Dark Tide (22 page)

His only comfort, as the fireman crawled closer, was that the darkness was no longer total. A while ago, two hours or more—though Barry felt like it had been an eternity—workers had cut a hole in the floor of the firehouse twenty feet away from where Barry lay trapped. Light had poured down through the hole and then traveled weakly into the crawl space, casting the tunnel in an eerie gloom. Since then, workers had used key-hole saws to cut away additional sections of floor, allowing more light into the crawl space. Barry could now see the stubble on the firefighter’s jaw and the intensity in his dark eyes as he struggled toward him. “Almost there, John,” the rescuer said, squirming closer. “Almost there.”

Firefighters worked in shifts for four hours clearing debris from around and under the wrecked firehouse to reach their trapped colleagues. Firefighters Bill Connor and Nat Bowering, as well as stonecutter John Barry, were freed.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

Barry heard them cutting right above him now, and he heard timber and wood crashing, too. As workers cut away the floor and moved debris, the building settled further—it was falling around him, Barry thought. “Look
out
, for God’s sake, or the building will kill the whole of them,” he heard a man shout from above his head, though Barry could not see him yet. The rescuers still needed to remove more floorboards and debris to reach him. Barry was weeping again, distraught that the firehouse would collapse and kill him seconds before crews pulled him to safety.

The firefighter reached Barry now, rested the syringe on the stonecutter’s upper back.

“Are you ready, John?” he asked softly. “Do it,” Barry said, squeezing his eyes shut. He felt the burning pain immediately as the needle plunged into his spine for the third time. He heard himself cry out, a big, wracking sob, but only once.

“There you are, John,” the firefighter said. “No more needles for now.” Then he drew the stopple on the brandy, and stuck the bottle into Barry’s mouth. “Drink all you can, John, but don’t bite it,” he said. Barry drank, coughed, drank some more, and felt somewhat revived. The firefighter was close to him, so close that Barry could smell his foul breath. But the firefighter was free, and, in moments, would crawl backward out of this stinking crawl space. Barry was still pinned by timbers and a large hot water heater that lay across his back, as helpless as a baby and completely dependent on others to save him.

The firefighter jammed the bottle into Barry’s mouth again for one more swig, then Barry swung his free arm, indicating he had had enough. “Hang in, John,” the man said, capping the brandy bottle. “We’re almost there.” Barry’s benefactor began crawling backward to safety, his shoulders and face shrinking as he retreated.

Barry felt the morphine kick in, the pain subside a bit, the thick fog surround his head and eyes. He thought he heard distant voices—“one more … one more … careful!”—though perhaps he was hearing them only in his own head. He dozed, dreamed that he was sitting in his living-room chair smoking his pipe, then heard voices again, closer this time. “That’s his leg—his leg’s out!” Awake now, but drowsy, lying in a pool of molasses, he heard the rhythmic swish-swish of a saw inches above his left ear. Then suddenly,
miraculously
, he felt the enormous weight being lifted from his back and legs, relieving the pressure. Seconds later, he could move his head and lift his face out of the muck. “Easy, John, easy,” he heard the voices saying, but he didn’t recognize them. Then he heard louder voices, feet clomping on wood, felt hands on his body and felt himself being hoisted into the air. A cool breeze hit him then, salty, from the harbor, and he could breathe again and see gray water and gray sky, and then he was being lowered again, gently, onto a stretcher, his back and legs shrieking with pain. He caught sight of a priest and a group of firemen. He heard himself crying, then laughing, then crying again, tasted tears and molasses, felt molasses running down the sides of his face, down his chest, down his legs. His drenched shirt pressed against his chest as he lay on the stretcher, this time flat on his back, staring at the darkening late afternoon sky. Then they lifted the stretcher with him in it, and he felt himself moving forward; he saw the flash of legs and boots and faces and helmets as he went by, saw men looking down at him, some shaking their heads, others shouting words of encouragement.

He heard one voice, one question that puzzled him: “Who’s the gink with the white hair?” the voice said. He had heard it clearly, cutting through the shouting, through the smell of molasses and freshly sawn wood, through his own pain and the morphine haze.

John Barry didn’t know. But as the exhausted stonecutter slipped into sleep atop the molasses-covered stretcher, he found himself hoping that the white-haired man had not suffered too much.

