Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  Philip Large stammers until Cinders whispers in his ear. Philip then transforms and lowers his wide shoulders and round eyes in preparation for the fight to come.

  Harry comes to me, “Ya still got that yoke?”

  From my coat I reveal the pipe, “I do.”

  “Ya said ya’d fight for this place, is it true?”

  “I told you, I’ll fight and die for those what helped my family.”

  “Good, we’ll fight. Cinders, we need to prepare, an’ quick. We’ll need to tell Paddy to get all the strongest homebrew an’ grain alcohol, wet some towels wit’ it and plug the bottles an’ keep matches close,” Harry looks round to everybody in the room, Red Donnelly and Henry Browne, The Lark and Big Dick, Philip Large, Dance Gillen, Thomas Burke and myself until he draws the gun in his righthand and a shiv in the left. “We’re a shadow of our former selves, but if Bill thinks he’s gonna take this place wit’ a simple thrust, he’s mistaken. Our ways are the ways o’ honor and Bill Lovett has never valued that.”

  Waves of screams come from the crowd outside as Harry puts a hand on the desk, “The Dock Loaders’ Club has been our headquarters since 1848. The power in Irishtown has always resided here except durin’ Maroney’s time. But we had it out wit’ him an’ took it back. We will burn it to the ground before losin’ it again. An’ we’ll always be remembered as standin’ up for honor’s sake, hopefully,” he allows for doubt in that statement. But then resurges with an angry assurance. “Bill Lovett would sink Irishtown in the East River if he could be the captain to go down wit’ it, see. An’ the pain that ya may feel before death? It will be a small price to pay for the cowardice ya fam’ly will know o’ ya if we back down to Bill Lovett. To the end, we will stand up for our people. To the end, we lie down for no one. I ask yaz this question, why is Dinny Meehan in jail right now? Why?”

  “Because he stole thousands o’ dollars worth o’ boots from Hanan & Sons?” Dance answers unsurely.

  “That’s right,” Harry agrees in a hoarse growl and a pointed finger, then wheels round to the men. “He stole it to help those that need helpin’. That’s what Dinny Meehan does, he uses his might to help people. To make right. He has always been there for them. I know I ain’t much for talkin’. An’ what I done. . . I have paid for my mistakes. Paid dearly, ya have no idea. . . But Dinny has been fair wit’ me. Even in punishment, he is fair. I was a orphan wit’ nothin’ an’ nobody but an ol’ nun named Sister Reynolds who I was named after, but Dinny reached his hand out to me an’ gave me life an breathed life into me. An’ I know for a fact that all o’ yaz have a similar story as mine. An’ so too all o’ them people outside. We are the forgotten, we are the unneeded, but Dinny always remembers us. No one cared for ya, but he did! If ya die today, ya die fightin’ for everythin’ that’s right in this world, even if it is against the law. Ya die fightin’ against what we know is wrong. I don’ care if no one ever knows about me a hundret years from now an’ I’m completely forgotten. For me. . . this is more than enough.”

  Every man in the room stands and barks in accord. The ceiling is too low, so we can’t raise our fists and weapons. But we bark and howl like rabid dogs in husky, rhythmic punchy sounds, REW, REW, REW, and stamp in unison. Ready for death and a scorched earth plan. Refusing ever to secede our headquarters to Bill Lovett.

  In a horrible hymn, and with a pulsing rhythm, REW, REW, REW, we trample down the stairs in a great calamitous war chant.

  Over a shoulder I see Burke, who has not dared to make a move.

  I turn round to him angrily, “Do you think you’re safe up here?”

  “I. . . I might just crawl out the window and jump down. Make my escape out back and maybe I can—”

  “We have a hundred men who aren’t here,” I interrupt him. “Go get some of them as reinforcements. You know where the local men live here in Irishtown. You can run through the snow. Now go.”

  I make him go ahead of me down the stairs. Behind the bar, Paddy and Cinders collect match boxes and plug bottles with towels as Burke and I walk by. Philip stands next to them with his mouth open.

  “Go wit’ Liam,” Cinders tells Philip, who waddles round the bar.

  We file out the front door together as a band, barking and stamping, REW, REW, REW. Outside, we stand in the snow along the perimeter of the saloon. Above us, frozen spikes hang from the low roof that glitter like crystal glass in the morning sun.

