“Bill, ya ain’t my enemy,” Dinny turns round and raises his voice. “Bill Lovett ain’t our enemy. I ain’t Bill Lovett’s enemy. We are two sides o’ the same coin. Two factions from the same clan. The real enemy is out there an’ we gotta come together to fight it shoulder-to-shoulder. Now look at what’s happenin’ t’day. Look around, Bill. Everywhere. The signs. The symbols. We are headed for a bloody downfall if we fight amongst ourselves. I ask ya to set ya differences aside an’ join wit’ us against the real enemy who haunts us; Wolcott an’ his patsy errand-boy, Garry fookin’ Barry. Ya’re my fam’ly, Bill. We’re fam’ly. Because ya fam’ly was side-by-side wit’ mine down in Jackson Hollow.”
“Where’s Jackson Hollow?” Bill lowers his eyes.
“Jackson Hollow was where our fam’lies squatted when they got off the boat in the 1840s. They came shoeless. In rags, but they survived. My father was a child an’ only a few shacks away from ya grandparents in the empty lots. Ya see, we’re cinched by blood, Bill. Back then the newspapers compared our fam’lies to pigs an’ wild dogs, thievin’ monkeys. They still do, yet ya bow to them. There’s a lotta shit goin’ on around Brooklyn, but what do the papers choose to write about? Tilda’s Tears? They talk about one guy that ya beat up instead o’ all the wrongs that are done by the businesses in Brooklyn to the strugglin’ fam’lies who have to break the law to put shoes on their children’s feet. That’s because the newspapers are businesses. An’ both o’ us? We’re the enemy. We are the enemy o’ the Waterfront Assembly who wants nothin’ more than to have us fight each other. Do ya need to rule so badly that ya’d accept the support o’ our true enemy. They’ve been doin’ this to our people for generations. Dividin’ us, to conquer us. Do ya hear me? We come from the same mother, we do. We have our differences, but if we’re gonna survive we gotta work this out between us. Here Bill. I offer my hand in truce,” Dinny pushes an open palm toward Bill again. “Accept my terms, or ask for better terms. Do as ya think is right, but ya’re not my enemy, Bill. Ya never were.”
Bill looks at Dinny chancing an arm for peace. He turns his head as if to recall some long-forgotten memory from a past life until his eyes move up to meet Dinny’s. Non Connors goes to his ear, but Bill glares at him as if he were a stranger, then looks out into some distance over Dinny’s shoulder. Darby then comes to Bill, though he keeps staring off. Finally, Abe Harms noodles in from behind and whispers no more than three words into his ear and suddenly Bill snaps his head back and forth.
“It’s weakness what causes ya to ask for peace from the man who killt ya cousin. Ya want I should join forces wit’ weakness?” But Bill appears shaken and holds two fingers to his temple, “How. . . How’d ya know about my fam’ly? When. . . When I was in France, I had a vision. I saw’r everythin’. It all came to me. The journey o’ the Lovett fam’ly from shoeless an’ unknown to all-powerful. I saw’r my grandfather stick fightin’ in a place similar to what ya describe, but also I saw’r myself upstairs, leader o’ the White Hand an’ all the territories. I had it. It was mine. An’ everyone followed me! That dream. I mean, it was a vision. It is my fate. An’ the moon. The mornin’ moon. It foretold my ascension.”
“The moon foretells what your heart requests. The desperate turn to fate or destiny as their claim. But nothin’s prewritten, Bill. Here’s what I do know, the Black Hand wants revenge,” Dinny looks round to all in the room, “If ya choose our enemies to help ya, then ya no better than the Butlers o’ Ormonde,” His eyes glint with intensity. “Ya can’t be happy when a fellow Irishman takes the war to our enemy an’ succeeds. Nah, instead ya begrudge them, because nothin’ cheers up the cheerless like misfortune upon the cheerful.”
Paddy the tender chortles in agreement.
“The FitzGeralds o’ Desmond rebelled against the English because they wanted to rid the world o’ Gaelic traditions an’ turn us out. Twice they rebelled. The FitzGeralds an’ the Butlers were fam’ly, neighbors. Like we are. Related by marriage and blood,” Dinny nods toward Darby. “But the Butlers wouldn’t stand wit’ the FitzGeralds because they saw'r opportunity, see? So they joined the English against their own kind. Because o’ that, thousands died o’ disease an’ hunger, famine and malnutrition as the English and the Butlers scorched the earth, burnt crops an’ drove the livestock. Women, children, the sick an’ the old were put to the sword. They even butchered those who had yielded an’ were sworn quarter. Exiled the rest. Sure the Butlers won, but what was left?
