Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  Her expression did not change, but for a pruning of the chin that pled ignorance.

  “He lived,” I added, “in St. Louis before the war. He became a colonel, then a general, of volunteers.” Still nothing.

  “Now, you must keep a secret, if you please,” I continued, “but perhaps this will help you remember. This General Stone seems to have been a political radical of sorts. He was wanted by the Russians. By the tsar himself, I am told. For revolutionary doings.”

  Mrs. Schutzengel grunted. “In Russia, to cross the street without permission is to make a revolution, I think.” She leaned toward me, to the degree her bulk would permit, puffing a little. “Maybe ‘Stone’ is ‘Stein.’ But this is a common name, ganz gemein. It tells nothing.”

  Abruptly, she looked down at my uniform. With suspicion. Twas the first time she ever had done so. “Und why are you, Major Jones, interested in a man who wishes to make a revolution against the tsar? This is America und we do not have the Geheimpolizei in the government, I think. Es gibt hier kein Russentum und kein Preussentum. Why is this man interesting to you, please?”

  “Look you, Mrs. Schutzengel. The fellow’s been murdered. And our government simply wants to know why.” I considered my words, then lowered my voice near a whisper. “There is a . . . a suspicion of Russian involvement, see. Nothing definite, but—”

  “Die Russen! Here? In Washington? Was fuer eine verdammte Schweinerei!” She stamped her foot so hard it nearly forced her to her feet. “No Russians!” She proclaimed. “Keine Kosaken, hierher, nein! No to the Tataren-Barbarei! No Russian Czarismus-Schwindel in America!

  I fear that, had she been a locomotive, she would have burst her boiler on the spot. We had little discussed the Russians in the past, but she always made it clear she did not like them. Now I found her enthusiasm alarming. I do believe the temperature climbed higher in the room, although the stove would not be lit until dinnertime.

  “No Russians!” she declared, bobbing up and down in her martyred chair. “Freiheit fuer die Polen!‘Runter mit dem Czarismus! Down with the Tsar!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Schutzengel, yes,” I tried to calm her. “But it may not be the Russians at all, you see. That is what we must find out. I didn’t mean to excite—”

  “Scheisskerle sind die alle! Tausende haben die Schweine in Ungarn erschossen!” She waved her kitchen rag as if lofting a banner above a defiant barricade. I understood but little of her German, which come too fast for my apprentice knowledge, yet I fear she was unkind to the Russian race.

  “Please, Mrs. Schutzengel . . . will you help me . . . perhaps your friends could . . .”

  “Carl Stone is his name? Who makes the revolution for the peoples? Ein echter Revoluzzer, meinen Sie? Und a general? Murdered? Die Kosaken haben den armen General kaltblutig ermordet?”

  “Yes, I do believe that sums it up. Now, if you could—”

  She leapt from her chair. Which was a sight to see. “Die Russen-Schweine will not kill generals here in America! Schlechter als die Rebellen sind die! Worse they are than the Rebels!”

  Had mine own visage betrayed the slightest Russian quality, I fear the dear woman might have slain me on the spot.

  “But perhaps it wasn’t the Russians, see. That is what we must find—”

  “Jawohl! It is the Russians. I know it.”

  “Well, there is the matter of proof, of course. We cannot—”

  “Komm doch! Come! We go now to see die Verrückte Maria!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We go to see Crazy Maria. She will know your Carl Stone, I think. Or she will know who will know him.” Mrs. Schutzengel paused for a moment, gripping my forearm with a strength born of wielding skillets. “But I must trust you, Herr Major.” Her face was as earnest as any I ever have seen, and the sweat seemed to freeze in its tracks. “You must not say where you have seen this Crazy Maria. You must not say to any persons that you have seen her at all. You must promise me this, because—”

  “Yes, yes. I promise.”

  “—they are wishing to hang her.”

  That gave me pause, I will admit. Things did seem to be happening with despatch. Already half the way to the front door she was, nearly forgetting the need of a coat and scarf.

  “But . . . who wishes to hang her?” I begged of my landlady’s retreating, but hardly diminishing, form.

  She turned to me with a face of such anger I lack the words to tell you of it.

  “Everybody,” she said.

