Chapter 6
The Crossing
In the morning there was a hole in the floor.
That was how Greg described it, standing at the door of the jury room in his shirtsleeves with a cup of coffee in his hand and his eyes very wide. He had gone to the kitchen at six. He had come back, white, and said it twice before anybody understood him. At the end of the corridor, behind the great steel shutter that had been locked the day before, a section of the floor had opened.
It was not a hole. It was a stair.
The shutter was up. It had gone up in the night, an inch at a time, on a motor, and left behind it a square of black with a cold wind coming out. A stair went down. It was wide, stone, worn hollow in the middle by two hundred thousand feet. A handrail ran down the wall. There was a light at the bottom, a long way off, small and yellow.
"No," said Helen Marsh.
She had come out of the lounge, leaning on Nora, with a gray blanket over her shoulders. She stood and looked down the stair and her face, which had begun to get its color back, went the color of the stone.
"I don't like that."
"Nobody does," said Frank.
"I know what's down there." She said it flatly. "It's the old coal cellar. They had a boiler. A big one, a Scotch marine, they said it was the last in the county. In my first year as a public defender a client tried to hang himself in it. I went down with the sheriff." She coughed, and wiped her mouth. "It's a very bad room."
"Is it time?" said Ray, faintly.
He had come to the lounge door. He was very pale, and he held his left hand across his chest in a clean white bandage, which Nora had put on at dawn. The fingers were swollen like candles. His eyes went from face to face with the look of someone who is hoping that one of them will tell him it's all right.
"Mr. Wells," said White.
It came from the corridor ceiling, soft and clear. They turned.
"Good morning. For the record, it is eight-oh-four on Thursday, the seventh of March. I hope you slept. I hope that Miss Marsh is better. I regret her cough." A pause. "The second game is called the Crossing. I will explain it below. I would ask you all to go down."
It was a long room under the earth.
There were steps all the way, thirty-one of them. Daniel counted. At the bottom they came out onto a landing, a flat iron platform with a rail, about twenty feet square, and a row of old yellow work lights bolted to the wall. Below the landing, there was nothing.
It was a pit.
It ran away from them, forty feet long and about twenty wide, with brick walls on three sides and a roof of black arched brick over it. It had been the coal bunker. It had once been filled to the brim with coal, delivered by the ton down a chute from the street. Now it was empty, except for a mess of rusted pipes, broken benches, bent filing cabinets, and a heap of old office chairs piled in one corner like the bones of a large animal. The floor, fourteen feet below, was a bed of dull black dust. It looked soft. It did not look soft.
Across the pit, from the landing to a second platform on the far side, ran a girder.
It was an old steel beam, an I-section, eight inches wide on top. Daniel put it at forty feet. It was brown with rust and polished down the middle by a hundred years of men who had walked it with their shovels. It had no rail. It had nothing, on either side, but air.
"Oh, Lord," said Tom Rudd.
"That's it?" said Greg.
"That's it."
"Somebody's got to cross that?"
"It's what the man said."
At the midpoint, where the beam met its own shadow, another girder crossed it at right angles. It made a T, or a cross, he couldn't tell. He looked at it for a long time. It stuck out on both sides, a few feet to the right and a few feet to the left. The right arm ran on, and he could see, clearly, that it joined the far side and came out on a ledge.
The left arm stopped.
It stopped abruptly after about six feet, with a bright, clean, silver edge, where somebody had cut it with a torch. Beyond the edge there was nothing. It had been left like that. It pointed into the dark, and the pit under it, and a long way off, in the wall, a rusty iron door.
"There's two ways at the cross," said Frank, who had seen it. "Right goes to the other side. Left goes nowhere."
"I think that's the idea," said Helen.
"How's he going to know which?"
"He won't," said White.
The voice was in the cellar too. It came from a small speaker, bolted to the wall by the landing. It did not echo. It seemed to be speaking from close by, at the level of the ear.
"The rules of the Crossing are these. The foreman will cross the girder. He will do so blindfolded. He will be guided from the far side by a single person, whom he will choose. The guide may speak but may not touch him. The foreman may not remove the blindfold. If he reaches the far platform, the game is won. If he falls, the game is lost, and the clock will lose two hours."
"Why a guide?" said Daniel.
"Because it is a test of trust."
"Whose?"
"Both, I think," said White. "A man who is blind must depend on the one who can see. And the one who can see must decide how much she is willing to risk on his behalf. I have always thought it was the second part that matters."
Daniel did not say anything. He looked at the beam. The yellow lamps lit it from one side, so that it seemed to glow dully like a bar in a fire. He looked down. Fourteen feet. A man would break his legs. A man might break his neck.
"And if I refuse?" he said.
"Then the clock loses four hours."
"That's not a choice."
"It is a choice. It has a cost." The voice was gentle. "I did say. I will not deceive you about the costs."
He took a long time over the guide.
