Ride to Valor

by David Robbins

James had never been in a fight. Not a real one. He’d wrestled and roughhoused, but he’d never been out to hurt anyone, and no one had been out to hurt him. Orlan hit him in the gut so hard, his whole body exploded with pain, and he doubled over, his head swimming. Orlan gripped the front of his shirt and the next thing he knew, he was flung onto his hands and knees.

  James heard gruff laughter. His vision cleared, and he raised his head. He was ringed by Blue Shirts.

  “On your feet. I’m not done.”

  “I just want to see Coil,” James said.

  “Coil, Coil, Coil,” Orlan said in his mincing way. “Sweet on him, are you?”

  “What?” James said.

  “On your damn feet. You’re making me mad and you don’t want to be doing that.” Without warning he drew back his foot.

  James tried to throw himself to one side, but he was too slow. A boot caught him in the ribs and more agony burst in his chest. He was knocked onto his side, and he clutched himself. It took every ounce of will he had not to cry.

  “Look at him.” Orlan paraded for the others. “A damned sissy boy is what he is.”

  “Stomp him.”

  “Beat him good.”

  “Make him crawl.”

  Orlan bent so his face was close to James’s. “Hear that, brat? They’re out for blood. If you’re not a Blue Shirt, you’re an enemy.” He grabbed James’s hair. “What will it be first? A black eye or a bloody mouth?”

  Deep inside James, something snapped. He had been mad before but never mad like this. Never so furious that he lost control. With an inarticulate snarl of rage and hurt, he swung his right fist and caught Orlan full on the lips. Blood spurted, and Orlan cried out and stepped back, and James heaved up and went after him. He swung in a blind blur, fist after hard fist, hitting Orlan’s moon of a face. Cartilage crunched and wet drops spattered him. As in a haze he saw Orlan stagger back, saw scarlet everywhere. He kept on hitting. A blow glanced off his temple. Another seared his side. Orlan had recovered from his initial shock and was fighting back.

  James tried to bring the bigger boy down. He was big for his age, but he wasn’t big enough. Suddenly his head imploded, and the sky and the ground changed places. He was on his back, overcome by nausea, struggling for breath.

  Above him loomed a crimson block of wrath. “Goddamn you,” Orlan husked, and spat a gob of blood. “Goddamn if I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Do it!” someone yipped.

  “Cut him!” a second yelled.

  Orlan reached behind him and when his hand reappeared, he held a knife. He wagged it so the blade gleamed. His bloody lips curled. “This will teach you to bother the Blue Shirts.” He went to lunge but glanced up sharply.

  James realized the other boys had gone silent. They were all looking toward the barbershop. He twisted his neck.

  Coil filled the doorway, and fire danced in his eyes. When he came toward them, he moved with the menacing grace of a tawny panther. He looked down at James and then at Orlan. “I told you to leave him be.”

  “I can do as I please,” Orlan said.

  “I asked him here,” Coil said quietly. “To put him up as a Blue Shirt.”

  “He’s not one of us yet. And until he is, he’s fair game.”

  Coil’s hand came from behind him, and he was holding a knife of his own. “You did this on purpose. You’ve pushed and you’ve pushed and now you’ll get your wish.”

  “Hold on,” said a boy who shouldered through the ring. “A Blue never fights a brother Blue.”

  “Unless it’s to challenge the leader,” Coil said. “That’s what this is about.”

  The same boy turned to Orlan. “Is this true? You’re laying claim?”

  “I have the right,” Orlan said.

  “Any of us does,” the boy replied. “But Coileanin has been the best we’ve ever had. Only a fool would want to take his place.”

  “I’ll remember you said that when I’m on top,” Orlan said.

  Coil reached down with his free hand and yanked James to his feet. “Out of the way. We’ll talk after.”

  “You’re awful confident,” Orlan said.

  “I’m awful good,” Coil answered, and was on the heavier boy in a flash of motion.

  Most of the others backed quickly away. Amazement rooted James. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing: a real, honest-to-God knife fight.

