The Exile Breed

by Charles Egan

  As they discovered, the anthracite terminal was a mixed kind of place. All kinds of immigrants were there, many hardly able to speak English. Luke heard many ‘Dutch’ speaking Germans. Other immigrants too from all over Europe – Scottish, Swedish, Danish, French, Russian and Hungarian.

  But the Irish outnumbered all the rest by far.

  Half way through the morning, they stopped for a break. Hot tea and bread. Luke realised three men across from him were speaking in Irish. He listened closely. West of Ireland definitely. He walked over.

  ‘Are ye long working here?’ he asked.

  ‘Long enough,’ one of the men replied. ‘A year if it’s a day.’

  ‘Where are ye from then?’

  ‘Tourmakeady and around.’

  ‘Down by the Partry Mountains.’

  ‘That’s it, right enough.’

  ‘Are things so bad there?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Worse than bad. The fever was murdering us last year. We were lucky enough to get out of Ballybanane. Sure there’ll be none of it left if it goes on like that. That’s where my father and mother live, four children too when I left. No word from them since, only silence. The same with Bornahowna, that’s where Éamonn and Seán are from. Silence there too. Not a word. Three families. Flanagans, Derrigs, and Shaughnessys. What’s left of any of them? No one knows.’

  ‘Can they write?’

  ‘Write? Not a chance. They get the priest to do the writing, when he’s passing through.’

  Back shovelling coal. Luke was working beside one of the Tourmakeady men.

  ‘One thing I don’t understand is how easy it was to get working here.’

  ‘Did you think you wouldn’t?’

  ‘We tried the other side. There were dozens of men ahead of us, and the gangers were only selecting some. They never got down as far as us.’

  The man stopped shovelling for a moment, and leaned on his shovel.

  ‘Well there’s two reasons for that. First of all, they’re all from Five Points, and they’re all far too lazy to come over this side.’

  ‘They weren’t as lazy as that.’ Luke said. ‘Standing outside in the cold that early was hardly easy.’

  ‘Sure, but what kind of condition were they in? And there’s another reason too. We’re paid damned little here.’

  ‘I never even asked…’

  ‘Maybe you should have.’

  ‘Like – how much?’

  ‘Fifty cents a day, if you’re lucky.’

  Lines of barges along the piers had to be worked. Sometimes they shovelled the anthracite out directly to the lighters, sometimes they filled carts and wagons, and sometimes they filled sacks and heaved them onto the wagons.

  Some barges came with anthracite in large chunks, and the coal heavers had to break them with sledgehammers before shovelling them further. Young boys worked the smashed anthracite, searching for ‘slate’ – rock mixed in with the anthracite that could explode with heat.

  It was no different to Mayo, Luke reflected. Breaking rock and shovelling it, whether in their own quarry or on the Famine Relief Works in the mountains. Children working too. That was no different either, but, while their blackened grimy faces looked ghastly, at least there was none of the hair growing along their cheeks to show the later stages of starvation.

  Their foreman was American. His only concern was to get them to work faster.

  ‘Another hard man,’ Luke said.

  ‘They’re the same all over,’ Jack said.

  ‘What’s that ye’re saying?’ one of the other men asked.

  ‘Just talking about the foreman, that’s all,’ Luke replied.

  ‘Arra, they’re nothing as bad as the fellows on the Relief Works back home. They were the Devil in Hell, every single one of them. Drive you to hard work, and you starving.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Luke said. Best not talk about that.

  Ten hours was the usual working day. Even Luke found his muscles were aching at the end.

  ‘So how does this compare to the railways?’ Jack asked him one day.

  ‘Tougher, I’d say. On the cuttings, you’d get a chance of a break from the shovelling. Like using the pick in under the front of the lift of rock, but I preferred the shovelling anyhow.’

  That night, they returned to Costellos.

  They rode on an anthracite lighter back to the New York side. It was full, and they sat on the anthracite, looking back over the harbour as the sun set over New Jersey.

