The Year We Sailed the Sun

by Theresa Nelson

  And just when I was beginning to think that she must have fallen asleep herself, she started talking again, real quiet, so I had to turn my good ear to hear her:

  “Look there, now,” she said, “how she rests her cheek on the back of her hand. Her daddy used to sleep that way at home. Oh my, just exactly like that—” She smiled and shook her head. “You’d have to shake him awake ten times in the morning, before he’d start moving at all, and if you left and came back two minutes later, he’d be dead to the world, same as ever.”

  It was an odd thing to say, I thought—“dead to the world”—but I don’t believe she even knew she’d said it. Two-Bits Brickey, she meant. The gangster. Betty’s daddy was Sister’s brother. Though she wouldn’t have called him Two-Bits, would she? And I never said a word about it, but she must have heard me wondering, because a moment later she shook her head again, and sighed, just as if I’d asked out loud.

  “Ah, Harry. Poor boy. There wasn’t a bit of harm in him. You can’t believe what they say, you know. He was as good a brother as ever there was. Only got mixed up with the wrong crowd, that’s all—that tough gang from Ashley Street—the Rats, they call them now. But Harry was no Rat. He thought Thomas Egan had hung the moon. He’d given him work, you see, sweeping up and running errands, after our father died in a strike bust-up down at the Laborers’ Union. Your father would have been there, too; all the workingmen were there. Never mind the whispers that it was Egan’s hired thugs who’d picked the fight, cracking union skulls for the owners. A job was a job, and times were hard, and Harry was putting food on our table. Even our mother thought it was a gift from heaven. ‘You do what Mr. Egan tells you,’ she said to him, ‘and don’t be asking silly questions. No use pokin’ your nose in places that aren’t any of your concern.’

  “And oh, sweet mercy, that face of his! An angel’s face, if ever I saw one. Just look at Betty there and you’ll have an idea. . . .” A tear slid down Sister Bridget’s cheek, and she had to stop and fish for her handkerchief. “So Egan knew he could trust him, you see, like his own right hand,” she went on, once she’d blown her nose. “He was that innocent, our Harry was, and loyal as a dog, never saying a thing but ‘Yes sir’ and ‘No sir’ and ‘Right away, Mr. Egan.’ So he’d send him hither and yon, Egan would, with that face like a day in June, and not a cloud in it. And Harry did as our mother told him; he never asked questions, only took this package to one man or that package to another, and never a hitch but a single time when he tripped in a pothole and dropped the bag—

  “ ‘And what should fall out,’ he tells us at home that night, ‘but a roll of cash as big as my fist!’

  “ ‘Ah, you knucklehead,’ says our brother Jack. ‘That’s bribe money. What were you, born yesterday? Egan sends you with the boodle so he won’t get his own fingers dirty.’

  “ ‘That’s a lie,’ says Harry. ‘Mr. Egan’s not like that.’

  “ ‘Oh no?’ says Jack. ‘I’ll tell you what was in that bag, boy. Grease for the wheels. A hundred for hizzoner the mayor, five hundred for the chief of police, a thousand for his old pals down at the Four Courts. And then the great Thomas Egan does whatever he bloomin’ well pleases, and the whole world goes deaf, dumb, and blind.’

  “ ‘Stop it, Jack!’ Ma tells him. ‘You leave Harry alone. He’s keepin’ us out of the poor house, which is more than I can say for some.’

  “But then one day Harry comes home with his face white as eggshells and his eyes popping out of his head, and I say, ‘What’s wrong, are you sick?’ And he claims he’s fine, but I know there’s something up with him; he’s not himself at all. So after supper I whisper, ‘Is it your girl, then, Harry? Is it Maggie?’ Because we all know he’s sweet on little Maggie Meehan. She’s in the dance act down at the Standard Theater. Jack’s seen him hanging around the stage door, flowers in his fist, standing there with his sheep’s eyes, ready for the slaughter. But Harry says, ‘No, no, Bridgie, for heaven’s sake, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Don’t go sayin’ a word about her, do you hear me?’ Still his face goes from white to red, so I know I’m getting warmer, but now the others have their big ears cocked, too, and he clams up tight. And then finally I’m asleep in my bed and he’s shaking me awake and saying, ‘Bridgie, I have to talk to you, I have to tell somebody. I need to know what class of sin I’ve committed and you’re the only one knows the whole catechism.’ ‘Oh Lord, Harry, what have you done?’ I ask. ‘I went to the track,’ he says. ‘Well, that’s not so bad,’ I tell him, though our mother would skin him alive if she knew. Hadn’t our pa—rest his soul—had a weakness for the ponies, and run her ragged with worrying he’d bet away our last dime? But what did Harry have to gamble with? Only what Egan paid him—peanuts—a few dollars a week, that’s all. Unless . . . oh Lord . . .

