Shadow of Ashland (Ashland, 1) Read online

  "But the rain," I said. "The water."

  Their faces set grimly, in silence.

  "Ought to work in shifts from now on," said George.

  Stan nodded.

  "No more'n three at a time in the tunnel," he continued. "Make sure there's always more on the outside than on the inside, in case another chunk collapses. Could dig us out, or get help. Be a safety measure."

  "Makes sense," said Jimmy.

  "It'll slow us up," said Emmett.

  "Diggin's goin' well," said Stan. "Like Jimmy says, makes sense."

  Emmett looked unconvinced.

  "Till the rain stops," said Stanley.

  Emmett hesitated, then nodded. "Makes sense, I guess," he agreed, finally.

  I dug for a while longer with Jack and Stanley. The others took a break, becoming the safety crew.

  "Know anything much about coal, Leo?" asked Stan, suddenly, after watching the others leave.

  Sometimes we needed to talk just to hear the sound of human voices. Sometimes we just wanted the silence. This was one of those times for the voices.

  I remembered it was 1934, searched for a memory that would fit. I remembered playing in the coal bin in the basement when I was a kid, remembered getting hell because I was coal black afterward. "Got a big old octopus furnace that opens its mouth and eats it up," I said. "Lot colder there. Burn it all winter." I remembered watching my father shovel it into the flames.

  I heaved a shovelful of dirt into the tram, thought. "I watch the men pour coal down the chutes into the apartment buildings around the comer from where I live. Looking at them, their hands, their faces, I wonder how they ever get clean. Even handlin' it after it's been dug up seems like a hell of a job." I dug the shovel back into the wall, heaved again. "I remember a story my father told me. Told me about how his own father had a horse used to be out back of the house on Berkeley Street. Horse was used to pull the coal wagon my grandfather drove to deliver it in the area." I smiled wryly. "Don't know the same things about coal up in Canada as you do down here. We delivered it and burned it up, after you got it out of the ground. Comes in by train. Sits in big cement silos." I rubbed my nose, smudging dirt across it. "Heard of black lung, but never saw it," I added.

  Stanley wiped his brow, listening, watching me. "Hard to picture it gettin' all the way up there to Canada."

  "My father says that old horse was a swayback. Says he had grass growing out of his back."

  Stanley smiled.

  "Ever hear of Father Coughlin?" asked Jack, topping off the tram, smoothing out the dirt with his shovel.

  I straightened. "Matter of fact, I have."

  "Ever actually hear him?"

  I shook my head. "No," I said.

  "Every Sunday. From Royal Oak, Michigan. Was in charge of buildin' the shrine there, to Saint Therese, the Little Flower. Till he started makin' people aware of things we should know, things that need sayin'."

  I watched his face, in the shadows, become enlivened.

  "Puts the international bankers right up there with the devil and the Communists."

  Stanley had stopped and was listening now.

  "The Union for Social Justice," said Jack. "He read us some statistics couple weeks ago that said the profits of the wealthy had increased sixty-six percent the last few years, while wages and salaries had dropped sixty percent in the same time."

  "The Radio Priest," said Stanley, "gets eighty thousand letters a week. Poll taken at the radio station asked if folks wanted to hear his program. Hundred thirty-seven thousand said yes. Four hundred said no."

  "Program's on Sundays," said Jack. "Goin' to miss it this Sunday, I expect. Might miss mass, too." He grinned at Stanley.

  Stanley smiled back.

  This Sunday. It was what we were here for.

  That evening, after dinner, we sat in the parlor in front of the radio, sipping tea: myself, Jack, Stanley, Teresa, George, and Jimmy. The teapot sat on a crocheted doily on top of a mahogany coffee table. Beside the teapot lay a well-thumbed copy of the February 1934 issue of Vanity Fair, which looked all of its nine or ten months old. The cover featured a caricature of FDR as a Rough Rider, complete with chaps, hat, boots, scarf. He was riding a saddled outline of the U.S.A., his reins pulling on the snout up in Maine, his heels digging in down in the southwest. Easily taming the wild steed beneath him, he tipped his hat in the air and smiled.

