by Peter Quinn
“He said it was a long way, but I don’t think he knew the distance.”
“Well, I got a proposition for you. Been looking to hire a hand. Can’t pay much, but I can give ya a place to sleep and your meals. Maybe ya can save up something to make up for what them Paddies stole.”
Jack accepted the offer. The farmer, who lived alone, worked him hard, but he had a place to sleep in the barn, and there were milk and eggs to eat, peaches and apples, bread and cornmeal and chicken. He ate whatever he was given, gobbled it down, lying back afterward to enjoy the sensation of a full stomach.
One day, after the midday meal, Jack was on the barn roof hammering on new shingles when he saw two men coming up the road. He knew right away who they were. He flattened himself against the roof. He heard the farmer come out the front door of his house. He peeked over to watch. The farmer was carrying a musket, and his dog raced ahead and ran circles around the men, who stood there, their hats in their hands, their eyes on the dog. They looked older and smaller than Jack remembered. They were caked with dust, and their shirts were stained with dark pools of sweat. They were shoeless.
“Sir,” said the one who had held the knife to his throat, “could you spare us water?” Jack heard the obsequiousness in the voice, the tentativeness of someone speaking in a language not his own, the man’s eyes traveling from the dog to the farmer to the ground, his hand worrying the brim of his relic of a hat.
The farmer cradled the musket in his arms. “Sorry, boys,” he said, “ain’t got nothing I can spare.” He shooed them with his hand, as if they were flies. “This is private property, so you best be getting along.”
They walked back the way they had come. The farmer trailed behind them. He stood by the gate until they disappeared around a turn. He came back into the yard and called Jack down from the roof.
“Jack,” he said, “there are Paddies in the neighborhood, so you have to keep an eye out and make sure none of them tries to sneak around and steal what he can.”
By September, Jack felt rested and strong. He told the farmer he thought it was time he resumed his journey to Troy, and he asked for his pay. The farmer gave him two dollars for two months’ work. Jack felt he was being underpaid to the point of being cheated, but he was eager to be on his way and said nothing.
“I got good news for you, Jack,” the farmer said the next morning as the boy prepared to leave. “A cousin of mine is hauling freight down near Boston. He says he can take you as far as Manchester, and that will leave you in shooting distance of Troy. Says he’ll do it as a favor to me.”
The cousin came by in his wagon in the early afternoon. He introduced himself as O Ahaziah Fry. Jack climbed aboard. They traveled a pitted, rutted road and were jolted up and down. Jack wasn’t sure he had heard the name correctly. The cousin repeated it. “O Ahaziah Fry. Second Kings, chapter nine, verse twenty-three,” he said. “‘And Joram turned his hands and fled, and said, “There is treachery in the land, O Ahaziah.”’”
The roads were so bad that Jack thought the wagon might break apart. O Ahaziah said nothing more until they reached a smooth stretch.
“This will cost you a dollar.”
“Your cousin said it was free. Said you were doing it as a favor to him.”
“My cousin don’t speak for me, nor me for him. And that dollar is payable now.” Jack handed it over.
“I got apples and cheese in the sack behind you,” O Ahaziah said. “Since you’re a paying fare, you got a right to help yourself.”
O Ahaziah said little over the next few days. They lived on apples and cheese, and slept under the wagon, O Ahaziah reading his Bible by the light of a lantern. When they reached Manchester, O Ahaziah said, “Might be better if you just stay aboard for Boston, that is, if you ain’t going to keep any of your relatives waiting in Troy. I figure they probably gave up on you by now.”
Jack hesitated. He had no idea how he would reach Troy. He had only a dollar in his pocket.
“Plenty of work for an enterprising boy in Boston,” O Ahaziah said.
Jack knew nothing of Troy except that it was the home of the first American he had ever met, a city on a river, walls, towers, great pennants atop them.
“Troy is still a distance,” O Ahaziah said.
