by Peter Quinn
“That’s the holy war our boys should be preparin’ for, stead of allowin’ themselves to be drafted to die in the cause of the nigger,” Cassidy said.
“Down the road lives Kate McGowan,” Flanagan said. “Had two boys. The youngest killed at Antietam. The other’s been wounded in Pennsylvania. She’s sick with grief and worry, but I haven’t seen any niggers at her door offerin’ condolences or help.”
“Not likely you will,” Cunningham said. “Nor likely you’ll see the nigger volunteerin’ in the fight to free Ireland. But he’ll soon enough take the jobs of them slaughtered to win his freedom.”
Flanagan came around with the tray again. The bottle soon finished, Flanagan went to the still behind the shanty and got another. When he came back in, he roused the children from their beds, told them to scrounge all the kindling and dry branches they could find and heap it in the yard. A second and third bottle had been consumed by the time Flanagan interrupted the men’s talking and singing and told them to come outside.
“Gentlemen,” Flanagan said, “the time is after midnight, which means this is the twelfth of July, Orangemen’s Day, and I think we shouldn’t let such an occasion pass without some mark of our undyin’ affection for our Anglo-Saxon masters!” He doused with kerosene the pile his children had collected and lit it. He brought out the skull.
“Let me do the honors,” McSweeney said, and tossed it into the middle of the bonfire.
The men cheered. Cassidy yelled, “To hell with the draft!”
McSweeney lay still. He was unsure of where he was, a feeling he despised, distant memory of mornings in places better forgotten. He heard laughter, giggles, children’s voices. He extended his hand, felt rough cloth a few inches away. Wherever he was, he wasn’t alone. Slowly, the night before came back to him, dancing around a bonfire, swigging whiskey, cursing the niggers, the draft, the Republicans, the English, the English-lovers, the rich man’s war. He opened his eyes: Cassidy lay next to him. Beyond, in the doorway, Flanagan’s children were darting in and out, laughing.
McSweeney sat up and felt a sharp pain in his head. Next to Cassidy was another body: Foster’s. They had spent the night on the dirt floor, the three of them, but McSweeney had no recollection of how they got there.
Flanagan came out from behind the curtain, and the children scattered. He stood in the doorway and screamed at them to stop their shenanigans.
“What’s the time?” asked McSweeney.
“Past nine,” Flanagan said.
“Jazus,” Cassidy said without lifting his head, “could we have some quiet?”
“Is Cunningham gone?” McSweeney said.
“Long ago. Tried to wake ye up, but easier to wake the dead.”
“Let’s have some quiet so a man can rest,” Cassidy said.
“How’ll we get back to the city?” McSweeney said.
“Can’t answer that,” Flanagan said. “But I can tell ye that I’d be in my right to ask payment for last night’s lodging.”
Cassidy got up. “Lodging? You call the floor of this sty ‘lodging’? Here’s what I think it’s worth.” He spit on the floor.
“I’ve already warned you against expectoratin’,” Flanagan said.
Cassidy helped McSweeney to his feet and pushed Foster’s shoulder with his boot. “Get up,” he said loudly. Foster stirred. “Charge us for lodging?” Cassidy said. “Well, you can try. But you better be good with your fists.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Flanagan said. “Or I’ll summon the law.”
“Summon the bloody Supreme Court for all I care,” Cassidy said. He reached down and put a hand under Foster. “Give me some help,” he said to McSweeney. Together they lifted Foster to his feet and walked him to the door. Flanagan stepped out of the way.
The glare of undiluted sunlight made both Cassidy and McSweeney shield their eyes with the palms of their hands. They crossed Flanagan’s yard with Foster between them and turned into the road.
“O Christ,” McSweeney said, “we’ll be walkin’ all day before we reach the city.”
“We’ll go down to Manhattanville,” Cassidy said. “Catch a train.”
“We’ve money for that?”
“There’s hardly a conductor on the line I don’t know. Many the time they’ve extended the courtesy of a free ride.”
After a while, Foster got his legs and walked without their help. They stopped at a farmhouse and were given permission to use the pump. They stuck their heads beneath the spigot, soaked their hair and washed their faces. Foster put his mouth to the spigot and kept it there. He pumped and pumped, drinking so much water that Cassidy said, “I’m surprised you haven’t sprouted a hump to store it.”
