Free The Bridge by Gay Talese

would be the winning
     wheel.
    They watched it move smoothly along the tramway overhead, then it rolled higher to the tower, then down, down faster to the
     anchorage, then up again, quickly reloaded, up the tramway— "Keep moving, you mother!"—closer and closer to the tower now
     . . . then it stopped.
    "Bitch!" screamed one of the punks.
    "What the hell's wrong?" shouted Anderson.
    "The engine's conked out," some punk finally yelled. "Those goddamn idiots!"
    "Let's go beat their asses," yelled another punk, quite serious and ready to run down the catwalk.
    "Calm down," Anderson said, with resignation, looking up at the stilled wheel, shaking his head. "Let me go down and see what
     can be done."
    He went down to the anchorage, only to learn that the engine failure could not be fixed in time to continue the race within
     the hour. So Anderson walked back up, sadly giving the news to his men, and when they walked down the catwalk that night,
     their hardhats under their arms, their brows sweaty, they looked like a losing football team leaving the field after the game.
     In the remaining two months, no gang could top the mark of fifty-one, but in September, when the gangs started to place the
     two-thousand-pound castings over the cables (the castings are metal saddles which would help support the 262 suspender ropes
     that would stream down vertically from each cable to hold up the deck), a new kind of competition began: a game to see who
     could bolt into position the most castings, and this got to be dangerous. Not only were bolts dropping off the bridge in this
     frenzied race—bolts that could pepper the decks of passing vessels and possibly kill anybody they hit—but the castings themselves
     were unwieldy, and if one of them fell . . .
    "Chrissake, Joe, let's get the bolts out and put that mother on," one pusher yelled to Joe Jacklets, who was being cautious
     with the casting.
    The pusher, noticing that another gang working down the catwalk had already removed the bolts and were clamping the casting
     into place, was getting nervous—his gang was behind.
    "Take it easy," Joe Jacklets said, "this thing might not hold."
    "It'll hold."
    So Joe Jacklets removed the last bolt of the two-section casting and, as soon as he did, one half of the casting—weighing
     one thousand pounds—toppled off the cable and fell from the bridge.
    "Jes-sus !"
    "Ohhhhhhh."
    "Kee-rist."
    "Noooooooooo !"
    "Jes-SUS."
    The gang, their hardhats sticking out over the catwalk, watched the one-thousand-pound casting falling like a bomb toward
     the sea. They noticed, too, a tiny hydrofoil churning through the water below, almost directly below the spot where it seemed
     the casting might hit. They watched quietly now, mouths open, holding their breaths. Then, after a loud plopping sound, they
     saw a gigantic splash mushroom up from the water, an enormous fountain soaring forty feet high.
    Then, swishing from under the fountain, fully intact, came the hydrofoil, its skipper turning his head away from the splashing
     spray and shooting his craft in the opposite direction.
    "Oh, that lucky little bastard," one of the men said, peering down from the catwalk, shaking his head.
    Nobody said anything else for a moment. They just watched the water below. It was as if they hated to turn around and face
     the catwalk—and later confront Hard Nose Murphy's fiery face and blazing eyes. They watched the water for perhaps two minutes,
     watched the bubbles subside and the ripples move out. And then, moving majestically into the ripples, moving slowly and peacefully
     past, was the enormous gray deck of the United States aircraft carrier Wasp.
    "Holy God!" Joe Jacklets finally said, shaking his head once more.
    "You silly bastard," muttered the pusher. Jacklets glared at him.
    "What do you mean? I told you it might not hold."
    "Like hell you did, you . . ."
    Jacklets stared back at the pusher, disbelieving; but then he knew it was no use arguing—he would