Exile on Bridge Street

by Eamon Loingsigh

  “My husband will have something to say about it,” Mrs. Lonergan says softly, then looks away.

  “Ya husband needs to be workin’, Mary. We all know that. Send ’em every mornin’ to Red Hook and I’ll keep ’em busy. You’re gonna run this bike shop from this point forward. You an’ Anna and we’ll keep supplyin’ new bikes. Here’s how it’s gonna go. We’re gonna stay quiet, all o’ us. Right now, we ain’ ready. I owe Meehan tribute every week from Red Hook. I’ll give ’em back his own money from this shop here and it’ll be even. But nobody says nothin’ to ’em. Anybody talks,” Lovett points toward the Lonergan children. “I’ll take every last one o’ these fookin’ snotty fookin’ mucks o’ yours . . .”

  “You’re drunk,” Mrs. Lonergan screams.

  Gritting, Lovett grabs her by an arm and holds it over her head with a hard grip, pushing her backwards as Anna holds her from falling.

  “Let ’er go,” Anna screeches.

  Harms looks from the wall toward Richie, who goes up on his elbows to watch.

  “Ya fookin’ ugly slattern whore,” Lovett says, pushing her and Anna backwards over two bicycles and then wheeling around toward the boys with his .45.

  Children are hugging each other, shrieking, convulsing, and unsure what to do with the fear that runs up in them. The littlest ones go to their mother and big sister who’ve fallen across a row of bicycles. Willie waits for his older brother Richie to move before going after Bill. Scared himself, Lovett pushes the stripling teen to the ground and points the gun at him, then kicks him in the kidneys.

  “Six mont’s,” Lovett says, roaring toward Willie, then looks against the wall where four teenagers are smashed against it, over to Anna and Mary Lonergan standing and checking their wounds, then stares down to Richie on his back. “Six mont’s and we’ll make our move. . . . Petey an’ Timmy?”

  The two teens look back to him from against the wall.

  “Ya tell ya older brothers they’re wit’ us. That they’re in now, forever. Mary, ya tell ya husband he’s wit’ us too. Darby Leighton, Byrne, Seaman, Healy, and others. Six mont’s and we’ll make our move.”

  Squatting by her mother who is bleeding from an elbow and her back, Anna looks up to Bill Lovett. Sees that no one in the room challenges his command as he struts from one side to the other, bellowing and casting rules and orders. She watches Bill as he throws her brother’s wooden leg toward him and tells him to get up. She is not outraged at his actions. Sees in him the violence that she knows from her father’s actions, but does not feel the same disgust. Instead she sees in Bill Lovett all of the qualities of control and power that her father lacks. The dominance over others. The leadership. A violent demand for success unlike her father’s violent demand for respect. Aroused by this man’s will, she looks up from helping her mother and sees not hatred for the man that has wounded her here, not resentment as she has so often felt toward her father, but stimulated by the brutality she’s come to know so well.

  “All five o’ ya, out the door. Go bring back five bikes so these women can get to work sellin’ ’em. Ya got rent to pay, no more freeloadin’ off Meehan. When the time comes I’ll be in charge and the whole lot o’ ya will be ruling ya own territories like Dinny’s dockbosses. We’re gonna get there, but we need six mont’s o’ quiet to build up. Richie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That day comes, you’ll be my right hand. But get it, we need quiet. Silence. G’ahead an’ do what Dinny an’ his boys command for now. He’ll be keepin’ all o’ ya away from me, so you’ll be sent up north in the Navy Yard’n the other terminals. Do what they say. Wit’out question, but tell me about it right off. I wanna know everythin’. Understand?”

  Everyone in the room looks at him, from the wall and from the ground.

  “Understand?”

  They all mumble in agreement, making sure not to attract too much attention on themselves as the five teens walk past the children and out the door to Bridge Street.

  “Eh, Mr. Lovett?” Mrs. Lonergan says.

  “Don’ call me that.”

  “Well I just don’ want to . . .”

  “Whadda ya want? Say it.”

  “If yer to be the king round here someday soon, takin’ me childers away from me . . . and me husband . . . won’t ye need a wife fer to be known as . . .”

  “Ma,” Anna pulls on her mother’s arm, yet looks toward the man for his reaction with a soft glance.