The English took the most tillable land an’ gave it to those who were loyal to their crown. The Munster Plantation they called it. More like the Munster clearing. Ya want that to happen here?”
Bill shakes away the suggestion, “I never heard o’ that story before in my life.”
“Because ya don’ know ya hist’ry. In place o’ hist’ry ya fill in the blanks wit’ what ya call fate. Then ya bend facts in two an’ wonder why only half the world believes ya,” Dinny motions to all in the room. “Should we allow this man to lead us right into the teeth o’ our enemy? Or should we stand together against it?”
Bill runs a thumb and index finger along his upper lip, then speaks aloud, “He would have us debate the past all day long. But I. . . I will give yaz the future!” Bill looks over his shoulder. “The men that follow me cut a new path, like true-blue Americans. Patriots. They’d never follow him for the riches o’ an ancient glory that was lost to the English. What man wants to follow the weak into the past?”
Outside one hundred men stand in the cobblestoned Bridge Street under a slab of ashen gray clouds. Through the front windows I see two boys wend through them but halt when Bill’s shit-yellow hound sits up with a tongue lolling out of its mouth.
“I made ya an offer, Bill.”
“An’ I did you as well.”
“Do ya refuse me?”
“I do. Ya refuse me?”
Dinny does not answer that, instead he lowers his voice, “Bill Lovett, I call ya to challenge.”
All men in the room stifle a gasp.
Chisel McGuire’s eyes go white, “A challenge!” He yells out from behind in his barker’s voice. “We have a challenge!”
“A challenge!” Paddy Keenan mirrors and throws down two glasses to fill them with home-brew poteen.
Dinny picks up one of the glasses and holds it in front of Bill. Bill then reaches across to the bar and holds it high against Dinny’s, “I challenge ya to a one-on-one fight the ol’ way, from the olden days,” Dinny announces. “Winner takes the Red Hook territory square up. Do ya accept?”
Bill’s face is stone and his ears redden at the proposal. But it is no mere suggestion for him to consider. If refused, a man cannot walk among us without scorn on his name and he will never rise above his station, if he isn’t shamed out of Irishtown altogether. I had never seen anyone defy the challenge, but if Wild Bill Lovett is known for anything it is breaking code, if it benefits him. The shot of poteen shakes in his hand and the angered look on his face allows us all to believe he could spill it on the floor to sate his contempt for the old ways. Abe Harms ducks under a few awe-struck faces and leaves Bill with whispered words. There is silence in the saloon but outside the sound of snapping dogs and a collection of growls rise and fall.
“I further that challenge,” Bill growls and holds his poteen above Dinny’s, then labors resentfully through the routine. “I challenge ya to a one-on-one fight the ol’ way, from the olden days. But not for Red Hook. No. Winner takes the White Hand an’ all the territories, square up. . . Do ya accept?”
“Yes!” Darby yells out.
“Shaddup,” Bill snaps.
A sadness comes across Dinny’s face that no one would have noticed unless you know him as we do. Dinny has had many challenges. But this is different. This has been in the making for many, many years.
“I accept,” Dinny announces.
As the two of them throw back their drinks, the bar explodes in celebration.
“Wait, wait,” Paddy Kee
nan stops everyone. “Wait a second! Where will it take place? Where will the fight be?”
Dinny clears his throat, “Jackson Hollow. Meet me in the field o’ honor, an’ I will try it out wit’ ya.”
All eyes blink toward Bill.
He’s lost already. His face says it all. He is nervous.
“On one condition,” Bill says, but before he can speak his mind, a bubbling cough comes to his throat. When it subsides, he snorts back phlegm from his sinuses and speaks. “We do it in June.”
“June? Let’s do it today,” The Swede bellows. “Do it now.”
Dinny nods in agreement, “He needs time to recover from his war wounds. I want no excuses. We do it in June. Next two rounds are on me. Everyone drinks.”
