It’s a clean trench. We’re through thegravel backfill, and I scrape around the bottom to get at the flange from thecatch basin to the old iron pipe to the storm drain. Getting into old dirt.
The hole is out of the wind so it’s nottoo bad down here. Parker comes back from picking up coffee and is handing outthe cups from a cardboard tray. Biggs is laughing at something Reeve said whenmy shovel hits something hard in the dirt. My hands sting and I drop thehandle.
“Ah, son of a…” I say, and bite my lip.
“You got a stinger there, Joachim?”O’Brien says. Everyone calls me Jack, even my pop, but O’Brien likes to call meby my Portuguese name when he’s in a good mood.
“Yeah,” I say through gritted teeth andtry to shake the mix of numbness and needles out of my hands. “Got me good.”
“Oh, man,” Reeve says, laughing. “Thatsoftball game against the Boston Gas guys last year I caught a good one, yo.You remember that?” He’s hopping up and down at the edge of the hole, trying tostay warm. I don’t, especially, but I nod anyway. I bend down to dig throughthe packed dirt to get the old paver or chunk of concrete I hit. I pull up apiece of metal. Confused, I knock the dirt off of it.
“The fuck?” I hold it up so they can seeup top. “It’s a horseshoe.”
“So? You want a cookie?” O’Brien says.“Throw it on the pile and let’s go.” He takes a sip from the Styrofoam cup andspits. “Jesus Christ, Parker! How much sugar did you put in this?”
“I told them two like you like,” Parkersays. “They marked it right on the cup.”
“Well, I can feel my fucking fillingsfalling out,” O’Brien says. “Jack, what the hell are you waiting for downthere?”
“What’s a horseshoe doing under the street?” I say.
“Came over on the Mayflower. Fuck shouldI know? Jesus. All right, climb out of there and get your coffee.”
“They got horses on the Mayflower?”Parker says. “I didn’t know that.”
Biggs snorts and almost chokes on hercoffee laughing. Never used to have women on the crews, but Biggs did a coupleof tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, so she’s plenty rugged enough for this anddoesn’t take any shit from the guys.
We huddle in a small circle with ourcups. I look down toward the water across the untouched snow crust of the ballfield. The water is gray. Even the gulls have sheltered somewhere. I can seethe masts of the Constitution across the inner harbor and if I walked to thewater’s edge I could see the Cassin Young too. I like those old ships. There isa break in the wind and more of those light feathery snowflakes drift lazilyaround us. I’m finally settled from the morning. Just enough coffee to keep meawake without feeling like I’m vibrating. Looking at the rest of the crew, theyall look tired. There is a scream nearby and I start, but it is a gull, not ahorse. Biggs tenses up at well, but her face goes hard fast. Coffee finished,we go back to work. No one is talking much now. I take over flagging, wave thetraffic by. It’s a little light. Only the people who have no choice are outtoday. Cabs. Delivery drivers with their trucks full of whatever. I stifle ayawn.
On the way home, the subway is filledwith exhausted people lost inside themselves and, on the turns, the metalgroans from strain. And somewhere in the background beneath the clatter andsqueal of the steel wheels I can almost hear the horses again.
* * *
I’m on the second floor of an oldthree-decker with faded vinyl siding and an absentee landlord who lives inJamaica Plain. I nearly fall on the ice on the stairs. The plastic bucket ofice melt in the front hall is empty, so the neighbors dumped it out and thendidn’t bother to refill it. The landlord keeps the extra salt in the basementbecause, I guess, someone might break in and take it out of the hallway. Iunlock the door and find the light switch. There’s no cover on the switch, andI can feel the edges of the metal electric box. The stairs down are narrow. Ihave to crouch because the hall stairs are right above these, a low slantedceiling.
The building is old. The stone issettling because the old wooden pilings beneath the streets are beginning torot. Cracks in the plaster, with crumbling brown undercoat falling away down tothe lathing. Cracks in the stone foundation. A hard turn at the bottom of thestairs by the fuse box. Half the breakers are double-tapped and there areold-school fuses in small cardboard boxes on the wooden shelf next to it, allcovered in thick grey dust. There’s no way this is up to code.
The basement is low with an old dragonof a boiler and pipes wrapped in thick asbestos. There are three stalls alongthe wall, wooden pens with chicken wire door frames, maybe seven by ten.Storage for each floor. I don’t keep much in mine.
The salt is under the stairs in a heavywooden shipping crate stenciled with “The Murray Company” on State Street. Ayellowed sticker reads “grapeade soda.” Full of salt, it weighs a ton. I can’timagine having to haul freight back in the day. I reach for the coffee can thatI use to carry salt upstairs and