  Coil thrust and Orlan sidestepped. Orlan stabbed and Coil backpedaled. For all his bulk, Orlan had fast hands. But Coil was incredibly quick and it was apparent within seconds that Orlan stood little to no chance. Orlan showed no fear, though, as Coil forced him back. When Orlan had retreated to within a few paces of the fence, he set himself and stubbornly held his ground. He was nicked on the arm. He received a cut on the cheek. Beads of sweat broke out on his face.

  “We should stop them,” a Blue Shirt said.

  “A challenge is to the death,” said another.

  It hadn’t occurred to James that either would die.

  A rock caught his eye, and he scooped it up. None of the Blue Shirts were paying attention to him, so it was safe to say they were as surprised as Orlan when James threw the rock with all his strength and it struck Orlan on the side of his head below the ear. Orlan howled and staggered and his knife arm drooped. Instantly, Coil flicked his blade. Orlan howled a second time as blood welled, and his knife landed at his feet.

  Everyone froze, Orlan in dread, Coil with his knife poised, the rest of the Blue Shirts in anticipation of the life about to be taken.

  “Finish him!” someone hollered, and others echoed his sentiment.

  Coil touched the tip of his blade to Orlan’s throat.

  James’s breath caught in his own. He was about to see someone slain. His mother would say it was terrible and he should look away, but he found it exciting, and couldn’t.

  Orlan was trembling. He poured sweat, and licked his thick lips. “What are you waiting for?” he croaked.

  Coil slowly lowered his arm. “I take your life now, some will think I didn’t take it fairly.” He glanced at James.

  “I had to,” James said.

  “What, then?” another asked. “He challenged you, didn’t he?”

  “I might be making a mistake, but I choose another punishment,” Coil said. “We banish him.”

  “No,” Orlan said.

  Coil gestured with his knife. “Take off your shirt. You no longer have the right to wear it. From here on out, you’re as much an enemy as the Swamp Angels or the Dead Rabbits.”

  “Not this,” Orlan said, his cuts forgotten as he looked in appeal at the others. “I’d rather die than this.”

  “Your shirt,” Coil said again, his tone brooking no argument, and several of the other boys moved in, knives in their hands.

  “You heard him,” said a tall boy with flaxen hair.

  “You never did know when to keep your big mouth shut, Orlan,” remarked a companion with eyes as black as night.

  Not a single face mirrored sympathy. Orlan flushed and swore and threw his high hat to the ground. He jerked and tugged at his shirt and peeled it up over his bulk and cast the shirt on the ground, too. “There.”

  Coil bobbed his head at a gate in the back fence. “You brought this on yourself. Off you go. And keep in mind if you make trouble you won’t be spared a second time.”

  They all watched as Orlan went to the gate and wrenched it open. He turned to glare and for a few seconds his hate-filled eyes lingered on James. Then the gate slammed, and he was gone.

  Coil turned. His own features were hard as flint, and there was a savage timbre to his tone as he said, “What in the hell did you think you were doing, throwing that rock?”

  “It was because of me,” James said. “I had to do something.”

  “Have I made a mistake about you?” Coil said.

  “I didn’t want to be to blamed for one of you dying,” James said. “Not even him.”

  “You missed the whole point,” Co
il said, and cursed.

  “What point?” James asked.

  It wasn’t Coil who answered, it was the flaxen-haired boy.

  “Damn you, kid. Orlan has done nothing but make trouble for Coil. But he never pushed it all the way, never gave Coil cause to put an end to him until now.”

  “And you went and spoiled it,” said the black-eyed Blue Shirt. He took a step, a double-edged dagger gleaming in his hand.

  “No,” Coil said. He sighed and replaced his knife in the sheath at the small of his back. “Listen to me. All of you. Doyle, here, didn’t know of the bad blood between Orlan and me. And he didn’t want a Blue Shirt to die on his account.” He paused. “What’s our most important rule?” he said, and pointed at the flaxen-haired boy. “Devlin?”

  “We look after our own, always and ever.”

