During daylight hours, there were few places as busy in all of New England as the Dorchester docks, a hub of organized insanity. At any given moment one could stand and spot ships entering and exiting port. Crew members tying off boats. Forklifts loading and unloading supplies. People of all different sizes and ethnicities running about, their destinations as varied as the vessels they came in on.
For as active as the docks remained during the day, the combined effect of that activity ground to a halt with the arrival of darkness. With little to no boat traffic there was no cargo to unload, no deckhands needed on standby.
In early June, darkness could be counted on to descend upon Boston somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30. On Wednesday the 3rd, it hit at 8:18, nearly splitting the difference.
Seamus Reilly’s shift had started a couple of hours earlier at 6:30, a small overlap existing with the afternoon crew to assist in end-of-day tasks. It was just his second week on the job and he was still learning, though there wasn’t a great deal more he had to discover. Already he had mastered the night shift and was fast becoming able to run the day-end tasks each afternoon by himself.
Another week and everything he did would be from muscle memory, the practiced skills of rote repetition.
Unlike many of the workers on the docks, Seamus had not grown up in the trade. A call had gone up in the old Irish neighborhoods a month before looking for able-bodied workers and he had signed on. Times were tough and the factory he’d been at for eighteen years had shut down without warning.
No pension, no gold watch. Just a sign on the door and a pat on the back from his old boss.
When the call for workers first went out it was accompanied by the usual gossip from the rumor mill, this time coupled with a warning that some boys had met a bad end working there. The stories were varied as to exactly what had happened, but the punch line seemed to be that somebody was picking off dock hands for sport.
The tales might have spooked some potential applicants, but they barely even registered with Seamus. At thirty-five years, old he couldn’t much read nor do basic math, but he was handy in a scrap.
That much he knew from a lifetime of experience. If getting into an occasional fisticuff was the worst part of the job, then Seamus figured he’d found his new calling.
At 8:30 Seamus made another round, carrying a clipboard and checking off items as he completed them. The docks were quiet, the only sounds his boots scraping against the ground and the occasional gull calling out as it floated by. He made the same trip at 9:30 and again at 10:30, each time finishing the loop without marking down a single thing of note.
As the clock trudged toward midnight, Seamus felt a deep boredom begin to set in. For eighteen years he’d worked with an acetylene torch in his hand, a trade that kept his senses sharp and the clock moving. Now, he couldn’t help but watch the minutes crawl by.
A few minutes before 11:30, Seamus stepped out from the guardhouse, clipboard in hand. The Sox were off for the night and without a game to listen to, the small metal outbuilding seemed cramped.
In no particular hurry, Seamus started on the north end of the lot and made another pass through. Going beyond the standard items on his list, he went out of his way to check the knots on rope riggings and bulbs on security lamps. Before long, he even began tugging locks on the metal containers to ensure they were fastened tight.
Tedious, but it helped pass the time.
The extra tasks added over ten minutes to the round and Seamus finished right at midnight. While a bit crisp, the evening was pleasant and he began to whistle an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song as he walked back toward the guardhouse. He kept an easy pace through the deserted docks, walking with no particular purpose until he rounded the final corner and spotted his destination up ahead.
Leaning against the outer wall of it was a solitary figure, dressed all in black. The man was too far away for Seamus to make out any features, but he could see the man was wearing an older style fedora and smoking a cigarette.
The tune fell away from Sheamus’s lips as the hair on the back of his neck rose. Since taking over the shift by himself on day, three he had yet to see another soul on the dock at night.
The appearance of one now could not be a good sign.
Seamus slid the clipboard into his left hand and pushed his right into his jacket pocket. Without breaking stride, he wrapped his fingers around the roll of quarters he kept stowed there, the plastic casing on it feeling cool to the touch.
“Hello there,” Seamus called as he approached, waving the clipboard with his left hand.
Without tilting the fedora up from the ground, the man replied, “Hello there.”
Seamus noticed the thick accent immediately, not sure where it had originated, but noting it definitely wasn’t Irish. “Boss send you out here for something?”
“You could say that,” the man replied, a touch of amusement in his tone.
“Never seen you out this way before,” Seamus commented, pulling to a stop half a dozen feet from the guardhouse and shifting his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, “but I’m pretty new here. What did you say your name was?”
The man shook his head, the overhead light casting a shadow from his hat that seemed to envelope his entire body. “I didn’t.”
Past encounters had taught Seamus when somebody was looking for trouble, it was always better to be the aggressor. He had no idea who this man was or what he wanted, but his sudden appearance, his icy demeanor, made it apparent he carried ill will.
Dropping the clipboard to the ground, Seamus pulled the roll of quarters from his pocket and charged forward, swinging his right hand low, preparing it for a massive uppercut. The fist made it just past his hip before the man shuffle-stepped forward and hit a snap kick to the throat before retreating to the side of the building and placing the cigarette back between his lips.
The roll of quarters was the first thing to hit the ground, the clear binding on it giving way, sending silver splashing across the concrete. A moment later Seamus fell to his knees in the middle of the mess, gasping and pawing at his neck, his body fighting to draw in air.
Thick streams of blood swelled in his throat and ran down his tongue, dripping off his chin and onto the ground below. Sweat poured from his face as his skin receded to pale blue, oxygen deprivation setting in, his body unable to draw air through a crushed larynx.
The man stood and watched until Seamus came to a stop face down on the ground before crushing out his cigarette and placing the butt in his coat pocket. Pushing his front teeth over his bottom lip, he blew out a shrill whistle, answered on command by a set of headlights appearing from the darkness.
A low rumble emanated through the night as the lights rolled closer, a pickup truck on oversized tires emerging. With a quick overhand wave, the man watched as the truck rolled past him and crawled toward the opposite end of the dock. He lit another cigarette and remained stationary as the truck coasted to a stop over fifty yards ahead of him.
Pausing for a moment to select a target, it idled forward and brought the front bumper to rest against a nondescript brown container. It remained motionless just long enough to shift into gear before the brake lights blinked out and the engine kicked to life.
The sound of heavy diesel exhaust filled the night air for several long seconds, angry bursts of smoke combined with the metallic whine of cylinders running hot. A moment later the sounds were joined by tires squealing against concrete, the smell of burnt rubber drifting through the air.
The final sound to join the crescendo was the bottom of the container scraping against concrete. Inch by inch it nudged its way toward the edge of the pier, asphalt and metal protesting in a strained wail.
The front of the truck remained flush with the container until it reached a tipping point and began its inevitable slide toward the water.
Less than five feet from the edge, the enormous machine came to a stop, its red brake lights flaring. It remained idling in place as the container
slid into the water, standing vigil as the massive weight of the metal hulk pulled it beneath the surface. Once it was gone from sight, the truck eased into reverse before turning and exiting the same way it had entered.
Standing against the guardhouse, the man waited until the taillights of the truck were gone before crushing out his cigarette and disappearing into the darkness.
On the ground, he left Seamus’ dead body, ten dollars in coins scattered around him.
In the water, he left a container full of people whose fates would soon be much the same.
Chapter Seven
Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel Page 8