Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  “Right there,” she points for Richie. “On the sidewalk over there. I fell to my knees in horror. Ma had gone out into the cobblestones wit’ Tiny Thomas in her arms. People were watchin’ from every window. A thought had creeped up in my mind. I couldn’t get it outta my head. It was like a ritual, I thought. A ritual, seein’ a woman cry over her dead child. Do ya understand me?”

  Richie nods.

  “A ritual. Like it’s happened so often throughout time, it’s like even emotions, the most emotional thing in the world, a mother losing her child, even somethin’ that emotional is just, I dunno, repetition maybe? Like things repeat through time. I don’ know what I’m tryin’ to say exactly, but I want ya to hear me, Richie.”

  “Uhright.”

  “Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Anna turns and looks up into her brother’s pale eyes. “We’re to give protection to Grace an’ Kit, since they were witnesses to the murder o’ Christie the Larrikin. After Pickles is released an’ we get the scofflaw soldiers from him, Bill’s gonna disappear an’ we are gonna take over. The Lonergan fam’ly. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah.”

  Oh Richie my sweet brother, you are going to be my tool. You are going to bring Neesha back. Revenge for killing my love. Revenge will shake the heavens until he comes back to me.

  Richie looks away for a moment. Then back to her. Doubt had crept into his thoughts for less than a second. It was obvious to Anna. That little moment of doubt made her stomach flip and quickly her finger is up to her mouth, biting at the cuticles.

  I must be the one that is mad. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. But my instinct says I should. My instinct says it is the right thing to do.

  “Richie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do ya wanna do this wit’ me? Abe an’ I, we’ll work all the things out. So tell me. Tell me. What do ya think?”

  Richie looks over her shoulder, into the distance, “I dunno.”

  His eyes, Anna thinks. I just saw something in his eyes. An amber glow. My love.

  “First ve must get you close to Bill,” Abe Harms walks up behind Richie.

  “What do ya mean?” Anna turns to him. “Who?”

  “You. . . Of course Bill must be convinced that ya have a vay to help him vin Irishtown, and you vill. In this manner I shall prove my loyalty to the Lonergan cause.”

  “How?”

  “Bill is not the type of person who listens to his advisors,” Abe tisks and shakes his head. “Zuch a shame. Those who are driven by fate often cannot reason vith those of us who share this earth vith them. Bill is much more likely to believe vhat he thinks are zigns of his ascension, yez.”

  “Signs?” Anna’s lip curls. “What kinda signs?”

  “Like vhen a shadow comes to him and imparts the gift of prophecy.”

  “What shadow?”

  Death of a Fenian

  Liam. My name is Liam, which means feckless and infirm.

  A horse neighs impatiently as I pass a street stable. Under the enclosure of buildings I offer my palm to the shy mare, but she turns me away and slowly lopes back inside to leave me with the swing and sway of her round hindquarters and the snap of her tail.

  No one wants me. I am the bearer of bad news and a quitter on top of it.

  Midnight’s streaky clouds dim the stars and mute the moonlight. Eighth Avenue is illumined only from the street corners where yellow pavilions of lamplight break the black and creep out into the wet street. Alone I wander, now friendless. It’s after midnight so it’s my birthday now. I can feel sorry for myself if I want.

  I curse the keyhole outside the tenement. Somehow I put the key in upside down three times in a row. Feckless and infirm. The gas lamp in the hallway on the first floor is not lit and I have to feel my way to the stairwell and lean heavily on the banister only to fight again with key and keyhole to our room upstairs. When finally I turn the lock and swing the door open—

  “Surprise!”

  Before I know what is happening, I am out the door again with pipe at the ready. My sister Brigid laughs inside. And so are some of the Burke children.

  I take a deep breath and pinch myself, then slowly open the door to our room again. Inside my sisters are red-eyed and yawning, but come near to wish me a happy birthday.

  “Why are ye so late tonight?” Brigid asks. “It’s never this late ye come home.”

  I quit the gang, I think, but instead I just smile.

