It was late autumn, the trees stark and bare, when she sat him at the table one windy night and poured a glass for herself. “I am afraid we have to move.”
“Move?” James repeated. This was their home. It had never occurred to him that they might leave it.
“We’ve used up what little we had saved, and I can’t make the rent on my own.”
“Move where?” James asked.
“Somewhere cheaper. Don’t worry. We’ll find a place easy enough. But it probably won’t be as nice.” She looked around them and her eyes misted.
“I don’t want to.”
“Now, now.”
“I want to stay here.”
“Stop,” she said. “Don’t make it harder than it has to be. I’ve done the best I can.”
“It’s not right.” James felt his own eyes watering.
“No, it’s not,” she agreed. “You’ll find as you grow older that there’s a lot that’s not right with this world. Your father and I were able to protect you from what’s out there, but now he’s gone and there’s only so much I can do alone.”
“You work so hard.”
She smiled wearily. “I do it for us, son. To earn money so we can survive.”
“Can I earn money, too?”
“If it comes to that. But I’d rather you were at my side for now. It’s more bearable for me with you around.” She clasped his hand. “You are my reason for living.”
The next day they started looking for a new place. James didn’t like any of them. The buildings were too crowded and the rooms were cold and cheerless, and most were in need of repair. Some had no glass in the windows. Others were filthy.
The third day they were met by a portly man who wore an ill-fitting suit and a bowler. He kept smiling at James’s mother in a way that James didn’t like. His name was McGill, and he showed them two rooms at the back. Only one had a window that looked out on the grimy wall of another building. There was a small stove and nothing else.
“You’ll like it here, ma’am,” McGill said. “The nights are quiet, and the people are friendly.”
“It needs a good cleaning,” his mother said.
“It will make a fine home for you and the wee lad. And if there’s ever anything you need, you have only to ask.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes or no? If you don’t want to, there are others who will.”
To James’s dismay his mother said yes.
She used some of their precious money to hire two men to help move. It took a whole day. The men didn’t take the dining room table or his mother’s chest of drawers. He was surprised to learn she had sold them.
“It all wouldn’t fit,” she explained.
Their first night in their new home proved McGill a liar. It wasn’t quiet at all. People yelled and cursed and stomped about. Doors were always slamming and children were always crying.
James lay in his bed with his back to the bedlam and hated it. He had an awful feeling. A sense that, as bad as things were, they could get worse. He felt cold all over and pulled his blankets tighter. “Please, God, no,” he said, as somewhere in the building a baby bawled.
3
Lost Souls, the street was called. James went out the next morning and stood on the stoop. His mother was ironing. He debated whether to go for a walk around the new neighborhood.
The street was narrow, the flow of people continuous; men in shabby suits, ladies in plain dresses, urchins in need of a washing. Few laughed or smiled and fewer still looked the least bit happy. It made James strangely uneasy. He started to turn to go back in and stopped.
Coming down Lost Souls in a wedge were a dozen or more Blue Shirts. Anyone in their path got quickly out of the way. They hardly noticed, or if they did, they didn’t let on. They were somehow apart and different from everyone else.
James felt a tingle of excitement watching them. In the lead was the one with the scar he had seen before. The Blue Shirts went past the stoop, and the one with the scar smiled.
James smiled back. He almost ran after them. He wanted to ask the scarred one what it was like being a Blue Shirt.
The door opened, and his mother’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“Here you are! What are you doing outside by yourself?” She didn’t let him answer. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times, you’re not to step foot out of our apartment without me. Is that understood?”
“Ahhh, Mama.”
She pulled him inside and closed the door. “You’ll heed me, James Marion. The Five Points is no place for a child to wander about alone. I’ve lost your father, and I’ll not lose you.”
That night she lit a candle and put it on the table, and they ate stew and bread with butter and for dessert there was apple pie. They were celebrating, his mother said, their new home.
As she was tucking him in, James asked a question that had been bothering him. He didn’t want to bring it up, but he had to know. “Will I go to a new school now?” He had been attending St. John’s.
His mother tenderly brushed his cheek. “I’ll check into it. To be honest, I’ve been too busy with the move to think about much else. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” James said. He didn’t really want to go. He’d rather stay home with her. To his relief, she didn’t mention it the next day or the day after and in a week he figured she had forgotten about it.
For a while they were busy with the laundry. A few weeks passed, and people brought less for her to do. One evening his mother was in her rocking chair and he was playing with his tin soldiers when she remarked out of the blue, “It’s getting harder.”
James looked up from where he lay on the floor. “What is?”
“To make ends meet. My old customers don’t care to come this far. Some stuck with me for a while out of courtesy, I expect.”
“Can’t you find new people with dirty clothes?”
His mother smiled. “I’ll certainly try. I’ll post notices around. Maybe that will bring them. If not—” She stopped, and frowned.
“If not what?”
