She fell asleep in her chair, and they woke her up at dawn.
“Angie, wake up, we want more of your magic water!”
“And right away!”
She led them in singing the Lourdes Hymn.
“Is this Lourdes water?”
“ ’Tis Holy Water from the north woods, and hasn’t his Lordship Bishop Muldoon blessed it for youse.”
They cheered for Bishop Muldoon.
Angela sent one of the nurses to bring Sister John of the Cross.
“Glory be to God!” she exclaimed as she came into the room. “You’ve saved them, Angela child, God bless you and keep you, didn’t you save them all!”
The good Bishop came to the hospital to bless them. They were convinced that the Bishop had worked a miracle for them.
“I think, Sisters, we ought to give thanks to God and to Dr. Tierney, who made a very wise decision.”
“And ourselves hating her because she made us drink all your water.”
“I didn’t bless that water, did I, Angela?”
“You did without noticing it, me Lord. I asked Jesus to bless it in your name and then I said a prayer over all the bottles.”
“You’re unstoppable.”
“Sister,” she said later to the administrator, “ask this man from the Board of Health to inspect the water supply at your little novitiate and replace the pipes that bring in sewer water. That’s what almost killed your wonderful young women. Make them drink the Bishop’s water until it’s fixed. If they run out, tell me and I’ll get more.”
Later Sister John told her that it was another miracle. How could she possibly have known about the pipes in the basement of the novitiate?
“I’m a witch, S’ter.”
“No, you’re a great scientist and a living saint.”
She later learned that Mother General Sister Mary of the Holy Innocents refused to replace the pipes in the novitiate, so she sent people from the Board of Health over to the building with orders to demolish it.
Angela had kept careful records of each of the young nuns—age, weight, temperature, number of bowel movements, and traced-out charts showing how many pints of pure water were required.
“Angela, this is brilliant.” Timmy went exuberant, as he often did when he was excited. “You must write it up for the American Medical Association News and send it off to them by telegraph tonight.”
“I don’t want to write anything. It will just call attention to myself.”
“Let’s see what Pa says.”
Pa said that Timmy was right. He should write the bulletin and send it to the AMA, giving full credit to Angela Tierney, MD, of Rush Medical College and Mercy Hospital in Chicago.
“I’m going to bed,” Angela pleaded. “I haven’t had any sleep for a week.”
Timmy was back in a half hour with a draft.
“Looks good,” Papa Paddy said. “They’re going to want verification. So add my name to it, and yours too.”
“It’s her finding!”
“Timmy, I don’t care.”
“We’re there only for their verification. They’ll want to get it out right away. Here, you read it.”
Angela glanced at it.
“Looks fine to me. Are the numbers right, Timmy?”
“I have your notes.”
“Put them in Dad’s safe with the other stuff.”
She wasn’t sure what the other stuff was.
The AMA wanted to see her notes. Papa Paddy sent them by courier and requested a receipt. A one-word telegram came for Angela.
CONGRATULATIONS. STOP. JAMA.
Thus did Angela Tierney, MD, become famous all over the medical world at the age of twenty-two, eight years after she had arrived at the Central Depot on Chicago’s Lake Shore.
She would have two more encounters with serious illness in the next year: smallpox and pneumonia. Her dedication to fighting infectious diseases was sealed by these experiences.
14
“WHY DON’T we look at your calendar?” Nuala Anne in her exercise clothes entered my office as I finished my census of extortions on the St. Joe’s school yard. The rain that had drenched the city again last night, had left the yard a muck of mud and standing water.
My wife in a state of relative undress is enough to wipe any distractions out of my mind. She knows it, of course and likes sometimes to wipe away the distractions. This time, however, an insight had come in the process of fighting off extra ounces. I was disappointed.
“Same guilty parties. The population of extortionists is limited to nine bullies, three of them members of the Finnerty family and four more of them hangers-on. We get rid of them, we change the atmosphere of the school yard.”
“Or make room for a new crowd of hellions . . . Let’s look at your calendar.”
“See,” she said triumphantly, “you’re responsible for the attack on your man.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Weren’t you after taking him out to Ridgemoor on September 16 and September 18 didn’t them shite hawks thrum him in the River?”
“Coincidence,” I said.
“There are no coincidences, Dermot Michael Coyne. How many times do I have to tell you that! Your man is living a quiet life for his creepy little firm, going to school two nights a week, sleeping in that morbid little hotel and nothing happens to him. No one knows he’s in town. His only amusement is kissing Julie and the odd fantasy of taking off her clothes. Then you bring him out there to that swamp of half-drunk Irish traders, and two nights later don’t they thrum him into the River? Sure, isn’t it all as plain as the nose on your face? A nose which I kind of like?”
She kissed the nose and pressed her breasts, imprisoned in a stern exercise bra, against my chest.
“Woman, you’re trying to seduce me as yourself well knows.”
“Spur-of-the-moment fantasy. ’Tis all your fault and meself loving you so much . . .”
She climbed into me lap and kissed me repeatedly and enthusiastically.
