“And this kid? Joe Garrity’s nephew?”
Dinny nodded. “Still early on him.”
“Yeah, but he’s dangerous now,” The Swede said.
Dinny smiled. “Dangerous, yeah, I guess so then.”
The next morning and it’s Sadie and L’il Dinny and I off to St. Ann’s again. The trolley we board slides on the tracks through the tenement halls with a motorcar here and there scuttling by us on the left, keeping up on the right. Pedestrians dodge opposing traffic and look behind us as they run ahead of the trolley or wait in the middle of the street for us to pass. Apple carts and potato shays and one-horse drays park along the sidewalk for the morning markets under the awning of laundry wires and elbows and faces pouring out from the window ledges above, staring lazily at the scenery movements. And along the rooftops are flocks of pigeons pecking at simple flecks and pooping on bald spots below as if they are targets. Ladies dressed to the nines, or as best they can, have the big hats that flop in the breeze of the trolley air with ruffles on their sleeves and squeezed between many a stranger who thinks long and hard on her curving thighs and heart-shaped hips hugged by the make of her church gown.
Inside Father Larkin blesses the tabernacle and just before the baskets are sent round for the offering, there is a clamor behind us all as the church door swings open with a fling and a bang against the back wall. Two men storm down opposing aisles like soldiers through a prisoner’s camp looking through the crowd for the wanted. Ignoring wholly, even desecrating the vaunted rituals adhered to by the flock of prisoners and true, the rituals of most millions too.
“Ya see’m?” One of the rebels yells across the flock.
“And who might ye be lookin’ fer, bhoys?” Father Larkin echoes angrily over St. Ann’s hall. “What on eart’ is it that gets in ye so impartently s’mornin’ that ye feel overcome wit’ yer inclinations as to interrupt this service. . . .”
“Dere he is! Dere’s da yoke, I see’m,” Tommy Tuohey yells over Father Larkin’s complaints.
I can tell by the accent it’s Tommy Tuohey and by the time I see him, Vincent Maher has come behind me and begun his pulling me out of the pew by the underarms.
“Let’s go, kid,” Maher mumbles, then signals at Sadie. “Don’ ya dare say my name out loud. Don’ do it.”
“Oop-ye-go-bhoy.” Tuohey lifts on my legs and together they carry me over the heads of the faithful of the aisle.
“I can walk on my own,” I yelp with embarrassment. “Let me down, let me down. I’ll go on my own!”
“Ye’re not to hert the bhoy,” Father Larkin cautions in echo form with all his summoning.
“Clouts for touts!” Maher yells back.
Father Larkin doubles his tone, “Don’ let me see dis bhoy hert in the slightest, I say! I’ll have the justice upon ye! For heaven’s sake, let the bhoy down and be off wit’ yerselves den!”
By then the flock has all but stared at my sequestering and is beguiled and betwixt by the treachery and the tragedy and the blasphemy in it. L’il Dinny has begun crying and grabbing through the air for me to come back while Sadie has turned her attention to his soothing. I unwrinkle myself angrily next to Maher in the aisle and blush at the attention. Father Larkin continues with his celestial scorn and instead of answering back in kind with snide remarks, Maher pulls out two bills from his pocket and drops it in the offering basket, then starts his pushing me toward the door with Tommy Tuohey in tow like two trench-coated rebels marching their informer to his execution. The people mumble and they gasp and Sadie has turned red in anger, though a few of the older men giggle happily being as it reminds them of their own brash youths in the place they used to call Irishtown.
Following us from behind is Cinders Connolly who is a churchgoer himself and who assures his wife all is well as he leaves his family to be with his boys. Outside we are, and with a crash of the door Maher and Tuohey push me up Gold Street until a left we take on Plymouth.
“Real tough now, ain’ ya kid?” Maher taunts.
“I don’t think I’m tough.”
“Yeah well, ya know things now, don’ ya?”
“What do I know?”
“T’ings!” Tuohey yells in my face, then pushes me again.
I look over at Connolly hoping he will help me out since I know from the look on his face that he is kinder than most, but he keeps distant and nods toward me to go along with it all.
