What I Lived For

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Sean shrugs. Bares his smoky-looking straggly teeth at Corky, smiles and says, “What the hell, lad, there’s a hundred places in Union City better than this dump.”

  How it happened exactly, there are two versions. How Dermott Corcoran was hanged.

  There were three young Corcoran brothers who emigrated to Union City, New York, in the spring of 1880, from County Kerry, Ireland. Living at first with relatives in Irish Hill and toiling alongside them at the Moneghan Pottery Works making decent wages (by Irish standards) roughly one-fifth of which were sent back home—at least at the start. Dermott was the eldest, nineteen years old when processed through Castle Garden; Joseph was eighteen; Gahern, sixteen. Were they high-spirited fun-loving lads for whom the discipline of tending kilns in even the summer heat (and how much hotter upstate New York than County Kerry, Ireland! even into late September, temperatures pitilessly high as ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit) proved insufferable; or were they hotheaded hard-drinking rebellious lads with no patience, once out from under their father’s rule, for taking orders from priests, relatives, or foremen? Very soon Dermott Corcoran quit, or was discharged, from the pottery works; followed soon after by his brothers Joseph and Gahern. All three worked at whatever jobs came their way, however briefly—mule drivers on the Erie Canal, bargemen on the Great Lakes, slaughterers in the Union City stockyards, dockside laborers. Dermott Corcoran was also a stone quarrier, a teamster driving a horse-drawn truck, a popular local prizefighter. He was never married and if, as probably he did, he sired any number of bastard children in upstate New York in the short period of time he lived there, no records were kept of them; no Corcoran lineage maintained. Dermott was a tall bull-necked red-haired young man with a hotter temper than either of his brothers; his expectations for himself were grander. On the other side, as America was spoken of with both reverence and apprehension back in County Kerry, a man with pride has a right to expect anything he can envision.

  Bare-knuckle fighting, sometimes to the very death, was a specialty of the Irish in America. It was one of the things they were good at, and good for. In some cases they fought for actual monetary rewards in the “prize ring” though in most cases, being Irish, they fought for fighting’s sake, usually in saloons or close by saloons. Dermott Corcoran exhibited a natural talent for such fighting and soon became a crowd-pleaser in towns and settlements along the Erie Canal. He was known as the “Irish Charger”—a heavyweight blindly ferocious as a young bull when provoked, all offense and no defense. He was undaunted even when his face was streaming blood, nose broken and teeth loosened in his jaws. In the sixty-odd bouts of his foreshortened career liquor fueled his best performances; liquor was at once the stimulant, the balm, and the reward. It seemed he must feel less pain than the average man—in the ring, he could be relied upon to stagger to his feet after being knocked down repeatedly, returning for more punishment until, as often happened, his opponent punched himself out on Dermott’s very body. His youth was like a Fourth of July rocket—consuming itself in its display. Next to the pleasure of feeling his opponent’s nose or jaw shatter against his skinned, bloody knuckles, Dermott loved the applause of the crowd. He was a man among men, and would live forever.

  Asked if he wasn’t afraid in the ring, especially against an opponent bigger and more experienced than he, Dermott Corcoran sincerely professed bewilderment—for what was there to be afraid of other than turning coward, and running away? And that no Corcoran would ever do.

  His purses were as low as $25, and as high as $1000. In his career he may have earned—the estimate was his brother Gahern’s—as much as $4500, of which virtually all was spent, lost, or stolen. After a winning bout, when Dermott was in his happiest state, drinking until he collapsed, he sometimes gave all his money away to his companions, and when, waking sober, a day or two later, he realized what he’d done, he would weep and insist upon going to a priest to take confession and be absolved of his sins. Rarely, in America, did Dermott take communion—he would wait, he vowed, until he was ready. Until he was heavyweight champion of the world.

  The Corcorans of County Kerry, Ireland, were anxious about Dermott who sent them money only intermittently.

  In November 1882, in Albany, Dermott was matched with the heavyweight title-holder himself—John L. Sullivan. The purse was an extraordinary $4000—winner take all. It did not occur to Dermott that he might lose, so the stark terms of the stake were satisfactory. In fact, Dermott was so certain he would win, he made numerous bets on himself, using up what little money he’d saved. He encouraged his brothers Joseph and Gahern to bet, too. A contingent of male Corcorans journeyed to Albany for the fight, of whom some did not return to Union City for days. One of them, a father of nine young children, disappeared entirely and was never heard of again.

