Half the kids, the older ones, were already fully costumed. The younger were still struggling with their ensembles and needed help. Junior and little James had convinced their cousin Davey to allow Sophie and Daniel to paint their faces elaborately in lieu of the common burned cork method. Junior did not care for the obstruction of a mask. The artists worked fast as they could on the impatient imps. Junior submitted first so as to convince his unsure little brother Davey of its advantages. Then James submitted to the ritual. While Davey was being decorated, Junior and James knelt on the floor to put an old worn and cracked leather collar round Mickey’s neck, a black patch over one eye, and bandaged a foreleg to make the compliant dog appear injured. Junior applied some vermilion to the bandage to simulate blood. Mickey shook off the patch. Junior replaced it. Mickey shook it off. James replaced it. Finally Mickey used his paw to rip it off and exuberantly throttled it to death, just like the rat he’d caught in the shed the day before.
“He doesn’t want that on him, Junior—Mickey needs to be able to see,” scolded Mazie. She was right, John Jr. concluded, and gave up the fight.
Junior and Mickey were portraying a destitute hobo and his maimed dog. To complete Mickey’s outfit, Junior hung a little cloth basket around the canine’s neck with a card attached announcing “I need $5 to get my leg fixed or they’re going to cut it off!”
When ready, with Mickey barking his excitement, Junior, James, Mildred and Davey took off running up the street together to go where they might.
Next door, Hannah labored over the yam pudding she was preparing for the joint celebration. Realizing she was low on sugar she ran next door to borrow a cup.
“What is your friend Ruth planning for Thanksgiving?” Annie asked Hannah as she struggled with the lid of the sugar tin.
Hannah was suddenly ashamed. She hadn’t even asked Ruth what she had planned. “Oh! I’m not sure, Annie. She has no family.” Hannah had been so wrapped up inside her own head again lately that she caught herself being inattentive even to her own children.
“Do you think she might like to join us for dinner?” Annie asked.
Hannah was quite surprised by her proposal as Annie was no admirer of Ruth McGowan’s strident opinions. On the other hand, Annie was grateful in a sense that Hannah’s habit of cornering her and lecturing her had diminished dramatically since Ruth and she had become such conversant friends.
“Why don’t you ask her to come? It would be nice to have her here with us.”
“Oh, that would be grand. I will! Thank you Annie. That is very sweet of you.”
“It’s Thanksgiving after all,” she said aloud, but adding in her head, and I’m thankful that you’ve found someone other than me to sermonize.
Annie did not have the nerve to reveal to Hannah or Ruth or to anyone else that primarily she felt grateful to Ruth McGowan for revealing to Hannah that Junior had been molested by Father McGill. She’d rather have not acknowledged that verbal exchange, much less the crime itself. The contradictions dredged up by McGill’s abomination against her innocent trusting child were too complex and troubling to sort out, especially the devastating effect it lately had on her previously unshakable religious beliefs. Every previous doubt she’d ever had about the Church since childhood—its odd teachings, its literally holier-than-thou clergy, its strong-arming tactics—she had been able to justify, blindly accept, or ignore. But not this. The abomination of her own child made her question everything.
Hannah took her sugar home. After combining the mashed yams, butter, cream, sugar, beaten eggs, cinnamon, salt and vanilla and pouring the heavenly mixture into a buttered ceramic baking dish she put on her heavy wool coat and a warm hat. “I’m going over to Ruth’s for just for a few minutes,” she called to Jim. He answered “Okay,” and she went out the door and around the corner. A gang of ragamuffins were already on the loose. “Pennies! Pennies!” they chanted when they spotted her. She ignored them.
At Ruth’s little house she climbed the four wooden steps to the porch and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again. Once more, nothing. She peeked into the window, trying to see through the lace curtains. She saw Ruth walking to the door, slowly shuffling. Hannah waved. Ruth opened the door. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying. Her hair was disheveled. It was already eight-thirty but she was still in her robe.
“Oh Ruth dear, is everything all right?” Hannah asked.
