by Ralph Peters
Fine Jim held out a copy of the Evening Star. He was little more than a matchstick shadow under the gaslight.
What do you see in a child’s face? When life turns their way for just a matter of seconds? It may be the slightest transaction, a father’s glance or the sale of a newspaper, yet they greet it with such delight. There is no gift so pure as a child’s eyes. Now I speak of purity, not innocence. Too much is made of innocence, and we grow hard and unpardoning. Innocence perishes—too often through no fault of our own—yet purity may endure. I knew Fine Jim had seen things many a grown man has been spared. No, twas not innocence in his face, but a wonderful, gleaming purity. And faith. The faith that good will come, despite all. Is that not the soul of all religion?
“I must have not one, but three-and-thirty copies,” I told him. For at three cents each, that made ninety-nine cents, and I might spare him the final penny without shaming him. “Here is the dollar.” I held out the coin.
He looked at me, doing his own figuring. “But Major Jones,” he said, “ya can’t read but one.”
“They are not for me,” I lied. Yes, lied. “I have friends in New York who would each have their own copy when I return. I must not disappoint them, see.”
He counted out the papers. I had reduced the stack by half. Perhaps he could escape the weather early.
Our business done, he could not meet my eyes. But only said, “We miss ya, Major Jones.”
“You will see me again, boy,” I told him. “For I am a bad penny, and will turn up. Keep well now.”
I left him in his wet rags. Once, I looked back, and saw him watching me. Now I would not question the Gospels, for in them lies our salvation. But sorry I am of the warning that “the poor will always be with us.” It isn’t fair, see. And I would rather give a boy a chance than a dollar.
I WAITED UNTIL I HAD WALKED well out of sight, then laid down all of the papers but one. I tapped along as quickly as I could, for I had business to transact before the shops closed and more to do thereafter.
Slipped early from their duties, staff officers paired along the sidewalks, jovial and headed for Willard’s Hotel or lesser establishments. Not a few would seek out Murder Bay, with its women of sorrow and liquor to blind. Provost riders clopped along, swollen lumps under India rubber capes, and clerks scurried across the mucky streets. A serving maid hastened on a late errand, basket clutched against her.
The shop was well lit and clean, as always. M. FEINBERG AND SONS. I needed a second major’s get-up, see, for the lovely uniform made by my Mary Myfanwy was already wearing a bit and I would preserve it for ceremonies and Sundays. And Mr. Feinberg had treated me fairly in the past.
Now you will say, “That Abel Jones is so tight in the purse he buys Jew shoddy.” But you will only make me angry. For I will tell you: When I clerked in the War Department, it was the great lot of uniforms from Brooks Brothers that we had to condemn, not the honest cloth of Moses Feinberg.
When I come in, the old fellow saw me at once. And didn’t he drop the very business he was doing with a customer, throw his hands up in the air and rush toward me?
“A miracle!” he cried. “A miracle!”
Now I am glad of a welcome, but this seemed excessive.
He stopped before me, all beard and deep brown eyes, hands still upraised.
“A miracle!” he repeated. “Major Jones, your coming is a miracle!”
“I was looking for trousers and a frock coat, see.”
But he had turned again, calling to his younger son behind the counter, “Levi, see to the customer, like a good boy. Viel kaufen will er. Where’s your brother?” And then, to me again, “A miracle, a miracle!”
“Solly’s in back, Pop. Like always. Where else is he going to be?”
The lad sounded as flinty and American as the old man sounded foreign.
“Come, Major Jones,” the old man begged. “Come. Save my boy.”
He led me to the room where they cut and sewed. Twas windowless, and heavy with the smells of flannel and digestion. The elder boy sat doing fine-work by a kerosene lamp. He was a handsome fellow, like the young men in those Bible prints, but lean as a diet of hardtack. Spectacles pinched his nose and he had the fingers of a lacemaker.
“Solly, you remember Major Jones? ‘Not a penny more!’ Remember?”
The young man put aside his work and laid his glasses on the cloth. He stood up respectfully. If there was a hundred pounds of him, I am Achilles, after all.
