Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  We were encircled.

  My hired navvies dug and did not talk. They would not even glance up at the mob. The deputies, unwilling to a man, looked at their boots or made excuses to move closer to the horses. Only our teamster, perched upon his wagon, looked as though the world was as it should be, no better and no worse. He watched us all, with an expression more of apathy than alarm.

  As for my Christian self, I would not be daunted. A murmured threat is a cowardly thing, and a grim-set face is often an empty dare. A few of the Irish carried pick handles or sticks, but they looked more troubled than confident to me. And duty must be done, no matter the cost. I met the eyes that searched me out from the tattered ranks of the crowd, returning every gaze until it weakened.

  I knew those faces. I am not so hard as that white-haired priest would have me, and I know the Irish are human, if truculent and wanting a proper scrub. I do not mean to suggest the least indulgence. I am no friend to tumult and disorder. I know full well the Irish tend to vice, nor would I wish such neighbors for my family. But I wished the Irish no harm.

  Their leanness and their rags make me uneasy, see. Speaking as a Christian, who has read his Bible through, and more than once. Simple enough it is to condemn, when a fellow knows his belly will be filled. We overlook our brother’s plight, so long as we may banish him from view. The priest was right about that much. Those miners and their families, pale to a wasting and coughing in the cold, might have liked to hang me from a tree. Yet, I could not hate them any more than fear them. The Irish are a burden we must shoulder, although you will agree they must behave.

  I think my true emotion was “embarrassment” that day. Although I cannot explain the reason why. My thoughts were as confused as when I make an effort to read in Mr. Emerson, whose genius lies beyond my comprehension.

  Oh, the Irish.

  I thought of the green flag of their volunteers, climbing the slope across Antietam Creek. Those men fought for our Union like maddened tigers, peerless in the extravagance of their courage. Yet, they did not shout for Lincoln and liberty. They rushed forward with cries of “Fontenoy!” and “Erin go brach!” As if the Rebels wore coats of red, not gray. As if the Irish cared naught for the names of countries or the passage of centuries, but only for wreaking vengeance for old wrongs.

  Whatever their flaws, those men were brave to a folly.

  The Irish at home stood hard against the war, unlike their brethren under General Meagher. Quick with their hatreds, those miners knew only that everyone wished them ill who did not share the sorrows of the Gael. I might have been a Chinaman, for all the human brotherhood they saw in me.

  Twas in Black ’47 and thereafter that England let them starve to death on the roads and watched their children die at the poor-house gates, while grain ships left the Liffey and the Shannon, brimming full to enrich Britannia’s merchants. Parliament denied there was a problem, for many of its members were absentee landlords who found the Irish tenant an inconvenience. Millions died of neglect and blackened potatoes.

  Some claim that half the population died. Of course, the Irish are given to exaggeration. But the landlords stayed in London, or idled in the country homes of their kind, far from the typhus, hunger and foreclosures. They let the Irish die and called it virtue, arguing that the poor must not be indulged. The blight upon their praties struck the Irish like the plagues of Egypt. It set the living to wander the great, wide world. And bitter they went.

  I met them first in India. They came to fight and drink their soldiers’ pay, sweating in scarlet coats that smelled of voyages. They were savage with the Hindoo and the Seekh, as if those brown men had been Cromwell’s own. No soldiers were as careless of their lives as were the Irish, and their battle cries cut deep as bayonets. The niggers feared them worse than grape and canister. Yet, in the barracks the Irish were shiftless and docile, and had to be forced to their tasks by corporals and sergeants. Lions in their cups, they were meek in the morning, and most of their ailments were cured by a stint in the lock-house. They would have swallowed gin in the heathen sun, at noon, if we had let them. They sang, and cursed, and wept like little children. Laugh they would at a comrade’s grisly death, only to bawl and cry as they reminisced. In garrison, they were troublesome and untidy, but no man stood more stalwart in a fight. They feared their priests, held grudges, and told lies.