◆◆◆
On the street Johnny Sullivan, Mickey the dog, siblings James and Mildred, and cousin Davey recruited a gaggle of additional friends to join their gang as they prowled along. Bryan Leahy brought his little sister into the group, otherwise his mother would not allow him out. She was only three years old so they had to be cautious in their choice of shenanigans. They gained and lost masked members of the little tribe as they wandered and went, going up one street and down the other, knocking on doors, hurling the odd rotten egg or two. One of the boys had been setting aside eggs from his mother’s chicken coop for weeks to rot them real good and another had brought a pail of potato and carrot peelings black and slippery with spoilage. Junior had sneaked out a paper bag with a cup or two of flour with which to dust victims. Sophie had spotted him taking it. She made sure he knew that she saw him take it, but she didn’t stop him. She thereby gained a future favor she would not fail to call in when it best suited her.
Begging coins and treats, the gang knocked on doors of houses known to be friendly to ragamuffins while alternately voiding, or avoiding, others. Their baskets were filling nicely. Well into their canvassing they turned the corner from O’Connell Street onto Alabama Street. Junior’s stomach tightened at the sight of the priest’s rectory and his disturbing memories of the place. “C’mon, let’s go!” boldly shouted Bryan Leahy as he ran up to the rectory’s front door and rang the bell. Junior followed hesitatingly. Mickey whined and became skittish. The door opened and Father Lynch appeared in his Roman collar with a handful of pennies. He laughed at their disguises good-naturedly and complimented them. He put one penny in each basket. Junior held back. Lynch recognized the Alderman’s kid in spite of the painted disguise. “Here, John Jr. Here’s one for you,” Lynch encouraged, beckoning him forward to receive his coin.
Mickey whined and studied the priest intently, focusing on his black smock and white clerical collar. He then looked at his hesitant master. Then back at the beckoning priest. As he did so the priest’s arm extended further toward Junior, penny in hand. Junior would not step forward, so Father Lynch took a step toward Junior. Mickey’s eyes grew enormous. He launched himself through midair to sink his teeth into Lynch’s arm. Lynch shouted. Mickey refused to let go.
“Mickey! Mickey!” screamed Junior. His brother James just stood and cried in fright. Mildred was dumbfounded. All the other kids screamed as well. Junior grabbed Mickey by the tail and violently yanked him backwards screaming “Mickey, let go!” As he pulled, Mickey released Lynch’s arm. Junior grabbed Mickey’s collar and held tight. Blood darkened the priest’s black vestment. Mickey stood his ground, all four legs stiffened and spread wide apart, head up, eyes wide, tail erect, nose vibrating, barking crazily, ready to spring into action again at the least provocation. Junior had to summon all his strength to hold the dog back. Lynch was shocked and stunned. He slammed the door shut as soon as Mickey released him. Junior pulled the leash and the combatant Mickey along with it and together they all ran home. A block from the house Junior stopped the group.
“Don’t none o’ yous say a word to Ma and Pop, or else they’ll take Mickey away from us! Understand?”
The kids all stood at attention, nodding in the affirmative, focused on Junior and his authority as the eldest of the group. “Not one single word—or else!” he threatened. Junior was convinced not only was he in dire trouble, but Mickey even more so.
Drawn by the commotion, Mary Sweeney had stood in her parlor window watching the scene play out across the street. She recalled the day she saw Mickey tied to
the pole outside the rectory, his protective instincts boiling, the dog going wild at the end of a rope knowing his master was in trouble at the hands of Father McGill on the other side of that closed door.
Once Junior had run off, followed by the other children, Mary Sweeney put on her coat. She had been invited to her daughter’s for Thanksgiving dinner and was dressed in her finest cotton dress which took forever to iron properly. She went to the bathroom and from a cupboard removed gauze bandages and a brown glass bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Then she went across the street and knocked on the rectory door.
Inside she stood at the kitchen sink pouring the liquid on the priest’s wound, fascinated by watching it foam. He winced, thinking it was going to sting but it did not. The copious blood at first had made the injury appear worse than it was. Mickey must have hit a blood vessel, but now it did not look too bad. It was only slowly leaking from two punctures. Lynch’s vestment did however suffer a severely torn sleeve.
