Irish Dukes (Fight Card)

by Jack Tunney

  The one in the street grabbed half-heartedly for Mary’s basket. She yanked it away from him and stepped back onto the sidewalk next to me. We stood there, stopped and facing one another.

  I could feel my heart racing. I felt like a coiled spring, I heard Father Tim’s voice, Control it, Kevin, control. Hold it in lad, steady, think.

  Big Mouth smiled, I noticed a space where a tooth was missing off to the side of his mouth.

  “I’m afraid you’re in the way,” I said, my voice was soft. I kept my gaze leveled at Big Mouth, but had the other two in my periphery. The one in the middle had stepped forward just an inch or two, I guessed he’d be first.

  “I think you’ve seen too many movies, Yank. Give us a look, Mary.” Big Mouth nodded his chins toward the basket.

  “Let’s go,” I said and turned round, pulling Mary out of the way.

  I’d guessed correctly, the middle one came first, reached for my left shoulder. I spun round, caught him with a right upper cut just under the chin, lifting him off the ground. You could hear his teeth clack as I connected.

  He was crumpling to the ground when I spun and drove a hard left into Big Mouth’s solar plexus. His lips pursed and I heard the air rush out of him, felt his breath blow across my face just before I slammed a right cross into his face. As he went down I got off another hard right to his exposed rib cage, putting everything into it. I might have heard a slight crack. He dropped his pint glass and it shattered on the sidewalk. I gave him another right to the rib cage and felt my fist do some serious damage.

  I suddenly slammed into the wall, but bounced off. The third guy, the one who’d tried to take Mary’s basket, bounced off me. Mary’s foot was still out from tripping him. I half lifted him by the coat collar and gave him a hard right to the nose. He spun round and left me holding his coat as he took off down the street. Big Mouth was down on all fours, crawling and gasping for breath amidst the broken pint glass.

  Mary’s green eyes were wide and her mouth hung open. I tugged at the bottom of my Class A jacket, just to straighten it, then pulled out my overseas cap and put it back on, “Nice talking to you, boys. Shame on you for wasting that pint.”

  The crowd across the street stood quietly staring, except for two guys who set their pint glasses on the window sill and started to clap.

  Mary seemed in shock. I took her arm and stepped over the first one I’d put down, he seemed to be coming round.

  “We’d better get dinner ready. Gran will be waiting for us,” I said and pulled her along. She walked with me, but her head was turned back over her shoulder, mouth open staring at the two men down on the sidewalk.

  “Come on, Mary. Watch where you’re going. I don’t need you falling.”

  “Wh, what did you… where did you learn… how did you? That was Oisin Kelly…”

  “The big dumb looking one? The guy with no manners? Yeah, I caught his name earlier when you mentioned it.”

  She didn’t say much, but suddenly slipped her arm around mine and kept looking at me as we walked. When we turned into Gray’s Square, she picked up the pace, but she was smiling. About three doors away, she shook loose from my arm and began to run, calling “Kathleen, Kathleen, you won’t believe it. Kathleen.”

  ROUND 5

  Gran cooked the steaks in a skillet. I gathered it was one of two cooking pans she owned. She had a little gas stove, just one burner and an oven you could barely fit the steaks in to keep warm. She put the roast in the ice box, but they didn’t have any ice, so I wasn’t sure it would do much good.

  “I’ll cook it first thing in the morning,” she said. “I’ve never seen a roast that size.” The kitchen was so tiny it almost couldn’t hold the three of us.

  Mary kept twirling around and chattering on. “Jimmy Debbens, Kathleen, didn’t raise so much as a hand before Kevin had him down and out. Tommy Dennehy down the road like a frightened rabbit, and you should have seen that bastard Oisin Kelly…”

  “Mary, I’ll not have that sort of language in my kitchen. You’re to go directly to confession before mass tomorrow.”

  Mary ignored her. “There he was crawling like a baby. It’ll be a cold day before he puts his hands on the likes of me, again.”

