Up-canal at the next bridge, the Dundonald Street Bridge, just visible from here, there’s the City Pride Bakery which is still in business. North on Dundonald, where Parish intersects, Grandpa Liam’s lumberyard he’d started as a kid practically, in his mid-twenties, at the farther corner Corcoran Brothers Construction Co., now the site of a tacky mini-mart but Corky won’t be driving in that direction.
Nor past 1191 Barrow Street, the old house. Whoever lives there now has added a front porch with a green-plastic roof, aluminum fixtures, fake-brick asphalt siding. Last time Corky cruised by, there was a young mother on the porch with a baby, small children, the skin color might’ve been white or light-skinned black, Hispanic.
Couldn’t make himself look closely. Just couldn’t.
You made me love you. Didn’t want to do it.
The canal looks shallow along this stretch but that’s deceptive—it’s deep. A few miles north the canal sides are as high as thirty feet at the uptown locks, made of rock and nightmare-looking but in Irish Hill the banks are grassy, footpaths trail along the sides, you can walk right to the edge. Plenty of drownings over the years, in Corky’s memory alone. An uncle of a kid at school, a priest visiting his family, out drinking with his old friends and returning from the Cloverleaf after it closed they’d decided to go swimming and two of them drowned including the priest. And Nick Daugherty that time, pushed in by some kid he was fighting with, and Corky and some other guys managed to haul him out, would’ve drowned otherwise. How old?—around the time the Bishop came to Our Lady of Mercy to confirm their class, eighth grade it must have been, thirteen years old.
And Tim’s Great-uncle Stanislaus, the captain of the Irish Hill precinct, what a scandal, dumped in the canal bloated and his nose and groin shot away. That was no drowning.
The first wave of relatives came over from County Kerry in the 1820s to work digging the canal. Of six or seven Corcoran brothers and a number of Donnellys, Dowds, McClures only a few survived the digging of the canal and the rough times to follow. No direct ancestors of Corky’s but blood kin from Dingle Bay, wonder did any of them look like him? Genes, DNA, through the decades? He’d always wanted a brother, could you have a brother close as a twin born in the wrong century? Living and dying so long ago these young men were not recalled in any family tales. Nor buried in Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery. Buried instead where they’d died of dysentery, yellow fever, influenza, beatings and stabbings and shootings, buried in the muck along the canal banks. Living in tents, what kind of food were they fed, what kind of sanitation did New York State provide, must’ve died like flies.
Irish and Chinese laborers mainly. Why Chinese, so long ago?—they’re a smart race.
Why the Church has always forbidden birth control, abortion. The more Catholics born, the more chance of a few surviving. Holy Mother Church—like Mother Nature not giving a damn for the individual only the species. Thirteen brothers and sisters in Theresa’s mother’s family! Corky’s Dowd cousins, fifteen of them at least, how many still living he’s lost track. Also the Donnellys but some of them are long gone from Union City.
No more big Irish families, even in Ireland the population’s in decline. Scarcely four million. Maybe a race can wear out, lose faith in itself. Northern Ireland, Protestants outnumber Catholics is it two to one? The IRA, poor suckers, a lost cause.
Corky continues on Dalkey past the Dalkey Street Elementary School past a row of stores he wouldn’t know except in his memory seeing them as they were twenty-five years ago, this intersection with Decatur a thriving commercial zone at that time. But there’s a drugstore exactly where there’d been a Rexall’s. And Dignam’s Funeral Home is still a funeral home, the name’s now W. Young & Sons.
The Corcorans had always used Donnelly’s of course. On Erie. Still in business, run by the sons.
The Ship of Death they’d called it, the cholera barge traveling north from New York City then westward from Albany past towns along the canal where they weren’t allowed to dock—Irish immigrants mainly, in the 1880s. Yet some survived. Three Corcoran brothers of how many brothers, sisters, cousins and these too from Dingle Bay coming to live with family and work in the Moneghan Pottery Works. Dermott, Joseph, Gahern bearing the gift of life.
Corky’s approaching Roosevelt where Sean lives beginning to feel that sickish excitement, dread. The fact is, in his dreams he often visits that house. Never dreams of the first house, on Barrow, nor even of the house on Schuyler where his father died and his mother’s screams rent the air. But waking within a dream in his old room shared with his cousin Pete, or upstairs in the attic where since that first time after his father’s funeral he’d gotten drunk, and knew the solace of drink. Like drunk is a place you can go to, a bucket you can lower down to a deep secret subterranean spring.
