A hard chorus of “Yes, sir!”
“Then, gentlemen, at-ten-tion!”
The horses swung into rows as sharp and straight as razors.
Peters thought, Wait a minute. Hold on. Slow down. Let’s think about this.
“Charge!”
The bugle blew and Major Sullivan’s mount burst out through the portico, as if fired from a gun. The rest of the cavalry followed suit and Mayor Peters found himself running alongside them. He felt like a child at his first parade, but this was better than any parade, and he was no longer a child but a leader of men, a man worthy of salutes given without irony.
He was almost crushed by the flank of a horse as they rounded the corner of the State House fence line, took a quick right and then streamed left onto Beacon at full gallop. The sound of all those galloping hooves was unlike anything he had ever heard, as if the heavens had unleashed boulders by the hundreds, by the thousands, and sudden white cracks and fissures appeared in the windows along lower Beacon, and Beacon Hill itself shuddered from the glorious fury of the beasts and their riders.
The breadth of them had passed him by the time they turned left on Cambridge Street and headed for Scollay Square, but Mayor Peters kept running, the sharp decline of Beacon giving him added speed, and when he broke out onto Cambridge, they appeared before him, a block ahead, sabers held aloft, that bugle trumpeting their arrival. And just beyond them, the mob. A vast pepper sea that spread in every direction.
How Andrew Peters wished he’d been born twice as fast, wished he’d been given wings, as he watched those majestic brown beasts and their magnificent riders breach the crowd! They parted that pepper sea as Andrew Peters continued to run and the pepper gained clarity, became heads and then faces. Sounds grew more distinct as well. Shouts, screams, some squealing that sounded nonhuman, the clang and thwang of metal, the first gunshot.
Followed by the second.
Followed by the third.
Andrew Peters reached Scollay Square in time to see a horse and rider fall through the storefront of a burned-out drugstore. A woman lay on the ground with blood seeping from her ears and a hoofprint in the center of her forehead. Sabers slashed at limbs. A man with blood all over his face pushed past his mayor. A volunteer policeman lay curled up on the sidewalk, clutching his side, weeping, most of his teeth gone. The horses spun in ferocious circles, their great legs stomping and clopping, their riders swinging those sabers.
A horse toppled, and its legs kicked out as it whinnied. People fell, people were kicked, people screamed. The horse kept kicking. The rider got a firm grip on the stirrup and the horse rose up in the crowd, its white eyes as large as eggs and wide with terror as it rose on its front legs and kicked out with its back legs and then toppled again with a squeal of confusion and abandonment.
Directly in front of Mayor Peters a volunteer policeman with a Springfield rifle and a face warped by fear leveled his weapon. Andrew Peters saw what was going to happen in the split second before it did, saw the other man in the black bowler with the stick, the man looking dazed, as if he’d taken a hit to the head, but still holding that stick, wavering. And Andrew Peters shouted, “No!”
But the bullet left the volunteer policeman’s rifle and entered the chest of the dazed man with the stick. It exited his body as well, punching its way out and imbedding itself in the shoulder of another man, who spun and hit the ground. The volunteer policeman and Andrew Peters both watched the man with the stick stand in place, bent over at the waist. He stood like that for a few seconds, and then he dropped the stick and pitched forward onto the ground. His leg jerked, and then he sighed forth a gout of black blood and went still.
Andrew Peters felt the whole horrible summer coalesce into this moment. All the dreams they’d had of peace, of a mutually beneficial solution, all the hard work and goodwill and good faith, all the hope…
The mayor of the great city of Boston lowered his head and wept.
CHAPTER thirty-eight
Thomas had held out hope that the work he and Crowley and their ragtag band had performed last night would have sent the proper message, but it wasn’t to be. They’d busted heads last night, they had. They’d gone in, fierce and fearless, and met the mob in Andrew Square, then met it again on West Broadway, and they’d cleared it. Two old warhorses and thirty-two bucks of varying experience and varying levels of fear. Thirty-four against thousands! When he’d finally arrived home, Thomas hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours.
