Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  The priest’s voice cracks and he sucks in air through his whistling nose, “He may’ve lost his faith for an ignorant prophecy that fed on his fears, but he loved his wife like I’ve never seen a man love a woman. He lost her that year. His faith shaken to the core,” he growls and sits up. “It was that damned storm. An’ the old world took him back. Ol’ Brosnan’s body was found in the East River this afternoon,” Father Larkin’s eyes turn up, and through the dark window he leers at me. “All those years on the streets exposed him to the superstitions o’ ye shanty Irish. Cursed him, even. But he still found it in himself to be a good Catholic. An’ a better man than even I ever believed god could create, an’ what do ye do to him? Ye butcher him, stuff the pieces o’ him in a barrel an’ dump him.”

  I made a mistake in coming here. I’ve made many mistakes today.

  “I—”

  “A man that was beloved by the community, an’ by his daughter, herself the wife of a patrolman, god help them now. She is with child on top of it, Doirean Culkin is. Two others already born. Would ye have their father Daniel butchered as well?”

  “You have the wrong man, Father.”

  “Do I? For a fact I know ye killt yer own uncle. I knew him too. Joseph; he was named for the patron saint o’ workers who died in the arms o’ Jesus an’ Mary.”

  “Yes he was saintly, wasn’t he?” I put in sardonically.

  Outrage takes his face, “Ye’ve got a mouth on ye like that? I’ll tell ye this once, ye do not talk back to me thusly in the house o’ god. Yer uncle was not a perfect man, but none of us are. An’ if ye’d kill yer own blood, then why is it a stretch for ye to take the life from an officer o’ the law?”

  Mam told you about uncle Joseph, I realize. That was a strong move, Mam.

  Father Larkin’s eyes flash in fury, “It’s Dinny Meehan everyone blames for bringin’ this trouble to Brooklyn. They even blame him for that storm.”

  “Irishtown does not blame anyone but touts and outsiders,” I correct the priest. “But I will say this. He is guilty. Not of murder, but guilty of the crime of poverty. Moreover, guilty of standing strong for the poor.”

  “Ye talk to me as if I’m a crony on the street? No ye don’t—”

  “You and I aren’t all that different. We’re both just trying to survive, aren’t we? And both of us are succeeding.”

  “There is a world o’ difference between us, William. I am a godly man, an’ yer’self? Ye’ve chose to follow some other false deity, for in times o’ great sufferin’, false deities arise.”

  But I’m trying to free myself of him. If only you could see it.

  “I know ye’ve suffered son. I can feel it comin’ off o’ ye, but ye must cast off the shackles that Dinny Meehan has put ye in. He enslaves ye by his will, even serves ye the lethal bev’rage that has for so long imprisoned the Irish. Ye have to shed light on he who hides in darkness like the demiurge. For salvation ye must expose Dinny Meehan to the light. I have even heard it said he had his own cousin, Mickey Kane, put to death so there’d be no heir to. . . to challenge his tyranny over and the folly exiles an’ raggle-taggle diddicoys in his employ.”

  Lies.

  “Confess for yer mother’s sake. She has already lost so much, she cannot bear the weight o’ losin’ a son on top o’ her husband. Beat yer swords into ploughshares and yer spears into prunin’ hooks an’ come to god an’ fam’ly.”

  I come off my knees to exit the Confessional box until his voice softens.

  “Son, I can see that ye had nothin’ to do with Detective Brosnan’s murder. But to save yerself ye must give up Meehan. Ye must say it. Say it to me, an’ ye’ll be free.”

  “Is that the word of god? That to repent, I should turn in others?”

  “No son, it’s the word o’ the law,” Father Larkin’s voice is calm now, inviting.

  “Ye haven’t a choice, son.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Admit to me now an’ I can protect ye. There’s nothin’ left for ye out there. Outside,” He turns to look behind him and in the candlelight I can see his profile. “Out there it’s all over now. Brosnan’s death changes everythin’. But I can protect ye if—”

  “Protect me?”

