As we walk around the high fire, I hear men hooting loudly and strong congratulations being shouted into the air. No longer do we find fashionably dressed men and women. They’re now replaced by the woolen sweaters and wool hats of the immigrant working class that I am so used to seeing in Brooklyn. Among the crowd I see a tall Free State Irish flag waving wildly in the air on the back of horse-drawn buggies and out of tenement windows too, and saloons. Young men carrying newspapers with the evening editions are working overtime. Bellowing as they run through the drinking crowds of hurraying festivities. A cheering assembly has gathered around a man that stands on the back of a hay wagon. After saying something we can’t quite hear, he throws his hat in the air and the crowd all do the same, yelling at the top of their lungs about something which only succeeds in scaring me almost out of my own shoes.
Sliding through the chaos, I see a shopwindow that has something painted on it, which grabs my attention right off: “THE COUNTY CLAREMEN’S EVICTED TENANTS PROTECTIVE AND INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION.” I wonder what on earth all that means, so I stop for another read and figure it must be some group that helps immigrants from Clare find jobs in New York who’ve been evicted from their land back home.
“Come on!” Dinny yells through the cheers. “There’s no time for dilly-dallyin’. This place has gone bugs.”
We come into a displaced crowd of men lined up along the wall of a saloon. They are gathered around a barrel that fills their glasses with beer. Some of the men have two fists full of beer glasses. Dinny walks up to them and as they recognize him, they jump up for greetings.
“It’s a Meehan come back ‘round for a drink on this finest o’ nights,” says one.
“Ol’ feller, welcome, welcome,” says another who proudly pats him as he walks by and yet another brings him a drink and heartily shakes his hand.
“What’s the rumpus here?”
“The Volunteers and the Citizen Army stormed Dublin, raised the tricolor up high at the GPO. It’s a fact,” a man says.
“Kid,” Dinny interrupts as I am thinking on what the man just said. “This is Tanner, Tanner Smith. He’s a ol’ friend o’ mine that . . .”
“What happened?” I ask to Tanner, interrupting Dinny. “I didn’t quite . . .”
“The kid’s from Ireland?” Tanner asks Dinny. “True thing kid, read the papers. True thing. The IRB Volunteers and Connolly’s army took it over; the GPO, Stephen’s Green, Liberty Hall. All the fookin’ British was at the races for da holiday. No one expected it.”
“Are they armed?”
“Sure they are.”
“But . . . what are they going to do about it? Have the British said they’ll go away?”
“Nah,” Tanner said. “They’re condemnin’ it. Gonna send troops to put it down. What part ya from, kid?”
“He’s from Clare,” Dinny answers for me.
“Is that right? Another Clareman, eh? Welcome to the American capital o’ County Clare: Greenwich Village!” he announces with his arms in the air, a few passersby agree with him too.
“But they already took over the GPO?”
“Yeah, yeah, here. Read the papers yaself, kid,” Tanner says as he hands me the paper from his back pocket. “They’re sayin’ it’s the biggest thing since 1798.”
I looked at him when those magical numbers came to his lips. “Since Wolfe Tone?”
“Dat’s what they’re sayin’,” Tanner says, looks at Dinny. “Kid knows hist’ry, uh?”
I am reading the newspaper and I can feel the world shrinking. Pulsing. Breathing, IRISH REBELS CAPTURE DUBLIN IN STREET FIGHTING, then I skip down under the headline, “England is face to face with the Fenian element’s yearning to see their Ireland freed, twelve British soldiers dead thus far.” Every word seems unreal as it describes the men and their surprise rebellion as a true threat to the empire.
This threat immediately gives the rebels the pride and the honor my people have so lacked for so long. Standing up to an empire. The only pride I had ever felt in my lifetime of Ireland and our people came from the men hiding behind the drink and from the stories my father told of Emmet and Wolfe Tone, the United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders. These were never real men to me, they were like saints. Like ghosts or parts of my own self that even I didn’t believe. Reading these words in the newspaper there, those men start to come alive again inside me. Make some sort of sense to me for the first time, as if I never truly believed they were real until this moment.
