Exile on Bridge Street

by Eamon Loingsigh

  Then the voice of Father Larkin imitated by the reverberation.

  Day of wrath and doom impending.

  David’s word with Sibyl’s blending,

  Heaven and Earth in ashes ending.

  Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth,

  When from Heaven the judge descendeth,

  On whose sentence we all dependeth.

  Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,

  Through earth’s sepulchres it ringeth,

  All before the throne it bringeth.

  Death is struck, and nature quaking,

  All creation is awaking,

  To its judge an answer making . . .

  We know these prayers in English and Latin. Some know them in Irish. And we know the incense and the holy water flung to the resting child. And we genuflect on call. And stand and sing and listen to Father Larkin in his black vestments, the prayer cycle of the Office of the Dead and his reading of the Liturgy of the Word. And over the child he stands on the altar, hands clasped, and into his homily he slowly gives for the young deceased.

  “And as we know,” he begins, voice sounding off the high ceiling and wood floors. With his palms open now, he is looking down to the child. “This earthly life fer which we are exiled is not permanent. Though t’is filled with pain and with sufferin’.”

  “I would like to spake today o’ the one True God, and the Savior,” Father Larkin’s voice opens up. “Can we not all agree that there is only one God? Yes. We can. And in so bein’, he has only one Messenger o’ the Light. His son. In our quest fer salvation, deliverance. And in places o’ great darkness. In times o’ great ruin and war. Poverty, hunger, disease, and death we sometimes believe in half-makers. For it is only in times of our greatest sufferin’ that such a false deity may arise. T’is up to ye to listen to the Spirit o’ God. To not be convinced by those that live only in the material world. Ye must remember that the Spirit o’ God comes from the divine essence. The spark o’ divinity. We are born ignorant o’ this fact and must learn it. But this false deity is only concerned with the physical realities and at times such as these we are tested.”

  Ahead, Cinders Connolly turns his wide shoulders to me and stares. Stares without saying a thing, eventually turning back round slowly.

  “This false messenger believes himself the one and the only. And although he is born o’ wisdom, of a great mother, he does not even know her. Has never visited upon her and cannot prove even who she is. His own mother. . . . He is no more than an orphan with a divine sense o’ himself. Exiled from the wisdom of his mother and from God. Arrogant, blinded by foolishness, he is a fashioner of ignorance. A creator, yes, but a creator only o’ rules and morals and codes and schemes that cause us to remain attached to earthbound, material needs, enslaving us by his will. Enslaving us to our physical needs. Serving our people the lethal bev’rage that has for so long bound and imprisoned us—” A slight gasp comes across the flock. “And for which the state o’ New Yark has just this very week endorsed a prohibition upon the production, transportation, and sale of. In one year from now, dens of alcohol will be drained and boarded up.

  “And now I say, you have, all o’ ye in the house o’ God now, ye have the ability to ascend from this materialistic, sensate slavery. Ye may be liberated, if ye so choose. Spiritual freedom awaits ye for when ye pass, as this child has today, yer divine spark is sent up and if ye have not overcome the ignorance from which ye’re born, and have not transcended from ignorance, which sin is the consequence, yer soul not accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven summoned by the last trumpet, it may be sent back to the pangs o’ slavery in the physical world again, or worse.”

  Father Larkin above us on the altar walks in his black gown and headdress gently, intently.

  “My children, the word o’ God, it must be remembered, can only be taught by His apostles and t’rough the sacraments. I ask ye, all o’ ye now, to look round. Shed light on he who seeks to hide in darkness and those archons that follow him, for they are not angels. Bring him to the open so that we may see him. See him for who he is and what he does. So that we know that he is a false creator, intent on enslavin’ us in our born ignorance. Bring him to the fore so that we may use our common sense. With the faculty of our minds it is necessary to understand what is true and what is real. Expose him to the light, he who has no awareness o’ the spirit o’ God. No understandin’ o’ the world beyond matter and mind. It is he. He and his followers that seek to exile all of us in the pangs o’ slavery, ad infinitum . . .”