  The slew of mendicants that have braved the weather fall back away from the Dock Loaders’ Club when they hear us bark and see us with weapons wielded.

  “Please Liam!” Mrs. Lonergan’s shrill voice cuts through our deep chants. “Just enough to get us t’rough the day! A few dullars!”

  Beyond the edge of the crowd people are being shoved by something, though I can’t see who or what it is. Whatever it is, it heads straight for the Dock Loaders’ Club. Some cheer and shout as it gets closer. With the back of my foot against the wood frame of the saloon, I hold the pipe tight in my right hand.

  I will not kill, but I will beat them back. I will not kill.

  “For Mickey!” Dance Gillen pulls the bolt and barrel back to chamber the first bullet on the M.12.

  REW, REW, REW, we chant and stomp and bang cudgels and pipes against the wood-framed headquarters.

  Philip Large stands next to me and I pat him on his thick shoulder and make a fist as he nods back to me with his round eyes and tiny mouth while Burke slinks away and runs round the corner.

  “Where’s he goin’?” Harry demands.

  “He’s goin’ to get more men that live nearby,” I yell over the crowd noise. “But if he doesn’t come back, well—”

  “Good thinkin’,” Harry nods.

  The bodies in front of us begin to part. Some realize that a gang war is about to erupt and wrench their children by the hand in panic and push through the crush.

  REW, REW, REW! Louder now, meaner, eyes bulging, teeth gritting.

  “The king is here!” Mrs. Lonergan screams. “The king o’ Irishtown!”

  The entire crowd jumps in glee as Harry and I look at each other. The slew opens in front of us to form a clearing as up ahead the gaunt and elongated face of The Swede appears, while his long body casts a ghostly pall a head taller than all else. Angrily he drives people from his way with one arm and berates them. His other arm hangs uselessly at his side.

  Cinders runs out with a flaming bottle in his hand, “What happened?”

  “I’ve never been so happy to see such a ugly mug,” I yell in Harry’s direction, pointing at The Swede.

  “Vincent!” Red Donnelly runs ahead and lifts Vincent Maher onto a shoulder in elation.

  In the air Vincent is all sly smiles and piercing eyes. When Red lets him down he musses Vincent’s mane and hugs him from the side. Behind them the Mullen and Sutton boys throw their small fists in the air. Vincent quickly has a hand-rolled in his teeth as he cuts through the slew with a libertine’s swagger. The Masher, as he is monikered, surveys the crowd in a slim-fit long coat that hugs his lithe build. He then purses his lips and adjusts his cock down along his left leg. The length of his famous manhood plainly shows in his thigh-tight, belt-less trousers while the suspenders hang round the knees.

  As Vincent and The Swede step aside, Dinny Meehan emerges and dawns through a clearing of the hungry Irishtown faithful. I can’t help but smile when I see his powerful frame stride toward me while Feeble Philip embraces me so hard that I drop the lead pipe into the snow. The throaty words that spill out of Philip’s mouth are indecipherable, but it’s clear he is as elated as I am. It is then that the chanting falls into bursts and fits as Dinny’s people claw at his clothing and pull at him. He moves forward with a manful gate and unflinching eyes. And sees me. Sees through me, even.

  I turn to Harry to share in the relief, but he has gone. In the offing I spot the back of him as he moves through the thick slew away from us.

  From the side Mrs. Lonergan falls to her knees and cries to D
inny and clutches at his thighs. He stops and touches her disfigured face, leading her back to her feet with a gentle hand on her cheek. Among the wild horde round them, her many children hold tight to her sack dress and eye the man who helps their mother stand.

  “Please don’ kill me son Richie,” she implores. “I beg ya! Oh god, please fer once. Listen to me. Please don’ do that to me. Not me Richie. Ye will be saved!” She suddenly screams out as she watches him walk through the crush. “When god comes back again, ya will be saved from the second death! Blessed are the dead what die in the name of our lord! On such his followers the second death hath no power!”

  “What is she, some fanatic now? It’s gods an’ kings all the time wit’ her,” Big Dick laughs.

  “Is that Tanner Smith?” The Lark wonders. “Why is Tanner goddamn Smith wit’ Dinny an’ them?”

  “And Dead Reilly too,” I say, the attorney tiptoes through the muddy snow in pointy black patent leather shoes and a pin-stripe suit.

