“I need ya to find out the name o’ the man who rode Anna, understand?”
“Yeah.”
“When I kill him, I will have his soul. An’ she’ll be pure again.”
A silence takes the pierhouse that Darby finds endearing.
We have had a moment together, he and I. A meaningful moment.
Bill shakes off the memories and hoots out with a wild call, “That’s the first time I ever talked about that. Fookin’ feels good.”
Bill smiles at Darby until he suddenly grabs the hammer, “Uhright, but I still need to test ya. Tell me, Abe went over ya role for the raid, right?”
“He did, but I’m not a soldier, Bill. I can’t go on raids.”
Bill grumbles under his breath, then looks over to Darby with disgust on his mouth, “The more people I know, the more I just wanna be wit’ my dogs.”
Bill lets that hang in the air for a moment until he looks back up again, “Ya goin’ wit’, an’ that’s the end o’ it. I wanna see ya prove ya loyalty in the. . . in the real world. Tell me then, what’s ya role in the raid?”
“I dunno, Abe said somethin’ about keepin’ a door closed.”
Bill smiles, “Not good enough,” he turns to the door and yells. “Non, come in here.”
The door opens and Non Connors speaks through the crack, “Yeah?”
“Bring in Richie.”
Darby’s stomach drops, “Bill—”
“Shaddup, here’s the thing,” Bill says as he spins the hammer in the air and hands it to Richie. “Pain always helps ya learn things quicker, like. Somethin’ else I learnt in France that prepared me for the present. An’ on top o’ that, ya never fookin’ forget it either.”
“What do I—”
“Break his finger in half,” Bill says.
Without hesitation, Richie grabs Darby by the throat as the table is upended. Next thing Darby knows, Richie is sitting on his chest and holding his finger out. Then the hammer comes down with a smack.
A scream pierces the pierhouse as Richie walks out the door, allowing all outside to hear.
As Darby lifts his hand to his face, bile appears in his throat when he sees his pinky is broken and bent sideways, dangling by thin flaps of skin as blueish-red blood streams down his arm like reaching roots.
Bill jumps on the ground to look in Darby’s eyes again, “Now ya won’t forget ya role, will ya?”
They Let Us Starve
April 1919
Dawn opens its cloudy eyes to find hundreds of men filed along the shore, restless already. Hungry for work.
“Jab,” Dance Gillen calls out, so I lean to the right and let the fist whip over my left shoulder. But he comes back with another left, this one a cross that catches my ribs.
I surge for breath as the cobalt gray morning sky pisses all over us, coming down sideways off the Atlantic Terminal. Out on the dappled currents of the river, scarves of rain cascade in the shape of foraging birds. A thousand waves as white as an old man’s beard crest between here and the island of Manhattan where a hundred ships negotiate through the gray darkness along the turgid East River.
“Ya’re slow t’day,” Dance lowers his fists on the wet dock.
As a sparring partner Dance leaves me bruised and sore. I need it though, as he fights as tough as the Pavee brawler Tommy Tuohey ever had. He may not be the biggest, but he might be strongest and without question he has the fastest fists of the White Hand. He’s a natural, and I’m an out of practice seventeen year-old who is in over his head on his first day alone as dockboss.
I take a deep breath, “Bring it back again. The jab and the left to the body.”
From behind I hear Dago Tom’s voice, “Liam, maybe ya should take a break. This barge’ll be ready soon.”
“Nah, let’s go,” I urge Dance. “Swing.”
“Ya look tired,” both Eddie and Freddie stand between Dance and I.
“Get out of my way,” says I. And they do.
Inland, a crowd of some three hundred drenched and hopeful laborers watch on amidst the ballast of stone and gravel along the track bed and the sprawling network of the freight yard with its rolling stock, switches and an engine house with a thirty-foot tower above platforms and freight bays. Out on the echoing anchorage, harbor tugs moan in communication through the darkness, hoo-hooooo. Their hawser lines are strung high above and tied to the horn cleats of both the port quarter and the starboard beam of a giant engineless lighter barge. When the diesel engine of the tugboats are throttled, the slack is whipped taught to drag the old barge into dock, while the tug itself is lifted up and out of the water and spun violently. Closer to the pier five more tugs yank at the beast like the lilliputians who fettered Gulliver in the old book while two others push from behind.
