Divide the Dawn- Fight

by Eamon Loingsigh

  “That is—”

  “Valuable,” Anna finishes his sentence. “Ya tell him that he needs to provide her protection because Vincent an’ The Swede are bullin’ her again, that way—”

  “We can make sure she can help right the lie,” Darby realizes.

  “An’ ya come across as able as Abe.”

  “A white birch tree,” Darby blurts when an idea comes to him.

  “Wha?”

  “I heard Bill talkin’ about how they left him to die in the forest by a bunch o’ birch trees, if we tell him I was shown a sign from a white birch tree, he might believe it. My aunt Rose used to tell me about how they had the power to purify an’ to start the fires o’ Beltane.”

  “What’s Beltane?”

  “A Celtic festival to mark the beginnin’ o’ summer. Bill thinks he’s been reborn as a Celtic king.”

  “Now ya're gettin’ it,” Anna encourages.

  “An’ they protect from evil spirits. But is it true?” Darby asks. “Are ya still pure?”

  “Yes, of course it’s true. I’m just a girl an’ I’m not sure what I want,” Anna bites her lip again, red and moist in Darby’s eyes.

  It’s not true, Darby’s head hurts and he places a palm over one side of his forehead. It’s a lie, she is not a virgin. I know a lie when I see one. Everything I am fighting for is to right a lie, but is it wrong to accept another lie in order to right the lie that has defamed my family? Yes, it has to be, otherwise—

  He looks back to Anna Lonergan to test her reserve, “This is dangerous, Anna. If ya not one o’ Bill’s followers, then ya his enemy. If ya get caught lyin’, he’ll. . . Ya only gotta look at Mickey Kane to know what Bill does to his enemies.”

  Anna swallows again and turns her eyes down and away from him.

  “I seen what he done to ya already. If he punches a woman, he’ll kill one too. Don’ do this, Anna. It’s not right. Why does Abe say ya want revenge? He told me that there is power in numbers, but a red-haired girl’s revenge is even more powerful. What do ya want revenge for?”

  Anna blushes and her eyes begin to blink quickly as she looks down and away from him again.

  When she doesn’t answer him, Darby says, “Secret. There’s a secret that’s burnin’ inside o’ ya, ain’t there?

  Anna turns on him, “Ya’re the one’s gotta be careful, understand? Abe knows everythin’.”

  “Knowin’ things is what I’m known for.”

  “Abe knows more than you.”

  “Yeah well, there’s one thing he don’ know. An’ he keeps askin’ me about it.”

  “Yes,” Anna agrees. “Sadie’s secret. What is it?”

  I’ll never tell. Not you. Not Bill, no one. I don’t care if it burns me from the inside, I’ll die with Sadie’s secret.

  While Darby’s thoughts spin and twist and spiral, he doesn’t hear a single thing Anna tells him. When he looks back at her, she suddenly stops talking, smiles and turns her attention inside the window again. “Be very careful, Darby. A baby doesn’t earn its wings until after it becomes a angel.”

  What choice do I have? My brain is fakakta. I can’t do this alone. I need help.

  In the far-off Darby hears the distant tinkle of a trolley bell down below, but an elevated train clicks and clacks and overtakes it.

  “One last thing,” Anna says, “Ya know that Abe handles all the gang’s income? The thing is, Abe knew about a week ago that the trial was gonna be postponed.”

  “No he—”

  Anna holds up her hand, “It’s true Darby, Abe’s had someone followin’ ya all along. Put the devil on horseback an’ he’ll ride to hell, he says. Put a shadow on the shadow an’ the darkness takes shape. How do ya think I knew where to find ya?”

  “Does he know Ligeia is. . . I-Talian?”

  “Course he does.”

  “Does Bill?”

  Anna slowly lowers her face to stare deep into Darby's eyes, “No, Bill does not know. . . Yet.”

  “Bill can’t know that, he—” Darby thinks of the right way to say what is on his mind, licks his lips and turns back to her. “If Abe gets too influential, we might have to do somethin’ about that.”

  Anna measures her own words, “Maybe. Until then, consider this Abe’s peace offerin’,” Anna reaches into her peasant blouse and hands Darby a wad of money, “It’s two hundret an’ fifty dollars. Go to Dead Reilly an’ pay the retainer, then go to Bill. An’ when ya get back, take this poor woman out an’ buy her a dress.”