“Ye don’t have to be worryin’ yerself now, Father” Mary Sweeney soothed, “that dog don’t have the hydrophobia. No sir, that dog gets better care than some children in the Ward. He’s not allowed to wander by himself, not never. He sleeps with them children in their beds every night, protecting them. Ye’ll be just fine.”
Lynch didn’t say a word. He looked as if he’d turned inward on himself, his mind churning. Mary Sweeney wasn’t sure how much Lynch knew about Father McGill, what he had heard or perhaps been told. He’d arrived at the parish after McGill had been transferred out to St. Louis and after Pastor O’Connell’s death, so she couldn’t be sure. Certainly the Bishop had to have revealed to him something of what had transpired here. Lynch had to know something, if not everything.
“Ye know why that dog attacked ye, now, Father Lynch, don’t ye? He was just protectin’ the Sullivan boy. After all that happened to that poor child, right here in this very rectory—we can’t really blame him, now, can we?”
She was guilting him, not for anything he might have done particularly, but for what priests everywhere in general have done. Priests he knew. Priests he knew of. Priests he suspected. Priests for whom he had conveniently looked the other way. Priests about whom he had remained silent. She wrapped gauze securely around his forearm. “I know you’re upset right about now, but ye’ll be fine, I promise. Ye can’t blame the dog, Father Lynch. The beast has concluded—from his point of view anyway—that priests are simply not to be trusted around children. Right or wrong, that’s what he’s learnt. That’s just what he knows from his own experience. He was just doin’ his job, actin’ as the children’s protector. You understand.”
◆◆◆
“Come in,” Ruth said.
Hannah hesitated there on the porch a second or two. She had never seen Ruth before looking anything other than perfect. She looked ten years older. She stooped as she moved. She didn’t walk, she dragged her feet.
“What on earth is wrong, Ruth?”
“Oh Hannah, something awful!”
“Tell me, please!”
“It’s my mother!” Ruth cried.
“Is she dead?” exclaimed Hannah.
“God no, it’s far worse than that, Hannah! She’s alive!”
◆◆◆
Every Thanksgiving Hannah lobbied unsuccessfully to host the holiday dinner at her large house. It was half again as big as the Alderman’s, but Annie, though enjoying less space and a larger family than Hannah, had her heart fully set on it. Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday, ever since she was a little girl. “Besides, we have Sophie to do all the work,” she reasoned unreasonably.
That poor girl, Hannah thought.
Jim was over at the M.R.C. boathouse helping to clean up after the previous night’s ball. No one expected him to do that but he considered the club an extension of his home. As senior police detective, he had the Thanksgiving holiday off. At any rate, the pawnshops and stores were closed. Any club member who happened by the boathouse was put to work, but no one would expect not to be. A supply of wrapped peppermints, pennies and leftover broken cookies from the previous night’s festivities were in bowls by the door for when the beggars came calling. A whisk broom normally hung right there on a hook regardless of time of year, but with this day’s anticipated dousings of confetti, flour, or worse it would be put to frequent use. The morning cold gave way to mild temperatures by eleven o’clock and the Ward’s streets were teeming with pranksters.
“Supper’s at three o’clock!” Annie and Hannah reminded their respective broods as they ran out the door. The excessive overeating made a mid-afternoon meal a necessity if anyone was expected to sleep at all well that night.
The children trickled back home beginning at noon with the older girls’ arrival. They did not have as much fun as the boys. Ragamuffining was decidedly a boys and tomboys holiday. Delicate girls were less prone to enjoying wearing rags and perpetrating random havoc. “It’s fun for a while,” admitted Jean Delores, “but when them boys decide to turn their mischief on us, we’d rather be at home even if it means we’ll be forced to work.”
