Shadow of Ashland (Ashland, 1) Read online

  I straightened beside him.

  "She got used to it," he said. "We all did."

  There in the tunnel, the sound of men working about me, another filament of memory dangled down from my childhood. There had been a sidewalk construction pit a block or so from where I grew up—a hole at the southwest corner of Duplex and Eglinton. I was eight... perhaps ten years old ... I watched them work, saw how the tunnel some twenty or thirty feet down went out under the street.

  I have no idea what it was all for.

  I went back after dinner, in the early evening, when everyone had gone home. Red flare lanterns had been placed around its perimeter, and it had been covered over with long construction planks. I played about it for quite a while, peering down between the planks, trying to see the mysteries below. At some point I realized that there was a ladder below the planks, and assuring myself that no one was about, I pulled one of the boards aside, boldly lifted one of the red lanterns, and descended into the pit.

  To this day, I have no idea what made me do such a rash thing.

  Alone, I explored far out under Eglinton Avenue. No one knew I was there. Had there been an accident or cave-in, it would have been days perhaps before anyone discovered me.

  It seems like madness to me now.

  I played down there for about an hour. When I got home, my mother was frantic—a combination of maternal anger and fear.

  Where were you? I was asked.

  Playing, I answered.

  Where?

  Around the block on Duplex Avenue, I answered.

  I was not allowed to cross the street.

  No, you weren't... I've been around the block twice looking for you! Where were you? Where did you get all the mud on your shoes?

  I couldn't answer.

  I never told.

  I knew, even then, that what I had done was foolish. I knew I would be in trouble. And I had not the guile to construct a more intricate story.

  My mother's eyes were wild, and she was breathing heavily. She didn't believe me.

  But I was back. That was enough. Her relief overcame all else.

  We let it drop. Neither of us ever mentioned it again. Perhaps she forgot about it. I never did. My cave has been my secret ever since.

  Just as everyone's childhood is such a secret.

  I still remember the smell of the earth.

  The earth below Ashland was soft and wet.

  The tunnel cut through occasional springs, which ran into puddles that needed to be channeled back into a pit in the basement of the hotel. The pit was only a few feet deeper than the basement floor, and the sound of water running into it, into the pool at the bottom, was something that became a constant.

  If one dug too low, Henry told me, one would inevitably meet the Ohio River. It was always there, he said. Just beneath us.

  ELEVEN

  Thursday, October 11, 1934

  I slept until noon. when I woke, the stiffness of the muscles in my back, arms, legs all told me what I already knew—that I had done more than I should have. Jack was gone.

  Gazing at the window ledge above me, I touched the wall beside me where I lay on the floor. Solid. Real.

  The shower attachment that would be fitted around the bathtub in the years to come had not appeared yet. I filled the tub, lowered myself into the steaming water, soaked in it, grateful for the luxury.

  I watched the steam drift up and out the window.

  Watched it disappear.

  I wandered down to the Woolworth’s on Winchester. Candy, postcards, toys, bars of soap, chewing gum. Gold-filled rings that a baby could wear sold for a dime.

  At the food counter I saw Jack sitting, talking to Teresa. I was several aisles away, unnoticed.

  I watched him touch her hand. I watched her let him leave his hand there. I watched her smile, saw the way she looked at him.

  I left before they saw me.

  I had seen what I had suspected that first time I had seen them together. I had seen another of Jack Radey's secrets.

  In the late afternoon, I was sitting on the veranda steps of the hotel when Jack came strolling down the street. He smiled and sat down beside me.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, letting our Canadian skin feel the Kentucky sunshine coming through the October clouds.

  "You really go to work at the hospital?" I asked finally.

  He nodded. "I go there. Do my job." He pulled a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes from his pocket, shook one loose, put it between his lips, lit it. "You don't smoke, right, Leo?"

  "Right."

  "Smart. Fifteen cents a pack. I must be nuts. I smoked Player's or Gold Crest back home. When you went to the States, everybody wanted you to bring back a pack of Luckies." He blew the smoke out in a stream into the sunlight. "The hospital," he said. "When the job's done, I leave. Do it as quickly as I can. Come back here. Then I do my real work." He leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees. Then he looked at me. "What do you know about Toledo?"

  I looked back at him. "I know what happened."

  He waited.

  "Drove through myself," I heard myself saying. "Heard the stories. Stan said you were there."

  He inhaled on his cigarette.

  "Fellow was either on one side or the other," I said.

  "The right side or the wrong side," he finished.

  I did the waiting this time.

  "I was on the wrong side." The smoke drifted from his nostrils. "Took a man's job 'cause I wanted a job of my own. I didn't understand. Went into work one morning and this guy comes up to me and stands in my way. Little guy. Smaller than me. Thought there was going to be a fight. Thought maybe he was goin' to hit me. Guy says to me, 'You're either one stupid son of a bitch, or you're one mean fucker to do what you're doin'.' I had to decide which I was. I like to think I was just stupid." A silence. Then: "Biggest mistake of my life. Learned everything I needed to know from the experience."

