The Flaming Corsage

by William Kennedy

  “Sheridan Avenue boys,” Maginn said. “The one sassing the cop is Cully Watson. He doesn’t like to pay for things.”

  “He has the look of a man who uses women,” Edward said.

  “Very perceptive,” Maginn said. “He’s also very wild.”

  Edward and Maginn boarded the barge for the impending voyage, a neighborhood outing of North and South End church groups, social clubs, and singing societies. They’d all been accumulating food in their club rooms and vestries for days for this, the Eintracht excursion, which took its name from the city’s premier choral group, the Eintracht Singing Society, a mix of working and professional men, Protestants and Catholics, Germans, Dutch, English, and Irish, who once a year embarked together on this exercise in social leveling.

  The excursion was financed by boarding tickets, and the sale of prepaid tickets for beer and soft drinks. People had been boarding since eight o’clock, fifty cents a head; and the two barges (used to haul ice, hay, or produce on weekdays) were already a floating small town. At ten-thirty, with more than two thousand aboard, the sailors hauled up the gangway. Old Hellhound, the tug, towed the first barge under and past the narrow draws of the Maiden Lane and South Ferry Street bridges, then went back for the second barge; and when the two were side by side, sailors lashed them together, then opened the rails of their top decks so the two boats became one, doubling the conviviality. Then the tug moved them downriver at low speed, toward the Baerena Island picnic grounds.

  Edward and Maginn searched for a table on a lower deck, where women were already passing out knockwurst, pork sandwiches, plates of beans and cabbage, and men were clustered at the bar, where two bartenders steadily drew mugs of beer from tapped kegs. Johnny Daugherty, the famous fiddler, Edward’s distant cousin through unchartable family links in Spiddal, broke into “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” for anyone ready to jig this early in the day, and there were a few. Card games proceeded, and Edward saw Midge Kresser unfolding his portable three-card-monte table, about to begin his day’s work parting suckers from their nickels and dimes. Ministers and priests were eating with their flocks. Policemen Willie Glass and Joe Anthony strolled the deck, keeping the peace.

  “I see Giles,” Edward said, and they found him in line for drinks, wearing his commodore’s cap and lemon-yellow vest.

  “Felicity come with you?” Edward asked, expecting Giles’s wife would have absented herself today for the same reasons as Katrina.

  “She did,” Giles said, and he pointed toward a table where Felicity was sitting with a woman in her late forties. Felicity was quintessentially summery in a white linen frock and white straw boater with pink ribbon. The other woman was older, slender, bosomy, and narrow-waisted, her pale-green dress subtly décolleté.

  “That woman with your wife,” Maginn said, “she’s suitable for a saddle, wouldn’t you say, Fitz?”

  “I knew you’d notice her, Maginn,” Giles said. “Felicity’s Aunt Sally, a handsome woman. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if she went for you. She has a weakness for your type.”

  “What’s my type?”

  “Worthless lout with a wit,” Giles said. “Her husband has no sense of humor.”

  “She has a husband but fancies witty men.”

  “I hear he’s not much of a husband. He’s a fire chief down in Westchester. You see before you the fireman’s wife.”

  “The fireman’s wife. And why is she here?”

  “Visiting Felicity. The fire chief rents a summer place near Glenmont, and Sally stays there all summer. The chief comes up weekends.”

  “Weekends,” said Maginn. “Is that a midweek knock at the door I hear?”

  “I wouldn’t go so fast,” Giles said. “She’s a proper lady all the same.”

  “Of course. Aren’t they all?”

  Giles’s procuring for his wife’s aunt at first mention of her existence baffled Edward. It was out of character for the man, but it certainly energized Maginn.

  “What do you want to do, Maginn? As if I didn’t know.”

  “I’ll go chat with Giles,” Maginn said.

  “You do that,” Edward said. “I’ll see you later.”

  And Edward then roamed the barge alone, seeing who was aboard. He saw Jack McCall sitting with Ruthie, and Father Loonan with a glass of ale in front of him, and men Edward knew from the Eintracht, to which he, Giles, and Maginn all belonged. Lyman had initiated Edward into the singing group at age sixteen (“The Daughertys always had the music” was Emmett’s line), but as he grew older, traveling as a writer, Edward lost connection with the group, except for this excursion. He had no desire now to join anybody’s company. The fraternal impulse to spend the day with his fellow Eintrachters and North Enders, to celebrate family serenity and midsummer’s sweet pleasures, had faded totally. If he could get off the barge now, he would.

