Brookland (59 page)

Ben had determined that to build a strong foundation, the hole on the Brooklyn side would have to reach a depth of more than thirty feet. Even at such a depth, the excavation would not reach bedrock, but it would reach a dense, firm soil into which the piles to support the foundation stone could be driven to refusal. While the idea of digging a pit of this size only to found the structure on sand daunted Prue, she also understood Ben's reasoning was fundamentally sound. For the time being, Ben explained to the men the precautions they'd take for safety; and until the hole reached a depth of a few feet, they would be doing nothing all day but shoveling sand into wheelbarrows and either carting it away or using some of it to erect a barricade against nosy children. This no more required two supervisors than it required Prue to pitch in to the labor; so after she watched the workers begin, she waved Ben good-bye and went to find Tem in the brewhouse. Tem goggled at her as if she'd seen a ghost, but Prue said, “See? It'll be months before you have cause to worry about the flavor of your gin.”

“I prefer to worry about it every day. I believe that does the most good,” Tem said, and went back to leaning on the side of the tank to watch the hot water pour in.

The new workmen made good progress on the foundation hole. After three days of digging, it became necessary to shore the excavation up from the inside, so Ben ordered the men to construct a cross-braced scaffold within the pit. The vertical and horizontal boards and diagonal rakers laddered down the four sides of the hole and, as a secondary benefit, provided a means for the men to descend once the hole grew too deep to
jump. Building at each new level took time, as did erecting a barrier good enough to keep out the naughty, the hapless, and the devil-may-care and removing the sand a sufficient distance from the site. Nevertheless, the excavation proceeded at a rate of about a foot per day, which, though she had little experience against which to judge it, Prue thought excellent fast.

Ben managed everything beautifully, to the point of building a thatched roof to keep rainwater out of the hole. He installed a small hand-powered pump to the same purpose and determined that if necessary, he could run a belt to the waterwheel and operate it continuously, without wasting one man's labor. Prue wished there were some work she might do to further the bridge along; but as long as she continued to be obstinate about the rectifying, the distillery would need her. When it came time to begin digging the foundation on the other side, either she or Ben would have to cross the river every day. Until then, she counted the hours until she could begin dividing her time between the two tasks. She could think of no better way to distract herself from her sorrow—and for such a worthy end.

Only a week passed, with the hole no deeper than a mean bedroom was tall, before it began to fill with groundwater. A man had stood knee-deep in water all morning, operating the pump as quickly as he could, before Ben realized the water level would never decrease at such a rate. Many of the rest stood by, eating sandwiches; a few of the more industrious went looking for extra wages, loading rope at the ropewalk; and the laziest went back to their tents to nap. Ben brought Prue up from the countinghouse to consult upon the issue.

They arrived at the pit to find the thoroughly begrimed fellow at the bottom leaning exhausted against the wall nearest the pump. “Sorry, Mr. Horsfield,” he said to Ben, “but I don't see as it's making much difference if I pump or if I don't.” The water was creeping upward as he spoke.

“Climb out,” Ben told him. The man sloshed up the latticework, his boots releasing torrents of brown water back into the hole, and wiped his hands on his backside once he'd arrived on dry ground. “Foot and a half deep, would you say?”

“Bit more.” The man gestured to his britches, which were wet to above the knee.

“ 'Tisn't so bad,” Ben said to Prue, “except that it isn't going anywhere.”

Prue looked to see how far distant the waterwheel actually was. “As you say,” she offered, “you can provide it power, and keep it going in perpetuity.”

“I think I should order a second pump straightaway,” he said. When she nodded, he put his hand to his brow in salute and set off toward the New Ferry—just past the ropewalk, and'a far faster journey, with its trim boats, each rowed by a younger man than Losee—to visit the company in New York that could order his second pump from Philadelphia.

