“Yeah,” Thos pops his lapel to obscure Frank’s view. “When the nun saw me she said I scared her half to death, twice.”
Frank looks at him confusedly, so Thos changes course, “What did ya hear about ya brother?”
“Which one, Darby or Pickles?”
“Either.”
“Well, it’s true what yu ’eard about Pickles, ’e’s got a retrial for the Maroney murder. ’Ere’s the funny part, me ova bruva Darby got me cousin Sadie to pay for the attorney. Wild, innit? Well Darby’s a plonker, yu know that yeah? But he’s come out into the light after all them years in the shadows, I s’pose. Like Darby, a lotta gormless muppets ‘ave turned to Bill Lovett. I ‘ear Bill’s got more than fifty men an’ a brood o’ wild dogs supportin’ ‘is claim for King o’ Irishtown. Bill ‘as always been known to love animals, yu know.”
Thos rubs a thumb across his nose, “So does a butcher.”
“The word is Pickles promises Bill a hundred scofflaw soldiers if ‘e gets exonerated in the retrial.”
“Interestin’, that’d give Bill an edge.”
“An’ makes me bruva Darby’s role important.”
The conductor of a locomotive nods toward Frank as the train rounds the freight tracks into the brick building from the street.
The sound of wet metal wheels scraping against the rails causes Frank to speak louder, “Dark days loom down Brooklyn way. I’m glad Dinny sent me away. ’E was always good to me when I managed the Kirkman Soap Fact’ry, Dinny was. Good to me wife Celia too. Good man, Dinny Meehan is. But for what I done; speakin’ wif the eighty-sixt Darby. . . Dinny let me off light. Let me leave Brooklyn on the quiet. I still feel bad about it. What’s wrong wif me? Why do I still feel bad for double-crossin’ Dinny?”
“Those are two very different questions,” Thos answers. “Dinny makes exceptions for fam’ly matters. Fam’ly makes a big difference when it comes to the White Hand’s code o’ silence.”
“Bill Lovett wouldn’t’ve let me off light. It’s touts for clouts in Brooklyn, but I got lucky,” Frank smiles and taps Thos on the shoulder. “Yu gonna back Meehan, aren’t yu? Yu sound like yu put respect on ‘im.”
“If respect won wars, mothers would rule the world. How did Darby get Sadie to pay the legal fees for Pickles’ new trial? Why would she do that?”
“That’s what’s eatin’ me up too,” Frank scratches a clean-shaven chin.
He knows but won’t tell me. Darby must be blackmailing her. But with what?
Thos nibbles at the edges to get more information, “Is she still in hidin’, Sadie?”
“Yeah I s’pose so. . . I ‘aven’t spoken wif ‘er though,” Frank looks up and to the right.
“I didn’ ask if ya had,” Thos shoots him hunter’s eyes, yellow and cruel.
He’s lying, he definitely has spoken with her recently.
Frank clears his throat and changes the topic, “I ‘eard Tanner Smif bailed Dinny out. Ya ‘eard that, Thos?”
“Yeah,” he groans at Frank.
Another of Thos’s informants let him in on that one, Henry Browne.
“An’ now Tanner’s in the inner circle o’ the White ‘and, true innit?”
I wish you would tell me something I don’t know, that’s what I pay you for.
Frank continues, “That must complicate things, eh? Did ya call the Blood Feud on Tanner before yu knew ‘e was in Dinny’s inner circle?”
“That don’ matter. The business between Tanner an’ I goes back to 1916 when he tried to muscle me to get into the ILA. What happened back then can’t be smoothed out. It’s blood an’ only blood’s gonna solve it.”
“Well now that ya proclaimed a Blood Feud, someone’s gonna die. I got me money on Thos Carmody, though,” Frank comes in closer for a whisper. “I got somethin’ yu can use, Thos. Yu’re gonna like this one. Word is Tanner Smif is in deep wit’ a shylock ‘ere in Man’attan.”
“The Dropper? Or Johnny Spanish?” Thos asks.
Frank smiles, “Spanish. They always called ya Quick Thos for good reason.”
So that’s how he got Dinny to take him back, Thos looks away in thought, then asks, “Wasn’t Johnny Spanish the fella that shot his pregnant wife an’ when the baby came out it was missin’ three fingers?”
