The Banished Children of Eve

by Peter Quinn

  “The boy’s had enough!” Mulcahey cried, but no one paid any attention. The parade stopped again. The crowd circled around Squirt. Mulcahey forced his way through. Squirt was directly at his feet. The boy seemed to have regained consciousness, his eyes flashing for an instant. He looked up and saw Mulcahey. A single word formed on his lips: Jack.

  There was a gale of laughter and cheers as a boy opened his fly and urinated on Squirt’s legs. A woman rushed out of the circle with a broken bottle and stabbed Squirt in the face. The crowd surged ahead and swept Mulcahey aside. Some men hauled Squirt over to a lamppost, and the next thing Mulcahey saw was Squirt’s small, naked body rising above the heads of the crowd. It hung there limply, even when a burning torch was held beneath the feet.

  Mulcahey turned and ran and didn’t stop until he reached Tom Kingsland’s. He ordered his own bottle and sat alone in a booth. He had it half drunk when he remembered the glow he had seen around Squirt’s head several months before. Been so long ago. It had never happened like this before, the delay between the appearance of the light and death’s arrival, never been more than a day or so. For a few moments it brought him comfort to think that what had happened to Squirt was foreordained and couldn’t have been altered by anyone, no matter what they did, but when the image of Squirt’s face lying in the street came back to him, the memory of his own name on Squirt’s lips, Mulcahey started to cry, and the rest of the bottle couldn’t make him stop.

  VI

  JIMMY DUNNE watched from the lobby of the New England Hotel as the dregs of the Five Points trickled down Bayard Street, the kind usually content to prey on one another, murdering for the sake of a drink or a bed or because the urge came upon them. One character in a wide Panama and a scarf about his neck walked down the middle of the street, a hunting knife prominently displayed in his belt in the style of a frontiersman in a Bowery melodrama. Seemed to Dunne the very image of Piker Haggerty. But couldn’t be, not unless the Tombs itself was giving up its dead. Piker had slit his own throat the night before he was scheduled to be hanged. He had confessed to killing a saloonkeeper in the course of a robbery. “The fish insulted me,” Piker had told the court. “Wouldn’t have stabbed him otherwise.”

  “You not only stabbed him, Mr. Haggerty,” the judge said. “You slaughtered him in the manner of a butcher in an abattoir.”

  “I teach a man a lesson, he learns it for sure,” Piker replied.

  Piker confessed to five other murders while he was awaiting execution. Rumor had it that the priest who heard his last confession was never the same. A great throng of celebrants gathered outside the Tombs in the hours before Piker was to be hanged, and there was a near riot when they were brought the news that he had taken his own life.

  Piker’s double spotted Dunne in the window of the hotel and motioned for him to come out. Dunne hesitated a moment, then went into the street.

  “Piker?” Dunne said.

  “None other.” Piker lifted his hat, revealing the pointed skull that had given him his nickname.

  “I thought you was dead.”

  “That’s what you was supposed to think!” Piker smiled. He pulled open his scarf. Across his neck was a jagged, gruesome scar. “Did it with a sharpened spoon. Doctor was paid afore to pronounce me dead. Undertaker too. Whisked me out and stitched me good as new. Been lying low since, but seems the time has come to settle some accounts!” He retied his scarf.

  Piker insisted that Dunne accompany him across the street for a drink, and they reminisced about the old days, when the Dead Rabbits held sway, and how John Morrissey had chosen Piker as a boy suited for a career in politics. Dunne kept an eye on the blade in Piker’s belt, but death, though faked, seemed to have softened Piker somewhat. He said that once he took care of those who had betrayed him to the Metropolitans, he would leave New York, head west, and start over.

  When Piker departed, Dunne went back to the hotel bar and drank sarsaparilla. The windows stayed shuttered all day. Only residents of the hotel were admitted, and they came and went trading the wildest sort of rumors, Confederate ships in the harbor, the water supply poisoned, the railroads seized and Rebel troops riding them down from Canada. Only thing certain was that the situation was out of hand. Didn’t have to search for some remembered advice from Dandy Dan to know it was a day to stay low, don’t risk a cracked head or a stray bullet from some panic-stricken militiaman. The condition of the streets confirmed the decision Dunne had already reached: A visit to Bedford’s could wait until tomorrow.