During the days they awaited its arrival, Ben loaded all the men on barges and took them to New York to dismantle the rotting woodwork of the Old Market Wharf. As they did so, the poor of the precinct stood by waiting for the boards, which they trucked off either to patch their dwellings or to burn for firewood. Once the area was clear of debris, Ben and Adam took their bearings time and again, as they had done at home, until at last Ben felt secure marking out the perimeter of the foundation. Prue could see little of this from the distillery, but if she climbed Clover Hill and stood atop their newly repaired back fence, she could look across the water. Just as when she'd been a girl, she could observe, through the manufactories' smoke, the tiny shapes of men moving across the ground.

Because the composition of the New York earth differed so from Brooklyn's, so, too, did their method for digging into it: There were no shovels, but two-man teams, one member of which steadied and turned a drill three feet in length and an inch and a half in diameter, while the other drove it in with a sledgehammer. This was grueling and dangerous work, but the men had good eyes, and the sheer repetitiveness of the motion seemed to keep them on their marks and prevent them from shattering one another's hands and forearms. One man had his toes broken and another his thumb crushed the first day, but the New York doctor expected both would recover; Ben reminded the men to redouble their care thenceforward. He also said they worked in what appeared to be a kind of trance, in which they were cognizant of nothing but the swing of the mallet and the turn of the spike; often, they did not hear him when he called them for a break or to move on to the next phase of work.

Ben had, while on his northern surveying expedition, observed in
mining operations some of the most modern techniques in blasting, which he put to work in gouging out the New York foundation. When the deep, narrow holes pocked a sufficient area, the men filled them a third full with gunpowder, each charge employing about two pounds. The men then dropped fuses—reeds filled with black powder—into the holes, and tamped the remaining space with clay to contain the explosions. Though Gregor Joralemon had volunteered for the commission of lighting the fuses, it was dangerous work, and Ben did not hire him for it. While most of the crew took cover a good distance away, one division ran through lighting the fuses, then hurried to safety. From across the river, Prue would see the rising cloud of dust and rubble, and a moment later hear the deep rumble of the exploding shots. Each time, she prayed Ben had reached safety and none of the others had been killed or maimed. When the dust settled, the men returned to the site of the explosions, swept out the debris, and recommenced hammering in their drills. In the first days of blasting, a number of the men were injured by the blowback of the exploding charges—they were cut and abraded, and a few temporarily lost their hearing. Such wounds were painful and, in the case of loss of hearing, distressing, but none kept a man from working for more than a few days. The men loaded the scree onto punts and sent it to Manhattan's North River side, where an entrepreneur named Comfort Hull was expanding a broad swath of waterfront. The Brooklyn crew did likewise with their excavated sand.

Such blasting had previously only been employed in tunnels and mines, and never in Manhattan. Ben reported that the children of the neighborhood gathered by the score to watch; and the newssheets, while skeptical of the enterprise's safety, explained it well enough to allay the citizens' fear.

The second pump soon arrived by boat from Philadelphia, and Ben attached both of them by long belts to the waterwheel's crown gear. They whirred and screeched incessantly, but they emptied the hole of water, and half the men could then return to work on the Brooklyn foundation. At last Prue believed she could contribute to the work.

“I don't know,” Ben argued. “I don't know how well they'll take orders from a woman. You might remain in the distillery awhile yet. Tem needs you.”
Prue stood looking over the edge of the Brooklyn pit. “Surely digging a foundation hole doesn't require constant supervision?” she asked. He shrugged his shoulders.

“They might grow accustomed to me, if I am with them only a few hours a day. The rest of the time I can spend back in the distillery, where they accept direction from me without difficulty.”

Ben must have sensed the pique behind her otherwise calm words, for he relented. While he loaded the New York division onto their barge the next morning, Prue set up the workers on the Brooklyn side. “I like your britches,” one of them said to her; a few others sniggered.

Prue had encountered this before, and told herself not to lose her temper as Tem would have done. Nevertheless, she could not ignore it. “Further commentary upon my attire will result in your dismissal,” she said, holding her face as placid as she could. “If any of the captains hears of such talk, you will report it to me or to Mr. Horsfield immediately. My apologies for being blunt; I see no other way.”

