“But Anthony certainly wanted to free the slaves? He was sincere in that, was he not?”
Livingston’s eyes regained enough focus to find me in the brown light of the room. “Sit ‘em right there beside you. Anthony would have done that, all right. So close you could smell the jungle. Treat ’em equal to the white man.”
“Then why on earth be so set against the likes of Cawber? A man of his own race?”
He blew out two lungs of bad air and followed up with a burp. “Cawber… just isn’t our sort. Why… his father… did you know his father worked on the docks? Anthony… could not have… Jones, would you be a friend and share a touch more of your whisky?”
I gave it to him, God forgive me.
He drank and savored and sighed. “Look… Anthony had a great fondness for his pet Negroes. Like his father with his Chinese heathens. The Fowler men… they all have this unaccountable need to save somebody.” He turned his eyes to me and the blue of them shone weak. “Don’t you see it, Jones? Your nigger’s one thing… I mean, he’s not going to climb up and push his way into your house, is he? But Cawber’s sort? They’ll build a bigger house right next door to you. Annoy the ladies. Want their brats to play with your children, go to the same schools. Buy their way in with all their dirty money. Upset the order of things.” He smirked. “You might as well invite the Irish to the opera.”
“I have noticed… in going through Captain Fowler’s papers… that he paid a great lot of attention to Mr. Cawber’s doings.”
He grunted. “Anthony saw him for the crooked swine he is. Anthony hated him.”
“There is a certain matter of cannon.”
Livingston sat up straight. I would not have thought the boy capable of it. “Now you’re onto it, Jones. Now you see. Anthony was going to put him in jail. For fraud against the government. Then we’d see what all the Cawber money was good for. Let him try to buy his way out of prison. Like he tried to buy his way into Philadelphia society.”
“Your friend… Anthony… had quite a pile of evidence. Requisitions outside of the normal process. Bills of approval signed by Secretary Cameron himself. And more than a dozen cases of exploding guns—all from the Cawber works. Men were killed. It’s all here.”
“Cawber’s a damned crook. Anthony saw it. Anthony… was a hero.”
“Was Anthony… did Captain Fowler ever express any personal concern… fear, to put the honest word on it… regarding Cawber?”
He treated me to a dumbfounded look, with his glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
“Anthony wasn’t afraid of anything,” he said.
The one thing I did not understand was the behavior of General McClellan. Now certain it was that he was busy. Yet his concern for the Fowler business had seemed so great, and his worry that the boy’s murder would be used for wicked purposes so urgent, that his lack of interest in my doings bewildered me. There was a great campaign in the newspapers to follow Anthony Fowler’s ghost on to Richmond. Every Union man with a mouth called for vengeance, from Maine to the banks of the Missouri. Yet I had heard not a word from the general for almost two weeks. I yearned to lay my suspicions before him, for I believed I had seen through the matter. But the only time I glimpsed Little Mac he went dashing by on horseback, kicking up leaves and dust, with one of those French devils beside him and a troop of aides galloping to keep up.
Oh, I wanted to talk to the general with a fury, for I saw the murder clear. But he had forbidden me his headquarters. All I could do was to wait. And the waiting was hard.
I wanted to see justice done.
I outlasted Livingston that afternoon. When he finally staggered off, I shut up my papers and books in the safe I had cajoled for the office and stepped out into the dark. The little warmth of the day was lost, and winter was teasing us. On Pennsylvania Avenue, a line of oxen towed a great gun toward the city’s defenses, and I paused to watch it pass. Then I made my way toward Mrs. Schutzengel’s house and dinner.
When I stopped for my Evening Star, Fine Jim said, “You’re struttin‘ just like a minstrel, Captain Jones. You’ll be running next.”
Twas a lie, but well meant.
“I’ll have my paper now,” I said, and he held it out to me. I gave him his three pennies, and a fourth for his kindness. I am no believer in spoiling a young fellow, but I had a weight on my conscience. The matter of paying the devil a dollar then pouring Satan’s whisky into Livingston was wrong, I knew.