  He heard half a dozen singers in an impromptu rendering of “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms,” Tom Moore’s ballad about the constancy of love:

  Thou wouldst still be adored,

  As this moment thou art,

  Let thy loveliness fade as it will . . .

  He walked to the rail and felt the day warming, saw the sky as a wash of peaceable blue. He stared out at a field full of grazing cows, at the great trees along the river’s edge, at the riverfront mansions, and fields of early-sprouting corn growing above the flood-plain, and he felt invincibly depressed, trapped in his shriveling skin: a man in motion to save himself from stasis. Tom Moore’s song mocked what he felt about his increasingly silent marriage. The only constancy was Katrina’s steady withdrawal into her world of poetry and fantasy, the endless interiorizing of her life in diaries, which she did not hide, but which Edward would not intrude upon. Her behavior had been eccentric always, but after the Delavan she backpedaled into silence, her life a chamber of secrets and venerations of all that is sad and solitary: in communion is contamination; in isolation the suffering soul’s beauty is enhanced.

  “Where have you gone?” he had asked her this morning after she decided not to join him on the excursion.

  “Where I have to be,” she said.

  “You should be here with me.”

  “I am here.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Let me be.”

  “I apologize for trying to make you look at us as we are, and what we have become. I know it’s terrible to force someone to accept reality.”

  She smiled and grew more beautiful.

  Francis Phelan tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You ain’t thinkin’ of jumpin’ overboard, are you, Ed?”

  Edward shook hands with Francis.

  “Just thinking about things that can spoil a great day,” Edward said. “How come you’re not playing ball?”

  “We got us a day off and Annie wanted to spend it on the river.”

  Francis, maybe the best baseball player in the city, played shortstop for Albany in the New York State League. Edward had written a play, The Car Barns, about the Albany trolley strike of 1901, and modeled his hero on Francis, a young man who, with uncanny accuracy, threw a stone the size of a baseball and killed a scab motorman, an action that started the riot in which the militia killed two men, unacceptable violence in defense of scabs that hastened a strike settlement and made Francis a hero of the strikers.

  “Your family all okay?” Francis asked. “Katrina and Martin?”

  “They’re fine,” said Edward, looking at Francis now as Katrina seemed to see him: her bauble when he’d lived next door to the Daughertys on Colonie Street, before he married Annie Farrell: handsome young handyman in whose presence Katrina went fluttery. Very thrilling, no doubt. You know, said La Voluptueuse, I’m only interested in youth.

  “Martin’s started to write stories, father’s footsteps,” Edward said.

  “He can do it. Smart kid like Martin puts his mind to it, he could stand on his ear, do anything he wants.”

  “Sometim
es it’s not that easy.”

  “Maybe not,” Francis said. “Can I buy you a beer? I got too many tickets in my pocket.”

  “No thanks, Fran.”

  “That play you wrote,” Francis said. “People always tell me it’s me and your father.”

  “It’s some of you and him, all right, but not really.”

  In the play the hero is counseled by a labor organizer, as Emmett had counseled the young Francis, told him about the Pittsburgh steel mills, and the Sons of Vulcan Emmett had helped organize to give voice to the workers. “Identify the enemy,” the organizer keeps saying in the play, and the hero identifies one with a stone.

  “I ain’t no godalmighty hero for what I did and never thought I was,” Francis said. “I had a good time watchin’ your play, but I sure don’t talk like that hero.”

  “You have your own eloquence, Francis, and people know it. You’re a fellow to reckon with.”

  “I learned a lot from Emmett. Most clearheaded man I ever come across. Anything I asked him he had an answer. You don’t find people like that. They’re a gift. One day you get lucky and meet one, and after a while you find out you’re halfway smart, smarter’n you ever thought you’d be.”

  “Emmett was serious about every day of his life.”

  “That’s the truth. I’m serious too. If the Daughertys ever need anything, I’m there.”

