'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  Also, there was to be no swearing or any kind of blaguarding in Mr. Logan's house or we'd be asked to desist and depart. He would not allow his wife and child, Luke, to be exposed to any kind of disgraceful behavior from the twelve young Irish boarders. Our beds might be in the basement but he would always know about disgraceful behavior. No, indeed, it takes years to build up a boarding house business and he was not going to let twelve laborers from the Old Country tear it down. Bad enough that Negroes were moving in right and left and destroying a neighborhood, people with no morality, no jobs and no fathers for their children running the streets like savages.

  The weekly rate was eighteen dollars for bed and breakfast and if I wanted dinner that would be an extra dollar a day. There were eight beds for twelve boarders and that was because everyone worked different shifts on the docks and various warehouses and what was the use of having extra beds cluttering up the two rooms in the basement, the only time all the beds were filled was Saturday night and then you had to bunk in with someone else. It didn't matter because Saturday night was the night to get drunk up on St. Nicholas Avenue and you wouldn't care if you slept with man, woman or sheep.

  There was one bathroom for all of us, bring your own soap, and two long narrow towels that used to be white. Each towel had a black line to separate the top from the bottom and that was how you were supposed to use them. There was a handwritten sign on the wall telling you the top was for anything above your navel, the bottom for anything below, signed J. Logan, prop. The towels were changed every two weeks though there were always fights between the boarders who were careful about the rules and the ones who might have had a drink.

  Chris Wayne from Lisdoonvarna was the oldest boarder, forty-two, working in construction and saving to bring over his girlfriend, twenty-three, so that they could get married and have children while he still had a tittle of power in himself. The boarders called him Duke because of his last name and because of the silliness in it. He didn't drink or smoke, went to Mass and Communion every Sunday, and avoided the rest of us. He had tufts of gray in his curly black hair and he was gaunt from piety and frugality. He had his own towel, soap and two sheets he carried around in a bag for fear we might use them. Every night he knelt by his bed and said the entire rosary. He was the only one who had secured a bed of his own since no one, drunk or sober, would climb in with him or use the bed in his absence because of the odor of sanctity around it. He worked from eight to five every workday and ate dinner with the Logans every night. They loved him for that because it brought in an extra seven dollars a week and they loved him even more for the small amounts he put into his scrawny frame. They didn't love him later when he started coughing and spitting and there were specks of blood on his handkerchief. They told him they had a child to think of and he'd better find another place. He told Mr. Logan he was a son-of-a-bitch and a pathetic bastard that he felt sorry for. If he thought he was really the father of that child Mr. Logan should look around at his boarders and if he wasn't completely blind he'd detect a marked resemblance to the child on the face of one of the boarders. Mr. Logan struggled out of his armchair gasping that if he didn't have the bad heart he'd kill Chris Wayne on the spot. He tried to rush at the Duke but his heart wouldn't let him and he had to listen to Nora from Kilkenny screeching at him, begging him to stop or she'd be a widow with an orphan child.

  The Duke laughed till he gasped at Nora, Don't worry, that child will always have a father. Sure, isn't he in this room.

  He coughed his way out of the room and down the stairs to the basement and no one ever saw him again.

  It was hard to live there after that. Mr. Logan was suspicious of everyone and you could hear him roaring at Nora from Kilkenny at all hours. He took away one of the towels and saved money by buying old bread at the bakery and serving powdered milk and eggs for breakfast. He wanted to make us all go to confession so that he could watch our faces and know if what the Duke said was true. We refused. There were only four boarders long enough in the house to be suspects and Peter McNamee, the longest one there, told Mr. Logan to his face that fooling around with Nora from Kilkenny was the last thing he'd ever think of. She was such a bag of bones from running the house you could hear her rattle and clank coming up the stairs.

  Mr. Logan gasped in his armchair and told Peter, That hurt me, Peter, that you'd say my wife clanks and you the finest boarder we ever had even if we were fooled a long time by the false piety of the fella that just left, thank God.

  I'm sorry to hurt you, Mr. Logan, but Nora from Kilkenny is not by any means a morsel. No one here would give her a second look on a dance floor.

  Mr. Logan looked around the room at us. Is that right, lads? Is that right?

  'Tis, Mr. Logan.

  Are you sure of that, Peter?

  I am, Mr. Logan.

  Thank God for that, Peter.

  The boarders earn good money on the docks and in the warehouses. Tom works at Port Warehouses loading and unloading trucks and if he works extra hours he goes on time and a half or double time so that his pay is well over a hundred dollars a week.

  Peter McNamee works at Merchants Refrigerating Company unloading and storing the meat from the freezer trucks from Chicago. The Logans like him for the slabs of beef or pork he hauls home every Friday night, drunk or sober, and that meat takes the place of the eighteen dollars. We never see this meat and some boarders swear Mr. Logan sells it to a butcher shop on Willis Avenue.