  Every Irish family knows these griefs, like a secret rosary. Every Irish family has said this rosary. The saintly who die young, the drinkers and shouters and abusers who live into old age. The hardworking silent ones who die of heart attacks where they stand, uncomplaining. The good girls who run off and return home pregnant and humiliated and their young lives ruined forever. Or who never return, and are lost forever. The seminary student, passionate for God, who inflames the lust of one of his superiors and ends trying to commit suicide. The nun, safe in the convent, who goes laughing-mad and is sent back home again. The mother of six, or nine, or eleven children who dies of the last-born, mother and infant burning up together in fever, given the sacrament of extreme unction by the parish priest, and buried together. Forever and ever, amen.

  At the start of his match with the great John L. Sullivan, who outweighed him by twenty pounds, the Irish Charger performed heroically—he did not turn back when hit punishing blows against the head, the solar plexus, the midriff, the groin; he did not seem exactly to register these blows, as a vase, struck hard, finely cracking, might not shatter and fall into pieces immediately. By accident, in his desperate flailing, Dermott managed to strike some telling blows against his opponent, to the great excitement of the crowd. But at about the eighteenth round, Dermott had used up his youthful energy against the older, cunning, and more vicious fighter; by the thirty-first round, reeling and groggy on his feet, one eye completely shut, streaming blood from countless cuts, Dermott was overcome by a powerful right hand to the heart, fell heavily to the ground, and could not be roused for nearly an hour afterward. The evening was to be the pinnacle of the Irish Charger’s career. He was twenty-one.

  Following this, Dermott Corcoran began to lose as many fights as he won. And often with younger, less experienced men—emigrated Irishmen like himself, hot-tempered and with a weakness for alcohol. Though he flailed as madly with his fists as ever, he often missed his target completely; he made the crowd laugh by tripping over his own feet; often he failed to see a punch coming straight at him, as if, even at the start of a fight, his vision was impaired. His former admirers, many of them women, pitied him, or scorned him, or forgot him, for there was a steady supply of young prizefighters out of Irish Hill.

  At this time Dermott’s younger brothers Joseph and Gahern were working in a slaughterhouse off the Dundonald Road. And in the slaughterhouse there were many rough, illiterate, hard-drinking men, some of whom had been dismissed by other employers—by the Moneghan Pottery Works, for example. Joseph was continually harassed by one of his coworkers who had taken a special dislike to him for being the brother of Dermott Corcoran; one day, he was forced to fight this man against his will, and, with Gahern looking on helplessly, fell like a shot when struck a blow to the temple, and died in convulsions. It was widely rumored that his opponent, a fellow Irishman, had boasted beforehand of meaning to kill him in the guise of a fair fight, and that he’d closed his fist around a rock; and whether true or not, Joseph was dead at the age of twenty. When he heard the news, Dermott tracked down his brother’s killer in a canalside saloon and beat him mercilessly with his fists until, with dozens of witnesses looking on, he too died.


  So Dermott was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder in the county court; sentenced to die by hanging, as an example to the “lawless” “drunken” “anarchic” Irishmen of the western New York region of whom there were, in 1883, many thousands, and the threat of more all the time.

  Now the history of Dermott Corcoran, as recalled, and told and retold by the family, begins to become more ambiguous.

  In one version, young Dermott, only twenty-two at the time of his death, was courageous to the very end. He did not insist upon his innocence, and was too proud to beg for his life. Especially in a court, and before a judge, disdainful of the Irish. On the morning of his execution he shook off his jailers to approach the scaffold, ascending the steps by himself, wrists bound tightly behind his back and his legs awkwardly shackled but his handsome red-haired head held high. Here was the “Irish Charger” as all would remember him through their lives—the man from Irish Hill, Union City, who had fought, and fought bravely, the great John L. Sullivan. A murmur of pity and terror rippled through the crowd of hundreds densely gathered in the barren square behind the county jail. Several young women hid their faces, weeping as if their hearts were broken. A priest approached Dermott to bless him with shaking fingers. The sheriff himself was grim-faced. Even the hangman went about his duty reluctantly.

