On the Waterfront

by Budd Schulberg

  Father Barry took heart from the knowledge that he wasn’t the first priest in the harbor to raise his voice against the moral rot that permitted the underworld to sit at the partnership table with shipping magnates and political leaders. Old Father Mahoney on Staten Island—where Vince Donato ran the docks—had been delivering fiery sermons against this jungle for decades. If Father Barry were called to testify at the waterfront hearings, as had been suggested, he wanted to quote the old priest’s warning: “When the Church and the community cease to be interested in the men that labor, both the Church and the community die.”

  But Father Mahoney was a pastor over there and had established his right to speak his mind through two generations of service. He had baptized the grandchildren of the parents he had married. He could defy Donato even though that padrone, with the docks in his pocket, was a big political wheel on Staten Island. Here in Bohegan, Father Barry was still a young curate, and already his Pastor had stopped to talk to him that afternoon about the danger of committing himself too deeply on an issue that might first require discussion with the Bishop. Father Donoghue did not want to discourage his curate’s interest in the plight of the parish dock workers, not at all. Perhaps it was time to apply a little Christian charity to what did seem an unfortunate, unChristian state of affairs. But sometimes it was better to walk carefully than to rush ahead and stumble. However, as long as Father Barry confined his guidance to local communicants from the docks who came in for assistance, Father Donoghue could see no objection. He too regretted the brazen self-interest of certain prosperous Catholics and he was more than willing to remember at Mass Father Barry’s campaign against the evil spirits of profiteering and self-aggrandizement. “Just go easy, lad,” the aging Pastor advised. “Easy, easy. Like mountain climbing. Make sure one foot is securely dug in before you try raising the other.”

  Father Donoghue was a good, mild man and Father Barry took his remarks both as mild rebuke and mild encouragement. Saying his office that morning, the curate promised to be circumspect and to lend the men as much support as he could without embarrassing his Pastor or needlessly exposing himself.

  He had just finished the 11:00 to 12:00 confessions and was on his way to lunch in the rectory dining room, wondering if Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper, was going to serve her meat loaf again, when Moose ran up, out of breath, his big, deceptively tough-looking face livid with anxiety.

  “Father, Runty … Runty Nolan …” he gasped.

  “Yes, yes, what happened?”

  “His body just washed up to the surface off Pier B. The propellers of the Elm churned it up. The sons of bitches, Father.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll go down with you,” Father Barry said. The two men hurried toward the docks.

  Runty Nolan was lying under a tarpaulin on the stringpiece. The word had flashed around the bars and up the mouldy tenement stairwells and four or five hundred people had quickly gathered. Pop and Jimmy Sharkey and Fred the counterman from the Longdock, and Katie with Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Gallagher who mothered their tenement, and Luke, and Billy and Jo-Jo and some other Golden Warriors, and a sprinkling of the mob, Big Mac, and Truck and Gilly and “J.P.” Morgan and cops waiting for the coroner, and Captain Schlegel and some of the stevedore officials and Mutt Murphy still muttering to himself and a couple of hundred tight-lipped longshoremen from the day shift.

  Terry Malloy, in the middle of the crowd, tried to make himself inconspicuous. He spotted Katie, noticed that she looked pale and frightened, and purposely avoided her glance. He had nothing to do with this. Hadn’t he even tried to warn the little guy? And the fresh little bastard would have no part of him. He had nothing to do with this. He wished it hadn’t happened. He’d miss little Runty and his wise-cracking sass, his clownish face except for the flattened nose, his crazy courage. A little man with balls big enough to bowl with, he had heard somebody describe him in a bar. But what the hell! He went the way he wanted to go. Defiant and up to his eyebrows in good Irish whiskey. Terry could only hope he’d be that lucky when his number came up.

  Father Barry came thrusting through the crowd angrily, muttering staccato orders, “One side, gangway, lemme through.” When he reached the tarpaulined figure of Runty, he quickly gave him the last rites conditionally. Then he started to speak loudly and rapidly. He sounded more like a man engaged in fierce argument than a priest attending the dead.