“We’ll find out whatcha know, won’t we?” Maher says.
“Sure will, givertake moraless,” says Tuohey.
When we turn on Bridge Street and enter a saloon I had yet never seen before, Paddy Keenan stands behind the bar and looks upon us as we enter. On the end of the bar is Ragtime Howard with a small glass sitting ahead of him, though he hadn’t moved when the door opens nor gave us a glance, and finally the old storyteller Beat McGarry comes from the rear room with a big smile at our entrance. These men reside day and night in the saloon, even on a Sunday morning as this.
I am pushed to the middle of the saloon as McGarry begins clearing the stools away and putting them in the rear room. Menacingly, Maher motions in my face as Tuohey walks around the back of me and pushes me closer to Maher.
“What, ya wanna fight me?” Maher asks since I came upon him so close.
“I don’t.”
“Then why ya gettin’ so close on me?”
Connolly comes around to my side when the front door opens again, this time the two large figures of Gibney the Lark and Big Dick Morissey enter and seem to know from the look on their faces what the situation is. Together, they form a circle and push me not so gently from one side to the other.
“Tell me what ya know,” Maher says to me. “What did ya hear the other day?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’ play stupit, kid. I was there and I wanna know what ya hoid and and what ya didn’t.”
“How can I tell you what I didn’t hear?”
“Shaddup and start singin’!”
“About what?”
“That fat bastard Wolcott, whad he say that ya hoid?”
A range of thoughts run through me. Gibney kicks me in the seat of my pants and Morissey laughs in his baritone. Connolly pushes me to the center of the circle again as a matter of routine and McGarrity seems to be enjoying the whole scene like an oldtimer would.
“Let’s pull his trousers down and cut off them barnacles,” says the Lark. “Then we’ll send ’m back to church where he can’t do no one no harm.”
“Join the choir,” Morissey laughs, then shoves me to the ground at Maher’s feet who then puts a boot on my shoulder. “We’ll get it out o’ him one way or da other.”
“Get up! Get up ya fookin’ yella coward,” Maher pushes through to get to my face. “Ya think ya better’n the rest o’ us, don’t ya? Don’t ya? I seen ya over there at Dinny’s pretendin’ to be so important. Pretendin’ like ya gonna live for free forever! Get up! Now ya gonna find somethin’ out, get up!”
So I did.
“Lie down!” Gibney yells and kicks the legs from under me and I slam to the ground on my elbow and back.
“I said get up!” Maher hoots.
By then the room has started spinning on me and next thing I know the box head of Red Donnelly is jabbing me in the kidneys and Harry Reynolds too has somehow appeared while old man McGarry laughs it up.
“Are ya gonna kill ’em?” McGarry asks.
“No let’s torture ’em first,” Red offers.
Suddenly a terrible smashing sound came to my ears and it took me a moment to realize I’d been boxed with a hand across the side of my head and ear. Then Gibney grabs me by the tie and jacket and pushes me backward where Donnelly had gotten on all fours behind. As I tumble over top of him and onto my back again, my head hits the cement flooring. Someone drags me from behind and throws me into some chairs and a table and then all men are over me yelling one after the other, so much so that all of their angered voices mix together and
I can’t do anything or return a word so I decide only to stare at them with the strongest scowl I can muster. Slaps come across my head and face and then a fist splits my lip and I can taste the blood but instead of spitting it out, I swallow and all I can think about is Father Larkin and his warning, which had fallen on deaf ears.
“Ya’re the most dangerous man in Brooklyn right now, kid!” Maher yells over them all. “The most dangerous man ’cause ya weak and ya know things! That’s the most dangerous combination! Now ya gonna tell me what ya hoid Wolcott say to ya or we’re gonna beat it outta ya!”
“What? He didn’t say anything to me that you didn’t hear.”
A knuckled crack came thumping on the top of my head and my ears got boxed again as I lay in the corner among the shambles of the toppled tables and chairs.
“Where’s ya pride!”
“Why don’ ya fight back!”
“Tell me what ya hoid!” Maher shouts in my face, his toothpick flying out of his mouth with the spittle too. “Whad Wolcott say and how much did he give us!”
