The Trouble Boys

by E. R. FALLON

  Residents had lit tall white candles in decaying copper holders and set them near the entranceway. The landlord took them away a few hours later, claiming they were a fire hazard.

  Colin and his brother brushed off the tender pats offered by neighbors on their way up the steps to their apartment. Danny never looked up while Colin stared back at the sympathetic faces. Colin would never let them know he was afraid what would happen now that his father was gone, and that inside, he ached with all his heart. He stepped into his apartment with a numbing ease. This time, his brother followed him.

  Their father had come home for lunch that past afternoon but had never returned home for dinner in the evening.

  “Goddamn mick,” Colin had muttered under his breath as he left the morgue with Danny. He hadn’t meant it of course. He was just angry at his father for not telling his family about how serious his troubles were, and, eventually, leaving them.

  Colin and Danny had gone into a church on First Avenue after they left the city morgue, and Colin had cried in the pew at what he had said. Danny had given him a hug, which was rare.

  “It’s just Mam and us now,” he told Colin. “It’ll never be the same.”

  Then Danny got very angry and swore revenge, but they both knew that it was impossible. Mr. Burke had won.

  In Ireland, Colin’s granny had instructed the children how to use the old shotgun her husband had hunted pheasants with, something Colin’s father hadn’t liked; and Colin knew he could buy a gun in the street and shoot David Burke. But what good would that do? Because there would always be a family member wanting to avenge Mr. Burke’s death, and there would always be another man waiting to take Burke’s place. Violence never ended in the Bowery.

  The funeral took place at a small church frequented by the Irish. Their neighbor Mrs. Duffy had suggested the place. The tenement occupants had collected enough money to give Colin’s father a simple ceremony.

  Colin hadn’t wanted to go to the funeral. He wanted to sit in the bedroom he shared with his siblings and concentrate on nothing. He went to the funeral only for his mother. She had stopped crying when he stepped out of the bedroom wearing his black Sunday suit. His mother waved his father’s box of Lucky Strikes in the air. “Colin,” she said in between her loud weeping. “You look just like your father. You have to go to the funeral. Please. You’re the image of him.”

  The service was crowded, which was a testament to how well-liked Michael was in the community. The family had contemplated saying that Michael’s death was a murder and not a suicide, but they had decided against it in the end. Too many people already knew too much, and many had connections to the police and therefore to the truth.

  People speculated as to why Colin’s father had really taken his own life. Was his pretty, pompous wife cheating on him? Was it because his eldest son was missing an arm? Some in the neighborhood even snickered that Colin’s father was a coward and ‘not a man’ because he’d killed himself. Colin had hit a man he didn’t know well for saying those exact words. He was only fourteen years old and the man had decided not to call the police, but people in the neighborhood began speculating it was because of Colin and his temper that his father had done what he had.

  “And now one of the family will speak,” the priest said from the pulpit. “Michael O’Brien’s eldest son, Daniel.”

  The priest nodded at Danny in the front row. He was an old priest, a decaying man with droopy skin and dark circles under his fading blue eyes. He was depressing for Colin to watch. Every time Colin glanced up he thought he might laugh, but he reasoned it’d be more than shameful to laugh at his father’s funeral. His father’s casket was closed because of the damage he’d done to himself.

  Danny rose from where he sat with Colin and the family. He clutched a wrinkled piece of paper in his left hand. Colin had sat with Danny late last night as Danny dictated and Colin scribbled his words on the paper.

  Colin’s mother wouldn’t cease her crying at the funeral, and when Danny made his way up to the front of the church and stood behind the lectern, she started to bawl even more.

  “Our father was a good man,” Danny shouted above their mother’s cries. “He came here from Ireland and worked hard in America to support us, his family.”

  He looked at Colin from where he stood. Danny began to read louder as his confidence seemed to increase.

  “Da loved us.”