“I’ll go take me shower and anoint meself appropriately and then maybe come back here and torment you some more.”
“I’ll wait patiently.”
My brain was a jumbled mess as the hormones raced through it and then to the rest of my body.
Some of the literature said that women become more sexually aggressive as they grow older. The data didn’t suspect such a contention, but some men I knew, older than me, reported that their wives were driving them crazy.
“Better me than someone else,” one of them said, “though it can be exhausting . . . She’s pretty clever about it too.”
Middle-age male fantasy, I told myself.
Me wife was merely celebrating the fact that she might have solved the mystery.
While I was trying to reactivate my mind, the phone rang. Mike Casey.
“It was a long time ago,” he said, sounding skeptical, “but there was an IRA gunman living in Elmwood Park in the sixties and the seventies, on the run from even his own if you believed him, one Martin McGurn. He did own a gas station on Harlem south of Lake Street and then a popular bar on North Avenue at Narragansett. He talked a big line and some of it may be true. But the worst he did was collect money for Noraid, which was not against the law. He had a reputation for being a hard man, a ruthless alley fighter. No arrests, however. We have no indication that the Irish government was the least interested in him. The provos were busy with the Prots up North. On occasion he may have hid other people on the run, but we weren’t interested in illegal aliens in those days . . . He died six or seven years ago, at a ripe old age for a gunman, if that’s what he was.”
“Marty McGurn . . .”
“No, he was always Martin.”
“I grew up out there and never heard of him.”
“I don’t imagine your kind hung around at an Irish bar in those days. More likely you were hanging at Ridgemoor Country Club.”
“Or on Rush Street.”
I put
a sheet of output paper on my desk with the intent of working on a list of names. But my office was flooded with erotic perfume, followed by me wife in black lace.
“I haven’t seen that one before.”
“I was saving it for something special.”
“Why is today special?”
“Because, Dermot Michael Coyne, you’re such a special husband and I love you so much.”
I couldn’t argue with that assumption.
At noontime, worn out from my morning exertions but exhilarated by the complexities of my wife’s love for me, I listened to the latest reports from the battlefield across the street.
Three couples, all of them veteran and affluent parishioners, waited the previous evening upon the Pastor with a lawyer, and a police juvenile officer and charges against all the Finnerty children for their depredations against the weak and infirm. The Pastor flatly denied the charges against the students. We have nothing but good children in our school. He summoned the Principal, who adjusted her rhetoric to the situation, though she said that the Finnertys were poor people out of place in the affluence of the neighborhood.
“Let them move out of the neighborhood.”
“Or get them out of the school.”
“We are prepared to go into court and seek relief against the bullies, the school, and the Catholic Church.”
“We hope that these matters can be settled amicably, but if necessary we may have to take the children into custody on juvenile charges.”
The Pastor promised that they would talk to the Finnertys. The Principal insisted that such bullies which might exist were acting only in self defense.
Well that very morning Mr. and Mrs. Finnerty appeared in the rectory with their three children to meet with the juvenile officer and the lawyer. Mr. Finnerty was a skilled and well-paid hydrological engineer and had little to say. His wife, according to Mick, who had absorbed all this from his teacher, was, like everyone said, nuttier than all the Christmas fruitcakes, went postal. The rich celebrities in the parish were picking on her children because they were standing on their rights. Go ahead and sue us. We want our day in court. She swore and cursed them all. The juvenile officer and the lawyer, not used to such abuse from a woman, did not back down, but did not repeat their threats. The Pastor said nothing. The Principal renewed her commitment to the Catholicism of the school and the support of the “ordinary people” of the parish. There were other schools . . .
At recess time, the Finnertys and their respective gangs continued their terrorist tactics.
“What’s the solution, Mick?” I asked my firstborn son.
“Turn the wolfhounds loose on them. Get rid of Sourpuss and Hannibal Lecter. Shoot all the Finnertys.”
I called George.
“This report is based on the account of my son Mick, the one who is supposed to look like you.”
“Not good news?”
“Nope.”
“Our sister Cyndi called to warn us that she will shortly file a suit like the one she did in Joliet. Blackie seems delighted at the prospect. That way he’ll be able to close the school down and order an investigation.”
“He shouldn’t wait too long. It is Mick’s impression that the bullies will increase their efforts.”
“Is Frank sleeping with her?”
“I doubt it, George. But she’s in charge. My son advises that we get rid of them both.”
“Intelligent young man. Tell him it will be soon.”
I turned on our TV monitor.
“Great picture,” my wife said, sitting on the edge of the desk. “Hey, there’s a lot of people in the yard.”
“Parents come to protect their children from extortionists. Observe that the excellent Mr. Flynn is back.”
“Those two female cops?”
“Juvenile officers, I suppose.”
“Mike Casey’s people.”
“Invisible like those two people in the Comcast truck and the good matron walking her baby and the man mowing the lawn down the street.”
As we watched, Kevin Finnerty and his two regular coconspirators approached a second-grade boy, whom they had extorted many times before, and began to push the poor little kid around. He fought back and they knocked him down. The boy’s parents were on them immediately, as were the juvenile officers, who endeavored without much success to take the extortionists into custody. One of the officers reached for her mobile and called for backup.