  Edward nodded and thought: I’ll pass the word to Katrina.

  When he went back to Giles’s table, the women were gone, Maginn and Giles were sitting with Jimmy Cadden, another Eintrachter, a prankster who battened on the comic discomfiture of his friends, especially Maginn.

  “Where’s Aunt Sally and Felicity?” Edward asked.

  “Maginn chased them away,” Cadden said.

  “Not true,” said Maginn. “I paid them such compliments they couldn’t sit still. Sally is crazy about me.”

  “She thinks Maginn is demented,” Cadden said.

  “We’ll see what she thinks,” Maginn said.

  “Let’s say Sally was amused,” said Giles.

  “I saw you talking to the hero of your play,” Maginn said to Edward.

  “If you mean Francis Phelan, get it right,” Edward said. “He inspired part of the hero’s character, but only part.”

  “The radical part,” Maginn said.

  “Some of that, yes,” Edward said.

  “How’s that play doing?” Giles asked.

  “Played to sold-out houses in Albany for a month and a half last year,” Edward said. “Did well in Boston and Philadelphia, and it’s still running in New York.”

  “I’m writing about it for the Century,” Maginn said, “an article on using fiction and theater for political ends, writers telling us how the world ought to be. I seriously warn you against running with those pimps of transformation, Edward. You’re a talented man, and The Car Barns is a talented play, but radical work like that strikes me as a justification for labor violence. I’m fond of politics, but let’s not call it art.”

  “Some art is political, whether you like it or not.”

  “And some plays are so political they cease to be art.”

  “I write what I believe. My soul is open for inspection.”

  “Read my inspection report on your soul in the Century.”

  “What about your novel? When do we get a look at it?”

  “Let’s say my novel is in abeyance,” Maginn said.

  “You’ve quit it,” said Edward.

  “Maybe,” said Maginn.

  Excellent move, Edward thought. You never wrote a fictional paragraph I believed. More intelligent than talented, that’s your condition, Maginn.

  “We all do some things better than others,” Edward said.

  “I envy you your naïveté, Edward,” Maginn said. “You still think that everything you do matters. I think it’s all a chase after the great cipher.”

  “Time to chase the beer,” Cadden said.

  “I’ll go,” Maginn said, and he collected the drinkers’ prepaid beer tickets. When he moved toward the bar, Giles quickly unfurled his plan for the Fireman’s Wife Joke. He’d heard about it in New York, where it had had great success, but now said he needed Cadden and Edward to make it work.

  “Leave me out,” Edward said. “I’m too old for this.”

  “Of course you are. That’s what makes you credible.”

  Edward was only five years older than Giles, but five seemed like twenty to Edward. Giles, dedicated physician, good and amiable friend, was the perennial adolescent, a fireman himself since the Delavan, reveling in the excitement of a flaming building, riding with firefighters as their doctor, treating injured firemen and burn victims.

  “What do you expect me to do?” Edward asked him.

  “Be the voice of authority.”

  “Who else are you bringing in on it?”

  “Somebody whose voice Maginn won’t recognize. Clubber Dooley, maybe. Maginn doesn’t know Clubber very well.”

  “Can you trust Clubber not to give it away?” Cadden asked. “Isn’t his brain a little wrinkled?”

  “Clubber’ll do me a favor,” Giles said. “I eased the pain in his bad foot last year.”

  “Maginn is smart,” Edward said. “He’ll figure it out.”

  “Maybe not,” Cadden said. “When he’s hot for a woman his brain moves below his belt.”

  Very accurate on Maginn, Edward thought. The man, unfortunately, was a freak. He could be the greatest of friends, great talker, witty and oddly wise. Edward had had misgivings asking him to be best man at the wedding, but Maginn behaved impeccably, a notable contributor to the elevated spirits of that marvelous day. And he was embarrassingly grateful for being asked: an imprimatur on the friendship. But you are also a pain in the ass, Maginn. Your mouth is out of control and so is your critical faculty. You need come-uppance. Edward decided to help with the joke.

