Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  “Is it true?” Darby sees a man say among three others who bandy about a hand-rolled cigarette between them.

  “Can it be true?” The older man answers with a question.

  “He came to me,” Darby tells them, eyes fixed above. “He gave me the gun. An’ I gave it to Richie Lonergan.”

  From the deck of a bobbing lighter-barge tied up in the Atlantic Basin, four bundled sailors stare up at the pierhouse roof along with everyone else, while all round them the harbor wind blows through their clothing.

  Bill Lovett sits up as the onlookers gasp and a morning moon floats softly in the new sky over the returned soldier. He rests his elbows on his knees and slumps groggily, eyes down at his boots. He kicks some snow from his way and stands in place and stretches his back. Slowly he turns to the north and pants for air. His face and neck are pocked with pustules and blisters, his hair shorn close except on top where it is whipped back, black and slick above a couple fawn ears. His half-round black eyebrows look painted on his pale face like some crepuscular carnival clown.

  Though the air is frozen, his face is dewy and his collar is damp with sweat. He grits through a cough and turns to the opposite direction toward the South Terminal of Red Hook, which was lost to the Italian Black Hand while he was gone to war. He then winces inwardly as his stomach muscles stifle another deep cough. The onlookers watch him and stare with dread in the low morning light, for a great grippe still tears through the waterfront neighborhoods like the black plague of Medieval Europe.

  “He is a dark angel. Do not be fooled. He is a demon,” the older man with the thickly wrinkled face warns.

  Bill Lovett wears a rudely sheered sheepskin over his Army uniform with one large hole cut for his head and two smaller holes for his arms. The animal had been butchered by his own hand for its meat and warmth in the wilds of France. The shearling coat is now darkened from exposure and was tanned with the wool intact in the forest where his Metropolitan Division was surrounded for weeks, taking heavy casualties.

  The pelt is blackened in the front because he had to crawl on his belly under German fire to draw water from a ravine, Darby would later learn. Bombarded not only by the Hun, but his company had also caught a barrage from their own side when inaccurate coordinates were sent through carrier pigeons. Seven hundred of them had been surrounded, only one-hundred and ninety four would escape with their lives. With the dead all round them, they suffered from pleurisy and gas poisoning. Bill had been shot through the right arm and right leg in a nine hour standoff that left charred and dismembered bodies strewn among the churned earthen craters from German shells. As he dragged himself off his machine gun post after an order to retreat, a faint yellow cloud overtook him. He heard the canister hiss, but could not move fast enough. He eventually lost consciousness.

  In a report written by 2d Lt Sidney Delvin, Bill was dragged for a quarter-mile, but had gone cold and unresponsive. The company, under perpetual battering at both flanks from trench mortars and rifle fire, resumed their retreat without him. In Delvin’s report, Non Connors was mentioned as “causing great distress among the ranks,” by protesting the decision to retire without Lovett’s body, but he too had been wounded and was hauled off despite his unrest.

  In the end, Bill Lovett’s remains were left in the rushes amidst a hilly grouping of white birch trees in the forest of Argonne. A burlap sack covered his upper body and face.

  Five weeks later Bill’s name was included among many others in the New York newspapers as “Missing in action, presumed dead.” Father Larkin of the parish of St. Ann’s appeared at his parents’ room on Jay Street in the Bridge District of Brooklyn, the priest’s hands clasped, his head bowed. Two uniformed men flanked him, hats under arms. Pt. William Joseph Lovett was dead.

  But death need not prove fatal, and like some motley assemblage of reluctant death worshipers Darby Leighton and the others see him risen here and now in Red Hook. And under Bill’s sheepskin is a Distinguished Service Cross pinned to his 77th Infantry uniform, as well as a crude patch on the shoulder of a halo-crowned lady liberty who holds up a flame, which matches the statue just beyond Governor’s Island on the water behind him.

  Bill takes in the snow covered industrial view as one-arm Flynn sidles up to him, “This is our home, Bill.”

  “No one tells us what to do,” adds Connors. “Ever again.”

  Bill looks round himself, then at the two men he fought with in France, “Smells like piss and diesel.”

  Flynn crows out a laugh.

  As the men below await his noticing them, a doleful smile crosses Bill’s face as he finds the feral hounds below tip-toeing on the frozen ground and yawping into the cold air.