  Bill looks at Anna with hard eyes, his cherub ears red and flayed out from the side of his head, bright lips and blushed cheeks. He looks at her body, gun in his hand, black tie still over his shoulder. He walks toward them as the children gasp again.

  “This bike shop’s yours now, Mary,” Lovett says, staring into Mrs. Lonergan’s eyes. “Ya husband an’ the boys, they need to be workin’. You know that like I do. You’re a businesswoman now. You’re in charge here. When Dinny’s men come to pay ya rent, just thank ’em. Don’ talk. We’re gonna move up, you’n me. All o’ us. But there’s only one way to move up, and that’s to move someone else out. The world demands it. The strongest run it and I’ll be the youngest ever to take over the docks.”

  Looking away from Mrs. Lonergan toward Anna, “Fourteen’s too young yet. The day comes when I clap open Meehan’s brain with this gun is the day I’ll earn ya. ’Til then, I ain’ nothin’r nobody but another laborer on the docks. The gang’ll be ours, though, and your family will be on top. Mary an’ Anna Lonergan, treated like queens ya will be, and wit’ kids fat’n happy. I promise ya that. As a man, I promise it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Old Protective

  I LOOK IN WINDOWS. ALONE, IT takes me three long hours to find Greenwich Village from Park Row where City Hall watches the trolleys climb down from the Brooklyn Bridge. Now here on Hudson Street, I see scores of children I mistake for an entire class but are really only three mothers and some twenty-five kids with nosefuls of dirty fingers and a wave of high-pitched voices.

  I ask an old man, “Do you know where I can find the County Claremen’s old protective, uh, association?”

  “Evicted Tenants Protective and Industrial Association?” he says with a toothless mouth and a melodious lilt.

  “Yes.”

  “Go see Lynch in his tavern at 463.” He points and shuffles off.

  I come to a brick building on the corner and inside are the whites of eyeballs staring from the sides of sulky heads among the obscured light from the front windows. They look the same as the longshoremen of Brooklyn who wait for the flag, the whistle, and the shapeup in local saloons.

  A very tall, sturdy man with a vest and full head of hair opens the growler hole behind the bar and takes some cash from a faceless hand outside, sends a filled cup through, then calls for me, “Help ye, bhoy?”

  “Is there a Mr. Lynch here?”

  He is looking in my eyes with a coldness about him that I can see he means to run this tavern as a real and respected business, “What’s yer need?”

  “I want to go back to Ireland and help set her free.”

  The men at the bar bob in a muffled, cynical laugh, holding their glasses of liquor in front of them.

  “Is that all?” Mr. Lynch says, bringing more chortles.

  I stare at him from the doorway.

  “Don’t stand there, bhoy, are ye in or are ye out? Make up yer mind.”

  I walk in.

  “So,” Mr. Lynch booms after dropping a beer for the man next to me. “It’s a soldier ye wish on bein’, like the ol’ songs,” he says, a dull light on one side of his face.

  “Uh . . . I want to go and fight, yes.”

  “Ye know they’ve surrendered? The men in the GPO and the others,” the tall man, Mr. Lynch, explains. “They’ll be executed. And the locals, the Dubliners, even the Catholics there . . . spat on them bhoys as they was frogmarched t’rough the streets. Dumped chamber pots on ’em, they did.”

  “Why?”

  “Lackeys, jackeens,” Mr.
Lynch says standing well above the other men hunched along his bar. “They see Home Rule as bein’ put in place after the war, I s’pose. So why start an armed rebellion and ruin their city? That’s what they say at least.”

  “But England will never follow through with Home Rule, not if the Ulstermen have something to do with it and there’s no history that shows we should trust England.”

  “True t’ings, all that ye say there, but it’s complicated. Here in the States, more and more we’re seen as German sympathizers and with Roger Casement and the arms he tried to bring to Ireland t’rough the German cargo vessel, they’ve got their connection. . . . Think about it, bhoy, one-hundred t’ousand or more Irishmen have volunteered to fight with Britain against Germany. And this Easter Rebellion is what, a t’ousand men or more? I support their efforts, don’t hear me wrong, I want a free Ireland like the next fella, but those men’re martyrs.”

  “What’s wrong with martyrs?”

