The Banished Children of Eve

by Peter Quinn

  Stewart sat back in his chair. He took a deep breath as if he had confessed a secret that had been weighing him down. “We are living on the side of a live volcano, all of us. Each day the pressures grow and the rumblings beneath our feet become more ominous. Some choose to imagine the tremors are the random workings of nature, but we are not among them.”

  The others nodded in agreement.

  “This Vesuvius is a creation not of nature but of men. Since the beginning of the war, there has been a growing agitation among the laboring class. It began with the grain shovelers. Five thousand of them tried to cripple the ability of the port to function. They left their jobs to stop their employers from using the new floating elevators that transfer grain from lighters to ships with efficiency and speed. Soon after, the employees of the Manhattan Gas Works walked off their jobs. When the Gas Works tried to fill the positions that the strikers had abandoned, mobs roamed the streets and chased away those hired as replacements. Next came the longshoremen, then the house painters, then the ironworkers, then the tobacco workers, carpenters, piano makers, machinists, until, by God, there is hardly an industry or business that hasn’t been affected. In some cases the men have returned to work and the strikes ended, but for every one that is discontinued, another begins. At present, there are over thirty strikes in progress in this city. Yesterday, the tailors at Brooks Brothers walked off the job. Three hundred men employed in the production of uniforms for the Army.” Stewart gestured toward one of the men across the table. “Mr. Atkinson is a partner in the firm, and he has something that might interest you.”

  Rodney Atkinson was a white-haired man with a round, pleasant, wrinkleless face. He took a pamphlet from the breast pocket of his coat, threw it onto the table, and pushed it across. Noonan looked at it but didn’t pick it up. The title was in German, in big Gothic letters.

  “I don’t read German,” Noonan said.

  “No need to, Colonel,” Atkinson said. “The usual rubbish, down with property, death to the rich, that sort of stuff. Was found in the drawer of one of the strikers’ sewing tables.”

  “Each of us, no matter what our business, is being subject to such agitation and threats,” Stewart said. “In one place, the demand is for more pay. Somewhere else, it is a change in the work rules. In my business of retail merchandising, there is now something called the Dry-Goods Clerks’ Early-Closing Association, its supposed goal the reduction of the workday from twelve hours to ten.”

  “I’m sorry you are having such difficulties,” Noonan said. “But the disputes between employers and employees are no concern of the Provost Marshal. If they interfere with the delivery of materials for the Army, General Wool, Commander of the Department of the East, will decide what should be done. If there are threats being made against you or your property, the police should be informed.”

  Stewart turned to face Noonan. “You are perfectly correct, Colonel. On its face, the labor agitation occurring in this city has nothing directly to do with the Provost Marshal. But beneath the issues of wages or hours or conditions there is another force at work, an insidious conspiracy of tightly organized revolutionaries who are fomenting an explosion of enormous proportions. These men view the war as the opportunity to attack the very foundations of property. All authority and all wealth are their enemy. They are traitors steeped in an inheritance of brutality and insurrection, and have dedicated themselves to the overthrow of our republican institutions.”

  Stewart placed a small square of paper on the table, unfolded it, and ironed it flat with his hand. “We have watched them carefully. We know who they are.”

  “If they resist the draft or advocate resistance, my office will look into it,” Noonan said.

  Stewart slid the paper in front of Noonan. “They are plotting far worse than that, Colonel.”

  “Perhaps. But I cannot arrest men on your word. They have a right to seek higher wages, especially in light of the increases in prices the war has caused.”

  “And a right to advocate the overthrow of every American institution, do they have that right, too? Are we to fight a war to free the slaves only to take the shackles from their wrists and place them on the wrists of men of property?”

  Atkinson pounded the table with his fist. “Here, here!” he said. The others quickly joined in.

  “Those who resist the draft will be arrested,” Noonan said.

