Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  Every time Sadie thinks of her son following in his father’s footsteps, her stomach turns. It does not matter that Dinny Meehan’s fight is an honorable one, danger is danger.

  Her choice riddles her with shame. Yet her choice is final. When it was reported Dinny’s cousin Mickey Kane had disappeared in the same area, Red Hook, where Bill Lovett had resurfaced, she knew. And she decided. And she knows now that even though Dinny Meehan had pulled her out of the depravity and poverty she’d known all her life, she could not expose her son to the dangers of her husband’s world. But what turns her assuredness to helplessness and finally shame, is Dinny’s belief that no child is guilty of the crime of poverty. And he acts on that belief every single day. But it is his selflessness what attracts danger, to be sure.

  When Tiny Thomas Lonergan died of an infection from walking shoeless in Brooklyn, Dinny and the gang acted. Within a week every child in Brooklyn wore Hanan boots. In Irishtown Dinny was deemed a hero after that. But even heroes get arrested. Even heroes are targeted for murder. And with Wild Bill back and the Waterfront Assembly and everyone else targeting Dinny Meehan, his son would also be in their sights.

  In a moment of clarity and courageousness, Sadie chose her son’s future and abandoned her husband’s past. It’s easy to make that decision out here though, she crumples Liam’s letter. But when the money runs out. . .

  Sadie strikes a match, hoping it will not wake her son John who sleeps on the bed next to her. By candlelight she holds the second, unopened letter as if it were a priceless heirloom. This one is from her cousin, Frank Leighton. Postmarked “New Haven, CT.” She had saved this one. This would be the letter that would bring safety to her and John.

  “We are so sorry,” are the first words, which makes her stomach turn again. “Celia and I long for a child in our home. As you know, we have not been blessed with children yet. You must believe us, we are very sorry,” her hands shake as she reads on, “But how can we take you and L’il Dinny in without his father’s allowing it? We don’t want any trouble. That’s one of the biggest reasons we are leaving the city. We would love to have you both, but your husband deserves the opportunity to consent.”

  My husband’s consent, she mimics the words silently. You may look tough, but you are a coward, Frank.

  Sadie and Frank emigrated together by steerage to New York back in 1910. She was nineteen years old then and Frank had turned twenty-one on the day the ship departed from Liverpool. Frank was her best friend in those days. Big and with a flat, pug nose and a constant grimace on his face, Frank was more interested in flowers than fights. He had even memorized hundreds of the Latin names, which helps identify the genus and species, he told her.

  On their passage they spent hours arm-in-arm singing on the deck overlooking the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, sat knee-to-knee playing Cat’s Cradle and at night they slept back-to-back in the cot they shared. Frank even waited outside while Sadie used the loo, but never made it seem like he was being protective. It was often rumored that girls who board an Atlantic steamer alone, debark with a base child in her belly. Sadie’s own sixteen year-old niece once traveled from Liverpool to Portrush near Coleraine in Northern Ireland, but nine months later she mothered a baby girl.

  Though Frank never spoke of such a crude thing, he was keenly aware of their surroundings and scared off would-be suitors with his big head and flat nose. Sadie’s mother Rose came with as well, but she spent most of the time getting besotted with the drink until late at night, singing songs with the crew and waking up in their cabins.

  Of all her cousins, Frank was the gentlest of heart. “I hate danger,” she remembers him saying. A strangely obvious thing to admit, but it explains a lot. Confrontation was something Frank had experienced too much of over the course of an itinerant childhood. Luckily for the both of them that no one on the ship challenged him. Otherwise Frank would have capitulated like the poltroon he truly is.

  One cloudless day on deck Frank and Sadie stood next to each other overlooking the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

  “I’ll never go back to London,” Frank said in a husky voice, his big club hands wrapped round the railing. “Never. I’m going to get a job an’ work until I can buy land somewhere, get married an’ ‘ave a big fam’ly in a big ‘ouse. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m goin’ to do. Lots an’ lots o’ kids, an a big garden too, yeah.”

  “Yu won’t miss East London?”

  “Nay.”

  “What about the rest o’ the fam’ly?”