And when I read the proclamation these young rebels posted up at the GPO for all Dubliners to read, some of the words glow in my imagination, like “dead generations,” and “summons her children to her flag,” and “we declare the right of the people of Ireland to the owndership of Ireland,” and “we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives . . . to the cause of its freedom,” and finally, finishing this poetry made from real life and written in their own blood certainly, this ultimate dare of a document describes their revolt as an “august destiny.”
“1916, they’ll always remember this year,” I say, continuing to read as drops of tears fall from my eyes to the newspaper.
Tanner and Dinny watch me among the chaos of the city street. I read of America disapproving of the Irish rebels and their acts meaning they stand with the Germans against the allies. This is proven by Sir Roger Casement’s arrest for the scuttled German boat carrying arms for the rebels.
“We don’t concern ourselves with a war between empires!” I hear a man yelling from a cart addressing a crowd. “Not with King nor Kaiser do we stand!”
I look around more and there are men with their faces in their hands, crying in elation. Old men with silver beards and country hats leaning against the walls and affected so deeply by the surprise attack in Dublin that their legs shiver uncontrollably. They hug one another in tears, a very rare thing for Irishmen to do. I see women throwing paper out their windows above the saloons. Throwing their aprons too. Throwing anything into the bonfire. Everything. Men with tin whistles under their mustaches sing old songs. Very old songs that are so upbeat and happy that it makes the tears turn to cheers, tilts back the drink in them. When the men with tin whistles happen upon a reveling fiddler, they ask in each other’s ears what tunes they know, then stand with their backs against the Hudson Street saloons and play the rebel songs I remember as a child. The same songs my father hummed as the muscles in his shoulders swelled from the pulling of peat from the soggy ditches and bogs outside our home and the songs he whistled as we traveled from our farm to Queenstown (he always called it Cobh, though) just six months earlier where I boarded the ship for New York.
“Fookin’ Cath’lic moiderin’ scum!” I hear a man yelp.
“The surprise of it, eh? Hit ’em when they’re busy on the continent. On our holiday! Easter!” Tanner yells.
“Ya thinkin’ about ya father?” Dinny asks.
“Yeah.”
“Well, the way things sound, the Brits won’t allow this to go unpunished,” one of the men named Costello says. “Doubtful they’ll lay down and let Home Rule take place now. There’s gonna be battles for some time.”
I looked at Dinny, who says to me, “We need to think about gettin’ ya family over here, kid. Ya mother and sisters at least.”
“I should go home,” I say. “Back to my family. To fight. Ireland needs her sons right now. I’ve only been here since October last and . . .”
“Wait, wai’, wai’, wai’.” Dinny steps closer to me, away from Tanner. “Ya father sent ya here for a reason. He didn’ know the Fenians was gonna strike again? He didn’t? Shit, he knew. And that’s exactly why he sent ya here when he did. To get away from what’s comin’, a new war.”
I looked at him strangely, as he seemed attached to using that same outdated word again, “Fenian.”
“You been readin’ the paper about these guys? The Clan na Gael papers here in the city? These men’re ready to die. They wanna die
. Ready to throw themselves against the empire, ready to be martyred.”
“And I am too!” I say.
“Ain’t the point, kid. Ya father sent ya here so ya could bring the rest o’ the fam’ly to New York. You don’ see that? Ya mother. Ya two sisters. He wants them in New York. That’s why he sent you here.”
I look at Dinny, then think about the Claremen’s association down the block and the Hibernians who can help get them here. And then on the letters I’d sent which were never replied. Probably thrown in the trash by my uncle. Over the next hour or so, I remain in shock about everything that has just passed, connecting things in their new forms. All the while, Dinny tells me not to worry, then turns around and keeps talking business with Tanner. I had a hard time paying attention between all the excitement, the beer and my worries. Dinny shows Tanner his scar from being shot by a starker, “One o’ the Droppers.” Dinny explains.
