Destiny - The Callahans #1 (9 page)

The first task, however, designed to
facilitate the building of the bridge, was the fabrication of a
caisson, or floating construction dock. An engineering marvel in
its own right, the caisson was a device that employed a
pressurization system to remove water from its lower compartments,
enabling construction workers to work below the surface of the
water. The use of the caisson was fraught with dangers and a number
of mishaps and deadly accidents dogged the massive project. When
the bridge was completed fourteen years later, in 1893, the
construction had been costly in terms of both money and human
life.

Folding the flyer and putting it in his
pocket, Tom found himself astonished at the wages, exceptional by
any standards for skilled tradesmen, much less general labor.
Unknown to Tom, ten years earlier, the original bridge laborers had
earned only two dollars and fifty cents a day. The peril involved
in working within the pressurized caissons had made it difficult to
keep good men and had driven the wages up.

Applicants were directed to apply in person
to the foreman, Stanicich Construction, 236 East River Road,
between six and noon for the following three days.

At five-thirty the next morning, Tom arrived
to find a large number of men already standing in a line outside
the warehouse facility. The applicants ranged in age from kids no
older than the young man who had passed out the flyers, to men the
age of the priest Tom had met in the pub. At six sharp, a man
opened the door to the warehouse, and the line began to slowly
move. Tom could tell from the men coming out that the old and the
very young were being rejected for the work, raising his hopes for
acceptance. Finally his turn came and he entered a small room where
two men were seated behind a table. A stocky man, with a two-day
growth of beard and chewing on a cigar, looked up.

“What’s your name, son?”

Tom removed his cap and held it in his hands
in front of him. “Callahan, sir. Thomas Callahan.”

“How long you been in America, Callahan?”

“Three months, sir.”

“Any experience working around the harbor or
on bridges?”

Tom hesitated, not wanting to eliminate
himself on the basis of lack of experience, but not wanting to be
caught out in a lie. “No, sir,” he replied, “but I’m a quick
learner, sir.”

The man glanced up at Tom. “It’s not a job
for the faint hearted, Callahan. You got the stomach for a
dangerous job?”

“Aye, sir,” Tom replied, beginning to wonder
what kind of job would pay such wages with no experience
necessary.

“All right, Callahan, sign here, and be back
at six o’clock tomorrow morning. Six sharp, Callahan, and sober.
Miss one day’s work, drunk, and you’re through. Understand?”

“Aye, sir. Thank you, sir,” Tom said, backing
out of the room quickly.

Outside again, Tom fell in quietly with a
cluster of men who had also apparently been hired. He mingled with
the group, hoping to find some clue as to the kind of work they
would be doing. He saw a man about thirty years old, who was
talking to several younger men, seeming to give instructions.

“ . . . ten per caisson, two hours a shift,”
he was saying as Tom joined the group. “Three hours topside on the
labor crew and then back down for another two in the hole, three
topside again, and that’s it for the day. Any questions?”

No one spoke up and Tom held his peace. As
the group began to break up, Tom took stride with a couple of the
younger men leaving the warehouse yard, listening to their
conversation and discerning several dialects.

“Six tomorrow for you, too?” Tom said to one
he took to be Irish.

“Aye,” the other replied, continuing his
Irish brogue, which Tom had recognized earlier as the more clipped,
staccato speech common to Belfast. “And you?”

“Yeah. Any idea what we’ll be doing? I didn’t
hear what that fellow said.”

“Working on the pilings on that there
bridge,” he said, pointing to the bridge that now spanned the East
River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. “She’s barely ten years old,
the man told us, but some work needs to be done on the pilings.
We’re gonna’ have to go down to do it.”

“Go down?” Tom asked.

“Yep. In a tube of some sort—with ten men in
it. They pump air into it, and it keeps the water out.”

Tom’s eyes widened. “You done this before?”
he asked.

“Nope. But for five bucks a day, I can
learn,” he grinned back at Tom.

“Aye, I guess you’d be right. See you then,”
Tom added, heading off for the nearest trolley to return to the
produce market.