  And it seemed as if Danny might shed a tear or two at that moment, but he didn’t, he just kept reading, appearing as proud as ever.

  “He had four children. Me, my brothers, Colin and Patrick, and a daughter, my lovely sister Maureen. His favorite thing to do was to spend time with his children and his wife, our mother. And he enjoyed visiting with his brother, Rick. He went to Rick’s pub almost every day, but he never drank. Da was sober until the day he died.”

  Colin thought how Danny made the lie sound real. “He was decent and led such a good life…”

  Colin knew Danny had more written down, but Danny’s voice cracked as though he might cry and he stopped speaking. So he ended with that, and that was enough, apparently, because the funeralgoers rose to their feet and clapped, some even called out words of praise or admiration.

  “Now let us lead the O’Brien family in a prayer,” the old priest began after Danny returned to his seat and the commotion had settled down.

  All in the audience bowed their heads, and, if they were Catholic, which most of them were, they knelt on the rests.

  “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

  The words echoed through the small church, heavy with the scents of myrrh and frankincense. Fingers crossed patiently over chests.

  There wasn’t a funeral procession afterwards. People just dispersed and returned to Manhattan to the family’s small apartment for an impromptu wake while two glum workers buried Colin’s father in the ground at the potter’s field on Hart Island. The immediate family had been invited to watch the burial from afar. Colin’s mother declined to go and took Patrick home with her instead, but Colin, Danny, and Maureen went. When it was over, Colin returned home with Maureen and Danny and found the apartment overflowing with guests, including Johnny.

  Initially, most of the adults had a drink of whiskey, and the older children each had a shandy. Then one drink turned into a couple of drinks for the adults, and soon most of them were pretty drunk. Songs were sung. Someone broke out into “Auld Lang Syne” and then another fellow mentioned it wasn’t the appropriate season and a fight almost broke out. A man was dead. The atmosphere at the gathering, however, was not.

  Uncle Rick came by the reception already drunk. Colin hoped he might drink an entire bottle himself and lose his head so he could finally have it out with Rick once and for all, to confront him about the awful thing his uncle had done when Colin was a little boy. Colin watched Uncle Rick give Líadan a few white flowers, but other than that his uncle seemed to avoid the family at the reception, as if Michael’s death might rub off on him somehow if he got too close to them.

  5

  Colin quit school a few weeks after his father’s funeral. He reasoned an education wouldn’t do him much good now, not that it ever would have. A boy from the Bowery wasn’t going to use many books in his life, unless they had to do with the horse races. He was a man of the household now, and all he needed to do was to find ways to earn money.

  Despite his large stature, he had difficulty finding work where most men did – like down at the piers unloading gigantic cargo ships – because of his young age. So Colin filched rich men’s wallets and unsuspecting deliverymen’s bicycles, until he found a job selling stolen cartons of cigarettes for a downstairs neighbor, the man from Dublin. Danny had once worked for the guy. It was the same man who had almost gotten Danny killed.

  Colin got five percent of every box he sold. It wasn’t much, but it was steady, and he found he had a knack for it. He hawked the stolen cigarettes all over the city, downtown, midtown, and the u
ptown area. Sometimes he rode the subway to the outer boroughs or hitched a ride into New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

  Sometimes the people who bought the cigarettes got a ‘bad box’, cigarettes that were no good and didn’t light, and more than once Colin ended up in an argument with a dissatisfied customer that escalated into a fistfight. Colin had a brass knuckle and won the struggles most of the time, but other times he found his eye blackened, his face cut, his jaw swollen, or a finger broken. Maureen mended his injuries at home. A few times he ended up in New York’s juvenile court system for delinquency or truancy. And by the time Colin was fifteen he had criminal convictions and had served almost a year’s worth of various minor sentences at juvenile detention centers.