  Maginn returned with the news that a roll of the prepaid tickets used for buying beer had been stolen, and bartenders were accepting only cash. Maginn, short of cash, suggested they all buy their own drinks. So he, Cadden, and Edward moved toward the bar at the stern of the barge.

  Cully Watson and the five other toughs from the gangway incident, all in their twenties, all in shirtsleeves and caps, hovered near the bar. Only Watson was bareheaded. He had an empty glass in one hand and tickets in the other.

  “You’re saying my money’s no good,” Watson said.

  “Tickets are no good,” the bartender said. “Our tickets were stolen. You want a beer, you pay cash.”

  “I paid cash for these tickets when I got on this shitbucket.”

  “Maybe you did, but now it’s cash only.”

  “He says our tickets are no good,” Watson said to his friends.

  “Maybe he’s the one that’s no good,” said one.

  “He says he only takes cash,” Watson said.

  Edward saw the toughs were already in a fight stance, coiled with energy. Watson’s talk was a gambit. Cadden stepped up to the bar.

  “I got cash money and I’d like three lagers,” Cadden said. He turned to Watson. “You guys don’t mind, do you?”

  The barman filled three mugs. Watson stared at Cadden.

  “This is trouble,” Maginn said. “Let it go, Cadden. We’ll go to the bar on the upper deck.”

  “I got ’em already,” Cadden said, reaching for the beers.

  “You wait your turn,” Watson said, and he put his tickets on the bar. “I’ll take them beers.”

  “Not with tickets you won’t,” the bartender said, and he pushed the beers closer to Cadden. Watson reached for the mugs but Cadden blocked him.

  “You ain’t very polite,” Watson said. He shoved Cadden with one hand and knocked him off-balance, then swept the mugs off the bar.

  “Bad news, Cadden, I told you,” Maginn said. “Don’t push it.”

  “Cheap hooligan,” Cadden said.

  As Cadden faced down Watson, one toug
h picked up a fallen beer mug and stood staring at him. Suddenly the tough swung the mug and hit Cadden on the side of the head. He staggered and fell across the bar. Willie Glass and Joe Anthony arrived, swinging nightsticks. Glass rapped the tough who had floored Cadden and he buckled. Maginn and Edward pulled Cadden away from the bar and sat him on a bench. Edward felt his head. No blood. Cadden shook his head, trying to focus.

  “Break this up,” Willie Glass was saying, shoving the toughs away from the bar. He and Joe Anthony had their backs to each other as they swung their clubs.

  “I’ll get that son of a bitch,” Cadden said.

  “Cadden,” Maginn whispered, “that’s Cully Watson. He’s a killer.”

  “Where’s Giles? Get Giles to come and look at Cadden’s head,” Edward said to Maginn.

  Two toughs leaped on Glass, took away his stick, and brought him down. Two other toughs were showing knives, and one said, “The cop says break it up, so we’ll break it up,” and he kicked Glass in the mouth, then bashed his face with a beer mug. Anthony clubbed the kicker, but another tough hit Anthony with a mug and blood spurted from his left eye.

  Two fell on Glass, punching his face, which was drenched in blood. One tough took his revolver and two others pulled off his uniform jacket, then his pants and shoes. Jack McCall moved out of the crowd and next to Edward, a club in his hand.

  “Let’s move in,” Jack said.

  “Gimme his gun,” Cully Watson said, and a tough threw Glass’s gun to Cully, who fired it into the deck, halting Jack and Edward’s forward motion. Another tough took Anthony’s pistol and pulled his uniform off. With their knives the toughs sliced the uniforms into rags. Cully, pistol in hand, shoved aside the two elderly bartenders, and with his other hand held a mug under the open tap. One tough pointed Anthony’s pistol at the crowd of picnickers, keeping reinforcements at bay. Men from the excursion sent women and children to the upper deck.

  Cully drew more beers and slid them across the bar to the toughs, who guzzled it. Cully left the taps open, the deck awash in beer, then tucked the pistol in his belt, picked up an empty keg, and tossed it over the bar to a tough, who caught it.

  “Give Glass some beer,” Cully said, and the tough dropped the beer keg on Willie Glass’s back. Glass was unconscious, clad only in underwear, his and Anthony’s uniforms in shreds. Anthony was conscious, but bleeding profusely.