Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  Freddie says, “The White Hand descends upon them what think they can call us out. No one calls out Patrick Kelly at the Atlantic Terminal!”

  “Poe,” Dago Tom comes from behind and grabs my arm. “Ya gotta say somethin’ to the guys. Ya gotta. Look at them all. They’re waitin’ for ya.”

  When I turn, all the men have me in their sights. “Speech! Speech!” They call out.

  I turn the rest of the way to face them as Dance drops a stool on the ground in front of me to stand on. When I do, I can see the amount of them as all the men who had been loading the train pavilions have joined. When their demands for a speech quieten, I clear my throat.

  “There’s no need for celebration here,” I call out. “There’s no need for speeches. What we done today is not right. But it’s necessary. We do what is necessary round here to feed our families. If this were a better world, all of you would be peaceful men. Do not exult. Go to your families and tell them that you love them. Tell them that you do things that you are not proud of to ensure they are fed. But remember that everyday we win, others lose. This is not the world we would choose, but it’s the only world there is.”

  As I step down Dance laughs and shakes his head in comical disbelief, “Ya’re more like Harry than I ever realized.”

  Big Dick’s baritone voice chuckles, “I remember when we used to dump him head-first into garbage cans. Now look at him.”

  I turn back to Dance, “I want everyone from the Bronx to Gravesend talkin’ about how a bunch of Russians were maimed at the Atlantic Terminal today. Let as many people see you do it as possible.”

  “Ya got it, boss,” Dance nods.

  Beyond the dark and floating sheds out on the pier I lay flat on my stomach and submerge my hand in the East River.

  I didn’t want this, I tell myself again. I never asked for this. But what do I want? I’ve done terrible things today. Horrible things I didn’t think I could do. Why do people cheer men who do horrific things? Why do they exult in horror?

  I look across the expanse of the harbor. My mother, if she knew what I did this day, would think me a monster. Eat or be eaten, it’s said. Feed your family, or starve. Kill or be killed, that is what this place demands of us all, and I am no longer innocent of it.

  A swirling wind travels along the water and rifles through my clothing. Suddenly the sun is overtaken and the sky darkens again. A black mist rolls in from the north and soon the bridges that span the East River are engulfed. The city beyond disappears.

  A figure appears out on the water, obscured by the tumbling fog. It is a woman in a gown.

  Emma, Emma is that you?

  Her hair is unwashed and hangs over her gaunt face. Shoeless, she walks on water. When she looks over to me, her mouth almost smiles.

  “Emma!” I call out over the water.

  “Liam,” her voice is low, yet hurts my ears for its vibration. “Why do you still love me, Liam?”

  My chin quivers, but anger bursts out of me instead, “I don’t love you! I never did. I barely even knew you!”

  “I name you a liar,” she responds. “Why do I still haunt you then?”

  “I’m no liar! It’s true! Love is a game of chance and surrender that I’ve no time play any longer. I have a family that needs me to support them. There’s no place for love in me.”

  “Is family not love?”

  “It’s not the same as loving someone who is not family.”

  “Liam, if you do not open yourself to the light, the darkness will close in around you. Just now, archons attack. It is not your fault that they let us starve.”

  As the dark mist rolls over top of her on the East River, I repeat her words, “They let us starve.”

  I don’t know why she said those words, though they are words I have heard throughout my life. They are words that bounce round in my head and cause the greatest melancholia. “They let us starve.”

  Feckless and infirm. I am feckless and infirm. Worthless, useless, lazy, not worth the value of the food I eat. Not worth the land I stand upon. I am a monster.

  A deluge of large raindrops begin to plummet from the dark and swirling sky. The mist is cold to my skin. I cannot see twenty feet but I hear the waves turning over and slapping against the bulkhead. Behind me I hear a rustling. The dark doorway of a storehouse swings open, but no one is there. Waves rock the sheds on the shoreline, yet still no one comes.

  “Who’s there?” I yell out, but the wind takes my words and sends them to oblivion.

