The Crimson Thread (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  She knew she was stretching the truth. This tiny, dilapidated apartment wouldn’t be any sane person’s idea of good, and she completely understood the skeptical glance that Liam was now directing her way; nonetheless, she felt good and thought it was important to spread her optimism. What good would it do them to cave in to despair?

  “What are you cooking?” Liam asked.

  “As soon as these burners get hot, I’ll make a soup from potatoes and a beef bone.” She was pulling a patched tin pot from the cupboard when Paddy, Finn, and Seamus burst in the front door. Underneath Paddy’s right eye was a spreading purple welt. Finn’s collar was torn, and his lip was swollen and caked with blood. Seamus’s cheek had been scraped, and the right lens of his glasses had a crack in it. “What happened?” she cried when she saw the condition they were in.

  “I knew one day that foreman would push me too far,” Paddy growled.

  “You’ve been there less than a week,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, well, it’s been too long,” he grumbled. “Him calling us Mickey this and Mickey that. I could take it, but when he started picking on Seamus, and him but a boy—well, I just snapped.”

  “And you snapped too?” she asked Finn, taking in his disheveled appearance.

  “I had to back Da up, didn’t I?”

  “I suppose,” she agreed.

  “It was great!” Seamus put in enthusiastically. “Da laid the guy out. Everyone was laughing at him. He had it coming, and they were glad to see him go down.”

  “You were lucky you didn’t get arrested,” she said as the reality of what they were telling her settled in. She remembered Hilda telling them how immigrant troublemakers were sent home ... “deported” was the word she had used.

  Her father and brothers glanced at one another sheepishly. “We ducked out the back door as the coppers were coming in the front,” Finn told her. “We don’t think they know where we live.”

  “But they know your names,” she pointed out.

  “Well, yeah,” Finn admitted.

  “Don’t worry your head, my girl,” said Paddy, sitting and mopping his grimy brow with a piece of torn cloth from his pocket. “We were fighting with right on our side.”

  She was of two minds as she stood there. Part of her wanted to scold such rash behavior. There was clearly no going back to the place. They were paid at the end of the week, so there would be no pay coming this week for the work they had already done. Her pay alone couldn’t carry them.

  But another part of her felt too proud of them to scold. They were defending Seamus, so it was the right thing to do. They’d stood up for him and for their self-respect.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go out and find a new job, a better job,” Paddy assured them.

  “It might be good if we traveled out of this neighborhood to look,” Finn suggested, “just in case the coppers are looking for us. It wouldn’t hurt to stay out of sight.”

  “We’re wanted men,” said Seamus with a grin that showed that his front tooth had been chipped in the scuffle.

  “Ah, Seamus, your glasses are broken, as is your beautiful smile,” Bridget lamented.

  “I don’t mind. I can still see out of my glasses, and my smile was too perfect. Now I look like a real man,” he replied.

  “You are a real man,” Paddy praised Seamus, at the same time ruffling his hair as he would do to a young boy. “You did the O’Malley name proud today. But you’re right, Finn, tomorrow we’ll venture uptown in our pursuit of new employment.” He turned to Bridget. “And if anyone asks you if you know Paddy, Finn, or Seamus O’Malley, you never heard of us.”

  “You disreputable lads are total strangers to me,” she agreed with a wicked chuckle. But she rubbed the back of her neck as she laughed, a habit she had picked up from her mother. The two of them always did it when something was troubling them and they hadn’t yet found the words to articulate their dismay.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rick Miller from Wales

  That night Bridget lay on the straw mattress in her corner of the apartment with her eyes wide open, too worried to sleep. The lumpy bed was on the floor and was covered with the crocheted blanket her mother had made. They had ripped one seam of her shorter, patched skirt and used it to make a sort of curtain around her bed to give her some privacy.