  When they returned, Catherine looked at them in disgust.

  ‘Ye’re looking as black as coal, the pair of ye.’

  ‘Sure it is coal,’ Jack said.

  ‘Enough of that guff out of you. Get down to the courtyard and clean yourselves up.’

  They stripped off their shirts, and washed at the hand pump in the courtyard. Then they carefully returned to their room and changed their trousers.

  ‘Time for a drink,’ Jack said.

  They sat with Costello, as Catherine served the beer.

  ‘Ye got work, did you?’ Costello asked.

  ‘We did. Not that it pays a lot, but it’ll do for now. And at least we’ll be settled, so we can stay around New York for a while. It might be better than going to Lackan straight away.’

  ‘It might,’ Costello said. ‘You’re still thinking of bringing out your wife?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You can use this address so,’ he said, ‘and if you’re not here, we’ll know where you are, and be able to send her on to you.’

  After a few days working and travelling back at nights, one of the Tourmakeady men suggested they should stay on the New Jersey side of the Hudson.

  ‘Not a bad idea either,’ Jack commented to Luke.

  After work that evening, they accompanied the three others to a lodging house on Steuben Street. It was a square-built building, just across from a shipyard.

  ‘And if ye don’t like shovelling anthracite, ye might try building ships instead,’ one of the others said. ‘Whenever they start building them again, of course.’

  They entered the house and met the landlady, a Mrs. Gleeson. A rate was quickly agreed. It was cheap, but at their wages they could afford no more, and Luke reckoned Mrs. Gleeson knew that. They followed her up to the bedroom. There were six bunk beds around the walls.

  ‘You can have these two,’ she told Luke and Jack.

  ‘I’ll take the top one so,’ Jack said rapidly.

  ‘And there’s one other thing,’ Mrs. Gleeson said. ‘I expect my lodgers to be clean. Very clean.’

  She brought them back down the corridor to a small room in the end. Inside was a large copper tub, three pails of water beside it. The floor was covered with damp coal dust.

  ‘Now you can wash each other here,’ she said, ‘and make sure you’re scrubbed clean before dinner.’

  ‘We best have a clean suit of clothes so,’ Jack said, half joking.

  ‘Ye can come down naked, as far as I’m concerned, but you don’t come down in filthy clothes.’

  She left them.

  ‘I’d hoped she was joking about the naked bit,’ Jack said.

  ‘I think so,’ Luke replied. ‘But still, staying here might be better to where we are. I never wanted Winnie to see Five Points.’

  ‘I’m not sure that this’d be much better for any lady,’ Jack said. ‘Coal dust and naked men, eh?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  That night they travelled back to Five Points and explained their plans to Costello.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would make sense too. But ye’ll come back and visit now and again.’

  ‘Sure why not,’ Luke said.

  He had decided now that Farrelly’s suggestions were for the best. He could stay waiting in Jersey City and New York until Winnie arrived with the baby. He had a fixed address at last, two if he included Costellos. Now too, he knew there was no problem travelling in winter. The ships came straight from Mayo to New York, all year round
. With his own money, he would be able to ensure that she would travel on a passenger ship. No coffin ships for his wife and child. Yes, one way or another, it would be best to have her come to New York and meet her in New York or Jersey City. That would be far better than waiting ’till he moved to Lackan, and have her take a train to the mines in Lackan on her own.

  Early on the Monday morning, he got a bank draft from the Chemical Bank.

  Then he returned to Jersey City. That evening, he bought a pen, ink and paper, and returned to the lodging house. He washed, went down to the dining room, and wrote.

  Gleeson’s Boarding House

  Steuben Street

  Jersey City

  New Jersey

  United States

  Carrigard

  Kilduff

  Co. Mayo

  Ireland

  7 June 1848

  My Dearest Winnie, Dear Mother and Father,

  At last, I have some good news for ye. You will notice the address above, and this will be my fixed address until at least Winnie and the baby come out to join me in America. It is only just across the river from New York. A second address worth noting is that of Mr. John Costello, who owns Costellos Bar in Orange Street in the city of New York. If there is any problem, he will always know where I am.

