by Charles Egan
‘Is it any wonder the cholera spreads though?’ the woman said. ‘Have you seen the kind of water they’re drinking? We can’t be protecting children by breastfeeding them all the time.’
‘I’ve heard there’s one sure way of stopping that,’ the second woman said. ‘Boil the water.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ the first woman said. ‘It’s only superstition.’
When they arrived in Steuben Street, the other men were sitting in easy chairs, smoking.
‘Seen any sign of the cholera yet?’ Jack asked him.
‘No.’
‘They’re saying there’s cholera in Manhattan.’
‘Not at all. It’s only more stories.’
‘It’s more than stories. Some French ship came in a few days back; they were riddled with it. There’s cases in New York today. Leastwise, that’s what we’re hearing.’
Luke thought of all that Winnie had said of what she had seen at Five Points over the weeks. She would have known cholera. Catherine too. He knew just how fast-spreading cholera was, and still remembered the outbreak of 1832, as Winnie would have. At that time, cholera was more a disease of towns and cities than countryside, but they were living in a city now. He decided that Winnie and Liam should stay in Steuben Street. Manhattan might be too dangerous.
Every time he visited Five Points, there were Irish men and women begging in the streets – more than before. There were stories of more evictions back in Ireland. Whenever he passed the Cortland Street Terminal, he saw the long lines of thin, ragged men waiting for work, though he knew full well they had no chance. There was no work to be had in New York or Jersey City.
He no longer travelled on the ferry now, preferring to use the coal barges, which cost nothing for the crossing. Here, he heard the bitterness among the bargemen.
‘Damned Irish,’ one of them said. ‘Pouring into New York, they are. Rabid with every damned disease too. Fever and cholera. They have to be kept out.’
‘But how?’ another asked.
‘Send them straight back to Ireland when they arrive. And it’s not just the sickness; they’re taking our jobs too. They’ll work for damned near nothing. Starvation wages, that’s what they’re used to in Ireland, they’re worse than slaves. I’ll tell you this, there’ll be nothing but Irishmen in the coal terminals if this goes on.’
Luke realised that they had not recognised him as Irish, and said nothing.
*
That evening, he went to the bedroom and checked through their money and their bank account.
‘It might be enough to get us to Lackan,’ he said to Winnie. ‘It’ll be a close call though.’
The days passed. Now there were fewer barges tying up at the terminal. As they were emptying one barge, he asked the bargeman about it.
‘It’d be freezing higher up by now,’ he told him. ‘The barges back at the mines won’t be able to get through. Another few days and there’ll be none here at all. You’ll be able to go skating on the canal by then.’
‘So when do they open again?’
‘Springtime.’
*
When Luke arrived back at Steuben Street, Winnie was not in the dining room. He went up to the bedroom. Liam was asleep at the top end of the bed. The rest of the bed was covered with cut-outs of cotton. Winnie was in the corner, stitching under the light of a candle.
‘Winnie!’ Luke exclaimed, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Stitching shirts,’ Winnie replied.
‘But…?’
‘Mrs. Gleeson. She does it too. She signed me up for it. Ten cents a shirt.’
‘Ten cents?’
‘I reckon on a dozen shirts a week, if I work at it. A dollar twenty, if I keep at it. And I’m well used to outworking from the time we still had linen weaving back in Mayo.
‘But a dollar… That’s terrible.’
‘It’s all we can get, a grá, and at least I don’t have to go out to work.’
‘But we’ll be going to Lackan soon enough,’ he said.
‘Well, this’ll help us when we get there. We don’t know how long it will be till you get work, and even then, how long it’ll be till they pay you. And I’m not sure that there’s any outworking of shirts in Lackan neither, so I might as well do it while we’re close to New York.’
Luke lay awake that night. The turn of events had shaken him. Now, there was no obvious source of earnings for himself, once the canal froze. And his own wife was earning pennies, stitching shirts.
Next day, he took the coal barge to Cortland Street, and then went to the Chemical Bank, withdrew all his dollars and closed the account.