Except no longer. Corky’s never going to taste alcohol again.
Never?
The last time Corky visited the old man he’d brought him home half-crocked after a funeral and the two sat in the dim-lit shabby parlor in front of a TV watching the Mohawks play a crappy game losing to the Athletics and killing two six-packs of Molson’s between them. And even at the commercial breaks they hadn’t talked, weird like Corky wasn’t even there. Corky gearing himself up to ask for twenty-five years Why did my father die? Is there some secret nobody’s ever told me? Why wasn’t Fenske, or any of them, arrested? but has never asked waiting, must be, for the right moment. But when’s the right moment? You’d think, the two of them getting soused together might be it but suddenly near the end of the game there’s a whistling snort from Sean and Corky sees the old man’s passed out in his ratty chair, head back and jaw slack as a corpse’s, a tusk of spit hanging from his chin.
That’s you, Corky my man, in thirty years’ time.
Corky used the bathroom, made enough noise on the creaky stairs to wake the dead. Still the old man slept, snored. So Corky gave up. Left five twenty-dollar bills atop the TV, pocket money for his uncle (who’d been complaining, at the funeral mass, how seriously Corky didn’t know, of not having enough money to get his suit dry-cleaned, his shoes repaired) and what happens?—next day, that cunt Lois calls Corky at his office to give him hell for getting her father drunk, “That’s just like you, ‘Corky,’ isn’t it! Just what we’ve learned to expect!”
And no mention of the $100. No mention!
Typical Irish gratitude.
Corky’s losing it, his high. A drink? God damn no. His knuckles hurt, you wouldn’t think busting somebody in the crotch would be like busting him in the jaw, of course Corky’d caught some bone there, fucker’s pelvis.
Wonder will Red be there tonight, at the Chateauguay Country Club.
If Oscar Slattery’s there, and it’s not likely Oscar Slattery would stay away, Red will be there, too. Don’t kid yourself he won’t.
“Hey, fuck it!—watch out!” Corky calls out his car window not exactly wanting to yell, riding his brakes as three black kids high school age cross the street against traffic, strutting unhurried and unseeing. Buzz-cut hair, razor-carved initials, rattails—it’s like Zululand, some kind of primitive tribe. Except these guys are wearing expensive Reeboks, gold chains, wraparound mirror sunglasses, skintight black spandex bicycle pants that even Corky, who’s disgusted, and no queer, can’t help staring at—buttocks like melons, genitals showcased like for a male stripper show. Corky feels a wave of frustration, rage. Remembers how, before things started to change in the late 1960s, Dundonald Park was off-limits to blacks, gangs of white kids like Corky and his friends made sure of it, and the cops, who were mainly Irish cops from the neighborhood, looked the other way. And now, who would believe it?
It isn’t just Corky’s white, these flashy fucks ignore traffic, take over the sidewalk so everybody’s quick to get out of their way.
Yesterday, at the Zanzibar: that tall menacing kid suddenly smiling at Corky handing him sweet potato pie, an emissary of Roscoe Beechum’s so it was O.K., Corky’s O.K. and in no dan
ger. Like when they see white skin it isn’t automatic it’s white, or white exclusively. If another black man, one with big bucks and authority, like Beechum, sanctifies you, you’re O.K.
Corky has to admit, it felt good, that kid yesterday looking at him with respect. And it surely did hurt, Roscoe Beechum turning him away seeing white, seeing cop, never seeing him.
Corky swings around to Dundonald, not much of a boulevard anymore, drives past Our Lady of Mercy which looks mostly unchanged—weatherworn pebble-colored brick and a steeple not nearly so high as Corky remembers, also the rose window not so big, if he had time he’d go inside for a few minutes, in any Catholic church it’s nice to see the stained glass from the inside. And that smell of a Catholic church, incense, votive candles. Flowers at the Virgin Mary’s feet, white lilies against the blue plaster robes.
He’s lonely, he misses it. Homesick?
Yes but it’s all crap. Even as a kid you figured it out.
One of his aunts saying in a slow halting voice after a typical funeral these days, It used to be so nice in Latin, we didn’t have to know what it meant meaning how simple, like for children, wish-fulfillment fantasy, God loves you and you’re all set for Heaven. And confession’s different now, too, Corky knows though he hasn’t gone in thirty years. No power any longer to make you God-damned scared.