  I enclose a bank draft, which should cover more than the price of a ticket to New York. It may help you through the present hard time too. I would send more, but the work we are doing is not well paid.

  There is no problem with winter crossings to New York, because the rivers here do not freeze like in Quebec. So Winnie may leave at whatever time she pleases, but should take a good passenger ship, direct to New York, and from Mayo if possible. At any cost, avoid the lumber ships, where the passenger quarters are worse.

  Now for other news. We have had a good journey from Bytown, with little to do except for some labouring work when we had to break up the lumber rafts, and by God, that was hard. We also did a little clerking for the ganger. For the rest of the time, we were able to watch the country we were passing through. There are now many farms along the rivers following the line of the logging in Canada, and along the rivers in the United States too, and many Irish farmers have settled the land, I hear.

  At Lake Champlain, we passed through the border of the United States, but it seems that things are easier now than they were in 1847, and they no longer stop Irish people from entering. We then followed the Champlain Canal down to the Hudson River, which runs straight down to New York. When we got to America, there was some work breaking up the timber, and floating it to towns on the river bank, and the same when we reached New York.

  Jack and I are now working on the anthracite terminals in this town, shifting anthracite to carry across to New York City. It is hard work too.

  I have to tell you that Martin Farrelly has gone from Harrisburg, since the rail building has stopped in that town. He is moving to a place called Lackan in Pennsylvania, and Mikey Jordan and Matt McGlinn are going with him. They will work in the anthracite mines there, making up their own gang. Ye may tell their people if they have not already heard.

  It is my intention, Winnie, that as soon as you join me in New York, we might afterward travel to Lackan so that I may work with old friends who I have known so long in County Mayo and the English railways.

  Please God I will write again before the end of the summer and send more to ye, and by that time, Winnie may already be with me here in America.

  I have no more to say, but remain your loving husband and son,

  Luke Ryan

  When he had finished writing, one of the Tourmakeady men approached him.

  ‘You can write?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Would you write a letter for us?’

  ‘For all of ye?’

  ‘Why not? There might be one of us with family still living.’

  Luke took a separate page, and wrote out the address –

  Ballybanane, Tourmakeady, Partry, County Mayo, Ireland.

  He then went on in the Irish language, writing separate letters on the same page for the three families, first horizontal, and then vertical. He wrote on both sides, and when there was no more room he wrote again across the back.

  When he was finished, he wrote an extra note on his own letter.

  I would also ask ye, as a favour, to send the enclosed letter down to Tourmakeady. The fellows I have written it for, are working with me here in Jersey City. They would consider it a great kindness if you could do this for them.

  A cheaper way,’ Luke explained. It’ll only cost a penny for the postage from one part of Mayo to another, rather than us having to send two letters from here.’

  One of the men insisted on giving Luke two cents to pay the cost.

  Every week, they visited Costello’s at Five Points. Partly this was to catch up with any news Costello might have, partly to find out what had happened to Conaire.

  ‘I doubt we’ll see him now?’ Costello said one day. ‘He’s lost in getting to New York. Though I reckon it’s worse than that. The forests are deadly dangerous, aren’t they? He might have met with an accident.’

  Luke remembered the axe-man who had been killed in the forest, and the Quebecer who had died in the fight, as well as the many he had heard of being killed on the river drives.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s likely enough.’

  ‘In fact, he could even have got this far,’ Costello said. ‘For a fellow like him, not knowing New York, he could have got knifed for his pack. This place has the highest murder rate in America.’

  ‘I’d believe it,’ Luke said.

  ‘And it shows you the dangers of travelling this country. Once you’re on the road, no one on earth can find you.’

  ‘But he knew you were in Five Points, I tell you,’ Luke said.