“’Evening, sir,” he said, accent as purely American as his brother’s. I noticed a volume of Walter Scott tucked behind the tailoring.
“Solly, Major Jones wants to talk to you. He wants to talk sense to you.”
Well, this was news to me. But the old man explained:
“A terrible thing! Terrible! The army he joins. To go and fight for the Schwartze.” He pointed at his son. “Does he look like a soldier? I ask you. Tell him, Major Jones. Tell him what a fool he is. And ungrateful! Look at these hands, worked to the bone to put food on the table! He’s breaking his mother’s heart, and mine, too!”
I looked at the two of them. The father had naught but love and worry in his eyes, while the son burned with the determination of youth.
“I will talk to him, Mr. Feinberg,” I said. Although I was not certain what I would say. For though the boy did not look like the material of a soldier, many is the man that would have said the same of me. And it was not my duty to discourage those who would serve our Union. But the weight of a father’s love and loss had been impressed upon me that very afternoon. “Perhaps . . . you could leave us for a few minutes, sir?”
The old man went, muttering about miracles.
“Sit down, boy,” I said.
He sat.
“Going for a soldier, is it?”
He nodded.
“It is a hard life. Blood and boredom. Only the fool finds joy in it. And not for long.”
“You don’t think I’d make a good soldier,” he said, with gentle accusation in his voice. For he was alert to the world.
I waved my hand. “David may do as well as Goliath. Or better. I would only tell you that it is not all flags and trumpets. Or strolls with the ladies on Pennsylvania Avenue, with you in a fine uniform. There is death and misery, and the surgeon with his saw.”
“I’m going to join up.”
I nodded and fingered the head of my cane. “That is your affair, boy.” I pointed at the novel that lay half-hidden. “I would only have you know that there is more of Cain and Abel in the business than there is of Mr. Scott and his stories. It goes hard, see. And there is always sickness, and the cold.”
“I have to join,” he said.
“And why is that, boy?”
He looked at me fiercely. “Because I’m a Jew.”
I did not understand him.
“Because they all say we’re cowards,” he went on. “And thieves. ‘Greedy Jews.’ You know what they call us.”
Yes, I knew.
He leaned toward me, a soul on fire. “If I don’t go . . . when all the others are going . . . maybe they have a right to think that way. Why shouldn’t I fight, too? Isn’t this my country? Will it ever really be my country, if I don’t join up like everybody else?” He looked at me in a transport of devotion to his vision. “By George, I’m going to show them, Major Jones. A Jew can fight as well as the next man. Better, too.”
“Little is proved in war,” I told him, though the words verged on a lie. For though we like it not, war is taken as a proof of too many things upon this earth.
Then he beat me completely.
“Don’t you think this country’s worth fighting for?” he asked.
Youth is cruel.
I took some time to answer. For the boy was right. Yet I feared for him. There was too much conviction in him, and too little fear. A certain fear preserves us, while conviction kills the saint.
“Yes,” I said. “There is true. It is worth the fight, our Union.
Still, not every man is carved for battle. Think on it, boy. Do nothing rash. Perhaps you should wait until you are a little older . . .”
The skinny little fellow jumped to his feet like a lion. “I’m twenty-one years old, and I’m going to join up.” Then he looked at me with his father’s lovely brown eyes. “It’s our fight, too,” he told me, softer-voiced. “If not here, where, Major Jones? If not now, when?”
“Only think on it,” I said lamely.
Mr. Feinberg tried to give me too great a discount in gratitude, for he assumed I had succeeded.
I would not take any reduction.
“I do not know if the boy will listen,” I said. “I do not even think he heard me.”
The old man’s face was sculpted by a lifetime’s work, by joys and sorrows. Twas a good face, that.
“A man tries to do good,” he said. “When a man tries, he should be rewarded.”
“The price is fair,” I said, “and I will pay it all.”