  ELEVEN

  MRS. SCHUTZENGEL’S BOARDING HOUSE STOOD ON A quiet lane, so we had to turn down Seventh Street for a cab. Hardly a lamp still burned in the Patent Office, but the General Post Office glowed. The lanterns were lit on the corners and shops were closing, with each proprietor’s son or daughter latching the shutters then giving the doorway a sweep. The street was dense with Germans, who are a conscientious folk, and they never forget a title. As we hastened along, we were honored by greetings of “Guten Abend, Herr Major” and “Guten Abend, Gnädige Frau,” with a nod that was almost a bow to Mrs. Schutzengel. For Communist though she was, she owned a good deal of property in Washington, as I had come to learn across the months, and your German respects a deed as much as the Hindoo reveres his idols.

  Nor did our passage excite a smile, except from the half-witted Negro who haunted the street and sang colored songs for pennies. Twas strange that no one laughed, I must admit, since I fear the two of us made a curious pair. I am not great of stature, although I do show strong in the chest and shoulders, and my bothered leg goes along as best it can. Mrs. Schutzengel topped my own height by seven or eight inches and, had she served along with me in India, I might have enjoyed a generous shade at her side. The good woman was big. Yet, she moved with an alacrity that astonished. Children and dogs got out of her way as she plunged along the boards that fronted the shops. And I do believe draught horses shied in the street, although it may have been but the mud giving under their hooves.

  Now, I will tell you the queerest thing: War is a sin and a Christian must doubt its morality. But war produces wealth in heaps and piles. Not only were the shops ever bigger and brighter, but the dusky city was building itself higher and broader and finer with every month. The year before, our cannon had blocked the avenues. Now lumber carts and wagonloads of brick encumbered movement. Much was shoddy work and speculation, I will grant you. But all was rewarded by War and its boundless appetites.

  Strange it is that God allows such things. But his ways are ineffable.

  Nor was I guiltless myself, I will admit, for my railroad shares had earned a tidy profit.

  Yes, the railroad, that paragon of speed and modern times. As we approached the vivacity of Pennsylvania Avenue, where the decent women kept to the northern walk, while those bereft of honor patrolled the southern side, I heard a locomotive’s shriek from the yards just by the Capitol, a trumpet of progress that pierced the city’s evening. I could not see the great vehicle, for blocks of buildings interposed between us, but I imagined it bringing new troops, with their shining, young faces, or delivering the fruits of our Northern industry to nurture the army across the Potomac River.

  Now, I will tell you a thing, though you call me untruthful: I already had decided we could not lose the war, but for the Lord’s ill temper. I saw our triumph as certain, if only our will did not fail us. Twas but a matter of how long our victory would take and how much misery our nation need endure. My conclusion arose from all I saw, still more from what I felt. Our Northern states bloomed with commerce and great energies, with ever new additions to our mills, more miles of track laid down, and improved methods of molding iron or even forging steel. We had been in a bit of a bust before the war, but now it seemed that a dollar invested sprouted up gold pieces in no time at all. We were the future, see.

  Only the April before, I had seen our Southland, all pomp and dust, carelessness and valor, as much a place of the past as sullen India. I did not know half a million more would
die. But I knew that we would win. The South could swagger and fight, but we could work. And you and I know which the Lord rewards.

  My journey from Pottsville back to Washington had taken me through a landscape of smoking chimneys and piled freight, past laden canals and railways overcrowded. The antique superstitions of Irish miners and rumors of fairies and witches seemed but a dream to me, as the cars raced past a world new-engineered. A journey through Southeastern Pennsylvania gave a man the sense that nothing was impossible for our America. God willing, of course.

  I had paid such matters even more attention than was my habit, for I like to read on the railway, but had been disappointed by the book I brought along. I did give Mr. Chaucer a fair try, for I have been told he fathered our English language, but the fellow could not spell and I set him aside. Nor could my German grammar hold me an hour. Certainly, we must not indulge ourselves with excuses and must strive diligently for our personal improvement. But the German tongue is a feast I can only nibble.

  Let all that bide.

  MRS. SCHUTZENGEL PICKED OUT a cab from the line fronting Brown’s Hotel, giving the driver instructions in a dialect that forbade my understanding. But in I got, after letting the good woman squeeze inside herself, which took not a little time. I fear the carriage’s springs complained, and I know the rig sat lower.

