A day or so earlier a fire below the street had flames jumping from each of the sewers, blowing manholes in the air after a gas leak flooded the pressurized underground. A pre–Civil War wood-framed building had collapsed over the sidewalk and into Pierrepont Street some three months before I arrived, and lay there still untouched. Only the oncome of winter has halted the advance of weeds, now receding in the rubble. Children gamble openly against a brick wall below the brownstone stairwells, laying down the money they’ve garnered from some underhanded racket for a chance to double it playing craps and faro. And bigger kids come by with rapacious intentions and punching the wee ones to extract their own sort of protection money, preparing themselves for the big show on the docks later in life as it’s the Dinnies who are the heroes on the lips of these shorn-headed, floppy-hatted lads.
The first liner I ever see fall into dock, scraping its keel against the wooden pier with a swoosh and a gulp, is a Scandinavian girl named The Halkinnean full with a load of crated birch shingles weighing close on seventy pounds each. The flag has gone up in the waterfront steam, the old signal for labormen to gather. And the whistle from the pier house blows as men amble out of their tenements and from the saloons for the need to work. No more than a skinny stripling standing in line with larger men of much might, I am lost among the crowd and quickly can’t find my uncle. As I look around in a fright, I hear the callings of the cattle pushers.
“To Pier Six wit’ ya’s!” They yell. And quickly the hopefuls begin running up the cobblestoned street, a rough road lined with freight tracks along the pier houses that break the waterfront view, “Run! Go! Who’s the best among ya!”
As we pile into the landing at Pier Six, a new voice yells at us to run north again. “Up to da bridge’n back, first ten mens guaranteed woik!”
Scrambling, men in dirty suits with broken shoes and hats in their back pockets fight amongst one another for the lead. Their suit ties are in tatters and dirt-rimmed collars flap mistakenly over their bedraggled coat as they take to the wind in hope of winning work for a day. Unknown faces spilling strange languages from their gobs and with eyes empty and bellies falling out of them with hunger to summon strength from their deflated reserves, they clamber with patchwork humility in the early-morning gales. Some men cheat and turn around for the final stretch before making it to the bridge. They are met then with shoulder bumps that put their faces in the ground and kicks that leave them moaning heavily in the cobble mud. Eventually we are led by the Dinnies all the way back where we started and lined up again. Breathing heavy. Breathing deeply with our hands on our knees, we look for the Dinnies and quickly straighten up to show how we are not in the least affected by the sprinting and fighting.
“On the line! Fix ya’self on the line, ya bunch o’ spalpeen layabouts,” I hear one of the Dinnies yell out.
“Get there! Get there. Quick, quick . . .”
“Ya nothin’ but a bunch a rotten navvies!”
“Shape-up boyos, who’s the man of the men here?”
“Who’s the bee’s knees, then?”
As I look up, four of the men barking at the mass of hopefuls push themselves through the group and make a separation to reveal their leader. And in he come. From the grimace of his toughs they clear the way for the chieftain of the dock clans.
Look at the man. Mid-twenties he strides across the face of us with a prominent stare and a fixed grin as his cronies shrink behind him, arms crossed. He does not have a happy grin though. This grin is that of a man staring into the sun. This man who emerges from the parting crowd, he who knows that each pale staring face that peers upon him is desperate for work, does not give the glaring eyes a notice as it’s he who looks upon our shoddy like to see how much work can be wrung from us. How hard we’ll give. He looks in each face. In each eye and if he finds fire, he moves on. If he finds passivity, moves on. If he finds reason, he chooses. But reason without muscle of course, he moves on.
Lost in the crowd as was I, one of his sluggers approaches and grabs me by both shoulders, pushes me between two men that know each other in line. After a moment, one of them elbows me behind him so he can be on the side of his buddy and I having to force myself back into line again from behind.
The man with men parting around him is, of course, Dinny Meehan, leader of the White Hand. And though it was many years ago, I remember it as if it were happening now and right out in front of me.