It was not a thing he could be quick about. They stood in a ring on the iron landing, the seven of them, with the cold coming up out of the pit and Helen's cough ringing off the bricks, and nobody looked at anybody. He knew what they were thinking. They were each thinking: not me. They were each thinking: please, not me. They were afraid of choosing, and afraid of not being chosen. It was the fear of a class of children on the last day of term.
Frank Ross offered.
He did it brusquely. "You want somebody who's seen things. Somebody who can keep his head."
"Thank you."
"I've done it. I've talked a man across a fire escape."
"What happened to him?"
"He got across."
"Is that true?"
"No," said Frank. "He jumped. But I'd have talked him across, if he'd let me."
Daniel looked at him. The old man looked back, without a flicker. He was not a person who made things easy. But he had held Ray's fingers for an hour, in his own two hands, and he'd put his own jacket round a stranger.
"Mr. Ross," said Daniel. "I'd like you to be the one who watches. I'd like to know that someone is."
"Watches what?"
"The rest of them. Because if somebody's going to push me, I'd rather it happened in front of a witness."
"You think someone's going to push you?"
"I don't know what anyone is going to do."
Frank nodded slowly. He seemed, in some way, to approve.
"Tom?" said Daniel.
"I'd be glad to. I'm not a, I'm not a quick man. I might get tongue-tied."
"I think you'd do fine."
"But?"
"But I can't," said Daniel. "I'm sorry. I don't know why. It's not you."
"It's all right," said Tom heavily. "I understand. I'd sooner not, anyway."
He didn't look at Daniel when he said it. He looked at his hands.
There was only one person left who had not offered and not been asked.
She stood near the stair, in her scrubs, with a gray cardigan of Helen's pulled round her shoulders. She had her hands tucked in her sleeves. She was looking at the beam, and her face had a closed, remote, absent look, as if she were making a long calculation on some other subject. Then she felt him watching, and turned, and gave a small tight smile.
"It should be me," said Nora.
"Why?"
"Because I'm the only one you've talked to." She said it matter-of-factly. "And because everybody else is, I don't know. They're a bit bigger. They want things. I only want to go home."
"You're sure?"
"No."
"Good," said Daniel.
"Why's that good?"
"Because everyone else was."
She looked at him. Something crossed her face and was gone. It was too quick to read. It could have been surprise. It could have been something else, something that looked a great deal like pain.
"All right," said Nora, very quietly. "I'll do it."
They put the hood on him at nine.
It was a black cloth bag, thick and soft, with a drawstring. Frank tied it, carefully, behind his head, and tested it with two fingers, and said, in a low voice, "Can you see?"
"No."
"Not even light?"
"Not a thing."
"Good. Good luck, son."
"Thank you."
It was dark, and it smelled of something old and dry, like a closet. He stood very still. He could hear everything, with a strange, enormous, close clarity. The soft rasp of breath. The scrape of a shoe. A drip, somewhere far below. Helen's cough. Greg's heavy swallow. And the silence of the pit, which was not silence at all but a great hollow note, like the sound in a seashell.
Somebody took his arm. It was Frank. He guided him, step by step, to the edge of the platform, and set his hand on a cold iron post. Then there was a pause.
"I'm on the other side now," said a voice.
It came from far off. It was Nora's, clear, a little thin. It had a faint flat echo.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'm going to talk to you the whole way. I'm going to say every single thing. If I say stop, you stop. If I say step, you step. All right?"
"All right."
"Put your right foot out. You'll feel the edge. It's about six inches wide."
"Eight."
"Eight. Okay. Put it on."
He moved his foot. There was a long cold moment, where it hung over nothing. Then it touched. It was steel, hard and slightly gritty, a narrow bar in the middle of a very great deal of air. It was level. He put his weight on it. He heard Helen draw in her breath.
"Good. Now the left. Just next to the right. Don't cross them."
"I know."
"I know you know. I'm only talking."
"Keep talking."
"Okay." A pause. "It's a nice morning."
"What?"
"It's a nice morning. Isn't it? That's what you say. When you're on a ward, and you've got somebody who can't see, you tell them what it's doing. It makes it less of a surprise." She was speaking naturally. It was a low, clear, even voice, with a little roughness in it. "It's raining. A bit. I can't see, there's no window, but I always think it is. I think it's the kind of day where the rain comes down in a line."
"I like that."
"Step. Left. One more. Good. You're doing really well."
He took a step. And another. The girder was perfectly steady under his boots. He could feel it faintly ring. He held his arms a little out, with the palms down, as he had held them walking the rail of a bridge at the age of nine. He breathed in through his nose. The air smelled of rust and cold brick, and under it, distinctly, of hospital soap.
Fourteen steps, he counted.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
"What did you say your daughter's name was?"
"June."
"That's a nice name. It's the month. Isn't it?"
"My wife picked it."
"Anna."
He stopped. He was still, with the beam under his feet, and the hood against his face.
