“Besides, ye’ve a free soul. Ye were never one to take orders well. It was all imagination an’ stories fer ye, never rifles, death wishes or blood sacrifices. It was a good thing to send ye to America, like yer father did. It was his hope all along to live forever in songs, an’ so he may, after all. He wanted us to live long though. To go to America an’ maybe come back to a free Ireland. He wanted that ye would provide fer us here.”
She shakes her head with a hand on her temple, then places the other hand on her hip, “Now tell me, what happened to yer uncle?”
My stomach shifts and flutters, “What?”
“Ye heard me, what happened to yer uncle Joseph? Yer father’s brother? Go ahead an’ tell it to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring—”
“Ye lie to yer mother, do ye? If ye lie to me now, then I’ll know ye’re already dead to me,” she moves closer, her red-rimmed eyes ablaze in anger now. “Don’t underestimate me again, Liam. Don’t do it. Now tell me what ye did to yer uncle Joseph.”
She knows everything. How does she find these things out? What drives her? “I. . . I Won’t say it.”
The stars pulse above as she draws back. She knew, yet hearing the shame in my voice beats her breath. I grab for her wrist, but again she pulls away.
“Ye were forced to do it,” she mumbles. “Ye’d never do such a thing on yer own. Ye had to prove yer loyalty to these men, an’ they required yer uncle.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand that if this is the type o’ men who ye’ve given yer loyalty, that we are all in danger. But mostly yerself.”
I already quit.
“You don’t understand what I went through. I was thrown into the maw when uncle Joseph turned me out. I was on the streets and he. . . they helped me do exactly what my father wanted of me.”
“I understand it Liam. Ye did a wonderful job, is that what ye need to hear so to start thinkin’ o’ the future? Thank ye fer all ye’ve done. But what are we going to do now? What is yer plan now?”
I don’t know. I thought I did, but I now I’m lost.
“Ye know what amazes me? That I raised ye to see the difference ‘tween right and wrong. Yet ye’re blind to the noose that looms over yer head, if only ye’d look up an’ see it. I do not grudge ye, Liam. I understand now that the future o’ this fam’ly is with its women. It always is, if truth be told. I understand too that my son has no regrets for his actions—”
You don’t know that. You don’t know the horrible regrets I have because I don’t talk to you, or anybody about them.
“But I have one request that I’d like ye to honor,” she moves closer and whispers, but there are no tears on her face now. “Before I slip the widow’s weeds over me head an’ go into silence, I have one last request. I know ye question the faith, but it’s the faith ye must have now, Liam. Wit’out it, we’re all lost. Father Larkin at St. Ann’s says ye’ve never been to see him for Confession. Go. Go to St. Ann’s an’ Confess. Go to god. Lift the burden an’ look up, son.”
No, absolution won’t come for what I did. Because I can never feel resolute that I’ll sin no more.
Regicide Relived, Regicide Foretold
Darby Leighton’s eyes are closed, though he can see. What’s better, he can hear with both ears again. But what he hears is nothing. The air is still and his breath frosts in front of his face. The snowstorm had come down sideways in a torrent for days and ravaged Brooklyn. Now, here, he stands among a profound calm, hip-deep in a perfect snow again, untouched, unbroken, unblemished.
I’m dreaming. Yet I’ve never felt more awake.
Ahead is the Meehan brownstone. Behind him a horse whickers inside a stable and eyes him with distrust.
On a wet brick facade of a four story building, bare ivy vines snake outward. With snow having settled on the vines, it appears to the eye that there are bones strung upon the brick exterior wall in the form of letters. Or words. Symbols maybe. Someone might be able to decipher the secret message, but Darby cannot.
An old man’s shaky voice comes to him as the wind suddenly rings in his ears, “Darby,” it says. “The time has arrived for ye to make a decision. I shall take ye to the darkness o’ the past an’ to the light o’ the future.”
Darby covers his ears, “Who are ya?”
The voice continues unabated, “An’ I’ll even tell ye what ye should do. But t’will be up to yerself, ye who live forever hoverin’ at the clash o’ dawn, t’will be up to yerself to alter yer course in the present.”
“What do ya mean? Why do ya haunt me?”
