The Charity

by Connie Johnson Hambley

  The old man and the young woman assessed one another openly, surrounded by row upon row of army-issue cots. Brown and muddy green blankets were tossed in piles around the room. Women, some young, but most old before their time, sat hunched over on the edge of their cots or moved around the facility. The center of the room was divided by a long muslin curtain in an attempt to provide privacy between the sexes. The old man was on his way out the front door when he saw the young woman curled up on a cot in the front row. No one paid any attention to him as he quickly patted her down in his search for cash or valuables. Now his impulsive action rooted him to the floor.

  Jessica freed the man from her attention and scanned the room instantly. She was lucky to find the place last night. She did not dare check into a hotel, and this shelter kept her off the streets. The volunteer at the door told her the shelter was full for the night because the frigid temperatures and bad weather had forced everyone off the streets. After looking at her face more carefully, the young man asked her what had happened. Jessica indicated domestic abuse. She figured she must have looked pretty terrible, because she was ushered to the last available cot.

  Before sleep finally transported her away from the unfamiliar sights and sounds of the shelter, she laid, wide eyed. Listening. Most of the people using the shelter for the night were asleep, taking comfort in the soft beds and warmth the shelter afforded them. Others moaned and cried out at their own demons and delusions. A woman sobbed. A man shouted something about the media controlling his mind. Jessica tried hard to push all of it out of her head.

  “Look, I’m outta here.” He dropped his head and turned away.

  “Hey, wait a second.” There was something about the old man that caught Jessica’s attention. “What’s in your hand?”

  “What? Nothing.” He began to walk faster.

  “Give it to me,” she demanded as she whirled the man around by his arm.

  The old man wavered. “I... I don’t have anything of yours.”

  Jessica squeezed his arm tighter. She kept her voice low to avoid notice. “Give it to me.”

  “Ouch! Okay! Okay! Here! Take it.” He thrust the lighter back into her outstretched hand. “I didn’t take it from you. It was on the cot beside you.”

  That was too close. She released him with a little push and turned to leave. She was halfway down the aisle when she heard him say, “You’re one of them, aren’t you.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re one of them. I figured you musta made a mistake, and they taught you a lesson. That symbol on the lighter, you know?”

  “You don’t know anything. Forget you ever saw me or the lighter.” She pushed past the shaking man.

  “No! Wait. If I help you, what’s in it for me?”

  Jessica stopped. It was the first time she saw the desperation in the man’s eyes. “How can you help me?”

  “I... I can bring you to Sarge! He always helps the new recruits.”

  “Sarge? Who’s Sarge?”

  “He’s a regular here. I seen him plenty of times.”

  “Why do you think he can help me?”

  “H-he has the mark! Right here.” He motioned to a place on his forearm.

  Jessica’s face throbbed from her beating. She had come too far to play it safe. “Okay. But I’ll meet with him someplace public. Do you know where he is now?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do. But what are you gonna do for me?

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “Okay. Okay. Two hundred bucks.”

  Jessica felt the cash taped to her and mentally calculated what she had. “One hundred and you never saw me. That’s it.” She shoved the money into the man’s hands.

  “Okay. Okay. Good. He always hangs out at the Tapestry Diner, eight blocks up Mass Ave. They got cheap coffee.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  Jessica looked up to see a woman of about forty standing over her. She wore the uniform of a social worker, well-worn jeans and sweater, hiking boots, small round glasses. “Yes. We’re fine. I’m leaving. Thanks for the cot.”

  “There are shelters for battered women all around Cambridge and Boston. You can go any time of the day or night.”

  “Oh. Um. Thanks. Really, I have to go.”

  “I can’t force you to stay or to talk to our counselors, but take these phone numbers and brochures. Whoever did that to you can’t touch you in our safe houses. We are in constant contact with local authorities who can help you obtain or enforce any restraining order you may have. Okay?”

  Jessica averted her eyes from the woman’s earnest look. “The police check the shelters?”

  The worker nodded. “Yeah. They make sure people who need them use them safely. You’d be protected at any one of them. What’s your name?”

  “I’d rather not say. Thanks. I gotta go.” She turned to the old man. “Ready?”

  He had already disappeared. Jessica walked to the main exit. Leaving the cavernous shelter, she squinted against the bright and painful light.

  She kept her head down as she walked up the street toward the diner. The shelter was in a converted lyceum on the outskirts of a neighborhood in Cambridge. Well kept Victorian buildings, long since converted to condominiums and apartments, marched up either side of the street. Several blocks later the buildings, like the few people dotting the streets, begged for attention. She finally found the ramshackle diner. The Tapestry Diner was a true greasy spoon. Jessica doubted that the decor had either been changed or cleaned since it first opened its doors for business. Judging from the stainless steel shelving which lined the back of the counter, the pink and gray tile motif, and split vinyl pads atop wobbly pedestals, that would be about forty years of dirt.

