“Ya did it right. She’ll be happier now.”
“Happier?”
Dinny’s jaw clenches at the thought of Sadie until he speaks in a tone of admission, “Ya spend ya whole life thinkin’ ya gotta protect a woman, it ain’t until later ya realize the best thing ya can do is let her go. How can I tell her to stay in her tower when its under siege? No, she needs to learn to fend for herself. I love her wit’ all the wit all I got, but the only way I can show it is to let her fly away. Good thing is, she an’ our son are outta the way o’ the terror what’s comin’.”
“What terror, Pickles’ retrial? Bill?”
“Worse.”
“Like what?”
He shakes his head slowly and flashes the dark handle of a Webley Revolver to me, “Take this.”
“I won’t.”
“Ya should.”
“Harry never needed one. I have the pipe in my coat.”
“Harry knew what he was doin’,” Dinny rolls up a sleeve and shows me the gunshot wound I saw him take back in 1915. “I won’t show ya the others. I’m gonna give this to Dance, then.”
“What are we going to do about Bill?”
Dinny shakes that off, “Don’ let nothin’ stop ya from putting fifty bolts o’ silk on that boxcar. Worry about the men who watch ya. By the end o’ this day, they will challenge ya. Make them forget about how Petey Behan owns ya. Make them remember how ya killt ya uncle.”
“What about—”
But he interrupts me, “The pilgrimage is takin’ place on the day o’ the fight, in June.”
“The pilgrimage,” I simply repeat.
Every year there is a pilgrimage from Irishtown to Jackson Hollow and back to honor the original settlers; the survivors of the Great Hunger. It appears this year’s will have even more relevance.
Dinny walks on and calls for The Swede and Vincent to come with him.
I turn to Dance, “Are we ready to unload?”
“Yeah.”
Dago Tom comes to my ear, “Five hundret bolts o’ satin, two hundret twenny-nine various broadcloths, three hundret bolts o’ wool an’ eight hundret an’ twenny bolts o’ silk.”
“We have to put fifty bolts of the silk on that boxcar over there.”
“I know, we know what the deal is.”
“The faster we get this done, the better.”
Beyond the platforms are warehouses and factories that provide cover for any invader. With Brosnan disappeared, some patrolmen might come to ask questions. Or worse, Bill with his lieutenants and Trench Rabbits.
But Dance growls at the dark green boxcar, “That fookin’ thing.”
Turning round, Freddie Cuneen walks up to me with the maze of bisecting, intertwined depot rails behind him, “We’ll be loadin’ on track six over there. The conductor is pullin’ her round as we speak. We gotta clean path from dock to train.”
“Where’s the stevedoring company?”
But just as I ask, three men with a folding table, a coffer chest and chairs appear.
Dance says. “Any more than sixty men an’ we’ll take too big of a hit. We’re here to make dime t’day.”
“Walk with me,” says I to Dance. “Eddie, Freddie and Dago come up behind him.”
There are twenty other men I trust, but my inner circle of dock, deck and hull gangs at the Atlantic Terminal are set. At the end of them all are the two bright-eyed ten year-olds that Dinny had brought along as runners, Whyo and Will. A dream come true for the boys. Now they’re making money for their mothers.
We walk through the lines of wet men who would work for me this day, if picked.
“I need sixty strong men!” I yell out to all who would hear. “Courageous men, but you shits can help out until I find some.”
A few snickers come from behind me.
“The only thing you have to remember is that the White Hand is your boss and myself and the men that walk with me are all named Patrick Kelly. If you’re picked, you will work all day unloading this barge,” I point up to where the planks are being rolled down onto the pier that lead to the hull as the long winch arm reaches over me with an empty net connected to it. “The stevedoring company will pay you your day’s wage and then you will give us ten percent. If you hear voices in your head that tells you not to pay up, remind yourself that men die out here for doing less.”
After that, the picking went rather easy. But Dance came to my ear.
“I got ten guys wanna put two dollars in ya pocket an’ mine each for the right to work this mornin’.”