They went back to walking. The sun quickly dried them. Soon they were sweating heavily. In the late morning they reached Manhattanville, went down through the quiet Sunday streets, past the Christian Brothers’ college, and sat on a log beside the tracks. The sun beat down hard. The pain in McSweeney’s head grew worse. His stomach contracted, and the urge to vomit rose in his throat. He moaned.
“Are you all right?” Cassidy asked.
McSweeney shook his head. The contraction in his belly grew tighter. He stood and crossed the track to the high weeds on the other side. He bent over, gripped his knees, braced himself. Liquid gushed out of his mouth, splattering his trousers and his shoes. Sweat flooded his eyes. He pulled the sleeve of his woolen jacket over his hand and wiped it across his mouth. The sting of vinegar was in his mouth and nose. He ran a finger over the red ridges of his gums. He braced himself again and coughed so deeply that his ribs hurt. A small rush of vomit poured out. Sweat dripped across his face, puddled beneath his armpits, and ran down his sides.
In the distance was the whistle of a train. McSweeney walked back to the log and sat down. Foster had his head buried in his arms. Cassidy was up and standing by the track. As the train pulled in he walked beside it, looking for the conductor. But when the conductor descended the stairs of the middle car and jumped to the ground, Cassidy didn’t approach.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” he said to McSweeney, “the only conductor I don’t know and he has to be on this train. We’ll just have to wait.”
A cabriolet pulled up beside the log, and a tall gentleman in a frock coat got out of the passenger seat. There was a high polish on his shoes. His shirt and cravat were white and crisp. He looked at McSweeney blankly.
“Who do you think you’re looking at?” McSweeney said.
The gentleman moved toward the train without answering. The whistle blew. He mounted the steps. Steam shot from beneath the car. He turned, grinned at McSweeney, and said something that was drowned out by the clatter and hiss of the train as it began to move.
McSweeney struggled to his feet and staggered. He shouted after the train, “Who do you think you’re lookin’ at, you three-hundred-dollar whore, Protestant son of a bitch!”
JULY 13–15, 1863
I saw the ramparts of my native land
One time so strong, now dropping in decay,
Their strength destroyed by this new age’s way,
That has worn out and rotted what was grand.
—Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (1635)
It is the common practice of the cultured portion of our populace to view history as it does the smooth and well-executed canvas. The gentleman enters the reverent hush of the pinacotheca and approaches the work of art. He sits on a small bench placed at the appropriate distance that he might have the proper perspective. Quietly, serenely, he regards the sweeping vista, capacious sky, the looming mountains with roseate peaks reflecting the candescence of a deathless sun that the gathering clouds of night can neither obfuscate entirely nor deny utterly. He sighs with pleasure at the symmetry of this design, an improvement on nature in the grand style of those majestic, irresistible panoramas executed by Frederick Church, all the savagery and brutality of the world’s wildness tamed and contained by the aeonic mastery of the artist’
s penicillus.
Alas, dear gentleman, enjoy this fugacious moment, as false in its eternal aura as the peaceful creation depicted in this gilt-edged frame. Indeed, sir, incline your ear to the din that penetrates this asylum. Hark, the mob’s howl! It rattles the windowpanes and reverberates in these marble halls. History, sir, is about to suck you in, true history, no painted version of the jungle but the real thing, a place you must crawl through, a steaming, muddy swamp. Wild hyenas snap at your heels, their teeth eager for your flesh. The fearsome python slithers amid the branches above your head. Aedes buzz in your ear. Soon, sir, you will have no choice but to apprehend the trompe l’oeil of the historian and confront the terrible and inescapable truth of time’s swelling and shallowing. This landscape belongs not to you or to your refined understanding. This is the eternal kingdom of the uncivil, the uncivilized, the uncivilizable; here rules the vile, the violent, the vicious; here holds sway forever the race of small-brained creatures, men with the minds of beasts, in whom beat the hearts of animals.
