Boston Molasses Flood
On January 15, 1919, amolasses tank at 529
Commercial Streetexploded under press-
sure, killing 21 people.A 40-foot wave of
molasses buckled theelevated railroad tracks,
crushed buildings andinundated the neigh-
borhood. Structuraldefects in the tank com-
bined with unseasonablywarm temperatures
contributed to thedisaster.
-The Bostonian Society
These are the other victims of theflood. In their lives, they were harnessed and bound. Whipped, cursed andmisused. They were not buried or mourned. They were sold for glue or dogmeat.Shot, rendered, and consigned to nothingness, nearly a hundred years ago.
They are not seeking revenge for ourdisturbing this place.
They, too, want to be remembered.
“The horseshoe,” I say.
O’Brien nods.
* * *
Under their watchful eyes, we move backto the hole we filled in the day before. We don’t have the keys to the backhoe,so we dig with our shaking hands in the muddy fill. Some stand in a ring aroundus while others tramp restlessly in field and the street, sighing and groaning.
“We find that goddamned thing, I’m gonnaweld it to the cab of the backhoe, right on front there,” O’Brien says. I canonly nod numbly.
We are fortunate that it is not burieddeeply. I find it packed beneath crushed coffee cups and cigarette packages.
“I got it. I got it,” I say. I stand upand hold it high over my head so they can see. “See? We won’t throw it awayagain. I promise.”
A fog has come in from the ocean,softening the noises and edges of the city. The horses move again. They whinnyand nicker across the fields, rearing and cantering freely. I can hear theirvoices as they echo away into the streets of the North End and disappear. Theyare gone now, and me and O’Brien shiver at the edge of the dirt pile in thedark, the horseshoe on the ground between us.
“Hey, Boss?” I say. “We got, what, fourhours before work? You think maybe it’d be all right if I called in sick andgot some sleep?”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s a good idea.Think I will too. Biggs can run the site.”
“I never seen anything like that before,”I say. O’Brien shakes his head absently and stares across the street. He feelshis pockets for a cigarette and comes up empty. I fish a pack from my coat,light up two and pass him one. A Boston PD cruiser passes slowly by and I givean easy wave. He drives on as if two guys smoking on a dirt pile by a hole onCommercial Street in the rain is perfectly normal. Maybe it is. It’s morenormal that what I’ve been doing since we first broke ground down here.
“Ghost horses. Fuck,” O’Brien saysfinally. “How do you like them apples?”
Everything Smells Like
Smoke Again
Curtis M. Lawson
December 12th
He’s dead. Eric’s worried because I didn’t cry. I overheard himtalking to the boys, telling them that I’m keeping a stiff upper lip. That’snot it, though. Truthfully, this has been a long time coming, and he doesn’tdeserve my tears. That well ran dry long ago, and mostly because of him.
Do I feel a tad abnormal about my callousness? It’s fucked up Isuppose, but not as much as Eric must think. He can’t really comprehend what itwas like for me, growing up the daughter of addicts. His childhood wasn’tperfect, but it was normal; vacations, family game nights, never findingsuicide notes and empty pill bottles.
Eric and I are from different worlds. My in-laws, the people hegrew up with, are wonderful, and I love them, but their stability has alwaysleft me feeling out of place. The way they have their shit together — it feelsalien and untrustworthy.
Still, after fifteen years of holidays with them, anxiety swellsinside me as I wait for things to go sideways at every get-together. I look atEric’s dad and wonder how many beers he’s had and if this will be the one thatpushes him over the line from buzzed to monstrous. I wait for my mother-in-lawto take some off-the-cuff comment the wrong way and send Christmas dinnerwhizzing past my head. It never happens. I know it will never happen. Still,that fear persists.
It’s the same with Eric, himself. My husband is a caring andhardworking man. He’s not a drinker, or a party guy, or a skirt chaser. Despitehim proving his worth over fifteen years of marriage, I get a knot in mystomach if he’s late from work. I feel sick when he catches the occasionalbuzz. Jealousy and insecurity overcome my heart if he mentions some femalecolleague too many times. Not once has the man ever given me cause to doubthim, but when the floor falls out from under you for eighteen years straightyou learn to tread lightly.
It’s over now. Dad’s dead. To be fair he’d had one foot in the gravesince Mom passed. After her death he quit partying and abandoned streetnarcotics, more fully embracing his pedestrian, solitary addictions.Cigarettes, pain pills, and nostalgia mostly. I can think of maybe two times inthe decade-plus since Mom died that he’d left his depressing little subsidizedapartment for anything other than a trip to the dollar store or the packie.
I suppose I could have been a better daughter. Yes, I could havereached out and been a shoulder to cry on. The kids were young though, and Ericand I were building our own life — a healthy life for the family I had chosen,rather than the one which fate had burdened me with. My father wasn’t going toruin that with his depression and addictions. Enough of my life had beencompromised for him. I wouldn’t allow him to take what I’d built for myself.
When he started getting sick last year, really sick as opposed tohis normal state of perpetual unhealth, Eric suggested he come to live with us.I shot the idea down straightaway. Sure, I dreaded the thought of being aroundhim, but that wasn’t