But now the mob was at it again. In twice the numbers. And unlike last night, they were organized. Bolsheviks and anarchists moved among them, handing out weapons and rhetoric in equal measure. The Gusties and a variety of in-state and out-of-state plug-uglies had formed squads, and they were hitting safes up and down Broadway. Mayhem, yes, but no longer mindless.
Thomas had received a call from the mayor himself asking him to refrain from action until the State Guard arrived. When Thomas asked when His Honor expected that help to come, the mayor told him there’d been some unforeseen trouble in Scollay Square but the troops would be arriving presently.
Presently.
West Broadway was anarchy. The citizens Thomas had sworn to protect were being victimized at this very moment. And the only possible saviors would arrive…presently.
Thomas ran a hand over his eyes and then lifted the receiver from the telephone cradle and asked the operator to patch him through to his home. Connor answered.
“All quiet?” Thomas asked.
“Here?” Connor said. “Sure. What’s it like on the streets?”
“Bad,” Thomas said. “Stay in.”
“You need another body? I can help, Dad.”
Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, wishing he loved this son more. “Another body won’t make a shred of difference now, Con’. We’re past that point.”
“Fucking Danny.”
“Con’,” Thomas said, “how many times do I have to tell you about my distaste for profanity? Does anything get through your thick skull on that score, son?”
“Sorry, Dad. Sorry.” Connor’s heavy breath moved through the phone lines. “I just…Danny caused this. Danny, Dad. The whole city’s tearing itself—”
“It isn’t all Danny’s fault. He’s one man.”
“Yeah,” Connor said, “but he was supposed to be family.”
That seared something in Thomas. The “supposed to be.” Was this what became of pride in your offspring? Was this the end of the road that began when you held your firstborn, fresh from your wife’s womb, and allowed yourself to dream of his future? Was this the price of loving blindly and too much?
“He is family,” Thomas said. “He’s blood, Con’.”
“To you maybe.”
Oh, Jesus. This was the price. It certainly was. Of love. Of family.
“Where’s your mother?” Thomas said.
“In bed.”
Not surprising—an ostrich always searched out the nearest pile of sand.
“Where’s Joe?”
“Bed, too.”
Thomas dropped his heels off the corner of the desk. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“Yeah, he’s been sick all day.”
“With what?”
“I dunno. A cold?”
Thomas shook his head at that. Joe was like Aiden—nothing knocked him down. He’d sooner poke out his own eyes before he took to his bed on a night like this.
“Go check on him.”
“What?”
“Con’, go check on him.”
“Fine, fine.”
Connor placed the receiver down and Thomas heard his footfalls in the hall and then a creak as he opened Joe’s bedroom door. Silence. Then Connor’s footfalls coming toward the phone, quicker, and Thomas spoke as soon as he heard him lift the receiver.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“About an hour ago. Look, he could
n’t have—”
“Find him,” Thomas said, surprised the words came out a cold hiss instead of a hot shout. “You understand me, Con’? Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find your brother,” Thomas said. “Now.”
Back in June, the first time Joe had slipped out of the house on K Street, he’d fallen in with Teeny Watkins, a boy who’d attended first and second grades at Gate of Heaven with him before he dropped out to support his ma and three sisters. Teeny was a newsie, and Joe, during those three days on the streets, had dreamed of becoming one himself. The newsies ran in tight packs based on whichever newspaper they were affiliated with. Gang fights were common. If Teeny were to be believed, so was breaking-and-entering on behalf of adult gangs like the Gusties, since newsies tended to run small and could squeeze through windows adults couldn’t.
Running with the newsies, Joe saw a brighter world, a louder one. He became acquainted with lower Washington Street’s Newspaper Row and all its saloons and shouting matches. He ran with his newfound gang along the edges of Scollay Square and West Broadway, and imagined the day when he’d cross over those edges and become part of that night world.