It was then, as Dinny Meehan strode through the dock aisles, that I finally figured out that the group called Dinnies were really his own: Dinny’s men, that is. And along the line he stalked like some rogue general inspecting his indigent battalion of scamps and scallies queued up as well as they could but stung with the hunger and the cold.
He stands there in my mind as if it were today. Bold and humble, a man of his time and mine. He is standing there ahead of me, scanning the bodies and the faces of the hopefuls in line. Erect like a gypsy traveler appraises a piebald vanner mare with a keen, scrutinizing eye before arguing price. He even asks to see some of the men’s teeth and if they possess all the digits on their hands. Behind him, a pier reaching out into the East River becomes filled with a backing ship and four guiding, noisy tugs. This man Meehan did not walk with the gruff demeanor of his roughneck toughs who make order on the labor lines. Instead, he answers his men’s questions with a nod or a softly spoken “Nah,” or a gentle “Yeah.”
His clothing, though a bit patchy, clings to his muscled shoulders, chest, and upper arms and down toward his flat stomach and punchy legs. His boots are soiled, as are all the other men’s, and he has the face of a hardened laborman with a wide jaw and the small ears of a fighting dog. His brown hair falls back over the top of his head without the spit or oil some use, though shocks of it are left over his temple and down close to his ear on one side. His eyes though, that’s what made Dinny Meehan. His eyes are a very intelligent green and made of a nice shape both mean and understanding.
At the time, no one had to tell me who the tribe-head here was. He carried the weight of the responsibility of things on the Brooklyn docks in his eyes, he did. As had all chieftains among their clan in the olden days back home when they ran wild through the glens, heathers, bogs, and boreens.
Up and down the line bark his boyos. Attacking a loosened piece or a scowling laborman here and there. Hissing at them in the morning wind. Pushing them off balance if they sneer too much. The dockboss of the Baltic Terminal was John Gibney, “the Lark.” His right-hand man standing behind him is the slick-haired Big Dick Morissey with the chest of a black ape and the forearms of an anchor chain. Also there, tightening up the line, is the gangly white-haired dooker with the long arms and club fists, the one everyone calls The Swede. And finally Vincent Maher, a handsome masher who was a bit younger than the rest and who smirks with the sport of a skirt chaser yet walks with the same authority as a man in the inner circle of Meehan’s larrikins.
From behind with a scare and pushing passed me without mention of a pardon is another taller sort that doesn’t have the shoulders of Big Dick or the vulgar bearing of The Swede. This man who leapt through the line from behind me came straight to the ear of Meehan and overhearing him as I did, was taken by the fellow’s accent, which can’t be mistaken for anything other than that of a true Irish traveler. A native of the country roads of Ireland where they claim no territory as their own and wobble about in covered wagons pulled by gypsycobs from riverside to horse fair. This traveler, Tommy Tuohey is he, a type I knew all too well as coming from the clans of fist fighting and knavery who sleep their drink off under the big aimless pale starry and mooned sky. With logistics at hand, Tuohey speaks to Meehan as he’d just come from a meeting with the captain of the ship for a rundown on the goods to be unloaded and an estimate on manpower.
“Fer de sake of an eerly day Dinny, sexty-two strongmen could give de ship to rest, giverteek, moraless,” said the man so quickly that I barely understand him myself.
Meehan nod
s to Tuohey. Then appearing from another place was Eddie Gilchrist who was good with numbers, though a bit on the soft side. His spectacles at the end of his nose clumsily, Gilchrist looks up and mumbles under his breath as he gathers quickly the difference between the money offered by the shipowners, money needed by the stevedoring company, and how much take the gang would get from the sixty men.
For the dockmaster’s final line-walk, the others snap to attention and look forward into the distance, pushing their chest out and standing tall on their feets. When he comes upon me and my youthful, bony physique, he snorts quietly and grabs my arm, wrapping his hand around it entirely. Looking in my eyes, Meehan quickly looks away again without changing the posture on his face a bit. Then moves on and picks the fellow next to me and a few others for the job. Gibney the dockboss walks behind Meehan and every here and there whispers into his ear about a man having put a dollar in his pocket to get picked, then the man emerges from the line and stands among those who would work that day.
