You never can tell what you’re going to find in a New York bar. Greeley’s looked like a comfortable place to sit on a stool and sip a cold one, so I pushed the door open and looked inside. The bar itself was a solid, polished slab of mahogany, and the stools were sturdy and well-upholstered.
I sat down and sighed. As a salesman for a sundries distributor, I travel endlessly around the Boroughs and a new watering hole is a good thing for a young man’s thirst. I was thirsty as a desert nomad far from his oasis and exhausted from the heat of the pavement.
The barkeep pointed at the tap, I nodded, and soon he slid a mug of ale to my waiting hand. I took a sip and simultaneously heard a rude noise.
“Jeez and crackers, another drummer!”
I looked over to my right and then looked down. A tiny, pig-faced man stood there, glaring at my sample case next to my stool.
“I beg your pardon, sir? I am simply having a mug of Greeley’s best.”
His face twisted, even more, becoming indescribably ugly.
“Useta be honest, hard-working gents came in here to wash the dust of a day’s work down. Now we get the likes o’ you!”
He turned away and walked off, his small legs pumping rapidly, swung around the corner at the end of the bar, and disappeared from view.
The barman came up to the counter where I was and grunted.
“That’s Keg. Don’t mind him. He’s just missing his old mates, boys he drank with twenty years ago. Times they change, and people come and go.”
I sipped some more and listened to the barkeep for a bit.
“This place is his home, and always will be. I promised the previous owner I’d keep him on.”
The barman dried the mug he was holding and hung it up above the bar. He stuck his hand out.
“I’m Andy Greeley. Proprietor and bottle-washer here.”
I shook his hand and imbibed a bit more.
“Why does the dwarf make his home here? Is it Christian charity, or is he a useful draw? I wouldn’t think he’d attract customers.”
Andy stuck his hands in his apron and leaned back.
“It’s slow right now. I’ve some time to tell ya. Drain that and I’ll show you something.”
I tilted the rest down my throat and stood. Andy dropped his towel over a rod behind him and walked around the nearer end of the bar.
“This joint has a basement. It happened there, mostly. I’ll explain more down there.”
He lifted a small panel set into the floor and drew a box of matches from his apron. He struck one and lit a lamp. I followed him down a short flight of stairs, and Andy hung the lantern on a hook.
There was a wall of set bricks, crusted and damp, and near the base of the wall was a wooden board, hanging by a wire from two nails. Mike lifted the board gingerly. A hole, perfectly circular, a little more than a foot across, with a slight lip. I peered inside and saw an endless inky dark, naught else. The barman told his story.
“It was a few years after the War of Rebellion. Mike O’Neill owned the place then, I was a dishwasher, and Keg was just one of the customers. He worked as a pinsetter at a bowling alley and ran errands. One August they was demolishing a building two doors down, and we was open despite that. On that Saturday afternoon one of our guys ran in at sunset, all worked up. “Trouble! We gots trouble! Everybody come outside and help us!”
Well we’d heard all kinds o’ bashing and crashing and we’d been paying it no mind, but there had been a catastrophe — the lads with the hammers and axes had tipped their building over on the one nigh to us and both went down into rubble and dust. We set to and started heaving boards and bricks into the street and pulling souls outa the wreck. We worked half the day and Keg ran from the bar to the workers giving them beer and water and sandwiches to sustain the work. Soon we had no more of the living to hear and reckoned we’d found all the dead, iffen I recall the toll was about five or so unfortunates. Two stone walls were fallen flat at the bottom of the mess, and we couldn’t lift that to look, and anything under was surely mashed flat. The coppers and firemen left, and we thanked the weary citizens who had stood up to help rescue the victims. The borough left a man to guard the ruins, as they was apt to shift, and too dangerous for the curious to pick at.
I was helping Mike clean up and restock the bar, for we decided, as tired as we were, the curious who wanted to gawk at the rubble and talk about the collapse would come in and drink. I took empty crates down to the cellar and carried full ones up. On the third trip, just heading up the stairs, I heard the faintest of sounds, and I thought I’d imagined it, so I stopped and set my load down and cocked my ear — and it was there, steady though faint — a thin wail, like a mewling cat. I had a babe at home, and another on the way, and I knew it was a child and my heart sank.