“There is cold,” I said to Fine Jim. “You’ll want to dress more warmly now.”
His red hands slipped into his pockets and he did not answer me. I had been too much with my own thoughts and now I was sorry I had spoken, for I had shamed him. Had he a coat, the boy would have worn it.
I tipped my paper against the brim of my hat and marched on. But the devil had gotten into me as sure as he had waited in that whisky bottle for poor Livingston. I was not far along before I turned right toward Pennsylvania Avenue again. I had bought a uniform of decent quality at a fair price from a tailor fellow on 13th Street and soon enough I stepped into the shop of M. Feinberg and Sons.
The old man remembered me and smiled most kindly, putting on a queer voice that might have passed for an imitation of a Welsh accent among the far Eskimo. “Not a penny more! Not a penny more!” he called from behind his counter.
“Evening, Mr. Feinberg,” I said.
He considered the fit of my tunic. “To steal from me again, you come here? At such a price, I should feed my family? Still it hurts me.”
“I need a coat.”
He reached for a stack of army overcoats and held one up. “A beautiful coat,” he said. “Quality.”
“A coat for a boy.”
He turned, and if his eyes were not question marks. “A boy? A son? A son must have the best quality.”
“Actually… I’m wanting a coat for a newsboy, Mr. Feinberg. Just a little fellow, see. There is cold now. He feels the want of a warm coat.”
“A relative? A nephew, perhaps?”
“No. Just a newsboy. They’re a poor lot and—”
“No? Not a relative? Captain Jones, what am I to think? You bargain with me like a man with a knife.” He held up two blue-veined fists. “You hold every penny in your hand until it thinks it’s a goldpiece. And now—such a man as this—he tells me he wants to buy a coat for the paperboy? Maybe he thinks Moses Feinberg is a fool?”
“He’s cold, see. That is all there is in it. Simple Christian charity it is.”
He gave me a look then, but called for one of his sons from the rear of the shop. There was a great running back and forth. After a go-about over weight and size, we settled on a black wool affair that would cover most of the parts that might freeze on a boy. The cloth was rough, but warm. And it was big enough to give Fine Jim a year of growing into it.
With fear in me, I asked the price.
The fellow’s brown eyes sparkled.
“Fifty cents,” he said. “And no bargaining.”
Twas a two-dollar coat, if ever a two-dollar coat there was. Mr. Feinberg hardly let me open my mouth before he added, “Inventory reduction. Who wants such a coat? Take it from my shop. An evil day when I wasted good wool on such a rag.”
Another of his sons wrapped it with string and I hurried back into the street, for I wanted to catch Fine Jim before he left his corner. Now you will laugh at me and say there is foolish in Abel Jones, but I have seen the Jew from India to America and find him no more wicked than another man, and sometimes less so. I think him honest, though it surprise you. He has the carefulness of the eternal guest, see, and that confuses men born safe in their property. They think him devious when he is only cautious. Perhaps America will be a home to him, too, although I understand not all would have it so. For men need to blame and to feel bigger than one another, and sorry it is that we are made so. Look you: I recognize the sadness in the Jew. For it is the sort you will find in a Welshman when the singing is done. Our homes were taken, too, a
nd our religion mocked. We, too, were said to be of lower clay.
The evening froze around me. Fine Jim was still at his spot, dancing to beat the cold.
When he saw me coming on the wrong way, his face went into troubles. “Something the matter, Captain Jones? Something wrong with your paper?” Perhaps he thought I would ask for the fourth penny back.
“The paper is as a paper should be.” I held out the package. “Here is warm.”
He opened it, and there was pleasure in him, but a wavering, too.
“Go on with you. Try it for the size.”
He held it respectfully before him.
“My old man says I’m not to take charity.”
“And what does your mother say, then?”
He shook his head. And I understood that I had been indelicate again. I was hardly a Solomon that evening.
“Well, there is no charity in it,” I said. “It is a gift between friends. There is a difference, see.”
With the suddenness of a cat, he pulled it on. Large it was. But not to tripping over. It looked warm.
“You won’t miss your paper any day,” he said. “I’ll get it right to you, Captain Jones. Anytime you can’t come by. I promise.”
It is trouble to understand the world. I wanted only to do good. But the next time I saw the boy, the coat was gone from him and his left eye was swollen. He would not look at me. It was a hard country then. But let that bide.
After dinner I took my place in the parlor across from Mrs. Schutzengel, who was reading one of her queer German pamphlets. The Evening Star was as it always was, with the advertisements for the sale of waterproofs, oysters, and quack cures on the front page and the news of the war next back. I was just reading about a fellow named Grant and a to-do along the Mississippi the week before when a fist started up at the door. I would have gone to answer it, but Mrs. Schutzengel was the guardian of her own gate and would have it no other way.
I heard a voice ask for me. There was a familiarity to the sound, but I could not conjure a face or a name. A moment later, the brigade surgeon I had met over the river stepped into the light. His medical bag hung from his left hand.
“Dr. Tyrone,” I said. “Now this is a surprise. Mrs. Schutzengel, this is Dr. Tyrone, a surgeon to our troops.”
He bowed. “Habe die Ehre, gnadige Frau,” he told her.
Mrs. Schutzengel blushed and answered him with a stammer.
“German is it?” I asked him. I was surprised for, although he was a surgeon, he was, after all, an Irishman.
“Need it for the medical books. If a man’s serious about his butchering. Verzeihung, gnadige Frau. Your Germans have the doctors, the schools…”
I recalled that he had been reading a French book in his tent. Now that was a thing, it was. An Irishman who spoke French and German. Perhaps there was foreign blood.
“Listen, Jones,” he said. “I’ve business in town. Thought you might like to join me for an evening promenade. If that leg of yours allows.” He browsed over Mrs. Schutzengel’s pamphlets as he spoke. He was a man who could no more pass by a book or journal without examining it than a dog could pass by a bone.
Suddenly, he laughed. Almost a roaring, it was. And he looked at Mrs. Schutzengel.
If her face had been red, now it was crimson.
“The Communist Manifesto,” he said. “Now there’s a fine recipe book for the lady of the house.”
Mrs. Schutzengel snatched the pamphlet from his hand. “Sie haben kein Recht,” she barked.
I knew nothing of the work and had little of the exchange until Tyrone laughed again, delighted, and said, “Do you realize, Jones, that your landlady is a flaming revolutionary?”
I looked at Mrs. Schutzengel, at the stolid largeness of her. But her eyes had gotten up a defiance, as if someone had tried to rob her larder.
“It is only in America that the peoples will be free,” Mrs. Schutzengel said. “Even no-good Irish peoples, so ein wertloses Volk . . .”
“Now, now,” Tyrone said. “Nothing against it, milady. Read what you will. So long as the sheets are clean and the food abundant for my friend the captain. Will you walk with me, Jones?”
And we walked, with Mrs. Schutzengel giving the door a good bang behind us. Tyrone was thoughtful for a few blocks, then he said, “I can tell you her story, poor woman.”
“You know her, then?”
He shook his head. “No need of it. Tis a common enough tale. Common as hunger. Has she not spoken of a husband?”
“There has been such mention. An untimely end, I believe.”
He laughed again, but this sound was as dark as the night. “Yes. ‘Untimely.’ In the streets of Berlin or Frankfurt or Mannheim. Or on the Rastatt barricades. Might be they just hung the poor bugger after his catching.”
“Who, then?”
“Your Prussians. Back in forty-eight or forty-nine. The revolution that failed. Though it will come again.”
“I was in India then.”
We turned down 7th Street. “And I was in Vienna,” he said. “Studying. With my sympathies already up, though that’s another tale entirely. Nearly finished I was. And then they poured out into the streets, waving flags and shouting about the rights of man. A grand lark it seemed. The words… had the brightness of cherries. And victory seemed easy. We honestly thought we’d won. Then the army came back to itself. They shot their way through the streets.” He went a few steps in silence. “I went on to Budapest. For there was a great need of doctors there, with all the fighting.” He was gone into the past. “If ever a hero’s fight was fought, your Hungarians fought it. The Germans, the Austrians… everybody else had given up. But not your Magyars, bucko. First they fought the Austrian troops, and didn’t they give them a grand hiding. Then your Russian bastards marched in to save the dirty crown for Frantzen.” He lowered his face in the darkness between lamps. “Your Russian would rather kill than drink, and rather drink than breathe. It was nothing but a slaughter. I ran away and left them to their dying. Heroes they were…”
“I am not a great believer in heroes,” I said.
“Each man to his own. But heroes they were, sure. All over Europe that year. But your Hungarians above all. Fighting for a shred of decency to cover their arses with. Oh, the revolution will come again.” He turned his head toward me and there was more than gaslight in his eyes. “Is the walking too much of a bother?”
“There is no bother. Are you a revolutionary then, Dr. Tyrone?”
He laughed. He was a great one for laughing, Mick Tyrone, and had more different laughs in him than a chapel has hymns.
“Next time,” he said, “I won’t run away.”
As we turned from 7th Street into Pennsylvania Avenue, Tyrone made a fist at a door. The glass overhead read, WASHINGTON BUILDING.
“There’s a man I’d drop in the river with his hands tied back,” he said.
I said nothing, but he must have felt my curiosity.
“La Bonta,” he said. “Calls himself a doctor.”
I knew the name instantly, for the man’s advertisements were a constant in the newspapers. He claimed to cure diseases of shame.
“When he doesn’t poison them,” Tyrone said, “he gives them false hope. And back they go to the sheets. He’s a plague upon the camps. The provost marshal should close the bastard down.”
Dr. Tyrone’s language disappointed me, but we cannot hold the Irish to the same standards we apply to civilized people.
“Surely,” I said, “he must cure some. Or he would not have the business.”
Tyrone let off his darkest laugh of all. We passed a saloon and a girl in the door gave him a funny eye, far too familiar.
“There is no cure for syphilis, Jones. None. His sort prey upon the hopes of the afflicted. And hope is all he has to sell.”
He shocked me with his bluntness, for I had not heard the name of that illness spoken half a dozen times in my life, and then quietly.
“It is a terrible thing to
be without hope,” I said.
“And a worse thing for a man to believe himself cured only to infect his wife or sweetheart. Or for the harlot to think the fading of her symptoms means the end of the disease.” There was deep anger in the man. “There is no cure, not a one from here to Heidelberg. Not mercury, sure. And damned well not Dr. La Bonta’s potions. You make a wrong choice, and you die. Some go fast, some slow, but all of them go, Jones. And their going’s uglier than the Queen’s backside.”
I was not unaware of such matters, for I had seen that ugliness, too. India did not lack for it, and a regiment’s tragedies do not all occur upon the field of battle. But one did not speak aloud of such things.
“There is no need to insult the Queen,” I told him, “for she is a lady.”
He stopped cold. “Oh, a lady, is she? Just like all of them, then, your lords and ladies of fair England. Dancing while the Irish starved to death, and shipping their grain overseas for profit. No war was ever so ugly as the Famine, Jones, let me tell you.” He laughed bitterly. “Syphilitics can live for decades. But have you ever seen an infant starve to death, man? With the mothers teats nothing but dried-up little purses? They go fast, the little ones do. And the mother goes next, and half of the heartbreak. Your Russians in Hungary were kind put next to your English landlords. But I suppose you were in India for that, too?”
“I have heard of the matter of the Famine.” The regiment had seen a great influx of Irish soldiers from forty-seven on.
“Hearing won’t do. You had to see it. I ran to Vienna to get away from it. Already half a doctor, I was. But I couldn’t stand it. The bloody raw helplessness of it.” No laughter now. “Oh, I’ve done my share of running, Jones. As you can see.”
He turned across the avenue toward Murder Bay. Emrich’s Billiard Hall glowed like the portals of Hell before us.
“That is not a good way to go,” I told him.
Yet another variety of laugh from the man. Perhaps the Irish are so rich in the voice because twas the only thing the English could not take from them. It is why the Welsh sing.
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