“They wanna pay two dollars to us now an’ give up ten percent what the stevedoring company gives them afterward like everyone else?”
“Five percent. They’re offerin’ ya’self an’ I money to go around—”
“I know, I understand it. Who are they?”
“Russians, they say.”
“Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Tell them no. They don’t get to pay us for the right to get chosen. I do the choosing, and afterward they pay us tribute like everyone else.”
“Right.”
“Ya seen Burke?”
“Nah.”
I don’t have time to think much on Thomas Burke. Instead I look up to the barge moored to the Atlantic Terminal, “Let’s unload this beast. Dance?”
“Wha?”
“You’re my righthand.”
He nods and hides his surprise, “Ya’re not worried about—”
“I’m not. Dinny supports me on this.”
He nods again, “Harry never wanted a righthand. Too much of a loner, ya know?”
“Well I need a righthand. The best. I need you.”
~~~
When the job is done and the longshoremen are paid by the stevedoring company, there is trouble.
“Poe,” Dance calls while counting out the cash by the stevedore’s table with ten men round him.
“These guys say we had a agreement, five percent.”
“I didn’t make that agreement, remember?”
“Oh I remember, but they remember it different-like. We were just about finished loadin’ up that second train car. Ya know the one for Dinny’s thing? But we can’t finish until the Ruskies pay up.”
The open-shirted, swarthy Russians have a mixture of callous looks on their faces, and balled fists. Between thick shoulders, tufts of chest hair peak out of thin linen shirts and unbuttoned waistcoats while a few wear red neckerchiefs and sheepskin caps with scruff on square chins. They all have the same wily eyes that steal looks at us under thick tresses of wavy hair that has dried since the sun came out.
I turn back to Dance and walk with him a few feet away, “What’s the difference in our overall take?”
“Not much.”
“Yet they want to dig in their heels over a small amount?”
I’m in over my head, feckless and infirm. The voice echoes in my head and the answer back is, Yes you are in over your head. You should be sized up for a wooden overcoat.
“You picked them,” Dance says. “What do you want to do with them?”
“I know what it means to squabble over dimes. Next time they’ll saunter up to the docks with their cocks in their hands, giving me terms.”
I turn to look at the cold Russian eyes and gather Eddie and Freddie, Dago and twenty men I trust. In front of the stevedore’s table I square off in front of the Russians with my men behind me. One Russian, slightly shorter than myself but thicker in the chest, looks up to me with a stony, hard-bitten stare. I speak first, “You got sand, challenging us. But I’ve been told courage is only a stone’s throw from madness. You guys owe money. Take ten percent out of that envelope you just received and hand it over to me, all of you.”
“They don’t speak English much,” Dance tells me.
I gnash my teeth at them and look round, “Everyone stop!”
Dance smiles and bites his lip. I’ve seen that look on him before. Dance gets eager moments before he gets to dance with a man.
&nbs
p; The stevedoring men plead their case, “Sir, I mean it’s just a few dollars. Be reasonable.”
“I am being reasonable. Stop!” I yell. “Everyone hand your envelopes back to the men sitting at the table. Now! Do it. Do it!”
“Aw Jaysus—” A man begins until Freddie Cuneen pushes him to the ground and rips the envelope out of his coat and hands it to over the stevedore’s table.
“Dance,” I call out without losing eye contact with the hard stare of the Russian leader. “Form a circle. Eddie and Freddie, Dago. Let’s go. Get the rest of our men. Where’s Whyo and Will?”
Whyo runs up to me, “Here, here. I’m here.”
“Your faster than Will, right?”
“Yeah, like the blazes I run.”
“Good, blaze down to the Baltic Terminal. Tell The Lark and Big Dick we have trouble and to send men. Now, go.”
Whyo runs behind us to the south and disappears between freight cars.
Will steps forward, “Ya want me to go to the Dock Loaders’ Club for The Swede?” He stops, then gulps. “Or the Masher?”