  “All well and good,” said the black-eyed boy. “But he still butted in when he shouldn’t.”

  “He’s not one of us yet, Mick,” Coil said. “The rules don’t apply to him.” He looked at all of them. “In a way we should thank him. We’ve gotten rid of a troublemaker. Orlan would have played his hand sooner or later and I’d rather it was now than someday when my back was turned.”

  Talk broke out. From the gist, James gathered that most of the Blue Shirts agreed with their leader.

  “So now,” Coil said. “On to why he’s here. I’m putting him up to wear the shirt.”

  A change came over them. They all looked solemnly at James, taking his measure.

  “You speak for him?” Devlin said.

  “I do,” Coil said.

  “You’ll teach him the rules?”

  “I will.”

  “You’ll learn him all our ways?”

  “From first to last.”

  Devlin nodded and turned to James. “Now you, Doyle. Is it your intention to be a Blue Shirt?”

  James hadn’t come here for that. He’d remembered Coil saying once that if he was a Blue Shirt, he’d have money, and he’d wanted to ask about it, and maybe then he would join. But now, after all that happened, to say no would be like a slap to their face. He heard himself say, “I do.”

  “You’ll be true to the shirt and all it stands for?”

  “I will,” James said, although he wasn’t sure what that involved.

  “You understand that once you are one of us, you are a Blue Shirt until the day you die?”

  James hesitated. He hadn’t counted on any of this. Finally he said, “I do.”

  5

  James lied to his mother. He told her he was going out to look for work. Each morning he’d be up and dressed and as soon as breakfast was over he was out the door. He’d meet Coil at the lot in back of the barbershop, and off they’d go, usually with five or six others.

  The first day, James asked why they had to come, and Coil pointed at a boy named Nally. “Tell him the rule.”

  “Three or more always unless it can’t be helped, buachaill ,” Nally recited.

  “Strength in numbers—don’t you see?” Mick said.

  “You’ve got to remember always,” Coil said, “that once you don the blue, you’re fair game for every other gang there is, and anyone else who hates us.”

  “You’re a walking target, is what you are,” Devlin said.

  “And that’s no mistake.”

  By the end of the first week, James was painfully aware of several things. First, where he thought he knew the Five Points from walks with his mother and father, he didn’t know the area at all. His parents had taken him to only certain parts, the better parts, the safer parts, parts that didn’t portray a true portrait of life in Five Points.

  It was a slum. He’d often heard that word but never fully understood what that implied. A slum was a vile place, reeking of filth and garbage and worse, the buildings in such poor condition that those who lived in them froze in the winter and sweltered in the summer. There were so many people that it was a wonder the buildings didn’t burst. It wasn’t uncommon to have twenty or more crammed into apartments barely big enough for four.

  The landlords didn’t care that there was no heat. They didn’t care that the walls were paper-thin. Or that cockroaches and bedbugs and rats and other vermin afflicted the tenants. The landlords didn’t care about anything except the money they were due.

  That was the crux of it, James soon learned. Money, or rather, the lack thereof. In the Five Points poverty reigned. It was the hole into which the city’s poor had been poured and left to rot. It was a blight hidden from the well-to-do so that by avoiding Five Points, those with money and means need not be disturbed by the sight of those without.

  Crime was rampant. James would never have guessed, so well had his parents protected him, but murder and rape and beatings were epidemic. So was disease. Between the violence and the sickness, it was a feat for a child to outlive childhood.

  From Coil, James learned something of the district’s history. Five Points had gotten its start decades ago with an influx of Irish fleeing the potato famine and the arrival of blacks tasting their newfound freedom. The two didn’t mix well, and blood was spilled. Then the poor of other countries streamed in to what the politicians called a great melting pot, but those who lived there called a terrible hell.

  Money became a god, and to earn it people would do anything. Some sold their bodies. Some sold their children into indentured bondage. Some did things more vile.