  She shared the bed with Eileen, who now lay asleep but was tossing fitfully. Bridget worried that the little girl hadn’t eaten enough. The soup had not been as filling as she’d hoped, and Eileen had spilled half the precious bottle of milk before it was finished. Her small, round belly rumbled as though a wild creature were hidden inside.

  Moonlight shone in from the one window, streaming above the curtain and illuminating the place where she lay. Her mind raced with plans. What would happen if her father and brothers did not find work? What if they were arrested? She didn’t even have enough money to bail them out of jail or pay any fines. Da had long ago spent any money he’d brought on food and repairing the apartment. And whatever else happened, they could not allow themselves to be deported. Having sold nearly all they had in order to get to America, they would be in worse shape than before if they were forced to return to Ireland.

  Maybe she could get Mrs. Howard to allow her to bring materials home. That way she could sew more vests at night and bring up her pay. It still wouldn’t be enough, though.

  For the first time since arriving, she wished they’d never left Ireland. She longed to be home in her bed with her window up, listening to the night wind rustling the bushes.

  It didn’t seem to matter anymore that they’d been poor and had often gone to bed empty-bellied. Now, in memory, the plain, thatched cottage became an airy, sunlit kingdom resplendent with shining, smiling faces—a palace of warm familiarity. It had been home, her home, and now it seemed like a priceless world, forever lost to her.

  Exciting and new though it was, this place was not her home. It was strange, with brutal foremen, sweating women laboring in an airless attic, and an unsettling, mysterious young man who apparently read “dangerous books” and who seemed able to peer into her very heart.

  There in the dark, stuffy room, the illumination from the moon shifted slightly, falling onto the top of her battered suitcase, which she was using as a makeshift night table. She had piled her few things on top of it. In the silver gleam, the spool of crimson thread seemed to pulse with its intense color, almost as if the moon had converted it into a living thing.

  Bridget sat up with her back against the wall and picked up the spool of silken thread, shifting it from hand to hand, recalling how she’d acquired this small treasure. She looked at the vendor’s stamp on the top of the spool that gave his name. “It comes from China,” he had said. Such a long way to travel, she reflected, wondering if one of the Chinese people that she noticed on the streets had brought it.

  Why had the thread caught her attention that day, almost as though it had called to her? It was beautiful, there was no doubt of that, and like many young women, she liked beautiful things. But there was something more to it that she could not quite figure out. Her unexplainable attraction to the thread had felt almost supernatural, like a prophecy waiting to be fulfilled.

  Nonsense, she thought, putting the spool back on the suitcase.

  She was only making up stories again with her wild imagination. Da always warned her against letting her fancies get the better of her.

  As a child she’d often been sure that she had seen faeries and the little people darting among the trees. Her mother had told her it was a sign of royal blood, this ability to see the faerie folk. But Da had quickly squelched that notion, advising against filling Bridget’s head with ideas of royal blood and other nonsense.

  His warning had come too late, though.

  Her head had already locked onto the belief that she had a secret identity that no one else could see. She felt it deep inside with a confidence born of certainty. If she had ever voiced this idea, others would not only have mocked
her but seen it as a sign of the most ridiculous arrogance, if not total lunacy; so she kept her secret unspoken.

  Bridget was jolted from these ruminations when Eileen’s eyes suddenly opened wide. For a brief moment the child appeared startled to be awake, and then her face crumpled into a mask of unhappiness. She began to whimper pathetically, pointing to her mouth, which she sometimes did when she was hungry.

  It broke Bridget’s heart to see her so hungry and to have no food for her. “I’m sorry, sweetie pie, I have nothing ...” She suddenly remembered the mint that Ray Stalls had given her on the first day they’d arrived. She’d emptied it from her pocket when they had decided to use her skirt for a curtain.

  Finding the candy, still wrapped, on top of her suitcase end table, she licked the sugary morsel cautiously. It tasted sweet, not like poison. Still... maybe it was too risky to give to the child.

  Eileen continued to whimper pitifully until Bridget couldn’t stand it anymore. The mint was probably fine. Her crazy imagination was simply spinning wild tales for her again. Why deprive the child?