  It cost 35¢.

  I touched it.

  "Ever hear his Fireside Chats?" asked Stanley.

  I looked up. He was watching me. I knew that he watched me a lot. "No," I said, sitting back, letting my fingers slip from its slick surface. I shrugged. "Canada, remember?"

  "Course. I forgot. Don't think of it. Well," he continued, "it's his favorite way of sellin' his programs. Radio talks. Tries to make 'em sound informal. Likes to wait till folks are relaxing after dinner, till your food is digestin' nicely, so your brain isn't functionin' full tilt."

  George chuckled. "Shoulda heard his first one. 'Bout a year ago. Told us all 'bout how the banks were bein' reorganized, how it was safer to put your money in 'em than to leave it under your mattress. Told us there would be no losses that possibly could have been avoided." He frowned, scratched his head. "Still puzzlin' that one over."

  "Don't want other folks' money," said Stanley. He looked down at the magazine cover. Then he said, very softly: "Just Barbara's."

  I sipped my tea. "Where are we in the tunnel?"

  Stanley looked up. "Right underneath it," he said. "Right under the vault. We'll be through tomorrow."

  "Drills and torches are ready to go," said Jimmy, speaking for the first time.

  "What happens when they open the bank on Monday morning and find the money gone—see the hole, the tunnel?" I'm not sure I really believed we'd get there until I asked the question. I realized that I'd just been going along with them.

  Stanley looked at Jack, then at George. They smiled. Then he said: "We think we got it figured out."

  Jack leaned forward. The blue eyes, the white smile. He came alive. "Got a series of plans, Leo. None of them lead back here."

  Teresa listened, quiet, wide-eyed, admiring.

  Stanley was nodding, thinking. Then he looked from Jack to Teresa, watching.

  I saw the look on Stanley Matusik's face as he watched the two of them, and realized that he knew.

  I couldn't take my eyes from his face. I studied it, trying to read the thoughts behind it, trying to follow the river of his emotions.

  As I watched him, his face became a puzzle, his eyes colorless. I watched for anger, resentment, jealousy. Instead I saw traces of sadness in the slackened muscles, a deep weariness in his carriage.

  Jack looked at him.

  "No. You go ahead," said Stan. He seemed suddenly to struggle with the tiredness, to shake it away, collect himself. "You tell it."

  Jack smiled, excited, oblivious. "Emmett and Henry aren't here, you notice. They're part of another crew. They've been digging a shorter, smaller tunnel that's all set to join up at a right angle with ours just beneath the vault. Only got about three feet more to go. Been just sittin' there waitin' for us. Comes in from a sewer main beneath Winchester. We got it filled with clothes and stuff left behind by transients for the past six months. False trail, so they won't be looking for locals. They can inspect and scour it for weeks. Hundreds of false clues everywhere. Address books. Empty wallets with old IDs. Road maps, with places circled. Train schedules. You name it." His eyes shone.

  "We got the last twenty feet of our own tunnel rigged to collapse where it meets the Winchester one," he continued. "Pull a couple of ropes, it disappears. They open up Monday morning, see everything cleaned out, see the hole, follow it down to the tunnel that leads into the main sewer, see all the stuff we put there, and that should be it. No reason at all for them to come looking for us. No reason even for any of us to have to leave the hotel, or Ashland."

  "But won't they see the collapsed opening?" The questions sp
illed out of me. "Won't they be able to tell that there was a tunnel there? Won't they wonder where the covered tunnel went?"

  "Emmett and Henry will fix that. They can smooth it over between now and Monday morning so's you'd never know there was one there," said George. "And if anyone suspected and decided to start digging it out, why they'd never be able to tell if it was a tunnel or not. And we can fill in and collapse the rest slowly over the next few days. Nothin'll lead back here. Ain't no one goin' to dig our tunnel back out after we bring her down. Too much work. Wouldn't make no sense. 'Specially with all them clues sitting in the other direction."

  I didn't have much to say. They seemed to have covered all the bases.