  “Tanner paid our bail,” Vincent motions to me. “He got us out.”

  “He fookin’ backstabbed us a couple years back,” Cinders says. “He betrayed us. All o’ us.”

  As Dinny walks toward me, my knees shake. He stops as I hold the door open, and looks at me with his green-stoned eyes and shakes my hand.

  “Grab me a couple stools, would ya?” He says humbly, so I turn round and grab two from the bar inside and hand them to him through the door.

  He takes the stools and sets them in front of the coal-soot windows of the Dock Loaders’ Club and stands upon them. When the crowd sees him above, they cheer, though the widows spoon at their pots and pans noisily. Now joined by his enforcers, The Swede and Vincent, the rest of us, dockbosses and righthands and myself, surround him below.

  “I should be going, fellows. Thank you so much, I’ll be leaving now,” Dead Reilly reaches out timidly to shake our hands goodbye.

  “Wait here awhile,” Tanner tells Reilly.

  “I really should be going now—”

  “Wait here,” Tanner holds the sharply dressed attorney by the upper arm. “Why ya wanna run off so fast? Ya got a client more important than us?”

  Reilly looks shaken as Dinny looks down at him, “Well do ya?”

  “Eh, no I don’t,” Reilly washes a kerchief across his forehead and nervously mumbles to himself.

  Dinny motions to the crowd and asks for silence by lowering his palms. But the hungry people are in hysterics.

  “They’re like to evict us,” A father holds his young son on his shoulders to see the the man known as King of the Exiled, King of the Diddicoys, King of Irishtown and of course, King of Kings County.

  “Where’s Lumpy?” Cinders asks Vincent.

  But Tanner Smith laughs when he hears that name, “Lumpy Gilchrist, the bean counter. . . Someone had to take it on the chin for the rest o’ them to get released. Best it was him.”

  “Is that true?” I ask Vincent.

  He shrugs. “Guess so.”

  Poor Lumpy Gilchrist, the savant.

  Lumpy could do but one thing in life; count numbers in his head, for which Dinny put him to good use. We want no record of our earnings, so Lumpy’s talent served our needs. In a time of relative peace, Lumpy was a valuable member of the White Hand. Other than that lone talent, however, he was as helpless as a baby.

  I look with concern to the feeble-minded Philip Large. The White Hand protects the weak and the defenseless, and for that I am proud, but at least Philip can fight like a wild boar. Knock-kneed Lumpy was as lily-livered as a lamb, but having him spend his remaining days in Sing Sing is a fate worse than death.

  Dinny stands over us and surveys the crowd of Irishtown faithful as a host of smokestacks and water towers stand sentinel in the east. He waits for them to quiet with cool patience as the currents of wind rush through his coat and snap behind him.

  “Me girls an’ me bhoys are hungry,” Mrs. Lonergan screeches. “I’ve already buried two childers! An’ now we’ve no food an’ facin’ eviction from that leech o’ the land, Mr. Vandeleurs an’ his own band o’ thugs. What will ya do fer us, man?”

  “Uhright, uhright,” The Swede growls as the clank of pots and pans chorus over him. “Let the man talk!”

  Dinny’s voice booms out over the heads to shepherd their attention, “I am here t’day to announce that our enemies are at the gates. The siege o’ Irishtown has begun!”

  The people jostle among each other in the cold to get a better look at him. From the cobblestones that reach down into the railyard on the water half a block away, to the street and sidewalks that lead up to the Hanan & Sons shoe factory in the opposite direction, the people move closer to hear him.

  “But when a people are forced to their knees, it’s not proof o’ their weakness. It’s proof only that their strength is to be feared. They have taken the life o’ one o’ our own, my own relation, Mickey Kane,” his voice cracks when he says the name.

  Sympathetic faces stare back to see if he will cry.

  “A golden prince, was he!” A woman howls.

  “The heir to Irishtown!” Another voice calls out.

  “T’was Bill Lovett!” A man yells out the bitter words we know to be true.

  Dinny roars out over them all, “They took his life to instill fear among us. To take our heart. To divide us!”

  “But we are hungry now!” Mrs. Lonergan demands as one hundred wooden spoons clap on one hundred pots to take up her claim.

  “I will feed ya,” Dinny looks in Mrs. Lonergan’s direction with kindness in his eyes. “It is my life’s work. I have always cared for the people o’ Irishtown an’ the elders what came from the old country, have I not?”