On the third day, though, Teeny handed Joe a canister of gasoline and a pack of matches and told him to set fire to a Traveler newsstand on Dover Street. When Joe refused, Teeny didn’t argue. He just took the can and the matches back. Then he beat Joe in front of the other newsies, many of whom laid down bets. There was no fury to the beating, no emotion. Every time Joe looked into Teeny’s eyes as he brought another fist down onto Joe’s face, it was clear that Teeny could beat him to death if he chose. That, Joe realized, was the only outcome the other newsies were betting on. Whether Teeny did or not was an issue to which Teeny himself seemed indifferent.
It took him a few months to get over the coldness with which the beating had been delivered. The beating itself was almost forgettable by comparison. But now, knowing that the city was coming alive—and even coming apart—in a way it might not do again in his lifetime, any pains or lessons from that day receded and were replaced by his appetite for the night world and his possible place in it.
Once he left the house, he cut over two blocks and walked up H Street toward the noise. He’d heard it all last night from his bedroom—West Broadway making even more of a racket than usual. West Broadway was where the saloons were and the rows and rows of boardinghouses and the gambling dens and the boys playing shell games on the corners and whistling to the women who stood in the windows of rooms lit red or orange or dark mustard. East Broadway ran through City Point, the respectable part of South Boston, the section where Joe lived. But it was just a matter of crossing East Broadway and making one’s way down the hill until you reached the intersections of East and West Broadway and Dorchester Street. There you found the rest of Southie, the vast majority of it, and it wasn’t quiet and respectable and well tended. It jumped and exploded with laughter and quarrels and shouts and loud off-key singing. Straight up West Broadway until you hit the bridge, straight down Dorchester Street until you hit Andrew Square. Nobody had a car around these parts, much less a driver, like his father. No one owned a home; this was renters’ territory. And the only thing rarer than a car was a yard. Boston proper had Scollay Square to provide its release, but Southie had West Broadway. Not as grand, not as brightly lit, but just as dense with sailors and thieves and men getting a load on.
Now, at nine in the evening, it was like a carnival. Joe made his way down the middle of the street, where men drank openly from bottles and you had to be careful not to step on a blanket where dice were being thrown. A barker called, “Pretty ladies for every taste,” and upon seeing Joe: “All ages welcome! As long as you’re stiff and not a stiff, come on in! Pret-ty ladies lined up for your delight!” A drunk reeled into him and Joe fell to the street and the guy gave him a glance over his shoulder and continued staggering. Joe dusted himself off. He smelled smoke in the air as some men ran past him carrying a dresser with clothes piled high on top. Just about every third man brandished a rifle. A few others held shotguns. He walked another half block and sidestepped a fistfight between two women, and he started thinking maybe this wasn’t the best night to investigate West Broadway. McCory’s Department Store burned ahead of him, people standing around cheering the flame and smoke. Joe heard a loud crash and looked up to see a body falling from a second-story window. He stepped back and the body hit the street and broke into several sharp pieces and the crowd hooted. A mannequin. The ceramic head had cracked and one ear had broken into several shards and Joe looked up in time to see the second one sailing out of the same window. That one landed on its feet and snapped in half at the waist. Someone wrenched the head off the first mannequin and hurled it into the crowd.
Joe decided it was definitely time to head back. He turned and a small, bespectacled man with wet hair and brown teeth stooped in front of him, blocking his path. “You look like a sporting man, Young John. Are you a sporting man?”
“Name’s not John.”
“Who’s to know from names? That’s what I say. Are you a sporting man then? Are ye? Are ye?” The man put his hand on his shoulder. “Because, Young John, right down that alley there, we’ve some of the finest sports betting in the world.”
Joe shrugged off the hand. “Dogs?”
“Dogs, aye,” the man said. “We’ve got dogs fighting dogs. And cocks fighting cocks. And we’ve dogs fighting rats, ten at a time!”
Joe moved to his left and the man moved with him.
“Don’t like the rats?” The man haw-hawwed. “All the more reason to see ’em kilt.” He pointed. “Right down that alley.”
“Nah.” Joe tried to wave it away. “I don’t think—”
“That’s correct! Why think?” The man lurched forward and Joe could smell wine and egg on his breath. “Come now, Young John. Down yonder way.”