  “Arrested?” Stewart said. “What good will that do? They will either be released by some sympathetic politician, Governor Seymour perhaps, or else turned into martyrs, their imprisonment splashed across the pages of the city’s seditious newspapers, of which there is no shortage. There is only one thing to do with these scoundrels. Draft them!” With his finger, Stewart tapped the paper in front of Noonan. “Here are the names, Colonel. Each a known troublemaker, each a traitor. Put them in the Army and in one stroke you cut the head off the serpent.”

  “The draft will be conducted on the basis of a lottery,” Noonan explained. “Those who provide substitutes will be permanently excused. Those who pay three hundred dollars will be excused from this round of conscription. Beyond that, it is not in my power, or in anyone’s power, to determine the names which will be picked.”

  “Of course it is in your power, Colonel,” Atkinson said. “And I daresay it is your duty. Without the slightest injustice to the others in this lottery, you could easily arrange for the selection of the names on this list. The country and city would be in your debt for such service, a debt those of us in this room would do their best to repay.” Atkinson picked up the paper and extended it to Noonan. “Here, sir, look at these names.”

  Noonan took the paper. He folded it along the crease lines, ripped it into quarters, then into eighths, then dropped it into Stewart’s teacup. “Gentlemen, I am grateful for your time.” He stood up. “I will show myself out.”

  The day was Saturday. The evening before, Generals Wool and Noonan had come over to Governors Island to review the so-called Invalid Guard, sick and wounded men sufficiently recovered to serve in the light work of standing ready to arrest and remove any draft resisters, should they appear. The members of the Guard had paraded smartly. Major Ahearn had been in command. There were another 200 troops stationed in the forts around the city who could be called on in an emergency. In the city proper were the 150 men of the Provost Guard, the bulk of them lodged in the barracks in City Hall Park.

  The evening was windless and suffocating. Even though the sun had slipped down to the horizon, the parade ground was broiling. Noonan and Wool reviewed the troops from General Wool’s carriage. The perspiration streamed down Wool’s face, and he panted from the heat. Afterward, they dined on the porch of the house that Wool used when he was on the island. It was a full meal of roasted venison and mashed potatoes, and Wool attacked it eagerly. Noonan barely touched his food. He drank ice water and smoked cigarillos.

  At nightfall, a small breeze began to blow but quickly died away. General Wool had a suite of rooms in the St. Nicholas Hotel, where the War Department had its New York headquarters, but he often preferred to spend the night on Governors Island. The noise of the city carried across the harbor. Wool waved a paper accordion fan back and forth in front of his face.

  “You’d think heat would smother a man’s fighting instincts,” Wool said. “If we was a logical species, we’d sit still in weather like this and wait until the autumn to do our killing, but unfortunately we ain’t that smart. Greater the heat, the worse the killing.”

  Wool had taken his belt and tunic off. Unrestrained, the round bump of his stomach protruded from an otherwise thin body. He continued waving the fan with one hand and swatted a mosquito on his neck with the other. “Seems to me, though,” he said, “the heat is particularly fearsome on city folks, makes them nastier and more unfriendly than they usually are, which ain’t easy given the meanness they got naturally. A country man knows when it’s time to sit still in the shade. But city folk keep right on moving and working, drowning
in their own sweat, never stopping, and pretty soon they lose the ability to think straight. How else do you explain the silly ruction that the Mayor raised over them guns? The man presides over a town noisier than the workshops of hell. But the entire town gets itself in a lather over a little gunfire.”

  “We’re all accustomed to different sounds,” Noonan said. “I’ve seen soldiers sleep through artillery fire that would wake the dead, only to be awakened by the lowing of a cow.”

  “Had half a mind to turn them guns around and let the town have something more than just a report,” Wool commented. “Lob a few shells down on top of ’em, give ’em a whiff of the real thing, specially those copperhead sons of bitches. Believe me, given the rightful provocation, I would enjoy nothing more.”