Jack told O Ahaziah he would travel with him to Boston. When they had passed through Manchester, O Ahaziah said, “I got to charge you an additional fare since you only paid for as far as Manchester. It will be another dollar.” Jack handed over his second dollar.
They settled back to the rhythm of their journey, eating apples and cheese, sleeping under the wagon. Jack sat next to a silent O Ahaziah through the day. The roads were good. He took catnaps and dreamed of Troy. His mother and father and brother and sisters were on the walls, their heads surrounded by light. An enormous wooden horse was being brought through the gates. His granduncle, Malachi, was weeping and pumping the bellows underneath his arm, but no one paid attention.
“This is as far as I go,” O Ahaziah said. He poked Jack in the ribs to wake him up. They were atop a small hill, and in the distance was a vast compass of roofs and steeples, and a great gold dome blazed with sunlight in its midst. Jack thought he was still dreaming. O Ahaziah said, “I don’t go no closer than this.” The two of them sat and stared at the city. It was grander, bigger, more beautiful, than Jack’s vision of Troy.
O Ahaziah closed his eyes and said, “‘And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree; and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen, and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger.’” He opened his eyes. “Second Kings, chapter seventeen, verses nine through eleven.”
Jack jumped down. He felt a surge of apprehension as he left the familiar surroundings of the wagon. The urgency of finding his next meal hit him.
O Ahaziah reached behind himself and took an apple and a piece of cheese from his sack. He handed them to Jack. “Be careful,” he said. “Was Cain built the first city, and it’s his sons and daughters who inhabit it.” He snapped the reins and moved off to the east.
Jack sat on a tree stump and watched the clouds race over the city toward the sea. As the sun passed in and out, the dome went dull with shadows and then blazed again with light. It seemed to match his mood, dark one minute, bright the next, a melange of hope and fear. He walked down the hill toward Boston, and after a short distance he came to a cluster of houses and stores, a neat, prim-looking village on the outskirts of the city. He walked into one store, and the clerk came from behind the counter. He had been cutting meat and wiped the bloody knife on his apron. He blocked Jack from coming in any farther. He held the knife at his side.
“What you looking for?” the clerk said.
“I was wondering about the possibility of finding work.”
“Keep heading to Boston, there’s work there for them who are willing.”
The clerk stood where he was. Jack walked out of the store. Three doors down, there was a small building with a printing press and a board outside filled with notices. Most were broadsides for meetings and political rallies. Jack stopped to read them.
A voice behind him said, “Ain’t nothing there of interest to Paddy shits like yourself.”
Jack turned to look around. There were three boys about his own age standing there. They all held sticks. Jack said, “I’m looking for work, that’s all.”
“Ain’t that wonderful,” one of the boys said to his companions. “A Paddy looking for what he can earn instead of steal.” The boy whipped his stick around and smacked Jack on the right calf. “Get moving, Paddy, this is American territory, off limits to pigs.”
Jack held up his hands. “I’m just coming from Canada, that’s where I’m from.”
One of the others lashed out
with his stick and sent a sharp pain up Jack’s left leg. “And I’m the Emperor of China,” the boy said. Jack hopped around, the hot pain shooting up and down his legs.
“Canada, is it?” the first boy said. He hit Jack across the thighs. Jack put his hands down and stepped closer to the boy, who was just then raising his stick. Jack drove his fist into the bridge of the boy’s nose, sending him sprawling. The two other boys came at Jack with their sticks, beating him relentlessly until he stopped trying to find an opportunity to hit back and simply tried to protect his face. The two boys threw away their sticks and pinned Jack’s arms, and the boy he had struck, his nose dripping blood, pummeled Jack’s face with his fists.
Blood ran into Jack’s eyes and blinded him. He felt he was about to pass out when the blows abruptly stopped. A man had pulled his cart over, jumped down, grabbed the boy who was punching Jack, and threw him aside. The man kicked at the other boys, swatting one across the back of his head. They ran away. The man picked Jack out of the dusty street, took a rag out of his back pocket, and handed it to him. “Wipe your face,” he said.