  “Colin,” Maureen lectured him as he helped her wash the laundry in the sink. “Don’t become like the men who hurt Da.” She had already tried and failed to persuade him to finish school. A year later Colin was still alive, a year of selling stolen cigarettes and waving at the uniformed WAC girls. He was sixteen and lived in a dim world of smoke and fights. He knew all the prostitutes by name on 42nd Street from selling cigarettes to them in front of the pawn shops. His boss informed Colin there was a high probability of him taking over the business once he retired. Colin looked forward to that prospect.

  He was in love with an older woman named Lucille Byrne he’d met at the pub. She was unfairly beautiful considering how poorly she took care of herself. Her brother owned and was the bartender at Byrne’s in the Bowery, a favorite retreat of Colin’s, and where Lucille sometimes worked as a server. Colin had developed a taste for the drink and Lucille had become his drinking partner. It was unofficial, but late in the afternoon, just as her shift ended and before he made his evening cigarette rounds, they’d drink together. Like all the men in Colin’s family when they were young, he looked older than his age. But he’d recently told Lucille his true age, and although she promised she wouldn’t tell her brother, she started treating him like a boy instead of a man, which wounded him. “What are you drinking today, Lucille?” Colin said to her on one of those afternoons.

  “Get us some beers.”

  “Two beers, Joe,” Colin called out to Lucille’s brother at the other end of the bar.

  Colin sat with Lucille at the side of the bar closest to the front door. The door was propped open with a large rock to allow air inside the warm building. Colin liked sitting near the door because the outside air, no matter how much it smelled of the East River’s stench, made him feel more alive.

  “How have you been?” Lucille asked him.

  “Not bad. You?”

  “I’m thinking about leaving the Bowery, Colin. You know, packing my bags and…”

  “Sure. Whatever you say,” Colin said with a patient smile as he lit a cigarette.

  Every other day Lucille said she was going to leave the Bowery and go someplace where the weather was always warm and beautiful, yet almost every afternoon after she was still drinking with Colin at her brother’s pub. Lucille was a lifelong Bowery girl, and she depended on her brother. Colin didn’t know much about her past, but he inferred her mother was a drinker.

  “You’ll marry me someday, when you’re older?” Lucille half asked, half commanded.

  There was a longing in her voice that touched Colin’s soul. He glanced at her warm eyes and her pale skin and smiled. “Sure, I’ll marry you someday. I’ll marry you when I’m the mayor of New York and you’re the leading actress in a Broadway play. When that happens, we’ll tie the knot.”

  “You’re a crumb sometimes, Colin, do you know that?” Lucille shook her head. Then she laughed out loud.

  Colin laughed along with her. “I was only joking before. Of course I’ll marry you. When I’m older.”

  Joe slid the beers across the counter and Lucille smiled as Colin took the caps off the bottles using the edge of the bar. With a few gulps, his was gone. Lucille finished hers afterward.

  “Bring me a shot of scotch,” Colin said to Joe. Joe gestured to the different types of scotches. “That one. Thanks.”

  “You better slow down, handsome,” Lucille said.

  Colin grinned at her. “Lucille? Can I ask you something?” She nodded.

  “How come we’ve never been together? I like you, and you seem to like me, unless I’m wrong.”

  “I do like you.” Lucille blushed, and he hadn’t thought that was possible.

  “Do you not find me attractive?” he asked after a moment.

  Lucille laughed a little. “No. You’re attractive. And don’t you know it.”

  He continued to stare into her eyes.

  “Quit it, Colin. You’re making me nervous. You’re too young for me to really be interested in you.”

  He still watched her.

  She rolled her eyes. “What do you want, some kind of prize?”

  “A prize would be nice,” he said with a smile.

  “Ha.”

  But there was a look on her face that told him she might be considering it.

  “You mean it?” Colin’s voice deepened at the prospect of sex.

  “Let’s just drink now, okay?”

  Colin nodded. He faced the bar and drank his scotch. Lucille ordered a ginger ale.

  “So I don’t get a stomachache,” she said.