  The teen Richie Lonergan, the one with the delay in his leg, limps forward and steps in front of Darby, who moves from his way. Innocently, and without the superstitious reverence of the other onlookers, Richie stares with ice-blue, high cheekbone eyes up to the three uniformed veterans surveying their old territory above Red Hook’s North Terminal.

  Bill then looks from the hounds to Richie, and summons him with a slow wave. Richie wears trousers he’d outgrown two years ago, hiked high by suspenders. He labors up the stairwell and yanks at one leg and leans heavily on the handrail so as not to put much weight on the wooden peg strapped to his thigh where his lower leg had been severed years earlier by a streetcar trolley.

  Approaching Bill, Richie pulls the .45 from his belt and hands it back, grip first.

  Darby observes the teen melee fighter with envious eyes, I’m the one who gave that to him.

  “Richie,” Bill says above, vapor streaming over his shoulder.

  “Yeah.”

  “Help Connors an’ Flynn get the men against the pierhouse wall,” Bill commands, stopping to catch his breath. “Ya wit’ us now. Ya’re my lieutenant. Understand?”

  Richie’s pale blue eyes focus on the men below, “Yeah.”

  Connors and Flynn briskly walk past Richie, their heavy boots clop down the wooden stairwell as they yell toward the men below, scattering them. Richie irritably looks down and reaches for the handrail to begin his slow, labored descent.

  “Richie,” Bill calls again.

  The teen turns round in short steps to keep his balance and looks over a shoulder.

  “Good work.”

  Darby’s upturned face remains fixed on Bill. The long creases in the returned gang leader’s Army issue slacks ripple in the gusts and the woolly fleece flattens as Bill stares along the coastline toward Gravesend until the sensation of a cough bends him in half. Chest rattling, Bill hacks heavily until he puts both hands on his knees to regain regular breathing.

  Troubled glares come from the men below. For months, ships have arrived in the New York Harbor with the Yellow Jack flag signifying contamination. When Mickey Kane ran Red Hook for Dinny’s White Hand gang, many were stricken with the great grippe, and the influenza spread across the country and the world over a few months’ time. In Brooklyn, soldiers had come back from the war with a simple wet cough like Whitehander Johnny Mullen, only to drown in their own lungs within a fortnight. And amidst the men Darby heard mention that James Hart the teamster had recently been rushed to Cumberland Hospital in dire straights. He was supposed to haul a truckload of coal ash and cinders from the Navy Yard, but collapsed wheezing with the grippe in his lungs.

  “Against the wall boyos!” Connors yells at the onlookers who stare at Bill as he descends.

  “Shoulders, asses an’ ankles,” Flynn yells. “Get in formation. Stand at attention. Ten men against the pierhouse wall at arm’s length. Good, good. Now make rows.”

  Hopping through the snow a pair of wet rats wiggle between the lines of men to get from one pier to another.

  “Looky there,” Flynn chuckles. “That’s a good sign. Trench rabbits can survive just about anythin’. If yaz prove half as tough as trench rabbits, ya might be wort’ the moniker.”

  As the pack of hounds descend on the rats and sink their
teeth into the rodents’ backs and necks and run off with them through the lines, Bill laughs with wet and hoarse chortles.

  Darby stares incredulously at Bill. Barely able to decipher the orders, he hears only mumbles while his focus remains on the man coming down for him.

  It had been six long years since Darby had been banished to the shadows by Dinny Meehan for something that was not his fault. Six years alone. Darby hopes they were not for naught.

  Back then Dinny had outsmarted Pickles Leighton, Darby’s younger brother, and had him sent to Sing Sing. But Darby too was made to suffer his brother’s effrontery, since loyalty always leans to lineage before clan. Twenty-nine years old now, and Darby has spent the majority of his life hiding in abandoned basements, behind factory walls, observing from row house rooftops along the waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn and fighting the creatures that sprung in his own mind. Banished from working on the docks, even with him being a Meehan man, Darby was forced to live with the rats and roaches in the shadows where the White Hand gang had chased him.

  Until this moment.

  But shadows need light for life to spread a darkened reflection. And like a shadow, Darby Leighton is caught somewhere between.