  Noonan had decided that there would be no troops present when the draft lottery began. The sight of them might be a provocation. Instead, he directed that the draft would start at the Ninth District office, on Third Avenue, in the Nineteenth Ward, in the upper reaches of the city, a sparsely populated area where any outbreak could be contained and brought under control. A large force of police would be on hand at the local precinct but would stay out of sight unless their presence were required. If there were no disturbances, then on Monday the draft would begin throughout the city.

  General Wool dropped the fan into his lap. His head fell to his breast, and he began to snore. He would be eighty on his next birthday, but didn’t appear that old in uniform. Sitting in the chair, however, with his mouth agape, his jacket off, his posture gone soft, he looked to Noonan both tired and old. Noonan had two orderlies carry Wool to bed; he didn’t awake when they lifted his chair and brought him inside. Noonan walked the grounds of the island and watched the city as the night grew deeper and most of the lights were put out. For over a week, there had been rumors gathered by the police and the Provost Marshal’s office that an attempt would be made on Noonan’s life. Saloon talk, mostly. Conversations overheard by informers. No suspect had been named. But Noonan had decided not to stay the night in his lodgings in Yorkville. It was important there be no incidents on the eve of the draft.

  The noise from across the river had almost died away. The city was at its quietest. Noonan lay down in his room but couldn’t sleep. He remembered the last time he had seen his father alive, an event he hadn’t thought about in years. It was the spring before the Famine struck Ireland. He had returned to the farm from Dundalk, where he had secured employment as a clerk. His father’s appearance had shocked him. A once physically powerful man who had raised himself from the subtenantry to a prime tenancy of ten acres, his father had shriveled into one of those ancient countrymen who sat by crossroads begging a coin in return for the stories and prophecies they routinely repeated. He slept on a low bed set next to the hearth. Noonan’s older brother, John, still unmarried, saw to the farm.

  Although it had been over a year since Robert Noonan had been home, his father barely talked to him. They sat and smoked the tobacco Noonan had brought. Noonan broke the silence by talking about the political turmoil Daniel O’Connell was causing in the country with his campaign for repeal of the union with Great Britain. His father made no response; then, after a long silence, he said, “I saw it in the sky. I knew someday I would. Every cloud that blocked the sun raised the fear of it in me, but now it’s done, the sign appeared as she said it would, and it’s the people brought it on themselves, with their wantonness and faithlessness, God’s judgment is on our heads.”

  “What sign?” Noonan said.

  “The Black Pig.”

  John brought over to the bed a jar of whiskey and three cracked and dirty cups. He handed out the cups and poured. “It was a cloud he saw,” John said to Noonan, as if their father weren’t there. “A cloud like any other cloud. I saw it, too.”

  “’Twas no cloud,” their father murmured.

  “His mind plays tricks on him,” John said. “And he is near to blind.”

  “My mind is sound, and my eyes. ’Twas no more a cloud than the sun is a dish of butter. The cloven hoof, the tail, snout, ears, head—no cloud was ever shaped thus, exactly as the old woman said.”

  “What old woman?” Noonan asked.

  John drained the whiskey from his cup and dragged his sleeve across his mouth. “In the name of God, stop this silly talk.”

  The old man cradled the cup in his right hand. The fingers were gnarled and bent; it seemed more a claw than a hand. He spoke rapidly in Irish, a language his sons had rarely heard him speak, and then reverted to English:

  She lives by herself in the cliffs by the sea,

  As light and small as a bird is she;

  Her words are true words of prophecy.

  “That’s how the poetry men described her. She was a tiny thing, with wild hair, we’d see her scurry about the cliffs when we hunted gulls’ eggs, but she was a powerful creature, even the landlords feared her, and was over a hundred and twenty years when she died in 1791.”

  “No one lives that long,” John said.