  “Like ya mum, Rose?” He snorts through the nose.

  “I guess yu got a point, she is a ‘andful, me mum,” Sadie laughed and laid her head on Frank’s shoulder as below them white waves gently crashed against the side of the steamship.

  “Ah well,” Frank said. “It’s not that yu mum’s stupid. She’s quite smart, actually. It’s just that she’s ignorant.”

  Sadie dabs at her eyes with a tissue in the candlelight by the hotel window.

  I’m as ignorant as my mother.

  She covers her mouth as she weeps when she remembers what Eleanor Allerton, the temperance woman in the milk-white and light blue dress said to her downstairs, “The problem is. . . You’re ignorant.”

  I’m supposed to improve upon my mother’s generation, and here I am as ignorant as she is.

  The embarrassment turns to pain in Sadie’s heart. It feels like a little flame and aches with a burning sensation that can’t be extinguished.

  I’ve failed. I’m an ignorant person from a half-gypsy, half-Irish family who married a gangster.

  When she crumples Frank’s letter and throws it in the garbage next to Liam’s, she turns to her son sleeping rag-haired on the bed and pushes the tears from her eyes.

  My son will go to college. He will be smart. He will go leaps and bounds beyond any other Leighton. And I will make sure of it. But how? I am as much a coward as Frank.

  Sadie’s stomach turns when she again thinks of room 310, upstairs. The hotelier had groped her, taken her wedding band and threatened to get in touch with Darby unless she has sex with him. With the sun peeking through the curtains, he will be up there now, in fact, waiting for her.

  She looks up to the ceiling, This is what I get for wanting to be an independent mother? This?

  “Mummy?” John rubs at his eyes and yawns on the bed.

  “G’mornin’, love.”

  “Mummy I had a dream.”

  Sadie blinks slowly and takes a deep breath to gather her patience and answers with a flat, almost perturbed voice, “What was it, love?”

  “Someone was comin’ to kill daddy.”

  “What? Who?”

  John comes to his elbows, “Five men. We were back home on Warren Street an’ there was a woman sleepin’ in the kitchen an’ ya were screamin’, mum.”

  “I was?”

  “So loud it hurt my ears an’ the earth, it was movin’ like a earthquake. Shakin’.”

  “Oh ‘oney,” Sadie sits on the bed and gathers him up. “It was just a dream.”

  Tearless, he looks up at her, “I’m John Carter, but I couldn’t save him.”

  “Sweet’eart, I want yu to understand somethin’, yeah? John Carter is not real. In real life there are no ‘eroes, understand? That book is just a story, no one lives on Mars. It’s unin’abitable, see? An’ no one can save anyone. We’re on our own an’ we’re all doin’ the best we can, but—”

  “Who will defeat the bad guys then?”

  “There are no bad guys either,” Sadie holds his face. “Everyone has the capacity to do good things. An’ everyone can do bad as well. The ‘eroes an’ villains live inside o’ us all. But in stories, we give them names and roles that mirror our own selves. Does that make sense?”

  John looks away without answering.

  “Mummy’s goin’ to get ya some new books today, alright? We’ll go to the library this very day an’ we’ll get yu some books about real life. Because real life is a lo
t more interestin’ an’ complex than fictions an’ fantasies.”

  John nods, “Should I throw Gods of Mars away?”

  “No, yu don’ ‘ave to do that. Yu should keep it to remind yu o’ the lessons yu learned from it.”

  “Uhright.”

  A knock comes to the door and Happy’s voice comes through it, “It’s me.”

  John looks at his mother, “Happy is mostly good, I think.”

  “I think so too,” Sadie says.

  “But he can be bad?”

  “Well, he was in the Great War. An’ in a war yu ‘ave to do terrible things, but is it terrible to do terrible things when yu fightin’ against worse?”

  John tilts his head and scratches his neck in thought, “What’s the answer?”

  “The answer is, it’s complicated,” Sadie smiles and runs her fingers through John’s hair. “I’ll be back soon, then we’ll go to the library, yeah?”

  “Uhright.”

  Sadie opens the door and steps out, “G’mornin’, I’ll be back.”