  Lucille lived at a fleapit called the First Avenue hotel. Colin had suggested she better move out soon before she found herself strangled by a lunatic in the stairwell. Lucille had retorted that Colin was young and didn’t know what he was talking about. Still, Colin would often walk Lucille home to make sure she was safe.

  Colin walked Lucille back to her place like he usually did. One thing led to another, and the two found themselves in a drunken embrace in the stairwell and she kissed him a little. She was drunker than him, and he didn’t think it would be right to sleep with her so he went with her into her room, took off her shoes and helped her into bed with her clothes still on.

  She looked pretty and calm sleeping in her bed. But he knelt down at her side and took her pulse to make sure she was okay. After all, she’d had quite a bit to drink. Colin had taken the pulse of many people in his life because he had run into a lot of people who might have been dead. But Lucille’s pulse was strong, and her wrist warm and soft. Assured, he left.

  He stepped outside around six o’clock. His head hurt, and he reasoned he’d skip work altogether tonight. He had done it only once before, but the Dubliner wouldn’t mind as long as he made up for the lost time during the next few days.

  He walked toward Mann’s garage, where Johnny, now seventeen, worked three days a week. On his free days Johnny stole items such as car tires for the owner of the garage. Johnny was living what Colin thought was the high life, spending money on Donna at nightclubs.

  “You look tired, Colin,” Johnny said when he saw him. Colin smiled at his friend’s honesty.

  “I haven’t seen you in what feels like forever,” Johnny said. “It’s been days. Where’d you disappear to?”

  “I’ve been working a lot.”

  “How’s things with your boss, with what’s his name?”

  “We just call him the Dubliner. He’s all right.”

  “Is Danny okay with you working for him?”

  Colin shrugged. “We don’t talk about it. But I think he understands I need to make money. Got a cigarette?”

  “Why are you asking me for a cigarette? You’re the one who sells them.”

  “I know, but I left them at home.”

  Johnny seemed unconvinced but he handed Colin a cigarette from the pocket of his denim work shirt.

  “Got a match?”

  Johnny shook his head.

  Colin gave him back the cigarette. Johnny accepted it and then dropped it to the ground.

  “What did you do that for?” Colin said.

  “It touched your mouth.”

  Colin shook his head.

  Johnny shrugged and gave him an innocent look. “That’s some solid work you’ve got w
ith that Dublin guy.”

  “It’s all right.” Colin couldn’t offer to put in a good word for his friend because he knew the Dubliner only hired Irish. He didn’t want to upset Johnny and was relieved when he changed the subject.

  “Do you feel like getting something to eat? I’m starving. Didn’t have breakfast or lunch. So, what do you say?”

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  “Byrne’s?”

  “Nah, I just came from there.”

  Johnny chuckled. “Was Lucille there with you? Is that what really happened to those lost days, you’ve been spending them with her?”

  Colin shrugged then laughed. He didn’t want to admit Lucille had only kissed him.

  “How about we grab us some Cuban food? You always said you wanted to try it.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “I know of this place uptown—”

  “You sound excited about this place, Johnny, and I think that’s great,” Colin said to let his friend down easy. “But my head is killing me, and there’s no way I’m going that far just to eat.”

  “You drank too much with Lucille.” Then Johnny smiled. “I promise you this is the best Cuban food in New York.”

  “Nope. Sorry, Johnny.”

  Johnny sighed. “All right. Have it your way. Though you’re so damn lazy sometimes.” He grinned.

  Colin laughed.

  “There’s a vendor across the street.” Johnny pointed to the other side of the street where apparently there was a food cart, though Colin couldn’t see anyone from where they stood.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Come on, I’ll show you. How’s your sister doing?” Johnny talked as they walked.

  They waited for the traffic to stop so they could cross the street. “Maureen’s doing all right. She’s not married yet, if that’s what you’re asking.” Johnny blushed.