It was more urgent than ever to go to Lackan. He had enough dollars for a train journey. At least the anthracite mines would be open across the winter.
As it turned out, it was not to be that easy.
*
The barges stopped. Then the canal froze, all the way to the Hudson River. Now they had hours standing around, doing nothing. And it was bitterly cold.
Luke stood at the edge of the dock, looking at the ice on the frozen canal.
‘Damned hard too,’ he said.
‘Frozen solid,’ Jack said. ‘It’s like up in the forests. You could walk across that.’
The terminal closed, and the men were paid off.
‘And little enough too,’ Luke said, looking at the few coins in his hand. ‘There won’t be much to send back to Mayo, that’s for sure.’
‘No,’ Jack said, ‘they’ll have to wait till we’re well established in Lackan. They’ll be hungry back home, but there’s not much we can do about that.’
There was a bar close by, but no one wanted to spend money on beer. They stood around outside, stamping their feet and blowing into their hands.
‘We’ve got to get to Lackan damned fast,’ Mick said.
‘I know,’ Luke said, ‘but how are we travelling? Have ye found that out yet?’
‘By train,’ Mick said. ‘Sure how else would we get up that far?’
‘I know that, but which way? And how much?’
They walked to the terminal of the New Jersey Railroad, found a booking clerk, and asked about trains.
‘NJRR down to Philadelphia’ the clerk told them, ‘then the Philadelphia & Reading to Schuylkill.’
‘And how far is it to Lackan from Schuylkill?’ Luke asked.
‘Damned if I know,’ the clerk answered. ‘There’s no rails though. Some kind of a stagecoach connection, I understand.’
‘Well now we know,’ Jack said afterwards. ‘So when do we go?’
‘Right away,’ Luke said. ‘If there’s no work here, we’ll have to move damned fast. Next few days, I’m reckoning.’
*
As he came home, he heard the baby crying before he even reached their room.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ he asked Winnie.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Winnie said. ‘He’s been like this for hours, won’t stop. He was vomiting a while but that stopped. I think he’s nothing left inside him. I’ve tried him on the breast, but he won’t take it.’
‘Not surprising, if he’s vomiting.’
He felt the baby’s forehead.
‘I’ve done that,’ Winnie said, ‘it’s not fever.’
‘Sure he’s only sick in the stomach so,’ Luke said, ‘he’ll be better in a few days.’
No, it definitely wasn’t fever. He knew the sweetness of that. This was different.
Winnie stayed sitting beside the child all night. Luke tried to sleep, but could not.
There was a knock on the door.
‘Can you not get it to shut up,’ one of the men said.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Luke asked, ‘strangle him?’
It was near dawn when Luke finally slept. When he woke, Winnie was sitting beside the baby.
‘Did you sleep at all?’ he asked her.
‘How could I?’ she answered. ‘He’s going to die.’
He loo
ked closely at Liam. ‘There’s no way we know that, alanna. Is he hungry yet?’
‘No, but if he isn’t hungry, he’s surely thirsty. I tried giving him a bit of water, to see if that was what’s wrong with him. He took it all, and then more and more, almost as much as I could give him.’
‘I wonder why he’d do that if he was vomiting. Does he throw that back up?’
‘No,’ Winnie said, ‘and he doesn’t piss it either. He’s got terrible diarrhoea, doesn’t stop. That’s where all the water is going.’
‘We should get a doctor so,’ he said.
He asked Mrs. Gleeson for directions, then walked, half running, to the doctor’s house, through a fine drizzle and the slush of mud and coal dust.
‘He’s not here,’ the housekeeper told him. ‘He’s down at the infirmary.’
He went to the infirmary.
‘He’s up in the cholera ward,’ one of the nurses told him.
‘Cholera?’
He found the ward, and found the doctor. The stink was overwhelming, and he recognised it at once. The very same as Liam.
‘My baby’s very sick,’ he said.
The doctor looked up at him.
