by Peter Quinn
“You’re a newspaperman, ain’t ya? Come down here to spy!”
“Stick him!” a voice in the crowd yelled. “Stick him in the balls!”
“I’m no newspaperman,” Dunne said.
“Oh no?” the man said. “Then what are you? A bloody informer in the pay of the master informer, the chief Republican nigger-lover, Robert Noonan?”
Dunne slipped his hand into the interior pocket of his pants and gripped the iron claw. He marked the spot in the middle of the man’s forehead where he would land it. “All I’m doing is trying to make a living, that’s the only reason I’m here, as a drummer for Alton’s Distillers, been trying to sell Manning on our stuff for weeks now.”
“A lyin’ shit is what you are. Manning ain’t never sold any-thin’ but his own horse piss.”
“Don’t stop me from trying to sell him ours, does it?”
“I seen him in Manning’s before today,” another man said. “He’s telling the truth about that.”
From down by the river came a swelling wave of shouting. A boy ran up. “The men is stormin’ the pier!” he yelled. “They’re gonna get the niggers! Come on!”
“Go try to sell that old stinkbug whatever piss it is that you’re peddling,” the ringleader said. “Couldn’t be worse than the piss he already pours.” He turned away and pushed his way through the crowd.
At the bottom of Catherine Street, a mass of men pressed close around the cast-iron façade of the pier. Those in front clambered up onto the grates that covered the entrance. They rocked them back and forth until the hinges groaned with their weight. More men climbed on and shook the metalwork.
“Get the niggers! Get the niggers!” the crowd shouted as encouragement to the scores of men hanging from the gates. Several boys scampered to the top. Just as they reached it, the hinges surrendered and ripped loose with a loud crack. Men jumped free as the gates crashed down. The mob pressed ahead. Those on the ground jumped to their feet to avoid being trampled. To the right of the pier, a band of about twelve black men bolted out from behind a metal door. They stayed as close together as they could, running in a pack across South Street and up Catherine, toward the phalanx of police.
The dockworkers in the rear of the crowd that had surged onto the pier saw what was happening. “The niggers are getting away!” a woman screamed. The dockworkers ran to block the black men’s path, their sticks and baling hooks poised above their heads. “Get the thievin’ sons of bitches, the boss’s darlin’s!” a white-haired crone wailed from the second floor of a building on the east side of Catherine. The flying wedge of blacks had gone only a dozen yards when the dockworkers cut them off. Dunne found himself between the two groups.
The black man at the front of the wedge was short and sturdy. He wore a canvas duster over his overalls that came down to his ankles. He reached into the pocket and pulled out a revolver. He pointed it at Dunne. Dunne put his hands in the air. He heard the scrape of hobnails on the paving stones behind him.
“Put it away, nigger.” It was the ringleader’s voice. “It ain’t gonna do you no good. Your days of takin’ the bread outta the mouths of workingmen is over.”
“Get out of the way, Paddy bastard,” the black man said. “I’m givin’ you fair warning.”
The scuff of heavy boots drew closer. The black man fired twice. Dunne threw himself against the wall. The ringleader and another man lay on the ground, writhing and screaming. Suddenly, the police charged down Catherine, flailing with their sticks. The front row of the mob offered resistance, tossing stones and bottles, hitting back with their baling hooks, but soon they broke and scattered into alleyways and buildings.
The Metropolitans formed a cordon around the blacks and the two wounded men, a ring that also caught Dunne and several dockworkers. A sergeant of police disarmed the black man. He had the wounded men carried away.
The old woman leaned out the window across the street. She pointed at the sergeant. “May God and His Holy Mother damn you to hell, Frankie O’Donnell! May They turn Their backs on you at the hour of your death! May They close Their ears to your pleas for water as the flames of hell devour your flesh!”
Sergeant O’Donnell walked about as if he didn’t hear her. Finally, when she didn’t stop, he told two policemen, “Go over there and get that witch out of that window.” They ran toward her building.
“You bloody whore, O’Donnell! Selling your own into slavery, defending niggers while Irish women and children go without bread, you and the likes of you, the Noonans of this world! You’re not worth my spit!” She let go a shower of it on the two policemen who were forcing open the downstairs door.