Mike came down at my yell, and we plied our ears and our hands and found a painted patch of plaster on the wall, and we bashed that off, and well, you’re looking at it — some sort of cast iron pipe, no more than fourteen inches acrost. Someone had stuffed it with rags soaked in pitch, probably to keep rats out, and now we pulled that plug out with our hands. Now the wailing and crying seemed to fill our ears. We yelled and called into the pipe and there was no change, except now we could hear some snuffling and coughing along with the screeching. I talked into the pipe, trying to calm the bairn while Mike ran upstairs. A few of our regulars had come in, along with a few gawkers from the accident. We brought them down to hear and see if we could come up with a plan. Right off we had a man run down to the fire station. I kept yelling into the pipe, the wailing and crying continued, and I thought, At least they ain’t dead yet, but I couldn’t see how we’d get them out.
The firemen shined lanterns in the pipe, hung a small lamp on a pole and stuck it in, but couldn’t see anything except darkness further along. More than thirty feet long the pipe must be, and no sight of anyone inside, or of the other end. One suggested getting a terrier and some cord, another said we could dig a tunnel, but the risk of whatever void was under the rubble being collapsed was deemed too great. Various schemes were thought up, but all dashed against the hard facts.
Then Keg, our smallest customer came down the stairs. He was munching on a pickle he held in one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other. I’d not seen him for a few hours and had forgotten to look under the back table, where he’d often take a snooze when business was slow. He complained of the noise and yammering and it took some yelling and explaining to get through to him the nature of the predicament. As one of the firemen angrily berated the dwarf the other reached into his pocket, took out a piece of cord and laid it against the pipe opening, used his thumb to hold the measure and then laid it against Keg’s back. The small space in the cellar became almost quiet. The dwarf turned half around and swatted at the cord. “What are y’ doing!” The fireman looked at us. “He’d fit, with an inch or so to spare.” For a moment there was no sound except for the wailing and sobbing from the hole.
Keg’s face went gray, and he stammered at us, “What d’ye mean, I’d f-fit! What -” One of Keg’s drinking buddies, Karl, a German fellow, put a hand on Keg’s arm. “You can save dem, you can fit in ze hole, you can reach dem!” Keg turned and tried to run, but one of the firemen grabbed him. Keg struggled in his grasp, screaming. “You don’t understand! I can’t go in there! I’d die!”
I’m afraid we mostly yelled at him, and it for a minute or so it was a meaningless mess o’ yammerin’, but Mike shouted the rest down and put Keg up on a small footstool, pointed a finger at the dwarf and said in a low voice. “I’m listening to ya, Keg, but consider your words — that child will surely die if you don’t help.”
Keg snuffled a bit, wiped some snot off his face, and glowered at Mike, ignoring the rest o’ us.
“You don’t know me or me life. I’m nobody’s friend, an’ nobody’s hero. Been spat at and laughed at me whole life. Me ma was ashamed of me, kept me locked in a closet for month after month ’cause I ran off wunst. I canna bear small places, and the dark. I fear ’em like death isself. Ya wanna tell me why I should put my neck out for anyone?”
Mike put both his hands on Keg’s shoulders, like a father would his son, and held Keg’s gaze with his own. It was the damndest thing to watch.
“Keg, I can’t promise you na harm, but we’ll do our best to keep ya safe, and we’ll put a light in with ya, I swear. You say ya have na friends, but I’ve known ya and never talked ya down, ha’n’t I?”
To watch Keg’s face was like watching wax melt, as his features softened, although his eyes were still hard and suspicious.
“I-I know you, Mike. Ya would ne’er hurt a man, not even a dog like me.” Keg looked around at the faces of the men in the cellar. “I don’t know you knobheads. Whatever we do, Mike’s in charge or I’m out!”
Once we had Keg’s reluctant agreement, we cast about for stuff to get the job done, if we could. We were mostly a bunch of common laborers, but that’s not nothing. John McMenamy useta be a hard-rock miner, and he brought his old canvas cap, and a wick lamp which hung on the front. We had a couple carpenters who started putting together some boards we could tie to Keg’s stumpy little legs, and I found a cushion to tie to his pants so we had something to push against.