  “Kevin, maybe you could wait in the sitting room. Mary, set the table for supper. Bring the chair down from the bedroom. Go on, off with the two of you. And Mary, you’re not to say one more word about this affair.”

  “But, Kathleen, if only you’d…”

  “Not another word! Now go on, off with the two of you. I’m so hungry I could eat a small child.”

  We sat in the little sitting room, the only room on the first floor besides the closet sized kitchen. The table was in front of the turf fire and barely large enough to hold our three plates and the tea kettle. The steaks covered almost the entire plate and the potatoes were piled on top of the thick pieces of meat.

  We weren’t quite finished when there was a loud knock at the door. Mary and Gran exchanged worried glances.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  “Oh, maybe I better,” Gran said, getting up.

  “No, I’m closest.”

  I was up and to the door before anyone could say a thing. I opened it not knowing what to expect. There were two women at the door. I pegged them at maybe sixty. They looked at me wide-eyed.

  “Oh, my,” one of them said. “Would, ah, would Kathleen be home?” She smacked her lips and studied me up and down.

  “Ciaria, come in, come in,” Gran called from her chair. “Oh, and Siobhan, come in please. Mary, fetch two cups for tea.”

  Mary and I quickly cleared the table. There were only three chairs in the entire little house, so the two of us stood near the window while the three ladies chatted. Occasionally one of the two visitors shot a glance in my direction.

  They had been chatting nonstop for maybe twenty minutes when there was another knock on the door. I opened it and a white haired couple stood there. He was tall and thin with pink skin and she was stooped, but with a bright smile.

  “I bet you’re the Yank,” he said, and smiled.

  “Peter, please,” the woman with him said. “Is Kathleen in?” she asked, then looked past me to the noise rolling out from the women in the sitting room.

  “Please come in,” I said and stepped aside.

  “Bit of something for you,” Peter said under his breath, and then held up a green whiskey bottle as he entered.

  “Peter, Kate, come in, come in,” Gran called from her chair. “Mary, fetch a crate from the back garden for Kate.”

  If the room felt crowded with our four guests, it felt absolutely jammed forty-five minutes later with five more neighbors. If I’d answered the door once, I’d answered it a half-dozen times, always stepping aside to let another neighbor come in. One woman brought a wedge of cheese, and another brought some soda bread. Two women left and returned with candles to light the room. News traveled fast, I guessed. They were all there to hear the tale, but were too busy shouting questions for me to get a word in edgewise.

  “How many were there? Five did you say?”

  “Did you really hold one hand behind your back?”

  “Where’d you learn to fight, Sergeant?”

  “You got a piece of one, didn’t you, Mary?”

  Mary finally got everyone quieted down and then told the story starting at the beginning. Not the beginning of the fight such as it was, but beginning with me knocking on the door for the first time much earlier in the day.

  “I knew who he was the moment I opened the door,” Mary said. “Kathleen’s long lost grandson from the US of A, Kevin Crowley.”

  Apparently Mary’s attitude toward me had softened somewhat, if not changed altogether to hear her tell the story. “I’d warned the knackers three separate times,” she said, although it must have been softly because I never really heard her.

  “And then once I was sure that plonker Oisin Kelly was down for good, I turned toward that right ijit Tomm
y Dennehy ready to give him what for.” She spit in her palm and made a fist. “But he took one look and started to run away. He’s probably still running, even now.”

  Everyone in the room seemed to nod in agreement.

  “The knackers,” someone called out.

  More nods of agreement.

  “Have you heard from Ardee, yet?” someone asked.

  “You can bet the likes of him will come calling and then get sent home with his tail between his legs.” Not as many nods of agreement on that one.

  In short order, I was relegated to a corner of the room as tales where exchanged regarding the blizzard of ’47 and some guy named Declan Hurley who stole all the turf for fires.

  “It was cold for months on end, temperatures dipped below freezing,” a woman said, nodding in my direction.

  “Positively Arctic,” another chimed in.

  If this was supposed to impress a kid from Chicago who’d spent the last two years in Berlin, it missed the mark.