“The choices that try our souls define us, an’ so ye must choose. But before we go,” says the wind, as a darkness black as jet suddenly takes the sky. “Look, look up there.”
When Darby looks back up to the Meehan brownstone, a full moon now adorns a starry sky. In the black he sees a figure climbing up the fire escape on the side of the building. Darby moves so he can get a closer look while the horse whickers again.
The figure climbing in the dark then stops and looks down, but Darby instinctively moves to a shadow, unseen. Unheard.
“I already witnessed this,” Darby tries to organize his fleeting thoughts. “This already happened. I remember it.”
The wind says, “Now ye know that I know yer secret.”
Darby’s stomach turns, My secret. The wind knows the secret I hold over Sadie’s heart.
“Now we must go to the past, then to the future so that ye may alter the present.”
“Where?”
“To 1912.”
Darby looks round. He is no longer at the Meehan brownstone. He looks up at the thirty-foot shadow of the abutment to the Manhattan Bridge a block away to the left while to the right is the abutment to the Brooklyn Bridge. Up ahead, ascending a cobblestoned street, Darby’s brother Pickles and Vincent Maher walk together between the bridges.
“We really are in the past,” Darby says.
“We are.”
“But this is my dream, which means it’s my perception o’ the past?”
“We all impose our will on the past as we do the future.”
“Ya gotta kill him,” Darby hears Vincent speak up ahead, then watches him hand Pickles a black pistol.
“This was Pickles’ last day o’ freedom,” Darby realizes. “This is when everythin’ changed for the worse. This is the moment.” Darby calls ahead to his brother, “Don’ do it Pickles! I know what happens to ya. Turn around an’ go home. Pickles!”
But Darby’s words go unheeded.
“Nobody ever wants to hear what I say,” Darby remembers. “Why won’t anyone listen to me?”
Between the gas lamp posts that line both bridges, Pickles holds the pistol, then tries to give it back to Vincent as he speaks these words, “Kill him ya’self. I got a feelin’ this ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. I’m just here ‘cause Bill sent me as a token o’ his agreement wit’ Dinny.”
“No, ya gotta do it ya’self,” Vincent refuses the gun.
The two come upon an establishment where the beautiful voice of a young woman cascades through the barroom. The lament haunts down the street and echoes off the bridges. Since Darby is able to hear with both ears for the first time in a long while, the voice sends chills down him and reverberates through every bone in his body. He stops and notices a darkly painted wood sign above the window that displays its name, “Jacob’s Saloon.”
“I remember this place before it was burnt to the ground. It used to be the headquarters o’ the old Maroney Gang.”
Just as the first light blushes against the morning sky, Vincent turns sideways down an exterior hallway between two buildings and opens an alley door.
“The women’s entrance,” Darby says.
Inside, past the stairwell Christie the Larrikin dances with Kit Carroll. He has one hand on her breast while she sniffs dust from the pinky nail of his other hand. In the background McGowan sits in front of the window,
alive again. Darby moves to tap Pickles on the shoulder and tell him that one day in the future he will kill McGowan in Sing Sing during the War for the Inside.
“Pickles!” Darby screams. “Pickles, please listen to me. Leave now, before it’s too late. Pickles!”
But Darby’s words are still unheard.
McGowan sits in front of the window inside Jacob’s Saloon next to another man. At that moment Dinny Meehan turns round to look directly at the shadow that follows Vincent and Pickles. Tears stream down Dinny’s face like a faucet as he mouths the lyrics of the song Grace White sings.
O, Father dear, I oft times hear you talk of Erin’s Isle,
Her lofty scenes, her valleys green,
her mountains rude and wild
They say it is a pretty place
where-in a prince might dwell,
Oh why did you abandon it,
the reason to me tell?
“I know that song.”
“Get out here ya fookin’ larrikin!” Vincent yells through the alley entrance as Grace comes to an abrupt halt during the song and a trolley goes by on one of the bridges overhead, cha-chum-cha-chum cha-chum. “I challenge ya!”
Christie Maroney turns round quickly for a big man. Then turns back round to make sure Meehan and McGowan are still in the saloon by the front window, then again back toward Vincent’s voice, who stands next to Pickles in the narrow alley as Grace and Kit watch them all with big eyes.