The door of an SUV swung open and Maureen Finnerty emerged from it, an angry bowling ball aimed right at the cop with the mobile, a tiny Asian-American woman who tumbled over into the muck of the parkway like a tenpin. The Comcast crew blew their cover and rushed to defend a fellow cop (as they should have). It took both of them to subdue Maureen and cuff her. She continued to struggle and presumably swear at them. The other juvenile cop lifted her fallen Asian-American colleague from the mud. The parents of the intended victim continued to fight to hold off the bullies. The other parents gathered around the melee, probably shouting encouragement. The student body, doubtless screaming, “Fight! Fight!” converged on the scene of the fight. Mr. Flynn tried to chase them away. Dr. Fletcher charged into the fray, pushing people around, including the juvenile cop. Then four squad cars appeared, their sirens providing a soundtrack for our silent movie. Cops ran in all directions. Kids ran for the sanctuary of the school. The little Asian-American woman, definitely Chinese-American, I thought, took charge and by sheer force of character formed the police into an organized unit. The still-struggling bullies, Maureen Finnerty, and Dr. Fletcher were arrested and handcuffed. The cops seized the mother of the victim, a pretty matron of some twenty-five summers. The Asian cop waved the others off her. The matron picked up her battered son and hugged him. Her husband, perhaps a graduate student, confused by the riot, was telling the story to a cop—pointing at Maureen Finnerty, who was still kicking and struggling as she was forced into the back of the squad car.
“Brigid, Patrick, and Colmcille!” my wife exclaimed, more prayer I thought than curse. “Never in the West of Ireland did I see anything like that! I’m glad I wasn’t there! Wouldn’t I have exploded altogether if those monsters were picking on my sweet little Patjo.”
That youngest of our children would have given a much better account of himself, I thought.
And himself an alley fighter like you are.
Better believe it.
The Pastor in his full clericals appeared. Befuddled, he walked over to the lead police car. The eejits released Dr. Fletcher, but not Mrs. Finnerty.
“Eejits!” Nuala Anne exclaimed.
“It’s the end, regardless,” I said confidently.
However, what I did not anticipate was that three black high school students would be gunned down that afternoon on the South Side and that there would a huge protest, led by local clergy and politicians. It was never clear to me whom the protests were against—the street gangs who couldn’t care less or the police and the city who couldn’t do more. Yet angry and frightened people had to do something. Anyway, those events preempted the news cycle for that afternoon. There would have to be one more explosion—sometime soon, I hoped.
The three Finnerty gang kids were released to their families though charges against them were still pending. The next morning they strode into the school yard as arrogantly as ever. Maureen Finnerty was accused of disorderly conduct, assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest. She was released on her own recognizance at noon the next day. James Flynn was duly reported to his parole officer. Brief accounts appeared in small articles in both papers. I didn’t call George. He could read as well as I could. Petitions for peace bonds were filed against Maureen Finnerty. And the ultimate war in Heaven was postponed.
The battlefield was drenched again by the autumn rains, and even the extortionists fled the school yard. I resolved that we should avoid the fight. Nuala did not need the publicity of a school yard fight. I would accomplish nothing by cracking a few junior high school heads
.
Mike Casey called me to report that one of Martin McGurn’s sons had married a woman named McGowan back in the nineteen sixties. They had moved out of Chicago and no one knew where they were. Could she have been a descendant of Joey McGowan? And would some other descendant have seen Finnbar Burke at Ridgemoor and plotted revenge? Unlikely and irrational, but the First Battle of St. Joe’s had been the same thing. Please God, none of our kids would be involved in the second battle, to say nothing of my wife.
15
THE SMALLPOX epidemic that hit Chicago shortly after the cholera epidemic was not the worst in the city’s history. To some extent it was controlled by the gradual increase in inoculations, though most Chicagoans were not inoculated. Also those who had survived earlier epidemics of both variola major and variola minor (60 percent of the former and 90 percent of the latter) were likely to be immune.
At the meetings of the Board of Health, Angela had spoken strongly in favor of universal inoculation, which would destroy the disease before it could wreak its havoc. The enormous cost of inoculating everyone in Chicago made that strategy “impracticable,” as one of the businessmen on the board argued. “Where would we get the money?”
“Inoculate the schoolchildren,” Angela argued. “That way we would gradually eliminate it from the population.”
“Taxes are too high as it is.”
“What is the cost to the city of the deaths of tens of thousands of people?”
“Most of the people who will die are not productive citizens.”
“Many of them work very hard.”
“Immigrants can always be replaced by other immigrants. There is a constant supply of Eastern and Southern Europeans.”
“You didn’t say Irish. I thank you for the restraint.”
Silence around the table.
“What are we to do then?”
“We could quarantine them in a pesthouse.”
“Lock them up in a prison?”
“Angela, what choice do we have?”
“It would certainly save many lives.”
“And cost some too, as the police herd into quarantine those who were not infected.”
Irish Tweed Page 16
