by Terry Grosz
THE END
An Excerpt from The Adventures of Hatchet Jack
Chapter One: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fires of Hell
Patrick Jack Kelly climbed into the small, two wheeled horse drawn cart and looked back. His mother was standing in the front door of their small Dublin, Ireland home with a desperate look on her face. A face showing the many years of hard work, the strains of having too many children at such a young age, a hard drinking, abusive husband and, now this. Patrick’s dad was nowhere to be seen... The liveryman clucked his tongue to the horse and with a slight touch of the whip, the small cart lurched down the wet cobblestone streets towards the docks in Dublin. That was the last Patrick ever saw of his mother or wanted to see of his hard drinking dad. A dad, who because of hard times, had sold him, his eldest son, into indentured servitude to a brokerage firm in Dublin. That firm in turn, had sold the rights to Patrick to a man living in a faraway place called, St. Louis, Missouri in the United States of America.
Arriving a short time later at the docks in Dublin, Patrick was dropped off at the brokerage office and was met by a large fat man with the evidence of breakfast still on the front of his dark blue, official looking jacket.
“You be Patrick Jack Kelly I suppose,” blubbered out the fat British agent through a set of grossly thick lips.
“Yes sir,” replied Patrick with all the man he could muster up in his fourteen-year-old frame. A frame big for his age but clearly showing the many years of hard work under the club, boot and short temper of his hard drinking father. A frame with nary enough meals in between because of all the other younger mouths in his family needing to be fed first.
“That all the belongings ye have?” asked the fat agent as he looked the boy over closely with a practiced eye accustomed to such human misery sold into servitude.
Looking down at the small cloth bag carrying his meager belongings Patrick replied, “Yes sir. That is all that I have other than my good name.”
“Typical ’plug ugly’ Irishman,” mumbled the fat agent. “Nothing to his miserable carcass but a grandly sounding name and an empty gut. Ye had better be able to work and work well where you are going young man or your new owner will lay on the lash plenty good and proper,” he growled menacingly.
Patrick felt the shame of his plight and the indignation of youth rising up in his empty guts but his survival instincts took over and he held his tongue. A survival instinct that would go on to serve him well throughout his life of toil, danger, survival and finally adventure on the western frontier. So much so, that his common sense in the face of adversity, would later come to be known and respected by his peers as one of his trademarks.
“Get your Irish ass into this office so we can get the paperwork done and book passage on the boat that is to take you to America,” grumbled the firm’s agent as he opened the door into the dockside office. “And step lively if you know what is good for you,” he growled.
Once inside, Patrick was happy for the warmth the potbellied stove in the corner provided. Especially since he did not have a coat and his threadbare shirt provided little warmth in the damp Dublin morning air. Sitting on a bench along with three other boys of like age, Patrick watched the activities swirling around him. Behind a desk, a harried clerk was trying to process the needed paperwork to get the young men onto a sailing ship bound for America leaving that morning. The fat agent was breathing heavily down the clerk’s neck in an attempt to speed up the process and in so doing, only slowed down the paperwork and increased the little clerk’s level of frustration. Finally, all was completed and each boy was given a heavy envelope tied to a cord which hung around their necks. Then like a gaggle of geese, the boys were herded down to the docks and up a ramp leading through an open hatch into the side of a docked, iron sided sailing ship. This they would soon learn, was to be their home for the next several weeks or so depending on the weather and the winds as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
After showing a seaman the paperwork for each boy, the lads were herded into a large caged area in the hold and told to find a bunk among the many scattered around the cramped quarters. The steerage was already crowded with many other young men ranging from ten to eighteen years in age and bedlam soon ensued as the four new boys tried to find a bunk in which to sleep that wasn’t already occupied. Patrick grabbed a small cot near the wall of the cage, as did one of the boys of like age that had been in the dockside shack earlier with him.
“I be Patrick Donovan,” said the smiling boy settling in next to Patrick Jack.
“I am Patrick Jack Kelly,” said Patrick as he extended his hand in friendship to the first friendly person he had met since this nightmare of indentured servitude had begun.
“Your father sell you into bondage same as me?” asked Donovan.
“Yes,” replied Kelly, not really wanting to discuss the matter.
“Well, it can’t be so bad can it? At least, we will be out from under the boot and club of our fathers. Then we get to see a new country, start our lives anew after our five year period of servitude is over and can get away from the gloomy weather and lack of food here in Ireland,” Donovan continued with just a lilt of hope sounding in his voice.