  A scraping sound, like metal on cement comes to my ears. Then a chopping sound like an axe into wood. An unintelligible voice says something. It is garbled with phlegm, wet and sickly.

  I pull out the pipe that is stitched in my coat, “Come out!” When I grip the pipe, the pain in my knuckle vibrates and I loosen my hand round it.

  A man with a black mask over his face emerges from the shoreline mist at the base of the pier. The mask only covers the upper part of his face, leaving his mouth exposed. The nose protrudes out of the mask and is grotesquely hooked with eyes so close together they look like they almost meet. In the masked man’s hand is a scythe, or sickle that drags along the pier’s planks. When a winch engine one dock away begins whining, he walks directly toward me, his boots pounding the pier, pa-pum-pa-pum-pa-pum. Faster and faster. Louder as he comes closer.

  “Stop right there!” though I don’t believe he can hear me and there is no way Dance, Eddie & Freddie and Dago Tom can either. “What do you want?”

  He is half way to me along the pier when he picks up his sickle in a threatening way, waving it across his face with an athlete’s expertise.

  I don’t want to die. Is this death coming for me? I probably deserve it.

  His first swing backs me to the edge of the pier. A backhand swing with the pipe connects with a deep clapping sound to the back of his head, though he turns as if unfazed. We have switched places now, he at the end of the pier. I could run all the way down the pier now, but I do not. Instead I stand and wait.

  “You killed the cub reporter with that?” I point my eyes at the weapon in his hand.

  A bubbling sound comes out of his throat again, but I cannot make out any words. He gargles again, but it sounds like the thunder that rumbles in the sky. “They let us starve,” he says, the thunder crackles and right on top of it a lightning bolt flickers and for half a second it is again day time. When the thunder rumbles afterward, I can hear his voice again, “They let us starve.”

  He waves the sickle over his head once and thrusts a cross-swing toward my face. I step back again, but he sends another quick thrust, this one a backhand and I can feel the breeze on my cheek.

  I don’t want to die. I might deserve it though. But I can’t die yet, not now.

  We swing in unison at each other. Our weapons ring in the air at impact in front of our faces and I notice an old stitched wound under his mask, running down from his nose. The pain in my hand reverberates up my arm and into my brain. My instinct is to let loose of the pipe, but I can’t unless I don’t mind death. But I do mind it, and grip the pipe harder through the pain.

  We swing at each other again, the lead of my pipe and the sharpened metal of his blade make sparks above us that dissipate before touching the water round us. A left-handed punch lands on my cheek. I never saw it coming. I lose him in my vision as I struggle to keep balance. Backing away as fast as I can, I see streaks of him. When I swing wildly for defense, I catch nothing but air.

  What am I fighting? Who are you?

  When I see him swing again, I duck away but the grip of his blade comes down on the top of my head and stuns me. Lying across the pier on my back with the pipe at my side, I touch the top of my head and see blood in my hand.

  But is that the blood from my knuckle wound, or my head?

  Behind him the wind has turned to gusts and black clouds twist and turn torturously among themselves in the sky. He attacks again from above. I can only fall to my back and kick up with my legs
. The sickle waves behind him and comes rushing down toward my face. In a panic I grab for the pipe again and close my eyes. The sparks are much closer to my face this time.

  Kill. Kill. Kill, my mind echoes the words. Murder him.

  A cataract of rain comes furiously down as if a waterfall is being poured onto us. But the sky is black as pitch and I cannot see where the pier begins and where it ends. We are simply out on the water with no notion of direction.

  “I don’t want to die,” I thrash in anger as he is rearing for another swing.

  Somehow he lands on the pier next to me, the water on both sides of us. Without thinking I grab with my left hand at his wrist, which holds the sickle. Then grab hold of the flesh but it is as hard as wood underneath the stained cuffs of his dirty white linen shirt and the coal-colored coat. The old wound above his lip is not bleeding, but it is covered with some sort of yellowish green viscous. On one side of his face is a pattern of little holes. Scars like stars in the night sky while another streaks through his hairline over an ear like a runaway comet. From the ground next to him I swing across and connect on the top of his head. He had tried to turn away so that it did not connect on his face, but the sound that came from the blow was deep and loud.