“It is.”
Thos turns an eye up to Frank with the masonry block quoins on the corner of the solid brick building in the background. Along the tracks in the cobbles, a locomotive driver blows smoke from his mouth while trying to get a better look at the disfigured side of Thos’s face.
“Dark days,” Frank mutters. “One more thing. Goin’ back to me bruva, Darby. ‘E ‘as a child now. I was wif ‘im the night ‘is fiancé gave birf.”
“What about it?”
“She’s. . . Italian. Yu know ‘ow much Lovett ‘ates the guineas, yeah?”
So the shadow has secrets too, eh?
“When is Pickles’ retrial?”
“May. On top o’ that,” Frank continues as they both step out of the cobblestones when an automobile truck approaches. “I think Darby’s lost the plot altogeva. ‘E told me ‘e sees. . . angels.”
“Angels eh, plural?”
“Two.”
“One for each shoulder,” Thos grumbles and looks off, weighing the informant’s words.
So Sadie is not just hiding from her husband, but also her cousin.
Thos turns cruel eyes to Frank, “Why do ya feign innocence an’ give me all the dirt I need to know about ya brothers, Frank? Then lie to me about ya cousin Sadie?”
“Thos, I—”
“Ya movin’ to Connecticut, I hear?”
Frank laughs and shakes his head again, “Quick Thos knows all.”
“I know ya’re lying, but why?” Thos eyes Frank, “What’s the secret Darby has over ya cousin Sadie?”
“Quick Thos—”
“If ya keep callin’ me quick, my enemies’ll come to expect it. It’s best when they believe they can out-quick me, see?”
Frank’s voice changes to sound as if he is pleading, “I’m sorry, Thos—”
“Answer the question.”
“Which one Thos?”
“What is Darby bribin’ Sadie over?”
“I dunno, Thos—”
“Liar.”
“I dunno, really I don’t. We. . . Celia an’ I just don’t want any trouble is all, yu know? I ‘ate danger.”
“Ya hate danger, eh?” Thos groans at that, “Ya wife Celia, she still eh—” What is the word I am looking for? Barren?
“We have not been blessed wif children. . . yet.”
Frank speaks as if even he doesn’t believe they’ll ever come. This leads Thos to believe it’s probably the wife who holds out enough hope for the both of them.
“That’s good reason to take in Sadie an’ her child,” Thos says.
“We’re not—”
“An’ yet ya don’t give two shits about Darby’s baby wit’ the I-talian. That at least is smart o’ ya. Anyhow,” Thos shakes his head realizing he is being cruel to Frank. “I’m. . . I’m sorry to hear about the kids gimmick, Frank. I know ya’ve always prayed for a large fam’ly.”
“What about yu’self, Thos? Ya ever gonna get married? Start a fam’ly?”
Never, it’s not for me. Not now. “I don’ know.”
“Yu just got back from the war, Thos. Take some time off. That’s a good idea, innit? On ‘oliday maybe?”
“Holiday? Nah, I don’t need fam’ly or holidays, I just need trouble. Someone’s gotta go in and make sense o’ it. I like trouble. Trouble is my Juliet.”
“Trouble, or tragedy?”
“Yeah well,” Thos shrugs and looks out onto the Hudson River and New Jersey in the distance. “If everythin’s goin’ ya way, it’s a sure sign ya probably in the wrong lane, ya know what I mean?”
“Not sure I do, but that’s alright.”
“Frank!” A man yells from a third-floor arched window of the refinery. Frank and Th
os crane their heads up from the street.
Frank looks at Thos, “I’m sorry Thos—”
“Don’ worry,” Thos interrupts and pulls his hand out of his coat pocket with a folded twenty dollar bill in it and shakes Frank’s hand, passing it to him, “Thanks.”
“Might be the last time I ever see yu Thos. In a couple weeks me wife an’ I will be in Connecticut for good. We bought a ‘ouse up there,” Frank rubs the twenty dollar bill between his fingers before slipping it into his pocket. “Safer up there, it is.”
“Well good luck.”