  A few people sat at the counter and at the booths lining the outer walls. Jessica settled into one on the far side to get the best view of the place. A waitress shuffled over and did a double take when she saw Jessica’s face, placing a steaming cup of coffee on the sticky table. All of the patrons looked liked regulars at a homeless shelter. Stupid woman, Jessica cursed to herself, you just got taken for a hundred bucks. After a while, she took the lighter out of her pocket and fingered it, the second cup of hot coffee burning her swollen mouth as much as the first.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Jessica looked up and saw an older man with thick white hair and stark green eyes looking down at the lighter. Her heart skipped a beat. “Um. No.” She hesitated then plunged in, “Sarge?”

  He sat down and looked at her with an experienced eye. “Looks like they taught you a lesson. What did you do?”

  “I, ah, I didn’t show enough respect.”

  Sarge laughed. “It’s like that with all the new ones. Next time give ‘em whatever they want.” He looked again at the lighter. “Where did you get that? It looks like one the old man has.”

  “This? It was given to me.” She hoped the answer satisfied him. “Can I buy you some breakfast?”

  “Thanks,” he said as he settled in opposite her. With a glance for approval from Jessica, the old man ordered two complete breakfasts of eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, home fries, and toast. Jessica ordered eggs and an English muffin. The waitress shook her head and clucked her disapproval at Jessica’s swollen eye and placed a towel filled with ice on the table. She left without another word. Jessica held the ice to her face.

  The old man took a sip of his hot coffee, ceremoniously drawing in air to cool it. He placed the cup down in front of him with an exaggerated sigh. “So, your superior beat you and you think you’ve finally had enough, eh?”

  Jessica felt a stab of fear at having to lie to the old man. What if she got caught in her deceit? Exhaustion, fear and uncertainty threatened to cloud her thinking. One miscalculated statement could raise suspicions and intuition told her that the man sitting across from her had killed for less. She l
ooked down at the stained cup and resolved to weigh each word carefully. “Something like that.”

  “You don’t strike me as the type to live on the streets.”

  “No. No. I’m... I’m new.”

  “New? So where did you hear about me?”

  “Oh, um, the sh-shelter in, in Cambridge.”

  “You have better places to go to than that old shelter. Next time try another place. It’ll be cleaner and a lot safer for you.” The old man smiled revealing surprisingly white and straight teeth.

  “Oh. I’ll try to remember that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Siobhan.”

  He looked at her with an odd squint in his eye. “Siobhan. Never heard of you.”

  Jessica stammered. “I, um, I was told to meet you here. Th-that you were going to help with my training.”

  A moment passed as he considered his patron. “Training?”

  “Um, yes. I... I heard you were the best. Th-that you’d tell me the history of, um, that you’d tell me why I have to show more respect.”

  Sarge leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Ah! It’s been a long time since I was called upon.”

  “They, um, they told me to show you this so you’d know you could talk to me.” Jessica fumbled with the lighter, and she could see her shirt move in time to her pounding heart.

  Sarge looked again at the lighter and nodded his head at some unspoken agreement. He settled back into his seat, visibly more relaxed.

  “Well, Siobhan, in my younger years I worked for the cause, not for money, but for glory. You know how it is. After my wife died, may God rest her soul, I just never paid attention to where the money went. My kids needed it more than I did, so I gave everything to them. They said it was my one and only act of true goodness.” A look of what might have been deep regret passed over Sarge’s face.

  “Don’t your children keep in touch with you?”

  Sarge looked at a spot somewhere over Jessica’s head. “No. To them I am dead. I died the second my wife did. She was the anchor of our family. The shelters are my home now.” He paused. “How did you join?”

  Beads of cold sweat sprung from her palms. “I, um, I was recruited because I believe in the cause.”

  “Take it from me. Make them pay dearly for all you do for them.”

  “Thanks. I intend to.”

  Their conversation drifted while Sarge piled the food into this mouth. It was obvious he was starving, but he ate with manners and forced himself to pause occasionally as if he wanted to savor the moment. Jessica picked at her eggs and muffin, her mouth too sore to eat. She was intrigued with the old man’s air of quiet resignation.

  “Sarge? Tell me about what you did when you were young.”

  Sarge could not remember the last time he had the sole and attentive interest of a young recruit, especially one so attractive even with a bruised face. His eyes began to glisten as the memories washed over him. “I was a man of singular purpose, Siobhan. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. Like you, I was told I was helping hundreds if not thousands of people. Only now I see that I was played the fool. Make sure they don’t do the same to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He raised a shaking hand in a gesture which said ‘just a moment’ and settled further back into the booth with a heavy breath. He wanted this to take as long as possible, until lunchtime, maybe. He was in no rush to tell his story.

  “When I first heard about this group, I was a young man, just a little younger than you. It was considered a rite of passage in my family to be told of our history and the responsibilities to our homeland. My father and mother, may God rest their souls, immigrated here from Northern Ireland in the mid ‘thirties. I was born shortly thereafter.”