So in he went, muttering complaints, and worrying his lower lip with what he had for teeth. The first set of boards on his legs, and his body rubbed with grease, we slid him into the dark maw and seed it might work, for there was some small gap twixt Keg and the grimy pipe. Mike’s biggest fear is that the pipe would be too long, or we’d end up shoving Keg into something that smothered him, so he kept up yelling down the pipe to the dwarf, and then pausing to hear back. The pipe somehow made an echo for Keg’s responses, which were sometimes angry, sometimes fearful.
“Tha’ fooken smell, Gah! The smell! Feh… Ah, gawd it’s so close, I feel like I’m in Satan’s arse!
“Can ya see clear ahead, Keg? Is there space still for ya?”
“Yeh, I can see ahead, all pipe, but ahead! Ah ya damned lot o’ rowdies, why’d I ever trust you?! Ah, can feel the weight above me and all around me!”
Keg whimpered while we strapped on another ten feet of lumber to the rest, and pushed him in deeper. As a faint counterpoint, we heard the child cry again.
Keg stopped complaining for a few moments and I could hear him draw a deep raspy breath.
“Shove me along, ye bastards! While there’s still life in them and me!”
The work was slower than you would think, as we added to Keg’s sideways stilts and pushed and pushed, and stopped to check, the whole thing got heavier, and we had to handle it slower. I feared, and so did Mike and Old Jim the miner, that the rig would separate, and trap Keg half-way in the pipe. We set to battening the joints with rope and wire and as it got further and further in, some carpentry nails.
We were in about thirty feet, and Keg was just steadily cursing and crying now, and suddenly the boards in the hole began moving and rattling and all we could hear in the small cellar was Keg screaming and screaming for at least two minutes, and then, nothing.
No Keg, no sound from the child. Dead quiet. Keg wouldn’t respond to our calling and pleading. I finally grabbed the poles, and pulled back a few feet, and pushed forward a few feet, and shook them, heart in my mouth.
“Keg! Keg! Keg, talk to us man! Talk! Let us know you’re still there!”
After listening for a few minutes, and shushing the men in our small crew, I bent my ear close to the end of the pipe. I rapped the board with a small hammer and heard it echo in the pipe. I heard a low, growling sound, almost too low to hear.
“Damn ye.”
I shouted.
“Keg! Come back! Come to, man!”
“There was a rat, ye bastards. He came right up to my face and I could see his nasty little teeth!”
“Keg, we were…”
“My arms are so stiff but they moved, oh they did, they did! He came and came and I got him and snapped his rotten little neck, I did!”
“Keg… do you want to come out?”
“I… I canna come out, I still hear ‘im from time to time. He’s scared, and he’ll die, I know. I can’t go back. This little rat bastard will ride along with me the rest o’ the way. Push! I see room ahead!”
We heard Keg sobbing as we tied on more boards and shoved him in, again, and again, and yet again once more.
Keg was yelling at us now, to “put on more board, shove me inta the bowels o’ Hell!”
Forty-five feet in or a little more and Keg yelled back.
“I-I can see the end! Push me aboot four feet more, and ready to pull back!”
We put on the last of our boards, baling wire, screws, and rope and pushed slowly to a pencil mark one of the carpenters made. It took almost all our strength.
Mike and I put our ears to the hole.
“Keg! Can you see out! Can-”
I stopped. I heard crying, not Keg’s voice, but the child’s. It wasn’t quite so faint as before, and now, now it echoed like Keg’s voice did!
Keg spoke, not quite yelling.
“Pull! Pull steady and strong!”
We pulled, and pulled, and ripped off lumber as we pulled, and piled it up to one side. We listened and wondered.
Keg exhorted us a few more times to pull, but we heard him talking in another fashion.
“Hold on, hold on! Don’t struggle, ah ye brat!”
We hauled and piled, and pulled nails and unwound wire and pulled knots open and finally Mike and I yanked Keg from the grimy pipe, and as he came out, his hands, tight and purple and filthy, pulled out a young child, sobbing and whimpering and with sunken eyes in her pale face.
The men had a blanket ready, and wrapt it ’round her, and washed her face. One added a few drops of brandy from his hip flask to some water in a cup and had her sip it. She was shivering and sobbing still, and it was as if she knew not where she was now.