  “I came down to keep a promise,” he began. “I gave Runty Nolan my word that if he stood up to the mob, I’d stand up with him. All the way. Now Runty Nolan is dead. He was one of those fellers who had the gift of getting up. But this time they fixed him. Oh, they fixed him for good this time. Unless it was an accident, like they’ll be saying. Yes, and I’ll lay you two to one the police’ll go along. Just another accidental drowning for Port Bohegan.”

  His voice was full of anger. A ferry let go a warning blast in midriver, but nobody looked around. A cold wind was whipping up off the water and the priest’s cassock, which he hadn’t had time to change after Moose’s hurry-up call, billowed out and swirled around his legs.

  “Some people think the Crucifixion only took place on Calvary,” Father Barry continued. “They better wise up. Taking Andy Collins’ life a few years ago, the very morning he was supposed to blow the whistle as hiring boss on Pier D, that was a crucifixion. Taking Joey Doyle, to stop him from organizing an honest opposition, to stop him from testifying, that’s a crucifixion. And when they give Runty Nolan the river treatment, because he was ready to spill his guts next Monday to the Crime Commission, that’s a crucifixion. Every time the mob puts the crusher on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a union man and a citizen, it’s a crucifixion.”

  The angry word “crucifixion” crackled in the air and hung over them a moment like dangerously close lightning. Father Barry glared at the crowd as if he was accusing every one of them.

  “And anybody who lets this happen”—he gestured fiercely toward the tarpaulin—“and I mean anybody, from the high and mighty shipping company interests, the Police Commissioner and the DA down to the lowliest worker in the hatch—anybody who keeps silent about something he knows has happened—or strongly suspects has happened—shares the guilt of it just as much as the Roman soldier who pierced the flesh of Our Lord to see if he was dead.”

  In the midst of the crowd, Terry thought, “He’s lookin’ at me,” and lowered his head to hide himself in the anonymity of the clustered longshoremen. Why the hell does he have to keep lookin’ at me?

  From farther back in the crowd, Truck’s gravel voice called out, “Go back to ya choich, Father.”

  Father Barry pivoted, almost like a fighter, in the direction of his heckler. “Boys, this is my church. I took a vow to follow Christ wherever He might lead me. And if you don’t think Christ is down here on this waterfront, you’ve got another guess coming.”

  He shouted it in the tone the pier cowboys understood. Now he lowered his voice to speak to the rest of them.

  “Every morning when the hiring boss blows his whistle, Christ stands alongside you in the shape-up. Okay, I know that may bring a cynical smile to some of your faces. Don’t try and kid us, Father, a few of those faces are saying. Well, if this is kidding, so is the fact that Christ earned His meat ’n potatoes with His own muscle and sweat. It’s only kidding to those whom Christ Himself described as ‘Having eyes, they see not. And having ears, they hear not.’ That takes in too many of you fellers. Sure you have eyes and ears but you’d rather wear ear-plugs and look the other way.

  “But take my word for it, Christ stands with you in the shape. He sees why some of you get picked and some of you get passed over. Chances are, He gets passed over Himself because He won’t kick back and He won’t play ball with the boys who don’t have to work because they’ve got those strong backs of yours working for them.

  “So Christ is left standing in the street with the other rejects. He sees the troubled look in the eyes of the family men worried a
bout getting up the rent money and putting meat on the table for the wife and kids. He sees them driven to the loan shark, who’s happy to help ’em out—at the rate of ten percent and up. He drove the money changers out of the temple—and where do they wind up?—here on the docks!

  “How do you think He feels when He sees His fellow workers selling their souls to the mob for a day’s pay? How do you think He feels when He walks into a tenement kitchen and talks to Mrs. Joe Docks, who’s red-eyed with grief because her man isn’t working steady? She can’t figure where she stands from day to day. Right now she needs a five-dollar food ticket because her old man talked up for his rights and is being starved off the dock.