  Dunne went to sleep in his room in the afternoon and didn’t awake until it was dark. In the distance was the sound of gunfire, like the pop of fireworks. The hot, lifeless air was laced with the smell of smoke. He heard people going to the roof, and went upstairs to join them. To the east, along Roosevelt Street, several buildings were in flames, and it seemed the entire block might go up. Farther in that direction, on Water Street, there were more fires. South, on the New Bowery, a single building was burning out of control. North, scattered around the city, were what looked like large fires. Dunne saw Eliza, Mulcahey’s mistress, there, but she stood apart, in a corner, and went below without a word to anyone.

  “Thank God there’s no wind,” the man next to Dunne said, “or the whole city would go up.” A short while later there was thunder and lightning and a great downpour that dampened the fires and drove everyone downstairs.

  The next morning, Dunne set out to scout Bedford’s. There were no streetcars or coaches running, and the air was still thick with the scent of wet smoke, but except for the occasional rumble of what could only be artillery, he encountered few indications of any disturbance. It wasn’t until he neared Sixth Avenue that he saw bands of toughs peering into shops, and a block away from Bedford’s he found the first signs of a riot, broken bottles and bricks strewn around, two bodies stretched out and motionless—it was hard to tell if they were dead or just unconscious. A longshoreman in a thick woolen shirt, his baling hook hanging from his belt, went from house to house, peering beneath the stoops. He almost knocked into Dunne. “We routed ’em!” he said with glee. “They ran outta here like a pack of hares!”

  A dozen or so people converged on Dunne. At their head was a stout woman with a flushed face. She smelled of fish and held a gutting knife in her hand. “The booly dogs left with their tails between their legs,” she said. “Some of ’em are hidin’ hereabouts.”

  “Maybe you’d like to help us look for ’em,” a boy said.

  “Or maybe you’d like to make a donation to the cause,” the longshoreman said.

  Dunne unbuttoned his jacket and, making the pretense of looking for money, pulled a small revolver out of his pocket. “Seems I don’t have a penny on me,” he said. “Sorry, boys.” He walked straight ahead. They let him pass. Turning the corner onto Bedford’s block, Dunne slowed his step. At the west end, several hundred people were milling about. Dunne stopped at the bottom of Bedford’s stoop. The small knot of people he had encountered at the east end had quickly grown to a hundred. Both ends of the street were now blocked. He hesitated a moment. Maybe he should keep walking, try to blend in.

  The curtain in the window by the door parted. In an instant, Margaret opened the door. “Oh, come in, come in,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re here. It’s like the answer to a prayer!”

  He went up the stairs. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in. Standing right in front of him was the cook, a frying pan in one hand, a meat cleaver in the other. “Stay right there,” Miss Kerrigan said. “Don’t come an inch farther.”

  “It’s the gas man,” Margaret said. “He’s a friend.”

  “If he’s a friend, let him go summon the police.”

  “O God, Jimmy,” Margaret said, “it’s been like a nightmare since yesterday morning, when Mr. Bedford left for Long Branch. Seemed just a normal day till the grocer came with his delivery and told us to stay inside and lock the doors. Said there was a riot started uptown over the draft, but we har
dly gave it a thought till Mr. Ward come back from visiting a picture gallery and his clothes is all ripped and there’s blood on his face and he tells us he’s lucky to be alive, that he was set upon by a gang of thugs who thought he was Horace Greeley. Poor man has been in the most fearful upset ever since, and then this morning these people begin showing up right outside the house cursing Horace Greeley and screaming for him to come out. The neighbors summoned the police, and a force of them appeared, and it seemed everything was going to be all right when suddenly there’s a fearful noise, like wild Indians is on the loose, and the next thing the police is scattered and defeated and running for their lives.”

  “You’ve all got to get out of this house,” Dunne said.