  “A word, young Kevin?” It was pink, white haired Peter, supplier of the whiskey bottle. He held a tea cup with what I presumed wasn’t tea. Two other guys were behind him. We stepped out the front door, onto what passed as the sidewalk. Pretty soon you could hear singing coming from inside, some mournful song in a language not English.

  “Kevin, these are friends of mine, Noel and Jimmy.” As Peter said their names, each man nodded, extended his hand to shake, then went back to wrapping both hands round their tea cups.

  “Gentlemen, nice to meet you.”

  “Kevin, we’re a bit worried about Kathleen… and young Mary for that matter. Ardee and his bunch aren’t going to take this lying down.”

  “Take what lying down? They tried to assault us and I stopped them. Not much to it beyond that.”

  “Don’t be upset, but they run rough over the lot of us here. Anyone of us might find himself out in the street if they’d a mind to push matters on the rent. The fact you handled them, and handled them well, I might add, it’s just that I’d be careful were I you.”

  Noel and Jimmy nodded.

  “What do you mean careful?”

  “I’d expect them to come after the likes of you. Your man Ardee, he can’t have some young pup knocking his toughs about and making them turn tail and run. He’s got to do something, just for appearance sake.”

  “What does he do, this Ardee, that you’re so worried?”

  “Do? Well, he owns every home on this lane, and the next lane over, as well,” Peter said.

  “He has a betting shop, over off Meath Street,” Jimmy added.

  “And the fights,” Noel said, and drained his teacup.

  They all nodded at Noel’s comment.

  “The fights? You mean he handles boxers, runs a gym?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Noel said. “These are fighters. What you’d call bare knuckles.”

  “A dangerous bunch of knackers. Anything goes with the likes of them,” Peter said.

  “I’m still not quite following,” I said.

  “Well, you didn’t just stand up to them,” Noel said.

  “You swatted them around like flies off shite,” Jimmy chuckled, and then gave a lingering look at his empty teacup before he glanced over at Peter.

  “Are Gran and Mary in danger?”

  “Hard to say, but I would be very careful,” Peter said.

  The other two nodded in agreement.

  “And he runs fighters, you say, this Ardee?”

  Nods all around.

  “It’s what funds his betting parlor, the fights. There’s money in it,” Peter said, followed by more nods.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”

  We returned to the small sitting room and commenced to sing, or at least they did. I didn’t know the words, and in all honesty, I didn’t even know the language.

  ROUND 6

  Once the last guest finally left I curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace and immediately fell asleep. It was late the following morning. I’d decided to skip Gran’s breakfast porridge and was in the process of devouring the fried eggs and bacon she’d cooked for me when there was pounding on the front door.

  Gran got that worried look again.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  “It’s the rent collectors. I just know it. Be careful, Kevin, please,” she said, making the sign of the cross.

  It was three strides to the front door, but I didn’t make it before the pounding came again, this time even more aggressively.

  I opened the door and glanced on a figure that looked vaguely familiar.

  “Mr. Dennehy,” I said. “I don’t think we were properly introduced yesterday. Kevin Crowley,” I smiled and extended my hand toward the battered face.

  Two blackened eyes blinked on either side of a very swollen nose and stared back at me. He ignored my hand, took half a step back, and glanced over at the three men standing alongside him. One of them gave him an impatient nod.

  “I’m, we’re here for the rent. It's due. You’re to pay up,” he stammered.

  I pursed my lips for a moment and thought about it, then said, “Did you get your coat back? I left it hanging on a fence. Tried to catch up to you, but I just couldn’t. You were moving too fast.”

  “We’ve come for the rent, two weeks,” one of them growled from behind. He was a large man with small little close set eyes. There was a decided ‘S’ curve to his nose and the telltale scaring around the eyes that marked him as perhaps not the fastest man on his feet.

  “Two weeks? I thought it was paid every week.”

  “We’ll need two weeks from now on.”

  Gran had moved to the middle of the small sitting room. When she heard two weeks’ rent was due she brought her hands to her face in shocked surprise.