  “How does He feel when He goes to a union meeting—one of those rare, rare union meetings—and sees how it’s run? Sees how few show up, and even fewer dare to ask for the floor, unless it’s to second a motion from the boys on top. Sees what happens to the one or two stand-up guys who haven’t had the last shred of human dignity—yes, dignity in Christ—beaten out of them.

  “How does He feel when He walks our neighborhood and counts the number of bars and the horse-rooms and money lenders and looks around in vain for a playground or a community center? How does He feel when He sees the ragged kids of honest longshoremen wearing hand-me-down clothes and playing stick-ball in narrow, filthy streets, jumping out from under the wheels of the speeding trucks?

  “How does He feel when He finds out what these kids are saying and doing, what they’re up to in their wised-up ignorance by the time they’re eleven? Ready to fight the world at eleven in the Catholic Protectory. He who said, ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones to sin, it were better for him to have a great millstone around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.’

  “What does Christ think of the easy-money boys who pose as your union leaders, sell you out every day in the week and twice on Sunday, and wear two-hundred-dollar suits and sop up the beef gravy at Cavanagh’s on your union dues, your vocation fund and your kickback money? Yes, and what does He think of His respectable followers, the shipping executives and the city officials who drop a fin in the basket during Mass and then encourage or condone the goons and the dock bosses who learned their stevedore technique at Sing Sing and Dannemora?

  “What must He who established the dignity of work not with words, but with His hands, think about a set-up like this? And how does He who spoke up without fear against every evil feel about your silence?”

  Again he seemed to be staring through the other listeners into the lowered eyes of Terry. Terry pressed forward as close as he could against the broad back of the fellow in front of him. Goddamn the priest and his big mouth. Goddamn Charley and his big ideas too. Goddamn everybody and everything that drew him into this. The prolonged bass whistle of an ocean-going freighter competed for a moment with the angry blast from Father Barry. Maybe Terry ought to ship out, get away while the getting’s good. Maybe Charley had connections to fix him up with a sailor’s card and ship him out.

  “You want to know what’s wrong with our waterfront?” the priest began slowly when the sound of the ship’s whistle faded away. “It’s love of a lousy buck. It’s making love of a buck—the fat profit—the wholesale stealing—the cushy job—more important than the love of man. It’s forgetting that every fellow down here is your brother, yes, your brother in Christ.”

  The word Christ wasn’t spread over them softly as a balm. It was hurled at them as a gauntlet, as a furious challenge. It might have been in this manner that the first-century revolutionists had brought their dangerous faith to the market places and temple squares of Antioch and Philippi, stirring, converting and scandalizing. Most of the people gathered around Father Barry were accustomed to think of Christ only as a pious abstraction, a gray figure in the Missal illustrations. For them it was a hell of a shock to be urged to make room for a living Christ who stood among them in a windbreaker, carrying a cargo hook in His hand, a Christ Who wondered how He was going to meet His rent and His grocery bill, a Christ crucified by loan sharks and strong-armers, a Christ on a North River cross, dumped like garbage or Runty Nolan, tied up with bailing wire, into the muck of the Hudson.

  “Fellows,” Father Barry seemed to be speaking to each one personally, “no matter how tough it gets—and it looks to me like it’s gonna get tougher before it gets better—remember, Christ is always with you. He shapes with you every morning, in winter rain or ninety-degree heat. He’s in the hatch. He’s in the union hall. He’s in the bars. He’s kneeling here beside Nolan. And He’s saying to all of you: If you do it to the least of mine, you do it to me. What better slogan could an honest union have? What they did to Andy Collins, what they did to Joey Doyle, what they just did to Runty Nolan, they’re doing to you, and you, and you. All of you! And only you, with God’s help, have the power to knock ’em out of the box for good!”

  Then he said an Our Father and announced, “There will be a requiem Mass for Timothy J. Nolan at ten o’clock Saturday.” He turned to the covered figure, silenced at last under its tarpaulin. “Okay, Runty?” He made the sign of the Cross, looked around at everybody and, still angry, gave voice to a harsh, loud “Amen.”