“I got one last thing for yu. Yu bosses King Joe an’ T.V. O’Connor are gonna invite yu for a sit-down in the Chelsea ballroom, but it’s a ruse. They’re ‘avin’ a banquet in yu honor. They’re to give yu an award in front o’ everyone to prove ‘ow patriotic they are. The papers keep mixin’ the ILA up in their Red Scare an’ callin’ them Bolsheviks. So they feel like they ‘ave to—”
“I get it,” Thos cuts him off. “Thanks for the heads up.” Thos turns round coldly and puts a handrolled cigarette in the left side of his mouth before calling behind him, “Thanks again, Frank.”
“It’s yur world, Thos. We’re just livin’ in it.”
Thos stops.
If this is my world, it’s nothing but a dream. I should be dead. Why aren’t I?
He takes a long drag as pedestrians walk round him on the snowy sidewalk. When he looks back, Frank has disappeared.
Maybe I am dead and this is a dream?
Since he’d returned from the war he’d had a sense that nothing was real. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He was getting weaker.
Maybe I am right now dying on the battlefield and time has stopped, while a dream of living has begun.
Like in a dream, Thos reasons, he can conceive and perceive the world at the same time without realizing it’s not real.
But if I can conceive everything, then I might be able to control what happens. Yes, I can create my own reality. But am I really in control? Or is someone else?
Thos looks round himself, then remembers what the doctors said of him in the armory where he had been transferred after being released from the field hospital.
“Shell Shock,” they said.
“I ain’t shell shocked, goddamn yaz,” Thos angrily disagreed. “I ain’t no fookin’ poltroon coward! I’m a killer. I got sixty-seven confirmed kills an’ one back home in New York. That means I’m beatin’ death sixty-eight to nothin’. I’ll always be a killer, but—”
“But what?” The doctors ask.
Is that the right score? Or did I actually die? Sixty-eight to one?
Thos slowly unbuttoned his hospital gown to stand naked in front of the doctors, bearing the thousands of shrapnel wounds along the right side of his body, “I’m haunted.”
“Ok so you’re haunted, fine,” the doctor pleads. “Call it what you will. Just please eat. You’re getting weaker and weaker, Mr. Carmody. Eat something, don’t whither away.”
On the sidewalks of Manhattan, Thos pulls up his lapel and begins to walk with the crowds that are now forming, but he cannot. He leans against a brick wall and looks down to his shaking hands. Almost losing his balance in the icy slate sidewalk, he pushes off the wall and gathers the bits of strength he has left.
I’m going to get you, Tanner. Sixty-nine to one.
Born for this
A crackling sound comes to my ears as the clouds rush through me. From up here they move faster than I ever realized. They are colder and wetter too. And dense on the skin like white shadows.
I am fast at work. . . dragging corpses. I know that I am dreaming, but too busy to palter with that I continue my work dragging the malnourished and emaciated corpses. Carefully I organize them as they stare off with shock on their faces. Frozen forever in disbelief. They wear eternal masks of mistrust that had taken shape in their very last moment as if they doubted death would ever truly come for them.
No. . . I am not dragging the corpses. I am. . . I am stacking and linking them together. The broad-hipped women fit perfectly with the broad-shouldered men like cargo in a hull. Yet I am atop a mountain amidst the movement of clouds. In this dream I am back home high in the Moylussa peaks southwest of Tulla. Below, when the gray mist parts and opens enough for me to see down toward Tulla town, instead the East River appears with the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges spanning it.
Diligently I stack the corpses like cordwood. When I look away, turning to grab hold of yet more, I find that the neatly stacked bodies have transformed, becoming the earthen soil on which I stand. Each body lifts me higher into the clouds. Higher and higher still. So high my ears sizzle and pop from the pressure. A dizziness takes hold and interrupts my work. If I should fall I will land in the river, my mind rationalizes, but most likely I’ll wake up just before the water rushes up and smashes me.
I must have known there was something important to be done, and with that in mind I continue my work, stacking and organizing. As I lean to grasp the next lank and lifeless body under the arms, its blank eyes move and find me.
“Liam?” Through its throaty gargling sounds I recognize the voice of my uncle Joseph.
Says he to me, “Ye took me life, an’ ye have me soul. I live here now, inside ye. I understand though. Why ye killed me, that is. I understand it. Ye’re buildin’ somet’in’. I just didn’t know that the dead are important elements o’ the bigger story. That it was all written out beforehand. Turns out I was made to die regardless o’ all me hopes an’ dreams. The fulfillment o’ me life’s direction is but a step-stone fer others.”