Jack looked at the blood on the rag, and tasted the blood in his throat. His ears were ringing, and his face ached with pain. He started to cry.
“Don’t give them the satisfaction of your tears,” the man said. He led Jack over to the cart, helped him up, and drove off at a rapid pace.
“My God boy,” the driver said, “you should know better than to stray into a Yankee place the likes of that.”
“Didn’t do a thing but ask for work,” Jack said.
“Look at you, boy, in them ragamuffin’s clothes, somebody’s discarded shirt and them pants two sizes too small for you, right away they knew you were a Paddy, before they even caught a look at your face or heard you speak. You’re lucky one of your own was passin’ by when it happened, or you might not have gotten off as lightly as you have.” Jack felt a lump in his pocket. He reached in and found the apple and the piece of cheese O Ahaziah had given him. The cheese was broken and crumbled. He took the apple and hurled it into the roadside, and threw the cheese after it.
“Where are you from?” the driver said.
“Canada,” Jack said.
“Before Grosse Isle, boy, what part of Ireland are you from?”
Jack told the whole story, from the time he had left Ireland until that moment. He concentrated on getting it all straight, and the effort took his mind off the pain he felt in his legs and face.
“These Yankees are the sharpest people on the face of the earth,” the driver said when Jack had finished.
“What do you mean?”
“O Ahaziah and his cousin. They played a game with you. Pretendin’ they didn’t know you were Irish and havin’ you work for nothin’ but two dollars and then makin’ sure they got the two dollars back. That’s how the Yankees play. It’s their way with everyone, even with each other, but when it comes to we Irish, they see us as some sort of punishment for their sins and cheatin’ us as an atonement. The whole city and state is run by them, and they’ll ship the lot of us back to Ireland if they have the chance, but not before they’ve made sure they’ve wrung us dry.”
They drove through streets that grew narrower and more crowded. They came to a squalid area of sagging wooden houses that looked ready to sink into the muck that surrounded them. “You’ll be safe here,” the driver said. “It’s our own kind.” Across from where they came to a halt was a one-story tavern, a peeling, weatherworn place with a crowd standing around outside, idle men in patched and soiled clothing. On each side of this building was a taller, even more disreputable-looking building with a pitched roof. Strung between these two was a clothesline laden with the same kind of tattered garments that had hung from the lanyards of the ships at Grosse Isle, the semaphores of the Irish.
Jack was three months in Boston when he walked across the alleyway to see the minstrel show that had come to town. As it, had for Saul, suddenly there shone around him a light as if from heaven. When Jack had finished his performance in the hotel hallway, Jack Diamond had taken him to dinner and got him a room. Jack told Diamond his life story, and Diamond told him his, two immigrant sagas, the same yearnings and hunger. Jack got drunk for the first time in his life.
Heel, toe, round you go, heel, toe, come on, move those feet, watch me, follow what I do. They practiced together for hours, Diamond never seeming to show the effects of the alcohol he continually consumed. He treated Jack like a son. Good-time Jack Diamond. The great heelologist, his red hair under a black wig, Irish skin and Irish face all covered in soot, Paddy parodying a black man and receiving his first welcome in America, thunderous applause, two curtain calls a show.
“It’s a funny thing,” Diamond used to say after a couple of drinks, “but I didn’t stop being a Paddy until I became a nigger. Once I put the burnt cork on my face, I was all right with everybody.”
All right with everybody.
They pay to see us sing and dance. Wehman’s definition of the Philosophers’ Stone: Willingness to pay.
Mulcahey led the parade of self-melanized performers around the stage, Listen, you darkies, no more sitting around telling stale jokes. This was the third dance he had called for in a row, the pace never slowing, sweat dripping down their faces, their eyes wide with astonishment at this breach of the sacred canon of minstrel ritual, a spontaneous interjection of wheel about and jump about that snapped the audience out of its fidgeting inattention.
The minstrels fell into their seats.