About then the gangway going to the dock was dragged into the hold of the ship and the large iron side door was closed and tightly latched from inside. The light from the outside was now replaced by several lit candles meekly flickering in each comer of their caged sleeping area.
It was then that the realization sank into all the young men that they were leaving their families and their country for the unknown in a land far, far away. Soon, several of the younger boys began crying with that realization. Those soft sounds of despair were soon replaced with muffled orders being given up on deck. That was soon followed with the padded sounds of running feet on the deck. Then along came the creaking and groaning of the ship as its sails were unfurled, catching the morning’s breezes as it slowly moved away from the docks.
Soon, the sounds in steerage died away as the ship felt its way into the Atlantic Ocean and began the soft pitching and yawing found in the open water. That was soon followed by many young boys vomiting up what little they had from their last meals as sea sickness swept through the hold of the ship like a soft breeze over the bowsprit. Then, the intense sharp smell of seasickness permeated the hold in a warm thick intensity that only thirty sick young men in a confined space can do justice too. Later in the afternoon, the hatch to steerage was flung open and several seamen came down the stairs with buckets of cold sea water and an armful of mops.
“Avast, ye lubbers, hove too with these buckets and mops and clean this pig sty up,” yelled a large barefooted, bearded seaman. As it was, not a single lad in steerage made a move because of being too sick to stand, much less follow the orders just given.
“There will be no food until you lads clean up this area so it is fit for the likes of you,” shouted the bearded one. Then he and his mates left the buckets at the bottom of the stairs and quickly fled the stinking fetid scene, happy to be away from the warm, sharply intense stench of seasickness.
For the next two days, no food was served to those sick and vomiting lads in the now almost unlivable hold. Then by the third day, several of the boys who felt better began mopping up the wet and dried vomit. By so doing, they could venture out onto the open deck for some fresh air as they emptied their filthy vomit filled buckets and refilled them with fresh seawater. Each day thereafter, more and more of the boys got their sea legs and soon the hold was not only mopped clean but holystoned as well to remove the last vestiges of the smell.
By then, meals were being regularly served. The morning’s meal consisted of a small chunk of cheese and a larger portion of fresh homemade bread prepared daily by the ship’s cooks. Supper consisted of a large bowl of thick gruel with chunks of mystery meat, potatoes and a man-sized portion of bread once again. In between these meager rations, the boys worked above decks performing any tasks the crew de
emed necessary to keep the sailing vessel shipshape.
Then at night, the boys were once again locked in steerage and that was when hell rode into their midst on a “black horse”... Two of the older boys began to prey on the younger ones in the dark of night doing things accompanied by many muffled, horrible screeches. “Things” that were condemned in the “Good Book!” At first, such activities were conducted as quietly and covertly as possible. But as the two older and larger boys began to hold sway over the younger ones, things got more open and aggressive. At first, Kelly and Donovan tried to ignore the rapes but finally they could take it no more when it was brought to a head in their little comer of the world one dark evening. One of the ringleaders conducting the rapes on the younger ones, approached Donovan for such favors. Donovan objected and while Kelly was up on deck helping the ship’s cooks clean up, his friend was beaten savagely by the two older boys!
Upon Kelly’s return, he found his friend beaten senseless and laying in a pool of his own blood. Kelly did what he could for his friend and during the next evening when he was helping the cooks learning how to bake bread, he secreted a large bladed knife on his person. Returning later that evening after finishing his chores in the galley, he too was accosted in the ship’s hold by the two older boys responsible for the rapes on the youngsters and the beating of his friend.
“Boy,” the older of the pair said to Kelly with an evil sneer, “we have something for you and unless you want what your friend got, you had better yield.” With that, he moved menacingly towards Kelly as did his partner in sickness from behind. The first boy named Donald, never saw the flash of the sharp kitchen knife until it was too late. Slicing deeply between his ribs, its blade slashed his heart almost in two! Donald without a word and a look of puzzlement on his face, slumped into Kelly’s arms. Donald’s partner, Devon, thinking Kelly was acquiescing to Donald’s wishes, moved in from behind to share the spoils. Whirling, Kelly slammed the long bladed knife clear to its hilt into Devon’s stomach and then in a savage move borne of desperation, ripped the blade upward into the blood rich organs. An inhuman screech from Devon followed, waking up the whole contingent of boys in steerage. Soon pandemonium reigned in the darkened hold as many of the boys thought they were next “in the barrel.” Kelly yelled for silence and presently an uneasy peace settled over the boys. Lighting several candles, it soon became obvious to all concerned as too what had just transpired. Then a murmur of approval moved across the group of boys, which soon turned to thankful utterances of abject joy and relief.