On the topic of starkers, Tanner explains how the Jews in Greenwich Village have taken over the labor slugging and Tanner’s gang is laying low until the right time. Dinny offers assistance and they both agree that when the time comes, they’ll break the longshoreman strike that was inevitably going to come, being as though May Day was upon us. Dinny would provide two hundred, maybe three hundred men on top of Tanner’s gang and together they would restore the Irish to prominence on the docks of Greenwich Village and work together to keep the docks in Irish American hands.
“You seen Thos Carmody around?” Dinny asks him.
“Sure, what about ’em?”
“Wolcott paid us to kill ’em.”
“Kill Thos Carmody? The ILA recruiter? King Joe’s guy? Why? He’s been down in Brooklyn o’ somethin’?”
Dinny nods, “You see’m much.”
“Yeah, I see’m.”
“I need ’em done.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t know where to find ’em around here. You want back in? You wanna job?”
“Looky there, Dinny Meehan offerin’ me a job. Tables’ve turned, haven’t they?”
“You take care o’ that for me and it’s three hundred dollars.”
“Three hundred?”
“Done, like done,” Dinny says, making sure Tanner understands.
“It’s a risk on me, but we’ll do it, the Marginals.”
Dinny pulls out a wad, hands it over. “Welcome back to the gimmicks.”
“Thanks Din, we’ll work together good too. Like the ol’ days. Except you’re the big shot now.”
“I don’t forget friends,” Dinny nodded, then looked at him.
“Done,” Tanner confirmed. “I’ll give’m a bullet.”
“We still got things . . . in a couple days.”
“Yeah? A little action? How can we help? Ya wouldn’t do it wit’out us, right Dinny? Dinny? Action is action, we’re in wit’ ya, Dinny. Like ol’ days, me’n you runnin’ around Hudson Street. You kid,” Tanner taps me with his fist. “Dinny tell ya about them ol’ days, me’n him? He was my star. He didn’ warn nobody, just action. That’s Dinny Meehan. No threats, just fists and dornicks in the air,” turning to Dinny. “Then ya had to go an’ move to Brooklyn.”
“Can you send me a few guys?” Dinny asks.
“Sure, just lemme know and we’ll be there,” Tanner says, shaking Dinny’s hand and slapping him on the shoulder with his left hand. “Thos Carmody’s done, promise.”
“I’ll get back to ya about some action.”
Dinny trusted Tanner. They embraced. Laughing like old war buddies. Looking down the street at the festivities, I watch the flickering shadows playing off the tall, oranged tenements that line the edges of Hudson Street in the lowering sky. As crazed, drunken men and women flail in front of the fire in celebration, their elongated shadows dancing with them along the face of the old dilapidated buildings like peasant tribal gods of another era, ghosts of themselves from ages ago. Like the ghosts of the war-loving Celts celebrating rebel risings as if it were some farce of reality. It all seems so right these days as I dwell upon the past: fighting against an empire for freedom. Like it was inevitable. Fixed in history. Fated. But back then it was against the grain, against everything that was. The shock like that of an earthquake tumbling down the ancient edifices that stand so tall, the symbols for law and order that have guided the life of generations, only now revealed as fallacious by the weakness in its fallen state.
I hear the sighing of a mare strapped to a wooden cart amidst the rumpus, her owner off somewhere with the drink. I come to her with my palms open to her snout, but she is untrusting. She bobs her head in the air and turns her eyes sideways to watch me. I talk to her the way my father taught me, real gentle like, and I open my arms out wide to show her that I am in control and knowledgable of her kind. Although she is close on eighteen hands tall to the withers, she has a docile streak in her. In a moment, she is letting me soothe her, but the sounds of angry and drunken men make her stamp in place and I can see the bonfire in her eye like a mirror. Like the ancient light inside her, and inside me too. She is no pure quarter, but of mixed blood like the rest of us.
“A beautiful one, you are,” I say to her.
Soon she nestles her long face along my shoulder and neck, pushing me playfully. Then she looks away. Then stamping happily, clicking her shoes on the paving stones. And I have a yearning to unstrap her from the dray. To let her free from her binds.