  It’s a fair play to him on that point. Not a single face can disagree.

  “An’ I always will until my dyin’ breath. But we who are here now, within the walls o’ Irishtown an’ the long riverine territories have a great decision upon us. For seventy years gangs have kept outsiders out. But now the enemy is. . . Ourselves. The outsiders, the foreigners, they have burrowed their way into our hearts an’ crept into our fam’lies within the walls. One o’ our own, Bill Lovett has turned against us.”

  “Again!” A woman holds up a fist.

  “Black bastard!” The Mullen boy yells.

  “Some o’ ya are related to his followers. Sons that ya love, or Grandsons even. Beloved husbands an’ carin’ fathers. . . I could not ask ya to turn against ya own family, for that is what Bill Lovett asks. We have a choice now, each an’ every one o’ us. Will ya turn against ya own people an’ join Lovett?”

  The crowd stirs.

  “I am loyal. I pledge a bunch o’ fives to ya!” The Mullen boy bows up and stands forth with two fists held up. His ferocity is joined too, by chants of “Patrick Kelly, Patrick Kelly, Patrick Kelly!”

  “The auld ways!” A toothless man sings out with spittle in the air. “Honor the ways of our forebears!”

  Dinny’s voice carries in the wind, “If only we could turn to one man for blame, but we cannot. Our enemy is fivefold an’ gainin’ power. I cannot make ya mind. I cannot give ya the courage to put ya lives up against our enemies. I have neither the right nor the arrogance to do so. An’ on my honor there will be no punishment from me if ya decide in ya heart that our enemy gives ya a better life. I simply ask ya a question,” he bows his head, then slowly brings it back up to the faces that watch him. “I ask ya to search in ya heart. Is there a-one o’ ya this day who believes Bill Lovett would do the same for yaz as what these men an’ myself have tried so hard to accomplish for our people?”

  “Bill Lovett only cares for hisself!” A woman announces. “He would never care for my fam’ly!”

  “We love ya, sir!”

  “Our people have survived much worse than Wild Bill Lovett,” they answer the call with cheers. “We will stand together as we have in the past. We will set aside our petty squabbles an’ accept our neighbor’s needs as our own. Do not come wit�
�� ya hand outstretched. Come bearin’ gifts, however meager they may be. That is our way.”

  “But we are hungry now!” Mrs. Lonergan repeats.

  On the stools, Dinny nods his head in the air and points down toward Tanner Smith who stands below and at his side, “Thanks to a ol’ friend, we are here in front o’ yaz today. Life as we known it will be forever changed. We no longer can make the money we once did since the war’s ended an’ no more European contracts to be had. . . For each family I have cash to give for meals this week,” Dinny meets their request. “An’ as far as the landlord Vandeleurs is concerned, we will pay that leech your rent for the next two months.”

  Cinders whispers in my ear, “Where’d Tanner get all that money, payin’ for bail an’ all these handouts? We banished him for good reason. Now he shows up like a hero wit’ a bag o’ money? Who gave him all that money’s what I wanna know.”

  Mrs. Lonergan blurts out, “What about Mickey Kane! What will be done about ya cousin’s, eh. . . disappearance? An’ what about the Red Hook territory?”

  Without answer, Dinny pans across the gathering to Mourning Mother Mary, as she is known. The burn scars on her face give her the mask of a woman perpetually sad, or insane. Yet Dinny looks upon her with great generosity.

  But Dinny Meehan does not warn his enemies before he strikes out at them. And so nothing is said in return. The silence itself is blacker than any words. In time the metallic moans of the Manhattan Bridge and its banshee screeches fill the void as a train passes overhead, cha-chum, cha-chum, cha-chum.

  “We should attack before they come at us,” The Swede whispers among Dinny’s inner circle. “Beat McGarry says Bill’s on his way now. Here!”

  But Dinny ignores him as he steps down from the stools and turns to my direction, “Where are the McGowans? Why are the McGowans not here?”

  I try to answer, but my heart gets caught in my throat when I think of Emma McGowan. It’s said that first love never dies, but when Emma died of the grippe, my willingness to love seemed to have died with her. I can no longer fall head over heels for a girl, and that might hurt worse than any beating Bill Lovett’s men could give me.