Molasses by Wendy BooydeGraaff
Boston, 15 January 1919
For now it stands in the North End, close enough to wharves. Close enough to barrels. Close enough to workers. Close enough to factories.
Molasses. Slow as. Trickles out the bolted spots, rivets thick with sticky sweet, thin steel buckling.
Still, it stands.
Holds, for now, 2,300,000 gurgling gallons, give or take an oozing ounce.
Buckets, cans, pails, catch drips like pans under leaky roofs. A dribble or two, free for the table. Free for those who need something free in a city that works them too hard. The tank creaks on its tall legs. Children dodge the shudders and groans. Retrieve the pans. Run home.
Molasses tank, central, a tower of industry. Tall in the city. Fill it full, to the brim. Fill it hot. Molasses made to overwhelm, extracted from the slaves who sliced down sugarcane, who beat the sweet out of canes while being caned for not making the molasses process faster. Even though there’s a saying that proves it’s not meant for speed.
Molasses. Slow as.
The number one ingredient for rum. The number one ingredient for explosives. The number one ingredient for a flood that twists elevated train tracks, that lifts houses off their foundations and sends them down slick streets. The number one ingredient to trap horses and suffocate humans in its sticky grasp, twenty-one killed, one hundred fifty injured. The number one ingredient that crushes freight cars, that curls itself into a viscous wave higher than the one in the sea it rolls toward, intending to suck under, fill the lungs of whomever, whatever it can.
Artist’s Statement
I write for a variety of reasons, most often to understand and be understood. For this specific piece, it was a historical event that resonates into today, in that many disasters happen due to mismanagement and disrepair, and people suffer.
Wendy BooydeGraaff’s short fiction, poetry, and essays have been included in Ninth Letter online, Stanchion, Slag Glass City, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She is the author of Salad Pie (Chicago Review Press/Ripple Grove Press), a children’s picture book. Read more at wendybooydegraaff.com.