Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  “Don’ touch me ye fookin’ deviant,” she screams and pulls away in shame and fury. “Keep ya fookin’ hands to ya’self, god’amned toothless hare-brained eejit.”

  “I was just—”

  “I know what ya was doin’,” She turns to the three women and five men that have rushed out of the grocery store at her screams. “All women know what ya’re tryin’ to do. Catch a quick feel, ya fiend, wit’ ya. . . wit’ ya fookin’ claws an’ ya pointy nose.”

  “I’m sorry, I was just—”

  “Leave me alone!”

  The shocked onlookers then turn to the man as Anna makes her escape.

  What did I dream? I can’t remember my dream now. What did Neesha say? she strains to remember as she clops toward a train station in her gown and untied boots. What did he tell me?

  On the elevated train she rocks back and forth to keep warm and brushes her hands down her exposed arms.

  I just want to go back to sleep. Back to sleep so I can talk to him again.

  At the Twenty-Fifth Street Station she walks down the snowy stairwell as the wind tosses her hair in the air like flames against a city in white.

  On Fifth Avenue by Green-Wood Cemetery there are no grocery clerks to shovel the snowy sidewalks. Entire trees have fallen over the wrought iron fence and are now covered in snow that leaves the whole scene as if it were the end of the world. At each step her boots get wetter. Her feet, colder. The lower half of her dress is completely soaked in both melted snow and frozen piss.

  I’m going to freeze to death if I don’t get inside soon.

  Atop the hill on Sixth Avenue she turns round but her eyes water in the wind and freeze on her face. When she tries to wipe them away, it pulls the skin off her cheek. Eventually she focuses in the distance where smoke billows out of Red Hook.

  “I hope it burns, all of it!” She screams against the cold.

  When she recognizes the business sign she stops and reads aloud, “Yale & Stabile, Undertakers.”

  I can’t go in there though.

  She looks up to the third floor window, then searches the ground to find a rock. But there are none. None that she can see. Everything is buried in white.

  Behind the undertaker there is an old stone wall. Without tying her boots, she climbs up the wall by holding onto protruding rocks. As she grasps for balance, the mortar chips in her hand.

  At the top she reaches an arm across to grab hold of something. Then she slips and falls backward and screams. Before landing she tries to look behind her to see what she might fall on, a metal handrail? A garbage can? But before she can see below, the snowy ground comes up to smack her in the back.

  “Anna?” A voice calls down from a third-floor window.

  But Anna can’t respond.

  “Anna is that ya layin’ there? What happent?” Grace White yells down.

  “Why did yaz leave me?”

  “Leave ya?”Grace yells back. “We didn’ leave ya, this mornin’ ya wanted us to take ya home after Bill Lovett hurt ya. ‘Take me home, take me home,’ ya bellowed. That’s all ya would say, ‘Take me home, take me home.’”

  I don’t remember any of that.

  “Grace,” Anna mumbles. “Help. . . help.”

  “Jaysus on a stick, look at that mad woman,” Kit pops her head out and takes a long drag from a cigarette. “Ya hair looks like a big blood stain in the snow. Looks like a fookin’ crime scene down there. I wish I had one o’ them macgillicuddy’s, what o’ ya call them things? Photygraphic picture makers?” Kit flicks an ash that is taken away by the wind. “Anna ya tryna to kill ya’self or what? Why not get a pistol, it’s easier that way.”

  “She’s hurt I think,” Grace says.

  “She ain’t got nothin’ wrong wit’ her but a broken heart’s all. Anna, get ya spindly little arse up outta the snow.”

  “We should help her,” Grace disagrees in the window next to Kit.

  “Why? She ain’t no royal Stuart or Lancaster or York, she’s a fookin’ Lonergan,” Kit flicks the cigarette into the wind. “Anna get up!”

  And Anna does. She takes a deep breath and gets to her knees. Then eventually to her feet and wipes the freezing snow out of her hair and down the inside of her gown.

  “I’m up,” Anna yells back.

  “The drama wit’ this one,” Kit ducks back in the window.

  “I’m comin’ down for ya Anna,” Grace says and ducks in too, but Anna can still hear her talking up in the third floor. “I have a warm coat for ya an’ coal in the potbelly. We ain’t no shleps up here. Call it what ya like, Henhouse, slattern house, whatever, it’s warm.”