The boy did not listen, of course. He joined up. I did what I could to ease his way. Working through Mrs. Schutzengel’s acquaintances, I arranged for his transfer to a German-speaking regiment, for the Germans have less prejudice against the Jew than the rest of us. I hoped it would protect him, but he fell the next year at Chancellorsville. They told me he stood to his post while others ran, but that meant nothing to his father. The old man was inconsolable.
NINE
ANNIE FITZGERALD, THE HOUSEMAID, HAD MORE spunk than I knew. I thought the poor child a mouse, all drabness and devotions, running to mass whenever a moment come free. For there is a difference between worship and hiding, see. The Lord would have us pray, but live, as well. We must not run from life, but face it. We are enjoined to “fear not.” And I thought Annie weak with fear of living.
How we misjudge.
Twas she who got me through to Jimmy Molloy.
But first, I must tell of the pot roast.
You will recall this was a Monday night. And beef was reserved for Sunday afternoons or payday Saturdays. Nonetheless, dear Mrs. Schutzengel covered the table with meat. You would have thought she’d coaxed a stray cow into her kitchen. Oh, lovely it was. Sliced thick and bathed in gravy, with carrots and potatoes, onions and turnips simmered in the gravy of it. It made me want to shout a hymn of praise, though I did not.
The steam itself was thick enough for spooning. The sauce gleamed. If beef could speak, that roast would have cried out, “Devour me!” No gray and withered cheapness on that platter, but fine brown slabs. Tender to a falling into bits.
Oh, glory!
The other boarders marveled at the splendor, and I think they were pleased to see me then. All but one. Herr Mager, a close-boweled compatriot of Mrs. Schutzengel’s, could not like any matter concerning me. For he and I had fallen out over a matter of sausages some months before—twas but a misunderstanding on my part—and the German, for all his virtues, does not forget. Though I wonder if Mager was truly German, for he had the Frenchman’s acid and his bile.
He scowled, but ate his share.
Well, let Mager bide. The chewing was glorious, and wasn’t there pie and cake to help the beef home? Now I do not mind a sweet, and do not think the eating of such unmanly. Is there more robustness in whisky and the gutter than in a golden pie, thick with the apples of Eden? And your German can bake a cake, too. I used to think chocolate a queer thing. But one does grow accustomed to the way it paints up a fine, three-layered cake. And who does not admire the gentle springing back of a fine cake under the fork, and the delight of it in the mouth, and the last lick of frosting on the lips? I would say that a well-wrought cake makes children of us all, but my own youth was never as sweet as this. Yet, I must not favor the cake unfairly. That pie would not be slighted, with its apples soft as clotted cream in the mouth and a crackling crust to tame the wanton sugar. I had two pieces of each to show my appreciation. All washed down with coffee hot and black.
When the other fellows went outside to have a smoke and line up for the privy, I spoke to Annie, who was clearing plates. For she and Jimmy Molloy had made acquaintance during the Fowler case.
“Miss Fitzgerald?” I began.
She looked up from her gathering of the tinware.
“Would you . . . by any chance . . . know the present whereabouts of James Molloy?”
“Jimmy Molloy? Sure, and that one’s never been hard to find, sir.”
“You know where I might locate him then?”
She lowered her bouquet of utensils. “Oh, and will you look in on him, sir? Isn’t that a kindness? For that one can always do with a bit of regulating.”
I did not tell her that it was selfishness, not kindness, that drove me to seek out Jimmy Molloy, the regimental silver thief. Who should have been jailed in Delhi still. For all his wickedness, the man had talents, too. The Good Lord, in his mercy, is a spendthrift. And I had need of the fellow and his skills.
“I would look in on him, yes. If you can point me to him.”
Mrs. Schutzengel came in, face huffed at Annie’s slowness. When she saw I had engaged the girl, she calmed.
“Begging your pardon, sir, I can’t do that,” Annie said.
“So you don’t know where he is?”
“Begging your pardon, I do, sir.”
“Then . . . what is the difficulty, Miss Fitzgerald?”
“There’s no describing the place,” she said. “For it’s over to Swampoodle. I’d have to be showing you meself, sir.”
