Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  The men along the wall and in line nod their heads, doing their best not to look at Bill.

  “We learn. Learn about loyalty. I was loyal to Dinny once,” Bill proclaims and points to the bullet scar that streaks across his temple through his hair and over an ear. “Look what I got. My loyalty wasn’t appreciated. But I know now that I was the one that was wrong. I learned somethin’ important. . . About loyalty to Dinny Meehan. I made my mistakes an’ I own up to them now. I even shot a man for pullin’ a cat’s tail once. Ya think that little pussy appreciated my loyalty?”

  A few men snort through the nose at that, until Bill glances at them.

  “Nah,” he says. “But dogs? A dog’ll go to war for ya. So dogs it is. I need dog-men who bark and bite ‘cause it ain’t about who’s right or who’s wrong. There’s only one right, the right o’ conquest. Fuck all the rest. Nobody’s gonna give ya nothin’ in this world, an’ if ya ain’t got the sand to go an’ take it, then this is the time for ya to leave from here,” Bill ends and points an arm toward the street now. “G’ahead.”

  Darby feels his claim to a leadership role slip further away. Bill had come to him, after all. That must have meant that in some small way Bill trusted him.

  But now I’m thrown in line with all the rest, Darby turns his eyes away from Bill’s cold stare. Why haven’t I earned a spot as one of his lieutenants? What did I do wrong?

  He raises his eyes from the snowy ground to the gun pointed at him and calls out, “But no one’s gonna believe that, Bill. That he killt his own cousin to blame it on ya.”

  Bill angles his face down to Darby in the snow as Flynn pulls back the hammer. “Put him on his knees, tie his hands,” Bill commands. “Gather all the men around us in a circle so no one can see. Frankie Byrne! C’mere an’ help get the men in a circle. I saw’r ya a kill a man for me a couple years ago, ya’re my fourth lieutenant, understand?”

  “I do,” Byrne says obediently.

  What about me?

  As Flynn, Byrne and Richie Lonergan order the men out of formation and into a circle round the prisoner, Connors ties Darby’s hands behind his back and forces him to his knees.

  Looking toward the water, Darby sees the lighter-barge bob and yank slack from the mooring lines where four sailors stare back at him from its deck. But the men ordered to surround Darby come together in a circle and block the sailors from his view.

  “I just had a daughter,” Darby pleads. “Her name is Colleen. Colleen Rose Leighton.”

  “Then why don’ ya think about her before openin’ ya mouth?” Flynn responds as Connors ties a piece of cloth over Darby’s eyes.

  “She’s not even a day old,” Darby says, his vision blacked. “She needs me.”

  Darby hears the hammer of Bill’s Colt .45 caliber, which sounds heavier than the Army issue revolver Flynn has. Then he feels a nudge at the back of his head. The cold of the barrel thrusts a shiver through him as his teeth begin to chatter.

  That’s the same gun that killed Mickey Kane just a few hours ago, he realizes.

  “This is what we do to traitors,” Bill shouts.

  In the black, Darby hears Bill, but the words die off in his mind without piecing them together. Disoriented, he searches for Bill with his good ear. But without sight or the ability to hear in one ear, half-words linger in his head.

  I had such high hopes. The cruelty of it. Of everything. Six years in the shadows for a moment of light with my daughter.

  With his knees in the snow, moisture soaks through his trousers up to his hips. He searches with his fingers to loosen the knot that hold his hands behind his back, but all he can feel is his own forearm.

  Thoughts flash through Darby’s mind so quickly that it’s hard to make sense of them. He has a few visions of his childhood in London. Then how he was abandoned in Brooklyn when he was five years old with his little brother Pickles. They lived under a pier. All of those experiences will be lost forever. Gone to time and memory. Coohoo Cosgrave’s face comes to him. Coohoo taught Darby and Pickles to steal from ships in the middle of the night and run them through the sewers under Irishtown. The memories rush through him. There was a storm. A terrible storm and an upturned ferry in the East River in 1900. Then, Dinny Meehan appeared as the old-timers of Irishtown chanted of a prophecy. What does it all mean? Then into his mind comes an image of blood. Rushing out of a man’s stomach. Pickles had stabbed a man in Darby’s view. And then The Swede comes into his mind too, when he beat and banished Darby after Dinny was exonerated for murder in 1913. The memories are a confusion of time.