  Happy moves his crutches and pivots to face her in the hall, “Ya’re leavin’?”

  “I’m goin’ downstairs. I’ll be back,” she calls over her shoulder.

  When Happy goes into the room and closes the door, Sadie moves away from the descending stairwell, and takes the ascending stairs up to the third floor.

  302, 304, 306, the rooms on the left are even-numbered, the rooms on the right, odd. But all of them are empty for the winter months. The only sound is her own footsteps on the cheap carpet and the wood flooring beneath. Three original oil paintings of the Long Beach Boardwalk, the surf and a fishing boat adorn the walls. At the end of the hall, by a sooty window and a ratty radiator is room 310. Sadie steels her nerves as she stands in front of the nondescript, white door. Then knocks gently.

  Quickly the door opens and she is greeted with a three-toothed smile.

  “I see you’re a good girl,” says the hotelier. “Come in.”

  He looks down the hallway before closing and locking the door.

  “Drink?” He hands her a small bottle of rum. “It always makes things easier for women, I’ve found.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Such a beautiful creature,” he pets her cheek and runs knuckles softly down her neck and over her left breast, resting on her waist. “I love ya accent, too. Everythin’ about ya just makes me. . . I dunno, raises me. When I saw’r ya come in wit’ that one-legged fella, I knew he wasn’t ya husband. I just knew it. No fookin’ way that guy’s been inside ya. Nah, ya way too gorgeous for a private in the Army. So when ya cousin showed up an’ offered me money to turn ya in? I knew he wasn’t lyin’. What is he, like a Pinkerton or somethin’, ya cousin? He said ya’re the wife o’ a wanted man. That right?”

  Sadie does not answer.

  In my end is my beginning. Today, it ends. And begins.

  He grabs her by the wrist and slings her onto the bed violently, “Take ya clothes off, Sadie. Take them off an’ lay down. I wanna watch ya. Do it slow.”

  Sadie raises herself and sits on the edge of the bed as the hotelier rubs the outside of his wrinkled trousers and stares at her.

  When Sadie unbuttons the third button of her dress, she reaches into her brazier and produces the revolver with the long barrel.

  “The fuck?” He says.

  She stands up and holds it at the length of her arms and pointed toward the center of his chest, just as Happy had trained her.

  “Listen woman—”

  “Get on the bed,” she commands.

  “This is gonna be a big problem if ya continue to—”

  “Get on the feckin’ bed before I shoot yu, yu know who I am? Yu know who me ‘usband is, yeah? Yu fuck wif me, I’ll kill yu meself. Get on the feckin’ bed.”

  In a circle, the two walk round each other, trading places. Sadie is now close to the door as the hotelier holds his hands in the air, standing above the bed.

  “I’m not gettin’ on the bed, woman.”

  The report of the revolver shocks her. It was just a quick popping sound, but the kickback coupled with the sound, startles her. Happy had warned her, but it isn’t until it actually happens, actually pulling the trigger, that she could fully understand the power of the recoil and the clap of the pistol at once.

  The hotelier is now on the bed, shivering. Behind him, through the red umbrella in the oil painting of a family beach scene is a .38 caliber bullet hole.

  The wood handle of the revolver is hot, Sadie thinks, then remembers Happy’s words. Don’t let it go. The handle won’t burn you.

  The hotelier pleads, “Listen I got a wife an’—”

  “Take off yu clothes,” Sadie interrupts.

  “What?”

  “All o’ them, I wanna see ya naked on the bed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m in control. If yu don’ do what I say, I’ll kill yu. Yu think the police would suspect a woman? A mova? The wife o’ a war ‘ero? Nay, police love fictions. They wanna believe in good guys an’ bad guys an’ little women. By the time they find yu body, we’ll be long gone. Yu know ‘ow common the name Maloney is in New York? ‘Ow many Mrs. Maloney’s are there, yeah? Let them round all o’ them up, they still won’t find me, will they? ‘Cause I ain’t a Maloney, that’s a fiction too. Take off yu clothes.”

  “Are ya gonna kill me?”

  “Not if yu be’ave.”

  The hotelier unbuttons his pants and drops them to the floor. Then takes off his shirt and undershirt and stands in his drawers. With the revolver, she waves toward the floor.