This section of Irish Hill is mixed white, black, Hispanic, of course the Hispanics are Catholic so the parish is holding its own. Hispanic priest now, Corky’d heard, or at least somebody who can speak Spanish. Wonder what the ratio is, Irish parishioners to Hispanic now. Some blacks, too—that’s always struck Corky as weird. Old Father Sullivan who’d speak somberly of “coloreds” and people “wanting to live with their own kind,” he’d turn over in his grave could he know.
Sean Corcoran saying mean and aggrieved, at the wake No reason for any nigger to come to Irish Hill, except he helped get my brother killed.
As long as he’s this close, Corky decides to drive into Dundonald Park. Hasn’t been here in years. He’s surprised it looks so good, from what he’s heard and read, drugs, crime, vandalism, no more waterfowl on the pond because they’d been killed or mutilated by kids, and the sunken rose garden, the pride of Irish Hill, hundreds of rosebushes fanning out from the World War II monument, long gone. Driving past the swimming pool, the wading pool, basketball courts, Corky doesn’t see too much different except of course most of the people in sight are black, at the picnic tables too, here and there some white faces but it’s rare. And that fucking graffiti all over, an insult to the eye, Day-Glo scrawls on sidewalks, walls, even trees—supposed to be gang colors, declarations of turf.
Still the park looks O.K. The sun’s out, or almost; it’s spring; everything bright green from all the rain they’ve been having, and in bloom. That kind of golden-fuzzy stuff, must be seeds, on certain trees, birches. White-fuzzy stuff on other trees. And lilac. Lots of lilac, must grow wild.
Please forgive me, I love you.
O.K. honey I love you.
Corky cruises, turns. What time is it? A potholed lane through the woods, what’s left of the woods, then out behind the pond, what they’d called the duck pond, litter floating on its surface and in fact there are ducks, but that fucking graffiti, bright orange so for a second it looks like flame, on the war monument. Corky’s dreamy remembering how summer nights, in the park, he’d make out with girls. After swimming. And after softball games. Corky’s first girlfriend, the first time he’d made it with any girl, if you could call it that, Marianne Bannon after the Holy Redeemer picnic, Corky was twelve years old and hot-skinned Marianne a year or so older. Corky mashing his mouth against Marianne’s, grinding his frantic little cock against her belly and closed thighs, coming in his pants with a puppy’s yelp of astonishment—never forget. And afterward, other nights, in the woods beyond the refreshment concessions, she’d actually take him in her fingers and he’d come. But she’d never let Corky do it to her.
Why, Corky didn’t know. He’d thought maybe girls were scared of it. Or embarrassed. Or Marianne was laughing at him, at the look on his face.
Marianne Bannon, her old man a butcher. And in fact a drinking buddy of Sean Corcoran’s. If Bannon had known he’d’ve torn Corky’s ass up the seam, not to say what he’d’ve done to Marianne. She’d had to drop out of St. John’s suddenly in ninth grade, married some guy years older, in the Navy. Living now in Mount Moriah, her three or four kids grown up, really grown up—Corky’d been surprised as hell, and not pleasantly, ran into Marianne at a mall and bought her a drink at the Mauna Loa and Marianne’s still looking good, tough and sexy and giggling at the look on Corky’s face when she happens to mention she’s a grandma.
And her granddaughter’s eight years old!
Saying, a flirty poke of her pink tongue, You could be a grandpa, too, Corky, you might not even know it.
That possibility, the possibility he’s actually fathered kids, somewhere along the line and never knew it, never was informed—that depresses Corky like hell. Like his genes, DNA, the stream of life flowing invisibly through him played a dirty trick on him behind his back. Who’s to know?
The most profound difference between the sexes, that makes them, Corky’s thinking, as un-alike as two different species, a woman for sure knows.