But Bill is not festive and neither are those in his inner circle. Tradition has it that regardless of bad blood, on the day a challenge is accepted all are to come together in fine spirit while the whiskey flows. A true man does not begrudge another. A man of honor gives praise to the virility in a rival faction fight.
Dinny has an elbow on the bar and one-by-one greets every man who wishes to be heard with attentive courtesy. Many go from Dinny to Bill, but all go to Chisel McGuire to place money. Odds quickly are in Dinny’s favor, for not only has Dinny never lost a fistfight, but he is bigger, stronger and faster than his foe. When I look at Bill in the corner, he scratches at the blisters that weep down his neck. He seems not to have slept in weeks and the hollows in his face are dark bruises, black as his lightless eyes. When his stomach seizes up and bends him, he grits his teeth to suppress a cough but it bursts out of his mouth anyhow, leaving red strands of spittle to hang down his cyan-colored lips.
I sit with my back to the bar at Dinny’s left when two ten year-old boys sneak a peek through the front door.
“Go on,” Beat washes a backhand toward them, wishing them away.
But Dinny’s eyes are alight and taps my arm to let them pass.
As I pull the door open the rest of the way, the two ogle their eyes up to me, “Whoa, it’s Poe, the Thief o’ Pencils.”
It is rare that anyone calls me Poe, a name given to me because Beat McGarry confused a poem by Walter Whitman for Edgar Allen Poe. And Thief of Pencils, of course, came because I had in fact stolen a pencil.
I recognize his broth-of-a-boy mannerisms as Johnny Mullen’s son, one of Dinny’s oldest followers who died of the grippe after coming home from the war.
“Is there something we can help you with?” I ask the boy.
“See, he is Irish,” he elbows the other boy, whose last name is Sutton. “Ya can hear it on him. Admit it’s true, Will.”
“Ya right, I thought he was from here, but he’s true-Irish,” Mullen looks up. “Is it true ya killt ya own uncle to join the gang?”
“No,” I move to close the door on them.
“Wait!” the boys yelp. “Harry Reynolds is dead.”
I open the door again, “Dead? He can’t be. Where did you hear that?”
Mullen, the talker, pushes the door open with a small hand, “They burnt his buildin’ down. Over on Atlantic. The firemen’ve been fightin’ it all mornin’. There’s five dead so far. Five charred remains o’ people at least.”
I turn wordlessly to Dinny, who waves the boys over with a smile. Mullen and Sutton tiptoe in and bend their heads up to the ceiling and the walls as if they’ve just entered Taj Mahal. “Look Will, there’s the ol’ photo o’ Lincoln. It’s true!”
“Jee wow,” Sutton mumbles and tilts back his floppy cap to get a look.
Like silly supplicants the boys move toward a smiling Dinny Meehan. His thighs are thicker than their chests and he reaches a muscular hand toward them for a shake.
“Ya don’ shake a man’s hand limp,” Dinny says. “Try it again. Dig your hand in deep and grip, then look in my eyes when ya do so. . . That’s it. Ya give me a dead fish like that again an’ I’ll have The Swede give yaz the boot. Ya wanna stick around o’ what?”
“Yeah,” they agree in unison with big eyes, watching Big Dick and The Lark balance four beer mugs on Needles Ferry’s cadaverous head while four lit cigarettes hang out of each nostril.
“This one’s been dead from the neck up since birth,” The Swede growls.
“Try to shake my hand again then,” Dinny says to the boys. “That’s it, thrust an’ grip. Then give me the eye. I like it. Much better. Harry dead ya say?”
“Yeah.”
“Ya saw’r him dead?”
“No.”
“Then how do ya know?”
Mullen licks his lips and gathers his courage, “He’s prolly the reason they burnt it down.”
“Who?”
The boys look at each other fearfully and turn their eyes up, “Garry fookin’ Barry.”
“He the one behind Brosnan’s disappearance too, ya think?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else is wit’ him?”
“James Cleary an’ Wiz the Lump. They work for Wolcott an’ the Waterfront Assembly.”
“Smart kids,” Dinny taps my arm, then addresses the two again. “Who else?”
They look at each other and shrug.
“Why do yaz think they went after Harry?”
Mullen again, “On account o’ he’s loyal to ya an’ they wanna see a changeover. A new king atop Irishtown.”
“Anybody else they got their eye on, ya think?”