“But Dinny says there’s no such thing as fate,” I squat over my dead uncle.
“The laoch prepares his people fer life without him, but a shanachie? Ah yes, a shanachie resurrects the dead. Fer to create is to truly rule.”
“Laoch? Shanachie?” I say with incredulity. “Those are Irish words. Words you would never have used in your living days, save in mockery. Why do you speak to me in kindness now when in life you were cruel?”
A wan smile comes to uncle Joseph’s face,“True, now I am dead. An’ ye are in-dream.”
“Dinny is the one who creates. And it’s Dinny who rules. I am merely a teenage boy, ignorant and naive. Loyal but callow.”
“Ye’re almost a man proven. Look not at yer youthful age but at yer journey. Separated from yer loved ones, ye were initiated into another world; overcame it an’ summoned back yer fam’ly. Stand tall Liam, ye are more man than most. Now look round. See that ye’re born for this. See it! That is why the Bard waits fer ye an’ the Ghost God watches.”
“The Bard? From Irishtown? Why does he wait for people in dreams? And who is the Ghost God who watches?”
“One is man. One is myth. An’ on earth he sees with eyes. The witness! While in the Otherworld he shows, both at once together. Forever they ride.
Among the clouds I rub my forehead with an index finger, “So they wait and they watch, then they see and they show? At the same time?”
“The witness is not he who heard, ye understand. It is he who saw. An’ there is a subtlety that is understood when visited in dreams. Somethin’—” he searches for the right word. “Eternal. The magic o’ myth can reveal the inner maze o’ a thousand generations worth o’ truths. An’ just now archons and orphans bud like flowers over earthen corpses. As the miracle o’ life is forever threatened with the tragedy o’ death, so too a great and terrible thing this way arises. An’ ye shall bear it witness.”
I place him on the soil as gently as a mother puts her newborn down for sleep. His hair is thinner than I remember and is no more than flaying dry wisps across his pate. And his cheeks are so sallow that it seems the skin is but paper over his jaw.
I stand over him as the wet clouds pass through me and give a chill. Then I see it. Protruding from his throat is the blade of a knife that had been pushed through from behind. It’s Harry's knife, I remember. The knife Harry gave me to kill my uncle Joseph.
> His eyes search for me, “Ye’re alive, Liam.”
Prostrate, uncle Joseph looks away in thought but does not blink. Then tries to swallow but cannot. “Alive but ye don’t know what anyt’in’ means yet. In yer werld mortal sin is only forgiven by a great contrition o’ charity. But ye were always charitable. An’ ye did this to me in the name o’ yer fam’ly so that they might have a new chance for a better life in America. Yet still ye’ll seek out absolution as yer good mother advises. But I want ye to know that I forgive ye, Liam. I forgive ye, so I do.”
~~~
In the black of morn my eyes flick open and at once I have risen, dressed and tied my boots in the cramped quarters.
Harry and I had built a second wall in the Eighth Avenue room no bigger than a closet with enough room for a single bed where I sleep. A narrow window above provides a shaft of light.
In the darkness I run my fingers along the oaken top of the table Harry handmade for us. The dropleaf table fits perfectly between the wall and the cabinetry.
In the moonlight I walk the room as my boots set the wood floors to creaking. Harry too had taken the time to help rebuild the flooring as there was a giant hole when we moved in. By hand we sanded the floors, rebuilt the plumbing, painted, replaced the windows, mortared the hearth and built a new mantle to place photographs upon.
Over the sink I hold the white lace curtains between a finger and thumb and gently rub.
What a hopeless feeling we would be left with if it were all to be lost. All that work. All the conversations we have in here. All the love. We built it ourselves. And we made it our home.
Still haunted by the night’s dream, I freeze in place when I see movement in the blue-black of the moonlit room.
In the doorway to the larger bedroom the silhouette of my mother appears as she silently ties her robe. My stomach turns at the thought of the trouble I have put her and my sisters in.
If I was smart, I would make us move. It’s too dangerous here. But this is our home. Our creation.
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 15