  “Two weeks. And how much does that come to?” I asked.

  “Eight pounds, two,” he growled back.

  “Eight pounds, two,” I said loudly, feigning surprise.

  Dennehy took another half step back, prepared to run again.

  I reached into my pocket pulled out my wad of pounds. I peeled off a twenty pound note and extended it in Dennehy’s direction. “Here’s payment for four weeks, the next month.”

  They looked from one to the other, as if they hadn’t planned on my agreement and certainly never expected me to go them one better.

  “Well, do you want it or not? Come on,” I said, and waved my hand, indicating he should take the note.

  He looked to his friend with the ‘S’ curved nose. He nodded his chin toward me impatiently. Dennehy swallowed then stepped forward quickly, snatched the note, and retreated back to the safety of his group. I noticed a couple of window curtains had pulled back on the other side of the lane.

  “I think you owe me some change,” I said.

  They didn’t know what to do about this.

  “Call it even at two pounds?” I said.

  This seemed to confuse them even more.

  “We’re not in the habit of giving change,” ‘S’ curve said.

  “Fair enough. Anything else you need?” I said.

  Again they looked from one to another, didn’t seem to know what to do.

  “Okay, nice talking to you. See you next month then.” I said, and closed the door. I heard a grumble from outside as I stood behind the door waiting. I was thinking if I got ‘S’ curve in the throat first, took one of the others out, I had a fair chance. Unless they were armed, then all bets were off.

  Gran looked out the window from the middle of the room, her head turning slowly as she followed them walking down the lane.

  “Kevin, a month’s rent, but sure to Jesus you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Did you want them back here in two weeks? I’ll go get the twenty back if you do.”

  “Well, no, but, Kevin, twenty pounds? I’ve, I’ve no way to pay you, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t expect to be paid. Please, it’s the least I
can do. I’ve yet to really talk with you, what with all your house guests, Mary, rent collectors and trips to the butcher shop. I’d like to know about my parents for starters, well, and you. Maybe learn something about Mary, anything else you can tell me. I’ve waited all my life. I’d sure like to know, now.”

  “I’d better put the kettle on then and you had best sit down.”

  ROUND 7

  I was on my third cup of tea. It had grown cold and I still didn’t like the stuff. The daylight had drifted to early evening, not at all dark, but the beginnings of a blue-gray that proceeded twilight. Gran was still talking, shaking her head, her eyes red and a little puffy from tears.

  “So, as I said, he just up and disappeared, my Kevin, your father. They all think he ran off, but I’ve known from the first awful moment he went missing something terrible happened. There was never so much as a whisper about him. It was the devil’s work, Kevin. As sure as I’m sitting here, it was the devil’s work. But the good Lord has seen fit to deliver you back to my door. It’s nothing short of a miracle.”

  “But I don’t understand why he disappeared? What happened?”

  “As I said, it was your mother.”

  “But you said she loved him.”

  “Aye, she did. They were the perfect match, Kevin and Neave. Our Lord made them for one another and no one else. The sun rose and set on him as far as she was concerned, and he worshipped the very ground she walked on. But when she was carrying you, that was when all the trouble started. She had never done a thing to encourage Ardee, ever. She was a saint, your mother. But after she married my Kevin, that’s when Ardee began to cause trouble, following her, threatening her. The moment Kevin found out, he went after him. Gave Ardee a right proper thrashing, too, right there out in the middle of Meath Street. It wasn’t long afterward that Kevin disappeared.”

  “What did the police say? Surely they…”

  “The Garda Siochana? In those days they were in with Ardee, paid by him. They stood on the front stoop, looked up and down the lane, said they couldn’t find my Kevin. Said they figured he ran off, probably to England, and that was the end of it. I knew that it was a lie. Your father wouldn’t have run off. The next thing I know, Ardee is waving a paper he said your father signed, a gambling debt of over five thousand pounds he claimed Kevin owed. Kevin never gambled in his life. You were born shortly after and, as soon as she was strong enough to travel, your mother fled Ireland.