  After the ceremony Sadie is silent in thought, clutching her son’s little hand and splashing kisses on his fleshy cheeks. The homily having swayed her, she crosses herself and ignores me entirely. Even refusing to allow me to let her and L’il Dinny walk ahead of me. When she finally does look up, she is gritting her teeth at me.

  Dipping fingers in the font and crossing ourselves, she walks ahead of me in anger. As the double-doors open we are touched by the raw air and the slate grays and brickwork reds of late January in Brooklyn. And at the bottom of the steps of St. Ann’s, The Swede, Vincent Maher, Mickey Kane, and others stand in a natural sodality behind Dinny as if they live for the weather, steely-eyed and happy. He looks up at Sadie and sees her face laundered with concern and doubt, then to the child. As mother and son descend, Dinny reaches up for the hand of the boy but Sadie pushes it away furiously. “Don’t touch ’em.”

  Watching her as she splits and parts the band of men, the child led by the hand toward the trolley stop a block away, Dinny sends two men to escort her home.

  “Dada?” L’il Dinny calls out.

  “What’s the deal wit’ her?” Mickey asks.

  The Swede answers for Dinny, “Larkin.”

  From behind me, Brosnan, Culkin, and Ferris shoulder past and jostle quickly down the steps like muscular messengers prompted and aroused by some inner need to defend the sacrosanctity of their beliefs.

  “Word with ye, son,” Brosnan stands over Dinny.

  “Son?” he answers.

  Myself and the rest of us surround the tunics in their Sunday civvies to hear what is said.

  “Silk truck went missin’ last night, Dinny,” Brosnan grits. “Ye band o’ t’ieves know anyt’in’ about it, do ye?”

  “Who’s Dinny?” a man yells behind me.

  “Don’ say that word again,” Maher says to Brosnan.

  Brosnan then grabs Dinny, throws him to the ground. Dinny does not try and defend himself. Does not even try to catch his balance and allows himself to fall, looks up to the middle-aged, red-faced man.

  “Dinny Meehan!” Brosnan says with a screaming and a pointing. “The man right here, on the ground. Ain’ no more’n a culchie an’ a highwayman. A rogue of low degree by all accounts. Hillside men from a blighted breed o’ diddicoys on top of it.”

  The Swede stands between Dinny and his aggressor, looks down to Brosnan. “We told ya, but ya looked away.”

  “We didn’t know nothin’,” Brosnan declares.

  “Liar,” The Swede mumbles.

  “I’m off the wagon, Jimmy,” Brosnan grumbles, his hair gray on the sides and jowls loosening in his age. “Ye’ve no hold on me’r us.”

  “Then we’ll bring ye down,” The Swede says as Dinny comes to his feet.

  “G’on with it then. We’ll have nothin’ to do with yer likes no more. Go ahead and try and bring us down, ye feckin’ bunch o’ pikey shites. I got the right kinda men behind me now—yez all are the wrong kind,” Brosnan says, wiping us away with the back of his hand. “I challenge ye, all o’ ye.”

  Culkin suddenly pushes Mickey Kane by the face and neck, Ferris holds Vincent by the shoulder and a large crowd has gathered in a circle round the lot of us in front of St. Ann’s.

  “No, ye won’t!” screeches Mrs. Lonergan pushing through the crowd. “Ye won’t be settlin’ a damned thing at me child’s service, ye won’t. Get on, then. Get on. Outta here. All o’ ye.”

  “Get out!” Anna yell
s, again with her beautiful and angry face and her mother’s child on her hip, screaming at the height of her lungs. “Damn you. Damn all o’ you. I hate you, Dinny Meehan. I hate you. I hate you!”

  As Richie limps through, a confused and emotionless look on his face and two of his followers behind him, a man yells out, “Shaddup, girl.”

  “You shaddup,” Anna yelps and pushes through the crowd as her mother picks up a broken paver and heaves it toward the voice.

  “Go ’way,” Mrs. Lonergan continues. “Go ’way. Out. Out. Out!”

  Heeding her, all the men turn slowly round, dour-faced and shamed and pulling their hats over their heads. Apologetic even, some are.