—From The Ramparts of My Native Land, by Audley Ward (unpublished manuscript; folio IV, 619–663; manuscript Collection, the Library of the City of New York)
I
DUNNE SAT MOTIONLESS in the lobby of the New England Hotel. He reread once more the note he had found waiting for him at the front desk the day before yesterday. The long-expected signal from Capshaw: Father is dead. Please come home. Your dearest Mother. He wiped his face with his sleeve. The heat lay like a blanket. Move or not, you sweated. Something was in the air. Odor of rotting fish and raw sewage. But something else besides. Been there for days. An expectation.
Last night, on the Bowery, outside the Atlantic Garden, a drunken plasterer, his clothes crusted with gypsum, fought an equally drunken soldier. No rare sight. But the sidewalk fisticuffs drew a large crowd, and when the soldier got knocked down the crowd set on him, kicked and screamed, people fighting one another for the chance to pummel him. Would have ripped him limb from limb if the Metropolitans hadn’t appeared, and even then the mob didn’t back away. A blizzard of bottles from a nearby rooftop knocked a few of the coppers senseless, and a gaunt, ragged old woman climbed atop the Garden’s fence. Said any man didn’t stand and fight had an empty space between his legs. Took a large squad of reinforcements before the police was able to drag the soldier to safety and bring some order to the street.
Outside, on Bayard Street, there were a few passersby. Unusually quiet for a Monday morning. Heat had everyone sitting still, at least for now. Maybe just jitters before a job. Nerves set on edge from waiting.
He had never trusted Capshaw. Figured it right away: Bring in the Paddy so he can take the blame. The scraps handed out by Capshaw that April afternoon were enough to give a scent, but it was Cassidy who had pointed the finger at Jim Halsey, a name easily linked in the sporting places with Charles Bedford’s. The Faro Twins. Halsey had turned out to be nothing more than a Wall Street flickertail, part of the speculating mob that scampers about the Exchange like a pack of rabid squirrels. A pimp to boot. Used his girl to get a piece of the Trump and then to get himself a commission in the Army. Must have figured that was the only way to escape Morrissey’s clutches. Might be, so long as he kept on the move once the war ended and never showed his face east of the Hudson. Bedford was of a different stripe. Old name, old money. The kind sent Capshaw in a rage. Don’t seem about to stuff all he had in a carpetbag and run for it, but Dandy Dan had put it right: Despair sends men to places they never thought to be.
The deal according to Capshaw: Apply the screws to Bedford. Pressure of blackmail added to Morrissey’s threats, he’ll put what he can in greenbacks and get ready to fly. Once he does, it’s in and out, grab the wick, and Bedford still has to run, Morrissey and the Metropolitans both breathing down his neck.
Dunne folded the note and put it back in his pocket. Capshaw wanted to hold all the cards himself. The rat-noses’ way: Play by our rules, or don’t play at all. But no Paddy was quite as dumb as that, at least not in New York. Wrote another set. Tracked down Bedford. Followed him about in a casual way, him none the wiser. The Exchange. The Coal Hole. An occasional stop at Mrs. Woods’s fancy house. Always home before the evening grew too late—one of them tall, imposing places makes Capshaw’s look like a cabin. Housekeeper, coachman, a pack of Kathleens to do the cleaning and wiping. Waited till the missus was away and Bedford off to work. The beginning of June. Paid a visit in a sure and tested way. Went up the front steps, brazen as could be, the way a person of “larcenous intent,” as the magistrates might say, would never.
The maid barely cracked the door; said, “Go to the tradesmen’s entrance,” as the rule book said she should. She opened the tradesmen’s door and stepped aside, led the way past the narrow eyed cook, suspicion dripping from her like drool from a dog.
“Since when do tradesmen knock on a gentleman’s door?” the cook said.
“Way I read it, Lincoln’s abolished such notions.”
“He abolished slavery, not good manners.”
The maid barely stopped to hear the exchange of words. She walked ahead. “These the pipes you want to see?”
“Sure are.”
Time to do the job. Dunne took out a wrench, banged the pipes, turned the screws. Put an ear to the wall.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
“Got to check the pipes upstairs.”
She chattered the whole time, watching in a distracted way the routine of pipe-rapping and jet-turning. In and out of every room.