  ‘Maybe he did. But that doesn’t mean he’d be able to get here on his own.’

  ‘He could have gotten someone to write.’

  ‘Or maybe he didn’t want to.’

  ‘But why? Why would he not want to?’

  ‘Any number of whys. Someone might have told him about Five Points, and scared him off. Or he might be making money in a way he wouldn’t want known. Or maybe he’s living with a woman he doesn’t want us to meet.’

  ‘Or he might be dead,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yes,’ Costello said, ‘he might be dead.’

  Dead, Luke thought. Killed by a falling tree? Crushed by logs on some river drive? Frozen on some Canadian trail? Killed by fever? Axed in a fight? Knifed on a street in Five Points?

  There were many ways to die.

  Chapter 33

  Telegraph & Connaught Ranger, June 1848: State of Erris. There are some very miserable places in Ireland just now, but not one that can bear a comparison with Erris for poverty and neglect. And yet they are talking of building a Workhouse there. We wonder how such an establishment would be supported; certainly not by the occupiers of land, for they have not as much property as would enable them to supply themselves with the commonest necessaries of life. It is a wretched district, sunk in the lowest depths of misery, and unless some active and immediate steps be taken to bring about a wholesome change in its condition, its inhabitants will, ere long, be swept from the face of the earth.

  Kitty came on mid-summer’s day. She grasped Brigid and hugged her close.

  ‘There now, little Brigid, you’re not to be jealous of your little brother now, do you hear me?’

  ‘If you keep on spoiling her like this, it’s Liam who’ll be the jealous one,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Arra, not at all,’ Kitty replied. ‘Sure at Liam’s age he wouldn’t even know what jealousy is.’

  She reached into the pocket in her skirt and pulled out a potato.

  ‘Isn’t this a grand size, for the early crop?’

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘In our own potato garden,’ Kitty replied. ‘It might be early, but by God, it’s a
good size already.’

  Winnie took the potato and washed it. She brought it back to the table and sliced right through it. The flesh was firm and white.

  ‘Not the slightest sign of blight,’ she said, ‘that’s for certain.’

  ‘I know,’ Kitty said. ‘And it’s like this all over. The blight is gone, well and truly gone. By the time we get through to the main crop, the hunger will be gone with it.’

  And so it went on. It was still too early for the main potato crop to be dug, but even so, hungry people dug out the still growing potatoes to allay the hunger. Others dug up one plant from time to time, if only to wonder at the quality of the potatoes and the size of them.

  Then Luke’s letter arrived.

  Winnie took it from the postman, and ran inside. Eleanor took a knife and slit it open. The letter and bank draft fell on the table.

  Winnie started reading the letter.

  ‘Well, he’s given us a fixed address…so we can write to him. We can write straight away. And he says…he says I can sail to New York at any time.’

  ‘Through the winter season…’

  ‘He says there’s no ice. There’s nothing about storms, but he says I may cross as soon as I like.’

  Eleanor took the bank draft and went out to the fields.

  ‘Michael, Michael…’

  When they returned to the house, Liam was crying. Winnie was sitting at the table, trying to console him while still reading the letter.

  Brigid was pulling at her skirts.

  ‘Shush, shush there,’ Eleanor said to Liam. ‘What more does he have to say, in the name of God?’

  ‘He’s working at shovelling anthracite.’

  ‘Shovelling what?’

  ‘Anthracite.’

  ‘What’s anthracite?’

  ‘He doesn’t say,’ Winnie said, ‘but whatever it is, they’re shovelling it. And he’ll stay around New York until I get there with Liam. It’ll be a while yet, but at least there’s a chance of it now.’

  ‘But what else…?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I’m getting there,’ Winnie said, ‘there’s more news yet. Martin Farrelly has left Harrisburg. Mikey Jordan and Matt McGlinn too. They’ve gone to some other place in Pennsylvania, Lackan it’s called. Seems there’s better chances there, as the railways are coming to an end all over. They’re all going to be miners.’