“Grand. I could use a drink,” Padraic jokes as he heads inside, still hopeful of some lost treasure. The workers follow. These men are the unseen builders of the city, like ghosts themselves, and they’ve no need to fear the dark.
Only Sun Yu hesitates. He hates the dark, actually, but he needs the job, and jobs are hard to come by when you’re Chinese. As it is, he only got the job because he shares a cold-water flat with Padraic and several others in Chinatown, and the Irishman put in a word for him with the boss. It wouldn’t do to make waves. So he, too, follows. As Sun Yu navigates the mounds of fallen dirt and brick on the tracks, he stumbles over something. Padraic swings his flashlight beam over the tracks again and finds a pretty little music box with a hand crank on top. Padraic lifts the music box, admiring the workmanship. They don’t make them like that anymore. He turns the crank on the cylinder. A song plinks out note by note. It’s one he’s heard before, an old song, but he can’t really remember it.
He considers taking the music box but puts it back. “Let’s see what other treasures are down here.”
Padraic swings the flashlight. The beam finds a skeletal foot. At the base of the curved wall is a mummified corpse mostly eaten away by rot and rats and time. The men fall quiet. They stare at the tufts of hair gone as thin as candy floss, and at the mouth, which is open as if in a final scream. A few of the men cross themselves. They left a lot behind to come to this country, but not their superstitions.
Sun Yu is uneasy, but he doesn’t have the words in English to communicate his feelings. This woman met a very bad end. If he were back in China, he’d see to the proper prayers and burial. For everyone knows a spirit can’t rest without that. But this is America. Things are different here.
“Bad luck,” he says at last, and no one disagrees.
“Right. We best be back at it, lads,” Padraic says with a heavy sigh.
The men pile out of the hole. As Padraic closes the gate, he regards the unearthed station with pity. It’ll be gone soon enough, knocked out to make way for new subway lines for the growing city. Progress keeps progressing.
“Shame,” he says.
Moments later, the high-pitched hum of the workers’ jackhammers melds with the constant rattle of the subway trains; the city’s song reverberates in the tunnels. Suddenly, the work lights dim. The men pause. Wind wafts down the tunnel and caresses their sweaty faces. It carries the faint sound of crying, and then it’s gone. The lights brighten again. The men shrug—just one of those odd things that happen in the city under the city. They start in again; their machines turn up the earth, burying history in their wake.
Later, the exhausted workers return to Chinatown and climb the stairs to their shared room. They fall into their beds, the dirt of the city still caked under their ragged nails. They’re too tired for bathing, but they’re not too tired for dreams. For dreams, too, are ghosts, desires chased in sleep, gone by morning. The longing of dreams draws the dead, and this city holds many dreams.
The men dream of the music box and its song, a relic from a time long ago.
“Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me / Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.…”