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And for no reason he could fathom, O’Toole suddenly began kicking out at the inert, now petrified body of
his former boss and sometime drinking buddy, McAffey. Then again he landed another hard kick, and suddenly he
was again kicking him repeatedly with a booted foot and leg that acted without reason.
The body lay now at the edge of the lift, an arm hanging over. Once again, he viciously kicked McAffey’s
dehydrated form, until the body rolled off the platform altogether. He heard the nasty thump of the other man’s
body hit the stones lining the shaft as McAffey returned to the mine shaft below to spend eternity there for all
O’Toole cared now. “With god and the beast now,” he said, for a moment sounding like his old self. But only for
a moment.
“Off with ya, now,” he said to the darkness below where the body had fallen. “No time for ya have I.” Then
he haltingly chanted in what seemed another voice: “Out I must get…out…g-get out…got to get out…”
Before he could analyze these uneasy feelings, the lift finally came to ground level, and he stumbled onto earth
as if finding his sea legs, appearing a disheveled drunk in a gait that did not seem his, and yet these were his feet.
He stumbled and fell, gasping for all the air he could place in his lungs, choking as he did so. Whatever this
was, a voice inside his head was now telling him to go forth toward the city piers and the shipyards. This hypnotic
suggestion felt so strong; he could not fight it. At the same time, he wondered, “W-Where’s me-me own will got
off to?”
It was late, no one around, and no one to ask help of. He knew he’d live; something told him so, but he had an
inkling it would prove to be a short-lived future at best. Knew in his heart and mind that whatever had destroyed
Tim was soon to overtake him, but he didn’t wish to die in a hole in the ground. He wanted to die among men
here at the surface, yet he feared infecting others at the same time that this overwhelming need arose in him—to
die among men, in a crowd, the first men he came to. It might be his last wish, his final desire, but he could not
fathom why he’d not rather die among family than strangers but there it was—an insistence to go nowhere near
anyone he loved yet to seek out human contact.
It was a powerful suggestion, one that must be obeyed, one he could not combat no matter how much he
longed to see home, hearth, the wife.
He knew the nearest fellows to the mine were men working at the shipyards. He knew that his feet—the same
as had kicked McAffey back into the mine shaft, now moved toward the distant lights of the shipyard at Belfast as
if made of wood on the one hand, and as if they had a mind of their own, these extremities, and were guided by a
hand other than his own.
“Company of others…don’t want being alone…time like this.” He heard himself saying now as he ambled in
mechanical fashion toward where they had labored for so long now building Titanic and her sister ships via the
iron ore provided by the mine.
Francis had forgotten McAffey’s name now; could not dredge it up. Then he realized he’d forgotten his own
name as well. He wondered if he might live at least long enough to take in the air of the world outside the mine in
the company of other fellows, perhaps raise a pint to his lips, smoke a cigar before his mind should completely go
—but what else did it all mean? A man spending a lifetime, learning, filling his mind and for what? So it ends a
blank slate? Why? How? What was at root of living and dying?
“Some seed in that damned, cursed prehistoric dog carcass,” he muttered to himself, feeling an overwhelming
urge to live, and to do so among other men—other men who would allow life to continue—yet a life he did not
recognize. All he knew was that he must survive long enough to get to others of his kind. In fact, it replaced the
one mantra in his head—to get out and to get air—with another that pleaded for other warm bodies.
Some time later, O’Toole stumbled into the sprawling Belfast shipyard looking like a drunk at the midnight
hour. He passed below the huge gantry, a part of his brain unsure in the dim light how he’d gotten here, how he’d
come so far, how he remained alive when that other fellow…a man with whom he’d been…someone he’d known
but could not so much as picture in his mind now…how that other fellow had died so quickly and violently. That
much he remembered.
He felt not at all in control of his limbs, felt no control of his will, yet he was alive, despite the horrible belief
that some kind of dreaded disease had grabbed hold of him and would never release its grip. It seemed madness to
contemplate, but it felt as if the thing that’d taken hold had somehow transferred itself from this other fellow’s