Thrust: A Novel

When Aster started working with Joseph in The Brook, on the Sea Wall, he’d listened for hours as Joseph told him the stories of things from before. Told him about a line of men who might tell and tell and tell a story, as if it were a lifeline to something.

“You know, generations of us Mohawks have been coming down from Canada since the twenties to build the frames for buildings all over that city. Immigration tried to deport us as illegal aliens — stupid, right? They’re the foreigners. But then a court ruled that you can’t arrest and deport Mohawks, because we’re a people from a nation within two nations and treaty rights say we can move through our own tribal territories and their imaginary lines that are supposed to divide us. We have a special kind of freedom. Not that they still don’t try and make it a pain in the ass for us to go back and forth.” Joseph’s laugh emerged gravel-throated and deep from his chest, as if the sound had taken miles to grow. “Freedom of movement gave us the ability to pile ourselves up in the big city. Ain’t that some shit? We had the most skill walking iron. You know the Empire State Building?”

Aster hears Laisvė’s voice again in his head — one of her lists, her endless whispered recitals: The transcontinental railroad. The Canadian Pacific Railway. The Hell Gate Bridge. The George Washington Bridge. The Waldorf Astoria. The Empire State Building. The United Nations, Lincoln Center. The Twin Towers. The Freedom Tower. The Sea Wall.

Joseph continues. “The Twin Towers? We Mohawks topped off the Twin Towers. And we were there again for rescue and support when they fell. We knew them better than anyone. We helped carry out the dead bodies. We helped build the Freedom Tower.”

Aster sometimes said something stupid when Joseph would finish narrating, like “I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” and Joseph would say, “What this?”

“Staying alive,” Aster would respond. “That this.”

And Joseph would say, “That’s some stupid-ass shit. What kind of talk is that? You got a daughter, man.”

Sometimes Aster would stumble a little further—I have no origins, he’d say — but then he’d get lost trying to explain and Joseph would be silent for a while. Maybe night would fall. Maybe Aster’s arms would feel too heavy. And then Joseph would tell Aster how the Mohawk had always taken people into their tribes, for a hundred different reasons. War reasons. Family reasons. Love reasons. Hate reasons. Orphan reasons. Shelter and displacement reasons. Some reasons were brutal and some reasons were beautiful. But every one of those taken in were considered members of the clans and tribes into which they were adopted.

“Some are from ancestral blood and some are from migrations of the gut or heart,” Joseph would say, and then Aster would feel less like someone whose body was about to leave an orbit and spin off into space. “I barely knew my father. I mean, I knew him for a little while — about twenty years. Then he died. So what?” Joseph would clap Aster on the shoulder, then light a cigarette with one hand while driving, and take in and slowly release a drag. “But they say my grandfather John Joseph was the best iron walker ever. Worked on the statue, all that pretty copper. How’s that for pride? Tough to beat that. Shit, Aster, maybe it is in your blood, maybe not, but your body sure knows something. I’ve never seen anyone as sure-footed as you up there.”

Sure-footed. A father who could not save his wife, a father who lost his infant son. A father unsure how long he could keep his own daughter alive.

Once, Aster confided in Joseph his desire to surrender. Joseph, who had taken him in when they first arrived. Joseph, who’d taken care of him and his infant son and daughter as a father might have, or as Aster imagined a father might do. Joseph, who’d taught him how to walk.

“It’s so peaceful up here,” Aster told Joseph one evening as they straddled the beams, looking out toward the water and in toward the land.

Joseph looked up into space, then down at the ground. “Yeah, well, it’s always fucking windy, and you ain’t no goddamn bird,” he said. “You’re a father.”

Of course, his heart would lurch homeward then, the fact of his daughter would jolt his sternum, and down he’d climb, grateful for another day’s labor, grateful to be working on the one thing that might hold the water back enough to keep them alive. Only after he was on the ground did his fears creep back up his legs and hips to his gut. Keep feeding her, keep brushing her hair, keep teaching her about the world that was. Keep her hidden. Keep her alive.

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