Jacob’s Bridge

Jacob Inside the Caisson Chamber
At three o’clock workers will assemble on the caisson roof by the air lock for the next shift. I’ll be there. I’ll dress in the changing shed, tall rubber boots to my hips, a cap to conceal my identity.
Head bowed, I am ready, climb the ladder up to the caisson roof. The fellows there are a poorly set-upon sight, most skinny as a rail. Hunched over the ladder their bony spines form a series of knobs starting at hairline to their trousers looped with a rope. I’m traveling close behind the last man aloft, a young worker breathing heavily. We now descend a second ladder into a small iron chamber. The bright afternoon sun sparkles brilliantly, pouring through a glass inset in overhead ironwork. An older man at the hatch makes several turns of a long windlass.
Light’s gone, extinguished. My palms sweat, but I suffer no distress, my breathing holds steady. What is this strong usurping sensation I soon feel, as if my body’s entombed?
How dark it is here. Where in this iron chamber did the valve open emitting an unending screech? I shove fingers in my ears, pain whips, my head is taut, throbbing. Compressed air floods our iron box. Yes, I know the mechanics of the air shaft from Colonel Wash’s notes. The men are now flat against the wall. I wait, rubbing my doleful head, sensing my brain soon to be exposed from an implosion of intolerable fullness.
The sensation stops!
The floor hatch drops, hangs open. We step down another iron ladder into a caliginous, eerily lit room. Where went my bravado, gone, so quickly used up in the air lock.
The air lock slams shut. We are below in the chamber. I hear water crashing from some precipitous height. No, it is sound waves diverted in this strange heavy air. My pulse lowers to its normal rate. Workers are talking, mouths widen, close. I grow deaf as voices waver, rush through chamber doors. My ears whipped by hammers, drills and chains. Men working naked to the waist and I remove my own shirt, roll it, stash it into a trouser pocket.
Now my eyes do adjust to this spectral light. Partitions, posts, the chamber ceiling, all are slathered with a wash of mud. Can one balance steadily on planks, not fall off the board’s edge? I hobble, slide into mud. Steady myself, back on track. This illumination of blue-blazing limelight frames vacuous forms heaving sledge hammers at a boulder at least fourteen feet across.
Gone is the world above. It no longer exists. Here Hell does. All I have ever conceived Hell to be, I see in this chamber. This Hell is not mind’s logic reviling its surroundings; it is one’s entire mind and corpus trapped within fire and brimstone. The air is heavy, brutish. Men move as if sedated, their speech high-pitched and sluggish. It is difficult to think in this compressed gas. Nothing here is that which above was real. Sledges clang, echoes trapped in strange places leach out, slide beyond walled partitions and under cast iron shoes. Never have I ever had conjunction with so foreign an environment. Will timbers crash, courses of stone fail? I will drown sucked into a monstrous Blow-out. My nature, however, is not to show myself cowardly at these unpredictable forces before the men.
There’s the chamber harboring the water shaft with the clamshell scoop. Men “stirring up” the pool under the scoop never take notice. I watch, remembering what Colonel Roebling said, “Should the caisson suddenly settle, the shaft may be blocked by huge boulders. Waiting here at the scoop produces nothing; our caisson remains steady, no boulders in sight. I believe I am weakening, my pulse flutters. Take a breath, I say. It is strenuous. Here’s the reason, squat sperm candles posted on iron rods beside the walkway send up spirals of bright, acrid smoke. I am inhaling their vapors. Drenched with sweat I am covered with dirt from these sperm candles.
Is the temperature 100 degrees? Feels like it. I have not lifted a hammer or heaved a wheel barrow, but this strapping young fellow is exhausted. Oh, a nearby crate, I’ll sit there.
I like the pleasant feeling of having mastered the planks.
Mud everywhere, my crate rocks in mud.
“Here now!” Mr. Collinwood stood over me, caught me listing.
“Young Jacob in the caisson?”
Lord, I am discovered! Mr. Collinwood and Colonel Paine are in charge of clearing boulders beneath one of the shoes today.
“Might we have a stowaway, Colonel Paine?”
“Mr. Collinwood,” I say, slipping off my crate toward a pool of basin mud, “Colonel Roebling mustn’t know I am a stowaway.” My voice careens into the mist.
“Gas bothering ya, Jacob?” Colonel Paine bellows, pulls up the rear of my trousers.
“Not all that bad, Colonel Paine,” I report, righting myself. “I’ve grown quite used to it.”
“Did you bring your lunch pail, Jacob?” I nod I hadn’t. Mr. Collinwood slides another crate across the plank, proceeds to sit. Colonel Paine having done so opens his dinner pail.
“Air down here makes a man starved,” Colonel Paine says, tearing a hunk of bread, passes over a large piece, cooked roast beef and cheese.
I nod, raise a hand in protest.
“Oh yes, you can, Jacob.”
In wayward, flickering light, shadows wending on the wall we sit. I consume bread and cheese and pieces of beef, wash it down with a tin of beer.
“Colonel Paine,” I say, on the ladder to the air lock, “I had to see how it is. Must you let on?”
“Not a word, Mr. Knickerbocker.”
Once off the caisson roof our Brooklyn evening breezes rally about my head like spring succoring life. There I did it, withstood a daring endeavor and at this moment wonder how I did so. What an abominable and horrid place. My thoughts turn to Nelly, her fragrance of lavender, her freshness.