The man reached for his wrist and Joe saw an opening and darted past the guy. The guy grabbed at his shoulder, but Joe snapped away from his hand and kept walking fast. He looked back and the guy followed him.
“A dandy, are you, Young John? So it’s Lord John, is it? Excuse me all to heaven indeed! Are we not to your cultured taste, your lordship?”
The man trotted in front of him and swayed from side to side, as if made jaunty by the prospect of fresh sport.
“Come, Young John, let’s be friends.”
The man took another swipe at him and Joe jerked to his right and darted ahead again. He turned back long enough to raise his palms and show the man he wanted no trouble, and then he turned forward again and picked up the pace, hoping the guy would tire of the game and spend his energy on an easier mark.
“You’ve pretty hair, Young John. The color of some cats I’ve seen, it ’tis.”
Joe heard the man pick up sudden speed behind him, a mad scrabbling, and he hopped up onto the sidewalk and ducked low and ran through the skirts of two tall women smoking cigars who swatted at him and let loose high laughs. He looked back over his shoulder at them but they’d turned their attention to the brown-toothed barker who was still in pursuit.
“Ah, leave him alone, ya cretin.”
“Mind yourselves, ladies, or I’ll be back with me blade.”
The women laughed. “We’ve seen your blade, Rory, and, sure, it’s shameful small, it is.”
Joe broke back out into the middle of the street.
Rory scuttled up alongside him. “Can I shine your shoes, Lord? Can I turn down your bed?”
“Let him be, you ponce,” one of the women called, but Joe could tell by their voices that they’d lost interest. He swung his arms by his side, trying to pretend he didn’t notice Rory making ape sounds beside him, the man swinging his arms now, too. Joe kept his head turned forward, trying to appear like a boy with a firm destination as he headed deeper into the thickening mob.
Rory ran his hand gently along the side of Joe’s face and Joe punched him.
His fist
caught the side of Rory’s head and the man blinked. Several men along the sidewalk laughed. Joe ran and the laughter followed them up the street.
“Can I be of service?” Rory called as he trotted behind him. “Can I help you with your griefs? They looks a might heavy for ye.”
He was gaining on him and Joe darted around an overturned wagon and through a group of men. He ran past two men with shotguns and through the doors of a saloon. He stepped to his left and watched the doors and took several gulps of air and then looked around at the men, many in their work shirts and suspenders, a majority with handlebar mustaches and black bowlers. They looked back at him. Somewhere in the rear of the saloon, beyond the crowd and the smoke, Joe heard grunts and moans and knew that he’d interrupted some kind of show back there, and he opened his mouth to tell them he was being chased. He caught the bartender’s eye as he did, and the bartender pointed across the bar at him and said, “Throw that fucking kid out of here.”
Two hands gripped his arms, and his feet left the floor and he sailed through the air and back through the doors. He cleared the sidewalk and landed on the street and bounced. He felt a burn in both knees and his right hand as he tried to come to a stop. And then he wasn’t bouncing anymore. Someone stepped over him and kept walking. He lay there nauseated and heard brown-toothed Rory say, “No, allow me, your lordship.”
Rory grasped Joe by his hair. Joe swatted at his arms and Rory tightened his grip.
He held Joe a few inches off the ground. Joe’s scalp screamed and Rory’s back teeth were black as he smiled. When he burped it smelled of wine and eggs again. “You’ve got trimmed nails and, sure, fine clothes, Young Lord John. You’re quite the picture.”
Joe said, “My father is—”
Rory squeezed Joe’s jaw in his hand. “You’ll be finding a new father in me, so ye might want to save your fucking energy, your lordship.”
He drew his hand back and Joe kicked him. He connected with Rory’s knee first and the man’s grip loosened in his hair and Joe got his whole body into the next kick and drove it into the man’s inner thigh. He’d been aiming for his groin but it hadn’t worked out. But the kick was sharp enough to make Rory hiss and wince and let go of his hair.
The Given Day Page 63
