by Peter Quinn
“Ain’t it the truth, Sam, they’d scalp a dead man, then charge his widow the price of a trim.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Bedford said.
Sam said, “Hiram, let’s stop a-wastin’ our good time. Throw him over and let’s get back to work.”
“Listen to me, please,” Bedford implored.
“Let’s listen,” Hiram said to his unseen friend. “It’s one of life’s delights a-hearing a Yorker spin a ball of lies. No one on earth is as good at it. Now, go ahead, tell us how you got stranded all innocent-like and wasn’t intent on poaching our muskies.”
“Your what?”
Hiram poked one of the rats with the end of the pole. “Our muskrats, best there is, not like them poor starved, skinny handful you’ve got left on the other shore, your own fault, treatin’ them the way Yorkers treat everythin’, destroying all in your path, be it bird or beast.”
A rat scraped the floor furiously with one paw. Bedford’s teeth began to chatter. “I’m not a poacher. I’ve no interest in your muskrats or their fur. I’m lost and must get home. I’ve a wife and children who must think I’m dead. They’ll be frantic with worry. If you’ve no pity on me, at least pity them!”
From the other boat, Sam’s voice said, “Fur? This is July, the fur these muskies got on ’em now ain’t worth the hair on a cat’s ass. It’s the meat that makes ’em worth the huntin’, fetches a good price. The city folk can’t get enough of it, even if they don’t know it’s muskies they’re getting. ‘Stew meat’ is what the butchers call it.”
“Sam,” Hiram said, “if this Yorker thinks we’re huntin’ for fur, maybe he ain’t lyin’, maybe he’s telling the truth.”
“Maybe he’s just stupid, Hiram. That’s the case with plenty of Yorkers. They’re dishonest, for sure, but they’re also plain dumb.”
“For God’s sake,” Bedford said. “I’m telling the truth. Please, I have no interest in muskies, none, all I want is to be taken to the other shore, to go home.”
“Can ya pay?”
“Sure I can pay,” Bedford blurted out, then remembered his coat swirling in the river’s current. “I’ve lost my coat, it seems, and my money, but I will take your names and have payment sent to you as soon as I reach home.”
The boatmen’s laughter rang out across the water. Sam said, “Ain’t they somethin’, these Yorkers. They think no one this side of the river got a brain.”
Hiram pointed at Bedford’s shoes. “Tell ya what, friend, I’ll take ya over, but the price will be those walkers you got on.”
“My shoes?”
“Yep.”
“But they’re wet.”
“Wet things got a habit of dryin’.”
“I need them to get home.”
“We ain’t got all night. You can keep your walkers and swim home for all I care.”
Bedford unlaced his shoes. As soon as he had the right one off, Hiram took it and put his foot in. “Fits perfect!” he said. Bedford removed the other. The rat scraped helplessly at the floor. Bedford brought his feet up onto the seat. “Do you wish the stockings, too?” Bedford said.
“Nope.”
Bedford rolled the waterlogged stockings from his feet and tossed them overboard.
“Wait here, Sam,” Hiram said to his companion. “I’ll be back in but a shake.” He put down his spear and lantern and picked up his oars. He rowed with steady, powerful strokes, and the boat moved quickly through the water. A few yards from the Manhattan shore, he said, “Out ya go.”
“Can’t you put me ashore?” Bedford said.
Hiram kept one oar in the water and brought the boat around. “This is as close to New York as I care to come. I’m a-headed home,” he said. “Either ya get out or come back with me.” Bedford swung his legs overboard and lowered himself into the water until his feet touched the slimy bottom. The water reached his chest. He swam toward shore. When it became too shallow to swim, he ran across the muck to where there was grass. He was somewhere above the city, how far he wasn’t sure. He climbed through reeds and more mud, up an embankment to the railroad tracks. A hundred yards away was a cluster of shanties, a bonfire, raucous voices, the sound of fiddles. Saturday night in Paddytown, one of the countless collections of squatters’ shacks that he had fleetingly seen in the days when he rode the train to Spuyten Duyvil and his meetings with Stark, glimpses of small children with burlap sacks for dresses, women smoking pipes, men with faces burned red from the sun. He walked south along the river side of the tracks. He heard the rumble of an approaching train, saw the headlight in the distance. He stood aside. He was ready to run alongside and grab on if it should slow, but it was a freight train that rattled and clanged as it rushed by. Fifteen minutes later, he heard another locomotive. This was a passenger train, only three cars, and it began to brake only a short distance away, slowing down without stopping completely. Two laborers hopped off the rear platform. The conductor waved to them.