  We meet back at 25 Bridge Street a few blocks away for a crisp, noontime drink and some talk. Eventually Richie Lonergan shows with all of his teenage devotees in tow. Sitting at a table along the wall they are glum and surly and I can see by the look on Petey’s face when he looks at me that they are talking about us. Talking about how they hate us. Grumbling amongst themselves like ungrateful mucks. It angers me, watching them complain to each other about us, but I was looking for something to justify my anger. Something to justify my flying off the handle.

  I look back at Petey with Tommy Tuohey on my thoughts. And I think of how much bigger I am than Petey now and all the time Tommy spent teaching me to fight. To fight Petey after I’d been beaten. To fight Petey, that’s what Tommy taught me to do. And so I look at him again, little Petey Behan and his supposed tough self. Stare at him, do I. None too concerned this time about another challenge, me and him.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” he says.

  “I’m lookin’ at you and I don’t like the look on yer face.”

  “So come take it off.”

  “Hey,” Cinders yells toward me.

  “I’ll feckin’ take ye down, I will,” I say to him, throwing my drink to the ground and standing up.

  “Today ain’ the day for this,” Beat scolds.

  Red Donnelly picks me up over his head by my hips as everyone in the bar quickly stands, Cinders and Dance and Dago Tom and Philip Large and others between me and Petey, so quickly that neither of us have time to fight.

  “Where ya goin’, Poe?” Petey says, jumping up to everyone’s shoulders so he can see me. “Poe. Nice fookin’ name, Poe. Ya fookin’ idiot.”

  “We’re not done, ye’n I,” I yell.

  “Anytime.”

  In Donnelly’s arms, he and Henry Browne walk me right out the front door, “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “Came from Tommy,” I say pacing.

  “Tommy’n the drink too, eh?” Red says. “Go’n go for a walk, William. Walk it off.”

  “I’m not feckin’ round with people no more,” I yell.

  “I know, I know,” Red says.

  “Feckin’ tired o’ this place. Fuck you,” I yell up toward the Manhattan Bridge, which muffles my screaming with a passing train, cha-chum, cha-chum, cha-chum, rumbling and rumbling and shaking everything, then I whisper to myself, whimpering angrily. “Damnit. . . . Goddamnit.”

  “Walk it off, guy.”

  And so I do. I walk away. Walk and walk for hours at a time in the unsettled air, wind and bright breeze on my face. The cold. Always the cold and the wind. Always. I find my way to other drinking holes, and drink. And drink and sleep overnight on a bench in a saloon by Atlantic Avenue and Harry’s place. Then wake up and do it again, hardly understanding what I am so angry about in the first place. Just angry. Deeply angry. And confused. For so long I’d worked to bring my mother and sisters here and now I feel I don’t deserve them. That the things I’ve been a part of are horrible things. Shameful things and the dirt of death defiling and covering me. Hovering over me everywhere I go. That I grew up a good Roman Catholic and was taught what is right and what is wrong and still I was a part of murder, looked the other way in the deaths of others too.

  I am ready to punish myself or anyone that crosses me. I spend all the cash I have on me and drink on credit, food foreign to me. I bite at the coarse liquid that chars my throat and fires my soul. Sitting still I am reeling and dizzy and stung with great barbs of rage, and I hope that any man round me has an ill word so to excuse my fraying with him. When uncle Joseph’s face pulls up in my mind I close my eyes tight at the grisly and grim ways of the world. My own family, was he. The picture of his bony hips and bald spot haunting me. His bloodshot eyes and his drunken laugh. Mostly though, I remember the moment I looked back at him after I pushed a knife through the back of his neck, sticking him to the bar. Looking back to see him pull the chair quietly under him to wait out the last seconds of his life. How scared he must have been to die. How horrified he must have been when we set the saloon alight with him still alive in it. God how he must have suffered. And all because of me. Me.