I’m in over my head, the thought passes through me. Petey Behan said I’m feckless and infirm, maybe he’s right. If those laborers decide to charge they would butcher the White Hand at the Atlantic Terminal and I would be forever known as the dockboss who gave it up, just as Dinny Meehan had let Red Hook slip away. But at least I have help.
As the sky flashes with lightning so distant that it is silent to our ears, Dance dances to his right with fists over his face, “Jab.”
I duck the jab and move to my right to avoid the body shot, but he comes over top with the left cross this time and it catches the side of my head. For half a second the world falls into a haze as the low mutterings of thunder crackles down the dawn. My head tolls like a curfew bell and then the years flash before me and I am following my father through the turned fields of our Tulla farm. My older brother Timothy is next to me and together we are planting seeds behind Da, children again.
“I’ll beat ye bloody an’ bury ye in the field,” Timothy ribbed me while I pushed seeds into the twisted soil.
“You won’t.”
“Yeah, ye’re prolly right,” Timothy flashed a coy smile from above. “Ye’ll prolly be buried in some far off place.”
“I won’t, you eejit,” I cry. “I’ll be buried on the farm here. Or at least in Tulla parish.”
Da stopped when he heard me. “Ye won’t be buried on the farm, bhoy. Nor anywhere near the parish. Yer brother tells it right. Ye’ll be gone from here by then. Ye may never come back.”
I had run into the back of Da when he stopped. I gathered myself, blinked the dirt out of my eyes and looked up to him. “I don’t want to go. I’m true to the family.”
“I had two sons fer good reason,” my father’s voice washed over mine like rain does tears. “Yer mother an’ I kept tryin’ after Sean and Colm, my two bhoys that died durin’ the first two winters of our marriage. When Timothy survived I said ‘this one will take the fam’ly farm.’ An’ when yerself came along I said ‘let him be close to his mother,’ so I did. But great troubles are astir again. The next rebellion will be a bloody one an’ ye’ll take yer mother an’ sisters ‘way from here, so ye will. Ye’ll not die here, Liam. Ye’ll be gone.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Not up to ye,” Da interrupted. “Ye think I’m bein’ hard on ye, do ye? Ye don’t know the half of it bhoy, for the enemy of us is a heartless savage that is after starvin’ our fam’ly to death so to conquer us an’ lie about it as if t’were a game. Then they’ll write the hist’ry of it so it looks like t’was our own fault from the start of it. That’s what they do. But we’re not them, are we? I meself could never starve a fam’ly regardless of guilt or complicity. But I will butcher any foreigner that comes to my farm. An’ on top of it I’ll never repent to no man, priest or god fer it.”
You thought you had it all figured out, Da. But you didn’t. There was one thing you couldn’t have known.
“Liam, ya ok?” Dance shakes my shoulders and quickly I blink my eyes again and I am back on the Atlantic Terminal with rain pelting my face.
You could not have known that New York would be as dangerous as war torn Ireland.
“Liam, can ya hear me?” Dance asks aga
in as I come to my feet.
“I’m fine,” I push him away but the bells still toll in my head.
“I’m sorry I hit ya that hard, Liam. I didn’t think—”
“Don’t worry. It’s what I need to get better. I have to get better.”
A few minutes later I am told The Swede and Vincent Maher are inside a covered pier.
I thought this was to be my first day alone?
I shake off the rain and walk through the narrow passageway where arched doors on either side offer soft gray light. At the end of the pier I see them both.
“There he is,” Vincent smiles. “King o’ the Atlantic Terminal.”
“Why are you fellows here?”
The Swede does not turn round when I approach. Instead he stares out a rain-soaked window toward the morning skyline. Tiny windows glow in the distance across the East River and as he looks closer, his reflection appears in the window. I can’t tell if he is looking at himself or the city beyond, but his grim and gaunt face comes into view.
“I want ya to know I’m always here for ya, Liam,” he says without looking at me. “I watched ya come up an’ I wasn’t always good to ya, but ya made it now. Ya made it an’ I’m proud o’ ya.”