  “Not today, but in olden times things were different, there was a strength in the people that is gone now, and she was no ordinary peasant’s child but the daughter of a great Kerry chief, himself a man of seventy when he fathered her. There is no telling what age he would have reached if the foreigners hadn’t come, laid siege to his castle for seven years, and finally stormed and burned it the day before the King of Spain arrived with troops and ships to drive the enemy away. The foreigners slaughtered the chief and all his sept, but when they went to seize his daughter she turned herself into a bird, flew through the air until she could fly no longer, and took refuge in the cliffs of Donegal.”

  John put down his cup with a loud clatter. “I can’t stand to hear these fables anymore.” He walked out into the yard.

  “She knew what the weather would be, how the crops would fare, when a man would die and in what way. All the people came to her, even the priest, and brought offerings of food, mostly the sweet things she craved, and she told them what they wanted to know. Some went away in tears, others rejoicing, each knowing in his heart there was no escaping the future she described to them.

  “One day, when the people were in the field hearing Mass, she appeared. The priest cursed her and told her to go away, but she paid no heed. ‘Pray!’ she shouted in a sharp voice, a bird’s voice, ‘Pray you may be spared the Day of the Black Pig, for when he appears in the sky, the final end will have come for Ireland, and the Devil will have his sway. The people will starve and stuff their mouths with grass to kill the ache of hunger, and though they flee across the seas, the Devil will follow them, and they shall drown themselves in distant waters and tear the flesh from each other’s bones!’”

  The old man was hunched over as though in pain. He spoke into the cup of whiskey, which he had not drunk. Noonan felt the urge to put his arm around his father’s shoulders but held back. They sat silently until Noonan stood. “Ireland has already seen her share of hunger and death,” Noonan said. “Perhaps the prophecy is already complete.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I must be going now.”

  “Aye, then be gone. God’s grace go with you.”

  Noonan went outside. His brother was standing by the wall in a slow but soaking rain.

  “He’s mad,” John said.

  “He’s old, that’s all.”

  “His mind is gone.”

  “He doesn’t think as clearly as he once did.”

  “Little difference between the two, at least as far as I’m concerned, stuck here day after day with that raving relic of a man. Jesus, ’tis work enough to wring the rent out of this barren piece of land without having to carry him on me back. But how would you know? ’Tis neat and tidy work you do, done on paper, and never any lack of it.”

  “Work I took because this land was promised you, and there was nothing for me here.”

  John walked away without reply, crossed the muddy yard and the road beyond, into the fields. Noo
nan mounted his horse and set out for Dundalk, turning around only once, for what would be his last glimpse of home.

  In the morning, after the guns had finished firing, Noonan put on his tunic and went out to General Wool’s coach. Wool appeared a few moments later. He was stooped, and walked with a stiff, shuffling gait. He was already sweating profusely, and grunted loudly as he mounted the coach. He waved away Noonan’s offered hand, falling into his seat with such force that he made the coach rock.

  “Let us be off,” Wool said. The sweat was beaded on his forehead and upper lip. “It is impolite to keep any man waiting, but to do so to the honored dead is downright insulting.”

  A private viewing of General Samuel Zook’s body was scheduled for eight o’clock, in City Hall. He had been killed on the second day of Gettysburg. Before his body was offered for public viewing, his military comrades were to pay their respects.

  “If you don’t mind, General, I have offered Major Ahearn a ride with us,” Noonan said. “He should be here momentarily.”

  “Damn you, Noonan, for turning my coach into an omnibus, and damn Acorn for being late.”

  “Ahearn, not Acorn.”

  “From the look of him, it would seem his pubes grew in the week before last. Nothing but an acorn, and he’s a major already. We are awash in acorns, Colonel. We have been for some time. You see them everywhere, in business, the clergy, the Army, an endless parade of boys, none of them willing to wait, all of them in such a ferocious hurry. It is a dangerous thing when a country becomes all ambition and no wisdom, but it’s what happens when experience is pushed aside and mere youth put in its place.”