  * * *

  NIGHT AND FRIGID DARKNESS PIERCED BY the break of day and a floating afternoon all mix together and still I am run through with anger and madness and guilt and visions. I dream of holding Emma McGowan. Between death and living, sleep and wakefulness I can’t tell. Can’t see where I am. Drinks going down. Drinks coming up. A cement pillow, I dream. Of kissing her before she slips into unconsciousness. And I take her away for the gentle summer rain. The warmth of a humid rain on our northern bodies. And the flashing chance at the bliss of her trusting me, the kiss of her mouth. Trusting me so instinctively that she is ready to give herself entirely. I can see it in her and there is really nothing more beautiful in this life than what’s in Emma’s eyes. Her lips are round and they are soft on mine and she offers me her skin and there is no poetry better than this. Her love. Her body a treasure. Pressed against me, hip to hip. And as I make love to her I look and notice she is not there, and all that I hold in my hands, and that which had been close against my body was only the memory of her. My hands empty, filled only with imaginations.

  “Wake up, asshole,” a man says to me.

  I smile, grab him by the throat and pull him to the ground by the coat. Punching and punching. Kneeing him in the face. Never letting go of him. Never letting go.

  “Break his fingers, for fuck’s sake,” another man says. “Get him out.”

  And then I am again in the wind, stumbling. Onlookers staring at me. Gawking. Skirting out of my way.

  “A drink,” I tell another tender.

  He sets me up and soon enough I am on the ground again. Death all round my mind. Faces and galleries and zoo bars in my memory and missing fathers and insane mothers and wayward children and Dinny Meehan haunting me and the butcher’s apron flying above Ireland. My mother and sisters screaming as British soldiers kick in their door, licking their lips.

  “William?” I hear Harry Reynolds’s voice.

  “Wha?” I say, sleeping on the ground of some saloon.

  “C’mon, tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “No.”

  “C’mon, tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Today is Sunday.”

  “No it’s not, tomorrow is.”

  “The Lonergan funeral.”

  “That was a week ago. The big day’s tomorrow. Sunday. Tomorrow. Let’s get ya ready.”

  I just cry. So angry, I cry. Confused. Undeserving as I am. Shaking my head and covering my face on the floor and bleating and blubbering and acting the fool. Harry yanks me up by the coat.

  “Why did I survive and she didn’t?” I ask.

  “Ya didn’ really know her all the way,” Harry says coldly. “Think of it that way. Ya mother’n sisters, though—ya know them all the way. Drink this water and get some sleep.”

  “Does Dinny make people stay here? In Brooklyn?”

  “Why do you say that?” Harry asks, quickly looking toward me.

  “That’s what Mrs. McGowan told me.”

  Harry turns his jaw, looks away.

  I lie down, the engine in his room again put back together, the trunk of wood now in the perfect shape of a proper hobbyhorse for a young boy. With two wood-craft
ed curved runners for rocking back and forth, it looks as good a quality as any I’d ever seen. It’s even been lacquered in different shades with little leather reins to hold onto and the face of the horse is in the shape of a smile.

  I bathe in a wood-slat tub in the parlor. Sponge off. Shave. Cut my hair. Drink more water. Coffee. Eat a meal.

  “Ready?” Harry asks.

  “I think so,” sitting on my cot with a bowl and spoon in my hands.

  * * *

  SUNDAY AND WE ARE AT THE Atlantic Avenue Terminal, which is empty. I follow him through the maze of dock sheds, pier houses, the hodgepodge of odd storage units, worn wharf planks and wobbling empty steamers anchored by hawsers wrapped tight round cleats and all connected somehow, some way, and blocking out the general public from the jungle of the waterfront world where we reside.

  Waiting for us is a tug and a paid driver for a taxi ride across the shipping lanes. The wind and mist in our faces and the skyline to our north, we lean forward, our elbows on knees as the vessel’s stern is deep in the water churning below and behind us. Pegged, the mechanical engine struggles. Gargling with all its might, yet we move at the slowest pace.

  “Why is Brosnan breaking ties?”

  “Dunno,” Harry answers quickly.

  “That Waterfront Assembly meeting they had the other day? Remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I bet it came out of that Waterfront Assembly meeting, like he was told to get in step or get out of the way. And all that in the papers too, about unsolved crime and . . . murders.”

  Harry doesn’t answer, but he nods, which means that although he does not want it to be true, it is.