  “ ‘How much did you lose?’ I ask him, though I’m afraid to hear the answer, because now I’m remembering the story he’d told us—the one about the pothole and the cash in the bag. And what if—oh God help him—

  “ ‘I didn’t lose,’ says Harry. ‘I won.’

  “ ‘You won?’ says I. ‘Well, that’s good news! That’s all right, then, isn’t it?’

  “But he says, ‘No, no, Bridgie, you don’t understand. It was Mr. Egan who sent me with the bettin’ money. A hundred dollars—he said to put it on the favorite in the fourth race. Fogarty’s Bum. And if I’d done what he told me, that would have been the end of it; I’d have lost the whole bundle when the Bum limped in last. But I was late in line at the ticket window, and I heard this feller talking, you see; he was telling the man next to him about this old nag of a long shot, and how no one but a fool would put a penny on him, and what sort of a name was Hyacinth for a smelly old horse like that? And I say to myself, did he say Hyacinth? And it comes at me in a wave, Bridgie, like a sign from heaven, like the river is washing over me and the bloodthirsty Tartars are hot on my heels and I’m in danger of drowning for sure now, if I don’t know a miracle when I see one—’

  “ ‘So you put Mr. Egan’s money on the nag?’ I ask him.

  “ ‘I did,’ says Harry. ‘Forty to one.’

  “ ‘Forty to one!’ Well, of course I think he’s pulling my leg. ‘You don’t mean to say that old horse—why, if Hyacinth came in first—that’s four thousand dollars, Harry! You didn’t win four thousand dollars!’

  “ ‘I did,’ says he.

  “And still I don’t understand him. ‘Great gobs!’ says I. ‘Mr. Egan must have been beside himself!’

  “ ‘I didn’t tell him,’ says Harry.

  “ ‘You didn’t tell him?’ I gasp.

  “And he shakes his head and grabs on to my hand like he’ll sink in that river without it. ‘Ah, Bridgie,’ he says, ‘it ain’t such a big sin, is it? I gave him back every dime of his hundred bucks, and I never lied, neither; I told him I got to the window late—which I did, remember? And I never bet on the Bum—which I didn’t. And Egan clapped me on the back, and put the hundred in his pocket, and said lucky for him I was always such a slowpoke.

  “ ‘But dear God, Harry, he’ll hear!’ says I. ‘You know how people talk. And four thousand dollars—oh Lord, Harry, he’s bound to hear!’

  “ ‘Well, what if he does?’ says Harry. ‘It’s mine, ain’t it, Bridgie? I won it fair and square. It can’t be stealing if it wasn’t his to start with. If he’d thrown away an apple core and I’d planted a seed in my garden—well, it wouldn’t be his apple tree, would it?’

  “And I don’t know how to answer that, with his face lit up like Christmas, and still he’s talking a mile a minute—

  “ ‘And now we’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘Don’t you see, Bridgie? We’ll never have to worry again. You and Ma and the whole family. I’ll buy us a house—one of those big ones in Lucas Place, with electric light in every lamp and roses on all the rugs and the terlet right inside with a chain to pull. And a fat silver teapot on the dining room table—can’t
you see Ma sitting there in a fine new hat, pouring out the tea? And Maggie—well, you know, if she’ll only—’ He’s blushing again.

  “ ‘If she’ll have you,’ says I.

  “ ‘She’ll have me,’ says Harry. ‘She’s got to have me. I don’t see how I could stand it, if she wouldn’t. I can’t live without her, Bridgie. She’s the beat of my heart.’ ”

  Sister Bridget uncrumpled her handkerchief again and wiped her eyes on the only dry inch. “Ah, Harry. Poor boy . . .” She stopped and lifted a damp curl from Betty’s brow—it had wrinkled a little, as if she was worrying—but at Sister’s touch, it smoothed again. “I never did see a happier bridegroom. Your father was there, you know. Marched ’em in at the start, playing ‘Haste to the Wedding,’ and out at the end, still fiddling. And Harry beaming like the sun itself, with his girl on his arm, looking like he’d bust with pride.”

  “And then . . .?” I breathed. All this time I hadn’t said a word, but I couldn’t let her stop now. Still, I couldn’t finish the question. “And then—” I said again.

  “And then they killed him,” she said quietly.

  “For the four thousand dollars?”