I look at the Russians. Do they deserve a beating? Or Vincent’s .38? “Get The Swede to bring twenty men.”
Will rushes through the enveloping circle toward the Russians, but before he can get anywhere, he is picked up by an arm.
Both my fists and teeth are clenched now as round us the fighters’ circle closes. Atop the barge a few sailors point down at us and gather with a bird’s eye view. Five men are lined up along the rope ladder that runs up to the ship deck. A few other men climb up to the top of the locomotive that we just loaded and exchange bets. I pull out my pipe and take off my coat and cap.
“This is our territory,” I yell to all. “No one gives us terms in our territory. These men have waved the right of honor and do not pay tribute to the White Hand. That means they lose all their earnings today.”
The circle tightens round them, yet still they give us lifeless stares.
“Ya wanna fight all o’ us, or give us what ya owe? Who the hell do yaz think yaz are?” Dance stands at my right with the Webley Revolver at his hip.
The hard-bitten fellow comes forth to speak for them, though he proves to be a jaunty fellow, “I am Motshan, Master of Ceremony. The King of all Russian, Rumanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish families in the United States,” The Russians round him nod to each other in agreement while four or five young women step out from behind a platform festooned in gold-coin necklaces, gold-coin bracelets and gold-coin earrings with motley-colored skirts about their broad hips and red scarves upon their heads.
Motshan gives a languid smile, “I hear this your first day? Eh? We fight. But we change mind,” he whistles and in seconds thirty men come pouring out from thirty directions beyond the platforms and warehouses to run through the network of freight rails toward us. “We want money from all sixty laborers today and all money from stevedore company. Everybody money. Now! And all bolts on that green boxcar too.”
A gunshot goes off, but Dance is tackled to the ground. On the other side of us a Russian falls to the dock with a hand over his shoulder and blood seeping between fingers.
“Viteza de atac!” The Russians call out and quickly the stevedore table is overturned. The coffer chest where the money is kept is yanked from them and we are overrun by their numbers.
“Get that chest!” I yell out as Eddie and Freddie swim through the crowd.
But the chest is so heavy that the Russian must drag it away. When the circle closes on him, he lets it loose to defend himself from the punches reigning down on him. We outnumber them four to one, but when the thirty men rush into the fray with clubs and sticks, at least ten of ours are pushed over the bulkhead and into the choppy river. Including one of the stevedores.
From the edge of the water we fight them back. My left fist pumps while the pipe in my right hand connects here and there, but there are too many faces. Then I see five men jump into the boxcar where the stolen goods are held.
“Get those bolts!” I yell out.
Ten of ours break through the line and another brawl ensues along the rail tracks of the depot. One Russian who had almost made it into the car was pulled down by the back of his pants bearing his arse to all. Ten pair of Hanan boots then kick his head and shoulders and torso until he balls up to protect himself.
When I move to fight a man one-on-one on the dock, I have to step over the bodies who have either been knocked out or are partially unconscious. Eddie Hughes is whipping a knife in the air and catches a Russian’s forearm, carving it open. A gaggle of Russians move backward when they see blood. Freddie Cuneen is at his side and thrusts a cudgel into the Russians. With a deep cracking sound, it bounces off the top of a man’s head. Blood runs down in fingers into his eyes and round his nose until he receives a second clubbing across the face that fells him for good.
The Russians sure up a charge and push us back against the water. My heels are at the edge of the bulkhead and behind me I can feel the void. The drop to the water is only ten feet, but it would mean the loss of the Atlantic Terminal if we are thrown into the East River.
“Impinge-i,” they yell, which must mean throw them in, or something. “Impinge-i!”
They kick at us on the edge. And throw sticks and paving stones too. Three at a time they rush forward to push us in. Two men behind me fall backward.
“We can’t hold them off,” Dago Tom yells.
Ten Russians lock arms and start a countdown in their language. They have their sights on us and there is no way we will be able to stop their push.
“trin, duy, yek—” they rock back and forth, counting down.