  “Nothin’, ye want to be one yerself?”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Then stow on a transport ship ’cause England’s blockade won’t allow ye go back Ireland way, but ye’ll get caught ’cause every ship’s searched in Dover’n Dunkirk.”

  I look down to the wooden floor, deflated.

  “Where ye from, bhoy?”

  “Tulla.”

  “Ah, father in the East Clare Brigade, is he?”

  “He is, an’ my brother too. Do you know what may’ve happened to them this week?”

  “They was called off durin’ the Risin’ we heared, countermanded out in the country,” Mr. Lynch said as the others mumble in confidence. “What’s yer name?”

  “Garrihy.”

  “Garrihy, eh? Tulla? Come on here, bhoy,” Lynch says, touching his chin, then directing me to the end of the bar.

  I sit up at the end with my elbows as we meet at opposite sides.

  “Where’ve ye been stayin’ here New Yark, Manhatt’n?”

  “No.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “. . . No.”

  “Well where then?” he says, standing tall. “Oh . . . ye don’t talk, is that it. Yer as mysterious as the mist, aren’t ye? Ye gotta be in Brooklyn then because they love bein’ quiet. Irishtown is it?”

  I am still quiet.

  As he walks away, I call to his back, “How can I send a letter to my mother? I was sending her letters, but the return address was my uncle’s place, but he . . . moved. And anyway, he won’t give them to me.”

  He comes back and pushes his face close to mine, “Yer uncle’s Joe Garrity, ain’ it?”

  I look at him and because of the shock, I’m not able to deny it right off.

  “You an ILA bhoy down there? Brooklyn? The name Thos Carmody familiar? He’s missin’, ye know. Thos Carmody is. Know anythin’ ’bout it, do ye?”

  Again I’m taken aback.

  “No, yer not ILA are ye? Yer Dinny’s,” he nods his head and grits his teeth in thought. “Bet ol’ Dinny don’t know ye’re here neither.”

  A man sits at the bar and Mr. Lynch excuses himself. After serving a drink, he speaks with another man for a moment, who leaves out the front door. I have the look of torture in the face, unsure what to do with myself now with the idea of my returning home being shot to shit as it is.

  “So,” Mr. Lynch says returning. “Ye can’t go home and join the Volunteers. Yer uncle’s dead. Ye don’t know what’s been done with yer da or brother and yer mother’s all alone in Tulla. Well, I’d be scared o’ that too, for the Brits’ll come and arrest all the suspected IRB and Volunteer men. Break up the brigades. Out in the country where there’s no aut’ority is the most dangerous place fer a lone mother to be. Ye got sisters?”

  “Two.”

  “Could get ugly for them, ye’ve a fair assessment on it. We’ve all got family back there, though, but we here can help in other ways. Our County Claremen’s Evicted Tenants Protective and Industrial Association along with the Owen Roe and John Mitchel clubs and others here in the city have functions, and we send funds back to the place for various t’ings, freedom included. But now’s a bad time fer goin’ back or comin’ here. Why not bring yer mother here after the war? And the sisters as well?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “I know ye want to fight and kill Brits, we all do, but the smart man . . . the t’inkin’ man sees that it’s a better life in America fer yerself and yer family, is it not?”

  “My uncle thought so.”

  “Well,” Mr. Lynch says, leaning on the bar closer to my face. “Maybe he chose the wrong side at the wrong time? Word was he had a mouth on ’em, but not the meat to back it, so someone cut ’em, burned down McAlpine’s Saloon with himself in it. Is that what you heared?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Some say t’was Dinny Meehan’s men did it. The law locked up a good few of ’em too, but let ’em go all except one—Connors I t’ink’s the name. The leader they’re callin’ him, Connors, but I know as well as the rest of us that whatever the gang tells the police in their blue tunics are no more than lies.” Laughing, the tall man continues, “I heard a hundred dock men were arrested, all named Patrick Kelly, the entirety of ’em. Oh yeah, the Brooklyn bhoys have always lived under the cover of lies and silence, just like the White Boys of West Ireland back in the great day of Wolfe Tone and the Fenians. Some say that’s where they got the gang’s name from, and their code of silence too. And wouldn’t that make sense, eh? White Boys and White Hand? Rebels the both, are they not?”

  I’m watching and listening to Mr. Lynch behind his bar, fascinated by the stories and histories.

