by Ralph Peters
She made a sound as if scorning all of England. “Always putting on airs, he is. And shows no respect to his betters.”
“Now, now, Miss Fitzgerald. We’ll have no talk of ‘betters.’ For this is America, see.”
“And was it the Garden of Eden,” she said, “there would still be better and worse.” I had never known the girl to speak so freshly. “And what kind of husband would that one make, I ask you, sir, to some poor woman? When he won’t do a bit for a friend? And one who was like a father to him?”
The girl was spanking angry. I would not have recognized the forlorn creature I had met three months before.
“I was no father to him, Miss Fitzgerald. For I was hard on him in ways a father is not. Besides, we were of an age, or near it.”
“That one! He’ll never be more than a boy. And a bad one, too.”
We passed by a line of unfortunate women, each figure withered with the evening’s failures. Annie Fitzgerald was so stoked up that I do not think she saw them. Or, perhaps, she had seen them too often.
“And I asked him to do more than ‘a bit’ for me,” I continued. “His response was only reasonable.”
“I’ll give that one ‘reasonable.’ Letting down our kindly Major Jones. And won’t he make a fine tale of your visit, though? Bragging how the world comes to his door!”
“Each man . . . must find his own way, Miss Fitzgerald.”
She made a hooomph of a sound, fierce for the size of her lungs.
“That one couldn’t find the pot beneath the bed.”
We had come free of that vale of misery. A hack clattered by, and a constable leaned on a streetlamp.
Annie Fitzgerald stopped cold.
“Mother Mary!” she cried, laying her hand—delicately—upon my arm. “Oh, Major Jones! And didn’t I forget the doings I promised Mother Flaherty? And me with only this single chance to go by? You know your way to the house from here, don’t you, sir?”
“Miss Fitzgerald . . .”
“I won’t be the hour,” she said, already turning back toward Swampoodle. “Won’t you make my excuses to Mrs. Schutzengel, sir? For she’s good of heart and worries.”
“I can’t possibly allow you to go back into that . . . morass . . . alone.”
She laughed gaily. “Oh, and you were always the gentleman, sir! A girl can tell you were raised by a steady hand. But you’re not to worry. For we’re not like your highborns, and the boys won’t bother a girl who keeps herself proper.”
She would not hear of my accompanying her. Then, slowly—for I am not quick in such matters—I saw that she was likely borrowing the opportunity to pass a moment with some fellow who had her affections. As Mr. Shakespeare put it, we must not “admit impediments” to such efforts, but wish young lovers well.
“Go you, then,” I said, a touch embarrassed at my dullness. Yet, I felt some guardianship for the girl. She had been orphaned like myself. And life is hard even for those with two honest parents. So I called after her, “Beware false promises, now. And know your worth, Miss Fitzgerald.”
She laughed like a plain little angel.
I WENT TO THE DEPOT EARLY, heavy in heart and soul. My bag was heavier, too, with the new uniform and all the aromatic provisions Mrs. Schutzengel had thrust upon me. With a tear in her generous eye. Those baked delights and ransoms of cold beef should have boosted my spirits. But I felt so alone I just stood under the roof of the platform, one step shy of the sleet coming down. I had not even had an opportunity to thank Annie Fitzgerald for her kindness, for she had not returned and must have stayed the night with Mother Flaherty.
An empty man, I was. Waiting for a train to failure.
I watched them loading cars of convalescents. The lines were quiet here, but sickness fired volleys in the camps. The shirkers transferring the weak from the ambulance wagons went roughly about their work, careless of the comfort of their charges, and heedless of the weather. For no one feels true gratitude to soldiers.
A pair of bearers dropped a boy in the slush and mud. The lad foundered, too weak to right himself, and the devils found it amusing.
I was just stepping off to interfere—and would have done so sooner any other day—when I heard my name shouted. By a long-familiar voice.
Twas Molloy. Dragging a bright carpet bag. The trouser legs below his soaking overcoat would have blinded a circus barker. On his head, one of those new Derby hats collected the sleet.
Glad to see him, I was. But I made him wait until I had given the ambulance crews a fine piece of Welsh temper and saw our boys properly berthed.