“Can they see me? They’re starin’ right at me,” Darby wonders.
“A challenge?” Maroney’s gigantic, ring-laden fist holds the door open as his broad face peeks through the women’s entrance. The man monikered “Larrikin” has a heavy brow shelf and eyes that are set peculiarly wide apart over a muscular monkey mouth that protrudes as if the teeth were trying to escape. When his lips peel back for a gruesome smile, his gold-capped teeth display for all to see his crude belief in wealth and status. As King of Irishtown he sold its girls into prostitution, sold its secrets to the Black Hand, sold its waterfront riches to the union, sold its autonomy to the big businesses and sold its freedom to Anglo-American law. It was from this that Christie Maroney had drawn his wealth while Irishtown had fallen to its knees. Guilty of the crime of poverty again.
Darby had heard the superstitious story before: The old-timers in Irishtown, the original settlers, had summoned ancient prayer for Maroney’s removal and the women had keened to bring back the old ways. On this day, their pleas would be answered and a new king would arise. One of their own making, and nothing could stop it. Not even the truth.
With Maroney ready for sacrifice, Pickles holds the pistol at his side as he blanches in shock. When he fails to act, Vincent rips the gun from his hand and points it at the big larrikin.
Darby drops down and covers his ears at the report of the pistol, and when Maroney falls, everyone runs. Just then a glim of light flashes between two buildings into Darby’s eyes.
“It really wasn’t Pickles after all,” Darby’s eyes are closed. “Yet he rots in Sing Sing these last six years. It really is a lie. I was right all along, my brother is innocent. An’ all the dominoes that fell afterward were based on a deception. An illusion. A trick. Everythin’. This is why I must right the lie. Right it so that the truth can be revealed an’ Bill can become King o’ Irishtown.”
When Darby opens his eyes, he is again out front of the Meehan brownstone.
“I’m dreamin’. Yet I’ve never felt more awake. . . Wait, I already said that.”
The wind again dials up and almost blows his cap off as the old man’s wavering voice appears, “Ye’ve seen the past. Now ye shall see the future.”
“I don’ understand,” Darby says.
“Dustbroom Darby,” suddenly he hears Bill Lovett’s snarling voice from behind. “Ya never understand nothin’, do ya?”
Darby turns but only sees the horse again, staring back with a long, tilted face.
“C’mon, let’s go. Ya comin’ wit’, or what?” Bill asks.
He turns again and Bill Lovett is standing next to him, “Where. . . What?”
“Ya’re a fookin’ eejit. This is why they call ya Daydreamin’ Darby, ya know? Where do ya fookin’ think we’re goin’?” Bill’s eyes move up to the broken window of the Meehan home. “We’re goin’ up to kill Dinny.”
When Darby turns back up to the broken window, he asks, “Is Sadie up there?”
“An’ what if she is? Their kid’s up there too, so what?”
“Will they die too?”
But Bill does not hear him. Bill had never heard anything Darby said.
“This is what we came for,” Bill nods in confidence. “I’m here to lead the lost, remember? Ya’ve been lost ya whole life, Darby. Ya comin’ wit’, right? Think o’ the terror he’s brought to ya fam’ly. Do ya still have the medal I gave ya?”
Darby reaches into his pocket, but before his eyes can fix on the medal, it turns to dust in his fingers and the wind washes it away.
Bill chuckles, “It’s uhright. We will win when we kill Dinny. Then ya can be Fifth Lieutenant an’ a dockboss an’ ya fam’ly won’t have to live in a water closet in an abandoned buildin’ no more. We’ll be rich, but we gotta do it together. It’s fate, Darby. It’s my fate to be the leader. Don’ ruin it for me. Ya comin’ right?”
“There’s no such thing as fate,” Darby mouths the words without thought, keeping his eyes up to the window. His teeth then begin to chatter beyond his controlling them, and his eyes move back and forth again.
“What do I do? What should I do?”
“It’s too late for that, Darby. Ya’re always one step behind, bringin’ up the rear,” Bill says as he and three other men shoulder past him until another man joins at the stoops. Together the five ascend and enter the building with weapons in their hands.
“The archons. They are the five archons. Bill an’ four others, but who are the others? An’ where are the orphans?”
