:music: Oh little town... :music:
Another city with no room at the inn, separated from Bethlehem only by 2,000 years.
Christmas Comes to the Mole People
On a freezing December night, a woman?s sharp screams fill every recess in the abandoned train tunnel that more than a dozen people call home. The air is still, amplifying the shrieks as they echo through the dark cavern.
One by one and sometimes in twos, the nervous inhabitants come to its mouth, where the screams tumble out into the night air and are quickly lost.
?This ain?t right, this jus? ain?t right,? says Shorty, a recent member of the tunnel community, a newcomer to its kind of suffering. His words create vapors that linger briefly before they disappear without effect. The half-dozen men with him study the rubble at their feet in silence.
Shorty is a soft-faced man with watery eyes so brown that their whites have yellowed. Now they are intense and demanding. ?We should be gettin? help. This ain?t right!? he insists.
His clenched fists chop the air in short strokes when a sharp beam of white light from a passing river barge catches him, suddenly illuminating the scene. He shrinks from the exposure and his fists seem to abandon their determination, opening into stubby fingers cracked by the cold and ingrained with dirt. He shoves them into the pockets of his browned and oversized jeans whose frayed bottoms, cuffed several times, fold heavily over torn sneakers. Despite the cold, his clothes reek of the familiar smells of homelessness-spoiled and soured food from scavenged dumpsters, stale sweat, and the excrement and urine of the streets.
The beam sweeps past, and New Jersey?s flickering lights reappear across the river. The men are poorly protected from the Hudson?s cold winds. Butch, the beefiest among them and regarded as the leader of the community, shifts his weight to keep warm. His eyes are rimmed with tears from the cold as he hunches his shoulders against a new gust. He draws a switchblade from his jacket and fingers its edge gingerly. As everyone watches, he draws it several times across the face of a smooth rock, as if to sharpen it further, then closes and pockets it. His face resumes its vacant, distant look.
?Maybe we should pray,? says Juan tentatively. A slim Latino man whose eyes never leave the ground, he is the most clean and neatly dressed of the gathered tunnel dwellers. By day he works a minimum-wage job at McDonald?s. No one there suspects he lives underground.
Razor, a black man with face and neck scars, snickers at the mention of prayer. His midshoulder-length hair, matted reggae-style and knotted with dirt, looks especially wild in the darkness.
The rest of the men nod and grunt approval of Juan?s idea, and, in a low monotone, he begins to speak of the coming child:
?Dear Lord, please deliver this baby safely. His parents are good people. He?s done nothin? bad, Lord. He?s jus? a baby. He don?t mean no disrespect being born underground. We?ll take care of him when he?s with us. Just deliver him and his mama safely, Lord, and we?ll take care of the rest. Amen.?
?Amen,? several of the men repeat in whispers that overlap each other like the small waves slapping the river edge.
Above New York, white stars pierce the sky. Everything appears too sharp and dramatic in the sparkling cold, including the quiet when the screams abruptly stop. A small animal, probably a rat, shuffles through the dried leaves at the corner of the tunnel?s mouth, but the world seems less hostile in the quiet.
Then the baby cries a strong, demanding bleat. Then men look at the ground or at nothing, seemingly unmoved. They were familiar with death in the tunnels. Birth was something new.
?Should we go in?? asks Fred. His heavy-lidded eyes make him look dimly criminal and threatening, an effect he deliberately enhances on the street. Now, even while standing innocently outside a manger scene, he looks as guilty as a thief.
?Naw,? Butch says. ?Wait for Ronda.?
A woman?s figure walks almost bouncing out of the tunnel?s mouth.
?It?s a boy!? Ronda announces, her eyes tired but lively. ?Sally?s fine.?
The group moves from the December night toward the underground home of Sally and Tim, their blank expressions thawing into avuncular pride.
?Man, our first tunnel baby! Man!? exults Butch, shaking his head and smiling brightly. He leans over and smacks Shorty on the top of his head. ?Shorty, man, you was a mess, brother,? he says, smiling more broadly.
?You weren?t no calm chicken neither,? says Fred, elbowing Butch as tension releases into exaggerated bonhomie.
The men gather wood as they walk deeper into the tunnel, adding it to the campfire they had left when Sally?s screams became too near and personal. The flames leap and warmth returns with swigs from a bottle of Thunderbird that is passed around, and the men spend the last of the night expressing wonder and even awe at the idea that a baby has joined their community.
Sally and Tim live in the tunnel for a week after the birth, but the tunnel community is glad when they go.
?We?ll miss them and all that,? says Shorty, ?but this ain?t no place for a baby. A tunnel ain?t no place for a baby.?
?We would?ve told someone sooner or later,? says Juan. ?No baby could live down here with us.?
Most of the homeless who attended the baby?s birth have no intention of visiting Tim and Sally. Some also deliberately insulate themselves against disappointment in others by staying aloof.
Shorty, not yet callused in this way, hopes to keep in touch with the tunnel baby. ?Sure, I?ll see Little Shorty,? he beams at the thought of his namesake. ?They?ll bring him down to visit his uncles.? He entertains an idea fleetingly. ?Maybe I?ll pass him on the street one day.?
?Naw,? says Butch. ?Little Butch is better off staying away. He wouldn?t want to see your ugly face anyway,? he grins.
Excerpted from The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City by Jennifer Toth (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1993).