  "Nothing like making a mistake to make you smart."

  He smiled. "I must be the smartest man on earth, then."

  "Tell me about Marg," he said. "How's she doing?"

  It's 1934, I thought. She'd be twenty-five years old. My sister Anne would be four. Ron was two. "Doing well," I said. "Kids keep her busy." I thought for a moment. "She's good at what she does. Being a mother. Loving her family."

  He nodded. "She's like a little girl in a lot of ways, too."

  I couldn't answer that.

  "Naive." A pause. "But nice naive. Even though the worst shit happened to her—to all of us—she always thought everyone was really decent underneath. Had trouble believing bad things about people." He inhaled on his cigarette, exhaled. "Don't know how you get like that." Another pause. "Told me once when she was pregnant with Anne that she didn't understand how the baby was going to get out of her. She asked the doctor. It wasn't clear in her head." He looked at me. "Can you imagine?"

  I was speechless. Another revelation. Something I could never know about my own mother unless she told someone, and I was somehow privy to it. Another of the secrets we all carry around within us, unknowable to others. Unknowable to our own children.

  "She once found a twenty-dollar bill on the floor of the local dairy when we were teenagers. Wouldn't keep it. Said it was probably some person's entire weekly pay. Turned it in to the girl behind the counter. Said the person would probably come back looking for it. I couldn't convince her that the girl was just gonna pocket it—that she'd just given away twenty dollars." He shook his head. "Good old Marg."

  It rang true.

  "I'm not like that," he said. He held the butt of the cigarette tightly between his thumb and index finger, inhaling sharply.

  I thought of his easy acceptance of me, his trust in taking me to his room, his support of me in front of the others, just like his sister.

  "Not like that at all," he said.

  Jack looked at the sky. He looked to the east. The sun was clouded over. "Rain," he said. "It's comin'."
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  "Marg got married fast," he said.

  "Sometimes things happen fast."

  He thought about it. Then: "How's Tommy?"

  "Works hard. Works for the Globe during the day. Gets up when it's still dark. He's in charge of all the boxes all the way up Yonge Street, past the city limits." I had heard the stories many times. "Evenings, he plays jobs with his guitar, banjo. Romanelli's Orchestra. The Royal York. Palais Royale on the Lakeshore. Plays on the boats that go across the lake and back. Money's good. Dead tired, though, from what I hear."

  "Marg must be alone a lot." He looked at me strangely, inquisitive.

  I thought of Jack with Teresa.

  "It's not like that," I said.

  He smiled, a bit embarrassed, but relieved.

  "She's just a special person who's nice to everybody. Like you said."

  He looked down.

  "Your father," I said suddenly. "You should write to him." Jack looked at me with surprise. Then he said, "We had a falling out. Don't get along too well." He paused. "Marg tell you about that?"

  "Didn't exactly tell me. Just bits I picked up, listening."

  "Like we were talking about. Marg can't see him for what he is. Only sees what she wants to see."

  "Maybe she sees him perfectly."

  He looked at me.

  "You, too."

  He was quiet.

  "He's your father." I shrugged. "We don't get to pick our family. Our family happens to us."

  He said nothing for a long time before he spoke. "I'll think about it," he said finally.

  "You should keep writing to Marg. She loves your letters. Saves 'em."

  He frowned.

  "Keep writing."

  "I will," he said. The frown deepened. "I definitely will."

  At five that day, along with dozens of others, we had white beans boiled in water, two slices of bread, and a cup of tea.

  TWELVE

  Friday, October 12, 1934

  At 1:00 a.m. Jack came into the room. I sat up on his bed, where I had been sleeping while he was at the hospital.

  When he flicked on the light, I saw it on him at the same time I heard it through the open window.

  His hair was plastered wetly to his head and the drips had formed at his chin. The shoulders of his shirt were soaked through.

  We both listened to the steady drizzle on the pavement outside.

  It was a steady downpour.

  Jack looked out the window. "Need to talk to Stan," he said. "He knows the feel of this better than I do."

  I was putting on my shoes.

  Jack went through the door. I followed, closing it after me.

  They were in the basement, gathered about the drain hole there: Stanley, Emmett, Henry, George, Jimmy.

  Stan looked up when he heard us coming.

  They stepped aside as Jack and I glanced down into the hole.

  It had risen about six inches.

  When I looked up, George met my eyes. "The Ohio," he said. "Lyin’, waitin'."

  We listened to the steady trickle of water into the pit, heavier now than I had heard it before.

  "What do we do?" asked Jack.

  Stanley looked at him, shrugged. "Keep diggin'."

  "Pray," said Jimmy. He ran a dirty hand through his matted red hair.

  The springs in the tunnel ran in rivulets around our ankles as we dug. Emmett spent most of the night checking and propping the vertical beams, shoring them up where water had eroded the firmness of their footings. He fixed additional horizontals beneath the tram tracks where the earth had begun to disappear.

  The wetness turned most of the earth into mud, and each shovelful took on three times the weight.

  By dawn we were exhausted.