  Pop Doyle hurried up to shake his hand. Katie followed her father silently. The blood was drained from her face. This second killing so soon after Joey’s had carried her into a state beyond her fresh-eyed militance of a few days earlier. But the loss of Runty had an opposite effect on Pop. Joey was a born martyr. He had known what he was doing, the deep chance he was taking, and Pop had warned him and feared for him and unconsciously prepared himself for bad or worse. But Runty was a gadfly, a mischievous clown, a lifelong drinking and talking crony, and Pop found it painfully impossible to believe that Runty would not be over at the Longdock in a few minutes, bending an elbow in his everlastingly cheerful and malicious toast, “Here’s mud in the eye of Willie Givens …”

  “Father, I’m with ya,” Pop said. “I don’t care what they do to me now. I’m takin’ my chances with ya.”

  “Good boy,” Father Barry said. “I think we better have another meeting to keep things going tonight. The Longshoremen’s Committee of St. Timothy’s. I got an idea for putting out a leaflet on Joey and Runty. We c’n use the office mimeograph. Maybe we c’n keep enough pressure on Donnelly so he won’t be able to close this one out as an accident. Maybe we c’n get up a petition of protest.” He looked sharply at Katie. “Okay, Kate?”

  “Father, I’m frightened,” she said.

  “My old man used to give an old Irish toast,” Father Barry said. “ ‘May the Devil chew the toes—of all your foes—so you’ll know ’em by their limping.’ If this movement of ours can really get rolling, there’ll be a lot of tough guys limping around here before we’re through.”

  Moose and Jimmy and Luke and the widow of Andy Collins and half a dozen others who were standing around chuckled or smiled appreciatively.

  “Got a smoke on you?” the priest said.

  Pop offered him one. “Father, you and Mutt Murphy are a pair—a couple of scrounge-artists,” he said.

  “The Lord looks after his own,” the priest said lightly. Then he nodded toward the tarpaulin, which was being lifted toward the waiting door of the police emergency wagon. “And I hope that goes for Runty.” He felt heartsick at what had been done to Runty, and yet strangely exhilarated. Men have felt that way on a battlefield when their buddies spin in and they have to keep going. “See you later,” he saluted them sharply, then turned and swung into his rapid pace along the stringpiece.

  “Man, a few more like him and I quit the Baptists,” Luke announced.

  “Like Runty’d say, a bravadeero,” Moose shouted.

  “Jesus, I haven’t seen things so hot down here in thoity years,” Pop said.

  “The waterfront’s a funny place,” Jimmy agreed. “All quiet for years and then whammo, it goes off like a bomb.”

  Half an hour later Terry was sitting at Hildegarde’s bar.
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  “Wha’s a matter you so quiet today, you no luff me no more,” the outrageously fat proprietress tried to joke him.

  “Again,” Terry said, tapping his empty jigger glass. “Double it up this time.”

  “You want I play you a new record, very saxy?” Hildegarde offered.

  “Lea’me alone,” Terry said.

  “I know you feel bad about little Runty. Such a rascal. He always came in kiddin’ me about us gettin’ married. ‘Hah, in the bed I won’t be able to find you,’ I useta tell ’im.”

  “Okay, okay, stick the goddamn record on,” Terry said, and as she did so, his mind played a dirty trick on him and he heard the trusting, quiet agony of Katie’s voice, all mixed up with the musky voice of the vocalist, crying, “Help me, help me, if you can, for God’s sake help me…”

  “Here, kid, haff a drink on Hildegarde,” the hefty proprietress said.

  He nodded okay. But he heard himself answering Katie, “I have my whole life to drink …”

  Nineteen

  FATHER BARRY BEGAN HIS day with the six-o’clock Mass. The attendance was better than usual because the priest had won new allies when he pulled no punches in his send-off to Runty on the docks. Most of them had held back from joining Father Barry openly, but now they got up an hour early and joined the early Mass as a way of showing silent approval of Father

  Barry’s guts. “He’s stand-up,” they said to each other as they drifted into small groups from various tenements on their way to the old brick church through the bone-cold semi-darkness. “Stand-up” was the highest praise in the waterfront book.