  I just want to go back to sleep. . . So I can talk to him again.

  What Comes of the Storm

  A match is struck in the dark doorway illuminating Detective William Brosnan’s large, jowly face and droopy eyes under beetle brows. He twists the gallery and mantle and raises the wick with gnarled fingers, then gently turns the knob and lights the wick on both sides until he has an even flame all round. Shaking out the matchstick behind, he turns up the flame on the gas lantern as yellow light blooms through the glass chimney to reveal that he stands in a narrow hallway at the top of a steep stairwell.

  Brosnan takes out a silver watch from a vest pocket with a fancy hunting case that was gifted him on his 25th year on the force, checks the time, and then snaps it shut. The old cop then turns his attention to the buttons on his dark blue tunic. Swollen joints leave him struggling to push the buttons through the buttonholes. At six-feet, two inches and with his police tunic on and a keg belly out ahead of him, he looks like a bear standing on hind legs. But what he had witnessed over his years as a Brooklyn beat cop left deep furrows in his face.

  “Paw-paw, paw-paw!” A shoeless child stumbles through the doorway and grabs for Brosnan’s pant-leg, the first step of the stairwell only inches away and disappearing into an unseen darkness below.

  “C’mere to me, don’t fall down them stairs an’ break yer crown Little Billie Bear,” Brosnan bellows in the booming, resonant North Dublin brogue he never did lose, then picks up the toddler who straddles his belly. “Ye know what they’ll call ye if ye break yer crown? Do ye?”

  “Paw, paw,” the child repeats, and stuffs four fingers into his teething mouth.

  “No, silly, they’ll call ye Billie Box o’ Rocks,” Brosnan laughs and swings the child over the dark stairwell. “Do ye wanna be called Billie Box o’ Rocks? Do ye?”

  “Yes!” little Billie screams.

  “Dad, what are ya doin’?” His daughter Doirean yells at him through the doorway.

  “Oh we’re just havin’ a bit o’ fun’s all.”

  “I mean why are ya all dressed up? The snow’s hip-deep out there and ya got the day off.”

  “Ah my Doe, I can’t even begin to tell ye the whole of it,” Brosnan kisses her forehead and holds her shoulder gently as he looks down at the bump where her third child warms inside her. “Things to care fer, is all.”

  “Is it because Daniel’s shift ended hours ago?”

  “No, no,” Brosnan shakes his head incredulously, but knows very well that his daughter sees right through him as if he were a glass door. Brosnan had learned years ago that when he lies to Doirean, she finds yet more evidence in his choice of words and his seemingly unabashed expressions. In truth, she is twice the investigator he could ever wish to be.

  “I. . . I just,” Brosnan feels her eyes piercing him, judging him, searching.

  “Then why go out now?”

  Brosnan’s chest rumbles in response.

  “Don’t ya growl at me, ya ol’ curmudgeon,” Doirean wags a finger at him with one hand and balls up a fist in the other. “Thirty-one years on the force an’ ya’ve earned the right to let the young men like Daniel work on snow days. I know a lotta people’ve died ‘cause o’ this storm, Dad, an’ ya wanna help them. But that’s not it, is it? Ya not goin’ out there to help people, are ya?”

  Little Billie Bear squirms i
n Brosnan’s arms under the yellow mantle light of the narrow hallway. He fiddles with his grandfather’s badge and then undoes one of the buttons on his tunic.

  “My Doe,” Brosnan begins.

  Doirean folds her arms over the bump, “Don’t call me that, just tell me why.”

  “I. . . I’ve finally got the answer I was hopin’ for?”

  “Well? What was the question?”

  “It’s good news all round is what I can tell ye at the moment, my Doe. Rest assured—”

  “An’ what’s that got to do wit’ goin’ out on this day in the god-forsaken snow? Ya don’ even make sense when ya lie, Dad.”

  I cannot tell you yet, my sweet. But soon you will know.

  Brosnan takes a deep breath. There is no one in this world who can cause him great pause but his little Doe. No man could ever hope to wield the power she has over him. When she looks up at him with those sweet brown eyes, his voice warms and softens. No one knows that voice but her and it even surprises him when he hears himself. But some things men must keep close to the chest. Women will worry, mothers even more, but Doirean is right now with-child and there’s just no need for her to get into the middle of his plan. Not now.