“Darby?” The old man’s wavering voice comes to his ears as he stands alone in front of the Meehan brownstone.
“Yeah?”
“Look in yer pocket.”
Darby searches, then pulls out the Distinguished Service Cross, fully intact again.
The old man explains, “The choice is yours again. Ye’ve seen the darkness an’ ye have seen the light. In yer hand ye hold the dawn. Keep it an’ ye shall die, throw it away an’ ye shall live an’ the war will never happen.”
“I’m confused. Let me get this straight. If I throw it away, Pickles will be stuck in prison forever, even though he is innocent an’ Bill’ll never be king o’ Irishtown?”
“That’s right, an’ ye will live.”
“An’ if I keep it, Pickles’ll be released an’ Bill’ll be king?”
“True, an’ a gang war will claim many lives, includin’ yer own.”
“All this on account o’ I desire to right a lie?”
“Ye cannot change history, ye can only change minds.”
Darby rubs one hand against his temple and stares at the medal in the palm of his other hand, “Ya said ya’d tell me what to decide. That I could alter the course in the present.”
“It is a terrible decision before ye, but for humanity to evolve it takes one person to deny vengeance. It is the hope o’ a better way, however little our sacrifice may make on our overall improvement. However small, t’is hope against the dyin’ light in the darkness that envelopes. T’is a dream to right a lie when the damage has been done. The offer o’ a gentlelife is before ye, Darby. Throw the medal ‘way an’ ye shall live a long time with yer fam’ly.”
“Why do I have to choose?”
“We all must, because from the seed o’ the fallen will grow righteous vengeance as high as the moon fer all to see, an’ on an’ on, an’ on an’ on. Forever t’will repeat, if allowed. By things which are not, bring to nothin’, things that are. . . ad infinitum.”
“Who said that?”
“Oliver Cro
mwell, another king killer who became king.”
“Ya ask me to turn the cheek when Dinny destroyed my fam’ly? When he set up my brother for a murder he didn’ commit? Then had The Swede beat an’ banish me to the shadows? But that wasn’t enough. He then kidnapped my cousin Sadie an’ forced her to marry him. An’ to have his child!”
“Kidnapped? Forced? Are ye beginnin’ to believe yer own lies now?”
“Why should I be the only one to sacrifice?”
“Ye’re not. Dinny too has not killed Bill even though he had every right to call a Blood Feud fer murdering his cousin. Dinny has opened the door fer ye to join him again. Remember, ye once worked together years ago an’ ye held him a high regard.”
“So much has changed since then.”
“Stop the perpetual cycle o’ victims an’ victors that change places like life an’ death, Darby.”
Malice glitters in Darby’s eyes, “I will not.”
“I see,” The old man mouths.
“I will right the lie about my fam’ly,” Darby screams and closes his fist round the Distinguished Service Medal. “I will!”
Upstairs, five gunshots ring out and the screams that come from Sadie curdles his blood and shakes the ground as if the earth had been ripped open and the sky cracked. “Darby! Darby!” Sadie’s voice is so loud that blood trickles from his ears.
“It’s not my fault,” he dumbly responds. “It’s not my fault.”
“Darby!”
Darby yells back, “I can’t, I can’t stop myself now. I’m sorry, Sadie.”
“Darby wake up!”
When Darby swims to the surface through the amber sky and up into life, he gulps for air and comes to his elbows.
“Are you alright, my love?” Ligeia asks him, her face is so close to his in the dark that he can smell the spices of womanhood in her breath. “Darby? You had the eh, what you call? Night terrors again. Darby?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
“You were eh-dreaming. Darby.”
Darby drops his head back onto the pillow and screws both eyes with the knuckles of his bent index fingers. When he can’t move his pinky, he remembers the dressing Ligiea had put on it when she found him wearing a bloody splint. Somehow she had collected a few liquids, mixed them with something pulpy and made an unguent. With a meticulous and gentle handling of the skin that had been punctured by bone, she spread the potion with the handle of a boiled toothbrush. Afterward she tenderly draped a clean cloth over the wound which she had cut with a pocket knife to fit round the finger. Then she pulled it moderately tight and wove a hairpin through it to keep it in place as if she were darning a shirt.
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