Thirty-Thousandths of a League Under the Hudson

Goswick is fifty-six and bald, with a mustache and a strong jaw. He was standing at the pier’s end, surveying the broad river. “This is a shithole,” he said, gesturing southward at a sewage outflow pipe near a marsh. “As you start to go down, you can see your hand, but after you get five or six feet you’re done. And the thing with us is, when we’re diving, we’re on the bottom.” Zero visibility. “You feel a squish,” Goswick went on. That means you’ve reached the bottom. Then you have to dig in with your hands, to hold your position against the current. The squishy loam can be a foot deep. “You got to stay in shape,” he said, slightly tensing his barrel chest.