  “Here, baby, suck on this candy,” she said. “Come to me, sit on my lap. I’ll rock you back to sleep.”

  Eileen rolled over and crawled up onto Bridget’s lap. Laying her head of soft curls on Bridget’s chest, she held the striped candy to her mouth and seemed soothed.

  Bridget began humming strains of a lullaby her mother had sung to her as a little girl. The homesickness it brought her was almost too much to bear, but it calmed Eileen to sleep.

  As Bridget’s eyes also drifted shut, she took the last of the mint from Eileen’s sticky hands, fearing she might choke on it in her sleep. She slipped the sticky shard of leftover candy between her lips just moments before a dreamless slumber claimed her.

  “Our fortune is at hand!” Paddy announced joyfully the next evening as he burst into the apartment.

  “What happened? Why are you so late?” Bridget asked. She stood by the black stove with Eileen at her side. Finn, Seamus, and Liam lounged around a milk crate set up as a card table, fanned cards in hand.

  “You are looking at J. P. Wellington’s new carriage driver and stable manager!” Paddy’s smile spread from ear to ear. “Meet Rick Miller!”

  “Wha?” asked Seamus, looking up from his cards.

  “Attend to me now, children,” Paddy demanded as Eileen came to his side and he lightly tickled her belly. “This is a great and glorious day!”

  “You’re as puffed as a rooster,” Bridget remarked with a touch of irritation. She’d passed another long, hard day in Mrs. Howard’s steaming attic. The woman had found fault with the second vest she’d produced and ripped out the seams, paying her only a quarter for one vest. It had been barely enough for potatoes and another small bottle of milk. Bridget was exhausted and in no mood for guessing games or riddles. “Who is what’s-his-name Wellington and this Miller?”

  “I am Rick Miller,” Paddy announced, beaming.

  His children shot concerned, darting glances at one another in complete bewilderment. What was he talking about?

  “He’s gone delusional,” Seamus suggested flatly.

  “Have you been drinking, Da?” asked Finn, scowling with concern.

  “How can you ask me that, I who have pledged to my parents, your grandparents, to stay ever sober? No I have not been drinking.”

  “Then it’s as I said, he’s lost his mind,” Seamus insisted.

  The look of wounded offense on Paddy’s face remained there for only the briefest moment before erupting again into an irrepressible grin of satisfaction. “You children think you’re so smart, but here’s the long and short of it.” He settled himself into their one chair and tugged at his trousers as he always did when preparing to tell a lengthy tale.

  The boys put down their cards and regarded their father attentively. Bridget scooped up Eileen, balancing her on her right hip while leaning against the stove.

  “Finn and I took ourselves uptown early this morning, as you well know,” Paddy began. “We parted ways somewhere around Twenty-third Street. I continued on another ten blocks or so to a wide avenue know as Park Avenue, where I discovered an amazing world of houses, each one a small palace unto itself. And there I saw a sign reading ‘Stableman wanted.’ I carried myself in and applied for the job.”

  “What do you know about being a stableman?” Finn asked skeptically. “Nothing, I would venture to guess.”

  “You don’t know everything about me, my boy,” Paddy replied. “As a young man, before any of you were born, I spent time down Connemara way, a place renowned for its excellent ponies and fast horses. There I ran a stable for a Lord Pennyfather. During my job interview with J. P. Wellington’s man, I recalled enough about horses from those days to convince the man that I knew my way around a stable. As a result, I am now the stableman and driver for J. P. Wellington.”

  “Is he a real rich guy? Did you meet him?” Liam asked eagerly.

  “He is indeed a respected and wealthy captain of industry in the American style. I did not meet him, as he is, at present, touring his textile factories in the distant south of this sprawling country.”

  Though Paddy had not seen the inside of the elegant home, he had been dazzled by the carriage house with three fine horses and a splendid carriage. A separate small but refined room in the carriage house was for the stableman. It was now to be Paddy’s room.