“I’ll have to find something else. We can’t miss on the rent. Mr. McGill says he’ll overlook it if we’re a little late, but I’d rather not, anyway.”
“Do you like him, Mama?”
“Mr. McGill? Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” James said. “He looks at you strange. If Papa were alive I don’t think he would like him.”
“Now, now,” she said.
More days passed. His mother put up notices, but only a few people brought laundry. She took to having a glass of wine with their supper. She had always enjoyed wine, he remembered, and now she seemed to enjoy it a lot more. She became quieter than she ever had been.
James wondered why she made only soup for supper. Watery soup, with a few vegetables and sometimes no meat. For breakfast they had oatmeal but they only rarely had milk, so he had to have it with water and no sugar.
One evening there was a knock at the door. James saw his mother give a start. She squared her shoulders and smiled and opened it, and it was Mr. McGill, his bowler in hand.
“How do you do, missus? Sorry to bother you but it’s been a week, and the rent is overdue.”
“I know,” his mother said, and there was an edge to her voice that James had never heard, a hint of something he could not quite grasp. “And I’m sorry.”
“Do you have it?” McGill asked.
“No, I do not, but I should in a few days. I have more laundry coming.”
“Mrs. Doyle,” McGill said.
“I’ll have it. I promise.”
“It’s not that. As you know, I only manage the building. The owner doesn’t like it when the rent is this late. He might demand I throw you out—”
His mother clutched McGill’s arm. “Please. No. Anything but that.”
McGill looked at her hand and then at her and his thick lips curled in a smile that somehow wasn’t a smile. “Anything, missus?
”
“Oh, God,” his mother said. She took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder at James. “I need to talk in private with Mr. McGill. Why don’t you run out and sit on the stoop? We’ll only be a while.”
James didn’t want to. Something was going on here he didn’t understand. But he always did as she asked, so he slipped past and ran down the hall.
Night was falling. All across the Five Points, lights glowed in windows and smoke curled from chimneys. James sat on the bottom step with his hand wrapped around his legs and missed his father more than ever. He tried not to think of his mother and the man with the big belly. He almost wanted to cry, with no idea why. He was so sad that he didn’t realize someone had come up to him until a shoe filled his vision. He craned his head back in surprise. “You.”
The tall boy with the scar was alone. He leaned against the rail and pushed his high hat back on his head. “Kid,” he said.
“You’re Coil,” James said. “I remember the other boy saying.”
“And you would be?”
James told him.
“You have a sharp look about you,” Coil said. “I like that. The sharp ones always make the best.”
“The best what?”
“Blue Shirts.”
“I’m not a Blue Shirt,” James said.
Coil sank beside him and leaned back with his elbows on a higher step. “Would you like to be?”
“Me?”
Coil gestured at the dark grimy buildings and the squares of light. “This is the Five Points, boy. It’s dog-eat-dog. You can’t make it on your own. To survive you need to join a gang and it might as well be us as any of the others. You’ll have friends. You’ll have money. I’d speak for you if you wanted.”
“Speak for me?” James said, unsure what that meant.
“Put you up to join. We’re always on the lookout for new blood and I’ve had my eye on you.”
“You have?”
Coil stood. “Think about it. You can find us at the barbershop on Tenth. My uncle owns it and—” Coil stopped.
The front door had opened. Out stepped McGill, buttoning his rumpled jacket. He drew up short and blurted, “Coileanin.”
“Fat man,” Coil said.
“Don’t call me that.”
Coil slid a hand behind him. His eyes glittered. “You telling a Blue Shirt what to do?”
McGill shook his head, his fleshy cheeks jiggling. “No. Never. I don’t like being called fat, is all.”
Coil uttered a bark of contempt. “Do I look like I give a damn what you like, fat man? Maybe I should give a holler. I bet my friends and me can whittle some of that fat off you.”
McGill didn’t say anything. He slipped past James and scuttled away down the street as if he had to get somewhere in a great hurry.
“Tub of lard,” Coil said under his breath.
“He was afraid of you,” James said in awe.
“He was afraid of this,” Coil said, and touched his shirt. “When you’re a Blue Shirt, you get respect. No one gives us guff, not unless they want to bleed. It’s us against them and they damn well know it.”
“Them?” James said.
“The rest of the world.” Coil hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “I’ve got to go. Think about my offer.”
“I will,” James said.
4
His mother took to drinking more and more. She went all over looking for work to do in addition to her laundry, but there wasn’t a lot to be had. It didn’t help that there were few jobs for women. She would set out early and not get home until late and have nothing to show for her efforts other than sore feet and fatigue. Then she would feed him sparse fare and sit in her rocking chair with a bottle on the small table next to her and her glass always full.
She had stopped drinking wine and switched to whiskey. James read it on the label. He remembered his father drank whiskey now and then and once told him he shouldn’t touch the stuff until he was full grown.