  Jessica looked into Sarge’s face again, sitting forward in her seat.

  “The story they told outsiders was that my father left the mother country to find good steady wages as a chemical engineer to support himself and his young bride. The real story was that he came to America to search for contacts that would help him design and make a small, powerful explosive called gel-ignite. He lived here in Boston, but his main contact was a scientist in Cleveland, Ohio.”

  He took a sip of coffee and continued. “He quickly made contacts with shipping and customs agents and found it very easy to export the quantities of the explosive needed. Members of the group were waiting for the shipments on the other end. The very first bombing campaign against the British started shortly thereafter.” His raised chin and straightened shoulders spoke to the pride he felt at telling this tale.

  Jessica remembered what Shea had told her in the hotel and hoped she could weave it into a conversation to pull more information from her companion. “Sarge, I know that we bring attention to our cause by creating fear through violence. But why?”

  “You should know why we fight the way we do!”

  “I just know we do. I don’t know why.”

  “It’s basic history you should know. It was never meant to be so bloody, but we soon learned that to be heard we had no choice. Think of it. You have workers from the fields going up against the British Empire. They worked for meager wages by day and planned a revolution by night. All the while they knew that for every hour or every dollar they spent, their opponent had done that plus fifty times more.

  “It took hundreds of years for the British and Irish to reach their stalemate. Britain was not accustomed to giving up anything they felt was their rightful destiny to own. They created what we call a ‘statelet’ of the six counties in northeast Ireland seventy-five years ago. You will hear many different stories as to why they remained or even how they got there to begin with, but there is hardly a man or a woman in Ireland who does not blame Britain for the division of the Irish heart as well as their land.

  “The Irish are and were men of honor, and when no response came to their requests for negotiated settlements or even for dialogue on the issues, they declared war on England and fought the only way they could with the resources that they had. They had to destroy selected targets. Their targets were those of military significance; power stations, postal offices, bridges and the like. Each was planned carefully, and the authorities warned so that the area could be cleared of innocents before the explosions occurred. A few innocent men and women did get caught in the blasts of the war. Those were very sad moments for us all.”

  Sarge looked down at his hands as he wrung the napkin between them. It had been a long time since he was called upon to train a young recruit, and he was happy to have another chance. He hoped he would be remembered for his service.

  “Yeah, Sarge, but you were born an American. What did all of that have to do with you?”

  Sharp eyes lifted and looked at Jessica. She could see the anger and the hatred behind them. A shiver crept up her spine.

  “On my eighteenth birthday, my father sat me down and told me of the conflict in his homeland. At the time, he said it would give him no greater honor than to have his son fight for freedom at his side. For the Irish, there is no greater tie than that of blood. My father wanted the best for his wife and family, but his work with the IRA paid nothing. He worked two jobs and sent what he could to his own parents back in Belfast. One day a letter arrived, and my father did not speak for a week. It was years later that I learned that his father and mother were killed when they were caught in crossfire between the R.U.C., the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Unionists. That was when the Protestant/Catholic tensions were being created and fueled by the British to keep Ireland separate for religious, not political, reasons.

  “After that, my father set me free from his expectations. He knew I was an American by birth and by culture. He did not want me to experience the pain he had felt from a conflict thousands of miles away on an island. He made me swear on the Bible that I would never fight for the I
RA. To this day, I have kept that promise.”

  Jessica cocked her head to one side. “And so you found th-the—?” Looking for the right words, she glanced down at the lighter.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, child! Exactly! We never have to work directly for the IRA to support them. As you well know, they call our cause the Charity.”

  “How did they recruit you?”

  “In the mid ‘sixties, my father and mother returned to Ireland. My mother was in ill health and wanted to see her home again before she died. They were only to stay for two weeks. The Brits had gotten a tip that the supplier for the explosives was back in the country. In the middle of the night, British soldiers raided the home they were staying in. They wasted no time and rounded up everyone in the household. It was a heartless setup. My niece was dragged from her hiding place and brutally killed. My nephew was hopelessly disfigured at their hands. Those that survived were all locked up in prison—father, mother, aunt, and uncle. Each was convicted on a charge of either smuggling, storing, or transporting explosives or otherwise aiding and abetting crimes against the British Empire. My father had nothing with him that would have incriminated the whole household like that. He and my uncle were tortured. My mother died of pneumonia in prison. The shortest sentence anyone received was fifteen years.”

  “I went nearly mad with hatred and anger. Sure there was this conflict overseas, but now it had taken my whole family. I hated the Brits but was bound by honor to the oath I took before my father. I could not join the IRA, but I was desperate to help them. That’s when I found Charity, or rather, when the Charity found me.”

  “Sarge, I am so sorry about the loss of your father and mother. Even as a young man, the pain could not have been any less.” She tried to keep the conversation going but was afraid to say anything that would expose her bluffing. “That’s how they found me. They, um, they knew about my family’s, um, death.”