  “Ahhhh!” I yell out with every ounce of murder in me.

  Before he has a chance to respond I stand up, still holding his wrist. I kick at his abdomen with my right boot and yank at his wrist to keep him off balance. When his sickle falls in the green and brown water I let his wrist loose and barrage him with the pipe three, four, five times in the back until he slips into the water.

  I climb to the end of the pier to look for him, but there is no evidence of a splash nor even a wave. I push the water round with my bloody hand, but I see nothing. There is nothing. Just nothing, everywhere below.

  “Poe!” Dance yells from the base of the pier by the sheds and storehouse. “That’s prolly enough. C’mon in so we can wrap it up.”

  When I look up, the sky is cloudless and the sun is at its zenith. A tear drops from my face into the East River, though it feels as though it is someone else’s tear. Someone else who uses my eyes to cry. When I look round, I see myself. I see myself at the edge of the pier pulling my hand out of the river.

  “How is this possible?” The words spill from my mouth.

  But are they mine? Did I just say those words? Or was it someone else who put them in my mouth?

  I look round, but Dance had already turned back.

  I am alone. Alone in this.

  I stand and run as fast as I can. Sprinting down the pier toward the shore and my people.

  Equilibrium of Contradictions

  Remember your role, Darby Leighton rocks back and forth on the train. Remember your role in the raid. Remember. Go over it again and again so you don’t forget it.

  Darby looks down at the bloody splint on his pinky finger.

  After Richie fractured it with a ball-peen hammer, Abe spent an hour going over the details of the raid with Darby again.

  “If you do vhat is expected of you, all vill be fine, Darby, my little friend,” Abe had assured him.

  “But where are we goin’? Who are we raidin’?” Darby asked with agony in his eyes.

  Abe said, “All that you need to know is your role, yez. Ve all have our own roles to play, you need only vorry about your own, do you understand?”

  I hate when he talks down to me like that. I shouldn’t even be here. My role is to get my brother Pickles free and to right the lie, not go on raids. I’m no soldier. But don’t forget. Don’t forget your role in the raid, Darby repeats to himself as his pinky throbs, shooting pain up his arm and shoulder.

  Go over it again and again so you don’t forget it. He rolls the knuckles on his good hand across his forehead and grinds his teeth.

  Last night Darby dreamt death was closing in on him and he could not seem to stop the bleeding. The more he applied pressure to the wound, the more it spat red. What mystified him was that he did not know what had mortally wounded him. Bullet or Knife? Was it an accident? Had someone done it on purpose, or had he done it to himself?

  Darby had to wrestle himself out of the dream, only to wake up in sweats next to Ligeia. There, he sat in bed worrying over the dream, wondering what the weapon was that had killed him. Eventually Darby concluded the weapon was a lie.

  I lied to Bill and told him what he wanted to hear. I have lied about Sadie. I have lied about Dinny. But if I hadn’t lied, I wouldn’t be here right now to right the lie about my family. Is it not devious conceit that drives a liar to right other people’s lies?

  Anna Lonergan’s words suddenly come to his mind, “None of us are pure anymore.”

  Bill beat her for that. But Anna Lonergan had more courage than Darby could ever wish to summon in himself. But is it courage that helps people lie, or is it cowardice?

  The thought comes unbidden, and Darby concludes that everyone is just trying to survive in a place somewhere between dream and wakefulness. Bound to life in the now but with death’s freedom on the wing. Lingering betwixt the two sides like dawn amidst the night and coming day. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die, and here we are, trapped, or maybe circling the drain like water bugs trying to stall the inevitable.

  But lies. Lies cut us open without our knowing it.

  I am being pulled in opposing directions with lies on one side and truth on the other. But are they contradictions? Or do they work together in some equilibrium? Just forget about that. Forget it. Darby shakes his head. But don’t forget your role.