The next morning at a quarter to six, Tom
stood waiting outside the warehouse entrance with a small number of
men whose names appeared on a roster and who had been allowed
inside the gate. The line of new applicants was already formed as
it had been the day before, all ages once again represented. Tom
had convinced his boss at the produce market to give him a couple
of days off for some personal business, not inclined to quit before
he knew the job at hand would be permanent. By ten minutes after
six, the crew of about forty men were loaded on several horse-drawn
wagons and were en route to the construction site, located on the
Manhattan side, under the main bridge abutment.

Tom and some others were told that for the
first three days, they would be on a topside crew becoming familiar
with operations, and then he’d be assigned to a diving crew and
begin to work his two shifts a day beneath the river.

By noon of the third day, Tom had heard the
stories of men who had been injured or simply quit once they had
been assigned to a crew. “Even the guy who built the bloody thing,
got crippled as a result,” one man said.

At least two of each new ten-man crew quit
after their first two-hour shift underwater, often the result of
panic at being confined in the restricted space inside the caisson
and beneath the waters of the East River.

Tom’s first assignment was to work on a
platform suspended beneath the main bridge, about fifteen feet
above the water line. Some of the men on his crew managed the air
lines, suspension cables, and the compressor unit and mechanical
equipment used to support the submerged caissons. Tom was given a
job mixing the mortar being used to strengthen the bridge pilings.
By the afternoon of the third day, eight men who had been hired a
couple of days earlier, had already quit or been fired. Tom began
to doubt the wisdom of hiring on and dreaded the fourth day when he
was scheduled to be assigned to a diving crew.

Halfway through the afternoon shift, and
without warning, a whistle began to blow. Men were shouting.
Something drastic seemed to have occurred. Tom looked over the side
of his platform, and saw great bubbles of air rising to the surface
of the river. One of the foremen was yelling for the topside crew
to keep the compressor going and directing others to get below and
lend a hand. Tom stood looking on, confused as to exactly what was
happening, but witnessing a disaster in progress.

Just below the water line, Tom could see a
rupture in the caisson, which had protected the men from the
pressure of the river depths. A few of the men had scrambled out of
the caisson and were now lying prostrate on the platform. Two of
the men were convulsing violently, their bodies jerking
involuntarily.

“They got bent for sure,” one of Tom’s work
mates said, leaning over the ropes next to Tom and observing the
scene below. Some other men emerged from the ruptured caisson, and
those who were able, quickly cleared the platform, gaining the
relative safety of the ladders running from the base of the bridge
abutment to the upper support platform where Tom stood. As the
first of these men reached Tom’s level, a foreman grabbed the
wild-eyed man.

“What happened down there?”

“I dunno. We just lost air. I thought we’d
never get up.” He was disoriented and nearly incoherent.

“Who else is missing?”

Tom could see the man was in shock and unable
to reason. Looking back down toward the diving platform, Tom saw
one of the men, who was having a seizure, struggling to get to his
feet. He had no equilibrium and stumbled about on the platform.
Suddenly, the stricken man flopped over the side into the river and
disappeared into the dark water. Shouts rose again from the men on
the upper tier, who were also watching the scene below. Without
thinking, Tom immediately jumped off the support platform, landing
in the river alongside the diving platform. The cold water
momentarily took his breath away, but as soon as he surfaced, he
took a great gulp of air and dove again below the surface.

The murky water afforded no view of the man,
and after groping about blindly for a few moments, Tom came up
again for more air. Then, taking a deep breath, he submerged again
and by feel, descended the cables toward the river bottom, clinging
tightly against the current of the river. About fifteen feet down,
he brushed against something that moved. Tom reached out and felt
an arm, which he grasped tightly and pulled toward him. The man was
entangled in the cables, but changing his grip, Tom was able to
grab the man by his belt and begin struggling up the cable, pulling
with one hand toward the surface and dragging the limp body with
him. He needed desperately to take a breath of air, and just when
he thought he couldn’t live another moment without breathing, he
broke the surface.