  They even have presents wrapped in newspaper with blue and pink handmade bows that are leftover from Easter decorations at P.S. 5 where they go to school. Two of the Burke children hug at my legs. The littlest one, Mary Louise, claps her palms up at me to lift her, so I do. She climbs up my coat with her lips puckered and gives me a wet one next to my left eye. The room explodes in happiness and applause for her.

  Her father is there, reddened by guilt for not having shown on the docks. Then Mrs. Burke walks in front of him and kisses my cheek too.

  “We offer our kindest birthday wishes,” she holds my shoulders and stares deep into my eyes. “We’re so very thankful for the whole o’ the Garrity fam’ly, but especially ya’self, Liam. Ya’ve helped us immensely an’ I’m so appreciative. We all are.”

  Would you still think that if you knew I am as jobless as your husband?

  She pulls me closer again and whispers into my ear, “An’ congratulations on ya advancement, lately. I knew ya was dockboss material all along. . . Please don’ be angry wit’ my husband, please?”

  I smile back at her as she pulls away, “Never.”

  She takes her eyes from me and moves them to her husband, who steps forward, “Happy Birthday, Liam.”

  “Thank you.”

  His hand is small in mine. And although he is handsome, his frail frame is proof that work on the docks is too much for him. And it is written all over his face.

  “I. . . I’m sorry—”

  “We’ll talk later,” I move from him to his eldest son at the kitchen table awaiting me. “I know this was your idea, Joseph. You’re the sneak behind it, aren’t you?” Sitting next to him, I hold the top of his hand and grab his lapel with a fist, “You were probably waiting to see the shock on my face, weren’t you?”

  The room quietens to hear his response. His lips move and his head bobs but the words catch in his throat. “T. . . T. . . True,” he manages, but then I see the one thing that makes me happy; his smile.

  “I knew it. Say, did you like any of those pulp magazines I found for you?”

  His eyes widen and for a moment I think maybe his feet and legs would straighten, his knuckled hands would unravel and he would stand from the table with words to flow out of his mouth. But only his eyes rise and grow fierce with passion, while the words still fight to reach his lips. Again the room falls to a great hush to hear him out, “I like. . . eh. . . the dime novels. . . b. . . best. . . Detec. . . tive Story.”

  His mother jumps in, “He’s read all the stories from the same issue, five times now.”

  “Five times?” I smile with a look of incredulity on my face.

  He smiles too as his mother speaks for him with a hand on his shoulder, “I think he has it memorized by now. The Gilded Eros, it’s called.”

  “Ah, I think that one came out a couple of years ago. I’ll get more of them. What about the Walter Whitman book I gave you?”

  He gives me a sourpuss glance at that, “P. . . Poetry, ick.”

  I smile, but I had hoped he would’ve enjoyed Whitman’s love for men’s hearts as I had.

  “Ya gonna have to help me get him downstairs,” Burke says “He’s heavy, an’ he’s taller than I am now.”

  “Most men are,” says I, which puts another smile on Joseph’s face.

  “Is Mr. Reynolds to come this evenin’?” Brigid asks as Abby hits her with the back of her hand.

  Harry Reynolds is dead. But I can’t say that.

  “He’s soooo handsome,” Brigid laughs. “He would make such
a wonderful husband.”

  “Shut up,” Abby grits at her sister and squeezes her hand.

  “Harry is more than ten years older than the both of you,” I say coldly. “He had to go on a. . . trip. I’m not sure if he’s coming back, just so everyone knows.”

  Abby’s mouth opens as she lowers her head, but she soon catches herself to hide the fact of her first crush. Still though, her eyes wander with thoughts of Harry Reynolds.

  My mother then walks through everyone in the cramped room with a cake at her chest. I dread telling her the news, My poor Mam. She doesn’t deserve to suffer. Many have earned it, but not her.

  The cake has eighteen miniature candles that are all lit and dripping wax onto the icing. Back in Ireland, birthdays were not celebrated all that often. With so many children and the cost of making a cake for each one too much for a farm family to bear.

  “We’re American now,” Mam announces. “An’ I quite like the idea o’ celebratin’ birthdays.”

  “Me too,” Brigid says.

  “Yay!” The Burke children agree.

  Dinny Meehan you are wrong. This is not a ghost story, this is an American story.

