The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  Furey greased a baking sheet and set the ball in its center, then molded it into a rounded loaf. With a serrated knife, she scored the top of the loaf, an inch or two deep in the shape of an X so the heat would have a direct path to the center while it baked.

  Another bell rang. “Five minutes to Mass,” Maud said. “I have to go.”

  “Will you repeat this to my cousin Trish, Beatrice Devlin Sullivan, Seamus’s granddaughter?” Maddie asked. “And her aunt, Katie Devlin? They need to hear this from you, especially Katie.”

  Furey put the soda bread in the oven. Forty-five minutes to bake. Best served hot from the oven.

  “With God’s blessing.” Maud hung up without saying good-by.

  Maddie’s eyes welled with tears. Furey dampened a cloth in cold water and dabbed Maddie’s eyes, patted her forehead, wiped her cheeks and neck. Maddie tried to thank Furey for the phone call, but her sobs trapped her words so she hugged Furey and wet Furey’s hair with her tears and felt such a need for a catharsis that she kissed Furey full on the mouth, something she had never done with another woman, something she had not done with a man for longer than she could remember, and Furey led her by the hand into the living room where on the floor aglow with the ambient lighting of Brookline and under the watchful eyes of The Screaming Pope, they made love and Maddie felt a satisfaction she had never felt with another person, man or woman, a satisfaction she never felt with Richard Gloucester who, once upon a time, she truly loved. Together, they savored the Irish soda bread and finished the Guinness, then made love again. Hours later, Sunday morning’s sun rose on them asleep in each other’s arms, crumbs from the soda bread clinging to their sweat-dampened skin.

  CHAPTER 3

  SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 1981

  -1-

  In the early morning heat of the Sunday of Charles F. Sullivan, III’s funeral, shortly after first light but before the sun breached the horizon, the reddening dawn sky foretold another day just like the day before and the day before that and the days before that, so many days that Boston could no more remember its last snowfall than it could what life was like before Charles’s murder.

  Mabi, the token African-American member of the Capablanca Chess Club, sat naked in bed, listening to his own heavy breathing. He unfolded a frayed, creased poster of a black basketball star now many years retired, many years forgotten by white sports fans except the few obsessed with professional basketball. It was the only relic he had taken with him when he moved out of his parents’ home, that and a lingering desire to learn the meaning of Wallaca and vivid memories of his brother Jim Ed.

  His soul burned hotter than the weather. He dozed on and off, his sleep made fitful by his dreaming of a little boy named Leroy Wallaca who shared a bedroom with his brother and a basketball poster tacked to the ceiling. He dreamt the leprechaun floated down from the ceiling like a snowflake and settled on the pillow beside Leroy’s head. It whispered into the ear of the sleeping Leroy that he was descended from generations of leprechauns going back thousands of years to the beginning of time. Leroy awakened and asked the leprechaun how a little black boy could be descended from generations of white leprechauns. “Bad luck for life not to believe in me,” the leprechaun said and before Leroy replied, it vanished. Leroy stood on the bed and tried to scrape the leprechaun off the poster. In his dream, Mabi shouted to Leroy, but Leroy ignored him, begging the leprechaun to come back. He dreamed Leroy cried himself to sleep and when he awoke, his, Mabi’s, pillow case was damp.

  In that same Sunday morning heat, Charlie and Trish Sullivan dressed for their son’s funeral. They had concluded the funeral arrangements the night before. The cardinal would officiate at the funeral Mass which, with the internment, would be by invitation, family and friends. No politicians. No campaign contributors. No tuft hunters, brown-nosers, or favor seekers. To allow the public to bear witness, Boston’s public television station would televise the Mass without commentators or comment. Reporters would be barred from the church and cemetery, but to appease them and to satisfy the public’s curiosity, its need to know how Boston’s first family was coping, Charlie insisted on holding a news conference later that day. Trish’s complaint it would turn the funeral into a campaign rally went unheeded. From church to cemetery, the cortege would pass through the wards Charlie carried in his last election.

