Free Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano Page B

weight. Nunzio overheard the foremen calculating that it could be three to four days before they got the tank floor to the ground. Supervisor Mulligan nervously circled the disc when he wasn’t being summoned to the phone. At noon the men were promised an extra hour’s pay if they took ten minutes to eat and skipped their lunch. They were hot and exhausted, but it was too good an offer to pass up.
    By two o’clock the disc had been lowered to twenty-six inches. After another phone call, Supervisor Mulligan brought the foremen and lead men together once again.
    “We’re going to oil the cups; it’s going too slowly. I figure if eight men go underneath, that should do it. At twenty-six inches, they need to work on their backs, so the skinnier the better.” Mulligan walked away, leaving them in stunned silence.
    It took a few moments for the chief foreman to speak. “There’s eight crews. Each lead man should pick one person from their crew to oil the cups.”
    The eight lead men stared at the Irish foreman, who knew them well enough to know that they would pick themselves. It was a matter of honor. They were the lead men; they were making five cents more an hour. It was their responsibility. Nunzio looked around at the other men and wordlessly asked the question. The lead men all nodded.
    “We’re the men,” intoned Nunzio.
    They gathered again at the bottom of the disc to discuss positioning. The foremen figured they needed five men in the interior and three along the perimeter. The chief foreman called off names. “Lagato, Fiero, Constantino, Romano, and Idone will work toward the center. Pontillo, Amato, and Jones will handle the perimeter.”
    Pretty Boy, whose real name was Mariano Idone, tried to control the shaking in his hand as he reached for his oilcan. Nunzio noticed and offered, “Pretty Boy, I positioned most of these jacks, why don’t you stay around the edge and I’ll go in.”
    Pretty Boy stared at Nunzio and quietly said, “Alright Profes sore, if you think so.”
    Nunzio slithered on his back under the disc and headed for the center. He used his heels on the concrete and his palms on the metal tank bottom to propel himself through the space. He held the oilcan in his mouth. It was dark, and the few inches that were lost with the lowering of the disc made a huge difference in the amount of air and anxiety that flowed through his body. To keep going, Nunzio was forced to use a mental trick Giovanna had taught him that she used with women in labor. His body was sandwiched between sun-scorched steel and concrete, but he visualized himself sitting with Giovanna on the cliffs of Scilla. A sea breeze cooled them, carrying the smell of lemons.
    The laborers above were instructed to lower the tank an inch while the men underneath oiled the cups and checked the jack pins to ensure they were working. The strain of the jacks on the metal was amplified beneath the disc. Nunzio’s head felt like it was going to explode from the noise and the heat. It was almost pitch dark under the disc, but when Nunzio saw how the pins played loosely in the cups, he knew he had found the problem. He decided to check one other jack cup before telling the foreman. Nunzio shimmied over to the next jack. He glimpsed the bottom of a boot and called out.
    “Do the pins seem okay to you?”
    “I can’t see a thing, I’m getting out of this goddamn inferno,” came Lagato’s voice.
    “I’ll be right behind you.”
    Aboveground, Supervisor Mulligan noticed that the strain on the jacks and screw logs had not changed. He was furious with the engineer for backing him into this problem. It wasn’t his fault it was taking so long; the engineers had come up with a lousy idea. Mulligan decided to tell them he was stopping the job until they came up with a better plan and marched off to the office to call.
    Nunzio had checked a second jack cup and found the pin just as loose. “No oil is going to help this situation,” he