  Then we heard the thunder. It rumbled down from the east, rattled the windows.

  The rain continued to bounce off the pavement outside.

  All the bases except one, I thought.

  It was Saturday night. Most people went to the movies.

  We'd all seen King Kong. We sat in the parlor, cradling teacups, and listened to "Your Hit Parade."

  I watched Stanley.

  He watched Teresa and Jack.

  I began to feel light-headed. The parlor of the Scott Hotel came into focus as though through a wide-angle lens, curving at the edges.

  Is any of this real, I wondered?

  Will I ever see my father, my home, my job, Jeanne, or Adam again?

  Where am I? What's happening?

  I didn't know.

  Below us, the Ohio River strove upward, trying to join the sky and the rain, squeezing us blindly in between.

  FOURTEEN

  Sunday, October 14, 1934

  "Jack, George, and Jimmy are the first shift," said Stanley.

  "They should clear the earth right up to beneath the vault. Scrape it clean, so's we can see what we're doin'."

  For the first time in front of me, Stanley unfolded onto the coffee table, atop the Vanity Fair, a working diagram of the tunnel, the secondary tunnel, the sewer system, all superimposed on a scale drawing of streets and buildings.

  "Leo and I'll work the basement, pull the tram out by rope if we can, spread the dirt around best we can."

  "Water's pretty high," said George. "Don't know if you'll be able to move the tram that way."

  "We'll try it anyway. If we can't, we'll do whatever we have to. Whatever it takes."

  In the basement, the water was deeper than we had dreamed. It swirled above the knees, restless, with no place to go.

  "This'll never work," said George. "Too much water."

  "Has to work," said Jack. He went first into the tunnel.

  Jimmy followed right behind him, taking his end of the long rope, letting it uncoil like a water snake behind him as he disappeared.

  George looked at us, then focused on Stan. "Too much water," he said again. Then he said what he was thinking: "We should wait a month."

  Stanley's eyes did not see him. They seemed to be following the sound of the men wading down the tunnel. "We're right there," he said. "Right under it. It's ours."

  George looked at me, then back at Stanley.

  "Rain might even help." Stanley Matusik's eyes glazed. "Make it easier to collapse the tunnel afterward. No sign of any kind. Bury it forever."

  George heard the same illogic in the voice that I heard and looked to me suddenly for support.

  "Maybe George is right," I said.

  Stanley did not even look at me. "Too late," he said. "Everything's too late. What's gonna happen is gonna happen."

  He stared down the tunnel.

  George turned and went after Jack and Jimmy.

  We were able to retrieve the tram with its first load of earth. But when we had emptied it, before we could tug the rope on its other end in signal to haul it away, it was clear our system wouldn't work anymore.

  The water continued to rise and, empty of weight, the tram car became unstable—not light enough to float, not heavy enough to ride the tracks.

  "They try pullin' it back, it'll tip on its side. Fill up with water," said Stanley.

  "I think you're right."

  "Better tell them." He started to wade toward the tunnel.

  "I'll come with you," I said.

  "Don't have to. You can wait here."

  "I'm coming." I slogged after him into the tunnel.

  Sometimes we remember everything with unusual clarity. Other times, it seems blurred, and we wish we were privy to some kind of instant replay, some way of studying an event to see how it happened, what happened, to try to understand it.

  I don't know exactly what happened. I try to replay it in my head, but I can't see it clearly. In my mind I feel the water around my legs, feel the mud of the walls with my hand as I walk along, squint into the glare of bulbs.

  Then suddenly it is dark. There is the feel of stale air on my face, blown as with a bellows, then I hear the muffled splash far up the tunnel at the same time I feel the walls shudder under my hand. The water stirs with new bubbles. A wave washes up toward my waist as it surges past me, ricocheting its way into the basement where it will crash around crazily without escape.

  In the dark I stand there, knowing Stanley is somewhere beside me. Knowing that everything has gone bad.

  The flashlight beam snapped on in Stanley's hand, darting crazily about the walls as he ran ahead of me through the water.

  I ran after him, tripped, fell, got up, ran again.