  I had an Irish soldier whom I liked, young Jimmy Molloy, with whom you have made acquaintance. But he went wrong and spoiled his life for a trifle. Twas only his luck and a passage to America that gave him a second chance and set him up proper.

  Well, all of that was far away in India, where different rules apply and character fails us. Now I stood in the stubble of a graveyard, above the elms and below the silver birches, in the autumn chill that pricks.

  I marked a well-hewn Irishman who stood out from the rest, as some men do. Black as polished coal he seemed, although his flesh was white as mine or yours. He did not have the smeared face of a miner—not that day—but wore a beard like a pirate’s in a book. Handsome in a stern and manly fashion, he looked as if his mouth had never smiled. At first, I thought him in the prime of life, perhaps of mine own age of thirty-four, but beards deceive. At a second glance I judged him ten years younger. What he possessed was that special thing for which we lack a word, but which sets a man apart as born to lead, despite his age or family antecedents. He did not give commands or say one word. Yet, I sensed that men would follow him into peril.

  I would not have chosen that fellow for mine enemy.

  My navvies dug slowly and should have been finished long since, given that the grave had been turned time and again. Part of their slowness was fear and sloth, but part come of their payment by the hour. Hired from the waster class of Pottsville, they were men of the streets, whose appetites killed pride. We had brought them in a wagon, under guard. For many’s the man will accept a task, only to change his mind as the work approaches.

  The guards themselves, a dull confusion of deputies, fingered ill-kept Colts and looked all nerves. They thinned ranks without permission, until only a sturdy pair were left beside me, while the others stood ready to flee, over by the horses. I meant to do all I could to avoid a fight, because I knew a fight would bring no good, but also because I did not trust my men. A coward with a pistol is no match for a man of courage with his fists. And I did not believe the Irish were afraid of us.

  They let us dig, the Irish did. Watching all the while. Somber as Pushtoons lurking in the Khyber. Even the children kept their peace, but their eyes were avid and anxious, for they had caught the spirit from their parents. The wind pulled hair from shawls, blew shawls from shoulders. And a great, swollen miner’s paw would catch the fabric, replacing it on a slump-shouldered wife with a delicacy that would have shamed a lacemaker. Great ones for the family they are, the Irish. Although not half so responsible as the Welsh. For the Irish love and squander, as if they think tomorrow is a myth, while the Welshman saves, and mends, and minds his business.

  The wind keened. Its force drove copper leaves across the hillside. Overhead, the clouds were dark and slack-bellied, and the air moistened our faces. All smelled of earth and rot and approaching rain.

  Father Wilde come down at last, with his skirts blowing black behind him and a little cap clutched to his head. The Irish marked his appearance and kept their distance. Yet, somehow, they paid him less deference than I expected. As if he were a player unsuited to the day’s match. He took his stance apart from the pack and folded his arms over his chest, reaching up now and then to secure his cap. He wore that expression which priests and such are taught for times when the world is not to rights. Impassive to a blankness he was.

  I could not see his eyes from where I stood.

  One more fellow joined us for the finale. A gentleman in a long, brown coat come stumbling up the hill, his anxiety too urgent for his legs. As he rushed up I saw the look of a man who was frightened every day of his life, the face of a man born t
o be blamed for the heedlessness of others. He wore a Derby hat that tempted the wind, and when he reached to snatch it back he showed the world the bald crown of his head.

  I decided the fellow must be Mr. Oliver, the superintendent of the works, to whom young Boland had confessed his crime. I had not had time to visit him before we began our digging, since calling on the priest seemed more important, given the power such folk hold over the Irish. But I had meant to call on him when we finished.

  His aspect matched the report that I possessed of him. When Daniel Boland approached him, wild with the need to confess his crime, Mr. Oliver had done his best to avoid the business, putting young Boland off as best he could. As the superintendent of the mines and the colliery, Mr. Oliver bore the responsibility for good order and obedience to the law. But he had gone down to Minersville to see the magistrate only under protest, after the Irish had pressed him to it and given their promise that he would not be slain for his troubles.