  Supposedly, control of the Five Points rested in the hands of the politicians. But many of the politicians were put up and backed by gangs. As Coil explained it: “Many of the gangs are political. We’re not. The councilmen and their cronies are yapping mouths who dole out jobs to the gangs that back them, but we don’t need that. We make it on our own.”

  Each gang controlled a territory. The larger gangs had the biggest slices of the pie, but each protected its own with blood if need be. They took money from businesses for protection, and money from prostitutes for the right to walk their streets, and from footpads and others. Thievery was like the air; it was everywhere.

  James’s mother and father taught him that stealing was wrong. It bothered him, at first, that the Blue Shirts did so much of it. It bothered him even more when he was informed that he must steal his share.

  Coil caught his reaction and said simply, “What?”

  “I’ve never stolen anything,” James admitted, at which Mick and others laughed.

  “Then it’s time you learned how,” Coil said, and led him to Chatham Square.

  When James was younger his parents often took him there as a treat. There were few open areas in Five Points. Space was too precious to be used for anything but buildings. Chatham Square was where wares were sold and ladies in gaudy dresses paraded and the gangs mixed without bloodshed. It was neutral ground, the one spot in all of Five Points that could make that claim.

  James was conscious of furtive stares. Gangs in full dress were always conspicuous. The Blue Shirts had their bright blue, the Bowery Boys had their hats, the Dead Rabbits their rabbit fur, the Swamp Angels their knee-high boots. He felt slightly out of place being with the Blue Shirts but not wearing one. They strolled along an aisle lined by booths. Coil, Devlin, Mick, and the rest had an air about them that made James think of cats looking for mice to play with. Coil leaned against a booth wall and hooked his thumbs in his suspenders and eyed the passersby.

  “Pay attention,” Mick said.

  A well-dressed couple approached, a middle-aged man and woman in fine clothes, walking arm in arm.

  “See there,” Devlin said, and nudged James. “Come to gawk at the animals, they have.”

  “The what?”

  “At us, damn you,” Devlin said curtly. “Look at them close. They’re from outside the Points. They’re here to sneer and laugh behind our backs.”

  “They would do that?”

  Mick swore and pocked James hard with a finger. “Where the hell have you been? Living under a rock? Those who have look down their noses at tho
se who don’t. To them we’re filth.”

  “Or entertainment,” Coil said, “which is no better.” He suddenly warned, “Quiet now.”

  The prosperous couple went by, the woman darting a look, her eyes crinkling with amusement.

  To James’s consternation, Coil grabbed him by the arm and fell in a few paces behind them.

  “What are we doing?” James whispered.

  “We’re about to pick a pocket.” Coil grinned and winked. “Be careful you’re not shot.”

  His parents used to warn James about pickpockets. They were common enough. A plague, his father called them. A lot of them were nippers, small boys and girls, quick and fleet of foot. Men that could afford them bought money belts and wore the belts under their shirts so the pickpockets couldn’t get at them. Women learned not to carry money in their purses but in small pouches concealed on their person. “But what if we’re caught?”

  “If we are, it will just be too bad for them.” Coil patted the small of his back. He was intently watching the pair while pretending not to. He would turn his head to the side as if admiring wares in a booth, but he never took his eyes off them.

  Panic gnawed at James’s marrow. Since he was old enough to toddle, his parents had impressed on him that he should always be nice, that he must never, ever hurt anyone, that hurting was bad, that stealing was bad, that to kill was unthinkable, the most heinous of acts. Suddenly he was aware that Coil was staring at him.

  “Listen to me, Doyle. I like you. I think you have the makings. But you have to grow up.”

  “Grow up how?” James said.

  “Put away your childish notions. It’s you against the rest of the world, and the sooner you get that through your head, the better off you’ll be.”

  “My mother says—”

  Coil held up a hand. “Stop right there. I won’t mock you for bringing her up as some of the others would. Mother’s boy, they’d say. My own mother was a fine lady, and I have fond memories of her.” He resumed watching the couple. “But we have to cut the apron strings. They make us weak and in this world the weak are eaten by the strong.”

  “I don’t want to be weak,” James said.