She shook her fist. “God’s curse on ye all!” The two policemen suddenly appeared behind her and pulled her away from the window.
O’Donnell ordered the police to take the blacks back to the Bowery. Two of the dockworkers refused to give their names, so he had them handcuffed and sent along with the blacks. He looked Dunne up and down. He had a scowl on his face.
“Do I know you?” he said.
“Not likely,” Dunne said. “I’m a Brooklyn man.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Took the ferry over last night to go to a minstrel show, and you know how things are, Sergeant, one thing led to another and I ended up staying the night. Just coming to the ferry when I got caught in these proceedings.”
O’Donnell squinted as he studied Dunne’s face. “We ever met?”
“Not that I remember.”
Dunne had been arrested only twice. First time, he was thirteen. Had flown the Orphan Asylum the year before. Was pinched for trying to lift some rat-nose’s watch while standing next to him on the Broadway coach. Just a silly kid. He would have been sent back to the Asylum and been out again in a month if the Children’s Aid Society hadn’t gotten custody and shipped him west. Next time was on the day after the great battle in Paradise Square, the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies in alliance against the Bowery Boys, the Paddies versus the True Americans for control of the East Side, the last stand of the rat-noses before the Irish sent them packing and claimed dominion. July 1857. A great day it was until the militia arrived, sealed off the streets, and the Metropolitans went door-to-door, dragging out suspects. He couldn’t remember the face of the policeman who had found him in Tom Cahill’s cellar, pulled him by his hair up the stairs. Perhaps O’Donnell had been the man.
“What’s your line of business?” O’Donnell said.
“I sell tombstones at the Green-Wood Cemetery. Maybe you’ve family there, maybe that’s where we’ve met.”
“None of mine is buried in Brooklyn, thank you.”
On the northwest corner of South and Catherine streets, a small mob had formed again. They screamed curses at the contingent of police that had stayed with O’Donnell. One of them threw a rock that fell far short and clattered across the paving stones. The policemen looked at one another uneasily. They were visibly anxious to rejoin the main body of men back on the Bowery.
O’Donnell said, “Maybe the best thing is for you to come along with us.”
“O Jesus, Sergeant,” Dunne said. “I’ll be in trouble enough for missin’ work, never mind if I’m arrested for nothin’ more than the misfortune of walkin’ in on a riot.”
Another rock hit the pavement. It struck closer than the one before. A policeman called O’Donnell’s attention to the crowd that was gathering on the rooftops of the buildings across the street.
“Goddamn it,” O’Donnell shouted, “I ordered them roofs cleared and occupied.” O’Donnell turned to Dunne. “Get out of my sight,” he said. “If I see you again, I’ll have you clubbed senseless. No questions, no conversations, just a good crack across the head.” He marched the men toward the Bowery.
Dunne walked straight toward the Catherine Street ferry-house. He stopped at the corner of South Street. Some boys had taken a bed sheet, laid it over the puddles of blood left by the men who had been shot, and then nailed it to a lon
g stick. They scrambled up and down the street, waving it like a flag. From the rooftops that the police had failed to secure, a choir of women shouted encouragement. The boys followed O’Donnell’s men up the street, running as close as they could without being grabbed. One of them ran ahead and fluttered the bloody sheet in front of O’Donnell’s face. “Come on, you peelers!” he yelled. “Come on and show us how brave you are! Nigger-loving sons of bitches! Murderers of your own people!” O’Donnell lunged at the boy, who darted out of his grasp.
O’Donnell halted his men outside Brooks Brothers. A platoon of police came down from the Bowery to join him. O’Donnell paced back and forth in front of them. He never took his eyes off the crowd.
On South Street, from the direction of the Governors Island ferry, came another flock of street urchins. They ran at breakneck speed. One of them collided with Dunne and went sprawling. He clambered to his feet. The soldiers is comin’!” he yelled. “A whole pack of ’em!” He ran off, shouting his news.