“I did not expect your coming this morning, Molloy.” I kept my voice level, though it was a struggle. I made a great to-do of brushing the melt from my greatcoat.
He put on a face that rued his own folly, then shot me that smile I first saw in old Lahore. “Oh, and me conscience deviled me up and down so’s I didn’t know which end the porridge went in and which end it come out. Wicked, how the weight o’ me obligations crushed down upon me. For conscience is cruder than famine.” His grin stretched up to his ears. “And didn’t I jump up then and say to meself, ‘Our little Sergeant Jones—who’s come up a major—is terrible in need. And how will Jimmy Molloy live with himself if the Whiteboys take him?’ And here I am. Though how I’m delivered beside ye, I’m hardly awake to tell.”
“I’m pleased, Molloy, that you have risen to your duty to our country.” Twas all that I could say, see. Though I knew he come for me and not a flag. There are some things a man cannot bear in the morning. And I would not have such a fellow think me a servant of my emotions.
Now you will say: “We knew that he would come. For there are bonds that soldiers never lose.” But I did not expect him, see. For hope does not make sound policy. And we must ever prepare for the worst in this lovely world.
We rode and talked and planned all the way to Philadelphia, sharing the food from my landlady’s kitchen. He was a sharp one, I will give Molloy that. And he knew his people. His scheme to go inside them was ingenious. And brave. It even put me to worrying that I had, indeed, asked too much of him. For I would be just and not expect more of another than of myself. But by then Molloy was in fine fettle, enjoying himself like a child, and insisting that it was just like old times, only better.
As we drew into the Pennsylvania yards, he said but one thing that was out of place.
“Women,” he muttered, “will get a man in trouble every time.”
TEN
THERE WAS TROUBLE, BUT NO WOMAN IN IT. UNLESS you count the jailer’s frightened wife. Men with guns and torches met my train. The police fellows had carbines, while most of the other men carried sporting pieces. A brace of hounds yearned after scent, tugging a plump man with a revolver along the platform. Outside the station door, a commercial traveler waited with his trunk and valise, doubtless recounting a lifetime’s dishonesties as he watched the forces of law surround the train.
John Underwood stood beside a railroad man. The sheriff’s hand lay on his holstered pistol.
As I stepped down, I caught the sense of things. The lawmen were not there to search the train, but to prevent a boarding. They surrounded the locomotive and the string of cars, while horsemen galloped ahead along the line. When the train began to move again, with the drummer safe in his coach and praying thanks, riders paralleled the wagons until the train surpassed their speed.
The sheriff come up to me right off, for I had telegraphed him from New York regarding my return.
“Don’t you worry,” he told me. “He won’t get away.”
“Who, then?” I hoped he would lead me inside the depot building to continue the discussion, for the wind was ripping.
“Nolan,” he said. “That damned Nolan.” He scratched a mighty ear. “Oh, for crying in a bucket. I knew they shouldn’t have hired an Irishman onto the police.”
“And what,” I asked, for all was new to me, “did Mr. Nolan do?”
Underwood looked down at me, face boili
ng with chagrin.
“He killed the fellow who was set to answer all your questions.”
THE SHERIFF DROVE ME TO LIBERTY STREET, to a Greek Revival house done up in stucco. Twas the jail. Passing by, you would have judged it a fine place for a family, for you could not see the harder portion from the front.
No sooner had we entered than the jailer’s wife went wild. Wailing in a voice to chase cats. Mr. Meeks, the jailer and sheriff’s deputy, sat in a corner chair, head down and hands clutched between his thighs. But his wife was up and going like a dervish.
“It wunt his fault,” she cried. “He couldn’t help it. Don’t put us out in the street. It wunt his—”
“Nobody’s putting anybody out in the street,” Sheriff Underwood told her. But you know how it is when a woman has had too much time to think on a matter. Mrs. Meeks was set to speak, not listen.
“That dirty Irishman,” she cried. “That Nolan. That’s who it was. That Nolan.” She looked at her broken husband. “I told him you can’t trust no Irishman. I told him. But would he listen? Would he listen to me?”