“Good night, Pat,” they yelled.
“Good night, boys,” the conductor replied. He hung off the rear and waved a green lantern. The train gave a shrill whistle and started to pick up speed. The conductor went inside the car. Bedford ran alongside, grabbed the iron railing, and pulled himself up. At Manhattanville, he jumped off and ran into the bushes. Two or three people got off. The conductor waved his green lantern. As soon as he went back inside, Bedford climbed aboard again. At Thirtieth Street the train stopped, the steam engine was detached, and a team of horses was hitched in its place, ensuring that the train would move slowly as it traveled down the West Side to Chambers Street. The crew worked at a leisurely pace. Bedford hopped off the rear platform. In the middle of June, Bedford had received a secret missive from the clerk in Commodore Vanderbilt’s whom he had been paying for tidbits of inside information over the last several years. The clerk had risen to a position of prominence in the Commodore’s corporation, and was privy to important schemes. “I have news of breathtaking magnitude,” he wrote Bedford. “The Commodore is planning an assault on the Hudson River Railroad, acquiring control through the accumulation of a majority interest in the capital stock. In the privacy of his office, the Commodore waxes about what he will do when he gets control. He talks of merging the New York Central with the Hudson, constructing a grand terminal in the midst of the city, and bridging the Hudson River at Rensselaer, which will bring our trains into the city of Albany. Now is the time to buy stock in the Hudson River Railroad. This will be the greatest killing since Theseus slew the Minotaur.” Bedford had thrown the letter aside. He had been too busy with the short-term prospects for gold to bother pursuing such a tip. Morrissey on his back. His account books rife with fraud. Capshaw threatening him with blackmail. Bedford started to walk across the wet cobblestones. His bare feet felt cold and exposed. He took small, cautious steps.
“Hey, buddy, you just off that train?” A squat man in a vest and bowler hat was walking toward him. “Let’s see your ticket.” The man extended his hand. In his other hand he held a long locust stick that he tapped against his leg.
Bedford ran. The soles of his feet made loud slapping sounds on the paving stones. He charged into a street with saloons on both sides, men sitting outside to escape the heat. He stopped and thought for an instant of going back, but his pursuer was lumbering after him, the stick raised, a finger pointed directly at Bedford: “Stop that man!”
From both sides of the street men came out of the saloons. They were yelling. Bedford was sure one of them would try to tackle him, but they jumped out of his way as soon as he came near. He ran faster. He realized that the yelling was for him, a chorus of cheering, as if he were a runner in a race. He heard the shattering of glass. He turned. A barrage of bottles and mugs were crashing around his pursuer. The man had dropped his stick. He was covering his head with his hands.
“Hang the railroad scab!” somebody yelled.
The man turned in his tracks and headed back toward the river. A group of men set out afte
r him, throwing more bottles as they went.
Bedford ran until his legs ached. He went through streets where despite the late hour the stoops and sidewalks were filled with people too hot to sleep. Thousands and thousands of Paddies. He sat on a curb. His white shirt had turned almost tan with dirt and sweat. His bare feet were bloody with cuts and lacerations, but he felt no pain, just a hot tingling. A workingman passed by, looking slightly tipsy. He threw some pennies at Bedford’s feet. “Get yourself a whiskey,” he said. “You look like you need it.”
Bedford walked the rest of the way. He kept an eye out for the police. The wealthier the neighborhoods became, the quieter and more deserted the streets. He waited at the bottom of his stoop. All the lights were out, the bottom windows shut and locked. He had no idea where he had lost his keys. They were probably in his coat at the bottom of the Hudson. He considered trying to force a window but decided he had no choice but to ring the bell. He crouched in the dark of the doorway. He rang several times before he heard someone coming down the stairs.
As soon as the maid opened the door a crack, he pushed his way in. She looked startled and afraid. “Sacred Heart of Jesus!” she cried.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. He took her by the arm. He saw himself fleetingly in the mirror in the hallstand, the image of a man who had just escaped a burning, sinking ship.