  Only twelve short hours ago, Darby’s daughter was born. Twelve strange hours. He had held the child in dismay, while the muffled cries of happiness from his fiancé echoed in his head. As he clutched the swaddled creature delicately under a hallway gas lamp, an epiphany swelled inside him. A guiding light, she would be. A message from some god, a true god, that he had been found. Illumined, he could finally emerge from his darkness.

  In celebration, Darby took to the drink as men often do at the birth of a child. His older brother Frank had come with him and spoke into his good ear. Frank mentioned that he and Darby’s fiancé and newborn daughter should consider a move to the burgeoning suburbs of Connecticut with him to start a new life. But when Darby turned to look at Frank’s face, he was not there. Drunk, Darby had unwittingly migrated to one of his hideouts; a shack on the roof of a row house where once pigeons were bred. He could not be seen there. He could not be found. The snow came down thick as thumbs and swirled outside the coup, breaking apart in front of his eyes, slicing through the chicken wire. He looked at the bottle of whiskey in his hand, but it was empty. He remembered the baby and the echoes in the hospital hallway, and remembered feeling illumined by light. He wondered why he had come back to his old haunts after having an epiphany.

  Was it habit? Did the drink make me fall back to my old comforts? Was it fate? But I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe anything I can’t see with eyes. He shakes his head, I’m not even sure what I believe.

  Inside the pigeon shack, the door opened and a black figure handed him a gun.

  “Give this to Richie Lonergan,” the figure said.

  “Bill?” Darby wondered.

  It appeared as though the figure was wearing a black mask that covered his eyes and had a long, phallic nose.

  “Tell him I need to know who he really is. Tell him this is for Mickey Kane.”

  Now, after daybreak with his wet boots in the snow, Darby Leighton looks up to Bill Lovett whose mouth moves without words.

  Epiphanies are as fleeting as flakes of snow.

  He blinks impassive eyes as men are yelling and scrambling in formation all round him. Still coming down the stairs, Bill Lovett’s mouth moves again, but Darby cannot make out the words and tilts his good ear at him.

  “What?”

  Impatient, Non Connors punches him in the side of the head, waking Darby to Bill’s orders, “Up against the wall ya fool!”

  “Me? But Bill came to me—”

  Connors then kicks Darby’s legs out from under him, “Now!”

  “Extend ya arms ya bunch o’ fookin’ navvies,” Connors continues as Darby rises to stand with the others. “Get in formation. Do it. Do it now, we don’ got all day. Now drop ya arms an’ look straight forward. I catch anyone lookin’ at the captain and yaz’ll end up just like Mickey Kane in the drink. Don’ look at him Matty, I’ll fookin’ kill ya. Timmy? Ya got it?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.”

  “Shaddup then,” Connors looks at Leighton one last time and points in his face. “No one looks at the captain. Just stand still.” Connors then steps back and surveys the lines. “A’right, there all yours Captain.”

  Bill Lovett nods toward Connors and Flynn to stand behind him. Richie falls in with the rest after finally descending the stairs. Bill stops as a crackling sound emanates from his lungs until he spits red into the white snow and grunts as Darby’s eyes move to the ruddy splotches at his feet.

  Bill peers into each man’s eyes as he stalks the lines. Teens Richie Lonergan and Abe Harms. And neither look back. Petey Behan, Timothy Quilty and Matty Martin, they all stare ahead obediently. All is quiet but the crunching of snow under Bill’s feet. As he crosses in front of them a tugboat hoo-hoos in the waterway distance. Best friends Joey Behan and James Quilty, both Army vets too, stand bolt upright. The experienced Frankie Byrne and his followers Sean Healy and Jidge Seaman. And Richie’s father too, old man John Lonergan and forty others are lined up along Commercial Wharf.

  More like prisoners than soldiers.

  In a raspy voice, Bill speaks out, “Ya know what he done to us. Dinny Meehan. . . But it won’t happen again.”

  He said the name, Darby thinks. You’re not supposed to say that name.