“Theo?” Underwood said.
The jailer looked up. His face was gray.
“Theo, could you and the missus give us a little privacy for business?”
The man nodded. “Anything you say, sheriff.” But he did not move.
The woman threw herself onto her knees. With a sideward glance at me. “I’m begging you. I’m pleading, John Underwood. My husband’s an honest man, and he don’t deserve to be put out into the street.”
Small towns, see. They have their shames, but not the hardness of the city. Everyone knows everyone else, and must live with them. So John Underwood did not raise his voice, or scold, or threaten. No, he lowered his voice still further.
“Now, now, Sarah. Don’t you worry. I know it wasn’t Theo’s fault. But I’d be grateful if you’d cook up some coffee. And you take Theo out and let him gather up his wits. It’s been a hard day for everybody. You just cook us up some coffee, all right?”
Give a woman a task for her hands, see, and she will rest her mind.
Out she went, meek as a mouse and husband in tow, shutting the door behind her.
The sheriff shook his head. “Shock to ’em. Don’t I know it? Never had such doings around here.” He cocked an eye at me. As if a part of him still suspected that I myself had brought on all this trouble. “Found O’Connor with his throat cut. Right there in his cell. Back of his calves sliced through, for good measure. And what do you think of that? You kill a man, what’s the sense of cutting his tendons? Sure isn’t going to run off on you.”
I said nothing.
“This morning, that’s when it was. Sarah was off buying her groceries. And gossiping, no doubt. Well, some fellow Theo’s never laid eyes on before comes running in yelling that I need him—that I need him—over at the number five lock. That we got another drowning. Irish fellow, the one who run in hollering. And who’s here in the jail office just then? Just by sheer chance? Nolan. Our grand Irish policeman. And Theo leaves him here with the keys and everything else.”
The sheriff sighed, investigating an ear with a sausage finger. “Damned lie, and nothing but. There wasn’t any drowning. I was still up at the farm, just getting a late start, that’s all. There’s days like that.” He looked at me, a truant child. “Wife’s been ailing, you know.” A flush of anger colored his brow. “They knew damned well where I was. Damned well.” He grunted. “Then Theo gets out to the lock. And there’s no sign of a drowning. Not even a crow to pass the time of day with. Everything’s just all froze up and waiting for the work gang to come around again. Well, he realizes something’s fishy. So he rushes on back. And there sure isn’t any Nolan, no sirree. Office here is empty as the tomb on the third day.”
He looked around at the walls. With their legal notices and likenesses of criminals. “So now Theo’s fretting. He goes and gets out his old dragoon pistol—Nolan didn’t steal anything, at least—and he goes on back to check the cells. And what does he find but old Chauncey O’Connor lying there, every inch of him covered in blood. And the missus sitting by him and rocking and crying how I’m going to boot them out of the house for letting a thing like that happen. Well, first thing Theo thought was that the missus did it. She’s got a temper, that Sarah. And Theo figures maybe O’Connor got smart-mouthed about the food. But soon as he came to his senses, he saw he’d been made a fool of. Letting Nolan alone in the jail like that.” He sighed. “Theo did his duty, once he saw it. Say that for him. Ready to take his medicine like a man. Sent Jonah Clarke up after me. Met me coming down the Potter road. Told me about the killing and Nolan disappearing. First thing I did was to call everybody out—constables, police, for what they’re worth, and all the fellows we keep on the rolls as reserve deputies. That’s always been an honor kind of thing. Never had to call ’em up before. Well, I got ’em out on the roads fast as they could scoot. On all the roads. And you saw how we’re handling the trains.”
“This Nolan,” I said. “Perhaps he’s already gone. With a good horse. Surely, he wouldn’t just wait to be taken.”
Underwood twisted up his mouth until it seemed his lips would touch his ear. “There’s the thing. Nolan’s Irish. No horse of his own. And nobody’s missing a horse. Morning train was long gone. Lake’s froze, and the canal. So he must’ve gone off on foot. Or he’s hiding.”
I nodded, but meant nothing by it. “Tell me about Nolan, then. If you would, John.”
