“I’m yer fam’ly, Liam. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean ye have to keep everythin’ a secret from me too. I understand why ye don’t want Mam to know all, but I. . . I miss ye. The way we used to be in Ireland, as kids. Sure ye was treated differently because ye’re a boy, but I’m only one year younger than ye,” She comes closer and sits over me. “Remember when we used to play in the fields together an’ we’d always team up against Brigid? Remember it?”
A long sigh comes to me as I slowly ease back onto the bed, “Of course I do. She always got so mad when we hid from her together. She’d say—”
“I can’t wait to watch Da massacre ye when they find me dead,” Abby finishes.
I can’t stifle the smile on my mug, “How exactly was she going to watch if she’s dead?”
Abby shrugs with smiling eyes.
For a moment we sit there in silence to look at each other. Then look away. Then back again.
Abby reaches for my arm, “Liam, ye’ve done so much fer us. But ye’ve changed. Ever since ye left fer New Yark it’s like I don’t even know who ye are. I know the look on men’s faces when they don’t love their fam’ly, but ye don’t have that, Liam. Ye’ve got the love on yer face all the time, but it’s tortured now. Ye always seem so tortured.”
You don’t even know the half of it, I look down at the blue and black bruises from Culkin’s blackjack.
“Liam tell me somethin’. Anythin’. I won’t repeat it. I promise. I know the code o’ silence.”
I turn to her when I hear those words. Then clear my throat, “Do you like your schooling?”
“At P.S. Five? I s’pose so.”
“I want you to grow up to have a bigger understanding of things. I’m sure the teachers are droll and the lessons are boring, but you will have a broader perspective than I ever will be able to know.”
“Because ye couldn’t go to get schoolin’ yerself,” Abby looks down in shame.
“It’s not a bad thing if it’s what I want. Mam says the future of our family is with its women. And I believe her.”
“Liam, she was just tryin’ to get yer attention when she said that.”
“It worked.”
Abby sighs in frustration, “When did ye get so cold, Liam?”
“Cold?”
“I spent my entire childhood watchin’ ye. An’ what I know about ye is that ye always had an open heart an’ a kindness to ye. A love of all things in life an’ a deep interest in learnin’ about them. But now. . . What happened, Liam? What happened to yer love? Tell me.”
“My love?”
She doesn’t answer that question because she knows that I know what she means. I’ve hardened inside and out and there is no way of hiding that from my sister since one of the most important things in her life is the relationship between us.
If I harden up completely, she will too.
“Emma,” I say the words.
“Emma? Who is that?”
“Emma McGowan’s her name. Beautiful and soft-spoken and smiled back at me when I smiled at her.”
“Is she here in—”
“In New York, yes,” I look out the window. “I don’t even know if she liked me back. We only spoke a few times and once I even gave her flowers.”
“Really?”
I nod with, “She was the sister of a guy who died the same time the White Hand took me in. He was the righthand of the leader.”
“The righthand?”
“The leader’s most trusted.”
“Oh.”
“In fact the first day I met them was at her brother’s wake the day I was found. But because her brother died when I arrived, and then just afterward, her and I began to spend time with each other, it felt,” I turn to Abby. “It felt destined. Like we were supposed to be together. No one was surprised at the thought of us getting married. Having a family one day. It was like everyone expected it, to be honest. I thought about it all the time. Stupidly.”
“Why stupidly? That’s the most beautiful thing there is, startin’ a fam’ly.”
“Yeah well—”
“What, what happened?”
I raise my palms and look up, “When I was brought here with the grippe, I was quarantined for a couple months and I couldn’t stop thinking about getting better and going to her. To proclaim once and for all that I loved her. I had it all planned, and when I was finally released I went right up to her door, but. . .”
“But what?”
“She had gotten sick too.”
“She died?”
“She did.”
Abby’s mouth goes small as she blinks through her thoughts.
“All along I thought I knew what my destiny was, but it was ripped away. That’s the thing. There is no destiny. There is no fate, either. We’re just out here swimming against the tide and some of us die along the way and it doesn’t matter. You just have to keep swimming, right?”