  Darby holds the money while still trying to understand everything she just said, then notices Anna has extended her hand toward him.

  “A pact,” she offers. “Abe, ya’self an’ I will get Bill atop Irishtown by hook or by crook. An’ when we do, the king’s court will already be established.”

  Darby shakes her small hand.

  Anna then opens the window and bends down, “Then we gotta get to work an’ start earnin’ money. Ya can’t live in this shithole wit’ a new baby, what’s wrong wit’ ya?”

  “But what about the fight? Bill can’t beat Dinny, one-on-one.”

  Anna slowly closes the window, “The mole in Bill’s ear whispers to him.”

  The Rusted Badge

  Daniel finds his wife on the parlor floor of their Navy Street room. The same room that had been her home all her life. Since the very day she was born, which was the day her mother died. Doirean cries and bawls, flailing on the floor of the home where her father William Brosnan raised her as best he could.

  “Doirean, ya gotta get up now,” he stands over her with Little Billie Bear in his arms dressed in funeral black but for the white shirt and starched paper collar. “Everyone’s waitin’ outside.”

  “Where paw-paw?” The boy asks scratching his upper lip with a fingernail. “Where grandpaw-paw?”

  “Ah god please, why, why, whyyyyy?” Doirean bawls out when she hears her son, who was named for her father. “Daddy, daddy, what happened to ya? Why did this happen to ya daddy?”

  Her face is pressed against the wood floor of the parlor, arms sprawled out. She can’t lay straight on her belly because it is full with child, so she is slightly askew. She had pinned her long hair earlier, but it is now peeling off and cascades down her neck like the skin of an onion bulb.

  Daniel feels a stab of guilt, I shouldn’t have done this. What have I done? This is what I get for being greedy. I have to control her. I have to take control so that she never figures this out. Nobody can ever know.

  “Doirean?” he lowers his voice to restrain himself. “They’re waitin’ for us outside, we gotta go, sweetheart. Stand up now.”

  “Mommy,” the little one whines and leans down toward his mother with grabby fingers, but Daniel catches him.

  “Where’s Johanna?” Doirean cries as spittle bursts out of her mouth.

  Johanna Walsh had come from St. Ann’s and spent countless hours with Doirean washing dishes, changing diapers and keeping the room clean.

  It’s probably better that she is gone now, my wife needs to get back on her feet. That Walsh woman made her lazy.

  “My only friend in the world. I need her t’day. I need her.”

  Daniel rolls his eyes, the left one is still sore where he had been punched by the ghost of the madman who blew in with the fire and razed the saloon on Hoyt Street to ash and cinders.

  Patrolman Ferris had told him that when all the other tunics saw him dazed and wandering from the saloon fire, it had triggered something inside them all, at once. Empathy, for there is nothing stronger than the brotherhood of men in blue when one of their own is wounded by the loss of a family member, his father-in-law, Detective William Brosnan. They had surrounded and protected him as if he were a soldier who’d fallen in battle, and moved him out of harms way.

  I need to harness that feeling of brotherhood, and ride it all the way to my captaincy, Daniel thinks. But Ferris had followed me. Ferris knows too much.

  “Doirean, c’mon. Ya gotta get of
f the floor. We gotta go now. They’re waitin’.”

  She moans. Louder now than before. Daniel walks to the window with Billie in his arms and looks outside to the people who have shown for the procession from the Navy Street tenement to St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church. He opens the window for all to hear his wife’s crying.

  That will keep my battle brothers thinking right.

  Doe almost made it without issue. She was strong all morning. Upbeat even. Or at least strong and upbeat for the childrens’ sake. She told them they were going to have a good day. A wonderful day. A day to remember grandpaw-paw. She washed and pinned her hair and applied makeup with a steady hand in the soft red, almost pink lipstick that favored the colors of her skin.

  Her belt didn’t fit though. It didn’t have a hole wide enough for her belly. How many pregnant women need a black funeral gown? You would think there’d be more with the great grippe still taking so many children in New York. It was the belt that sent her into a spiral. She threw her eyebrow pencil against the mirror when she looked at the dress hanging like a sack round her body. Daniel grabbed the scissors to put a new hole in the belt, but by the time he finished she was on the floor and everything on the table had been cleared off with a wash of her arm in a fit of despair.