  They must mean something. They can’t just go into the unknown.

  Darby doesn’t remember what his mother looked like back in London. He doesn’t remember her telling him that she loved him or that he was a good boy. The only mother he ever had was his aunt Rose, but she left them to the streets of Brooklyn. Then there was his cousin Sadie, but she left him too, for Dinny Meehan. Darby searches for what he felt was missing in his life. But how do you search for something if you don’t know what it is?

  I’m tired of sifting through misery for an answer. Maybe I am ready to give up.

  He thinks again of Dinny Meehan. A noble and just leader. Dinny would never do something this cruel. Even if Dinny set men up, and had others killed, the reasons were always for the benefit of all the people he cared for in Irishtown and beyond. Not to make an example of his power to intimidate his own men. Bill would never follow Dinny’s lead. Dinny was always there to offer the one thing people like Darby never had; hope.

  That’s what’s missing, Darby realizes. That’s what I’ve been searching for; hope.

  He concludes then, finally, that he wants to be a father and cursed himself for leaving his fiancé and Colleen Rose at the hospital while he went out for drinks.

  All I need is hope, Darby thinks. Hope is all. And Bill Lovett, as crazy as it may seem, offers me hope. Hope to feed my family. I’d prefer Dinny Meehan over Bill Lovett, but Dinny would never have me. It wasn’t my fault Pickles tried to kill Dinny back then.

  Again his brother Pickles comes into his mind, Pickles?

  “Pickles!” Darby yells out desperately. “Pickles has a retrial! Pickles! In May o’ this year!”

  Darby cannot hear what the reaction is to his yelling his brother’s name aloud. Silence is the only response.

  Am I dead already?

  He can’t see his own breath, but he feels his wet and frozen legs and his hands tied behind. Then, the blindfold is ripped off.

  “What about Pickles?” Bill mumbles as Darby watches his lips.

  “I have to right the lie. The lie that changed my life. An’ yours and everybody’s! Pickles never killt Christie the Larrikin back in ’12. It was someone else, but the witness lied. She was bulled by The Swede an’ she lied on the stand. I have to fix it. I have to right the lie about my brother. I made my cousin Sadie pay for an attorney to get Pickles a new trial. To right the lie!” Darby throws the words out so quickly that it takes a moment for all to comprehend it. “Ya know what that means, Bill. If Pickles is released it means paroled soldiers for ya. A hundret soldiers. Maybe more. We can’t attack t’day, we don’ have enough men. We have what? Fifty? Even though the man an’ The Swede an’ Vincent are in the Poplar Street Jail, they still have more than a hundret men loyal to them up in Irishtown. If ya want to take the Dock Loaders’ Club, ya need more men. Ya need me.”

  “We will take the Dock Loaders’ Club t’day,” Bill waves his .45 round in the air. “We will take it t’day. That’s the whole purpose o’ this. I survived so that this could happen. I am come o’ the hope o’ the people. The fertile hope o’ the despairin’. Fate cannot be undermined. I am come of fate! I have risen! Yaz don’ even know what I been through to arrive at this moment, right now! Yaz got no idea,” Bill’s wild and woolly eyes turn to Darby. “That’s a cute story ya tell. A story that’d save ya life if true. But o’ course Pickles is way up in Sing Sing an’ can’t confirm it.” />
  “There’s no such thing as fate,” Darby shoots back. “A king isn’t born, he makes his own way. When we get the lie about my fam’ly exposed to the light o’ day, we will win Irishtown an’ ya will have domain over every one o’ the five main terminals from atop the Dock Loaders’ Club in Irishtown wit’ the truth empowerin’ ya. But we do not have the manpower to do it t’day, Bill. Listen to me for just a moment,” Darby turns on his knees in the snow. “Dead Reilly can confirm this story—”

  “Dead Reilly?” Non Connors squints incredulously. “Dinny’s lawyer that sent me up to the stir?”

  “Yeah, I hired him. He’s got no loyalty to the man. He’s a slave to the dime, that’s all—”

  Bill cuts in holding up fingers like a V, “Two things: First, stop callin’ him ‘the man.’ His name is Dinny Meehan, their code o’ silence means nothin’ to us. Second, ya hired Dead Reilly an’ made ya cousin Sadie Meehan, Dinny’s own wife, pay for it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bill looks at Darby and lowers the gun, then laughs so hard that he coughs and turns his back and bends down until he gags and retches up a red mass.