  The beam of light stopped at the wall of mud in front of us. Jack, George, and Jimmy were in there somewhere—under it or behind it.

  I saw Jack's eyes, my mother's eyes, erupt like startling blue flares in my brain, arcing from the past to the present, and back to the past.

  Stanley, Emmett, Henry, and I dug for the next fourteen hours straight. We burrowed a narrow path ten feet into the fallen mud without sensing any end to it.

  When the water was above our waists, a section of tunnel some dozen feet or so behind us collapsed, leaving only a foot or so of air space above it. We shone our lights back along its top surface. The collapsed portion was only a six-foot span—a segment between supports.

  The trapped water around us was rising rapidly.

  We turned our efforts on the earth behind us, digging with energy we didn't know we had left, scraping a path along the top of the collapsed mud that would allow us to crawl over it.

  With the water at our chests, we heaved ourselves up and inched our way out of our own plight, sliding down into the water and mud on the other side.

  In the basement, exhausted, we tried to collect our thoughts.

  "Have to go back," said Emmett.

  We looked to Stanley. His face showed nothing. "Can't," he said. "Not now. Too much water." A pause. "We need rest, food, too."

  "We can't leave them there," I said.

  Stanley looked at me.

  "What about the other tunnel?" I asked. I looked to Emmett and Henry.

  Henry shook his head. "Runs off the sewer," he said. "Sewer's full. Everything's flooded. You'd need diving equipment. Even then, full of water like this, whole goddamn thing could come down on you in an eye blink." He looked down the tunnel in front of us. "This one, too."

  "What do we do, then?" I asked. I heard my voice rise a notch.

  No one answered.

  The water, thick with its mud and power, flowed relentlessly out of the darkness around us.

  By Sunday night, the water filled the basement completely.

  FIFTEEN

  Monday, October 15, 1934

  The water crept up over the curbs onto sidewalks. By dawn, the town was beginning sandbagging operations.

  The bank did not open for general business that day. But it did open special at 10:00 a.m. for the armored car that pulled up in front of it.

  I watched from the veranda as the rain poured down steadily and the gray figures moved from bank to truck and back again, gathering the money, escorting it to the train and out of Ashland before it, too, sank beneath the water.
r />   It rained all day. The streets disappeared.

  That evening, I stood knee-deep in water on Winchester Avenue, hands in my pockets, the rain running off my chin, down my neck, into my eyes, feeling where the pavement had buckled slightly beneath my feet, facing the Second National Bank.

  Jack, I thought.

  Jack.

  And then it was over.

  Everything changed.

  SIXTEEN

  They remain shadows... shadows whose few remaining words and acts I have invented. Perhaps I only wanted their forgiveness for having forgotten them.

  "I remember their deaths, but not their lives. Yet they're inside me, flowing unknown in my blood and moving unrecognized in my skull.

  —Margaret Laurence

  The Diviners

  1

  The air changed.

  The water was gone. The rain had stopped.

  The wind blew warm and sultry.

  I looked about me, at the present, at the hot August night of 1984.

  I was back.

  The lightning flashed in sheets in the sky, and I stood, as I had that night, outside the First National Bank and Trust building, looking into the smiling face and warmth that was Jack Radey.

  "It's hot here," I heard him say. "But I like it. I like the possibilities." He stared at me, silhouetted in the radiance from a streetlight, a young man, confronted with his future. "A man can make something of himself down here. Anything can happen." He moved closer so that I could see the glow of hope on his face. "Do you know where Ashland is? Do you know where I could go from here?"

  I didn't know what the answer was. I didn't know anything.

  "God ..." He ran his hand through black curly hair. "Anywhere," he said. There was a flicker of lightning, like a strobe. "Anywhere." Then he turned and stared at the mountains, at the east. "It's like the jumping off point to anywhere." He paused. "I'm on the edge of the Virginias, the Carolinas. I could go right through to Richmond or Norfolk, or up to Washington, Baltimore, Atlantic City. It's all ahead of me." He turned to face me again. "You tell Margaret I'm fine."