By that time I am so upset and angered that I refuse to say a thing since already I know that Maher was there too at the big building on Imlay Street in Red Hook. There was nothing I was going to say to him that he doesn’t already know. Nothing. But to stop the beating and the yelling, all I have to do is say the words. That’s all I have to do. But something obstinate wells in me, walls them off in my eyes. Something so strong and so overwhelming is culled that I simply refuse, no matter the consequence.
In the saloon we hear the chu-chum-chu-chumming of the train come running overhead as the door has been opened again. In ducks a man of great height and white hairs. A man so long and slow in his strides that he seems to ride in like the swoop of an apparition. Something from the past that haunts us more in imagination than reality. A darkness so old and ancient that shanachies in all their trying could never bring the death-scare that the face of The Swede could summon as it does with me then and there.
“Where is ’e?” He bawls.
Everyone steps from his way and with the length and strength of a long moving crane, he crinkled his fists into my jacket at the chest and picked me up over his white-haired head, slams me up on my duff at the bar with a bang so hard that the bottles sang in their shock and in their shimmering.
“Ya gonna tell me how much Wolcott offered!” The Swede blasts into my face like a flung open furnace door. “Ya gonna talk an’ sing. Then I’m gonna make ya dance like a little choich goil too! Sadie Meehan ain’ hear to save ya now, is she! Dinny ain’ here neither, now start chirpin’! How much was it?”
Tears streaming from my eyes in anger and my face red and ready to burst, ears ringing and body shaking in a shock and fear eclipsed not even by the horror I felt of drowning in the Atlantic by a U-Boat’s will, I scream as loud as I can, “I don’t know any Wolcott!”
The Swede throws me across the bar where I fall to the floor on my neck and my back. Connolly half-catches me there and tries helping me stand back up on my own.
“Let’m go!” The Swede yells, then grapples me again by the jacket and flings me into the arms of another.
“Hold’em, Philip,” The Swede bellows. “Send’em to his heaven, that’s where he wants to go, see! Get ya hooks in him Philip!”
Shorter than I, Philip Large grabs me from behind obediently as Connolly whispers into his ear. I can hear the whisper and know that he won’t allow Large to break my back. But I also know that the only reason Large won’t snap me in half is because of Connolly’s influence. Connolly’s whispering. And if The Swede or anyone else orders Connolly to shut up, I’ll not walk again. Large fells me to the ground, and as we go back, he wraps his stout legs round my torso and pulls my arms yet over my head, choking me in his stubby grasp. Next to us on the floor below the crowd of larrikins is Connolly who continues whispering in Large’s dumb ears and I can feel that Large yearns to squeeze the life from me. Yearns like a snake to break the will from its victim or the yearning a man feels to stay inside his woman instead of pulling out when the sensation overcomes his reason. Above me I can only see Harry Reynolds’s face as the air is squeezed from my lungs. He looks on me with a businesslike stare. Looks to see if I will succumb and this look of his gives me the knowledge. Lets me know that giving the information these men are after will mean death. Not giving them their information will mean more torture, but it will also equal something else entirely. Something I hadn’t much experience with yet. Those things in life that men are entranced by.
Suddenly in my view is Vincent Maher after he has pulled a .38 from the back of his pants, then leans over me with his legs opened around us.
“This is ya last chance, kid. Last chance to walk outta this place alive! Ya gonna answer this question or else we’re gonna dump the remains of ya in the river.”
He pushes the gun on my nose and on my cheek enough so that I can see it on my face.
“Who does Wolcott want dead! Answer me! Answer me!”
More tears running down and into my ears, the anger builds in me so high and terribly that the obstinate feeling makes me happier than the relief giving way could ever achieve. I look at his face through the lack of breath and tremble to answer. Large’s hold is so strong now that even if I want to answer, I can’t. My back is beginning to bend and the more I try to muscle it back into a normal position, the more yearning I can feel from Large to squash it. Then I hear Connolly whisper and Large’s grip slackens a bit.
“Who’s he want dead?” Maher yells, gun to face.
“Your mother!”
