upriver side, and hooked it to a long, bent wire hook attached to his belt. It was designed so the spool could unwind by itself as Earl made his way across on one of the beams beneath the roadway.

  “You ready?” Pat asked, looking closely at him.

  Earl, who had been silent as the grave once he had gotten control of himself, took a couple of deep breaths and flexed his hands before saying “Yup.”

  Without another word, he went over the side, climbed down under the roadway, and disappeared. His feet were the last to go. He had them hooked on either side of the beam as he went across, hand over hand. Pat and Jus ran over to the other side, waiting by the beam, bent low, ready to grab Earl when he came back into sight. Carriages went by, but in the shadow of the promenade, the men weren’t seen. A second later they heard Earl, grunting with the effort as he neared them.

  “Give me a hand. I’m ’bout played out.” He panted. They reached and grabbed him by his shirt, one on either side, holding on as he carefully pulled himself atop the exposed beam. He lay there hugging it, breathing hard and staring down at the river. “Christ!” He gasped. “Christ!”

  They finished the final wiring about ten minutes later, tying their leads into the main wire coming from the dynamo room. Pat was to be the last to go. The plan was to simply walk off the bridge one by one once they were done. Earl had gone first. He disappeared toward New York, vanishing like a ghost in the gloom.

  “Can’t believe Matt’s gone,” Jus said as he and Pat waited for Earl to drop out of sight.

  “In all the years in the cables … not one man fell,” Pat said almost to himself. “Now here we are … and we lose a man within an hour.” He shook his head slowly.

  “He slipped,” Justice said to the unasked question.

  Pat didn’t say anything. He looked at his watch. “Well … Earl’s been gone five minutes. Guess you better get along.”

  Patrick Sullivan sat on the top of the truss that formed the railing of the promenade, watching his old confederate go marching down the slope to the city of the Yankees. This would be their last march. Watkins was gone. Now Emmons wouldn’t walk away either. Pat wondered how many might die tomorrow. He looked up to the circle of stars, like a crown to the bridge. He had helped build this thing. Was this how God felt in creation? Did the Almighty somehow share his pride? He thought that maybe it was so. It was like a living thing, this bridge. He could feel its vibrating heart through the cables. He wouldn’t have a hand in killing it.

  He couldn’t thwart the others, but he’d take no hand in it himself. Justice felt the same, he knew. He’d said as much. Pat checked to see that Jus had disappeared beyond the New York tower, then turned, his pocketknife in his hand. He’d have to be careful how he cut Jus’s wires. It would be bad if it was discovered tomorrow. Maybe with the stays in place, the bridge wouldn’t fall. Pat was leaning over the truss, reaching under to cut the wires, his knife poised when he heard the creaking of promenade boards behind him.

  “Just what the hell are you about, if I might ask?” a voice boomed in the dark, startling him with its closeness. Pat didn’t need to look around to see it was a cop. He’d been so intent on watching Jus walk off and then feeling for the wires, he hadn’t checked to see if anyone was coming from the Brooklyn side. He stayed for an instant, doubled over the truss, his face fairly hidden as he slipped his knife up one sleeve and tried to think of what to do.

  “Speak up, man! What were you doing there? You sick or something?” the cop demanded.

  Pat’s mind, which had been racing to find a way out, latched onto the phrase as if it were a life preserver. He groaned in the dark, hoping it sounded sick enough. The prod of a nightstick in the ribs was his reward.

  “Eh … what’s that?” the cop asked, clearly not satisfied. “You’re not sick,” he said skeptically. “What were you doing there?”

  Obviously they were on alert, Pat thought. Playing sick wasn’t going to be enough. He felt the knife in his sleeve but held that back as a last resort. A heavy hand slapped onto his shoulder, trying to spin him around. His panic doubled … tripled in the night. Turning away so his face wasn’t seen, he rammed a finger down his throat as far as it would go. It was magic.

  With a spasmodic heave his stomach emptied itself over the side of the trusswork, covering the wires underneath, where he’d tried to cut them. He turned toward the cop, vomiting on his shoes and himself too.

  The cop jumped back as if scalded. “For the love o’—” he shouted as Pat staggered toward him, holding his gut with both hands. “Get the fuck—” the cop held out a hand to stop him from getting any closer. A second heave splattered on the promenade. “Christ! Goddamn drunken bastard. Get the fuck off the bridge!”

  Pat waved his hands apologetically. “Sorry. Really … sorry, Officer,” he said, holding back a third retch.

  “Yeah, just get the hell out of here,” the cop said, stamping the vomit off his shoes. “Go back to the Bowery where your kind belongs.”

  Pat staggered a little more, still holding his gut.

  “Go on. Git!” the cop shouted, prodding him again with his nightstick from long distance.

  Sullivan apologized again, then turned, weaving his way down the promenade to freedom.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  And I a missile steeped in hate,

  Hurled forward like a cannon-ball,

&
nbsp; By the resistless hand of fate,

  Rushed wildly, madly through it all.

  —MAURICE THOMPSON

  May 31, 1883, 5:30 A.M.

  Tom stood before the door to Sangree & Co. The dream still lingered, the horror still strong like a smell he couldn’t get out of his clothes. He had gotten up, needing to do something, hoping that by activity he could put his demons to rest. He had to go over the office once more. Actually, he’d taken the El south at about 5:00 A.M. with little notion of what he would do, just an idea that he needed to do … something. He’d ended up going to Peck Slip first, where he stood for some time in front of Paddy’s, while the street came to life. Perhaps by going back to the beginning he could raise old ghosts or come up with new ideas. He wasn’t sure. It hadn’t taken long to get himself moving in the direction of Sangree & Co. He’d see what there was to be seen once more, he thought as he looked at the frosted glass of the front door. Then he’d go to work over at the bridge offices. He had to be missing something. These men couldn’t be that good. Pat and Charlie had gone over this place before, and they were as thorough as any men he knew … but.

  “What the hell,” Tom muttered, and kicked in the door with a tremendous crash of splintering wood and shattering glass. He didn’t feel like going to fetch keys.

  He stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying the place. There wasn’t much to survey: A big roll-top desk in one corner, a couple of chairs, a coat rack, a shabby rug, and a couple of ordinary-looking framed prints hanging on the walls outfitted the front room. Everything was shrouded and indistinct in the early morning light, giving the place a dreamlike quality. He took a deep breath and stepped into the dream—or was it the nightmare? This place seemed home of the nightmare. Things were planned and done here that he could only imagine. If such plans left a residue, some lingering trace of negative energy, they’d be here. Sangree planned right in this room, a room that echoed with the crunch of Tom’s feet on the door’s broken glass. There had to be something left, some lingering trace of insanity from thoughts and plans like that. He started to search.