  “Yes, speak. Speak son, admit Dinny Meehan was behind the murder.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “God will come for ye!” Father Larkin hisses through his nose, then summons a deep and resonant voice that bounces in echo off the rafters. “He is already here for the malevolent. Now!”

  “I hear he comes for us all,” I stand again to leave.

  “Ye refuse the Lord’s gift? Now yer soul must be sanctified. Yer flesh mortified. Officer Culkin!” he calls out.

  When I exit the box, Patrolmen Culkin and Ferris are awaiting me in front of the pews with a band of tunics who stroke their twelve inch blackjacks impatiently. Culkin smiles and bites his lip in anticipation.

  “No!” I run behind the altar and through a doorway into a long hallway with flagstone floors and a high, barrel vault ceiling. I can hear their clomping boot steps behind, chased by Father Larkin’s words. “Atone, my son. Jesus suffered an’ died for ye, an’ so ye must atone. Atone!”

  The hallway has four locked doors, but the one at the end is open. Inside I close it behind me and drop the bolt. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to cut me at the throat and chop me up. A small window allows dull light over a small bed in the dark room. As I pick up a shoe, the tunics bang on the door, though their words are muffled on the other side. The shoe cracks the glass on the window, but does not break it. The second shoe goes right through.

  Behind me the door is being battered to pieces and soon enough I can see movement through the boards. I pull out the shards of glass from the window as fast as I can until the door is smashed aside.

  “Halt I say!” A tunic yells and four of them elbow at each other to get to me.

  Glass sticks into my forearm and belly as I slip through, but just as I think I am free, my foot is grabbed and I am pulled back into the window. He is going to kill me. Cleave my flesh from the bone. Kicking backward with the other boot, I scrape at the hands that hold me and connect with a face or two until I am let loose.

  At basement level outside I run down a cement corridor where columns that begin at eye-level reach up to a covered garden. I jump up and scramble through rosebushes and a tomato patch among freshly turned earth. The cobblestones of Gold Street stretch out ahead and reach all the way down the hill toward the water. To the right is Hudson Avenue and the Navy Yard wall. If I jump the wall I can hide in the Navy Yard. He’s going to butcher me.

  I scramble to my feet, but five tunics block my path to the Navy Yard. I turn for the water instead as above us, tenement windows begin to open.

  “Let him be!” A lone woman screams down to the tunics.

  Boys appear on a rooftop to watch me run and shower bricks from a broken chimney down onto the men chasing me. Suddenly the air is filled Irish confetti; kitchen utensils are hurled streetwise, paving stones too, and eggs and heads of lettuce burst on the sidewalk. With a clang, a cast iron skillet bounces off the cobblestones behind me.

  “Ya let the boy go!” Another woman yells out.

  “Fuck off tunics,” a crowd of rag-haired boys and snot-nosed girls screech in soprano as they send dornicks and bottles flying at my pursuers.

  When I get to the railyard on the water five more men appear, though these do not wear tunics nor police blue, but are plain-clothed. By now I am exhausted and they run me down. It takes seven of them to subdue me until five more pile on. Three have their knees in my back and two more have their boots on my neck and face until they manacle my hands behind me.

  “Looky looky,” a high-pitched voice says above me. “The dockboss o’ the Atlantic Terminal.”

  “I am not.”

  “Ya killt my father-in-law, don’ deny it.”

  “I didn’t.”
He’s going to cut me. He’s going to stuff little pieces of me into a barrel and dump me in the East River.

  Patrolman Culkin laughs, “Hey Ferris, let’s see how long he keeps singin’ that tune. I say less than twelve hours.”

  Ferris smiles nervously, “Yeah, he’ll come to his senses.”

  “An’ if it really wasn’t ya that did it,” Culkin leans down and swipes some pebbles and dirt from my face. “Then I know ya will be happy to tell me who did, right kiddo?”

  Just then it begins raining sticks and metal cans. A garbage lid flies like a saucer in our direction and caroms off the pavement into two tunics. An angry gust of wind blasts over us as thirty, maybe forty Irishtown natives sprint in our direction.

  A black motorcar screeches to a halt and five men pick me up by the belt to toss me in the back. Two windows explode all round me, the glass falling like rain as I lay face down in the back.