  After finalizing the funeral arrangements, Charlie and Trish had attended Saturday night Mass. Trish had sat silent through the Introductory Rites, not responding with the rest of the congregation. The Liturgy of the Word was a mere buzz in her ears, as annoying as a mosquito. Father Curry’s homily, speaking of death, forgiveness, resurrection, and eternal life, was like a pagan’s spear puncturing the heart of her grief. What good was Father Curry? What did he know of the death of a child? She needed to talk to someone who had been through it, someone who had lost a child. She thought of what Maddie had said in Michelle Furey’s office, how the hurt never went away, how she still cried on Elizabeth’s birthday, how she thought about committing suicide. Maddie was the one to talk to, but Katie would crucify her and Charlie would do worse. But what could be worse? Charles was dead and death was eternal. Those thoughts kept Trish company through the night, accompanied her to the funeral Mass, and, as she rode in the cortege, to the cemetery.

  Later that Sunday morning, Spider and Mabi waited for Virgil outside the African Meeting House where Virgil was the custodian, a second job, more a labor of love than anything else as the pay was minimum wage when there was money enough to pay him. “If that old man don’t hurry,” Spider said, honking the horn, “Bumper’s box be dirt covered ’fore we get there.”

  Virgil hobbled forward and leaned against the door frame. The wood was dry and cracked with age like the earth after a severe drought. He hooked his cane over his forearm. “Welcome to Nigger Hill.”

  “I heard of Nigger Heaven,” Mabi said, “and Nigger Hell, but never Nigger Hill.”

  “It’s where you’re at.” Virgil rested his hand on the brick. It needed pointing. Time and the weather had gouged out chips.

  “I thought this place Beacon Hill,” Mabi said.

  “Bet you never heard of Cato Gardner neither. He came from Africa and raised the money needed to build this church. See his plaque up top the door.”

  “Ain’t much of a church,” Mabi said.

  Virgil closed and locked the front door. “The oldest black church in the U.S. of A. Built in 1806. Blacks they built it ’cause they had to sit in the balconies of white churches. That’s called segregation.”

  “Them balconies closer to heaven, further from hell,” Mabi said. “Still, they get what they deserving praying to white bread Jesus. Be no segregation if they prayed to Allah.”

  Virgil limped to the car. “Welcome to Nigger Hill,” he said to Spider.

  Spider laughed. “If there be a nigga on this hill, I s’pose white folks calling it nigga hill.”

  Virgil asked, “Would they be calling it fool’s hill if there be a fool on this hill?”

  “Depends if that nigga be a fool,” Spider said.

  “Or that fool be a nigga,” Virgil replied.

  The air conditioner of the limousine transporting Charlie, Trish, and Katie Devlin to Bumper’s funeral labored to cool the limousine’s interior. Sweat accumulated at the base of the driver’s neck, stained the collar of his shirt, an odd pattern, an upside- down mountain range. George Harriman, riding shotgun in place of the head of Charlie’s security detail, guzzled bottled water, rubbing the bottle across his forehead, up and down his cheeks. The limousine’s tinted windows darkened the sun, but did little to repel the heat that built up inside the passenger compartment street by street as the cortege passed through Boston’s neighborhoods. Grief doubled the ambient temperature. Burrowed into the corner of the limousine’s back-seat, Trish in the opposite corner, Katie Devlin between them, Charlie rested against the window. The glass warmed the side of his head. He ignored the passing neighborhoods. He ignored the peopl
e lining the sidewalks thrusting signs of sympathy above their heads. Ward heelers had brought out the loyalists, the lackeys who depended on him for their daily bread, their evening beer and chaser. Their expressions of mourning were as sincere as his at the wake or funeral of a constituent’s cousin where he curried favor with his people, collecting votes by the show of his face, the slap of his hand on a back, the murmur of ‘my condolences for your loss.’ How many candles had he lit to help ferry unknown souls to Heaven? How many of those unknown souls had arrived there? On the sixth day, God created Southie.