  “I’m not movin’,” the cook said.

  “Where’s Ward?”

  “Upstairs, in his room,” Margaret said.

  “You two go out the back, over the fence to the neighbors. I’ll bring the old man down and follow in a minute.” Dunne eyed the door to the library. Would have the safe opened in no time. See if Bedford had taken it all to Long Branch or wherever he was gone to.

  “It’s not only Mr. Ward,” Margaret said. “There’s someone else. He’s badly hurt.” She led Dunne through the dining room and the pantry down into the cellar, to a storage room next to the kitchen. Lying on the floor was a man wrapped in a blanket, with a pillow beneath his head. Margaret knelt beside him and gently pulled back the blanket. The man wore the uniform of a Metropolitan. It was torn and tattered. His face was badly bruised, his nose crushed.

  “We found him neath the stoop,” Margaret said. “He’d been given a terrible beating.”

  “Bloody animals was searchin’ for him like hungry dogs,” the cook said.

  “He’s safe here,” Dunne said. “Now go. I’ll bring down the old man.”

  Margaret stood. In a slow, deliberate way she said, “If this man stays, so do I.”

  “Aye,” the cook said. “We’ll stay together and defend this house!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Dunne said, “help me move him.”

  The Metropolitan was a large man, and they had trouble lifting him. Dunne brought a chair from the kitchen, and they propped him up in it. Despite the battered condition of the face, Dunne was sure he recognized him. Dunne stood him up and threw him over his shoulder, staggering under the weight. Now he remembered: last April, during the trouble on the docks. Sergeant O’Donnell, the strutting leader of the Metropolitans, who promised him a taste of the locust stick if they ever met again.

  “Get the door,” he said to the cook.

  “I’ll go keep a watch on Mr. Ward,” Margaret said, and ran out before anyone could say a word.

  Dunne went to the back fence and dropped O’Donnell beside it.

  “In the name of Jesus, be more gentle with him,” the cook said.

  “Climb over to the other side,” Dunne said.

  She stood for a moment, and looked at him. “Don’t you touch a thing in that house, do you hear!”

  He formed his hands into a stirrup. “I’ll give you a boost,” he said. She put her foot in his hands and went over with ease. He shouldered the policeman again and lifted him to the top of the fence. Some neighbors ran out and helped the cook lower him down.

  Dunne dropped back to the ground, went through the kitchen and back upstairs. Outside the mob was chanting the name of Horace Greeley. He went straight into the library. The Federal Certified All-Security Safe was in the corner. He took the claw out of the inner pocket of his pants. He put his ear on the door and listened to the tumbler. Trick was to get within a few numbers, slip the claw in, and pry.

  Margaret was calling from above, “Jimmy, are you there? Is that you, Jimmy?”

  A brick crashed through the front window, followed by a barrage that tore the curtains from their rods. The whole house echoed with a rhythmic pounding and the front door tore from its hinges and crashed to the floor. Dunne gave the safe one last try. It didn’t budge. He bolted up the stairs. She was peering over the banister, her hair hanging over her shoulders. She took him by the hand down the hall to a bedroom in the rear. A plump old white-haired man with a bandaged face lay on the bed. His eyes were open, but he seemed stunned and senseless.

  “I can’t get him to move,” Margaret said.

  Dunne heaved him over his shoulder. After O’Donnell, the old man seemed as light as a child. “How do we get to the roof?”

  “There’s a ladder beside my bedroom door.”

  They ran to the top floor. A ladder attached to the wall led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Dunne adjusted the load on his shoulder and took out his revolver. He handed it to her. “Go up and keep us covered. Anyone comes in the way, use it on them.”

  She climbed up, opened the trapdoor, and disappeared onto the roof. Her face peeked over the edge. “It’s all clear,” she said.

  Dunne climbed up, holding tight to the old man. He reached the top, and Margaret helped pull the old man onto the roof. Dunne was about to climb out himself when someone grabbed his legs and pulled so hard he almost fell backward. He held on to the ladder and kicked. For an instant he was free. He heaved himself up, then his legs were snared again. He kicked again, but this time he couldn’t break loose. He felt the sharp, hot pain of someone biting into his calf. Margaret grasped Dunne under the shoulders.