  Richie stands over Bill amidst the circle, “An’ ya’re a vet’ran too Bill.”

  “So what?” Bill struggles to say.

  “Ya’re a vet’ran,” Richie simply repeats himself until Abe Harms comes to his ear.

  “What are ya tellin’ him?” Bill loosely holds the gun in Abe’s direction. “Tell me what ya’re tellin’ him? Yeah you, ya fookin’ little mole of a man. I don’ know what’s worse about ya, the Jew side or the Hun side, ya fookin’ Jew-Hun. What are ya tellin’ my lieutenant?”

  Harms clears his throat. Self-conscious of his German accent, he keeps his eyes away from Bill’s, “You’re a veteran, Bill.”

  “What of it?”

  “That’s your edge,” Harms continues. “You’re a var hero. You even von a medal for your bravery against America’s enemy, Bill. If you show up vith guns at the Dock Loaders’ Club now, vhile Dinny’s in jail, they von’t know to respect you. The men you allow to live, they’ll haunt you for killing Mickey Kane. You’re a bull, Bill. But show them you’re uniform. Show them the medal your country honors you vith and they vill turn away from Meehan. And come to you. You don’t have to run down the hill like a crazy bull to fuck a cow. No Bill, valk down. Valk down and fuck them all.”

  Bill stares into the eyes of Harms, who looks away obediently. He laughs under his breath and clears his throat.

  With his hands still tied behind his back and on his knees in the snow, Darby speaks out, “Bill, name me the Fifth Lieutenant. You’ll need five dockbosses when we kill Meehan. I have proven my worth to you. Two years ago when Meehan made a deal wit’ the Black Hand and sent Sammy de Angelo to kill ya, I tackled him before he could put a bullet in ya head. I held him down when ya killt’ him an’ to this very day I can’t hear outta one ear because o’ it. My brother has paid the ultimate price for loyalty to ya, an’ my cousin was abducted by Meehan and betrothed to him in order to marry our fam’lies together. An’ me, I spent six long years in the shadows. Banished. I wasn’t even allowed to work wit’ ya down here in Red Hook, remember that? My success is tied to ya, Bill. None o’ us can move up unless ya win Irishtown. Now I’m here provin’ my loyalty to ya. I come to ya wit’ the gift o’ a hundret soldiers, Bill. I ask ya, name me Fifth Lieutenant. But more importantly, we all ask ya, all o’ us standin’ here in the freezin’ snow, what do ya have for those who are loyal to ya? What does it mean to be loyal to Bill Lovett? A bullet to the back o’ the head?”

  The men in the circle look from Darby on his knees, to Bill, who stands over him. They see that Bill is perturbed for having lost control. That he feels helpless and outwitted by a deaf fool who questions him. Begrudgingly, Bill waves with the back of his hand toward Darby, “Untie him.”

  Darby rubs at his wrists and comes to his feet. He loosens his shoulders and awaits an answer to his request.

  “Let me make one thing clear to all o’ yaz,” the waterfront gales blow over Bill’s pelt. “I don’ trust no one who I ain’t seen kill. We’re goin’ to war an’ we’re surrounded. Look around yaz. Black Hand to the east an’ to the south o’ us. White Hand to the north an’ we got our backs to the water. If ya ain’t killt someone for me, I don’ name ya as my lieutenant,” he looks defiantly toward Darby Leighton. “Ya wanna be my lieutenant? Kill Dinny Meehan, or The Swede, or Vincent Maher. Hell, kill that fookin’ Liam Garrity kid, I don’ care. Prove to me that ya’re loyal, like these men have.”

  Connors, Flynn, Richie Lonergan and Byrne stand behind Bill proudly.

  “Some men are valuable in other ways,” Darby exchanges a nod with Abe Harms.

  “A man can’t kill for me, he’s got no place as my lieutenant,” Lovett repeats, “Ya’re alive, Darby. Say a prayer or light a candle or somethin’, but shut ya fookin’ mouth up.”

  Bill suddenly looks away. Across the snowy street Darby finds what Bill sees; three women in dresses staring back at them.

  “Look at these savages,” Non Connors says.

  Flynn cackles, “Wish we could ride them into battle.”