She tilts her head.
“What? I told you all of this and now you’re just going to sit there?”
Abby’s eyes look up and her mouth moves to one side until she finally says, “You needed to say that aloud. Sometimes just sayin’ it can help, ye know? That’s what fam’ly is for. Not to judge, just to be there for each other. To listen.”
I look away when she says that. My eyes begin to well up, but I bite the tears back. When I feel as though my voice won’t crack, I turn and speak, “Maybe you should give Mam that advice, because she is after me quitting my friends altogether. They saved me, you know. They saved me from being homeless and brought you to me—”
Abby interrupts, “Homeless? When were ye homeless? Ye came here to stay with uncle Joseph.”
“Sure well, he turned me out.”
“He did?”“
Then he died,” I turn to her quickly, “I tried to quit the White Hand. Just recently. For Mam. I tried to quit, but. . . It’s too late. No one believes what we do is good. No one stands up for us, even though we feed hundreds of people who would starve if it weren’t for our being there for them. Thousands. All of these families that have lived here for so long would have nothing if we didn’t organize the labor work, take from the ships and force tribute. And if it weren’t for them, my brothers who picked me up off the street, then I wouldn’t have you here either. They helped me when I needed it most and brought my family here to me.”
“But what do you mean it’s too late?”
“I went to Confession and the priest turned me in.”
“Father Larkin?”
I nod and show her my bandaged fingers, “The police want to blame us for something we didn’t do. For something they did.”
Abby looks at me as if to question whether I tell the truth of it. As if to question whether I am capable of lying so boldly about a priest. She had only heard stories of how the church spoke out against the Fenians and the Moonlighters and the Irish Republican Brotherhood and sided with our enemy back in Ireland. But she had never been faced with the consequence of it impacting her own life.
“Liam, it’s not. . .” she searches for the right word. “Wise. It’s not wise to side against the law and the church.”
“I was put in a bad spot. The law and the church weren’t going to help me get my family out of the way of the coming wars in Ireland. I was thrust into this, but I fought. I fight,” I say, correcting the tense to present. “I fight to feed my family, whether the police say it’s against the law or the church says it’s a sin, I fight for us.”
She shakes her head in doubt and disagreement, which makes me feel I’m on an island, all alone.
“Listen Abby, you said you know the code of silence. Let me tell you this. . . Don’t break it.”
Her eyes move to the side as she slowly nods, “No wonder ye can’t love.”
“Why?”
Her eyes are alight with realization, “Emma died an’ now ye’re after protectin’ yer heart. Ye won’t let anyone in because ye think it’s yer fault she died. An’ may
be if ye love someone else, ye’ll lose her too.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. When we were children she would often name the animals and laugh at their individual personalities. But the day Da made me toss those puppies into the lake is the day I stopped giving any animals names.
“I know that feeling,” says she.
“How?”
“Harry Reynolds was just a crush, but. . . I know he’s dead now.”
I look with sorrow to her, “How did you find out about Harry?”
“I asked round,” she laughs, though there is no happiness in it. “We’re in the same boat, aren’t we?”
“I guess it makes us lovers of the dead.”
“No,” she shakes her head. “It makes us Irish.”
We share a smile at that one, but she concludes, “We just have to move on. If we were to ask Emma an’ Harry, they would both agree that we need to find new love while we’re alive. We have to love the ones who live, but never forget those who’ve passed. Liam?”
I look up.
“Between us an’ the men who helped ye, who will ye choose?”
“I. . . I want to choose the right thing to do,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to make the right choice. The honorable choice. But in this? I can’t choose one without dishonoring the other. It’s a puzzle that can’t be solved. It drives my head into a spin.”
“Do ye love them?”
“The men in the gang?” I swallow hard, but I know the answer. “I do. They’re good people. They’ve honored me in ways I could never repay. I do love them. With all my heart. But I love my family too.”