  All the boarders drink even though they say they want to save money and go back to Ireland for the peace and quiet that's in it. Only Tom says he'll never go back, that Ireland is a miserable bog of a place, and they take that as a personal insult and offer to settle it if he'll step outside. Tom laughs. He knows what he wants and it's not a life of fighting and drinking and moaning about Ireland and sharing towels in flophouses like this. The only one who agrees with Tom is Ned Guinan and it doesn't matter with him because he has the consumption like the Duke and he's not long for this world. He's saving enough money so that he can go home to Kildare and die in the house he was born in. He has dreams of Kildare where he's leaning on a fence at the Curragh watching the horses training in the morning, trotting through the mist that clouds the track till the sun breaks through and turns the whole world green. When he talks like this his eyes glisten and there's a slight pink flush on his cheeks and he smiles in such a way you'd like to go over and hold him a minute though that's the kind of thing they might frown on in an Irish boarding house. It's remarkable that Mr. Logan allows him to stay but Ned is so delicate Mr. Logan treats him like a son and forgets the baby who might be threatened by coughs, spits and flecks of blood. It's remarkable the way they keep him on the payroll at the Baker and Williams Warehouse where they have him in the office answering the phone because he's so weak he can't lift a feather. When he's not answering the phone he studies French so that he can talk to St. Therese, the Little Flower, when he goes to heaven. Mr. Logan tells him very gently he might be on the wrong track in this matter, that Latin is the language you need in heaven and that leads to a long discussion among the boarders as to what language Our Lord spoke, Peter McNamee declaring for a fact it was Hebrew. Mr. Logan says you might be right there, Peter, because he doesn't want to contradict the man who brings the Sunday meat home on a Friday night. Tom Clifford laughs that we should all brush up on our Irish in case we run into St. Patrick or St. Brigid and everyone glares at him, everyone but Ned Guinan who smiles at everything because it doesn't matter one way or the other when you're dreaming of the horses in Kildare.

  Peter McNamee says it's a wonder a single one of us is alive with all the things against us in this world, the weather in Ireland, the TB, the English, the De Valera government, the One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, and now the way we have to break our arses to make a few dollars on the docks and the warehouses. Mr. Logan begs him to mind his language in the presence of Nora from Kilkenny and Peter says he's sorry, he gets carried away.


  Tom tells me of a job unloading trucks at Port Warehouses. Emer says no, I should work in an office where I can use my brains. Tom says warehouse jobs are better than office jobs that pay less and make you wear a suit and tie and have you sitting so much you get an arse on you the size of a cathedral door. I'd like to work in an office but the warehouse pays seventy-five dollars a week and that's more than I ever dreamed of after my thirty-five dollars a week at the Biltmore Hotel. Emer says that's fine as long as I save something and get an education. She talks like that because everyone in her family went to school and she doesn't want me lifting and hauling till I'm a broken old man at the age of thirty-five. She knows from the way Tom and I talk about the boarders that there's drinking and all kinds of blaguarding and she wouldn't like me to be spending my time in bars when I could be making something of myself.

  Emer has a clear head because she doesn't drink or smoke and the only meat she eats is an occasional morsel of chicken for her blood. She goes to a business school at Rockefeller Center so that she can earn a living and make something of herself in America. I know her clear head is good for me but I want that warehouse money and I promise her and myself I'll go to school someday.

  Mr. Campbell Groel who owns Port Warehouses isn't too sure if he wants to hire me, that I might be too scrawny. Then he looks at Tom Clifford who is smaller and scrawnier and the best worker on the platform and if I'm half as strong and fast I have the job.

  The platform boss is Eddie Lynch, a fat man from Brooklyn, and when he talks to me or Tom he laughs and puts on a Barry Fitzgerald accent which I don't think is a bit funny though I have to smile because he's the boss and I want the seventy-five dollars every Friday.

  At noon we sit on the platform with our lunches from the diner on the corner, long liverwurst and onion sandwiches dripping with mustard and Rheingold beer so cold it gives me a pain in my forehead. The Irish talk about the drinking they did last night and they laugh over their great sufferings in the morning. Italians eat the food they've brought from home and don't know how we can eat that liverwurst shit. The Irish are offended and want to fight except that Eddie Lynch says anyone in a fight on this platform can go looking for a job.

  There's one black man, Horace, and he sits away from the rest of us. He smiles once in a while and says nothing because that's the way it is.

  When we finish at five someone will say, Okay, let's go for a beer, one beer, just one, and we all laugh at the idea of one beer. We drink at bars with longshoremen from the piers who are always fighting over whether their union, the ILA, should join the AFL or the CIO and when they're not fighting about that they're fighting about unfair hiring practices. Hiring bosses and gang foremen go to different bars farther into Manhattan for fear they might have trouble along the waterfront.