The room burst in excitement and laughs. Large lets me loose at Connolly’s request and the whole lot of them pull me up and backslap me with big broad smiles. The congratulations come like the way men used to congratulate others back in those days, with a simple shake of clasping hands and a proud look in the eye. To be happy for me. That’s how it was back then. To be happy to see me enter a new place with them under the crushing force of a world that turns its back on people in the low, as we are.
Then from the stairwell I hear footsteps and we all look up at the slow figures coming down. It is Dinny Meehan upstairs all along and as he calmly swung to our direction, he looks at me in my pitiful state with Eddie Gilchrist behind him.
“Ya know what honor is? Honor?”
“I think so.”
“Paddy, get the man a drink, can ya?”
Keenan pulls down a bottle from behind the rudimentary shelf and fills a small glass of whiskey, pushes it in front of me.
“Have a sip, den,” says Dinny Meehan confidently as he sits next to me while the others stand behind.
I did so.
“Wipe off those tears from ya face, kid. . . . There ya go.
Don’ let me see ’em again. Just self pity. Do ya pity ya’self? Do ya? Sure ya do. We all do. It’s alright to do that, of course, but it don’ help ya for nothin’. As long as ya know that. Honor is knowin’ things ain’t right. But still needin’ to survive, ya make what ya can wit’ it. Make the best for the people you care about. Go to the end o’ the earth for just a single moment of happiness for ’em. Honor is goin’ through hell, never talkin’ about it to ya wife an’ fam’ly. To ya mother. Honor’s feelin’ empowered by listenin’ to others complain about things, then fixin’ it wit’out even bein’ asked to fix it. These men here? Us? We don’ need a fire to bring back the blood of life in us. We are the blood of life. We’re made for struggle, that’s what we are. We are the struggle, dig? It’s a code and those that don’t know the code will never know it. Because the code’s ingrained in ya, locked in the blood, can’t be taught. You know who Patrick Kelly is?”
I looked at Dinny, then looked away. Then looked back. “I am.”
Dinny nodded his head and looked at the others in pride of my knowing the answer, “Everybody’s Patrick Kelly in here.”
The Swede stood over us, still not convinced. Never convinced. The others smiled however.
&n
bsp; “Ya think this country’s here for ya? The police? The gov’ment? The businesses? They here to help ya? They’re not. Don’ give a fuck for ya. These men,” Dinny waved his arm. “They care about ya. I care about ya. The only way we can survive, carin’ about each other. Been like that for a long time here. We survive because we make survival out of it. Not because o’ fate or coincidence, nah. To believe in fate is a sickness. We make our survival by the power of will. And what we talk about ain’ no one else’s business. No one’s. Death or starvation can’t break that from us. Torture either. Nothin’ break’s the code. That means silence is all they get from us. Ya understand? Ain’ nothin’ stronger in this world than the silence. Ya understand? What is it?”
“Silence.”
“I don’ know any Wolcott,” Dinny said. “Who’s Dinny Meehan?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Gibney the Lark?”
“Don’t know him.”
“Tommy Tuohey the tinker?”
“I don’t know any tinkers.”
“Vincent Maher?”
“Can’t recall that name.”
“The Swede?”
“Plenty of them around, Danes too. Norway, Germany, Finland . . .”
“He already knows,” says Maher happily. “We all thought you was soft since ya didn’ grow up around here. Like maybe ya’d turn a tout on us ’r somethin’.”
“Nah,” Dinny said. “He grew up in a place teaches ya from the day ya break ground. They don’ even teach it, it just is. It’s in the soil and the songs. Seven hundred years of it.”
“And counting,” say I, and wipe blood from my chin to coat.
I wanted to say something. Held it in tight. I wanted to say it, though it wasn’t the right time. Why did you flaunt my name to Wolcott? Like I was a trophy. Thos Carmody? My uncle Joseph? Why have I been taken in like a king? But it wasn’t the right time. Not yet. I lifted the whiskey to my mouth and bit at it again. It spread like fire in my mouth and as I swallowed the heat down through the chest, my lip burned where it had been split and the whiskey and the blood mingled in the grit of my mouth as I tapped the empty glass down on the mahogany.
Light of the Diddicoy Page 11