“Thanks—”
“But it’s dangerous here. People will know ya’re new an’ they’ll test ya. Push ya. See how far they can get. Don’ give them an inch, ya can’t trust no one, ya understand?”
“I do.”
“What, he can’t trust ya either, Swede?” Vincent japes, but The Swede doesn’t answer him. Instead he turns away from the window and holds his cruel eyes on me.
“Ya call on me when ya have trouble, uhright?”
“I will.”
He pulls me closer with his strong arm and kisses me on the top of my head.
“Why did we let the Italians go?” I look up to The Swede. “They were our allies. Now all we have is the ILA, but Thos Carmody fought with Bill in the war. They’re closing in on us, remember when you said that? Remember when—”
“I remember,” The Swede begrudgingly admits, then grabs me by the shirt. “Ya’re a fookin’ kid. Keep that in the front o’ ya thoughts, uhright? Ya don’ know everythin’. Trust Dinny. Ya just gotta trust him. He’s tryin’ to help ya. T’day ya grow the fuck up, uhright? Yesterday ya were a boy. Forget it. T’day ya’re a man.”
But we are going to be all alone against the world soon, though I clench my teeth so that I don’t say anything else that makes me look young and desperate.
To cut the tension Vincent announces, “I can’t wait for summer.”
At that The Swede’s face sours, “Summer gives me the shits. Let’s go.”
Vincent whispers in my ear while motioning to the covered pier, “He don’ like it when people know he’s a softy.”
As we come out into the rain, Dance is awaiting us, “It’ll cut the arse off ya, this fookin’ rain,” he says under a floppy cap with streams of water running down his swarthy face.
“A warm bed an’ a hot woman sounds like the cure to me,” Vincent hunches his shoulders and somehow keeps his paper cigarette lit under the tilted brim of his cap.
The Swede admonishes. “There’s work to be done. This is how we feed our fam’lies. Rain, snow, heat, freeze, we’re workin’,” He turns his eyes behind us at the hopeful longshoremen that have gathered in the rain. “Too many god’amn vodka-swillin’ Polocks an’ Ruskies around here o’ late. Someone oughta toss lit matches at them so we can see how quick they’ll catch. But the ones who call themselves Russians usually ain’t, they’re coppersmiths, confidence artists an’ clairvoyants lookin’ to give ya the gypsy-switch. They steal as fast as a plague o’ locusts strip a corn field naked. If ever ya hear a Russian describe himself as Master o’ Ceremony, ya better guard ya wallet because ya’re in for a fight.”
“Not t’day,” Dance growls at the rain. “This day is for Liam to show all them fucks who the new boss is at the Atlantic Terminal.”
The three of them turn to me while Vincent tosses the handrolled into the heaving river.
“Liam!” Dinny calls through the rain. “C’mere.”
I walk along the dock with wet boots through the torrent as the eyes watch.
“Help me tie these down, yeah?” Dinny says as two sailors twenty feet above toss down a thick mooring line from barge deck to pier.
As we tie the sopping wet rope round the bollard, Dinny clears his throat, “I know it’s ya first day, but we have need.”
“Need?”
“No more money from Tanner, an’ wit’ Red Hook in Bill’s hands an’ less ships to unload now that the war’s over, we don’ have the income we once did.”
“And?”
“The Leech.”
“The landlord? Vandeleurs? What about him?”
“He’s workin’ wit’ the Poplar Street Police Station to evict about thirty fam’lies from Irishtown. Biddy Hoolihan is seventy-nine years old. The Leech would throw her out to the elements,” he holds his palms up to the rain. “The fatherless Mullen fam’ly has many children an’—”
“And who else?”
“And the Lonergans.”
“The Lonergans,” The name puts a sour taste in my mouth. “How long are we going to support them? I agree with The Swede, we should let them pay their own way since Richie is Bill’s. Not to mention, he pulled the trigger on Mickey. We should cut them loose.”
“I. . . I can’t do that. I care for the Lonergans as much as I do the Garritys.”
Why? I don’t understand why. This is too much for me, I think. I’m in over my head. Feckless and infirm. Someone else should be dockboss, not me. I shake my head and look back to Dinny, “So what can I do?”