“There was a terrible boating accident,” he said. “A steam engine blew up.” He steered her toward the stairs. “Fortunately, no one was killed.” They walked up the stairs together. At the landing she pulled loose from his grasp.
“O my God, Mr. Bedford,” she said, “look!” She pointed at the pale carpeting. He had left behind a trail of bloody footprints.
“You can clean it in the morning, Margaret. Now go ahead and draw my bath. Do it immediately.”
She stood staring at the bloody tracks.
“Go ahead now, Margaret,” he said. “I’m all right. I’ve cut my foot, that’s all. The important thing is nobody was killed.” He nudged her. “Margaret, please, draw my bath.”
III
EVEN JOHN SKELLEY, steeped in the business of drafting, could barely keep up without spilling a portion of the brew. The overflow collected in a pail beneath the tap. Full, it was hauled by Mick Skelley, the last of John’s seven sons, to a table on the side of Third Avenue and hawked at a penny a glass to the dust covered drovers and teamsters too thirsty and in too much of a hurry to care that it was flat and warm.
“Skelley,” a small toothless man shouted at the tap master, “it’s your kind of drafting the people are in need of.”
In the crooks of his fingers John Skelley held three mugs beneath the tap and filled them one by one. Without looking up, he said, “War or peace, the need will never go away.”
“Beware the temperance men!” the toothless man said. “They’ve their way, they’ll do to drink what Lincoln done to slavery, abolish it, such is their promise.”
“Temperance and abolition, twin curses of the laboring man, the same bastards behind both,” Skelley said as he filled the last mug. “But they’ll have a harder time taking away a man’s drink than his slaves, I’d say.”
“Ach,” the toothless man said, “take all my niggers, but leave me to drink in peace!”
Skelley placed the three mugs on the counter. The toothless man grabbed one. One-Eyed Jack Cassidy grabbed the other two. “That’s the trouble,” Cassidy said. “The laboring man isn’t left in peace but has his name tossed in a drum and, luck against him, is forced to fight to free the niggers.” Cassidy handed a mug to the man standing next to him.
“Thousand in a single day, that’s what Noonan will have netted these past hours,” the toothless man said. “That rate, won’t be long every able-bodied workingman is conscripted.”
“Which of youse is payin’?” Skelley asked.
Cassidy tugged at the frayed, soiled patch that covered his eye. “Payin’ to get out of the draft, is it?”
The toothless man laughed. “The Union ain’t so desperate it needs the likes of Cassidy or me. Even if it was, where in the name of Jazus would we find the three hundred dollars to buy our way out?”
“Damn the draft!” Skelley said. “Which of youse is paying for the drink?”
Cassidy removed his battered hat and tipped it toward the man to whom he had just passed the mug. “Our friend here is standin’ us to drinks,” he said. “And you should be aware of the honor he does this place by merely settin’ foot in it.”
“Honor enough to get paid,” Skelley said.
The crowd at the counter was growing thicker and more restive. “Hey, Skelley!” one of them cried, “will ya have us die of thirst?”
“I’ve brought you the American song master himself!” Cassidy said.
“I don’t care if it’s Tom Moore risen from the grave. I’ve to be paid!”
Stephen Foster let go of the counter. He wobbled slightly as he fumbled in his pocket, took out a crumpled greenback, and tossed it onto the counter. How much had Jack Mulcahey lent him that morning in the bar of the hotel? An understanding man, Mulcahey had reached into his leather fold and plucked out several bills.
This should tide you over, my friend.
Only a loan, Jack. Once I deliver Daly his song, I’ll pay you back.
A slight hurdle: The song was still to be written.
Foster took a long gulp from his mug. Ever since the rains around the Fourth, the week before, the temperature had climbed steadily, day by day, the city baking without relief, and the dryness in his mouth had grown worse until it penetrated his throat and bowels.
Cassidy put his arm around Foster, pulled him close. “Oh, what times!” he said. “The men of this city have their ears plugged with wax, but not to avoid the Sirens’ sweet, destructive song. Done in the service of lucre, that’s all that matters, only sound will draw attention, the chime of gold and silver. Ours is not an age for poetry. Yet, Foster, what the Sirens falsely claimed of their music might be truly said of yours: ‘None that listened has not been delighted and not gone on a wiser man.’” Cassidy drained his mug and banged it on the counter. “Another round!” he shouted.