  Bill turns at the end of the men and paces back, “Meehan sent Pickles Leighton to the stir,” he sulkily nods toward Darby, then to Non Connors. “An’ set up Connors afterward. And to crown it off, he gives the South Terminal to them guinnea-fookin’-wops, lettin’ them cross the Gowanus into our territory,” he turns on his heel southward and points. “To this very fookin’ day, they are allowed into the territory I used to run. ’Til he set me up too, for murder. I had to go to war on another continent to show this country my loyalty to it. An’ for what? Because Dinny wanted me outta the way, that’s for what. A man what speaks highly o’ honor, yet bends low to demean us.”

  Cool grumbles float through the lines of threadbare and scruffy men.

  “But Dinny Meehan fights more than mere men. He fights fate,” Bill’s voice is commanding, almost ceremonial. “He may imagine himself made outta clay, but’ I am fated to lead from the Dock Loaders’ Club atop Irishtown.”

  Bill criticizes Dinny for believing in divine right, but believes he is fated?

  “The rightful King o’ Irishtown has come back,” a man in the back of the line voices his support.

  “Hear, hear,” others agree with the sentiment, but Bill shoots a look back at them.

  “I ain’t no king,” the words are half-drown in phlegm until he clears his throat. “But the power o’ the seat above the Dock Loaders’ Club can make life. Or break it. It breathes into lungs an’ it suffocates. It feeds babies an’ starves them. It is heat against the ice an’ shelter against the storm,” he turns with an arm pointed north. “That seat above Irishtown is pure revelation! An’ is fated to me. Fated to all them who would bleed wit’ me. All o’ yaz here t’day were lost to Dinny Meehan’s plan. Some o’ ya like the Leighton fam’ly been lost for years now. But we shall rise! Together. An’ through me is the way among the lost people reborn and ready!”

  He knows, he knows me. Darby’s skin tingles with goose prickles and his eyes fill with cold diamonds as the men burst with excitement and call out his glories.

  “An’ now?” Bill moves his pointed arm toward the channel. “Now Dinny Meehan has killt his own cousin. What kind o’ wretch murders his own kin?”

  Caw-caw, Flynn quarks in laughter at Bill’s words.

  The man in his fifties next to Darby turns to him, “He is a false prophet, I say. An archon of death.” He then breaks the formation and thrusts in heavy strides through the snow toward Imlay Street and the north.

  “Old man!” Connors yells at him.

  “Let him go,” Bill interr
upts and cups his mouth to project his voice toward the old, scared man. “Ya tell the leaderless men at the Dock Loaders’ Club what comes for them! While Dinny an’ his inner circle are in jail. We come t’day for them!”

  Darby’s head is tilted. He wonders if he had heard Bill correctly a moment earlier. He turns to Abe Harms behind him in the line, “Did Bill say the man killt his own cousin? Mickey Kane?”

  Connors growls and hurls himself at Darby. He punches and wrenches him to the ground for all eyes to see, “Ya can’t keep ya mouth shut, can ya?”

  When Darby lifts his head from the snowy ground, the barrel of a gun is held to his nose at the end of Flynn’s only arm.

  “Ya gonna be the one I make a example of?” Bill says as the wind-tossed fur on his sheepskin pelt tousles in waves. “Ya gonna be the one?”

  Unable to hear exactly what Bill says, Darby asks, “Why would the man kill his own cousin?”

  Bill walks among the men on the wall, “I bet everyone here knows but ya’self, Darby. Richie c’mere.”

  Richie breaks formation and limps to the side of Bill.

  “Answer the question,” Bill demands.

  Richie’s eyes go from Darby to Abe Harms, who mumbles to him, “To blame it on Bill.”

  Richie turns to Bill with his eyes to the ground in supplication, “So to blame it on ya, Bill.”

  “That’s right,” Bill stares daggers at Darby and pivots confidently to the men along the wall. “That’s to what lengt’ Dinny Meehan’ll go to to make sure we never have the right o’ things with the people o’ Irishtown. He’s a sick, sick man, Dinny Meehan. He’s taken everythin’ ya have. Even ya’self Darby, didn’ he? Was it fair when he banished ya? All them years ago?”

  But it’s a lie. It’s not right. Darby shakes off his thoughts and instead says, “Well, no—”

  “Then why do ya act the fool? Why? Never mind. It don’ matter, because the rest o’ these guys are tired o’ bein’ taken for a ride. They wanna work. We’ve all been through the shit, haven’t we?”