  He looks down at the bloody splint on his finger again, I just have to get through this raid and prove my loyalty so that I can right the lie about my family.

  Darby then looks round the train, confused, Where am I?

  Wild Bill Lovett stands and sways in the aisle of the train to address his gang after most of the other commuters had been run off at the last stop. His beetle black hair and the dark circles round his eyes contrast the skin on his face, white as mare’s milk. When he clears his throat, everyone sits to listen.

  “Men will die t’night,” he grimly imparts upon his cortege of followers, which includes his four lieutenants, the Lonergan Crew and ten Trench Rabbits.

  But Bill looks worse than ever. After he killed the Italians, his health had improved. But now. Now his eyes are red-rimmed with black bags under them like bruises. The open soars on his neck have returned.

  “There will be bodies,” Bill announces to his men on the train. “So make sure y’ain’t stupit enough to be one o’ them. Know ya role, an’ ya can survive. On this night we make our move in securin’ the Gowanus border an’ weakenin’ our enemy’s ability to strike at us. But we gotta crossover to do it. Behind enemy lines. A covert assault in their own territory, South Brooklyn. But we all know the only way to get a dago outta a tree is by cuttin’ the rope.”

  The boys get a laugh out of that one, but Darby does not smile. Either does Bill, who walks back to the front of the train car.

  One-arm Flynn calls back to us, “A dago walks into a bar—”

  The boys already start laughing at the jape before even the gag line is delivered.

  Flynn finishes, “A dago walks into a bar, holds up two fingers an’ asks for five beers.”

  Bill had gone over the plan and everyone’s role in it so many times that he now looks the other way when Petey Behan jumps up and down in his seat. Eventually the leg snaps off of it and Petey runs to open a train car window and toss it into the busy street below. All the teens line up along the windows and howl in joy when they see the leg flail through the air and hit a pedestrian down on the street.

  “He looked a guniea too!” Matty mocks with vulgar hand gestures as Tim Quilty stands in his seat and thrusts his narrow hips up to piss out another window.

  In the front of the car, the shit-black hound circles in place, then hunches its back and looks sorrowfully at everyone.

  “Ah Jesus on a stic
k, the dog’s shittin’ on the train,” someone announces as old man Lonergan snorts, the florid bruises from his son’s beating him still visible.

  Petey scoops up the dogshit with a kerchief and slings it out the window where everyone on the train looks to see if he got anyone. Two flatly dressed immigrant women, maybe Scandanavians or Poles in their forties stop when they feel something spray them, then look up. When the train car bursts into laughter, a shock of pain streams through Darby’s finger and up into his brain.

  “I got some in my mouth somehow,” Timmy says with a brown smile. “It’s still warm.”

  Caw-caw, one-arm Flynn quarks in laughter.

  Darby sulks in a back corner of the train watching as Brooklyn passes by. The sun has disappeared below the skyline, but the blotted clouds in the west are lit with yellow fire until a five story building along the edge of the Fifth Avenue Elevated train blocks the view with a windowless brick facade. When the train passes the building, the fiery sky appears again above the endless tenements.

  At the head of the train Bill sits with Richie Lonergan and listens to Abe Harms while his other lieutenants loiter round and pass a cigarette amongst each other. At Bill’s feet are three of his Shit Hounds. One brown, one yellow and the black one with the emptied bowels. Some Trench Rabbits had been brought along for the raid as well, chosen due to their loyalty to Bill and ability to follow orders.

  Bill’s specific, seemingly meaningless orders are as tactical and precise as a military offensive. If carried out according to plan, none of our own will be killed. That’s what’s said, at least.

  Darby must have heard Bill say it ten times, “We work as one; separate pieces all with easy tasks, but important roles none-the-less.”

  On the train Petey and Timmy yank out a window frame, complete with the glass intact and run over to the opposite window where below pedestrians walk unawares.

  One man had remained on the train while all others had been shooed away. He sits opposite Darby in a boater’s hat next to the fraternal twins in his care, one dressed as a boy. The other as a girl. He looks at Darby with the eyes of a concerned father.