  Curious, how the killer had been so anxious to confess, and how his countrymen had so urged Oliver to report the confession—if the tale I had been told was correct in its facts. Of course, a general’s murder was a dreadful deed and it might have been that the Irish feared the draft would be imposed with bayonets in retaliation. Perhaps young Boland truly was the murderer and the actions of the Irish common sense. But the entire affair smacked of a scheme to me, with Boland the sacrificial lamb who was not quite sacrificed in the end. Perhaps he had done the crime and the Irish had pressed him to confess as the price for helping him escape thereafter. But why had the priest abetted them, pledging his word that Boland had been “taken by the cholera,” before the law could make itself felt from Pottsville—which was not ten miles away? Was Father Wilde such a champion of the Irish? Or was there more to his doings than he suggested?

  And why were so many educated men in Pottsville willing to credit the story just as presented? Who was the girl in the coffin? Who put her in the grave while Boland ran? Again, the role of the priest suggested collusion. And why had the general been murdered in the first place, when all that he had sought were volunteers? Had the Irish thought it a ruse and believed him a spy, come to collect information for the draft? Why had Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nicolay been so reticent?

  And where was Mrs. Boland this fine day? The woman who had run away, only to appear to me by the graveside in the night? The woman the priest said clung to the old, pagan ways of Erin’s past? The woman of whom he seemed to be afraid?

  I did not know where the trails would lead, but I did not think our journey would end nicely.

  Puffing from his haste, the bald man in the long, brown coat approached me, drawn, no doubt, by my uniform, which was the only Union blue in evidence. He did not speak until he stood spit-close. And then he kept on glancing at the Irish. As they watched the two of us.

  “Good God, what are you doing? Good Lord, what’s going on?”

  “I am Major Abel Jones,” I said, by way of introduction, holding out my hand, which he ignored. “And what is being done is plain to see.”

  “You can’t dig up that grave.”

  “Not that one, but another, then?”

  “You can’t dig up any grave.” He cast another fearful look at the Irish. His voice was that of a native-born American, but he had the ill-nourished look of a Manchester man.

  “I have a writ from the district attorney, and papers from a judge,” I told him.

  “That’s not what I mean. I don’t care about your legal papers.” The wind snatched at his hat and he barely caught it. Despite the cold, his scalp shone bright with sweat. “Look what you’ve done here, man! Everybody knows how these people are about their dead. You’ve gone and shut down the mine and the colliery both. They didn’t even leave a man on the pumps. The shaft’s going to flood. There’s going to be Hell to pay.”

  “And you would be Mr. Oliver, the superintendent of these works, I take it?”

  “My name’s Oliver, all right. But that doesn’t matter one bit.” His eyes were as unsteady as his nerves, and his skin was colorless. Convinced I was that his line come out of Manchester, for such have a pinched and nasty and nervous look. “What matters is that you’ve shut everything down. We’re losing money by the minute, hand over fist. Mr. Heckscher’s just going to have himself a fit.”

  I sneaked a look up at the priest. His interests lay elsewhere, confirming my judgement that Mr. Oliver was not viewed as a serious fellow. He might have approved their pay slips, but he did not rule the Irish or their lives.

  “Well, I am sorry for the loss to your business,” I told him. “But the law must have its way, and there is true.”

  He drew himself up, as if he meant to threaten. Perhaps he thought I might be made to fear him, since, slight though he was, he stood the taller of us.

  Ah, if size were all that mattered to mortal strength, elephants would rule over the world.

  “Well, you’re on company property,” he declared, most rude and abrupt.

  “Company property is it? The boneyard? And the church, too?”

  “It all belongs to the company.”

  “And the bodies?”

  “This parcel of land has been lent to their church in sufferance.” He fired off the last word like a cannon. “As a matter of Mr. Heckscher’s generosity.”