  “Use the gun!” he yelled.

  She took it from her waistband and held it in her hands, staring at it.

  The biting stopped, but the weight around his legs was loosening his grip. “Use the Goddamn gun!”

  She pointed it over his shoulder, down into the darkness, looked away, and pulled the trigger. It thundered in Dunne’s ears. The drag on his legs disappeared. He climbed out and resettled the old man on his shoulder. They ran across to the roof of the next building. Dunne rested the old man against the chimney. Margaret handed him the gun. She was shaking.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

  He ran to the ledge. Down below, the street was filled with people exiting the house with rugs, clothing, lamps, bedding, furniture. A fire had been lit, and they tossed on it whatever they didn’t want: a piano, books, portraits of men in white wigs. Four men came out with the safe and pushed it down the stairs. They worked on it with a sledgehammer and crowbar, broke it open, and stood back. Dunne could see that it was empty.

  VII

  “YOU’VE NOTHIN’ TO FEAR,” Cassidy said. “The rich man and the nigger should be worried, not the likes of you.”

  Mike Manning mumbled something neither Cassidy nor McSweeney could hear.

  “How’s that, Mike?” Cassidy said.

  Manning stood with his face by the corner of the shade that was drawn over the front window. He squinted from the slanted, unsparing sunlight. He walked back and sat beside Cassidy and McSweeney, his only customers, folded his arms, and set down his head. Had been like this for the whole time McSweeney and Cassidy were with him, well over an hour. They had banged on the window for ten minutes before he appeared.

  “Maybe he’s not there,” McSweeney had said.

  “And maybe the Pope’s not in Rome,” Cassidy had said, and kept knocking.

  Eventually the shade had parted a crack. Seeing who it was, Manning had let them in but hardly spoke a word; he had poured them drinks and stayed by the window, his skinball face half hidden in the shade.

  Cassidy patted Manning on the back. “If you’d like, we’ll help you board the window up.”

  Manning raised his head. “Little good it’ll do when the scum decides the time has come.”

  “You’ve got a right to your opinion,” Cassidy said. “But I tell you, Mike, it’d go better if you opened the place. The police has given the order to close up? So what? Little chance of seeing a Metropolitan in this vicinity today! But the people will wonder why your door is shut. Person could put the wrong meaning on it.”

  “The people?” Manning said. “The people is nothin’ but envious, je
alous scum. Knock a man’s head off, if he tries to raise it. A tribe of begrudgers. Bloody begrudgers. Forgive one of their own anything save success. That they never forgive.”

  “Words like that won’t help,” Cassidy said.

  Manning shrugged. He went back to the window. Cassidy suggested to McSweeney they go someplace livelier where they might hear what was happening in the city, whether today would prove a worthy successor to yesterday. They said good-bye to Manning, who said nothing in return as he locked the door behind them. They walked up Catherine Street. On the north side of the street, the Brooks Brothers store was closed and shuttered. They stopped at Shugrue’s Ale House, at the corner of Henry Street, which was packed with patrons enjoying the free drink. They were told that the battle was on again, especially in the Eighteenth Ward, on the East Side, and that on the West Side the crowds had taken control of the ferries. If the government was planning to send reinforcements, it would have to find another route.

  McSweeney excused himself and went out back to the privy. His bowels were acting up again. A terrible ordeal. Started yesterday, when he awoke sweating, head throbbing with pain, mouth so dry it was hard to swallow. Felt as if he might foul the bedding and stood to go outside, but he knew instantly he would never make it that far, end up shitting his pants, so he squatted over the pail he kept in the corner for his night piss, felt the stream of liquid pour out, heard the dull, ugly sound when it hit the metal bottom.

  “Jesus,” his niece had said when he lit the stove to boil water, “do you want to kill us with the heat?

  “My insides is acting up,” he had said. “Tea is the only thing will quiet them.”