Read Online This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann - Free Book Online

Hall. Right under their noses. But he can’t get a permit no matter which way he tries, no way in hell they gonna give it to him. They’re making money from the El. They don’t wanna lose that. This is the 1860s, like I said. They say ol’ man Beach is crazy. And maybe he is. But he goes ahead anyways. He’s the sort of man who knows the only things worth doing are the things might break your heart. So he got himself some workers and they dug in secret right underneath Devlin’s clothing store down there on Murray Street. At nighttime they’d go smuggling the dirt back through the rows of clothes. Wheeled the dirt down the street while everyone else was sleeping. Nobody except the crew knew what was going on. Story is, the foreman was called the Tapeworm. They called him that ’cause he once cut out a digger’s stomach with a knife after the digger told the secret that they was building the tunnel.”
    Teacups let out steam on the kitchen table while Walker talks.
    â€œAnyways, they put in frescoes and tiles and all sorts of beautiful paintings and made that into the loveliest tunnel you ever did see. Just about the most gorgeous thing. That’s no lie. And right at the front they put in a fountain in the waiting room, a great big fountain with water piped up. They’d never seen nothing like it before. And ol’ Alfred Ely Beach he decided they needed a grand piano so they could welcome the customers. Just like this one here, I s’pose.”
    He nods across the room at Con O’Leary’s piano.
    â€œAnd then ol’ Alfred Ely Beach sent his first train through. It must have been a day! Story is, he hired a lady, all in fancy clothes, to come down and play the piano, and all the customers arrived and saw the fountain and heard the music and must have thought they about died and went to heaven. Anyways, they ran that train through the tunnel with pneumatic pressure, two big fans at each end pushing the train along. I don’t rightly know, but I reckon it might have been up to quarter of a mile or so. They ran it for a few years but they didn’t make no money, and ol’ Beach he was losing his shirt so he decided to close the damn thing down. So he bricked it off. Eighteen seventy-something. After a few years everyone forgot there was ever a tunnel down there in the first place. Even the men who made the maps, they forgot to put it on.”
    Walker looks in his teacup as if he’s weighing his words there.
    â€œGo on,” says Eleanor.
    â€œAnd this is where the strangest thing happens. It about jiggers my mind to think on it, but it’s true.”
    â€œGo on, go on.”
    He pauses to take a mouthful of tea and drops an extra lump of sugar in the cup.
    â€œTrue as I’m sitting here and strange as that is. Only last week I heard it. A man crossed his heart on it and ol’ Rhubarb he swears it’s true too. They were digging again under Broadway, see. Mind, now, it’s sixty years later. And everyone done forgot about that old tunnel. They’re blasting away with dynamite. Doing cut-and-cover, where they put steel sheet over the street so as none of the rock flies up in the air. So they put in the dynamite and they clear the tunnel and then one of them lights the fuse. Out they go, up on the street, and wait for the blast. Not hardly talking to each other. Tired, I s’pose. Then it goes ahead, the dynamite, and does its job. Boom! ”
    Eleanor jumps back in her seat.
    Walker laughs. “And the crew they all just go back down the ladders and into the tunnel. They’re walking with their scarves over their mouths to stop the dust. And one of them engineers goes first to make sure it’s safe, make sure there’d be no rocks falling on them. Sure enough, the tunnel’s looking good, and they all start getting that rubble out of there. Five of them. Shifting the big rocks backwards. Getting ready to put