  I sighed. “Mr. Oliver, there have been two murders here. I do not think your company stands above the law where such crimes are concerned.”

  “Two? Hold on there. Nobody’s said anything about two murders. Who said any such thing?”

  “Wait, then, and you will see.”

  He chewed his lip and tried me a final time. “You’re trespassing on private property. You’ve interfered with the pursuit of honest business. You—”

  “I do not think I have interrupted your work, Mr. Oliver. It seems to me your miners did that themselves.”

  “And they’ll pay for it. It’ll all come out of their wages, don’t think it won’t. And don’t think they won’t hear about this in Pottsville.”

  Twas then I heard a too-familiar sound. Of an iron shovel striking wood gone damp.

  The digging stopped. The whispers of the crowd swelled to a warning.

  I excused myself from Mr. Oliver and strode to where the navvies had paused in their labors. They stared up at me in that special terror of drunkards deprived of liquor. When Temperance comes by law, as it surely will, such fellows will be spared their lives of misery.

  “Keep to your work, like honest men,” I told them. Although not one looked an honest man to me. A black-toothed, black-hearted lot they were, and ashamed I am to say one fellow was Welsh. But even we are not a perfect race.

  The deputies looked more fearful than the navvies. As if the Irish had the law and the pistols, and we were in the wrong and weak besides.

  Well, weak we were. But at such times a fellow must not flinch. For men smell fear as wild animals do.

  “Take yerselves off, ye darty English bastards,” a first voice called.

  “The little one there in the soldier suit’s a Taffy. That little sod in nigger-lover blue.”

  “Lord Kiss-me-arse, that’s what I’d call the likes o’ that one there.”

  “Tis na wonder they’re calling their terry-bull draft down upon us,” a whisky-ravaged grampus declaimed, “for if their Lincoln’s brought down to recruitin’ crippled dwarves, the Rebel’s will all go marching high into Canadee.”

  Laugh they did, as nasty children will. And then that black-bearded fellow stepped to the fore, the young one who drew the eye. Trouble now, I thought to myself. But he only glared about him, with lips still frozen hard and eyes of fire. He hardly made a gesture beyond the turning of his head.

  The crowd quieted. And the black-bearded man faded into it again.

  I looked to the priest and saw that he had been watching the business, too. With a face that said Old Rome was on its guard, and not only against Welshmen.

  I realized the priest had
decided to let me learn my lesson. But I was not yet certain what the lesson would be.

  I had the navvies heave up the coffin and slide it onto a bed of leaves and grass. Twas a struggle for them, for their bodies had been poisoned by liquor and were not worth their wages. But I wanted the coffin up above ground. I did not want the poor fellows trapped in the hole, if the Irish took a mind to interfere. And I thought I would let the miners see my purpose. Let them feel the shame of a young girl’s murder. Let them explain such doings, if they could.

  I felt a surge of anger toward the priest. No man of the cloth should have had his hand in such matters. He should have taken his stand on the side of the law.

  The coffin come up in tatters, with the lid barely fixed to the sides. But I marked that it had been nailed shut, a thing my invalid soldiers and I had not been able to do. Of course, we had been forced by Mrs. Boland’s cries to leave without filling in the grave, and the Irish had been confronted with our doings. They were the ones who closed the box again, the men who knew full well of the murdered girl. I wondered how many of those in the crowd had blood and guilt on their hands.

  To be honest, the box looked a ruin. Many’s the woman who gasped at the battered sight of it.

  Something was wrong. I realized that much in a moment. And a brace of seconds later I knew what it was.

  With the coffin split and splintered, the navvies should have been gasping at the stench. But there had been no change in their postures of defeat, not even a grimace beyond those already settled over their faces.

  I forgot all else and rushed toward the coffin, grasping a pick from a workman on my way. I went at the lid with something near to a rage, for I already understood what they had done.