  There are nights when I stay out so late and I'm so confused with the drink there's no sense going back to the Bronx at all and it's just as easy to sleep on the platform where the bums keep fires going in great drums on the street till Eddie Lynch comes along with his Barry Fitzgerald accent and tells us, Off your awrse and on your feet. Even when I'm hungover I want to tell him arse is pronounced with a flat a but he's from Brooklyn and he's the boss and he'll say awrse forever.

  Sometimes there's night work on the piers unloading ships and if there aren't enough longshoremen with ILA cards they'll hire warehousemen like myself with Teamster cards. You have to be careful you're not taking jobs from longshoremen because they think nothing of sinking a baling hook in your skull and pushing you down between ship and dock on the chance you'll be crushed beyond recognition. They make better money on the docks than we do in the warehouses but the work is unsteady and they have to fight for it every day. I carry my own hook from the warehouse but I've never learned to use it for anything but lifting.

  After three weeks at the warehouse and all the liverwurst and beer I'm scrawnier than ever. Eddie Lynch says in his Brooklyn brogue, Faith an' begorrah, I could slip you and Clifford through the awrse of a sparrow, two o' youse.

  With the nights of drinking and working on the piers my eyes are flaring up again. They're worse when I have to handle sacks of hot Cuban peppers from United Fruit ships. Sometimes the only thing that will give me relief is beer and Eddie Lynch says, Jesus Christ, the kid is so desperate for the beer he's pouring it through his eyes.

  The warehouse money is good and I should be content except that there's nothing in my head but confusion and darkness. The Third Avenue El is packed every morning with people in suits and dresses, fresh and clean and happy in themselves. If they're not reading newspapers they're talking and I hear them describing their vacation plans or bragging about how well their children are doing in school or college. I know they'll work every day till they're old and silver-haired and they'll be content with their children and grandchildren and I wonder if I'll ever live like that.

  In June the papers are filled with stories about university commencement exercises and pictures of happy graduates and their families. I try to look at the pictures but the train rocks and jolts and I'm thrown against passengers who give me superior looks because of my work clothes. I want to announce that this is only temporary, that one day I'll be going to school and wearing a suit like them.

  21

  I wish I could be stronger at the warehouse and say no when someone laughs about going for a beer, one beer, just one. I should say no especially when I'm supposed to meet Emer to go to a movie or eat a piece of chicken. Sometimes after hours of drinking I call her and tell her I had to work overtime but she knows better and the more I lie the colder her voice and there's no use calling and lying anymore.

  Then, deep into the summer, Tom tells me Emer is going with someone else, she's engaged, she's wearing a big ring from her fiance, an insurance man from the Bronx.

  She won't talk to me on the phone and when I knock on her door she won't let me in. I beg her for a minute so that I can tell her how I'm a changed man, how I'm going to mend my ways and lead a decent life, no more stuffing myself with liverwurst sandwiches, no more guzzling beer till I can hardly stand.

  She won't let me in. She's engaged and there's a glint of diamond on her hand that sends me into such a wildness I want to pound the wall, tear out my hair, throw myself on the floor at her feet. I don't want to stumble away from her to Logan's Boarding House and the one towel and the warehouses and the docks and the drinking till all hours while the rest of the world, Emer and her insurance man included, lead clean lives with towels galore, all happy on graduation day and smiling with their perfect American teeth brushed after every meal. I want her to take me in so that we can talk about the days before us when I'll have a suit and an office job and we'll have our own apartment and I'll be safe from the world and all temptation.

  She won't let me in. She has to go now. She has to see someone and I know it's the insurance man.

  Is he inside?

  She says no but I know he is and I yell that I want to see him, trot the bugger out and I'll deal with him, I'll lay him out.

  Then she shuts the door in my face and I'm so shocked my eyes dry up and all the heat leaves my body. I'm so shocked I wonder if my life is a series of doors closed in my face, so shocked I don't even want to go to the Breffni Bar for a beer. People are passing me on the streets and cars are honking but I feel so cold and alone I could be in a prison cell. I sit on the Third Avenue El to the Bronx and think of Emer and her insurance man, how they're having a cup of tea and laughing at the way I disgraced myself, how clean and wholesome they are, the two of them, not drinking, not smoking, waving away the chicken.

  I know that's the way it is around the country, people sitting in their living rooms, smiling, secure, resisting temptation, growing old together because they're able to say, No, thank you, I don't want a beer, not one.

  I know Emer is acting like this because of my behavior and I know I'm the one she wants, not this man who's probably sipping tea boring her to distraction with insurance stories. Still, s
he might like me again and take me back if I give up the warehouse, the docks, the liverwurst, the beer, and get a decent job. There's still a chance for me since Tom told me they won't be getting married till next year and if I improve myself starting tomorrow she'll surely take me back although I don't like thinking of him sitting for months on the couch kissing her and running his paws all over her shoulder blades.