  He closes his eyes and drops his drawers too.

  “That’s it?” She says. “That’s what yu was threatenin’ me wif? That little thing? That’s funny, innit? Innit?”

  He covers his groin with his hands and does not laugh.

  “Men like yu’self? From now on, if any man makes a mockery o’ me ‘onor, they will answer the consequences. Now get on the bed an’ bend over.”

  “What?”

  “Do it,” she yells while digging her wedding band out of the hotelier’s trousers. “Get on all fours. If yu do what I say, yu might get off.”

  Reluctantly he turns round and gets on the bed.

  Between her index finger and thumb, Sadie holds the band up to the light from the window. While pointing the revolver with her right hand, she uses the pinky and thumb on her left hand to pull the band back onto her ring finger.

  “Now back up,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Back up so yu knees are at the end o’ the bed, now.”

  He does as told.

  Sadie moves forward and with her free hand, she holds his hip. She then points the long barrel of the revolver toward his anus.

  “Open ya legs,” she slaps his ass. “Open them up.”

  The revolver goes in much easier that way.

  The hotelier howls and scrunches his cheeks.

  “Relax,” Sadie raises her voice.

  “Just. . . Just don’ shoot it inside me.”

  “Then don’ move. My finger’s on the trigger. Any sudden movement an’ it’ll go off.”

  “Ok, ok, but it hurts.”

  “Me son an’ I, an’ me ‘usband Mr. Maloney are gonna stay ‘ere for a few more weeks, yeah? We’re gonna pay in advance.”

  She reaches into the side of her brazier an’ throws the cash on the bed next to him.

  “If yu even think about sayin’ somethin’ to anyone, like the police? Or like Darby Leighton? The White ‘and Gang will come back ‘ere to paint this small town red, burn this feckin’ ‘otel down to cinders an’ leave yu’self laid out in lavender. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what they’ll say.”

  “Ok, ok, I won’t say nothin’.”

  “Good boy, yu’re a good boy. I think we’re done ‘ere.”

  Sadie yanks the gun from his anus as fingers of blood crawl down his hairy inner thighs. The sights blade must have torn something in
side him. She goes to the door and opens it.

  “Wait,” the man cries. “Wait, I need a doctor. Where are yu goin’?”

  Sadie turns round and wraps the foul-smelling revolver in a kerchief, “I’m goin’ to the library wif me son.”

  Germanicus Complex

  From the shadowy recesses beneath the approach to the Manhattan Bridge, a muffled metallic screech of train rotors haunts me in its mourning moans. Under the great yawning archway that lets out at Water Street, I can’t even hear my own footsteps in the moist and musty oceanic air that riffles through the passageway. Within the belly of the keening giant, the thunderous rumblings shake and tremble.

  The bridge is only ten years old, yet appears to the eye as some ancient ruin coated in coal dust. During construction a twenty-one inch thick steel cable broke loose from a tower and wriggled like a whip’s lash down Plymouth Street by the Dock Loaders’ Club. The legend of the riveter Donal McShane had come to my ears many times from the lips of Beat McGarry. McShane was born in Irishtown, the son of an exiled child. While working up on the bridge one morning a pipe of compressed air broke loose and blew him over the edge like confetti. He died at the arch’s entrance where I stand now after a one hundred and twenty-foot fall.

  My uncle Joseph knew McShane after he emigrated from Tulla to Brooklyn solely for the work on the Manhattan Bridge. For better wages, uncle Joseph took up the call of the longshoreman’s union and was promoted by Thos Carmody as an ILA recruiter. Yet he couldn’t even convince me to join, his own nephew. And now he haunts me to this very day through the ringing moans of the gigantic banshee bridge that hovers over Irishtown.

  As I come out onto Water Street, five attached industrial freight cars spilling coal onto the Belgian brick roadway pass in front of me. A small locomotive pulls it with a leering, blackface conductor. I walk sideways down the hill and the narrow sidewalk along the anchorage. As the hill heads down toward the water, the buttresses of the bridge slope higher and higher until they plain over the East River.

  “Liam!” I hear from behind.