  “There are ghosts of our past, ye know. They live among us too. Ye t’ink they don’t? Even if they are mostly just remembrances. They live on. Within us all. In our stories too do they rise up like rebels against our oppressors. Martyrs who wish to die so that the children of the next generation have the stories of their blood-sacrifice held in the tears of those youths. That the demand for freedom to be ourselves, alone is worth their lives. To fight against the notion of becoming their enemy—does that make sense to ye? That there are a great many of us who don’t wish on bein’ Anglo-American here? Just as they didn’t want to be Anglo-British over there?”

  “It does.”

  “Oh, there’s many-a story o’ Dinny Meehan too, surely. Ye know he was born just a bit down the street here? Did ye know it? A lot’s been said of the man. Did ye know too that almost everyone had died in his family within a matter of a year’s time, they did. Even his uncle, the great Red Shay Meehan who was shot up by a bunch of Strong Arm Squad men dressed as laborers. A lot’s been said of Dinny since he took his dyin’ father ’cross the East River where on a stormy day the currents sent ’em to Bridge Street. And there was young Dinny Meehan, all eleven years of him holding up his father against the icy rain and the gales of a death blow bearing down on the ferry. But it was Brooklyn where he was reared by the streets and the docks. The last son of the once powerful Meehan clan. There are some who love to tell stories of him. It’s true, too! Down in the auld Irishtown section, man named The Gas Drip Bard still tells those stories to this very day. And he tells ’em well too. Says, and I quote, ‘Dinny’s the last son who inherited a silent past. Whose history was obscured in lies by victors. In the shame of victims.’ That’s what the Bard says of him, ye know. Around 1912 auld Irishtown was bein’ sold out by its own son, Christie Maroney. . . . Ah well,” he says shrugging his shoulders. “No time for stories now but when ye’ve a moment, look up The Gas Drip Bard in Irishtown. An old man, a shanachie is he, whose words are like birds in their flight from Irish to English,” he smiles. “Look ’em up and ask ’em about the rise o’ Dinny Meehan and the gang known as The White Hand.”

  “I will.”

  Mr. Lynch smiles at me, “I s’pose ye just got outta the bullpen yerself. First time was it?”

  I still don’t answer.

  “Yeah well, better not to commit, as they say.
Listen, bhoy, I’ll help ye. Do ye want to know why? I’ll tell ye. For Dinny Meehan’s sake, I’ll help ye. Only for his sake will I do it. So then, why not do this: write a letther. There’s t’ree ports we can send it t’rough, so ye’ll need to make two copies o’ the letther. Most mail and packages from the United States’ll be opened by British aut’orities to stop the money and weapons from flowin’ in, so t’ree letters at t’ree ports are yer best bet,” he counts them on fingers. “Foynes Harbor in Limerick, Galway Bay, and Kilronan on the Aran Islands which’ll be ferried to Doolin and out to Tulla. When ye get word back from ’em, then ye can decide. It’s not a smart man decides his life on a dime, bhoy. And I’ll bet yer da didn’t send ye here so ye’d come right back when the trouble started, am I right?”

  “When my da came back from O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral last year in Dublin, it was then he bought my passage and here I am.”

  “Yer a good lad. I can see it. Voice barely cracked but a big weight on ye, there. But if yer da was a Volunteer all along, sure he had a feelin’ somethin’ was on the rise. Now write yerself a letther right over there,” he points to the wall opposite the bar, then turns to the rear room and yells. “Honora!”

  From a back room adjoining the bar comes a woman with a large bun of hair on the top of her head, an apron in one hand and an open-mouthed one-year-old in another.

  “This young man needs a sammich to write his poor ma a letther,” Mr. Lynch says. “He misses her and wants to know if she’s all right and he’s hungry too. Can we make him one?”

  “Sure we can,” she says, then speaks to the baby. “Let’s make the child a sammich, James, can we?”

  I write my mother a letter, then copy it twice at a candlelit table where a long low bench is connected to the wall opposite the bar. When finished, I walk up to the bar with all three letters in my hand.

  “Fine, fine,” Mr. Lynch says smiling. “Do ye have money at least to pay fer postage?”

  “Uh, well I have this,” I reveal some change from my pocket.

  “That won’t even get ye home, bhoy.”