Should turn back and get to Sean’s before he’s late, I won’t hold my breath but Corky finds himself cruising past the softball field where three yellow school buses are loading up, SOUTH UNION CITY HIGH SCHOOL MARCHING BAND, must be organizing for the parade. A few adults but mainly teenagers, whites, blacks, Hispanics, even Asians, dark Mideast-looking types, more of a mix than you’d expect in Irish Hill, Corky’s surprised. They’re all wearing green-and-white satin uniforms with American-flag epaulettes, everybody in trousers except, Jesus! drum majorettes in miniskirts showing their panties and knee-high white vinyl boots like junior hookers. Boys and girls in about equal numbers carrying musical instruments, Corky envies them, surprising to see a good-looking white girl with a trumpet, other girls with horns, drums, there’s a sleepy-looking black boy square-built as Mike Tyson delicately carrying one of those fancy brass horns, French horn?—another black kid, tall, rangy, mean-dude-style with flattop hair, razor-cut initials, gold in both ears carrying a sax, big fattish baby-face Irish kid hauling a tuba, lots of drums, snare drums?—and that hefty booming kind that drowns out all competition, you can see why no soft-sounding instruments in a band, violins for instance, woodwinds, or are there woodwinds? Kids trotting by with cymbals—that’d be fun, a deafening noise. But wonder: bad on the eardrums? Or do they wear earplugs?
Kids carrying flags, some of them on six-foot poles, must be God-damned heavy over a distance. How long the parade?—three miles? Plus the big banner-flag. Plus the school banners. But everybody’s in high spirits, at this age a Memorial Day parade’s fun.
Sure, Corky envies them. So young. He was that age, every day at the rich boys’ school was a hustle.
On the far side of the parking lot on a grassy strip there’s an impromptu drum majorette drill, Corky cruises by slowing, braking to a stop to watch though it’s almost one P.M., can’t resist the sight of a dozen girls in sexy-satiny costumes tossing gleaming batons up into the air, up up up into the air, twirling and ducking the batons under their shapely legs like quick flashes of sword, all the while holding their bodies self-conscious on display as strippers, pointy tits, tight-rounded asses, some of them fairly plump, no anorexics here. And no feminists. Corky’s amazed at these bimbo-looking girls capable of such feats of dexterity, the great Harry Blackstone would admire, and more than admire. Faces made up all bright lipstick and teased-tousled hair, could be 1962 not 1992. The girls begin to notice Corky eyeing them sucking on his cigarette exhaling smoke in lecherous clouds, must be used to men watching, what point to the display otherwise, they’re giggling together one even drops her baton on the ground liking his attention? not liking it? but if they don’t like masculine attention why
dress to provoke it? The majorette leading the drill is a tall good-looking girl with a skin the color of the cocoa finish of Corky’s Cadillac De Ville, can’t be older than eighteen but looks in her mid-twenties stacked like a Playboy centerfold, hair in a frizzy cascade to her shoulders, sexy as hell purse-kissing her lips smiling sly at Corky like there’s a lowdown secret between them. She tosses, twirls, catches her spinning baton fluid as a waterfall, up in the air one long shapely-muscled leg and fuck-me boot giving Corky a good eyeful of white-satin cunt, then the baton’s in her fist she’s thrusting it toward Corky jerking it upward so Corky’s blinking grinning as the rest of the girls laugh and his face burns pleasantly and he drives on and only after a few minutes as he’s cruising the area for the second time to watch the drill (but no: it’s over) does Corky catch on: the bitch was giving him the finger.
At her age! And on Memorial Day!
God damn! damn Corky’s muttering to himself royally pissed off and antsy I need a fucking drink turning onto the short, hilly block of Roosevelt where Sean Corcoran lives around the corner from the old house on Barrow, two blocks over there’s Our Lady of Mercy and the church bells ringing for one o’clock, a sweet-fading sound Corky listens to, as if it’s a message. Church bells you only notice when you’ve lived away from the neighborhood and have returned. Growing up in Irish Hill you rarely heard like rarely smelling the yeasty aroma of the bakery or the cruder earthy-bloody smell of the old slaughteryards or the stink of Cayuga Fertilizers, this is home. Corky’s actually sweating.
Yet seeing quickly, his eyes snatching for evidence, the block looks about the same, these old decent two-storey brick houses cramped in together on less-than-acre lots, typical of the old Union City residential neighborhoods in general as if owning too much land, too much grass to mow, was a liability. Corky notices how much damned cement there is here, double driveways between houses and double sidewalks, twelve-inch strips of grass dividing properties, so different from the suburbs where younger families live now. Those passionate neighborhood feuds lasting for years over not who owned the grassy median between properties but who didn’t own it, thus was spared the chore of mowing it, digging out crab-grass.
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