  The joy of the room sobers me from the flask of whiskey I’d shared back on Hudson Avenue, even as the sugar from the cake does not mix well with it. Abby refuses to sing a song unless Brigid joins her, but we are all glad for it as Brigid has a tender voice. The Burke children quickly pick up the chorus on the second passing to light up our room with merriment.

  We open the leaves of the kitchen table and even strike up the American Happy Birthday song. Abby and Brigid aren’t strong enough to hold me upside down, but they talk me into laying on the ground so they could bump my head on it eighteen times, like we do back home.

  Eighteen years is old, I think, then rub the back of my hand down my cheek. But as of yet no stubble has grown.

  Mam is all smiles at the sight of me on the kitchen floor, “The neighbors must think we’re wild.”

  “We are the neighbors,” Mrs. Burke howls. “An’ we’ve known yaz for crazies a long time now!”

  When things begin to calm down and the youngest have fallen asleep, I ask for everyone’s attention and stand over the table with one hand on Joseph’s shoulder and another on Mam’s, “I want to thank you all for thinking of me.”

  “Oh stop,” they wave me off.

  “Ya gonna make us cry, Liam,” Mrs. Burke dabs at her eyes.

  “And I want you all to know that you are also in my heart and in my thoughts all day, every day. I hope this is the beginning of a long tradition in our family,” I find Abby and Brigid. “A birthday tradition that stretches to our children’s lifetimes, and their children’s too. To have you all here with me is a blessing. We work hard for what we earn, and we give thanks.” To Thomas Burke I turn now. “May the Burkes and the Garritys live long together as neighbors and close family friends. From this generation to the next, and forever afterward. A thousand thanks to you all.”

  “Thanks be to god,” My mother finishes and everyone crosses themselves.

  “I ask only for one thing of you all tonight,” I continue. “I must speak with my mother about something very important, alone. If you will.”

  She stares up at me, terror churns in her eyes.

  “We’ll do the dishes an’ clean up,” Mrs. Burke offers.

  “Mam, will you come with me for a word? It’s not too cold outside. A scarf is all you’ll need.”

  She knows. Somehow she knows. She stands in place, her fingertips still on the table. Abby and Brigid do not have the sense that she has though, and gather up dishes with Mrs. Burke, still singing.

  Outside the clouds have mostly parted and the moon is eyeing us as we walk on the wet slate sidewalks. A block away is Prospect Park, though that can be a dangerous place after dark. Instead we slowly walk south on Eighth Avenue toward the tall tower of the Armory.

  “He’s dead isn’t he?” Mam stops when we are a block away. “Yer father. Ye got word? Does yer brother Timothy know?”

  The street lamp behind her flutters from the gas flame and sheds enough halo light that her blue eyes loom. Above us are a hundred dark windows, some lit by candle. Along the sidewalk are rows and rows of stairwells and coal holes half-hidden by the night.

  I reach out for her wrist, but she pulls away, “Just tell me how t’is, will ye? I don’ need to be comforted. I’m sure ye feel the right thing to do is to be gentle to a new widow, but I’ve been without him for many years now. Just come straight with it, then.”

  “I received a letter from Miko O’Dea, do you remember—”

  “Of course I do, Liam. He reported to yer father in the East Clare Brigade. G’on then.”

  “Anyway, you have the right of it, Mam. He’s confirmed dead. But Miko didn’t say how or when.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Mam looks to the sidewalk. “Not in a letter, he wouldn’t.”

  “Mam, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be sorry, do somethin’ about it instead. Because if ye don’t, ye’ll be next an’ all yer pity’ll be for nought, won’t it?”

  “Mam—”

  “I’ve lost things all me life, Liam. Ye know I was s’posed to marry yer father’s older brother, ye know? He died of a sudden, an’ then it was yer father’s turn. I never chose him. Choice was the first thing I lost. I’m fine with it, ye should know. But I’ll tell ye what I won’t be fine with. If I have to bury me sons before I go. That I won’t stand fer. I put me foot down on that, so I do. I know the type o’ men ye run with, Liam. They’re the same in Ireland these days. It’s all bravery and pledges o’ loyalty an’ honor killin’s. An’ I know what ye do all day, every day. An’ I know that ye made a bank account in me name in case ye one day show up dead like yer father.”