“You just want to be free, don’t you girl? Don’t you? You do. You just want to be home in the country where you can run and be yourself, not stuck here in some foreign land. You don’t even know why you’re here, do you? You just want to go home, but your home’s not there anymore.”
I stand there next to her, and still I am shocked by the awe of rebelpoets and teachers storming Dublin and the dancing shadows and the bonfires and Manhattan and the gangs filling up my new life. Tanner comes upon me among the party to wrap an arm around me next to the mare, his other hand filled with a growler of ale. “Kiddo, not to worry. That man will take great, great care o’ ya. Dinny Meehan’s a great, great man. No shittin’ ya. He’ll love ya so hard he’ll squeeze the tears outta ya. Stick wit’ ’em and all’ll be good for ya.”
Staring into the bonfire, I give a respect to my father who for so long stayed quiet about his plans. And I think on the pookas too, the ghosts that the shananchies told me about as a boy in the fields and hills and boreens of my youth. About how they haunt our successes, bringing us down again in rebellion and in flight too. Haunting us everywhere we go. I could see those ghosts on the walls of the New York tenements dancing above us under the sky. The shadow dancers from the barrel fires. Dancing over me. Dancing around Dinny Meehan’s head too. Sometimes giving us hope only to yet again lay us flat on our backs in the slums of foreign lands.
It’s family we have to think about first and foremost, I believe. Families. And I still do to this day many years from April 1916. Anything for the closeness felt by the family. All for it. And if Dinny is right that my father is off with the rebels, then that means my mother and sisters are all alone on the farm since my older brother, Timothy, probably went with him to the countryside, readying for the war with the Fifth Battalion of the East Clare Brigade, their brothers in arms for a real republic in Ireland.
And with that, my only goal is for their arrival. All else matters less. The mare looked at me from the side of her head and I could feel that she felt me. That my mind had been made and that I now only have but one purpose, for my mother and sisters’ safe coming. And the quicker the better, for everyone knows what’ll be done on the isolated farms in Ireland when the Brits come round for their retaliations. One purpose for myself, and nothing less. I hug the mare’s head with one arm under her large jaw and smell her mane. It reminds me of home, that smell of a horse. So pure it is too. Nothing purer than the place I’ll always call home: the west of Ireland, but that I will never be able to get back to in my long life, sadly. And so it lives so gracefully in my mind and in the o
dors that sometimes come back to me in the form of burning turf or the wild gorse in the fields or the natural smell in the mane of a cob or a draft horse.
And I remember too one day not long before this April evening of song and drink, when a homeless and hopeless sort I was. When all that I longed for was a plan. Something to drive me. Because a man without a plan and a fixated need to lead his thoughts is a rudderless wanderer altogether. And now I have it. A plan for my thoughts. A fixation on my mother and sisters’ health and well-being for it is I who was always thought of as the one who could open the doors for many, and open the door for my mother I will.
Although Dinny has offered me help, it is my family I need to turn to first. Kin before kith. Blood before all. And so Uncle Joseph, the brother of my father, is my first choice and maybe he has information, letters or news of some sort that will help me get my mother and sisters here as soon as it can be done. Only one goal now, nothing more. One plan for me is all, though a smart man always leaves himself options.
“Dinny,” I say, pulling out the knife across my hips. “I know what must be done.”
Turning my way among the circle of Tanner and friends, he looks at me with the sense of honor. And so do the others. The first time anyone in New York looked at me with the honor.
CHAPTER 16
A Tug and an Envelope
A SNAP HAD COME IN THE next morning. New York awoke to a mid-April chill uncommon to the city. It wasn’t yet cold enough to snow, but the sky threatened a freezing rain in the gray and cobalt covering. The lilacs and the lily of the valleys that had emerged with the weeds recently were laid flat by the gusts and stripped of their scents. Men leaned forward and winced their eyes closed when it kicked up. The scrape of trolleys ached in the back of heads, below the ears.
Light of the Diddicoy Page 18