His father’s tone softened, and he led DJ to a quiet area.
Sensing that the man was bracing for some bad news, DJ told him there was no emergency. “It’s just that time’s ticking, everybody’s getting older, and I wanted to see who my father was.”
O’Leary apologized. “I tried to contact you a long time ago,” he told his son. “Your aunt said you were living out west. There was no phone number. After a while I just gave up.”
There was no denying the awkwardness between them, but both sides seemed interested in trying to ease that. After talking for a few minutes, his father asked DJ for his number and said he’d call him sometime.
DJ never got that call.
Standing on a rocky ledge while submerged in the river, DJ clutched the sinker drill. The tool resembled one of those jackhammers that road crews use to tear up old stretches of highway, but it also had a drill rotation. It was early 1994, and DJ was back in Vermont working on the cofferdam. The divers had drilled holes in the river bottom and used them to anchor the base of the giant watertight “loaf pan.” Now they needed to secure its sides to the riverbank by drilling anchor holes there. This was turning out to be a much tougher task, owing to the unevenness of the rocky surface. DJ had begun by standing on steadier ground, positioning the sinker drill above his head, but that seemed too precarious a way to hold such a powerful tool while standing underwater. So he’d sought more leverage by climbing up onto a small ledge. Still, in order to get the drill where he needed it, he had to stand on his tiptoes. He jammed the tool under his armpit, holding it out horizontally in front of him, as if it were a big pipe he was carrying. Then he started to drill. Suddenly a strong river current tugged him, pulling him off the ledge. The drill remained jammed under his armpit and kept rotating for a spell, torquing his torso before tossing him onto the riverbank. He was left writhing in pain.
So much about this Vermont job had changed for DJ. Early on he had raced back to Waltham whenever he could to see his girlfriend. During one visit, DJ had had dinner with Dana and her doting grandmother, an immigrant from Italy. When the grandmother said something in Italian, Dana blushed. DJ asked for a translation. “She wants to know when you’re going to put a ring on my finger,” Dana said. DJ was a young guy who loved women and the nightlife too much to consider settling down. Still, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Dana really could be the one. If getting engaged was what it took to keep her, he told himself, he would do it. Dana was unlike his previous girlfriends. Although those girls had been attracted to DJ’s life-of-the-party charisma, they always ended up trying to change him, determined to get him to commit more fully to their relationship. Dana seemed so much more secure in herself. As the Vermont job wore on, though, DJ began to feel like he was the one wanting more of a commitment and suffering self-doubt when his calls went unanswered. Eventually his doubts were realized when Dana broke things off.
Meanwhile, his best friend on the Vermont job, Ron Kozlowski, had chosen not to return after the fall. Fortunately, Tap Taylor was still around, and DJ’s friendship with him had deepened. Despite the still-frigid water temps, Tap did most of his dives using only a band mask. Much cheaper than a diving helmet, the band mask had the same kind of front and regulator system as DJ’s SuperLite 17, but rather than being made out of fiberglass, it was essentially just a rubber hood. So it did little to protect a diver’s ears and head from the cold. As they worked more shifts together, DJ began to let Tap borrow his helmet. For a diver, this was no small thing. For starters, there was the matter of hygiene. In serving as a barrier from the cold water, a dive hat became a reservoir of saliva and mucus. So sharing a helmet meant sharing a whole lot more. Beyond that, a diver’s hat was an essential component of his professional identity, something he viewed as protectively as a woman might treat her diamond engagement ring. The fact that DJ was letting Tap take turns using his hat said a lot about how close they had become.
At one point, Tap introduced DJ to another diver, whose name was Billy Juse. Tap had met Billy working on the other Kiewit site, downriver in Vernon. A small guy with a black mustache, Billy was a hell of a diver, and DJ could tell how well he and Tap worked together. The bosses in Vernon had noticed the same thing.
For Kiewit, the twin Vermont jobs on the Connecticut River were beginning to wind down. At the end of most sizable projects, there is a punch list of small tasks that need to be done but don’t require a full crew and are scarcely worth a big company’s time. So the big company will often try to subcontract out that remaining work. One of the Kiewit supervisors approached Tap to see if he and Billy would like to be considered for this kind of assignment. Tap was ecstatic. It bolstered the line of reasoning he had taken in his disagreement with Kozlowski: if you work hard for your employer, rather than acting as though they’re always trying to screw you, good things will happen.
To be considered for the work, the Kiewit manager told Tap, he and Billy would need to have a fully insured and incorporated company. The supervisor had heard that Tap had a side business, called Black Dog Divers. Tap had started it years earlier to handle very basic dive jobs like changing moorings, but he’d put it on hold as he pursued his commercial diving career. “Is Black Dog incorporated and insured?” the supervisor asked. Tap explained that it would take some paperwork, and that if he was going to all that trouble, he’d probably change the name. He’d originally chosen Black Dog because he had a black Labrador puppy at the time, but now he worried the name might not sound serious enough to win jobs from big companies like Kiewit. “Don’t you dare change that name,” the supervisor said, pointing out that it would stick in people’s heads. So Tap and Billy teamed up and began working to transform Black Dog Divers into a respected subcontractor.
Meanwhile, DJ continued to struggle following his fight with the sinker drill. The pain, which he had initially thought could be handled with rest and lots of Advil, only intensified. DJ couldn’t bear the discomfort when he tried to go back into the water. Visits to a chiropractor and specialists brought no improvement. He concluded that he had to go out on workman’s comp.
His time in Vermont had begun with such promise. Fresh with a new love and a new career focus, he was now heading back home with uncertainty, heartbreak, and excruciating pain. After saying his goodbyes, he hopped into his Bronco and started it up. But then a thought crossed his mind, and he cut the engine. He grabbed his SuperLite 17 and walked back over to where Tap was standing. His new friend might own a company that could boast a great name and the prospect of becoming a favored subcontractor to one of the nation’s biggest builders, but Tap Taylor still didn’t own a diving helmet. “Here,” DJ said, handing over his prized possession. “Put that band mask away and use this until I need it back.”
2. Island Secrets, 1675–1995
The clear glass bottle on Doug MacDonald’s desk looked like it should be holding salad dressing, but the true contents were a lot less appetizing. The label read “Boston Harbor Water: 100% Authentic, Undiluted, Polluted.” Near the top was a band of cloudy water. Settled at the bottom was thick, oozing, disgusting mud. Someone had hatched this gag idea of bottling water scooped up at the Boston coastline as a way to highlight what a front-page newspaper headline had memorably called the “Harbor of Shame12.” MacDonald kept the bottle as a reminder that it was his job to bring redemption to one of the most famous bodies of water in American history. But by the summer of 1995, he had to confront the reality of just how elusive that goal remained.