Skelley was back at the tap, filling mugs. “Cassidy,” he said, “break that glass and it’s yours to pay for!”
Foster took a gulp of ale. A pleasure to be in the enfolding gloom of Skelley’s place. Blistering out on the avenue beneath a sun as cruel as found in the South, the South where he had never been, way down souf, whar de corn grow. A bitter memory: His brother, Morrison, had talked him into entering “Away Down Souf” in a song contest. It had received rollicking applause, but the judge awarded the prize to another song. Next day, Morrison discovered the judge trying to copyright “Away Down Souf” as his own. As yet unschooled in the knowledge that the world is filled with cheats and exploiters—that they are everywhere—Morrison and Stephen had been shocked.
“Lucky thing we met today.” Cassidy said. “Nothin’ save the chords funereal at Zook’s obsequies. But the spectacle of conscription, that’s true musical stuff, a nation doin’ what it must to fight a war, the resentment it raises among laborin’ men. There’s a ‘Dixie’ in this somewhere.”
Dan Emmett’s song. Another one-note hack. Knocked it out in an hour. Sounded it. Already be forgotten if not for the war. Foster finished his ale. He had bumped into Cassidy on the way out of Mike Manning’s. Headed for General Zook’s funeral. A fallen hero, a musical inspiration perhaps. Cassidy talked him out of it. They stopped in Mintern’s on the Bowery, where the whiskey was served in glasses loaded with chunks of ice, Saratoga-style. Lost its charm after one drink. The ice melted fast and diluted the whiskey, and Mintern charged a double price for watering down his drinks. Another cheat.
It had been Cassidy’s idea to take a horsecar up the avenue and watch the conscription. The trip had been a pleasant one, the stir of air created by the movement of the car as close to a breeze as could be found in the sweltering city. They had left
the horsecar at Forty-second Street and gone into Joe O’Brien’s. The place was full with men who had come from watching the conscription. Stretched out drunk on a table in the corner was Billy Jones, whose name had been the first out of the drum. Laid out like a corpse, red tablecloth over his legs and crossed mops at his head, Jones snored loudly, but nobody seemed to take much notice. After several whiskeys, Cassidy and Foster went back into the street. As hot as it had been earlier, it now seemed hotter. They walked up the avenue to Forty-sixth Street, the crowd growing thicker. At the corner of Forty-fifth Street, Cassidy met Pat McSweeney, a stooped, toothless wisp of an old man who quickly fell into conversation with them.
“Ah, Jack,” McSweeney said, “say what you want against the draft, and mind you, I’m opposed as any man, but a short bit ago they called out the name of Councilman Joyce, and the thought of that jackeen in uniform ducking Rebel bullets is enough to turn a man in favor of conscription!”
“Be a blizzard in Hades before Joyce ever wears a uniform,” Cassidy said.
Across from the Ninth District office, a horde of children played around the abandoned, half-built foundations of a house. Ragged and barefoot, they chased one another with sticks, seemingly unaffected by the heat. A pack of mongrel dogs followed, barking loudly. Atop a mound of dirt stood several women, soiled aprons tied around their waists. They ignored the cackling of the children and stared silently at the conscription office. Foster moved through the crowd and went up to the door of the office. Inside, it looked like the waiting room of a rail station: a large, undecorated space with a crowd milling about.
A man bumped Foster and pushed past. “To hell with the draft!” he yelled. “Three cheers for Ben and Fernando Wood!” No one took up the cry. McSweeney took a flask from the back pocket of his woolen trousers, swigged it furtively, and was about to put it back when Cassidy said, “What are ya, a bloody Republican? Hoardin’ your treasure against the people? Share the wealth, man! The anthem of all true sons of the Democracy! Share the wealth!” The crowd took up Cassidy’s refrain. “Share the wealth!” they yelled in a good-natured way, and McSweeney passed around the flask, a pained expression on his face as it went from hand to hand. When it reached Foster, it was empty. “We have been cheated, gentlemen,” he said with a southern drawl. “There is no wealth left for us to share.”