This Side of Brightness Read Online Free Page A

murmur.
    â€œCon!” she screams. “Con!”
    The next morning the newspapers report that Nathan Walker swam to the scow and was dragged aboard, blood all over his face. Vannucci and Power held on to the floating planks until rescued. The three men were brought to the manlock so their bodies could decompress. Walker sat silently. Rhubarb Vannucci tried to return straight to work, but he was bleeding and was sent home after an hour. Sean Power was brought to the lock with two broken arms, a mangled leg, and a deep gash in his forehead. Tubes were put in his ears to suck out the mud. The foreman gave him whiskey, and he vomited up what looked like a beach of sand and pebbles.
    In the middle of the solid column of type—alongside an artist’s interpretation of the burst—it says that Con O’Leary, 34, from Roscommon, Ireland, is still missing, presumed dead.
    Neighbors arrive at Maura’s fourth-floor tenement flat. They spread themselves out in a nimbus in her living room, silent in black dresses. Flowers sent by Walker, Vannucci, and Power stand on a small table.
    A daguerreotype of O’Leary is being prepared for a mass card. Maura uses a kitchen knife to cut herself out of the old wedding photograph. When O’Leary is left alone, he stares up at her from the palm of her hand. She raises the image and touches it with her lips. In the photo her husband has a hard, taciturn face. The digger lived much of his life in a taciturn way, coming home, scraping mud from his boots with a knife, the slow silences at dinnertime when she would ask him to do a chore, the shrug of his shoulders, the lovely way he’d raise his chubby palms in the air and ask her, “But why?” An old white shirt of his is still hanging out the window to dry. Maura had been scrubbing the ring of dirt from around the collar. A catechism is open on the table, and Con’s baseball cards are scattered beside the book: to become an American, O’Leary had decided to fall in love with the game, following it meticulously. He knew every score, each stadium, all the managers, hitters, pitchers, catchers, and basemen.
    The gutted piano he was fixing stands in front of the fireplace, the black and white keys spread out on the floor. He had rescued it from a rubbish dump and dragged it through Manhattan with a rope, destroying the carved legs as he pulled it over cobblestones. Four men were employed to help carry it up the stairs, only for O’Leary to discover it was an imitation Steinway, worth little more than the wood it was made with. He had been filing the keys down; they’d been sticking against each other, causing notes to distort. At night they would summon up songs that she could play.
    Maura places the daguerreotype on top of the piano and turns her head as someone knocks on the door.
    A heavy man, in a suit and tie and derby hat, brushes snow off his shoulders as he enters. He asks the neighbors if they will leave.
    The women wait for Maura to nod and then file out, casting suspicious backward glances. They remain on the stairs, straining to hear. Wide-bottomed, the man sits in the only chair. He hitches up his trousers and Maura can see—as a puddle forms around his feet—his polished shoes.
    â€œWilliam Randall,” he says.
    â€œI know who you are.”
    â€œI’m deeply sorry.”
    â€œWould you like a cup of tea?” She speaks as if there were marbles in her throat.
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œThe kettle’s on.”
    â€œNo, ma’am, thank you.”
    And then a long silence as he remembers to take off his hat.
    â€œAfter the blowout,” Randall says, “the tunnel was flooded. The other men were lucky to survive. We had to lay a canvas sheet on the river bottom. We dropped clay on top of it. From a barge. To seal the tunnel up again. We had to do it. We will, of course, give you compensation. Ma’am? Enough for you and the child.”
    He