  “For the four thousand dollars,” she repeated. “Though they never got a penny of it. He’d frittered it all away by then; we never knew how he managed it. All on gifts, just like he’d promised. Well, except for Ma’s mansion; even he couldn’t manage that much. But the fine silver teapot and her grand new hat—she had ’em till the day she died—and gold watches for all our brothers, engraved with a B. And a piano for me, of all things. It’s the one in the parlor now. It came here when I did; I wouldn’t part with it for the world, though I still can’t play a lick.” Sister smiled a little, and blew her nose again. “And the loveliest china doll for Maggie . . . Oh, I suppose it was a silly present to be giving a bride. Jack teased him to death about it. But she loved that dolly, Maggie did. She was only sixteen, you know. And Betty dotes on it, of course, now that’s it’s hers. It’s her pride and joy. She never lets another soul touch it.” Sister tucked away her hankie. “You haven’t seen an old doll anywhere around here, have you, Julia?”

  Chapter 27

  No.

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no . . .

  She didn’t mean that doll, did she?

  She couldn’t mean that doll. . . .

  “A—a baby doll?” I stammered. There was something hard and cold in my throat, wedged in against my windpipe. It felt as if I’d swallowed a block of ice.

  Sister Bridget shook her head. “More of a lady, I’d say.” She smoothed Betty’s covers. “With feathers on her hat and a fine satin dress—oh, now, don’t look so worried, Julia. It doesn’t matter, really. I just wondered, that’s all, if she might like to have it here—as a comfort, you see, when she wakes up. Would she keep it in the barn, do you think? You know how she loves it out there—”

  “I’ll find it,” I said. I was on my feet already. There must be another doll. There had to be another doll. . . .

  “Why, thank you, dear. Did you hear that, Betty? Your friend here’s getting your doll for you. But put your coat on first, Julia; it’s bitter cold. And don’t be staying out there too long now. It’s only a little thing, really. We can’t have you taking sick again too. We can always—”

  But I never heard what we could always do because I was out of the room by that time; I was hurtling down the stairs. “I’ll find it!” I called back again. It would be in the barn; yes, of course it would—please, God, let it be there—and now I was grabbing my coat from the cloakroom and cramming my arms in the sleeves and running at the same time, racing down the hall to the back door and thank heaven no one stopped me. There were plinkety-plunks coming out of the parlor as I passed, and there was Miss Downey giving Winnie her Wednesday lesson, blizzard or no blizzard, but they both had their backs to me and the others were all in the classroom now, so no one noticed me going outside. There’d be hell to pay later for being late but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. I had to find the other doll, Betty’s real doll that wasn’t Harriet—there has to be another one; oh please let there be another one—so I went tearing into the barn and started searching high and low, in the loft and under the hay and in the boxes behind the buggy and even in Hyacinth’s stall, while he snorted and blew smoke at me and pawed the floor under him with his forty-to-one hooves—he looked more like a million-to-one now—there were icicles in his eyelashes and an extra blanket folded up in the corner and I looked under that, too, but there was nothing there, neither, so I slung it over the other one on his poor old back and kept looking and looking—God help me, oh please help me—and all this time the stone-cold feeling in my insides was getting colder and colder and heavier and heavier, and what was the bleedin’ use of lookin’; I’d hocked Betty’s doll, hadn’t I? Her pride and joy that her daddy gave her mother. There’d never been another one; I wasn’t going to find any other one; there was just Harriet and only Harriet and it wasn’t the millionaires who’d brought her, neither, when I was sick as a dog and didn’t know anything. It was Betty herself, wasn’t it? Ah, sure it was, ye thickhead—it was Betty all along, thinking her doll would make me feel better, and now I had to get it back, was all. I had to go and give Doc the three lousy bucks. They were still in my pocket, weren’t they? Sure they were, right here. And Harriet would still be right there at Monaghan’s River Arcade and Pawn Shop—well, of course she would, of course she would—nobody bought dolls after Christmas, remember? Not the day after or the month after or—oh Lord, this was two months after, wasn’t it? Well anyhow, there was no use standing here worrying about it. She’d be there, she had to be there, and I had to go, so I went. I left. I opened the barn door and ran to the fence, and the wind and snow came whipping around me and stung my eyes, my throat, even my teeth, but it didn’t matter; I’d be taking the trolley; it wasn’t but a ten-minute ride on the trolley from here, and then—

  “Julia?”

  Oh no.

  “What are you doing, Julia?”

  I was halfway over the fence, was what I was doing, but I turned around and there was Winnie on her way to the lavatory, the bloomin’ lavatory; couldn’t a person get out of this place for once in her life when the whole world wasn’t going to the lavatory?