Dunne saw them in the distance, a column of blue coats, bayonets fixed, campaign caps slouched forward over their eyes. The crowds that had filled South Street instantly parted to let them through, and the soldiers moved with an easy gait, muskets bobbing on their shoulders, seemingly oblivious to the uproar around them. Even at a distance it was obvious to Dunne that these weren’t militia, skittish civilians whose uniforms couldn’t masquerade their fear. These were real soldiers, part of the Governors Island garrison, many of them wounded veterans of two years of war. Dunne could see that once the column reached the intersection of Catherine and South, the mob would be caught in a vise, the police to the north, the soldiers to the west, a rout in the making. He hurried across the street toward the ferry-house. Three short blasts of a steam whistle warned him the ferry was about to depart. He ran through the ferry-house, his steps echoing through the emptiness of the cavernous interior. The boat was pulling out, already a few feet from the docking ramp, and Dunne took the distance at a leap. He caught on to the gate at the stern of the boat, and a deckhand grabbed hold of him and helped him aboard.
“Can’t blame ya a bit for riskin’ your neck to get out of there,” the deckhand said. “A daft enough city when the sun is shining and the world is spinning in proper order, never mind when they’re wagin’ war in the streets.” He took Dunne’s fare. “I’ve never figured it out: Is it the people make the place crazy, or is it the place makes the people crazy? A little of both, I suppose.”
A heavy rain began to fall. Dunne hurried toward the cabin. The deckhand followed him inside. “Me, I thank God I was born and reared in Brooklyn,” the deckhand said. “Only a river between us, but might as well be an ocean. Ain’t two more different races on the face of this earth than Brooklyn people and Yorkers. We know how to behave, that’s the gist of it, not regardin’ lyin’, cheatin’, and stealin’ as the normal way. Tell ya this, as long as we got this river between us, the good people of Brooklyn has some protection, but it ever dried up, we’d be done for. The Yorkers would have the place overrun by noon of the first day.”
Dunne took a seat by the window. Only a handful of other passengers. He picked up a newspaper and pretended to read. The ferry went ahead slowly, its whistle shrilling a warning to the river traffic to steer clear and respect its right-of-way. Outside, all that was visible in the gray-black mist were the gliding shadows of other boats. It was a long time since Dunne had been on the East River, not since he had gone to see Dandy Dan on Blackwells Island. He put down the paper and watched the beads of rain race down the glass, one into another, ceaselessly. Somewhere north, beyond Blackwells Island, where the East River meets the Harlem, was Randalls Island, his boyhood home, in the sense that it was where he had been for the longest single stretch. Fog and rain mostly, at least that’s the memory of it. Must have been sunny, hot days aplenty over those four years, but it’s not them that stick in the mind. The cold and wet is what’s there. Cold gruel to eat. Cold tea to drink. The smell of damp sheets and pillows, musty, moldy, the black lettering on the covering the first thing you saw every morning: THE NEW-YORK ORPHAN ASYLUM.
The last year there, on a frosty, windy afternoon, the warders brought everyone down to the south end of the island, from the smallest kids who could barely walk to the biggest. They gave out drums and flags. Only thing to ward against the cold was the thin gray smock everybody got, boys and girls alike, no warmth in them clothes of any kind. Walked back and forth as the sun got hid by clouds and the wind off the river grew fierce, the little ones crying and whining, the warders telling them to keep moving, till finally the steamer appeared, a gleaming white boat trailing fat, glorious plumes of creamy smoke across the darkening sky. Pulled so close to shore you could see the plush red cabin and the waiters carrying trays of drinks and food. The warders said that Miss Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” wished to pay a visit to the orphan children that was the partial beneficiaries of the proceeds from her last concert at Castle Garden. Probably the only population in the city of New York, besides them in the lunatic asylum, didn’t have a clue who Jenny Lind was, and some of the little ones expected she’d be a real nightingale, half woman, half bird, fluttering in the sky. No such creature appeared. The boat idled off shore. Been late leaving the city and the captain wanted to be through the Hell Gate before dark, so the only glimpse of Miss Lind came when she appeared briefly on deck, a shawl around her shoulders, and at her side a bulging figure who the warders said was the great impresario and bunko hisself, Mr. P. T. Barnum.