Three men who had descended to the lower
platform reached out for Tom, calling to him to swim toward the
platform. Tom pushed the now unconscious man ahead of him, toward
the waiting hands, but he lacked the strength to pull himself up.
The men pulled the injured worker aboard as Tom struggled to tread
water. Flailing about in the current, the exhausted Irishman passed
out and the light slowly disappeared before his eyes.

The next several minutes were lost to Tom,
but as he gradually regained consciousness, he saw he was ashore,
lying beneath the main bridge abutment, and heard the foreman
talking to him.

“Ah, you’re coming around, lad.”

“Is he all right?” Tom asked.

“Tony? Yeah, thanks to you, young man, he’s
alive, but he and Sean got bit by the bends. They’re both on the
way to the hospital.”

“What happened?” Tom asked.

“Don’t worry about it, lad. It’s over now.
You just rest for a while.”

“The other men?” Tom asked, grabbing the
foreman’s shirt.

“We lost two good men, lad, and two more have
the bends. But, if it hadn’t been for you, we’d have lost Tony,
too. It’s a good day’s work, lad. Just take it easy.”

As Tom leaned back against the stone pillar,
someone handed him a tin cup full of hot coffee. It warmed both his
hands and his insides.

By the end of his shift, Tom was back to
feeling normal, and as he rode the trolley to his evening job, he
had time to contemplate the day’s events. More concerned than ever
about the safety of going down in the caisson, Tom found himself
unsure about the job he’d taken and the merits of taking such
risks, even for five dollars a day.

After his four-hour shift, spent cleaning
trolleys, Tom decided to stop for a drink. On the street between
St. Timothy’s and Clancy’s Pub, he crossed paths with Father
O’Leary.

“Which direction you headed, lad?” O’Leary
asked. Tired and as yet unsettled as to what he was going to do
about going back down in the caisson, Tom was caught somewhat off
guard by the smiling prelate.

“Well, Father, I thought I might grab a pint
and head home early this evening.”

“You all right, lad? You look a bit
shaky.”

“It’s been an interesting day, Father.”

“Mr. Callahan, what say we amble down to the
rectory? I’ve got a bottle of malt liquor and you look like you
could do with a stout drink.”

Too tired to protest, Tom followed after
Father O’Leary. Once they were inside O’Leary’s living quarters, he
offered Tom a seat, which the weary Irishman gratefully accepted,
along with the glass of beer the father handed him.

“There you go, lad. Maybe we can carry on the
palaver I mentioned the other night. But first, you just lay back
there and rest for a few moments. I’ll attend to another matter and
be back shortly.”

Tom drained his glass, then leaned back in
his chair. He closed his eyes, and the image of the workman falling
into the water played again through his mind. Father O’Leary found
him asleep when he returned, and, laying a blanket over the young
Irishman, the kindly priest picked up the empty glass that had
slipped from Tom’s hand and set it on the sideboard.

Waking to the aroma of sausage cooking, Tom
opened his eyes, unsure for a few moments where he was.

“Back from the dead, I see,” Father O’Leary
said.

Tom tossed back the blanket and got stiffly
to his feet. Cramped from sleeping all night in the chair, he
stretched and yawned.

“Never seen an Irishman go out like a light
from just one glass of malt liquor,” O’Leary taunted.

“What time is it?” Tom asked, suddenly
anxious.

“Just after seven,” O’Leary replied.

Tom shook his head and shrugged his
shoulders. Then, taking a deep breath and holding it momentarily,
he said, “Well, there goes one good job. But, on second thought,
maybe it’s all for the best. Smells good, Father. Taking in
boarders, are you?”

“The occasional meal, lad, when justified.
Here, sit at the end and I’ll show you a good old fashioned Irish
breakfast, bangers and all.” O’Leary piled Tom’s plate high with
sausage, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs and filled their cups
with steaming hot coffee.

“Now that’s a breakfast,” Tom declared as
Father O’Leary filled his own plate and sat down across the
table.

“By the time we have breakfast together, most
call me ‘P. J.’ Patrick James, as me mother said in the old
country.”