It was several weeks after the incident with McGill that she asked him to come over to the rocker. He sat cross-legged in front of her. He had never seen her so worn. Her cheeks were not as full as they had been and her eyes had dark rings under them. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands and said, “Mama?”
She sipped and looked down at him. “You should stop calling me that.”
“Mama?”
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re old enough now, you should call me Mother or even Ma. Mama sounds babyish.”
“But you’ve always liked me to call you that.”
“Not anymore. It reminds me too much of the life we used to have.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s not good to think of those days. All it does is bring tears.” She downed more whiskey. “We have to have a serious talk.”
“What about?”
“You.”
James tried to think of anything he might have done wrong. He’d been doing his chores as he should. It kept her in a better mood when she didn’t have to ask him again and again to clean or sweep or wash dishes. “What did I do?”
“Nothing. And that’s the problem.”
“Problem?” James was confused.
She gazed about the room, her face so very sad. “The rent is due in a few days. I have enough this time, thank God. But I might not the next time. Not if I have to do it all alone.”
“Work, you mean?”
“Exactly.” She nodded and smiled. “You always were a smart one. The truth is, son, this world isn’t fair. It’s easier for a man than for a woman. For men there are all kinds of jobs. For women there are only a few. There’s being a laundress, or a seamstress, or washing dishes, and others, but none pays well. Not enough for a woman by herself to get by.”
“What can I do?” James was eager to help. He would do anything to have her happy again.
“You’re almost twelve. I see a lot of boys your age with jobs.”
“You want me to get one?”
She drained her glass and promptly refilled it and sat back with her eyes pits of misery. “You do know I’ve tried, don’t you? To protect you from the rest of the world? To keep you safe and make things easier for you?”
“I know you love me,” James said.
His mother looked away and her throat bobbed. She coughed and drank and sighed. “I hate this. I hate having to ask you to find a job. But unless we have more money coming in, I can’t keep up the rent. And McGill made it plain that if we miss the rent a second time we’ll be out on the street.”
James flushed with anger. “He’ll throw us out?”
“He would have to. It’s his job. He works for another man who owns this building and the other man doesn’t care if I’m a widow barely scraping by. All the other man cares about is his money.”
“That’s not right,” James said.
“No, it’s not, but it’s how the world is, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” She paused. “Will you do it? Will you help me and try to find work?”
“Sure, Mama—” James said, and caught himself. “Sure, Mother. Whatever you want.”
She bent and put her hand on his head and affectionately tousled his mop of hair. “You’ve always been a dutiful son. I’ll say that for you. I hear other mothers say how much trouble their boys give them, and I give thanks to the Almighty for having a fine son like you.”
The very next day James eagerly set out to find employment. He went to a score of merchants and asked if they needed someone to sweep and clean. No one did. He stopped at a stable and asked if they needed someone to clean up after the horses. They didn’t. Whenever he saw a “help wanted” sign in a window, he went in and inquired, and each and every time they told him he was too young.
It’d go so, by the middle of the afternoon he was so discouraged he sat on a curb and glumly watched the passersby and wondered how in the world he could help his mother when everything was against him. And then splashes of blue appeared
amid the browns and grays and other drab colors, and he sat up. It was half a dozen Blue Shirts. He hadn’t seen any of them before. They moved along the street as if they owned it, and everyone gave them a wide berth, even grown men.
James remembered, suddenly. He got to his feet and went in search of the barbershop. A balding middle-aged man was clipping hair for a nicely dressed gentleman who had his head back and his eyes closed. James stood in the doorway waiting for the barber to notice him and finally coughed to get the barber’s attention.
“What is it, boy?” the man said as he snipped. “Do you want a haircut?”
“I’m looking for Coil. Are you his uncle?”
The man stopped and turned. He pointed at a narrow hall at the rear. “Go out the back.”
That was all he said. James thanked him and hastened through. The latch grated and the door opened into a blaze of sunlight and a small bare lot with a high fence on all sides.
There were Blue Shirts everywhere. Lounging, sitting, leaning against the fence, talking and smiling and laughing. Some were smoking, others were throwing knives and sticking them in the fence. One was hammering long nails into a short club. They all glanced over, and quiet fell.
James wanted to wither into his shoes. Mustering his courage, he said, “I’m looking for Coil if you please.”
Some of the Blue Shirts snickered and smirked and from among them came Orlan, smirking the widest of them all. “If you please?” he mimicked, and put his hands on his hips. “Ain’t he polite?”
“I’m looking for Coil,” James repeated.
“You found me,” Orlan said, “and I don’t like you.”
“I don’t want trouble.”
Orlan laughed and raised his voice. “Did you hear that? The brat doesn’t want trouble. Yet trouble is what he’s in for.”
“I’m not a brat,” James said. He was scared, but he was also mad. The other outweighed him by a hundred pounds, but he didn’t care. “You take that back.”
“How about I beat you black-and-blue?” Orlan said, and raised his fists.
Ride to Valor Page 2