Once the boys came home Sophie was charged with washing the young ones’ painted faces and getting them changed into their dinner clothes, in between her kitchen and other house chores. She noticed how subdued Junior, James, Mildred and Davey were but assumed they were just worn out. She complimented their get-ups. “You all look so grand!” Sophie encouraged, admiring their full baskets. “You too, Mickey!” she laughed to the dog. “The blood on your bandage looks so real!”
She was grateful for how tired they all were, but she missed their younger versions, the babies they used to be. Older boys and girls needed less help, less attention. She had mourned heavily when the two infants died. After baby Paul passed away she overheard Annie crying to the Alderman that under no circumstances would she have any more babies.
The children, being older, were a bit less trouble nowadays, but that meant they didn’t need her like they used to. They didn’t run to her much anymore when they were hurting or cranky. She worried what might happen to her when the Alderman’s family didn’t need her any longer. She had never married. In fact she had never yet had a serious sweetheart. She tried. The Poles all lived on the east side, an hour away by streetcar. She had tried attending St. Stanislaus Church over there off Fillmore Street, hoping to make the acquaintance of some countrymen as friends, or more. It was a long way to journey all by herself. She was shy. She tried to make the acquaintance of some Polish girls and older women. She was looked down upon by the first American-born generation because she was a servant, and because she was from the Old Country, and because her English was still not so good. These new generation Polish women, they were stridently American. They were embarrassed by their parents’ old country ways and accents and customs. They told polack jokes denigrating their own. They were educated. Their husbands weren’t just Polish American. They were also Irish and German and Italian. Sophie just didn’t fit in with these women. They referred to her as “that stupid polack” behind her back. She had no real life outside the Sullivan household. For years she buried her disappointments under the weight of her work and all those children. But these days there was less to do, less to distract her from her fears. She woke up one day just recently with her stomach tied in knots, wondering, worrying what might happen to her. She had been included in this family all these years but it was made clear to her that she was not part of this family.
Annie was quite an accomplished cook although most days she felt too lazy much of the time and just let Sophie take over. On special holidays like this, however, she went full steam. There was that big turkey, stuffed with chestnuts the kids had gathered from the trees near the boathouse on a trip to Cazenovia Park. There was a lovely roast of pork. Potatoes fried in bacon fat. Roasted apples and figs. Hannah’s yam pudding with whipped cream and maple syrup. Hannah’s put-up scarlet runner beans from last summer’s garden and Annie’s Onions-in-Cream. It was a feast by any standard,
even perhaps the hoity-toity Ellicott Club’s. Annie like to tell the story of her attendance at the buffet at the Ellicott Club given to celebrate the Pan American Exposition back in 1901. The mammoth table was filled with assemblages and sculptures created from food. An elaborate giant white Electric Tower, the exposition’s symbol, was created in white sugar four feet tall. A necklace of whole lobsters hung from their tails beneath a sugared replica of a sculpture from atop a pillar in the Court of Honor. It was an exercise in pure decadence, that table.
◆◆◆
As Hannah fussed over her, Ruth began to smile again. The shock of her viciously abusive mother finding and contacting her was still with her, but was set aside for the time being. The old lady wanted money. What else?
“You can’t give it to her, Ruth,” Hanna advised. “It will only open the floodgates. Don’t respond. She was no mother to you at all. It’s a miracle you survived the torture she visited upon you. You thought she was dead, so you just go on thinking that.” Hannah was in fact only putting it mildly.
“I’m still frightened of her, Hannah. I’m a full grown up adult, yet my mother still terrifies me,” Ruth confessed.
◆◆◆
Dinner at the Alderman’s house was a literal feast. The ragamuffins were jolly and well behaved. They told stories of that day’s adventures. When it was noticed that Junior and little James were unusually silent, JP asked. Junior rallied and told about other kids’ mischief and praising the generosity of many of the neighbors. He dared not reveal what happened at the rectory. He was far more frightened about the consequences for Mickey than for himself. He was terrified they might take his best friend away. Junior loved his Mickey. Whenever they were alone together in the boys’ bedroom Mickey consented to Junior’s urgency to bury his face deep into his fur as much for solace as to muffle the sound of his crying. Loyal Mickey licked the boy’s tears in empathy.
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 54