  “Nun, ja,” Mrs. Schutzengel said, once we were properly on our way. “Now you must make the promise again that you say nothing of the woman I take you to, the Crazy Maria. No word. Not even to your great friends.”

  “But Frau Schutzengel, I must use the information, see, or there is no purpose to—”

  “Yes, to the informations. Ja. Die Fakten muss man haben. Versteht’s. But you do not speak of the Crazy Maria to any person. This you must promise.”

  As serious as a wound to the heart she was.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I promise.” I hoped that fate would allow me to honor my word.

  We rattled past the great, unfinished outline of the Capitol, winding south of its littered grounds to rejoin Pennsylvania Avenue’s proper course.

  “Na, gut,” Mrs. Schutzengel said, as the horse strained up the slope. “Now you are listening. The Crazy Maria is not a Communist person. We are very few, because we are the most advanced, wissen Sie doch. The Communists will lead the . . . oooch, wie sagt man? The four fronts of the revolution, we will lead. The Crazy Maria is once the Fourierist, like your Irish friend, Dr. Tyrone. Then she becomes a Socialist, but the men are too weak and do nothing. They only make the talking always. So now she is a Bakuninite. Ob was daraus wird, weiss Ich nicht. Because she has been so many persons, she knows many peoples. I think she knows so much it is a great danger to many, if she is stolen back to Europe. That is why she hides, not because she is afraid of the hanging . . .”

  Twas then I made a dreadful mistake. I asked, “And what, Mrs. Schutzengel, is a ‘Bakuninite’?”

  Twas dark in the cab, but I do believe her face glowed like a stove.

  “Ach, diese Verrückten! Laute, dumme Anarchisten sind die, stupid anarchists. Crazy peoples. They do not understand that there must be organization for the world revolution! It does not happen from wishing and shooting the idiot policeman . . .”

  Now, I am not a fellow who believes in harming policemen. I began to wonder if I had not opened a door that had best been left shut. And locked.

  Thereafter, Mrs. Schutzengel endeavored to explain the complexities of the great political and economic thoughts of Europe to me, telling me tales of all sorts of nasty fellows, a suspicious number of whom had French names, which cannot bode well for any human endeavor. In little more than a minute, I was lost, although she spoke with a passion even our poor horse must have felt. I chastened myself for my lack of proper attention, then realized, as we passed the Marine barracks, that her fervor did not require me as an audience, but was a machine that went all of itself.

  The cab rolled down past the Navy Yard, where forges sparked despite the hour and dark hulls bobbed as tethered elephants will. We turned along the shacks and slops facing the river. A sentry stopped us at the head of the Eastern Branch Bridge, witless, but obliged to show his authority. He held his lantern to reveal himself, not us. The hack driver made his explanations and showed his pass, after which the soldier barely cast a glance into the shadows of the cab. A deadly assassin might have made his escape across that bridge, suffering only a lazy pretense at vigilance.

  Hooves and wheels clopped and clattered over the planks. A naval cutter rolled at anchor out in the stream, with lanterns hung fore and aft. I wondered where on earth we might be going, but did not wish to interrupt Mrs. Schutzengel with a question, since she was enjoying her own lecture immensely.

  Look you. That is how it is with all these disciples of revolution, tumult and what-not. Speeches are their substitute for prayers.

  Perhaps our America will make Christians out of the lot of them.

  Full night it was as we stopped at the iron gates. Brick buildings loomed behind brick walls, ill lit and barely attended. The guard was not a military fellow, but an old gummer, and the only other souls I saw were a brace of Negro women taking down a line of wash in the courtyard. A lamp set on the ground lit lofting sheets.

  “Frau Schutzengel,” I said, in rising concern, “this is the city madhouse.”

  Mrs. Schutzengel grunted in affirmation. “Now you will be quiet,” she told me. “I am making all the talking here.”