  Grace White and Kit Carroll are gaudily-tinseled in second-hand, pleated gowns of worsted wool with discolored shirtwaists and ruffled, low-cut necklines to reveal discount jewelry. To keep warm they wear shawls over their buns along with imitation furs while their hemlines are wetted and sullied by the soot and grime of snow and street puddles.

  Flynn caws out a laugh and points with his lone arm toward Grace, “That one there could nourish an entire division wit’ them swolled utters.”

  Anna Lonergan walks in front of Grace and Kit to stare at Bill. The gown she wears is an off-white drop-waste dress, fitted to her slight curves with flares round her hips to accentuate them. She even bears makeup; a smokey orange-brown eyeshadow to bring out her eyes with rouge and red lipstick that offsets her thick fox-colored hair. And her skin, a marbled porcelain with a blend of milky shades.

  Strikingly gorgeous, Darby focuses on Anna who has always been known as a tomboy, until now. As he stares, a deviant breeze contrives to set her gown aflutter.

  When did she get so elegant?

  She turns her mouth and blinks her eyes like someone unsure of what they see, “Bill? Ya’re back?”

  “Back?” Kit blows cigarette smoke out the side of her mouth. “Regurgitated more like.”

  The last time Darby saw Anna was when the two of them had called up into Sadie Meehan’s window on Warren Street before the storm. It was her idea. In a rage she told him to take her to the Meehan brownstone when Dinny was arrested for the robbery at the Hanan shoe factory. And when they got there, Anna was wild with fury and berated Sadie from below. Then she picked up stones and broken cobbles and fired them at the windows. Eventually one hit the mark and went right through the window, raining glass on the sidewalk below.

  After that, she disappeared. Even her brother Richie didn’t know where she’d gone. Sadie had disappeared too, along with the funds she was giving Darby for the lawyer and Pickles’ retrial. Though he dare not bring that up to Bill.

  Darby steps from Anna’s path and notices the difference in her appearance. She even wears an elegantly fitted gown, but most telling is the crestfallen gaze of her. She stares at Bill in a seemingly distraught state made beautiful with the pouting bottom lip and the disbelief in her eyes at Bill Lovett’s resurrection.

  Round her finger is a ring made of leaves. Gold leaves. She strides past Darby with Bill in her eyes and a cold strength to her.

  “Looks nice from afar, but she’s far from nice,” Darby hears one of the men say about her.

  All eyes watch, but Bill’s pierce her. She stops in front of him and holds her palm behind her, motioning secretly to Grace and Kit to stay where they are.

  Of a sudden, Bill breaks through the circle of men and stomps through the snow to meet her. Face to face, they stop.

  “Welc
ome back Bill,” courage overcomes her shock, then she nods toward her father and her brother who stand with the rest before slowly raising her eyes up with a matter-of-fact assurance. Coming to her toes, she gently places her chest to his. “I’m eighteen now.”

  Bill stares dumbfounded at her as if he’d never seen a young woman before. His expression then changes to one of near desperation as if she were some creature of fantasy or a goddess.

  “Bill?” She snaps him to attention. “What happened to Mickey Kane?”

  He grunts and turns away from her, then back toward the pierhouse on the water, “Went for a swim.”

  Anna swallows and shifts her feet in the snow.

  “Non?” Bill calls out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Get the men to work. That lighter-barge is waitin’ to be unloaded.”

  “Come wit’ me,” Bill grabs an arm and marches Anna away from the men. He looks behind and catches eyes with Darby. “C’mere,” Bill motions to him. “The two o’ yaz worked together right?”

  Darby looks past Bill into Anna’s eyes, “We did.”

  Bill stumbles through the snow and whips Anna round and again searches her up and down with wild eyes, leaving her confused. With an index finger Bill opens her coat and slowly pushes it off her shoulder. It crumples in the snow behind her as she looks up again with the same eyes as her brother, yet hers are filled with blue flames that flick back and forth. Bill undoes the brown shawl that covers her head, freeing her hair to swirl in the wind like red tentacles in the white backdrop.

  Darby stares until she glares back at him, weary of his eyes on her. Yet all the men behind them fixate on the red beauty in the snowy scene as if their leader’s ascension is now complete by a royal pairing with this crimson wife.

  “Ya goin’ somewhere?” Bill asks. “Why ya all dressed to the nines for?”

  Anna swallows again and screws her face up to appear innocent of any emotion, “I’m here for ya, Bill.”