  A pothole jolted the limousine. Water cascaded out of Harriman’s bottle wetting the front of his shirt. Charlie tapped a warning on the glass partition. Someone would sacrifice their job to that pothole. He was in a new place, Charlie was, an undiscovered place, a place as alien as the worlds in the monster movies Bumper once devoured on Saturday afternoons. Now, the monsters of this world had devoured Bumper. No. Not the monsters of this world. Him. Charlie Sullivan. He alone. He was the monster of this world. He had devoured his son. The Irish had a way of doing that, devouring their own. The sow always ate its young. Had he made it to the library sooner, Bumper would be alive. How many minutes sooner? Five? Ten? A tick or two?

  The cortege slowed for traffic. No sirens, Charlie had told the police escort. No running red lights or stop signs. No speeding. No signs of privilege to desecrate his son’s funeral. Voices muffled by the closed windows mouthed words of sympathy. He wished he could stop, accept their embrace, but how could he? A tick or two. Were the Bruins highlights that important? They could have waited. For the highlights, there was all the time in the world; for Bumper, a tick or two.

  He had relived that night many times over, the night of Bumper’s murder, an endless video loop with God’s finger eternally welded to the replay button. For the rest of his life he would relive that night. On his death-bed, it would accompany him down the dark corridor toward the light, accompany him through the gates of hell, accompany him as he stood before God awaiting judgment. The night of Bumper’s murder. He closed his eyes. No longer in the back seat of the limousine, no longer escorting his son’s body from church to cemetery for eternal internment, no longer in this world.

  Damp and clammy from the steam heat of Boston Garden, Charlie draped himself in front of the window air conditioner while he watched the television highlights of that night’s hockey game between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens. The players had skated at half speed on ice the consistency of the syrupy slush sold at Revere Beach in summer. Fog had obscured the game’s one goal and he hoped the television replay would give him a clear view.

  Hockey was his one respite from the pressures of being mayor of a city riven by court-ordered school busing, the pressures of his campaign for elevation to the United States Senate, the pressures of being a father and husband, the pressures of his wife’s opposition to moving the family to Washington if he won, the pressures of fearing for his soul and the soul of his wife and son.

  With Bumper’s death, would he, could he, ever watch another hockey game? Ever lace up his skates to play in an amateur league? If Bumper had died at the hand of a hit and run driver, died from being mugged on the T . . . but hockey.

  Slouching against the bedroom door, Trish squinted to read the tiny numbers on her watch. She felt floppy as if the heat had incinerated her bones.

  “Charles should be home by now,” she said. Exercising a mother’s prerogative, she referred to her son, Charles F. Sullivan, III, as Charles rather than Bumper. “Call the cab company.”

  Charlie pulled a tissue from a box and spit a wad of phlegm into the palm of his hand. “He must have locked himself in the library.” A chess prodigy, Bumper had full membership privileges at the Capablanca Chess Club, on paper a municipal recreational facility but in reality a club whose membership decisions were subject to the mayor’s whims and caprices.

  “It’s a school night, Charlie.”

  “After this replay.”

  “That’s another stone on our grave.” Trish retreated into the bedroom.

  Charlie squatted in front of the TV as the announcer recapped the Bruins loss to the Canadiens. On the replay of the game’s only goal fog absorbed the puck and he settled for the announcer’s description, Savard hip checking Bourque off the puck, the pass to Lafleur who skated through center ice with Cournoyer on his right wing, the deke bringing Cheesie out of the net, faking the pass to the wing, then scoring in the upper left corner, the one hole in hockey argot. Charlie doubted the goal judge saw the play any better than he did, but things like that happened when the Bruins played the Canadiens.

  The hip check, the pass, the center ice skate, the deke–which of these cost Bumper his life? Charlie tapped on the barrier between the limousine’s back seat and front and gestured for Harriman to pass back a bottle of water. Trish ignored his asking whether she wanted one. As did Katie.

  “The cab company, Charlie.” From the bedroom, Trish’s voice sounded wee and small. A cab company dependent on the Boston Licensing Commission for hackney licenses chauffeured Bumper to and from Capablanca.