But suddenly they are crushed from one side by a wave of men. The Russians with locked arms are pushed to the ground and stomped. The Lark appears and bulls two men backward while Big Dick tosses a man over us and into the water, then grabs another by an open shirt and tears the whole thing off of him. They had brought twenty of their own men from the Baltic Terminal as little Whyo Mullen is howling from on top of a boxcar, jumping up and down. “White Hand, White Hand forever!”
Stepping over victims Eddie and Freddie slash and brutalize more to move us off the bulkhead edge. From the side I see Dago Tom drag one Russian by a leg while the poor fellow takes Hanan boots to the back of the head. The leader of the Russian’s face has long smears of blood across it already. The hard stare has disappeared now and his eyes are panicked in self-defense. Now he wobbles to keep himself on two feet.
“Hold him up,” I yell to two of our own men who splay him out like Jesus on the cross.
The man’s face comes into measuring and my fist breaks his lip open, cutting my knuckle with a sharp cuspid tooth. He kicks back with both legs, barely missing my face until he is felled backward and engulfed by men.
When I look over, Dance is dancing on someone’s face. When he is done, the Russian’s body moves slow and sloth-like, his eyes dazed and his mouth open. He cannot seem to gain his balance or even know that he is on the ground as his legs are moving as if to walk. Dance then takes off his hat and moves to stomp the man’s face again.
“Where’s the gun?” I yell at Dance.
He pulls it out of a pocket and points it in the air. All heads duck down when the pistol claps.
“We need to kill them,” Dance calls back with fury in his eyes. “At least one.”
“No, take the envelopes of the men that challenged us,” I command, my hand slick with the blood from a blue and swollen knuckle wound. “Spread their earnings out among all the men that took part in this justice.”
The Russians are dragged off.
“Justice would’ve been one life, at least,” Dance confides as order is almost fully restored. The Lark and Big Dick agree.
“Ya don’ wanna be seen as weak,” Dance pleads.
“No one’ll see what happened here today as weak. If anything, they’ll see it as merciful.”
“Mercy is weak,” Dance says.
“I
will never kill a man again,” says I. “I made a vow and I plan on sticking to it.”
“That’s an unfortunate vow. Makes things more difficult for all o’ us. We may have beat them t’day, but they’ll be back tomorrow with even more men.”
I hate that he is right. Mercy is considered weak to some of these men. The men who need to be sated by spectacle.
“Take all of them that we have in custody here. Drag them beyond the freight yard and line them up below the tenement windows so people can watch.”
“And?”
“Break their knees. Break their ankles.”
“That’s a temporary fix. They won’t be able to walk what? Two months? Three? They’ll plot to come back the whole time they’re laid up.”
“What would you suggest? Other than killing?”
Dance thinks for a moment, then shrugs, “There ain’t nothin’ else. Breakin’ their ankles an’ kneecaps will have to do. . . Let me see that hand.”
His dusky fingers spread the five inch wound open. More blood pulses out and I can feel a heartbeat inside the hand.
When I look at it again, the skin round the deep wound has turned a dark shade of blue.
“Never punch a man in the mouth,” Dance turns his hazel-eyed stare to me and let’s my hand loose. “Go for the jaw or the nose. It ain’t bleedin’ too bad that ya need a tourniquet, but it needs to be washed off. Salt water’ll help. I’ll take care o’ the rest here on the dock. At least we still got the goods on the boxcar though, even after all that.”
We both turn as the sliding door is slammed shut and the lock latch fastened with a rusty squeak and a clang.
“Irishtown won’t starve this week,” I say, walking through the men with my hand a glistening red mess.
“Good man, Poe,” a voice calls out.
A hand reaches out and surprises me, though it just pats me on the shoulder.
As I am headed to the floating sheds to soak my hand in the river, Eddie announces, “We ain’t no fookin’ feckless cowards. An’ there ain’t a god’amn outsider that challenges us wit’out payin’ a heavy price for it. We made that clear t’day!”
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 36