“Strong work ethic, loyalty, dependability. . . Those traits deserve recognition, an’ ya display them all,” He turns to look up to the ship we just moored to the pier. “This ship has eight hundret an’ twenny bolts o’ silk on it,” He then turns round and points toward an uncoupled dark green boxcar in the rail yard. It is on the opposite track as the freight cars we are supposed to load for transport to a nearby textile factory. “I need ya to get fifty bolts loaded onto that single car over there. The green one.”
“Steal fifty bolts?”
The switchman tips his cap in Dinny’s direction, “I gotta buyer,” he says.
“On my first day?”
“Ya’d be savin’ thirty fam’lies from eviction. What are we s’posed to do, watch them get thrown out? No, good people come together to help the needy. The Leech is on the board o’ the Waterfront Assembly. Even though there’s less income comin’ through the docks, he’s raised rents an’ has the backin’ o’ all the businesses around here. Newspapers’ll never write a story about it because they’re on the tug too.”
Now I put my neck on the line for everyone else?
I give Dinny my grief, “Harry was my friend. Sure he was sulky and silent, but he displayed all those traits you just listed, and look what happened to him.”
“We all have different paths we must take,” Dinny stands to look at the rope tied to the bollard, then nods to the men up on the deck of the barge as the rain taps on our darkened coats and caps. “He was a good man—”
“And now we speak of him in the past tense. He’s dead, isn’t he? Just like Tommy Tuohey before him who also brought me up under his wing. Are men cursed to champion me?”
“Ya should be more worried about all the men that stare at ya.”
I turn my head back to the hundreds of hopefuls that await our picking them, though we only need about sixty.
“Some need a show,” Dinny says. “Ya gotta give them a spectacle. Somethin’ they’ll remember. Have ya thought about who ya want for a righthand?”
I’m not answering that question. Instead I ask, “Why did ya choose me? Others are not so wet behind the ears as myself. And garner more respect. Petey Behan owns me and—”
“One good man can tame the worst in twenny for a good w
hile. Two, a hundret, an’ for longer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The soul o’ man is tempest-tossed an’ always lookin’ to break what’s seen as holdin’ him down. When they witness a good leader, they see good in themselves an’ the beast within is calmed. A tyrant may take power for a time, true. Cruelty often wins, there’s no denyin’ it, but a good man is one who knows what it is to suffer. A good man has enough cruelty in him as any other, but recognizes that true leadership comes from below, rising up from us. Not from up high. Wolcott lives among the clouds far from us because he sees himself as a god, but ya’self, Liam? Ya come from the earth an’ have risen up wit’ humility an’ honor. I chose well. Ya never asked for this, an’ that is most tellin’ of all.”
Damn you Dinny Meehan. Even though you leave me cold with troublesome tasks, you warm me with words. You always have.
I turn back to the men that watch Dinny and speak on the rainy shore, “If they’re desperate, why do they believe they can lead?”
“We all want to try an’ steer our own future, even if it means drivin’ into a brick wall. These men?” He slowly gives a half turn. “They feel untried. Wit’out opportunity, desire takes hold. Desire is born o’ fancy. The flight from fancy to fantasy is not long at all, and soon gives way to action. Most leaders turn to inspirin’ fear to tame the tempests. But some can be persuaded by humility an’ honor to convince more that there is dignity in our cause. Those men can calm hundreds in ya name. The rest must be sated by spectacle. . . Who ya choosin’ for righthand?”
“Dance.”
“Why?”
“I make my decision based on who is most qualified, not by the trouble I’ll have because he is half-black. Dance Gillen is one of us. Always has been. He’s hard as bricks, a right scrapper and he can do this without me, if that day were ever to come. He’s earned righthand, but he deserves dockboss.”
Dinny turns and puts a hand on my shoulder in front of the eyes that peer through the torrent, “Ya put things in motion what most people either can’t understand or won’t.”
I hide the prideful smile that comes to my face, “I’m sorry for sending Sadie and L’il Dinny away. I know she’s your wife but you were incarcerated and Darby and Anna were tormenting them. I had to help them.”
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 35