  Dermott Corcoran stood on the scaffold unflinchingly. He refused to allow the black hood to be lowered over his head—it was soiled, having been used many times in the past. He did not require being shielded from seeing the trapdoor beneath his feet, the noose as it was lowered over his head and tightened around his neck. Nor did he allow the priest to get close to him—he had no need of the Catholic Church, he said, where he was going.

  The execution was set for eight A.M. As the bells of the nearby Lutheran Church began to toll, the hangman released the trapdoor, and Dermott fell through to jerk horribly at the end of the eight-foot rope. But Dermott’s muscular young body was so heavy that his head was torn from his body—there was a geyser-like torrent of blood from the neck as the body fell to the ground, followed by the head which bounced, and rolled, its eyes starkly open and, according to some onlookers, seeing.

  Everyone screamed and recoiled in horror, even Dermott Corcoran’s executioners. The headless body, its heart still frantically pumping, sent out streams of bright red blood for another six seconds.

  But in another account of the execution of Dermott Corcoran, the condemned man was so sick with dysentery he had to be half-carried out of his jail cell, and lifted to the scaffold in a chair. His face was so wasted and yellow, he looked so aged, the few friends and fewer relatives who’d come to watch could scarcely recognize him. Was that Dermott Corcoran?—that? The “Irish Charger” who’d once brought such pride to Irish Hill by fighting the great John L. Sullivan?

  In this account, poor Dermott clutched at the priest’s black robe and begged for his life. The priest, who knew of Dermott Corcoran only by his reputation, and who strongly disapproved of him and his kind, for bringing such shame to decent law-abiding Irish, told him sternly that it was too late for his life—he should be thinking now of his soul.

  By the expression on Dermott Corcoran’s contorted face, it was clear that here was a man, or the semblance of a man, without a soul.

  Again, the Lutheran bells began to toll the hour of eight A.M. Again, the trapdoor fell open. But poor Dermott was so emaciated from his illness that when he fell, the soiled black hood on his head, the noose tightened around his neck, his body wasn’t heavy enough to snap his neck. Instead, he writhed and kicked at the end of the rope, strangling. Hideous sounds erupted from his mouth. He shat his trousers. The hood was dislodged in his desperate struggle, like a worm on a hook as onlookers afterward reported, and his face was exposed—the eyes bulging, skin beet-red, blood trickling from mouth, nose, ears. There were shouts of “God have mercy!” and “Cut the boy down!” For two or three minutes the executioners stood paralyzed not knowing what to do as Dermott continued to struggle piteously. By now, the rope binding his wrists together had come undone, and he was clawing frantically at the noose. Witnesses close enough to hear would swear afterward they could make out him crying “Help me! Help me!” Finally, the sheriff came to his senses and gave the order “Pull his legs!” and he and two deputies rushed forward to grab hold of Dermott’s frenzied legs, and tug downward at them, but so hard, putting so much weight into it, that Dermott’s body was torn away from his head—there was a geyser-like torrent of blood from the neck as the body fell to the ground, followed by the head which bounced, and rolled, eyes starkly open and sightless. The body continued to pump bright red blood, in ever-decreasing quantities, for another six seconds.

  In both accounts of the execution, many in the crowd fainted dead away, and many more were violently sick to their stomachs. It was a fact that the hangman immediately quit his job and never did another public hanging in Union City or elsewhere. And no one ever forgot the spectacle of a man’s head and body torn asunder though in time, and probably, for most, fairly quickly, they forgot Dermott Corcoran’s name and his local renown.

  Says Corky with a grim laugh, “Jesus. You can always depend upon a mick to entertain, eh?”

  Sean Corcoran laughs with uncharacteristic bluster. He’s had a few ales, he’s feeling mellow. Telling a story, you’re in charge. Telling a story, you’re listened to. If the story isn’t something your listener already knows and judging by Sean’s nephew’s face he hadn’t known this, only maybe vaguely. It isn’t a Corcoran story the Corcorans and their kin have been proud of. Too sad and, if you’re a Corcoran, too convincing. Poor bastard carried up to be hanged in a chair—to Corky, that’s convincing.