  Outside I can hear Cinders Connolly’s voice as something bangs against the motor car.

  “Wee-um,” Philip Large yells out, though I can’t see him.

  The car then lurches forward. First gear winds so high that the transmission is about to explode until the driver presses the clutch and grinds it into second.

  I wiggle up to the window in time to see that we are on Plymouth Street. As we pass Bridge Street I can see the Dock Loaders’ Club down the block.

  “Help! Help!” But it’s too far away.

  In the passenger seat ahead, Patrolman Culkin turns round to face me with excited eyes. He swings once and the lead end of his floppy blackjack ricochets off the top of my head. It takes two or three seconds until the pain comes to the fore. When it does, I feel liquid fingers drip down onto my cheek. Culkin’s eyes look aroused, like how Vincent’s eyes look when he talks about women. Then he rears back again.

  Grey’s Faith

  May 1919

  Darby’s boots gently touch the metal ladder of the fire escape quiet as the wind in his hair. When he thinks of the possibility of Ligeia and Colleen being found squatting in the condemned textile factory, his stomach does somersaults. He stops and looks down toward their window. But being on the Sixth Floor, most people wouldn’t know to look up. On the shaded side of the building, way up here above Flatbush Avenue, Darby goes unseen, unheard. As usual.

  As he takes the last step and jumps onto the roof, Ligeia’s words now ring in his head, “I have eh-new friend to sit with the baby.”

  Does she mean a babysitter? How would she have been in touch with a babysitter when our room is sealed off and the only entrance is through the window? Why hadn’t I realized what she was saying at the time?

  He chalks it up to some problem with her English as another, more looming concern crosses his mind; Dead Reilly and the money he requires for the trial.

  The trip to Connecticut to find Sadie had been a waste of time. Darby, Ligeia and little Colleen Rose had made a day of it and went by train. It was all the money Darby had to buy the tickets, but Ligeia was so excited he couldn’t tell her how poor they truly are.

  They didn’t want to tip off his brother Frank, so they came unannounced. But when they found out Sadie was not there, and had never been there, Darby turned white.

  Ligeia was not as upset, however. Instead she had turned her attention to how beautiful the suburban house was. She and Frank’s wife Celia walked round for hours talking about electric appliances, electric lights, electric irons, electric heat and how handy Frank had turned out to be, evidenced by the two posts he had cemented in the backyard and strung up clotheslines onto.

  And when Ligeia found that Celia had gone to nursing school at Bellevue Hospital and that ten of the current students had died of the Great Influenza epidemic recently, she ran to Darby. “They have eh-shortage of eh-students, I want to go. I will go there to be nurse or,” she turned to Celia. “How you say?”

  Celia cleared her throat, “They also need midwives.”

  “Midwifes. I can be that too, Darby. I make money for our family,” she turns again to Celia and grabs Darby’s finger. “Look, I make this myself. His finger broken and bone come out, I fix it.”

  Darby pulled his hand away, “It’s at Bellevue they give ya the black bottle.”

  Celia sighed when she heard those words.

  The hope on Ligeia’s face fell away when Darby said, “Besides, why would ya wanna go where the nurses are dyin’ o’ the grippe?”

  Darby’s brother Frank changed the subject by complaining in the cockney accent that seems so strange and distant to Darby, “Yu should really let us know when yu’re comin’ before’and.”

  But Darby ignored him. The Distinguished Service Cross that Bill had given to encourage him was turning into a reminder of his failures.

  What will Bill do when he finds out I have no money for the retainer Dead Reilly requires.

  To make matters worse, when Darby had snuck into the Henhouse to make Grace and Kit tell him who rode Anna, Vincent Maher was in the room. As soon as he realized the Masher was in there, Darby snuck right back out the bathroom window that faces Green-Wood Cemetery.

  I left with my life, but not the information I need. Maybe I will die as my dream predicted. At Bill’s hand.

  The attorney had been avoiding Darby and here it is only a few days from the retrial. When he learned that thousands of dollars had been sent to Dead to be secured, he sensed something wrong.

  Why hasn’t he responded when I’ve reached out?