  “It’s all right, Winnie,” I told her. “You go on, now. Everything’s all right. I’m just—I was just—”

  She burst into tears. “Don’t run away, Julia! You’re runnin’ away, ain’t you? Oh, no, please—you can’t—it’s too cold; look how cold it is, Julia! You’ll get sick again, you’ll die, you’ll die just like Betty—”

  I climbed down and shook her. “No I won’t, I ain’t dyin’. Nobody’s dyin’, do you hear me? And I ain’t runnin’ away, neither; don’t you go tellin’ anybody I’m runnin’ away, Winnie! I’ll be back, I’ll be right back, I’m just gettin’ something, for Betty, that’s all. Her doll she loves, her lady doll. I hocked it accidentally—well, not accidentally, exactly. I sold it to Doc Monaghan—I made Jimmy sell it, that is, but I still have the money, see? I never touched a penny of it! So I’m going there to get her now; you tell Betty if she wakes up—only Betty, do you understand? Tell her I’ll be back in no time, an hour, tops. It’ll be all right then, she’ll get better then, I know she will but I have to go now, don’t you see, Winnie? Ah, don’t cry! Why are you cryin’? I’ll be back, ain’t you listening? I’m coming right back—”

  And still she just stood there with the tears streaming, shaking her head no, no, no, but I couldn’t help it; I couldn’t wait. I had to get Harriet, so I left Winnie standing there and I climbed back up the fence. It was slick with ice and my hands kept slipping and my boots kept slipping and I gashed one shin on something sharp, a nail, maybe, but that was nothing, I hardly felt it, and then I was over and out and running down the alley to Morgan Street—or not running, exactly, with the snow dragging at my boots and up to my knees in places and still stinging my e
yes, my throat, my teeth again but I didn’t care, it didn’t matter, I was almost to the streetcar stop; I could see it just ahead already and the trolley itself was right there, too—now there was a bit of luck—I wouldn’t even have to wait, would I? I could jump right on and be on my way, and back with the doll in no time—

  Unless—

  Ah, for crying out loud—

  That car wasn’t just stopped. It was stuck, wasn’t it? Well, sure it was, of course it was, there were horses and wagons and workers beside it, shouting and pointing and shoveling the track in front of it and around it, throwing up piles of snow to the left and right—mountains of snow, huge walls of it—leaving a great deep canyon in the middle. But the quicker they shoveled, the quicker the wind blew down half their work and new snow came down on top of it all, till it looked as if they’d never be done.

  “Hey, little girlie!” one of ’em shouted. “Go home! There’s no school today—didn’t anybody tell you? All the schools are closed!”

  “I know!” I called back, so he wouldn’t bother me. “I’m going home!” And I guess it worked—he stopped yelling, anyway—so I just kept walking the way I was walking. I couldn’t stand here forever waiting for the trolley to get unstuck; I’d freeze if I just stood here. I’d catch it later if they ever got it moving again, but I had to keep going now so I just kept going. I wished I had a hat; I should have thought of a hat. My ears were so cold they were burning hot somehow but never mind, never mind, if I stuck to the shoveled-out places behind the wagons up ahead I could go faster anyway and it wasn’t that far to Doc’s, really. I could walk it in half an hour on a good day, and anyhow there was one block behind me already now and then there was another and another, three blocks and change; I couldn’t feel my feet anymore and the drifts dragged at ’em but they kept moving all the same. I’m on my way, Betty, just wait, just you wait now, I’ll get her back, I’m gettin’ your doll. . . .

  There were hardly any regular people on the street anymore, no one but me and the trolley crews, shouting and shoveling—there were more up ahead, all along the track—and a few scrawny dogs, up to their haunches in snow, plodding beside me. “What are you doing out here?” I asked ’em. “Scat, now! Go home!” But they didn’t even bother barking. They only half looked at me with their eyes all slitted up and their ears blowing back and their tails between their bone-thin legs, and we all kept going and going, block after block, one foot after the other, past the dime museum shut up tight and the newsstand without any newsboys in it and Patrizi’s market, right where I left it, but with no Mr. P in sight. No one was anywhere they were supposed to be. And there were great sheets of white stuff coming at me again, so I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead anyhow, with odd shapes looming up out of nowhere in it, swimming at me like big white snow-fish—or was it me swimming at them? They turned into all manner of whatnot as I got closer: stalled motorcars and blown-over buggies and a stuck steam fire engine with the horses still strapped to it, floundering in the traces—“Damn it all, is that a kid down there? Go home!” the firemen yelled as I pushed through the drifts around ’em, past a half-buried bicycle and an abandoned sled with a crumpled runner and an upended grocery wagon with its crates cracked open and bright red apples spilling out on the snow, and one left-behind crow bent over ’em, pecking—but not that crow, surely—not the broke-winged feller—was it? And it blinked a pale eye at me and hobbled away.