  He had worked on this plan for her and Daniel many months now, but only recently had it all come together. Everything was thought out carefully, calculatingly, and on this day it will all come to light. To clue her in now would be silliness. He longs to tell her and share in her delight, but it would mean revealing his innermost secrets and superstitions. For it is secrets and superstitions what comes of the storm.

  “It’s Daniel ya’re after,” she says resolutely. “Ya’re worried about him.”

  My god, she knows so much. God bless her. But she does not know all.

  She would not agree. But there’s too much wickedness out there for her to know it all. Things of late have become dire in Brooklyn, where life has long been held cheaply.

  But there ain’t no pockets in a shroud, Captain Sullivan once advised.

  Worse though, are the signs he has seen of late. The symbols, everywhere. Then came the storm and rumors of dead men returning. Again. The worst of them hangs over his family like a black specter, returned now. Returned again.

  “No, no,” he shakes his head again until Little Billie reaches up and grabs hold of his loose jowls as if to stop him from lying, then lays the side of his face on Brosnan’s barrel chest and plops a thumb in his mouth for comfort.

  “Has he gotten himself into trouble again?” Doirean asks in whisper.

  “I have good news, I say. But I have to go now. Billie? Can I play trumpet on yer face again?”

  “No!” He yelps and writhes at his grandfather’s tunic to get away.

  “C’mere ’til I tell ye,” Brosnan blows into Little Billie’s fat cheeks to make the funny flatulent sounds, which transforms the boy’s giggles into screeches of happiness.

  “Ya get him all riled up an’ then ya leave,” Doirean scolds and takes Billie away from him. “Ya just leave an’ ya don’t even say why.”

  “I bleedin’ love ye so much my Doe.”

  “Just go,” she turns away with Little Billie in her arms. “Wait.”

  Brosnan turns back from the first step of the stairwell to allow his daughter to straighten his badge and button the button Billie had undone. He waits with patience, long enough to see the tear that has welled up in her right eye. When done, she pats the button and spins round with a sniffle and slams the door behind her.

  “Remember Doe,” Brosnan yells through the door with a great bellow. “Dignity is the strength we hold in our name, the Brosnan way!”

  As he carefully steps down the narrow stairwell the wrinkles round the fifty-five year old man’s eyes move into a pensive glare. For Doirean hadn’t been a Brosnan close on five years now, she is a Culkin. He had raised her as a single father. A proud father. A patient, open-handed father. A father who gave her so much affection and love that she felt smothered and grew spiteful of it. Until something terrible happened—

  At P.S. Five where Doirean went to primary school, her best friend was a chipper little redhead named Maureen Egan. The girls were inseparable. Their classmates called them “Moe and Doe.” But Maureen’s father was a follower of Christie Maroney, the King of Irishtown back then. Snake Eyes they called him. And for good reason, that man had a poison tongue that spat hatred everywhere he went. When Moe and Doe turned nineteen and graduated, Maureen confided something Doirean never knew or could have ever considered: Maureen’s father had taken liberties with her body for many years. Raped her.

  Brosnan had roughed up Snake Eyes and arrested him, but he was soon released. Afterward he tried to help the young woman to escape her father’s wrath. Worse though, she needed to escape her own thoughts. Brosnan couldn’t help her there, and that was when she fell: To drugs and the drink and Christie Maroney, her father’s boss. And she never got up again. Her new home was above Jacob’s Saloon on Sands Street between the bridges. But it was more like a prison where heroin and cocaine and alcohol were her bars and rough men in derby hats her guards. Maureen Egan, Doirean’s best friend, was lost to Brooklyn.

  It wasn’t until then that Doirean began to appreciate her father. His presence over her and the protection he provided when she was most vulnerable as a little girl made her feel blessed. She had come back to her father’s loving arms and from then on, nothing could get between them.

  Doirean’s eyes watch him from the window above as the old fellow wades through the snow. He can feel her watching, but does not look back. Even though motherhood has endowed her with powers, she cannot sense the wraiths that come out of the storms. She cannot know. For he has never told her the truth about the death of his wife, her mother. And the terrors that await Daniel Culkin.

  Brosnan wipes his brow as he struggles through deep snow.