My uncle Joseph is against the idea of paying to work, and so is his crew. Consequently he and his are rarely chosen. Across the gaggle he looks at me with a scowl as the line falls apart. Some throw their gripes in the air while the firm-eyed Meehan with all his cronies about him gives his back to us.
The Swede stands and stares into us as the others around him walk toward the ship. He dares any of us to step forward, waits for someone to back up their crying out against the old rules that still have life here on the docks of Brooklyn.
And as soon as The Swede begins to turn back toward the dock, a man runs from among us with a pistol in hand and lets off a wild shot into the gangsters. Everyone ducks except me since I don’t recognize the sound of a gunshot. The Swede acts quickly, turns round and pushes the running man off balance and lands on him knee first, then rips the gun from him. Tuohey, Gibney, Morissey, Maher and others land on the man too while Dinny Meehan rolls up his sleeve to look upon his bloody forearm, wounded by the shot.
“It’s nothin’,” he promises, then waves his men back toward the ship. “Bring ’em over here.”
I stare as the groups of men walk in opposite directions, those heading to the docks for work, and those heading back to the saloons. The man with the gun is taken from our lot and dragged screaming. He is apparently insane, soft on the brain, or both. His fate is not for us to know or ask, however.
“Starker,” Uncle Joseph explains. “Hired by the shippin’ companies or maybe the New York Dock Company, who knows. Anodder who wants Dinny Meehan dead.”
“That’s a good thing, is it not?”
He looks at me. “They kill union guys too, anyone for the dime. Labor sluggin’ has loyalty to no one but the dime.”
I wonder if the police are to be summoned, but told that no such law exists along the waterfront. The Poplar Street station is only called upon when a body is found by those who believe in police law.
“Up the street inland, the law is there for most people,” a crony of my uncle mumbles while the starker is pulled away by his collar. “Here, no one wants to know what passes in the dark.”
We turn round, and without work my uncle and his men curse the gang again. Days go on like this and the only time I ever get work is when multiple ships arrive simultaneously and no other men are to be had. Weeks can go by without working a single day while the same groups of men are picked. Some complain that they haven’t the money to pay the gang to be among the chosen and if they did, they’d still have to pay tribute at the end of the day. This would leave them with a small take.
Too many men, not enough ships and jobs. Even in a place like the Bridge District that is highly industrialized. Still, it isn’t near enough, as more ships unload the human cargo of pilgrims and defectors and escapees of foreign and obscure hostilities every day. Spilling into the overflowing neighborhoods and exasperating an already desperate circumstance. My uncle and his men explain to me that a few years earlier, many gangs used to war with one another for the right to work. For labor work. But Dinny Meehan brought all the gangs together and since then, it is the White Hand that controls the labor racket.
When we do get picked for loading or unloading, the work is backbreaking and strains my young thin muscles to a burning never witnessed in my body. I am often overcome with the need to drop my carry under the great strain in my shoulders and neck. Winded too, as we are made to run, and the sweat underneath my shirt freezes when it’s cold enough. One time Gibney the Lark kicked me to the ground for my lagging in the line. Already tired from the work, I fall like a pile of bones and use the time as a resting point while the others laugh it up at my expense. At the end of the day, when the stevedoring company passes out envelopes that contain my earnings, Gibney and his right-hander Big Dick, show up again with some other fellows and demand a portion. I willingly hand it over. Having heard the story of the four Italians who were dragged off by ambulance cars, I’m not concerned about the morality of it. After taking my portion, Gibney and Big Dick simply turn round and force upon the next victim.
“Have a little dignity, bhoy,” my uncle Joseph angrily whispers. “Don’t look so feckin’ scared when ye hand it over. Show’m yer honor. Give’m the eye. Are ye wid us or not?”
“I am.”