Abby gathers herself and straightens her posture. “Back home I was to marry one o’ the Cudmore bhoys.”
“Which one?”
“Padraig.”
“The one that loved to flick donkeys in the testicles?”
“That’s him. When I had. . .” her face blushes as she looks up to mine. “When I had my moon, our all-too-grand older brother Timothy made a deal with Mr. an’ Mrs. Cudmore that if I married Padraig, we would share profits from our two dairy farms. But not long afterward we got a letter in the mail.”
“A letter? From who?”
“From yerself, o’ course. An’ it had three tickets fer passage to New Yark in it.”
Once again a smile comes across my face that I simply can’t control. And that’s why Timothy married a Cudmore, isn’t it?”
“T’is,” she says. “Payback fer tryin’ to sell off yer sister.”
The two of us burst out in laughter at that.
“I was so happy when that letter came. I ran through the fields like I escaped the insane asylum, fer fecks sake.”
I put a bandaged hand over hers. In response, she puts her other hand on top of mine as tears drop from her cheek in the light from the window. Across the bed I reach to place another hand atop hers to show my love for her, my sister. My blood.
Through the tears she speaks, “I didn’t want to marry Padraig Cudmore an’ the way I see it, these men that helped ye out? That saved ye? They saved me too from an unhappy life bearin’ children to a man I could never love. Liam?”
“Yeah.”
“I know Mam would have ye choose, but I don’t think anyone has the right to tell ye who ye can or cannot love. Ye love that fam’ly too, the men in the gang. Ye don’t have to choose between them an’ us. Ye can have us both, the way I see it.”
“Do you really think that?”
“I do,” she nods. “Mam werries, o’ course. She lost two boys already, an’ her two livin’ sons are both in danger. But it’s a dangerous time, to be sure. An’ these men helped ye when yer own uncle wouldn’t. Go to them, Liam. They need ye. The pilgrimage comes soon. An’ the fight.”
“How do you know about—”
“Gather yer clothes, Liam. Before Mam gets back.”
Mortal Transgression
Rain drips down Thos Carmody’s nose and has soaked through his gray suit, darkening it. For the first time in a while he feels like he is back in France, hunting behind enemy lines, death so close.
But why am I so weak? Why am I dying?
He had forced himself to eat two days in a row. The buttered potatoes tasted like metal, the peas and corn as bland as chips of ice. Still he grows weaker.
The wind twists round him in the black of morn and whistles in his ear with the voice of an old man straining through an Irish lilt, Ye need to hunt. Ye need to kill.
Thos holds two fingers to his forehead and strains to stand, and fails to do so. He knows the voice in the wind cannot be right. It just can’t be. To hunt and kill cannot cure a man who has already so cold and cruel. A man who has killed sixty-eight people in his life already, if not more. To be that heartless and that uncaring, as Vaccarelli said of him, will only lead to regret, or worse. But not better health.
Maybe that is what is wrong with me? Death is tired of my winning ways and wants its scythe back.
There will be consequences for his need to win at everything. And consequences for choosing Lovett over Meehan.
That is what haunts me. That is why I am slowly dying. Death is due.
As the sky flashes over West Manhattan, then crackles despondently, Thos comes to his feet underneath the budding leaves of a skinny Green Ash tree in a narrow courtyard between two brick buildings. The pulley clotheslines are bare above because of the downpour. And no one sees him from the windows above as the color of his leaden gray suit camouflages him amidst the wet slate slabs.
Hunched under his coat’s collar he moves through the narrow alley as the outside of his shoulders scrape along both buildings. Tendrils of rainwater rush down the painted masonry facades like pulsing white veins and collect a foot-deep and run in a current down the alley in search of a grate or sewer. Inside his coat he pulls back the hammer to his pistol, then clicks it back again to practice. At each squishing step he repeats the action and continues doing so as he turns left on Eighth Avenue and ambles northward.