  “Mam that’s not why—”

  “T’is! Ye underestimate people too often, Liam,” she points her finger at me. “It’ll be the death o’ ye, ye know. Ye didn’t believe I could think through yer own thoughts. That never came to yer mind, did it? No, it didn’t. All that money ye have nestled ‘way? Fer god sakes, how did ye make that much? What did ye have to do to get it? An’ of late, ye’ve been doublin’ the amount. Ye’re in trouble, aren’t ye?”

  Well this isn’t going how I thought. “Burke told you everything, didn’t he.”

  “He didn’t have to, I saw it all on yer eyes. An’ I saw it in Burke’s as well. But most of all I saw it in Harry Reynolds’ stoney face. It’s his face tells the whole o’ the story, it does. But if there’s one thing I know about men it’s the look in their eyes an’ that one had a past on him.”

  “He was. . . He is a good man, I know him—”

  “Sure, but there was a hell of a lot more to that feller than he ever let anyone know. But where is he now? Did he go on a trip to New Jersey? Philadelphia maybe? Or did he get burnt to death in that tenement fire over by the Atlantic Terminal?”

  “Jesus, Mam—”

  “Say it, is he dead?”

  I don’t know that because I simply don’t know. There is a lot I didn’t know about him, even as I lived with him for many months.

  “Ye’re fightin’ against somethin’ that’s way bigger than yerself, Liam. Too big. Ye’re fightin’ against change, ye know. Against time itself. Ye cannot stem the risin’ tide, Liam. Ye think street gangs will own labor forever? Union thugs are the thing o’ the future, are they? No, they don’t hold true power round here, child. The true power is somethin’ ye don’t even get to witness. Ye only feel the repercussions after-the-fact, so t’is. Tell me about this missin’ detective, then? Go ahead, Brosnan was his name. A man with a pregnant daughter who has two children. His son-in-law is a patrolman on the force as well. What happened to him? Did Dinny Meehan—”

  “Mam, don’t say that name. Don’t ever say that name.”

  “Don’t ye snarl at me!” Her voice echoes off the brownstones, off the old clapboard buildings and round the tower of the Armory. “Ye may t
hink he’s a good man, an’ he may’ve done a great many things to help us get out o’ Ireland. I don’t know the feller, but I do know that a fish rots from the head down.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Ye’ve changed, Liam. Ye’ll end up in Green-Wood Cemetery where ye can rest from yer labor, but yer deeds will follow, Liam. An’ what’ll Meehan do for us then? Send us a stipend? We already have money aplenty, thanks to himself. That’s not what we need though. What yer fam’ly needs is yerself, Liam. In the flesh, not in memory. I’ll weather the death o’ me husband, but yer’s’ll rain despair over the rest o’ me livelong days.”

  “What about Timothy? He’s going to be swept up in the wars. Everywhere the papers are reporting raids and that the British are going to send war veterans to the countryside with lawlessness on their side. The whole country is set to explode. What if he dies?”

  “He’s a married man.”

  “He’s married?”

  “A mont' ago he was married at St. Mochulla’s Church to the Cudmore girl.”

  “Jennie Cudmore? She only has one eye and he used to make fun of her.”

  “No, it’s Julie he married.”

  “Julie? She’s younger than I am.”

  “When a girl has her moon, she is old enough for marriage in West Ireland,” Mam declares. “It all makes sense now. Timothy sent me a letter to say he was married, but nothin’ about yer father’s passin’. The Brits would probably never have let that letter leave Ireland. But ye probably know someone who can get letters out o’ Clare, don’t ye?”

  “I do, a County Claremen’s association in West Manhattan. So Timothy knew about Da’s death before I did,” I realize.

  “Logically,” she tilts her head. “He’s the eldest. An’ now he has a wife an’ a farm. He’s a man in a country that’ll be at war soon. Let’s hope they have children before he dies.”

  “So it’s alright if he dies, but not me?”

  “Liam, yer father knew ye’d not make a good soldier. From the start ye were meant to be mine, ye know.”

  I know, I know.