The watchdog cook waited at the bottom of the stairs. Held a ladle like a booly dog’s locust stick.
“We was never notified of any inspection.”
“Must have been. Probably forgot. Happens all the time. Busy, hardworking people often do. Guess you could use more help in a house this size. Ain’t it always the way? More you do, more they expect.”
The cook shook her head. “Ain’t more we need as them already here to show a willingness to work.”
The maid let out a snorting sound. The tour resumed: rooms of old furniture, portraits of old relatives, long dead from the cut of their clothes, pictures too big and unwieldy to hide a safe. The only real storage right out in view, in the corner of the library. Federal Certified All-Security Safe. Patented. Seemed as easy a job as Capshaw had imagined, if this was where Bedford put his trust.
All the rooms inspected and the pipes given an official bang, Dunne asked to be shown to the door. Gave the cook a friendly good-bye that was returned with a grunt. Went out the tradesmen’s route, the maid right behind, up the small flight of stone stairs into the sunlight. Dunne looked at her of studying the surroundings, at the woman ‘neath the uniform that wrapped every servant girl in the air of a nun, black and starched habit, hair tucked away.
She smiled in an open, inviting way. “You from New York?” she said. A pretty face.
“Wouldn’t be from anywhere else.”
“Where your people from?”
“Tipperary. Holy Cross, on my father’s side.”
“I come over with a family from Holy Cross.”
“Hope they weren’t relatives of mine. Got trouble enough taking care of myself!”
Her smile turned into a laugh. Straight teeth. Round, wide eyes: the deepest shade of green Dunne had ever seen.
Right then Dunne heard Dandy Dan’s voice in his ear, as though Dan’s shade was standing beside the stoop, fretting in the way he did when annoyed, moving his feet back and forth, his voice getting high and angry: Get along, Jim! Want to see a woman laugh and smile? Take a week’s tour of Greene Street once the job is done. The money will make the girls grin aplenty. Have all the sharebone a man can stand!
Just a minute more, Dan.
The uniform couldn’t completely hide what a fine, full figure she had.
She stood with her hands on her hips, a doxy’s kind of pose. But Dunne felt there was something sweet about her, even an innocence. She talked on about missing her family, abou
t the nature of her work, about the difference between what you expect of New York and what you find. Dunne lingered and listened. She had a gift for talking. Put a man at ease.
She paused. Seemed the moment to go. Dunne tipped his cap. “Best be off,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s getting warm. Soon the heat will be on us for sure,” and she reached up and took hold of the stiff white cap about her head, lifted it off, and the red-golden hair fell about her shoulders, waves of it, startling bright as it caught the sun. She tossed her hair and took out the pins.
“They’re all away, Mr. Bedford at work, his wife at the shore. What harm if a girl works without this pressed about her head like a crown of thorns?” She tossed her hair again, leaned her head from side to side, used her hand as if it was a comb, and the hair fell down her back, framed her face, rich ropes of it, thick folds of it, and the green eyes seemed even greener than before.
“Miss Kerrigan will have at me. But little joy there’ll be in life to them who listen to the likes of Miss Kerrigan!” She glanced up at the sky. “At home, on days as hot and clear as this, little work be done or expected. But here there’s no choice.” She gave a look: half sad, half happy, oh well. Those eyes. “Good-bye,” she said, and disappeared inside.
Dunne was alone on the sidewalk. He knew he should be gone, but he stayed. The ghost of Dandy Dan had completely disappeared, no echo of his voice, couldn’t remember a thing he’d ever said. Dunne was unsure of what to do next, unsure in a manner difficult to explain. It was as if the weather had suddenly changed, although it hadn’t, or as if the air itself was somehow different than before, although it wasn’t; and he kept feeling like that, unsure, even when he went his way, and stayed feeling like that all day and the next, till Sunday, standing in the back of St. Stephen’s, the church where the neighborhood servant girls hear Mass, he searched amid the crowd and saw the back of her fine head, her hair drawn up beneath a hat, her face leaned into a prayerbook. Just watching her gave him a stirred and happy sensation, although not the kind church was supposed to give.