  “How does this Rick Miller figure into your tale?” Bridget questioned.

  “In a most American way,” he replied, with a seasoned storyteller’s air of relishing a delicious mystery about to be revealed. “During the course of his several letters to me, Mike O’Fallon warned that Americans exhibited a certain resistance to employing the Irish; as if the hardship and poverty we have endured has somehow rendered us disreputable.”

  “So that’s why everyone kept turning me away today,” Finn realized bitterly. “They all seemed interested in taking me on until the moment I opened my mouth.”

  “No doubt,” Paddy agreed. “So, knowing this, I called myself Rick, which is the same as the end of my name, Patrick; and Miller, being near to the name O’Malley in sound. Rick Miller—it’s close enough to my real name that at least I’ll remember to answer to it.”

  “How did you explain the way you talk?” Bridget asked.

  “I said I was a Welshman,” he revealed with a self-satisfied shrug. “I don’t think Wellington’s man ever met a Welshman, so he had no idea what one might sound like. I told him Wales was a part of Great Britain, and that was good enough for him.”

  Paddy slapped his hands together robustly, a sign that his tale had ended. “What’s to eat?”

  “We saved you half a boiled potato and a glass of milk,” Bridget told him. “It was the best I could do. Mrs. Howard wouldn’t pay me for one of my vests. She said the seams were shoddy, but I think she was just letting me know that she’s the boss and can do as she pleases.”

  “Have no care about it,” Paddy assured her. He pulled a slim stack of American bills from his pocket. “It is the habit of J. P. Wellington to advance his workers the first two days’ pay to see them through until the end of the week—the sure sign of a great and beneficent employer. Tonight we eat at Sullivan’s Tavern. We’ll dine in the rear quarters, so Bridget and Eileen can join us.”

  “Why can’t I be in the front of the place?” Bridget asked indignantly.

  “The front of a saloon is no place for a proper young woman or a child,” Paddy stated firmly. “It’s fit only for the rough talk and hard-drinking ways of men.”

  “Is it wise for us to go out in public,” Finn questioned, “after what happened yesterday?”

  “Another compelling reason to dine in the rear,” Paddy slyly agreed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Police Close In

  The plate of short ribs, mashed potatoes, and carrots that Bridget ate at Sullivan’s Tavern that night nearly brought tears of happiness to her eyes. She had been half
-hungry for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to feel full. “I’ve never tasted anything so wonderful,” she said, mumbling with her mouth full.

  The tavern’s back room, though plain with wooden tables, white unadorned walls, and a rough-hewn, wide-plank floor, seemed the height of luxury after so much deprivation. Every table was filled with people involved in animated conversation as they enthusiastically devoured their meals. Here and there, clusters of men and women stood talking, mugs in hand, periodically erupting in laughter. The atmosphere was raucous but reminded Bridget of a great wedding party she’d once attended as a little girl.

  She grinned at Eileen, who sat in front of her stew with her blue eyes beaming happily. There would be no growling, hungry beast in her small tummy tonight.

  “So, shall we be calling ourselves the Miller family from now on?” Seamus inquired, his glasses steamed by the mist rising from his beef hash.

  “Perhaps we should,” said Paddy thoughtfully.

  “I’ll not be known by some foolish, made-up American name,” Finn objected. “O’Malley is our family name going back for generations in County Cork. If we renounce it, we cut all lines with our past.”

  “It might help you get a job,” Liam pointed out. “You could say you’re a Walsh, though I’m still unclear as to why they would like a Walsh better than an O’Malley. I had a friend named Thomas Walsh, and he was no smarter than me.”

  “Welsh,” Bridget explained, suppressing a laugh. “Da claimed he was from Wales, where the people are called Welsh.”

  “Oh,” Liam said, nodding. “Finn, tell them that you’re a Welsh.”

  “I’ll never,” Finn insisted firmly. “I’m Irish and proud of what I am.”