  The money Dead secures is the handle wagered for the fight. From every dank corner and garbage-strewn alley in the city; Queens to the Bronx, Staten Island to Manhattan people are putting money on it, but most comes from Brooklyn. A rumor about Bill coughing up blood had swirled and gave Dinny a wide spread. Then it was said the fight is fixed to Bill’s advantage. That lie almost evened the odds, though Dinny remains the chalk bettors favorite. But New York loves an underdog. Most of the money that came from Sing Sing is for Bill, naturally, since Pickles owns the inside.

  Darby’s mind is elsewhere as he stands on the roof and looks over Brooklyn. Dead must have been in touch with Abe Harms on Bill’s side and Chisel McGuire on Dinny’s to hold the total handle, but he never gets back to me?

  When Darby walks to the corner of the roof and looks down over Flatbush Avenue and Tillary Street, a rush of fear disorients him.

  I could jump now and I wouldn’t have to deal with all of this. If Bill finds out I lost Sadie and I never found out who rode Anna and that Dead Reilly ignores me. . . his stomach flips like a fish out of water before he can finish the thought.

  His knees wobble over the building’s edge. As he peers down with the wind in his hair, the words his brother Pickles said of him comes floating into his mind, ‘Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.’

  But Ligeia says she loves me. What would she do without me if I never came home? His teeth grind together at the thought. No, I have to corner Dead Reilly right now and make him talk to me.

  In his coat pocket Darby pulls out the Distinguished Service Cross. For Valor, the men had yelled out on the train when Bill gave it to him. Bill is a product of the romance of valor that swept the world into war, but am I courageous?

  Crossing the roof, an identical building is adjoined to the textile factory on the far side, and so he does not have to jump over an alley. He has but to scale a five-foot crumbling brick and mortar wall. As he crawls over it, the Manhattan skyline across the East River appears through the dense morning clouds while the bridges are obscured by low fog. When he reaches the far end of the second building, he turns round and begins the descent down the fire escape. At the eighth floor he looks round himself to ensure no one has eyes on him and quickly pulls up a rotted window frame and slips in. From there a dark and enclosed stairwell leads to a backdoor where an eight-foot old stone wall blocks any view of his exiting the building. Down a cement stairwell, past a basement door, then up another cement stairwell where underneath a water pump i
s being used by a woman in a sack dress. She speaks German to a shoeless child who opens the tall wooden door of an outdoor water closet, his undergarments wrapped round his ankles as he shuffles toward his mother.

  “woher kam er?” says the child as the sack-dressed woman turns round quickly, finds Darby’s bewildering eyes and shrieks.

  A few minutes later Darby pulls the flat cap over his eyes and slinks sideways between trains in the rail yard beneath the Fulton Avenue Elevated line. He ducks into the last car, takes a quick look at all the eyes on the train, and turns his face toward the glass door where he can see if anyone comes up from behind him.

  He departs at the Fifth Avenue Court House and walks to the back of a two-story building across the street. At a brick wall he stops with his back to it and looks at his watch, seven-fourteen a.m. One more minute.

  When he hears a door open, he moves off the wall and turns the corner.

  Dead Reilly drops his cigar and almost jumps out of his pinstripes, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. . . Why can’t you just use the front door?”

  Darby stares at Dead, “Ya refuse to see me, that’s why.”

  “That’s because I didn’t have an update on the trial,” Dead picks the cigar up from the ground, wipes it off, then throws it over the stone wall behind the law office.

  In the natural light, Darby can see where Dead Reilly had shaved above his pencil mustache that morning. There is even some gray in it, and crows feet splay from his eyes when he smiles or grimaces. His waistcoat matches his suit and trousers, but small food stains appear to have been rubbed out haphazardly, possibly with a wet finger. He certainly has his clothes dry-washed, but not as often as he should. In Brooklyn he became known as “Dead” because anytime there was a body, Dead Reilly would show up. Sometimes before the tunics even.

  “Ya won’t smoke a cigar that touched the ground, but ya will take a percentage off the top o’ the handle for the fight? Now I see how a man like ya’self can afford expensive habits an’ suits.”