The rest of us slapped Keg on his back, crying and hurrahing him, and we were lifting him to our shoulders. He slapped our hands away and said something, and backed away. Mike waved his hands and quieted the men. The little girl stopped crying and said something. I couldn’t make it out.
Keg had a look in his eyes I’d seen in war veterans, remembering shelling and dead comrades. He shakily walked back over to the pipe.
“I hafta… I hafta…” He bent his neck and cursed under his breath. “Put me back in tha pipe.” He turned his dead eyes back to me.
“Her brother is still in there, alive, and waitin’. He’s hurt, I don’t know how bad. There’s bodies in rubble all over.”
We cleaned up Keg a bit, quickly, gave him a coupla swigs of brandy and a chance to stain a wall, put more oil in his lamp, trimmed the wick, lit the lamp again and put him back in. We had some men take a break and brought more in. But we only had one Keg.
He was a lot quieter now, except for a few sobs and snuffles when he was in about half-way.
About two hours it took, strapping and wiring up the boards, pushing more confidently now that we knew there were no obstructions in the pipe. When we got to the end, Keg cursed and cursed.
“Damn brat! I can’t see him! Gawd damn him ta hell! Where is he?”
There were some clattering sounds.
“Push me two feet more! More!”
More clattering sounds. Silence. Our breathing seemed the loudest thing ever.
“I cut maself loost. I gotta go find him.”
“Keg, no, get back in, we’ll get ya back, ya’ll die!
One response, then silence.
“Damn ye, just hold tight.”
We heard nothing, nothing at all, for too many heartbeats. Then Keg’s voice again, in a different trembly timbre.
“I tied him to the boards. Pull him out.”
“Keg, can ya hold on until we push them back for ya?”
“Well, I’m gawdam well gonna hafta! PULL!”
During the awful hours we spent pushing and pulling Keg in and out of the pipe, and back in, we managed to get a sawbones, and he had a litter waiting and an ambulance ready outside.
We eased the boy, skinny and bleeding, from the pipe and the doc took over, listening to his heart and chest and then cutting away his clothes, cleaning his wounds with a tincture. We wrapped him in a blanket and the ambulance boys took him and his sister away.
We sent a bundle of rope and a bottle of water back along the pipe. We didn’t hear aught. When we figgered we had it pushed out the other end, Mike yelled and yelled for more than a quarter hour with no response except an echo. We rubbed out hands and felt half dead, wondering what had happened, until we heard a clattering and rattling in tha pipe. Mike bent to the hole and yelled.
“Keg! Are ya all right?”
Silence, then more rattling. A low voice, tired and full of fear.
“Pull. Please! Pull!”
We pulled and got him out. Keg sobbed all the way back, like a small child. We were glad to hear anything from him, even though he din’t answer us when we yelled.
Mike untied him, and he lay on the floor and puled like a baby, crying his guts out, and wouldn’t stop for several minutes. Mike hugged him and he calmed a bit.
“The boy… he… he was trynta get his pa out, and …another. His pa was dead. Then he fought me, and I had to lay him out to get him in tha pipe. Is he gonna make it?”
Mike stroked Keg’s hair like his own child.
“Aye, the doc thinks he will. Tomorrow we can go to the hospital and see them.”
“No, no I canna go, I can’t look…”
Keg lapsed into crying and coughing. We cleaned him up and took him out of that place, and the carpenters put that board over the hole that you see today.”
The barkeep slid the board back over the pipe, and carefully latched it.
I drew in a deep breath. “I don’t want to be here either. Let’s go upstairs and you can sell me another beer, and a sandwich.”
Back at the bar, I sipped at the draft, feeling more fortunate than usual.
“The little guy’s a hero, then, facing his fears, an’ death, saving two kids. Did he go to the hospital then?”
The bartender was slicing some cheese for my sandwich. He turned a moment.
“He couldn’t. He refused to see the children he saved. You see, sir, the people in the rubble, they was all twisted up and bent and crushed, almost as one with the debris. Dead, all but one. One was alive. Keg had an hour to think it over until we could push the boards back to him, an hour to watch, and when we sent him the rope, time to act. Keg did what he had to do, and when he left, there was no one left behind to suffer. Not even the kids’ mother.”