‘I can’t come now,’ he said. ‘Not a hope in hell. Look at what’s around you. We’ve a hundred here, hundreds more we can’t even admit.’
‘Cholera?’ Luke asked.
‘Cholera, and deadly. Is your baby drinking much?’
‘Never stops drinking.’
‘It’s cholera so. There’s not much you can do. Rehydration only.’
‘What?’
‘Water, just keep giving him water. Try putting a little salt in it, not too much. It might cure him.’
‘What’s the chances?’ Luke asked.
‘There’s about half of them dying. Now I’m busy…’
He went home.
‘Cholera!’ Winnie gasped.
‘No doubt about it now. And there’s no way the doctor can make it here. He says the only thing we can do is keep feeding him water with a little salt.’
‘That won’t be hard,’ Winnie said, ‘he’s drinking gallons.’
Luke sat, watching. After a while, Winnie turned to him.
‘No point in sitting around,’ she said, ‘Go and see what the fellows are doing.’
He went downstairs. The men were silent.
‘It’s cholera for sure?’ Jack asked.
‘It is.’
Jack whipped his hand to his mouth. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Not much you can do about it, is there?’
‘There’s not.’
‘But…but you can’t keep him in the house,’ Mick said. ‘He’ll infect everyone. It’ll have to be the infirmary, won’t it?’
‘They’re full,’ Luke said, ‘they’re not taking in anyone.’
‘I’m sorry, Luke,’ Jack said. ‘I’m desperate sorry.’
Not that it made any difference to Luke, either way. The doctors could do nothing for Liam, and the infirmary was only a quarantine. A place to die? Liam would have to stay in Steuben Street.
‘This wrecks everything,’ Mick said. ‘What will you do about Lackan?’
‘Well, I can’t go with ye.’
‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘Do you want one of us to stay behind?’
‘Sure there’d be no point in that. You fellows go up to Lackan. We’ll come up whenever we can.’
‘I don’t feel right about that,’ Jack said. ‘Leaving you in the lurch like that. Surely there’s something…’
‘Not a lot you can do,’ Luke said. ‘Just go up there, and get yourselves set up. I’m sure Lackan isn’t a big place. I’ll find ye soon enough.’
Next morning, Luke went with them across to the New Jersey Railroad, and watched in misery as they bought their tickets. Then they all walked back to Steuben Street.
At times, Winnie rocked the child in her arms, but it had little effect. Luke knew she was terrified of losing Liam. So was he, for that matter, but even more, he was terrified of losing Winnie. Cholera was highly infectious. Had she had it before, though? 1832 perhaps. If she had, she might be strong enough to resist it. He told himself that he had to stop thinking like that. Winnie would survive. She was too strong to die. But what about Liam?
The diarrhoea was nothing but water now, and the thirst went on.
Winnie took Luke’s hand and placed it on the baby’s chest.
‘Feel how fast his heart is beating.’
‘It is, isn’t it,’ Luke said. ‘I felt my own heart going as fast as that, but only after a hard hour’s work shovelling.’
‘It shouldn’t be like this, and he only lying down,’ Winnie said. ‘And look here.’
She pinched the baby’s skin and when she took her fingers away, the ridge on his skin remained where she had pinched him.
‘It doesn’t go back,’ she said, ‘and that’s not right.’
‘It isn’t. It’s part of the disease, I’d reckon.’
She was weeping.
‘He’s going to die, Luke. You know that.’
‘Let’s wait and see.’
‘There’ll be little waiting. Cholera kills fast.’
At last, they slept.
*
There was a knock on the door.
‘We’re going now, Luke.’
He opened the door. Winnie called out from behind him.
‘You go on, sure there’s no point in staying here. Go and say goodbye to your friends.’
He walked with the other men to the NJRR Terminal. Jack, Mick, Seán Óg and two of the other Tourmakeady men were travelling.
The train came in. The five men found a carriage. Luke stayed standing in the corridor.
‘We’ll see you there soon enough,’ Jack said, ‘and at least we might be able to advise you as to how best to get there. If ye haven’t left first.’