  TWAS NOT A PLACE where I wished to spend much time, nor did the company warm me. I suppose such unfortunates must be locked up, to spare the rest of society. Perhaps their surroundings matter little to them. It may be they are no longer truly human, but creatures half declined to an animal state. Yet, I cannot enter such an edifice without imagining myself thus confined. Perhaps it awakens old fears of cellars and locked doors. Or echoes a charge once leveled against myself, at the end of my Indian days.

  A succession of queries produced a fellow in shirtsleeves, dinner napkin still clutched in his hand. Mrs. Schutzengel introduced him to me as “Dr. Pankow.” They seemed to be on old, familiar terms. He excused himself for a moment, then reappeared in his coat. With a little, leather-wrapped truncheon in his hand.

  We crossed the yard toward a long building of two stories, not unpleasant, but for the window bars. The noises began to reach us some way off.

  Inside the brick fortress, Mr. Milton’s Pandemonium awaited, a gas-lit Hell.

  A guard, fat and dull, unlocked a gate within, opening a fetid corridor to us. We went along single file, with Day-of-Judgement screams and clashing manacles attending our progress. Horrid faces, half-devoured, pressed against barred gaps. One fellow tried to force his hand through the narrow opening of his cell, seeking to grasp Mrs. Schutzengel’s skirts. He pushed so hard he stripped away the skin of his knuckles and fingers before our eyes. He noised at her like a beast.

  “The criminally insane,” Dr. Pankow called over his shoulder. Then he added, “Syphilitics,” in a dismissive tone.

  Another door awaited us. A gray-haired fellow sat before it, rising belatedly at the doctor’s approach, still chewing the dinner he was eating from a pail. Our host did not bother to speak, but only made a gesture with his billy.

  As the guard unlocked the door, the doctor turned a pleasant face to us and said, “We must keep the women separate, of course.”

  A voice but one cell back shrieked obscenities to scorch the soul, all directed at the feminine aspects of Mrs. Schutzengel. Now, I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses. Soldiers come to know the extremes of language. But the things the creature called to her drew beads of sweat from the innocent woman’s forehead. I marked that her hands were shaking.

  We passed into the women’s ward, and the invitations from the mad were tendered to the doctor and myself. The most defiled souls of heartless India did not exceed such moral desolation.

  A woman, missing her nose and with lips chewed ragged, sq
ueezed a skeletal arm from her cell to claw at me. I am ashamed to say I jumped like a young recruit spying his first cobra.

  The words she hissed mocked every mortal love.

  Dr. Pankow produced a key to the cell at the end of the hall and opened the door. I half expected some harpie to fly out and clutch him.

  Behind my back, a crazed voice begged, “Two bits, just two bits, Mister. I do anything at all, for just two bits . . .”

  I followed my companions into the cell, and found an old slump of a woman seated at a desk. Outlined by lamplight, she was not chained, but did not rise or make the least gesture, either of welcome or refusal. She merely paused over the document she was writing, as if she had heard the buzzing of a fly. Her face was crudely made, as if carved by an amateur’s hand, but all of Mr. Faraday’s currents shone in her eyes. And those eyes judged me.

  Her look was so piercing I could not meet it long. I glanced about and found shelves of dark-browed books. But I was not so distracted I failed to see our host pass his key into Mrs. Schutzengel’s hand.

  “Danke, Herr Doktor,” she told him. But her tone was condescending, telling the fellow he might leave us without further ceremony.

  And he went, shutting the cell door gently.

  “Du, Hilda,” the old woman said at last. She laid down her pen and shifted slightly, to face us full on. Her clothing was clean, though worn past recommendation. Her aspect was as hard-used as her garments.

  Out in the corridor, the doctor’s withdrawal left a wake of shrieks.

  “Maria . . . wie geht’s denn?” my landlady asked.

  The old woman shrugged with her eyebrows, too weary to lift her shoulders. “Diese Armen sind nicht zu retten . . . auch nicht mit unseren Mitteln . . .”

  I understood that she felt sorry for her companions in that ward, but did not think they could be helped. Then she and Mrs. Schutzengel launched into a mighty German conversation, firing words as swiftly as bullets leave one of Mr. Colt’s revolvers. I could not get but shreds of it, though I recognized the word for “trust” and had no doubt what the old woman’s repeated glances in my direction meant. I heard my name spoken a few times, always with my rank attached, for even revolutionary Germans respect authority.