  The water in the pit had risen another four inches.

  At noon, we sat on the veranda of the hotel and listened to the train pull into Ashland. Within an hour, we were able to watch as the armored car pulled up to the bank and began to unload the money.

  The rain poured down steadily as the gray figures moved from truck to bank and back again.

  When Jack went to his hospital job that evening, I went into the basement where Stan and George had already begun to work.

  A small steady stream sluiced noisily down through the tunnel mud into the drain pit.

  Even from where I stood at the base of the stairs, I could see that the hole was full.

  THIRTEEN

  Saturday, October 13, 1934

  Jack came into the tunnel sometime between 1:00 and 2.00 A.M.

  We were ankle-deep in water.

  As the rain loosened the earth, the far end of the tunnel began to fall away in ever larger chunks under our assault—a phenomenon both exhilarating and frightening. We filled the tram what seemed like a hundred times, sending it back to the basement to be dumped.

  The tracks were completely underwater.

  As we burrowed deeper under the streets of Ashland, Emmett and Henry cut and built the supports from pine beams, shimmed and jockeyed them into place, fixing them with miners' care, knowing what was at stake.

  Still, as the water swirled about the bases of the beams, even though nothing was said, the worry in their eyes was clear to all.

  I thought of my solitaire games of years ago, the random flow of cards like the river beneath us.

  And another memory card turned over.

  I had taken my nephew, Bill, to a Jays game. He was ten? Eleven"? The tickets, from a scalper, had cost me a bundle. The parking, the hot dogs, the ice cream, the program.

  The Jays beat the Angels.

  On the street, on the way out, more sidewalk vendors hawked their wares.

  Can I have a pennant? he asked.

  I looked at them briefly, checked their price. The cheapest was $5.

  No, I said, feeling cleaned out. Too expensive. We've spent enough already.

  He took it with resolve.

  Next time, I said.

  He said nothing.

  We went home.

  And now, my back sore, sweat pouring down my brow, covered from head to toe in mud, beneath the streets of Ashland, Kentucky, somewhere in a past I do not understand, I wonder what I was thinking. There was no next time. I wonder what good that $5 is to me now.

  I'd give anything, I think suddenly, looking into the glare from the bare light bulb, the sweat running into my eyes, to buy the pennant for him now.

  And then the light bulb went out.

  I blinked, its afterimage still burning into my eyes in the dark.

  "Jesus Christ."

  "What happened?"

  "Quiet." A flashlight snapped on.

  I squinted at the new glow. It was in Stanley's hand, attached by a chain to his belt.

  The beam moved steadily about our surroundings, focusing finally on the electric wire that ran our lights. There was water dripping from the tunnel ceiling now, and the wire was covered in droplets.

  Stanley started back along the tunnel.

  We followed.

  We lifted our feet carefully so as not to trip on the submerged tracks. The water swirled now at midcalf, rising.

  About forty feet back along the tunnel, we saw what had happened. A small portion of the tunnel roof had collapsed, pulling down with it the electric cord. The wire angled down from in front of us to where it was buried beneath a pile of wet earth some two feet high. The earth covered the floor of the tunnel for about six feet.

  We looked at it, looked at one another.

  Stanley bent forward, pulled the end of the wire. "Hold this." He turned, detached the flashlight, and gave it to Jack. Then he crawled up on his knees atop the collapsed earth and pulled the wire loose for the six feet it was buried.

  He stood on the opposite side of the pile, the cord in his hands. "Must've pulled a connection loose farther back."

  "Ain't good," George said.

  "Looks like we got some repairs to do," Stanley said.

  We stared at him, standing in the glow of
the beam from Jack's hand, the water building up closer to our knees.

  It only took minutes to clear the floor of most of the fallen earth, to shovel it to the sides enough to uncover the submerged tracks. It reminded me of being a kid after a rainstorm, of damming up the flow of water rushing along the curb gutter, then breaking it open to let the buildup break free and disappear down the sewer.

  But instead of disappearing, the water merely dropped a few inches, back to the level of midcalf.

  We stared at the space in the ceiling above us where the earth had collapsed. I thought of the entire town sitting above us, of our frailty in the earth below.

  I asked it, what was not being said: "Is this safe?"

  For a moment there was only the sound of the droplets falling and the quiet rush of water about our legs.

  "Mine's a mine," Stan said. "Tunnel's a tunnel. Ain't natural. Men ain't really supposed to be down here, doin' this. Always a risk."

  "But the rain," I said.

  "Make's it trickier," said George. "Like Stan says, though, it's the nature of the beast."

  "I took two men out of a mine near the Panther Creek in West Virginia back in thirty-one," said Emmett. "Wasn't no rain. Just happened. Sometimes it just happens. Didn't mind workin' in the mines till then."

  "I can take you to see this mausoleum in a cemetery outside Coal Mountain." Henry had been silent for hours until now. "Fella buried there spent his whole life underground. Said when he died he wanted to be buried above ground. Kinda to balance things out." He looked around. "Lots spend a lifetime below. Nothin' happens to 'em."