‘Aye,’ Luke said, ‘that’d be useful. Even when the cholera is gone, I’d say the little fellow will be weak enough, and we wouldn’t want to be travelling too soon.’
They heard the whistle.
‘You’d better be going now,’ Jack said.
Luke was surprised when all five men stood to shake his hand. He returned to the platform, and the train disappeared in the distance.
He went back to the coal wharf. There was no anthracite now, and the wharf was covered in snow. He stared in frustration at the Morris Canal. Of course, it was frozen. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Up in the Ontario forests, even the St. Lawrence had frozen. He picked up a sliver of stone, and flung it at the canal. Frozen solid. He picked up another and spun it at the canal, watching as it skimmed all the way across. Then he walked home to Steuben Street.
Again, he counted their money. Still enough to get to Lackan, he reckoned. But how sure was he of that? The other men had only bought their tickets as far as Philadelphia. How much would it cost from Philadelphia to Schuylkill? And how much more for the coach to Lackan. And even if he had enough now, how long would the cholera continue? How long would he have to stay in Jersey City without any wages, except what could be earned from making shirts?
Whenever Liam slept, Winnie returned to stitching shirts. She could do it faster now. Mrs. Gleeson gathered them for the contractor, and brought the money back up to Winnie. On one occasion, Luke tried stitching, but he found the work far too intricate.
‘I’ll never have you do this again,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
‘It mightn’t be within your power,’ Winnie said. ‘Either way, I’m not sure they’d have this class of outworking in Lackan. It’d be far too dirty a town. God knows, it’s hard enough keeping this house clean, and it’s not even beside a coalmine. In a coal town, you’d need real washing to keep the clothes clean, and have the shirts ready for when the fellow comes around.’
‘I don’t know the rights or wrongs of that,’ he said, ‘but I promise you one thing Winnie, when we get to Lackan, I’ll make the money, we’ll have enough to live on, and we’ll never see hunger or chole
ra again.’
Having nothing to do, he walked back to the doctor’s surgery. As he had expected, there was still no chance of getting a doctor to see Liam. In any case, it would be useless.
When he returned, he saw Winnie had begun feeding Liam beef tea, a sort of light soup which provided some amount of food. This was on the advice of a nurse who had come to the house unasked.
Next morning, the nurse returned. ‘He’s improving,’ she said to Winnie.
‘I know,’ Winnie said, ‘I think he’ll make it.’
‘He will,’ the nurse said. ‘He’s a lucky lad too. There’s thousands dead in the big cities. It’s been one terrible epidemic.’
When the nurse had left, Luke hugged Winnie.
‘We’ll make it, Winnie, girl. We’ll live, and so will Liam.’
He still felt badly shaken, and he knew Winnie did too.
Leaving Mayo, he had thought he was leaving hunger and disease behind. Would Liam have gotten cholera in Mayo? Maybe, maybe not. But now it was nearly over, and neither he nor Winnie had gotten it either. The family was still together.
*
He walked to the New Jersey Railroad Terminal to buy his tickets. There was a line at the ticket clerk’s desk. As he waited, he saw two Irish men from the coal terminal ahead of him in the line.
A man behind him growled.
‘Damned Irish. Crawling all over the place. And what do they do? Steal our jobs, and bring us cholera. They’re the most accursed bastards. If they stayed in their own country, we wouldn’t have cholera here. Thousands of dead, and what do we do? Just let them pour in.’
‘I know,’ his friend said. ‘We should keep them all out, and the rest of the Irish, kick them out too. They’re a worthless gang of lazy scum. Don’t know how to work, all they know is how to beg, live off charity and kill us with fever.’
Luke said nothing, until he reached the clerk’s table.
‘Two for Lackan.’
‘I can only give you a ticket to Philadelphia.’
‘Fine so.’
‘Two only?’
‘And one baby.’
‘He’ll be free,’ the clerk told him.
Luke paid. As he turned away, one of the men behind him grasped his sleeve.