“I will need some help,” quietly stated Kelly. “I need to throw this filth overboard so no one is any the wiser as to what happened here and then we are rid of them forever.”
Within moments, numbers of thankful hands helped Kelly quietly carry the first body up the stairs and out onto the moonless cloaked, softly plunging deck of their ship. When the ship’s lookouts were not looking towards the steerage hatch, several sets of quiet feet shuffled across the decks and pitched the lifeless form over the railing for the ever trailing sharks to dispose of the body. That action was repeated with the remaining body and then the boys quietly washed the decks in steerage clean of the blood so that no evidence of the earlier violence remained. Then a quiet meeting was held among all the boys. There it was decided that the story concerning the absence of the two missing boys would be related to home sickness and their leaping overboard in extreme grief. The next day this story was told to the seamen responsible for the care of the young men in steerage and soon the matter was forgotten. Five days later, Donovan had healed up sufficiently from the earlier beating he had sustained from the two now long gone predatory boys and was able to return to sea duty.
However, he and the others never forgot what young Kelly had done for all of them. In fact, the favor would be returned several years later in a faraway land under what could have been the most dire of circumstances. A favor returned by one of the boys in steerage on the frontier, who was then named, “Blue Jacket by all who feared him in his current role.
Kelly never forgot what he had done either because before he had been sold into bondage by his father, he had been thinking about studying for the priesthood. The killing of the two predatory boys was a black act in his life, no matter the circumstances, to his Catholic way of upbringing. So by age fourteen, Kelly had killed for the first time in his life and later during a quiet moment, decided that if that was the way his life had to be, so be it. He would never again be beholding to anyone if he had to and would do what had to be done in order to survive. Then and only then, come the end when he stepped over the Great Divide, he would settle up with his God at that moment in time for his life’s many actions, both good and bad.
Several uneventful weeks later, the sailing ship arrived at the Port of New Orleans. There the passengers in bondage were offloaded into the hands of their respective new masters. From there, the young men were spread to the four winds to serve out their years of servitude, as required by the contracts previously arranged back in Ireland, in this, their new country called America. As it turned out, Kelly, Donovan and one other lad named O’Bannion were scheduled to board a packet steamer heading up a river called the Mississippi to a frontier town far to the north named St. Louis. From there, they would be delivered into the hands of their prospective masters. So for the next several days until their packet steamer arrived, their receiving agent made sure the boys worked the docks of New Orleans. That hard dockside labor and the many good rice laced Cajun meals, began putting on the muscle that their frames spoke to of what should have been and was soon to be.
Coming soon from Terry Grosz and Wolfpack Publishing.
About the Author
Terry Grosz earned his bachelor’s degree in 1964 and his master’s in wildlife management in 1966 from Humboldt State College in California. He was a California State Fish and Game Warden, based first in Eureka and then Colusa, from 1966 to 1970. He then joined the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and served in California as a U.S. Game Management Agent and Special Agent until 1974. After that, he was promoted to Senior Resident Agent and placed in charge of North and South Dakota for two years, followed by three years as Senior Special Agent in Washington, D.C., with the Endangered Species Program, Division of Law Enforcement. While in Washington, he also served as Foreign Liaison Officer.
In 1979, he became the Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two years later in 1981, he was promoted to Special Agent in Charge and transferred to Denver, Colorado, where he remained until his retirement in 1998.
He has earned many awards and honors during his career, including, from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Meritorious Service Award in 1996, and Top Ten Award in 1987 as one of the top ten employees (in an agency of some 9,000). The Fish & Wildlife Foundation presented him with the Guy Bradley Award in 1989, and in 1993 he received the Conservation Achievement Award for Law Enforcement from the National Wildlife Federation.
Unity College in Maine awarded Grosz an honorary doctorate in environmental stewardship in 2001. His first book, Wildlife Wars, was published in 1999 and won the National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and Environment. He has had ten memoirs published since then—For Love of Wildness, Defending Our Wildlife Heritage, A Sword for Mother Nature, No Safe Refuge, The Thin Green Line, Genesis of a Duck Cop, Slaughter in the Sacramento Valley, Wildlife on the Edge, Wildlife’s Quiet War, and Wildlife Dies Without Making a Sound (in two volumes) —and his Mountain Men Novels — Crossed Arrows, Curse of the Spanish Gold, The Saga of Harlan Waugh, The Adventures of the Brothers Dent, and The Adventures of Hatchet Jack.
Several of Grosz’s stories were broadcast as a docudrama on the Animal Planet network in 2003.
Terry Grosz lives in Colorado.
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