  Daniel’s tongue wheedles in the strange hole in his mouth where a tooth was knocked out. It’s no surprise to him that Doirean had fallen apart. He knew it was coming, yet still it irritates him.

  He takes a deep breath and puts Billie on the ground next to her, “Doirean,” Daniel’s voice is now edged with urgency.

  She quickly turns her head from the floor and finds his eyes.

  There it is, that look she always gives me. That look of hatred. She hates me and she doesn’t even know the whole of it. She hates me just for being alive. It’s not my fault. That’s alright, she doesn’t need to love me. She just needs to obey me.

  “Get up,” he tells her.

  “What is wrong wit’ ya!” she screams and pulls herself up from the floor with a flat fist over her head. “I’ll put a clout on ya that’ll make ya a hospital case.”

  “Ya don’ wanna do that,” he says.

  But maybe if I allow her to strike me, I can get control of the situation by way of shaming her.

  “Mommy,” Billie cries again, his big brother stands next to him now with a finger up his nose.

  Doirean collapses in tears on the new sofa Daniel had delivered a few months past.

  She better not get eye makeup on the fabric, he grits.

  The sofa was bought with the money Wolcott had given him on the tug on Union Street when he decided to join the Waterfront Assembly’s cause. A small fortune, it cost. The fabric alone was more than one hundred dollars, but made his wife blush giddy when she noticed the green and purple detailed design of Scottish thistle damask. The oak arms and legs are stained with a deep red lacquer that borders round the back of the frame as well, details she adores.

  Daniel watches with a lowered eye as Doirean writhes on it, She could land a job on Broadway with them dramatic overtures.

  “Tell me what happened to my father,” she sniffles, then turns her doe eyes at him.

  “I’m still investigatin’ it—”

  “Ya’ve been investigatin’ it for mont’s, what have ya found? Anythin’? Or are yaz so useless that even for one o’ ya own ya—”

  “That’s enough,” Daniel interrupts.

  “That’s enough?”

  “Yeah, enough. Ya know I won’t suffer no foolery.”

  “Ya mother did.”

  Daniel wraps a palm round the handle of the blackjack on his tunic belt in warning.

  Doirean says, “From soup to nuts, ya’re all class, aren’t ya?”

  “Ya’re scarin’ the kids.”

  “They oughta be scared,” her lips fold back in fury. “Scared o’ their father!”

  “What would the kids need to be scared o’ me for?”

  “Instead o’ bein’ an example for them, ya’re a damned warnin’. Why were ya out durin’ the storm, did ya know my father went out in the snow lookin’ for ya? Where were ya?”

  “I was workin’.”

  “Where? Wit’ who? Ya shift had already ended by then.”

  “Not ya concern, Doirean,” Daniel looks at Little Billie’s eyes to see if the boy can tell he is being mean to his mother. The boy has cold, untrusting eyes sometimes. Just like his mother.

  “It is my concern, goddamn ya,” she says.

  “Don’ use the lord’s name in vain—”

  “What do ya care about the lord, ya never go to Mass wit’ us?”

  “Doirean, we can’t make them wait much longer—”

  “I don’ care about makin’ people wait!” She screams. “They can wait all day.”

  “If ya don’ get movin’ soon, I’m gonna have to bring in Captain Sullivan.”

  “Why, is he gonna arrest me?”

  No, I’m going to let you shower him with tears so I can control his next move, and yours, Daniel stifles a smile and walks to the door. Outside his partner Patrolman Ferris is waiting in the small hallway by the stairwell. Daniel opens the door and whispers, “Bring in Sully.”

  As Daniel closes the door, descending footsteps can be heard.

  Oh this is going to be fun to watch Doirean run him through the cheese grater like she does me.

  “Is he really gonna come up an’ talk to me?” Doirean reaches for her purse and pulls out a compact to look and see if her eye makeup is running. She swabs her face with powder and blows her nose.

  A knock comes to the door.

  “I get it,” Billie says with a happy tone, the way he had heard his mother so often say.

  “No, I’ll get it,” Daniel pushes the child by the side of the head and walks by him.