CHAPTER 6
McGowan’s Wake
ONE NIGHT ON A SATURDAY I sleep on the sofa while white snow shimmers out the sooty kitchen window. It falls slowly, peacefully into the foreground of the bridges and masts and elevated tracks in the air among the stacked factories and tenements and brownstoned buildings leaning over the East River. The dark Water Street shack shakes when the stringed freight cars drop their loads of raw materials to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. Rail brakes moan through the halls when ship containers full of paint cans are delivered at the Masury & Co. factory and clicking echoes travel through the air shafts when torpedoes are transported to the E.W. Bliss building up and down Plymouth Street a block away.
In good spirits after a bout with the drink, Uncle Joseph brings over a few men to the tenement for a shindy. That Saturday, the bottom-floor room was to cackle with voices and was lit with elongated, blooming flames in the dark from sucking pipe matches. With the drink in them they are blurts, much louder now than on the piers where I last saw them.
When I am woken by the drinking roars, they hand me the hooch for a swig; and, set to waking the fireplace too, they throw broken pieces of wood from the stairwell banister. Cursing Dinny Meehan and all the toughs who follow him, they resort instead to lines about worker-friendly environs and the right of men to organize.
“Fair bein’ fair!” they demand. “Civility of the worker’s rights!” I watch them from my springy sofa pounding their fists on the kitchen counter with their boorish denunciations and their lavish proclamations. Crooning the melodies of the abject and summoning the war cries of that time and place.
“Emma Goldman says . . .” and “Gene Debs is a man we’ll vote fer . . .”
It was the pookas lived here too. I’d heard them as they were still fresh in my old country thoughts. The shanachies who storytell from village to village had always told me that the Irish are cursed by them, which explains why we are always on the bottom of every rung and wrangle, no matter the city we reside. Once we show a bit of success the pookas come and haunt us and whisper good-for-nothings in the ears of all. Next thing you know the whole shabang is overcome with unrest and back we go to the starving bottom of the rung, having to work day and night to wrangle every gimmick we can just to hold our lips above the water. That’s what the shanachies say at least. And though I had no idea what they speak of, pookas and wrangles and such, I am beginning to get a sniff of it as I listen to my uncle Joseph and comrades.
I can see that hungry look in his eye, Uncle Joseph. He has the stare of a scrag by the way his thin hairs flap over his baldspot, skinny neck and sunken cheeks with the opaque pallor of a half-dead man. He comes upon me close and breathes his boozy pan in my face, “Yer
makin’ progress now among us, bhoy. The men’r noticin’ ye as well. They are too! Ye’ve a fine werk et’ic ’bout ye.”
Impressionable as I am, the compliments open me up. I want to cry, I really do because the struggle I am going through internally is a difficult one.
“Not ye to werry, Liam,” he says. “We’ve got ye in our sights as well. We all see ye, don’ t’we fellas?”
“Sure do,” they agree.
“Right that.”
“T’ing is,” he continues, one arm around me on the sofa and pointing at me with the hand that is wrapped around a bottle. “We need guys like ye. Sure we do! We need ye here in Brooklyn. Young strong bucks like yerself. Able bodied and minded. The werld was made fer de like o’ ye. An’ the International Longshoremen’s Association needs good lads like ye. Ye’re comin’ in at the right time, ye are. I’m goin’ to introduce ye to a man’s gonna help us all, name’s Thos Carmody. He was sittin’ right here just a few week ago. Oh yeah, that’s a man can get things done, he’ll have ye up an’ runnin’ with a union card an’ all. He told us of the German plot, didn’t he men?”
“He did!” They agreed.
“The English, they call him the Hun, but what’s an Irishman got against the Germans? Nothin’, that’s what. One million dullers fer a strike in Brooklyn, that’s what they’re ready to pay us, bhoy. Thos Carmody an’ the ILA, they’re ready to pay us fer refusin’ to work and make weapons for the English to buy. And guess who’s to lose power from us strikin’, guess?”
Light of the Diddicoy Page 4