Mullen turns his downcast eyes in my direction, “The most loyal an’ most valuable to ya. Garry fookin’ Barry’s goin’ on a tear an’ everyone knows he never gives up. Poe Garrity’s next.”
Dinny looks at me, then speaks to the boys, “It’d probably be smart if Poe got himself a righthand that’s hard as iron. Someone who has a personal hist’ry wit’ Barry an’ enjoys dancin’ on people’s faces.” He stops for a moment. “An’ maybe Poe should carry a pistol on his person, don’ ya think?”
“Yeah,” they boys agree.
Darby Leighton and his sallow cheeks and dead eyes walk over, “Hey boys, d’yaz wanna meet Wild Bill?”
Mullen shies away and looks back up to Dinny, but Sutton goes with Darby to the corner. Bill doesn’t offer to shake hands with the boy and stares at them harshly with black eyes under two thick, arched eyebrows.
“I hope Will gives him a dead fish,” Mullen says.
Dinny’s tone becomes serious, “Ya first name’s Johnny?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about ya father, kid. He was a good man. A soldier for the White Hand an’ America, too. Most kids would be proud to have a man like that as a father,” Dinny taps me again. “Let the kid sit down, yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Paddy, give the kid a glass o’ the pure.”
“One pure fer the bhoy, t’is,” Paddy agrees warmly. “The son o’ one our own’s always welcome to a drink in this establishment, he is.”
Johnny Mullen Jr. raises the glass to his lips and lets it bite him. Breathing fire, he puts it down and fights off the sting of the homebrew. “Fuck, that’s smarts,” he says
Dinny slaps him gently on a thin shoulder. Johnny Jr. looks back to him and gives a demure smile. Then suddenly tears come pouring out of the boy’s eyes that he is unable fight off, but I’m unsure if it’s because of his father’s death, or that he has finally met his hero.
Dinny jumps off the stool. He pulls the boy by his arm, “Turn around an’ look straight ahead at the wall. That feelin’ that wells up inside ya? That’s anger, passion, feelin’. Hold on to it. Don’ let it control ya. It’s a matter o’ life an’ death, see? Get on top o’ it. There’ll be a moment when ya can use that feelin’, but now’s not that time. Wipe it away an’ put a hard shell on ya mug so no one else can have it. It’s yours, not theirs. There ya go. Save it. Save it for later.”
Johnny Jr.’s eyes search the room to see if anyone had seen his tears. He scratches angrily at his chin and tucks his hands into fists at the bar, “I’m gonna be a real fighter one day, t
hat’s why they call me Whyo. Whyo Mullen, an’ I ain’t one ya should whistle down the wind at, like Will over there. We used to call him Willie, but there’s too many Willie’s around. And he can’t have the same name as Willie Lonergan ‘cause Willie Lonergan’s tough and Will is a poltroon. His Ma still writes his name in his underwear. But I’m brave, an’ I know everythin’ about the gang.” he gives a hard stare to Dinny. “An’ I can help ya too.”
I whisper to Dinny, “Garry Barry wouldn’t come here to burn this place down too, would he?”
Blind the Predators
Anna recognizes the voice behind the door, “What do ya want, Matty.”
“Matty who?” Grace whispers.
“Martin,” Anna rolls her eyes. “One o’ my brother’s tomfools.”
The door opens and the skinny kid with a big adam’s apple and pushback black hair steps in. “Hi, um, hey—”
“What do ya want?” Anna stands in front of him with her arms crossed.
But Matty’s eyes are full of Grace’s breasts that are visible through her sleeveless shift while his mouth is empty of words. He looks at Anna, then back at Grace’s breasts.
“Matty!” Anna yells.
“Uh. . . it’s ya Ma wants to see ya. She had a fit.”
“What kinda fit?”
“Ya father eh, he said somethin’ to her.”
“What did he say?”
“He said um,” Matty faces his shoes, then back up to Anna until he notices the dress. “Why are ya wearin’ that kinda dress?”
“I’m only wearin’ this ‘cause. . . Never mind, what did my father tell her?”
“He told ya Ma that ya’re a slattern an’ that ya slept wit’ a man for dime at the Adonis an’ that’s how ya got money to pay for rent an’ food before the storm.”
“She did no such thing,” Grace exclaims. “We would know.”
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 27