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
Mulcahey’s foot worked the floorboard castanet. The signal for another dance. The minstrels groaned, but in an instant they were all up and moving. Biglips stopped trying to keep up. He swayed slightly in a vague attempt at movement but was panting for breath, one hand on his chest. He seemed ready to test Bill Wehman’s assertion that performers never died on stage.
Squirt had left the prompter’s box and was standing in the wings. The light had disappeared from around his head.
The power of the caul had returned suddenly. In the year before he was signed by Brownlee’s, Mulcahey had gone on tour with Joe Lunty’s troupe, the Manifest Destiny Minstrel Show. The agent in New York had booked them not only in Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa, but also in Kansas. They hadn’t appreciated what he had gotten them into until they found themselves on trains being stopped and searched by bands of armed men, participants in the opening act of the Civil War. One night, while they were doing the show, a gang of Border Ruffians pushed its way in. As they stood in the aisles, one of them started shouting about how they didn’t need northerners coming into the territory acting like a bunch of silly niggers.
Old Joe Lunty walked right up to the front of the stage and said, “Gentlemen, I must ask you to move because the owners of this hall have requested that we make sure no trash accumulates in the aisles.” The audience roared, and the man who had done the shouting pulled out a huge Navy revolver and started blasting away at the stage.
The only damage done by the pistoleer was to the interlocutor’s chair, two big holes in its frame, but the minstrels canceled their stay and took the next train east. Mulcahey sat across from Lunty, and they laughed about what had happened the night before, and then Mulcahey saw the light around Lunty’s head, the first time the benefaction of the caul had reappeared since he had left Ireland. Two mornings later they found Lunty dead in his berth. His destiny manifested, he had passed away in his sleep.
Wehman was next.
Now Squirt.
He felt genuinely sorry for the kid. But he had learned a long time ago that you couldn’t be sentimental about death. Did no good to concentrate on it as though it were something you could influence or change. Get away from it if it wasn’t for you, keep moving, heel, toe, slap that knee, stamp that foot, keep learning to beat the Yankees at their own game, and if minstrelsy proved a bust, hey, I’se de nigger dat don’t mind no troubles, cause dey ain’t nuffin mor’ dan bubbles.<
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III
THE THING ABOUT JACK MULCAHEY was that you never knew.
“There are two Jacks,” Squirt had once said to Eliza. “Black Jack, he’s a hurricane in a bottle, all these clouds and wind and rain swirlin’ around, and it’s always nighttime, no light nowhere. And Jack Jack, him a dancin’ and laughin’, always smilin’, the sunniest Paddy you ever seen.”
The minute Mulcahey came through the door of the New England Hotel, Eliza knew the weather had changed. Black Jack had given way to Jack Jack. The silent, somber man who had moped about the room all morning was now grinning, garrulous, ready to entertain. Squirt was right behind him, and they went directly into the bar. Jack bought a round of drinks for the house, put his arm around Eliza and kissed her on the neck. In the creases of his ear were the remnants of the burnt cork that could be removed only by a good bath. In the morning she would push his head under the hot, soapy water and hold it there until he threw his arms about in a mock struggle, splashing water on her. Kneeling beside the tub, she would work the inner S of his ear with a facecloth. So long to “The Ethiopian Impersonator.” He was like a boy at times and Eliza loved that about him, the way he tilted his head when she poked the facecloth into his ear, the grunts and complaining, his playfulness. Jack Jack. She hadn’t known white men could be like that, so devoid of arrogance, self-importance, condescension. She recognized the first time she met him in the hallway of the hotel that he wanted her, that their supposedly fortuitous meeting was the result of his deliberate planning, but she hadn’t tried to avoid him. She liked his reticence. Enjoyed his attentions. He had none of the typical white man’s silly expectations, the presumption that she secretly desired to wait on his whims and wishes. He courted her the way she imagined a boy courts a girl, trying to get her attention, and when she pretended not to notice, he tried harder, and even after she returned his interest, smiling at his antics, holding his hand, he seemed innocent of her responses until, in the end, she felt that she was doing the seducing.