Late afternoon January darkness enshrouded the waterfront when they finally pulled firefighter George Layhe’s lifeless body out from under the firehouse around 5
P.M.
Earlier, workers had rescued firefighters Bill Connor, Nat Bowering, and Paddy Driscoll, all of whom suffered injuries and were taken to the Haymarket Relief Station after they were helped from the crawl space. When John Barry was finally rescued, poor Layhe lay by himself under the firehouse. The firefighter work teams had to be especially careful extricating their fallen comrade; with the weakening of the building after so much of the floor had been cut away, one false step could bring the whole structure down, perhaps killing additional men. The arrival of dusk increased the possibility of missteps and made the task even more risky.

But the firemen helping with the rescue efforts insisted that the work continue until each of their brothers was removed from under the firehouse. They had lived and worked together in that house, and now the house had claimed one of its own, one of their own. There would be no break until George Layhe could be laid to rest with dignity.

Now, steadying himself on a shaky plank of split wood, fire department deputy chief Edward Shallow snapped a salute as four beleaguered firemen carried George’s body across the pile of wreckage, placed it gently on a stretcher, and lifted the stretcher into the ambulance that would take Layhe’s body to the morgue. They had found the thirty-seven-year-old fire department marine engineer wedged under the pool table and the piano, his legs crushed by timbers. Layhe, unable to move, had struggled desperately to keep his head above the rising molasses, and managed to do so for perhaps as long as two hours, before his stamina gave out. He finally dropped his head back into the molasses and drowned. Chief Shallow thought that Layhe “looked like a colored man” when rescue teams lifted him out from under the firehouse, his hands, face, head, and clothing completely covered with the dark molasses. Eyes scanning the dark waterfront, Shallow knew that Layhe was one of many good men who had died today. He believed Layhe had been the only firefighter; miraculously, the others in the Engine 31 station had survived, and he had accounted for the other men in his command. But his crews were now searching the molasses and the destroyed remains of waterfront buildings for the bodies of other men, women, and children who were not so lucky. Police had already called for electric lights, deciding that the search would continue well into the night. Shallow expected to be on the scene until midnight at least, with one break in the next few minutes—when he would call Elizabeth Layhe and deliver the news about her husband.

The fire chief turned and walked away from the ruined firehouse. There would be time to think about rebuilding, but later, much later; after rescuers had completed the grim task of unearthing and identifying the dead, and after clean-up crews disposed of the molasses and restored the face of the waterfront. It could take months. Surveying the damage, Shallow thought that it would take even longer for the shock to wear off in the North End neighborhood and across the city, for people to recover from this disaster and feel safe again, for things to return to normal.

Firefighters tried to wash the molasses away with fresh water, but would later find that briny seawater was the only way to “cut” the hardened substance. In the background is the damaged elevated railroad structure.

(Photo courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives)

As he waded through the knee-deep molasses that slathered the wharf, Shallow heard a single gunshot ring out from the direction of the city stables, its echo carrying on the cold, evening air.

The Boston Police had put another molasses-enmeshed horse out of its misery.

Returning to normal would take a long time, indeed, Shallow thought.

Giuseppe Iantosca stood alone at the bottom of the stairs that led to the door of his home sandwiched between Charter and Commercial streets. He needed to gather his thoughts before heading inside to see his wife, Maria. He had no more information about Pasquale now than he did nearly four hours ago, when he started searching for his little boy minutes after the tank collapsed, minutes after Giuseppe had regained consciousness from his own fall. No one had seen their son, and Giuseppe feared that God had taken Pasquale from them. The police would not let him past their ropes, so he could not even search for his boy among the piles of splintered wood, bent metal, and smashed railroad cars. In frustration, he had spent the last few hours questioning people along the perimeter of the destruction, using hand gestures and broken English to describe Pasquale, asking whether they had seen him, begging for information about him. In the mass confusion, most onlookers were searching for news about their own missing loved ones, and had neither the inclination nor the patience to listen to Giuseppe’s halting speech and confusing questions. Many had walked away before he could finish speaking.

Giuseppe’s own eyes had told him the horrible story. He had seen the giant wave of molasses consume his ten-year-old son; first Pasquale was standing there and then he was not. Now he could be anywhere. The molasses could have carried him under a building or flung him into the harbor. But the police would not let Giuseppe onto the wharf to find him. He had tried at several different checkpoints, but they had stopped him and ordered him roughly to go home and await news from the authorities. He felt like he had failed Pasqualeno when his son needed him most.