  Patrolman Ferris takes his police cap off as he enters and gives a little bow, avoiding eye contact with Doirean. Captain Sullivan struggles up the last steps in the hallway. The old man’s face is red. He heaves and leans on the bannister, huffing and puffing through his big white mustache. When he sees the door is open and all are watching him, he shoulders past Ferris and embraces Daniel with a powerful hug. A head shorter than Sullivan, Daniel’s face is mashed against the captain’s copper badge.

  “I’m so sorry, son,” his voice cracks. “I’m so, so sorry for ya loss. He was a good man that Brosnan—”

  No wonder your Captain, you know how to lie.

  Daniel blinks his eyes as the old captain offers lavish praise for Brosnan, “The ol’ Dubliner was a great joy to work wit’ down at the Poplar Street Station. An altruistic man who stayed loyal to the duties hoisted upon him to keep the world in order. . .”

  Brosnan was never so heroic. Never so beloved. He lives in the realm of the divine now, Daniel does all he can to avoid rolling his eyes at the old bow-legged captain.

  “Did ya know that durin’ his rookie year we had the Great Blizzard o’ 1888? That was when—”

  “Uhright,” Daniel interrupts him and moves to the side. “Why don’ ya give her a try, Sully.”

  Captain Sullivan lowers his eyes at Daniel, pushes the tears from them and wobbles toward Doirean, then promptly sits his considerable rump on the new coffee table that Daniel had delivered with the sofa. The salesman said the Art Nouveau table matched perfectly with the sofa and both came from a Belgian designer. He described the carved curves in the oak as “vigorous, yet as feminine as a flower.”

  Just like my wife, Daniel thinks.

  “What’s goin’ on outside?” He whispers to Ferris. “Commissioner an’ mayor are really here?”

  “Yeah, we’re just waitin’. We can wait all day, don’ matter to us, ya know?”

  Daniel looks back toward Doirean and Captain Sullivan and talks out of the side of his mouth to his partner, “I know ya’ve been followin’ me. I know what ya’ve seen.”

  “What?”

  “Keep playin’ stupit, Ferris. Ya walrus mustachioed father-
in-law over there is on the tug too. So are you. I know yaz suspect me, but ya’re wrong. An’ if yaz try to throw me out into the water, yaz both’ll drown wit’ me,” he turns and finds Ferris’s eyes. “Wolcott will make sure o’ that, see?”

  Ferris purses his lips and stares straight forward, wordless.

  “Wolcott’s got a new gimmick. Now that Lovett’s gang is makin’ dime hand over fist an’ Meehan’s men are switchin’ sides.”

  And Brosnan’s body resurfacing is phase one, of three.

  “We’re callin’ it Operation Grey’s Faith. So keep playin’ stupit, Ferris. I don’ mind. Just stay that way.”

  Daniel turns back to Doirean and Captain Sullivan who are exchanging words, “Look at her. She’s so fookin’ selfish. The both o’ them. Look at him rubbin’ his haunches all over my furniture like the itchy end of a dog.”

  The look that Ferris gives him causes Daniel to do a double take. But Ferris keeps his eyes averted in supplication.

  Captain Sullivan’s nose has the likeness of a blossomed mushroom, bulbous and scarlet red and lined with blue veins. His white wisps of hair encircle the ring on the back of his bald head and his legs are so severely bowed that he appears to be in a constant state of defecation.

  The captain reaches into a tunic pocket and produces a folded kerchief and slowly hands it to Doirean, “I thought ya might like to have this for keepsake, Mrs. Culkin.”

  She holds the kerchief in both hands, chin quivering. She peels the white layers open to reveal a blueish-green metallic object in the shape of a shield.

  “Eh. . . it’s discolored from the saltwater,” Sullivan points at it with a pinky as if it were a collectible artifact.

  “The salt water?” Doirean wonders, until the realization comes across her face that her father’s body had been fished out of the East River off Union Street. Her hands begin to shake as if any hopes she may have reserved that her father might still be alive were extinguished with the proof of Detective William Brosnan’s badge presented to her.

  It should have been given to me first, Daniel squints at the charade acted out in his parlor. I will take away your ability to maneuver around me, old man. I swear I will take everything you have.