As he walks across Eighteenth Street an echo of sound from an elevated train a block away mixes with the slap of raindrops on the pavement. He lowers his cap and tilts it over to the side so that he cannot be seen by the passenger who sits in a curbed motor car. Inside a man pulls from a pipe but takes no notice of Thos.
They can’t see ye, the voice in the wind says to him. Hunt. Ye must hunt.
At the south end of the block where his mark awaits death, Thos turns in to another alley, unseen. This one is so narrow that he must walk sideways to fit through. When he gets to the back of the building he flits his eyes up into the rain.
Above, Costello unhooks the fire escape ladder and lowers it so that Thos can reach it.
I can’t make it. I don’t have enough energy.
Try, the voice responds. Ye are chosen fer greatness.
Thos chuckles incredulously at that. Chosen to die, maybe.
Keep going. Ye will see.
The metal rungs are slippery. Paint chips pop off and fall to the ground with the rain. Thos comes face to face with Costello on the slatted metal platform.
“He’s up there wit’ two other guys, playin’ cards. Lefty’s guardin’ the front door.”
Thos looks up and reaches for the handrail and plods heavily up the metal stairs, “Welcome to the ILA, Costello,” he calls over his shoulder in the morning rain.
When he gets to the roof he swings a leg up and over, then falls into a puddle of water amidst gravel and tar. On his back he stares up at the raindrops that rush down at him. Faces appear in the dark gray clouds above and cry all over him as a church bell clamors somewhere in the offing.
I can’t get up. I should sleep. But I haven’t slept in months. I should sleep.
He had once grown used to sleeping in the rain when he and seven hundred others were surrounded in the gap. It was not an easy thing to do. Many men had gone insane with the rain and mud and fleas and rats. Not to mention the Hun shelling them with mortar and machine gun fire. It�
��s not easy to sleep in the rain when the severed limbs of your dead comrades float by in the red rainwater. Bill Lovett had no trouble sleeping though. Neither had Non Connors. But now? After the war? Thos simply can’t fall asleep at all. If he did, it was hard to notice. Sometimes he was groggy. But most of the time his wounds ache, which keeps his brain grinding away to a nub.
The wind turns the raindrops sideways as the voice speaks again, Get up.
Why, there’s no reason to. There’s no reason for anything. I have done terrible things. I have caused death everywhere I have gone since even before the war. My time has come. I will let Tanner take me. He has a family, I do not.
Get up.
On the roof he gets up on one knee in the rain. Water flows down the end of his nose and over the rim of his soggy cap. He lifts himself and moves off, shuffling like a drunkard round cages of wet pigeons who turn their heads sideways to see him. Then turn away. Four-foot brick walls separate contiguous buildings of equal height. He scales them thoughtlessly. Ponderously. And flails again on his back.
Get up.
He stumbles to the other side of the building. He turns backward at the fire escape and begins to descend. Slowly. But on this fire escape there are no stairs and platforms, only a rung ladder leading down to the first floor. When he lowers the leg that was injured by the grenade, his boot slips. Dangling by one hand he looks down through the dark. Gas lamps out on the street throw long, dimming light through the alleyways, but he cannot see the slate or cement ground below.
Four story drop. If I fall it’ll be all over.
Don’t fall, says the wind.
He feels his fingers loosening. He could grab with his other hand, but something stops him.
If I die you’ll die with me. No more voices in the wind. As far as I know, the world will die with me.
Ye’re almost there, don’t fall.
Thos smiles. And lets loose.
The drop through the black starts quickly. He flies past a window where a man and woman kiss in a kitchen. Then his foot hits a rung from the fire escape, bends his leg and forces his knee up, which smacks against his right cheek. From there, he cartwheels the rest of the way. Cartwheels just like when the Cricket Ball grenade exploded next to him in France. He does not fight the centrifugal force that pulls his arms and legs straight out and he can’t fix his eyes on anything. The world swirls in teetering visions and water until he lands flat on his back on top of a mortar and cinderblock barrier that separates two buildings, bending him in half, backward. The back of his head then whiplashes against the north side of the barrier and all goes black.
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 55
