A cloud of heat seemed to pass through the chamber, and at first he thought he was flushing with exhaustion or panic, but when he heard the water falling in a diminishing rattle through the holes he had cut, he knew that someone had turned off the pumps. Now the fire would rage, and the remaining water would steam him like a crab. He got up on his knees, knowing that he had one minute left. He whammed the chisel into the bolt, and it flew out of his hand and disappeared below among hundreds of flues. Somewhere under him, a rank of pipes began to hiss. He gathered his coveralls and put then beneath his knees, then, fumbling in his tool belt, he found a shorter chisel he’d forgotten, a sharper one. He sought the cut in the manhole bolt with his fingers and inserted the edge of the tool. The hammer, a two-pound maul, he found under his shin, and he took a steamy breath and hit, willing the tools together repeatedly, knowing that a missed blow might break his hand, or, worse, cause him to drop the chisel. He stopped thinking and concentrated only on the purposeful movement of his arms. After thirty lessening blows, the bolt head flew off, and the thick manhole gouged down on his shoulder and flattened him against the pipes, which whispered on his back like branding irons. He sprang up and into the opening, propelled by a freshet of live steam out into the world, his red skin smoking and puckered, his head roaring and building pressure. When his feet cleared the hole, he tumbled backward, his head slamming a catwalk and skidding over. He sensed a brief airy fall, ended by a head butt onto a cast-iron duplex pump. He opened his eyes but could see nothing through the unbelievable pain in his skull, and after a while, he gave up trying to see, hoping only for something to stop the hurt. He tried to yell but could make no sound. His legs seemed to be on the other side of the room. Because his mind was the only thing that was working, he tried to use it to kill the pain, and he attempted to think of his parents, who loved him, or his friends at the machine shop, who would sell their clothes to buy him a beer on a hot day, but no faces came to him at all, and when he closed his blind eyes and prayed for something to appear, he could picture only Colette, her minty skin, the nighttime in her hair, the balm of her restless eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen