Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “How did that one get in there?” Vinnie said.

  “I beg your pardon, Uncle Vinnie?”

  “Never mind,” Vinnie said.

  In the carriage on the way home, Vinnie showed the extra to Stephen who glanced down the list. “Well, they chose a fine day for it,” Stephen said, “the twelfth of July.”

  “That’s right,” Vinnie said. “Orangeman’s Day. Do you think they’ll make something of it?”

  Stephen shrugged.

  “There will be no talk of the war in our house, today, gentlemen,” Priscilla said.

  “Oh, don’t make the rule on my account,” said Delia. “I feel now like I got the plague, people shyin’ off when I come near.”

  “I’ve never done that, Delia,” Priscilla said, “even when Vinnie was away.”

  “Bless you, honey, you’re my only friend,” Delia said, patting Priscilla’s hand. “You and Nancy. Poor old dear, she don’t know which side she’s on.”

  “I’m on both sides,” Jem said, “only more on papa’s.”

  “When the war is over, Jem,” Stephen said, “you and your mother and I shall go to Charleston, and you will see how lovely it is, and there will be no more sides.”

  “I shall never go to Charleston again,” Delia said, “if the Yankees get there before me.”

  She was docile as a dove, Vinnie thought, as long as the Rebels were winning. But the vixen was coming out now. “I expect Pris is right,” he said, “we’d better talk about the weather and the park. I say it is beautiful. Perhaps we can take a drive there this afternoon.”

  “Along with everyone else in New York,” Stephen said. “I wish you ladies had been persuaded to go to the country without us, however flattering Vinnie and I find your devotion.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow,” Vinnie said. He had been watching the streets as the carriage drove north. In the poorer sections of town there was an uncommon activity for Sunday, men gathering in clusters, and everywhere amongst them someone was waving a newspaper in his clenched fist.

  “I shall not leave the city this week,” Delia said, and Vinnie glancing at her without raising his head, thought there was an extraordinary brilliance to her eyes. He sighed. He was quite capable of imagining anything these days. Too much work too soon.

  “And I shan’t go without Delia,” Priscilla said.

  7

  THE LAVERYS WENT TO early Mass that morning and Dennis, having gone downtown from there, was late getting home to dinner. “I can’t keep the poor girl in the scullery all day,” Norah chided, speaking of her sweep.

  Dennis ate in silence and then sent the children from the room. “I’ve decided to take you and the childer’ to the ocean,” he said.

  “To the ocean?” Norah repeated.

  “Aye. To the seashore. It’s goin’ to be a perishin’ week of heat they say, and I’d like you out of it.”

  “Oh, Dennis, that’ll be lovely. And what are we keepin’ our money for if not for somethin’ like this?” She thought about it for a moment. “Or is it there’s trouble you’re takin’ us out of?”

  “You’ll have trouble enough gettin’ ready by tea time,” he said.

  “Tea time? Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

  “You can and you must, Norah, if I’m to go with you. Or would you rather I didn’t?”

  “Don’t be witherin’ me with your tongue, Dennis. It’s only yourself ever keeps you from us.”

  “Then it’s myself that’s takin’ you,” he said, and began to see nothing but pleasure in the jaunt. “Do you know who’ll be our neighbor? The governor of New York, no less.”

  “Do I need to take clothes for that?” cried Norah.

  “I’d better not catch you without them for that,” said Dennis.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Can you swim, Norah?”

  She threw back her head in laughter. “Like a wheelbarra’.”

  Oh Lord, Lord, Dennis thought, going out of the house, why had he never thought of this before necessity prompted it? A rig was waiting him at the corner, and he drove downtown to the Mechanics’ Hall in the Fourth Ward first. There a crew of men was working on placards:

  NO DRAFT

  NO $300 ARRANGEMENTS FOR US

  “Haven’t you a better word than ‘arrangements’?” said Dennis. “If I have I can’t spell it,” the man said. “Then I’ll give you words you can spell,” said Dennis. “‘The poor man’s blood for the rich man’s money,’ write that.” He went next on a tour of the fire houses. “All I’m askin’ mind, if you’re told to bear arms, make sure who you’re bearin’ them against. We’ll kill the bloody draft for once and all. If the war’s to free the niggers, then let the niggers fight it. They’re talkin’ now in the legislature of a full time, full pay fire department. You know who’ll be the first in line for your jobs then, don’t you? Aye, like it happened on the docks, it can happen to you, my boys, so stand fast by your rights and to hell with the nigger.” His last arrangement of the afternoon was to provide arms for those key men who might need them for their own protection—the best arms Rebel money could buy, and for them he had spent the gold provided him. Not a cent of it had gone into his own pocket. No traffic in shoddy for Dennis Lavery.

  It was almost midnight by the time Dennis had his family settled at the New Jersey watering place, and not until noon the next day did he make his presence known to the governor—in time to get word that there was rioting in New York City. The enrollment office at Forty-sixth Street and Third Avenue had been destroyed. Seymour could not help remarking that he had foreseen it, and Dennis said, “Oh, aye, and didn’t you prophesy it on the Fourth of July?” The next telegraph brought word of an attack on the home of the Republican mayor, Opdyke, whom Dennis predicted was by that hour as far from the city as they were—a man without guts if he didn’t have an army to call out, and Lincoln had called all the soldiery from the city to hasten the rout of Lee. And the next word then was that the Draft was suspended, and Dennis went down to bathe with his children. He had never felt the power within him as great, and the only peace he ever knew in his life came to him, whatever the battle, after he knew he had won it. While the children were puddling nearby, he fell asleep in the sand.

  Norah shook him awake and his first thought was what the devil was she doing there at an hour the ladies were prohibited the beach. “Dennis, they’re lookin’ all over for you. They say New York is in flames!”

  Dennis ran back to the hotel where he read the last dispatch before the wires out of New York had gone dead. The Twenty-second Street arsenal was burning, hundreds of rioters trapped within it. The colored orphan asylum was burned to the ground, the Tribune building threatened. The fools, Dennis thought, the bloody fools, to let things get out of hand, and the whole purpose accomplished by noon.

  Dennis left for the city immediately, carrying word that Governor Seymour would arrive in the morning. Norah’s parting words to him were: “Find Peg. Promise me you’ll find her, or I’m comin’ home with you now.”

  Dennis gave his promise.

  The ferries were running all night, carrying women and children out of the city. It was, by report, the only transport in motion. The cars and the busses were lined up abandoned, and the sky was alight with the fires. Two navy gunboats guarded the Battery, their guns trained, should the Treasury come under attack. A drizzle of rain started as Dennis put his foot on land, and he prayed it would soon come a deluge. He first made his way to downtown police headquarters. Men were stretched on the floor, their sticks in their hands, sweating and stinking from the day’s exhaustion and the unmerciful muggy heat. The mayor, Dennis learned, his house twice attacked, had set up his office in the St. Nicholas Hotel. Dennis sent him the governor’s message. All night long the work of repairing the telegraph went on. If the rioters stayed in out of the rain by morning the police would have contact with each other, and the city with the rest of the land.

  Every grog-hole was crowded, Dennis perceived, crow
ded and spilling as he reached Chatham Street, swarming with men far gone in liquor, and sprinkled with women who’d gone a bit farther. That was the curse he had not counted on, being himself a man of abstinence. He could hear them bragging the stores they had pillaged and giving a cheer for the ones they’d cage in the morning. God keep us from morning, he prayed, and commenced a tour of the dance halls. Wherever they saw him, the ones who could see gave a great shout for Lavery. He could but wave and wish them peace, and for that they were willing to riot. If it wasn’t so fearsome, he thought, it would surely be magnificent.

  “Peg? Peg Stuart? Yes, she was here all right. God be praised she took her custom elsewhere!”

  “Peg? Oh, yes. There’s the remains she left us,” and a sweep of the hand showed a heap of smithered glass and chairs and bottles.

  Then Dennis caught up with her entourage in transit, a dancing, prancing swirl of urchins, some in long pants rolled up at the ankles, the price tickets hanging yet from their backsides. Boots they were carrying they couldn’t put on, and fancy pillow covers were draping their heads. They were trailing elegant shawls, sweeping the streets with white linens, pelting each other with apples and lemons, and singing the songs of the war, Dixie Land and Johnny Comes Marching Home. “My eyes!” they cried, “my eyes! ’Tis gallus, gorgeous, grand.” Mine eyes have seen the glory of the comin’ of the Lord. The children’s crusade.

  Dennis plowed through them, but he could not crash the inner guard, a shoulder-busting ring of toughs, sports of the town, its gambling men, his own dear ballot-box brigade. Join them he could, but not go through them, and there was Peg, skipping into the dance hall before them. The b’hoys swept after her and about her, two of them lifting her up to a table.

  “A drink for the honor of Peg,” they cried. “A round of drinks for Mrs. Stuart!”

  “Peg takes nothing she doesn’t earn, my gallants!” she cried. “You there, at the fiddle, and you at the drums, give us a jig I can buy with!”

  A scratch and a squeak and a muddle of thumps was the best the poor players could manage, but little odds that for them that had tongues soon drowned them. The windows, the roof, the house from its foundation jangled with the roar. Half the city it seemed crowded in with their coming. High, high, Peg kicked, her toes shooting out like flames. Her hair was wild and her eyes still wilder and the sweat glistened down her breast. Her face was red, her throat and her chest, and the scars shone out of it white like lightnings.

  Oh, my God, my God, Dennis thought and the tears welled into his eyes. He made his way to the bar and demanded a glass and a bottle. With them over his head he was made way for and by the dance’s end he stood beneath her, coaxing.

  Peg looked down. Her eyes were glazed but she knew him. She gave him her hand, but instead of coming down she pulled him up, and the boys beneath were quick to boost him.

  “My brother-in-law, Dennis Lavery!”

  Oh, what a shout went up! Enough to carry all the way to the White House.

  Damn the draft.

  Bloody the perlice.

  Burn the niggers.

  Hang old Greeley on a sour apple tree.

  Are ye listenin’, Father Abraham? We’re acomin’ for yer, a hundred thousand strong.

  Dennis wiped the sweat from his face. He caught Peg’s wrist and held her close to him. “You’re comin’ home with me now, my girl.”

  “Home!” Peg cried. “Where in the name of Christ is home?”

  “No, no!” those within hearing shouted.

  “God damn it,” Dennis shouted at her, “you’re comin’ out of this.”

  But Peg gave him a shove that tumbled him over the edge of the table and into the arms of them crowding below. Some bloody fool picked him up by the head, and somebody cuffed his ear. Dennis sickened with fear. One blow, then another caught him, tobacco juice sprayed into his face and his one hope was to get his feet on the floor. He was kicked and shoved and hoisted, and finally flung out on the street. There the arabs lept upon him, caging his watch, his purse, his tie pin, and at last while he lay still playing dead, they pulled the shoes from his feet and left him.

  8

  VINNIE AND STEPHEN WORKED side by side the first day of the riot, trying to rescue the wounded. By the second day both men armed themselves and volunteered to fight. Neither of them said it, but Vinnie knew that without Stephen, he would have been tortured at the prospect of firing upon Irish men and women armed only with whiskey and bricks. And they were Irish, mostly. It could not be denied. Justice might sanction their revolt, but not their riot. But where poverty and degradation have tasted a little power, who will say “enough!” These were not evil people, Vinnie swore. Yet horrors of their perpetration stank upon the streets. He and Priscilla had turned their house into a hospital where rioters and police alike were treated. A sign of mercy was hung up outside, and ambulances came often to the door. Dressings and help were supplied from the New York Infirmary, and Vinnie thought that a mercy depot was the surest hope for his home’s safety, although he doubted that such a thought had ever occurred to his wife.

  And now he was taking arms himself in another part of the city. They were moving, Invalid Corps and Volunteers, their muskets and carbines ready, upon the mile long barricade thrown up overnight out of rail ties, furniture, carts and telegraph trees. Stephen’s face was as gray as the paving stones. Vinnie suspected he had never fired a gun in his life. The police sent in the first round of shot and the screaming mob fell back. It was then that Vinnie and Stephen saw, stark against the smoke, the man’s body hanging from a lamp post. They had been told of such things, but this was their first sight of it. Not even waiting for a signal, Stephen ran forward, firing, and when the gun was empty turning its butt upon any who stood in his way. The wrath of the wounded, the soul-wounded, Vinnie thought. He knew it well from seeing comrades fall. They broke through the barricade at that point, and some of the mob retreated into the buildings, jeering, pelting down sticks of furniture, stones, whatever their fury could loose. Some climbed to the rooftops, women as well as men. Vinnie was slow with his blasted limp. Stephen and a policeman had cut down the maimed body from the post.

  “He’s a white man,” Stephen said.

  Vinnie saw the face then, the enormous head, the better by which to hang him. “Oh, Jesus,” Vinnie said. “Jesus, Jesus.” He looked up to where the women were howling curses from the tenement roof. Then he turned and vomited. When there was nothing left in him, he looked back to where Stephen and the other man were loading the body into a cart. He called Stephen’s name, and Farrell came to him.

  “That’s the artist, Jabez Reed,” Vinnie said. “Stephen, I think Peg is on the rooftop.”

  Stephen’s mouth trembled and then toughened to a hard, vicious line. He put his gun in Vinnie’s hand and strode through a shower of spit and stones to the building. Vinnie lifted his own musket to cover him. Then she came to the very edge of the roof, teetering there, her legs spread, her hands on her hips and giving a spit below herself. It was Peg all right, the bold she! Vinnie had not thought of that for years. What a terrible unity there was in all their lives. The volunteers were moving down on the barricades, breaking them up, driving the mob south before them with grape, and as they went another horde swept out of their shelters and set about rebuilding their wall to the north. Vinnie saw a soldier turn and take aim at Peg.

  “Hold your fire!” he shouted.

  When he looked up again, Peg put her hand to her face as though she would shield it from his eyes. She had seen him. She drew back then, and from the scream out over the noise of the mob, Vinnie knew she had fled into Stephen’s arms. Thank God, Vinnie thought, he did not need to witness that meeting. Waiting, waiting, he suddenly took fear for Stephen. This woman was not sane. Jabez Reed had been horribly mutilated. Vinnie was rallying help to follow him in when she and Stephen came out, arm in arm, onto the street, the confused crowd cheering them.

  “I’m taking Mrs. Stuart to her sister,”
Stephen said in a voice Vinnie had never heard.

  “That’s Vinnie,” was all Peg said, and after one glance at her he could not take another. She was covered with filth and blood. The smell of it rose from her. Her hair was matted, her eyes bloodshot, and her dress so torn that one breast shone out of the bodice.

  “Will I come?” said Vinnie.

  “If you will,” said Stephen. “Can you get us transport? None of us will be missed here.”

  Vinnie commandeered an ambulance van and drove the horse himself. Sitting stiffly, his back to the gate, Stephen held the woman gone spent in his arms.

  It was Dennis Lavery who came to the door at their pounding. He was bruised and bandaged, and his first words: “So you found her, God damn her craven soul.”

  “The same to you,” said Vinnie. “Where’s Norah?”

  A servant girl came then and helped them take Peg to a bed. To her Vinnie put the same question. “Where’s Mrs. Lavery?”

  “Her and the childer’ went to the seashore Sunday,” the girl said.

  “And where was Mr. Lavery then?”

  “Mr. Lavery returned last night,” Dennis said from the door, “if it’s any concern of yours.”

  “I promise you, Dennis, I shall try and make it mine,” Vinnie said. “I have heard you cheered too often today, you and Tweed and Seymour—and a sheriff that’s at home in a mob, but couldn’t stand by his regiment when the fighting started in Virginia.”

  “Go to hell,” said Dennis. “I was beat up myself last night. Look at me.”

  “Wear it in health,” said Vinnie, “as Mr. Finn would have said. Or don’t you remember him?”

  Stephen and Vinnie climbed to the seat of the van and Vinnie turned the horse around. For some way they drove in silence. The streets were all but deserted. Finally Stephen roused himself from his thoughts. “I want to go home,” he said. “If this is the turn things have taken, I’m fearful for Nancy.”