  You can do this old man. You must.

  “G’mornin’ Detective Brosnan,” Patrolman Ferris emerges from a group of four tunics standing in front of a Navy Street tenement. “Ya really goin’ out to Manhatt’n?”

  “No choice, ye said it was Wisniewski ya saw with Daniel durin’ the storm, that only means one thing.”

  “Well that is Wolcott’s lump, after all. Wiz the Lump, they call him.”

  “Daniel never came home last night,” Brosnan wipes his mouth as frost billows in front of his face.

  “Doe know what’s doin’?”

  “She knows but she don’t.”

  “Mind if I tag along? We don’ get to jaw so much since ya was promoted to big shot.”

  “Big shot my arse,” Brosnan smiles. “Sure c’mon then.”

  Patrolman Ferris had been broken-in by Brosnan some fifteen years ago and turned out to be a dependable partner. The son-in-law of Captain Sullivan of the Poplar Street Police Station, he paved the way for Brosnan to bring Daniel Culkin onto the force when Doirean settled for the sly, petulant younger man. And when Brosnan was promoted to detective, he could still keep his eyes on his son-in-law by naming Ferris his partner.

  Inside the wooden train that rumbles over the Manhattan Bridge commuter rails, Brosnan grips the straphanger and turns to Ferris, “Ye sure t’was Garry Barry that left with Daniel?”

  “Ya told me to tail him when I could, so I did,” Ferris answers from the side of his mouth. “He met up wit’ Wiz the Lump, walked into a Hoyt Street tenement an’ they came out wit’ Barry an’ his lone crony, James Cleary.”

  “I’ll tell ye what Doe does know,” Brosnan leans toward Ferris while he keeps his eyes on the train patrons. “She knows he’s up to somethin’ now that even I won’t suffer. Did ye know last weekend Daniel had a brand new sofa delivered to our room on Navy Street? What patrolman salary allows for such a luxurious items, I ask? An’ all the gold he buys? Real gold too! At least yerself an’ I know to tuck our dirty money in a savin’s account. But Daniel Culkin? No, he wants it flaunted for all to see.”

  Ferris leans in too, “I
put my wife’s name on my account. Just in case, ya know?”

  Brosnan smiles, “I just spent all that money.”

  “Yeah? On what?”

  “Never mind. Ye’ll find out in due time,” Brosnan changes the subject. “Not even Daniel knows. I might’ve taken him under my wing when he married my daughter, but I don’t trust him worth a shriveled shite. He’s too quick to the blackjack, he’s got no dignity about him an’ now he’s up-jumped himself to a dangerous height. To work directly for Jonathan G. Wolcott an’ the Waterfront Assembly? Oh no, no no. Now he’s gone too far an’ I’m after convincin’ Wolcott to release him from his employ, for good an’ ever.”

  Patrolman Ferris nods, tilts his head and sucks through his teeth, “Ya ever worry that ya shelter the kid too much? Sometimes a guy’s gotta learn about his follies the hard way, ya know?”

  The bear growls, “It’s more than that, Ferris. It’s the hand o’ destiny we’re up against here. My fam’ly’s destiny. History, prophecy, blood an’ dreams all inform me. As much as it pains me, there’s nothin I am more certain of than the task at hand. This terror I must face dauntlessly, selflessly. It is all for my little Doe. All.”

  “Destiny eh?” Ferris stares at a bearded Hasidim wearing a yarmulke with long ringlet-sideburns that hang to his shoulders. “I known ya a good long time now, Brosnan. An’ any time Garry fookin’ Barry’s name comes to ya lips, ya get all fidgety an’ spookt.”

  “Because I saw him dead, twice,” Brosnan makes a fist and whispers angrily through his teeth. “To save Daniel, my son, I have to alter destiny. A task way too big for the likes o’ me. I have to untangle the trap Wolcott dragged him into. Daniel’s now caught in the same nightmare that took Doirean’s mother.”

  Ferris purses his lips, “Didn’t she die givin’ birth to Doirean?”

  Brosnan lowers his head, This is why I have never spoken with anybody about this. They won’t believe.

  Ferris turns to Brosnan with a straight face, “Is Daniel pregnant?”

  “I don’t blame ya for makin’ light o’ my situation, but if t’was yer own daughter that was facin’ life without her husband—”