"I'm sorry?" he said.
"Anna. Isn't that what you said? Last night. On the cot. You said your wife was called Anna."
He thought about it. He could not be sure. He had said so many things, last night, to a girl in scrubs on the end of a bed. It was possible.
"I think I did."
"I'm sorry. Did I get it wrong?"
"No. No. It's right."
"Then step. Right foot. Good. You're a third of the way."
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
By the twentieth step he had stopped being afraid.
It was an odd thing. It happened suddenly, like a change in the weather. The fear had been in his stomach and his knees and the backs of his hands, and he had been pushing it down with every step, and then, somewhere near the middle, it had lifted. There was only the beam, and the voice. There was nothing else to think about. There was a small clean pleasure in doing a thing exactly and slowly, one inch at a time.
He thought of Anna. He had not meant to. He thought of her in the last year, when she was very thin, sitting in the chair by the window in the apartment on Burke Street, with the afghan over her knees. She had been teaching June to walk along the edge of the carpet. June was two. She'd put out her arms like a tightrope walker, solemn as a priest. Don't look at your feet, sweetheart, Anna had said. Look at me.
"You're halfway," said Nora.
"Am I?"
"Twenty steps. It's the cross. There's a, the beam meets another beam. You'll feel it."
He felt it. It came up through his boots, a slight widening, a change in the sound of the steel. He stood on the crossing with his feet together. It was oddly like standing in the middle of an intersection with his eyes shut.
"I'm there."
"Good. Don't move."
"I'm not."
"I need to look. Just a second."
He could hear his own breath. He could hear Helen, thin and wheezing, on the platform behind him, and the long, slow drip of water. It was a very long second. He counted four heartbeats. Five. Somewhere in the rafters of the cellar, a pigeon moved.
"All right," said Nora. "I've got it."
"Which way?"
"Right," she said. "No. Left."
"Left?"
"Left." Her voice had gone steady. It had a strange, flat, even quality, as though she were reading from a card. "Put your left foot out, and turn. The beam goes on at an angle. You'll find the edge. It's a bit narrower, so go slowly. Then it's only about eighteen feet."
He did not move.
It was a very small thing. It was a half-second of hesitation, such as a man has in a doorway. It was something in the voice. It had not been the way she had said step. It had not been the way she had said good. It had been a little too clear, and too level, and too carefully chosen.
Right, she had said. No. Left.
"Nora?"
"Yes?"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"I thought you said right."
"I said left."
"You said right first."
"I made a mistake. I corrected it." The voice was calm. "Daniel. You have to trust me. I can see it. The right arm is cut. It goes about six feet, and stops. I looked. It's the left. It's the left that goes across."
He stood in the dark with his arms out.
There was something in his head, thin and bright, like a wire. It was a picture. It was a picture of a beam, seen from above, with an arm on the left and an arm on the right. He had seen it before the hood. He had looked at it for a long time, in the light of the work lamps, with his eyes narrowed. He had seen the right arm run on and join the wall. He had seen the left arm end in a bright, clean, silver edge.
I saw it.
I saw it with my own eyes.
And behind that, much farther back, he heard a different voice, one that was not Nora's, saying in a hoarse flat tone, I'm a, I'm good with faces. And another, wet, patient, rasping, a lawyer's got to take her chances. And a dry old voice, a voice from a speaker on a wall.
The one who can see must decide how much she is willing to risk on his behalf.
"Daniel," said Nora. "Please."
It was the please that did it. It came out of her a little too soft, and a little too quick, like a thing she hadn't meant to say. It had a tremor at the end of it, and he heard it, and understood it, with a clarity that was almost peaceful.
She was crying.
She was crying, and she was going to tell him to step left, and she didn't want to.
"Left," said Nora. "It's left. Please. Please."
He took a breath.
He thought of a girl with a braid, sitting at a metal desk, with her eyes on a clock. He thought: the clock loses four hours. He thought: if I don't, if I stand here, it loses four hours. He thought of the red numbers, going down. He could take the left and not fall. There was a chance. There was a chance that he'd been wrong. That the picture in his head was backward. That the light had fooled him. He might have swapped them, in his memory. He had never been good with left and right.
He put his foot out.
It went into the dark.
For a long moment, it met nothing. It hung. There was a small, bright, impossible pause, in which the whole cellar held its breath, and he had time to think, clearly and without fear: I was right.
Then the beam was gone.
He heard somebody scream. It was a woman, high and cracked and furious. It might have been Helen. It might have been Nora. He felt the air go past his face, and his hand shoot out for iron, and brush it, and lose it. There was a rush, and a long cold slide, and a hard flat blow like a door slammed in his back.
Black dust came up in a roar and filled his mouth.
Somewhere far away, very small, a man's voice shouted Daniel. Another shouted no. And over them all, distinct, thin and rough and strangely dry, a voice he knew said in a tone of faint regret:
"For the record. The Crossing is lost."