Hadn’t been so cold, some of the kids would have been grievously disappointed to discover that the Swedish Nightingale wasn’t covered with feathers, but they was too frozen to notice, jumping up and down, banging their drums, doing everything possible to fight off the cold. Boat only stayed a few minutes more, long enough for the newspapermen to scribble a fancy description of the city’s gratitude for Miss Lind’s generosity as demonstrated by the singing, dancing inmates of the New-York Orphan Asylum. Then it sailed off, leaving behind nothing but its tail of luxurious smoke, and everyone ran as fast as they could to the orphanage, the only time we was ever eager to get back behind its doors.
Next evening, two of the kids put a log in the water and tried to sail to the Manhattan shore. Couldn’t have lasted long in water that cold, with the tides so strong. Was a month before the river gave them up, their bodies found floating in Deadman’s Bend, across from Corlears Hook.
The ferry docked in Brooklyn with a loud thud. Dunne got off. He walked a block to the Swordsman Hotel. The streets were busy but seemed far removed from the battle scene across the river. The Swordsman was a faded wooden building that catered to the whores who worked the ferry trade. “No SAILORS,” read the sign on the door. Dunne paid the charge for a room. The clerk winked as he handed him the key. “Should any visitors arrive, I’ll send her right up to your room, sir.”
“Do that,” Dunne said.
The room was on the third floor. It held only a bed and a dresser. Dunne took off his shoes. He put his claw, file, and the loot from Brooks Brothers beneath the mattress. The pillow had a large stain on it the color of tobacco. Dunne took a handkerchief from his pocket and covered it. He put his head down. As disapproving as Dandy Dan would have been of his conduct so far this day, of this Dunne knew Dan would approve. Rest, he was fond of saying, is the single most important thing a man in our line of work can get.
True enough, especially when scheduled to meet with Waldo Capshaw, a grudging, niggling croak of a man, the way all fences are, a Protestant True American to boot, the sharpest of that sharp race. An invitation to his house means a moneymaking scheme is afoot. Got to have your wits about you if you’re not to be the goat.
Through the fragile walls of the hotel came the noise of huffing and grunting from next door, the mounting creak of bedsprings rising and falling, faster and faster, a momentary moan, then silence.
Well, Dunne thought, there’s one thing that’s the same on both sides of
the river. In an instant he was asleep.
II
THE RAIN SCATTERED the small crowd in City Hall Park. The band of musician soldiers wrapped their bugles and drums in their canvas coverings. Men without umbrellas ran for the portico of the Hall of Records across Chambers Street, willing to risk pigeon droppings over rain. Stephen Collins Foster, umbrellaless, didn’t run. He walked at his regular pace toward the Astor House.
As he went past the sagging, weather-beaten barracks that had been erected as a temporary measure two years before and had become a dreary and permanent part of the park, the music filled his head, the instruments still outside their canvas, the sounds forming themselves into notes and half notes, scales and bars, black marks on white paper, a three-cent royalty per sheet, thirty thousand in the first printing, a song for the nation’s warriors, the printing presses never stopping, sixty thousand in the second printing, the presses gwine to run all night, gwine to run all day, an’ his rider’s drunk in de old hayloft, Oh! Doo-dah, day!
He stuck his hands into his pockets, the fingers numb and red. The traffic was heavy on Broadway, and he stood on the curb, the rain playing its own music in the puddle at his feet. Dat, dat, dat, doo-dah, doo-dah. A wagon went through the puddle, the monotoned rush of its wheels spraying red-brown water over his feet and pants. There was a break in the traffic. He ran across the street in front of a white omnibus with SOUTH FERRY in red letters on its sides. The driver pulled on the reins when he saw Foster, dragging the horses to a halt, and yelled an inaudible obscenity, but Foster was already on the pavement, running up the worn marble stairs into the rotunda of the Astor House. A throng of politicians, newsmen, brokers, and Army officers stood in front of the counters that encircled it. Behind the counters, men in white jackets carved steaming roasts and hams, sliced pies, shucked oysters and clams, laid portions onto white plates and pushed them across to the omnivorous crowd.