“Was denn?” Mrs. Schutzengel asked. “Was ist mit dem Swampoodle?” She had a curiosity, that woman. And all her heavy books could not appease it.
“I need to find Molloy,” I told her. “You remember him, I believe.”
“Molloy? Der nette? That sweet boy?”
Molloy was ever one for fooling the ladies. And the colonels. And even a sergeant, now and then.
“Yes, Molloy,” I said. “Mrs. Schutzengel . . . if you wouldn’t mind . . . if you’d do me the kindness . . . of allowing Miss Fitzgerald to guide me to Molloy’s address?” Here I will tell you that I feared the worst, for Molloy was the sort who could fall while lying down. “That is, if Miss Fitzgerald has no objections? And if she judges there to be no danger, of course.”
“Oh, none, sir. None at all.” The girl seemed positively eager to be going. What poor housemaid will not escape her drudgery for an hour?
“But,” Mrs. Schutzengel said, with heartrending disappointment on her face, “there is still cake for eating.”
“Mrs. Schutzengel . . . my dear lady . . . I could not eat another bite.”
“Ooooch, ja,” she sighed at the ingratitude of the world and its unfathomable lack of appetite. Then she looked at Annie. “Geh mal mit, Kind. Go with the major now. And clean your shoes before you come back in.” Suddenly, she brightened. “Take the poor boy pie. And cake. I will make a package.” She looked at me. “He has the great commitment to the world revolution, der Junge.”
Molloy had nothing of the kind, and I knew it. Twas all blarney. The only thing to which he was committed was roguery. And sloth, as well. Still, I said nothing. For I would not speak ill of a man whom I would shortly ask to risk his life.
I KNEW THE STREETS that led to Swampoodle. But no outsider knew the alleys within. The provost marshal’s men went there only by daylight, and the Washington police did naught but collect the bodies floating in Tiber Creek. Irish, the place was, in the lowest sense. I’d taken a beating there once, in the course of the Fowler affair, and entered on my guard.
Before we plunged too deeply into that swamp of sorrow and poverty, I brought us to a halt.
“Miss Fitzgerald,” I said, “I really cannot allow you to go any farther. For the place is a danger to all.”
“Oh,” she said blithely, “they’d not harm one of their own, sir.”
“Really, Miss Fitzgerald, if you would only direct me from here, I’d—”
“Sure, and you’d never find the place, sir. Tucked aw
ay, it is. Where the landlord’s own hounds would run circles.”
“I cannot—”
“Come, sir. For I owe you more than ever I could pay. For you kindness.”
“Twas nothing, Miss—”
On she went, carrying Mrs. Schutzengel’s bag of treats for that unworthy Molloy, and what could I do but follow?
Soot and sorrow marked our way. Lost women who no longer had the looks or health for even Murder Bay haunted the darkness. Hard boys and drunkards patrolled their domain or huddled about dust fires. The gas lamps ran out and only the occasional torch of pitch and pine lit the muddy alleys.
Annie fit her arm through mine and pulled me close. As though we were . . . intimates.
“Miss Fitzgerald,” I said, recoiling, “I will not take liberties . . .”
But she would not let me go. She had pulled her hood well over her brow, and her voice come from the darkness.
“Hush, sir. They must think I’m . . . one of those women. And that you’re my gatherings of the evening.”
“Miss Fitzgerald!”
“Please to hush, sir. For there is danger for you, if not for me. They’re hard after them that goes about in Union blue these days, and they take officers for the worst. And a Welshie officer would be a terrible bait to them. It’s the rumors of grafting them into the army, sir. They’ll have none of it, the ones what are left.” She pulled me closer still. So close I could feel the hungry childhood that trailed her through life. “You’ll be fine, if you’re quiet now and come along, sir. For the boys would not take the bread from the mouth of the lowest of women. We’re not so cruel as your Protestants, begging your pardon, sir.”
Such are the braveries we must remember when dark nights come upon us. The girl had known what she was doing from the start, and meant to protect me with the only armor she possessed: her honor.