He snorted. “Damned disappointment. Treachery, and nothing but. Must’ve been a spy for the Irish all along.”
“What was he like? Young? Old? I would like to know, see.”
“A murderer. That’s what he’s like. A damned murderer.” He looked at me, baffled by his thoughts. Twas clear he was shaken, too. “Here I was figuring there was hope for the Irish. Seemed like young Nolan was the best fellow of all the local police—not that I have much use for any of ’em. But he kept himself sober. No funny business. Supporting his mother and sisters. And saving up to be married, so he always said. Seemed determined to be as respectable as normal people. Hardly seemed Irish—that’s how they fool you.” He shifted a clot of unpleasantness higher in his throat. “That Nolan fooled everybody. And more fool me.”
Mrs. Meeks delivered coffee in tin cups. I suspect they were those used for the inmates, but no matter. The beverage smelled harsh and looked thin. She smiled and cooed, and you could feel her straining to hold her tongue.
“Thanks, Sarah,” the sheriff said. “You go back out and sit with Theo now. He’s had a hard day.”
And out she went, trailing doubt and apron strings.
“Now, John,” I said, “you made a certain claim at the station.”
“Claim?”
“That . . . the murdered fellow, this O’Connor . . .”
“Chauncey O’Connor. Dead as a throat-cut hog.”
“That he had been about to answer all my questions.”
“That’s right.” Then he considered. “Or a lot of them, anyways.”
“And who is—was—Mr. O’Connor?”
The sheriff shrugged. Whenever he did so, the lower half of his ears—those magnificent appendages—flared outward. “Irish. Old fellow. Well, maybe not so old. You know how they seem. Older for the drink. Although O’Connor wasn’t the worst of ’em by a long stretch. Just liked his poteen. Every so often we’d bring him in to quiet him down and let him sleep it off. Then he’d behave for a couple of months. No, he wasn’t the worst of ’em.”
“He came to you? As an informer?”
“Oh, no. No. We just brought him in drunk. He was down on Main Street, shouting his lungs out. How we were all going to see, how the Irish were going to show us, and how the Irish nation was going to rise up under the green flag of Erin. Any other time, I would’ve figured it was just more of their hooting and hollering. Nolan brought him in for disturbing the peace.”
“Nolan?”
“Yep.
Then he killed him. Because of what O’Connor said to Theo.”
“And what was that?”
He smiled, the cat who ate the canary. “That ‘President’ Kildare was going to make the Irish a country of their own. And he didn’t just say it to Theo Meeks. He was yelling it in the street when Nolan brought him in. With a pack of the saloon Irish trailing behind. Hollering that every Irishman was going to have his own home and land. That President Kildare was going to give it to them. That the mighty would be cast down.”
He was pleased with his revelations. And clearly expected me to be pleased, too. When I did not reply, he continued:
“So, there you are, plain as day. Hate to say it, but I was wrong. Irish are up to their tricks, after all. It’s a rebellion, all right. But now the cat’s out of the bag.” He gave a laugh that come close to a spit. “‘President’ Kildare. Fellow ever shows his face down this way again, I’ll give him ‘president.’ We’re going to nip this insurrection nonsense in the bud. You and me, Abel. Think we should send Bill Seward a telegram about all this?”
“There is no insurrection,” I said.
He sat up. “What?”
“No insurrection. No rebellion.” For I had thought hard during my journey, and found myself thinking even harder now.
“The hell you say. Why, the evidence is right in front of your face, man! You’re the one who was making all the fuss about it!” He yanked a mustache end as though he would pull it off his face. “Now, with bloody murder right here in my own jail, and as good as an admission from one of the Irish, suddenly you don’t . . . you don’t . . .” His face went red as cured ham.
I put down my cup of coffee. Twas still near full, for the coffee was only fit for a jail, and then as a punishment.
“John . . . you’ve done good work. You’ve helped me. But I must ask you to trust me now. There is trouble, see. But no insurrection. For we have read the signs wrong, and must begin again. And do not annoy Kildare. Please. Let him go about his business. Until we see what that business is.”