  Charlie poured two glasses of iced tea and carried them to the bedroom. Trish paused from her nightly reading of the Bible and marked her place with a red leather bookmark bearing the likeness of her favorite saint, St. Charles of Sezze. Each year, she celebrated his feast day, January 5th, by serving lamb out of respect for his humble origins. Charles of Sezze was an illiterate shepherd who risked his life to aid those stricken in the plague of 1656. To her, he was a true hero of the Church, not one of those born and bred into the papacy like the Medici popes and cardinals.

  “The cab company.” She rubbed the glass across her forehead.

  “Let him be. It’s the one place he’s really happy.”

  “He won’t have that in Washington.”

  “He’ll have more. He’s outgrown Capablanca.”

  Chains of causation, Charlie thought, as he sipped his water. Both life and chess were chains of causation, random events tied together in ways unforeseen. Was the cause of death the first link in the chain or the last? Was checkmate ordained on the game’s opening move?

  Bumper’s grandfather on the Sullivan side, Charles F. Sullivan, Sr., had taught him chess while Bumper recuperated from an appendectomy. Charlie the First, as he was known, played for whiskey with beer chasers in bars throughout Boston, losing only after the rewards of winning had so dulled his brain and dimmed his senses he could no longer tell the castles from the knights, the bishops from the pawns, the king from the queen, white from black. By the time Bumper had healed and his stitches had been removed, he dominated the man who called himself Charlie the First. For his birthday, Mayor Charlie arranged formal lessons with Pete Kelly, Boston’s only grandmaster and Capablanca’s president, and for Christmas, a Club membership.

  Bumper savored the novelty of being treated like an adult more than popcorn at the movies or chocolate syrup in his milk. When he sat king of the hill at the chessboard, childhood’s dark side–bogeymen under the bed, nightmares of dying while asleep, priests vomiting visions of hell while their hands fumbled with the belt buckles and zippers of acolytes and altar boys, bullies pissing on naked feet–dissolved in the checkmates he inflicted on the Club’s members. At Capablanca, he had no bedtime. Preparing for a tournament, he had no homework. If he won, his reward was tickets to the Bruins or, in summer, the Red Sox.

  In the limousine, Charlie gulped his water. In his memory, in his bedroom, he gulped his tea and changed the subject to buy Bumper a few more minutes at Capablanca. A few more minutes. Another tick; another tock.

  “The governor called,” he had said to Trish. “He wants to name a Jew to the Superior Court. His poll numbers are slipping and he needs their money. He asked for a recommendation. If I give the governor a real money bag, I’ll score his endorsement for the Senate primary which is worth something even if it isn’t worth as much as he thinks.”

  “We’ll st
ay in Boston, thank you.”

  Charlie’s mouth drooped with exasperation. “Mayors are a dime a dozen, hon, but there are only one hundred United States senators.”

  “What kind of father would take Charles away from the one place he’s happy?”

  “One who would take his son to a place where he would be happier.” Charlie scooped the car keys off the dresser, winked Trish a kiss, and stepped into the inferno.

  Happier? Are there chess boards in heaven? If it wasn’t the hockey highlights that killed Bumper, was it his lack of urgency on the drive to Capablanca, dawdling as he planned strategy for his Senate campaign in his mind?

  Driving to Capablanca, Charlie reviewed in his mind for the hundredth time the results of the polls he had commissioned to help him plot his campaign strategy. Running state-wide was not the same as running in the city of Boston. His organization lacked presence beyond the city limits, lacked the ability to get out the vote in the wards or precincts favorable to him outside Boston, or suppress the vote in those that weren’t. The dynamics of the election also differed. State-wide he would need the black vote. In his mayoral campaigns he was able to pacify black voters with lip service because their vote was irrelevant to the outcome. Statewide he would have to lure them to his side. And he would need Jewish money to fund his campaign, something also less critical in Boston. All without alienating his natural constituency of angry white voters. It would be tricky, but he was confident he could pull it off. Reagan had.

  Charlie capped the empty water bottle and tossed it on the floor of the limousine. Drops had dribbled on his dress shirt. He patted them with his handkerchief. He glanced at Trish, wishing he could read her mind. He didn’t have to. Her face told him what she was thinking. It’s your fault, her face said. And her face was right.