The fellow glowered at her like a child caught out at mischief and unable to admit his wrong. But over the hour she supervised them that morning, and when she came to check on them again in the afternoon, the men respectfully called her either “Mrs. Horsfield” or “Miss Winship,” and did not smirk when she made suggestions about the digging.

In the kitchen that evening, Ben asked her how it had gone.

“I suppose there will eventually have to be a proper Brookland supervisor,” she said. “I shan't be able to divide myself between the foundation and the distillery and have both come out aright. The captains must have someone to report to.”

I cld do it
, Pearl wrote.

Prue waved her fork at her. “You can't command fifty men with pencil and paper. It'd take too long to disseminate your orders.” Abiah clicked her tongue in sympathy. “Besides, I'm certain not all of them can read.”

Thn teech me to Rectify
.

When Prue knit her brow over the suggestion, Pearl underlined it and pushed it closer toward her.

Tem said, “It isn't the worst—”

“No,” Prue said. “It's too dangerous.”

I'm not a Child
, Pearl wrote on a new page. &
I'm a good Student
.

“I've not inherited Father's nose, but there's no reason to suppose she hasn't,” Tem said. “She certainly hears better than either of us.”

Ben said, “I think it sounds a fair solution.”

Prue thought she'd simply turned to him, but the way he bent down to study his roast made it clear she'd been glaring. To Pearl she said, “I don't doubt you'd excel at rectifying, as you excel at everything to which you turn your mind. And yet—”

But before she could finish her thought, Pearl had turned the page and written,
Everything to whch you allow me to turn my Mind
.

Prue's breath came up short. At once she recognized the truth of what Pearl had written; but she did not intend to be swayed. “What do you suppose should have happened to Marcel, had he been unable to cry out when the press fell upon his hand?” she asked.

“Might have bled to death,” Abiah said.

Before someone notic'd his Distress?
Pearl wrote. But she did not wait for Abiah to finish sounding out the letters before she added,
Only a Fool turns is Back on a Machine of that sise
.

Ben was cutting his roast into small pieces with a deliberation he rarely accorded his food.

“It is dangerous work, and I shan't have you do it,” Prue said. “I could not bear it if any ill befell you.”

Pearl hit the heel of her hand against the table, making the plates and flatware jump and the cider slosh in its cups. Then she went into her room and shut the door. No one said anything for a long moment, until Ben said, “Eventually, you know, someone must be with the Brooldand crew full-time, and you'll have a conundrum then.”

Prue did not answer him, but later that night, when they were already in bed, she told him she thought the day's experiment had gone well enough to continue. It would be a pleasure beyond words, she told him, to have some share in this work; and he agreed things might go on as they were awhile longer. She could not have anticipated, however, that the memory of Pearl's suggestion, and her shame at having rejected it, would leach the joy from both aspects of her work. Prue returned to the Brooklyn crew the next morning but found, in her sourness, she could think of what they were doing as nothing more than digging a big hole; and when she returned to the rectifying house that afternoon, it was hot and unpleasantly fragrant from herbs. The press's open jaws seemed to
taunt her. She had been working them for eighteen years without incident; and all at once, her prided art seemed the worst kind of drudgery.

Despite her ill mood, however, the distillery kept running, and the foundation holes for the bridge progressed in due course; they had reached their appointed depths by the end of May, and the men began the grueling work of driving in the huge timber piles that would support the'Brooklyn anchorage. No matter how Pearl's words—never repeated, but inscribed in Prue's memory—rankled, there was satisfaction in bringing the first phase of the work to completion without loss of life. And though it was small solace, Prue looked forward to being able to disconnect the pumps. Their constant whine had kept half of Brooklyn awake at night, and engendered many complaints. Prue hoped Patience's screaming babies would at last allow their parents some rest.