  As far as Sean’s concerned it’s just a story by now—1992. He’d first heard it when he was a kid of ten or eleven, that long ago. To him it’s like something he’d seen on television, flicking through the channels as he does now, never watching anything, even the news, for more than a minute or two. Or something in a movie many years ago when, sometimes, he went to movies. Which version of the story is truer than the other, or whether Dermott Corcoran died in some other, untold way, Sean doesn’t know. Except one thing’s for sure: Dermott Corcoran did die in Van Dusen Dorf Square, and his head was torn from his body.

  And Gahern Corcoran, only nineteen years old at the time, was a witness.

  Gahern, himself a sturdy-bodied young man, inclined to rough living and drinking, was so shaken by the deaths of both Dermott and Joseph, he never drank again, not even beer. Nor could he return to the slaughterhouse, in terror of the sight and smell of blood. He wrote impassioned letters to his father back in County Kerry asking to be allowed to return to Ireland and enter a Franciscan monastery—he wanted to consecrate his soul to God. But his father ordered him to stay in America, where he belonged. And to continue to send money home.

  Which Gahern did. Within a year of Dermott’s execution he married a pious Catholic woman eleven years older than himself who lived with her parents and helped them run a small drygoods store on lower Dalkey Street. These were the Dowds of County Clare: proudly “lace curtain” and not “shanty” Irish. In their presence, Gahern told no tales of the Corcorans, especially not of the “Irish Charger.” Few questions were asked, for Gahern was a handsome, able-bodied young man, and himself pious too, to a degree. Rare for an Irishman, he did not drink, and did not fight. He had no temper, it was marveled—no strong emotions at all. He went to mass faithfully on Sundays and Holy Days and never spoke critically of the Church, rare too for an Irishman. When his father-in-law died, Gahern capably took over the store: by then, he was the father of five children of whom the youngest, born in 1891, was Liam.

  Liam Corcoran, the father of Sean and Timothy, Corky’s grandfather.

  Corky who’s been listening to this for some reason tense, worried how it’s going to turn out, says, “Grandpa Liam!—thank God he got born.”

  Corky and his Uncle Sean are in a restaurant close by Lake Er
ie Park called Blackhawk Barbecue: a new, noisy, tacky-slick place really a fast-food joint though with more pretensions, and higher prices. One advantage is it’s open; another, it serves drinks, so Sean can have ale with his chili dog, French fries, and soupy coleslaw. Corky, smoking, and drinking Canada Dry, has been so absorbed in his uncle’s story, recounted in a dry, droll, ironic voice, he hasn’t even been annoyed much by the bleeps and blips and chirps and percussive farts of a video arcade behind the row of booths they’re sitting in. He hasn’t been hungry for lunch but, to keep his uncle company, he’s been eating a few French fries, dipping them in catsup and chewing quickly as if to get the pulpy stuff down before he’s revulsed by it. Sean has bummed a cigarette from Corky so both men are smoking and the plastic ashtray between them is heaped with ash.

  Corky says, “Uncle Sean, you make it sound as if it had to happen that way. Jesus!” He’s cheerful suddenly, laying his hand on the old man’s forearm which is ropey-hard with muscle.

  Sean screws up his face at Corky. “What the hell other way could it’ve happened, lad?”

  And while they stand together among a thinned-out crowd stretched along the main road through Lake Erie Park, watching the Memorial Day parade, the companionable feeling between Corky and his Uncle Sean continues. Corky’s making wisecracks to combat a melancholy mood that’s beginning to come over him like those cobwebbed clouds over the silvery-blue sky all these old men in uniform! and Tim Corcoran would be among them if he was still alive! and he, Corky, what a shithead, Corky, what a coward, never served his country never wore his country’s uniform not even the uniform of the National Guard! and Sean half-soused from his numerous ales is sardonic and witty like a white-haired old character actor on TV in dapper straw hat and blue serge suit coat and moss-green vinyl bow tie saying, when the oldest living veteran in the parade, the ninety-six-year-old ex-Army corporal from World War II is pushed past in his flag-festooned wheelchair, “—I get that age, take me out to the town dump and shoot me. Both barrels!”