Another city with no room at the inn, separated from Bethlehem only by 2,000 years.
Christmas Comes to the Mole People
On a freezing December night, a woman?s sharp screams fill every recess in the abandoned train tunnel that more than a dozen people call home. The air is still, amplifying the shrieks as they echo through the dark cavern.
One by one and sometimes in twos, the nervous inhabitants come to its mouth, where the screams tumble out into the night air and are quickly lost.
?This ain?t right, this jus? ain?t right,? says Shorty, a recent member of the tunnel community, a newcomer to its kind of suffering. His words create vapors that linger briefly before they disappear without effect. The half-dozen men with him study the rubble at their feet in silence.
Shorty is a soft-faced man with watery eyes so brown that their whites have yellowed. Now they are intense and demanding. ?We should be gettin? help. This ain?t right!? he insists.
His clenched fists chop the air in short strokes when a sharp beam of white light from a passing river barge catches him, suddenly illuminating the scene. He shrinks from the exposure and his fists seem to abandon their determination, opening into stubby fingers cracked by the cold and ingrained with dirt. He shoves them into the pockets of his browned and oversized jeans whose frayed bottoms, cuffed several times, fold heavily over torn sneakers. Despite the cold, his clothes reek of the familiar smells of homelessness-spoiled and soured food from scavenged dumpsters, stale sweat, and the excrement and urine of the streets.
The beam sweeps past, and New Jersey?s flickering lights reappear across the river. The men are poorly protected from the Hudson?s cold winds. Butch, the beefiest among them and regarded as the leader of the community, shifts his weight to keep warm. His eyes are rimmed with tears from the cold as he hunches his shoulders against a new gust. He draws a switchblade from his jacket and fingers its edge gingerly. As everyone watches, he draws it several times across the face of a smooth rock, as if to sharpen it further, then closes and pockets it. His face resumes its vacant, distant look.
?Maybe we should pray,? says Juan tentatively. A slim Latino man whose eyes never leave the ground, he is the most clean and neatly dressed of the gathered tunnel dwellers. By day he works a minimum-wage job at McDonald?s. No one there suspects he lives underground.
Razor, a black man with face and neck scars, snickers at the mention of prayer. His midshoulder-length hair, matted reggae-style and knotted with dirt, looks especially wild in the darkness.
The rest of the men nod and grunt approval of Juan?s idea, and, in a low monotone, he begins to speak of the coming child:
?Dear Lord, please deliver this baby safely. His parents are good people. He?s done nothin? bad, Lord. He?s jus? a baby. He don?t mean no disrespect being born underground. We?ll take care of him when he?s with us. Just deliver him and his mama safely, Lord, and we?ll take care of the rest. Amen.?
?Amen,? several of the men repeat in whispers that overlap each other like the small waves slapping the river edge.
Above New York, white stars pierce the sky. Everything appears too sharp and dramatic in the sparkling cold, including the quiet when the screams abruptly stop. A small animal, probably a rat, shuffles through the dried leaves at the corner of the tunnel?s mouth, but the world seems less hostile in the quiet.
Then the baby cries a strong, demanding bleat. Then men look at the ground or at nothing, seemingly unmoved. They were familiar with death in the tunnels. Birth was something new.
?Should we go in?? asks Fred. His heavy-lidded eyes make him look dimly criminal and threatening, an effect he deliberately enhances on the street. Now, even while standing innocently outside a manger scene, he looks as guilty as a thief.
?Naw,? Butch says. ?Wait for Ronda.?
A woman?s figure walks almost bouncing out of the tunnel?s mouth.
?It?s a boy!? Ronda announces, her eyes tired but lively. ?Sally?s fine.?
The group moves from the December night toward the underground home of Sally and Tim, their blank expressions thawing into avuncular pride.
?Man, our first tunnel baby! Man!? exults Butch, shaking his head and smiling brightly. He leans over and smacks Shorty on the top of his head. ?Shorty, man, you was a mess, brother,? he says, smiling more broadly.
?You weren?t no calm chicken neither,? says Fred, elbowing Butch as tension releases into exaggerated bonhomie.
The men gather wood as they walk deeper into the tunnel, adding it to the campfire they had left when Sally?s screams became too near and personal. The flames leap and warmth returns with swigs from a bottle of Thunderbird that is passed around, and the men spend the last of the night expressing wonder and even awe at the idea that a baby has joined their community.
Sally and Tim live in the tunnel for a week after the birth, but the tunnel community is glad when they go.
?We?ll miss them and all that,? says Shorty, ?but this ain?t no place for a baby. A tunnel ain?t no place for a baby.?
?We would?ve told someone sooner or later,? says Juan. ?No baby could live down here with us.?
Most of the homeless who attended the baby?s birth have no intention of visiting Tim and Sally. Some also deliberately insulate themselves against disappointment in others by staying aloof.
Shorty, not yet callused in this way, hopes to keep in touch with the tunnel baby. ?Sure, I?ll see Little Shorty,? he beams at the thought of his namesake. ?They?ll bring him down to visit his uncles.? He entertains an idea fleetingly. ?Maybe I?ll pass him on the street one day.?
?Naw,? says Butch. ?Little Butch is better off staying away. He wouldn?t want to see your ugly face anyway,? he grins.
Excerpted from The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City by Jennifer Toth (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1993).
