Into the Storm

by Avi

  My dear Sir Albert,

  I send you greetings from the sea.

  I wish to inform you that I have the property about which you were concerned safely with me. Indeed, I decided I could best serve your interests if I myself carried it to America and disposed of it there, as you so much desired.

  Now, sir, since I am going to such considerable lengths to do your bidding, I must ask you for some payment as soon as possible. I require a fee of one thousand pounds. Then, in addition, I ask you to pay me the sum of one hundred pounds monthly until such time as I alter the arrangement.

  I entreat you to do this quickly, for the post across the Atlantic is slow and I have incurred considerable expense on your behalf. In return, you have my word as a gentleman that no information regarding your desires shall ever reach the esteemed ears of your lord father.

  But of course, sir, if you do not see fit to pay your bills promptly, I will be forced to inform your father directly about what you paid me to do. I’m sure you can appreciate the complications that might result.

  Mr. Clemspool read and reread what he had written, making only a few minor adjustments. After due consideration he added:

  As to my address in America, I have yet to determine upon a permanent abode or even whether I will remain in the country. But you should write to me in the care of Mr. Ambrose Shagwell, in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. I am sure word will reach me. Mr. Shagwell is a highly esteemed gentleman and a good friend, a man I trust and, sir, a confidant in all my affairs.

  Trusting you are, sir, continuing in good health, I remain,

  Faithfully yours,

  Matthew Clemspool, Esq.

  The letter written, Mr. Clemspool stepped out of the stateroom into a long galley way. On the other side of the galley way was the dining room where the three first-class passengers would eat their meals with the captain, first mate, and ship’s doctor.

  At the forward end of the galley was a large door providing access to the main deck. At the stern end was the captain’s quarters. The galley itself was windowless, lit only by a single oil lamp, far forward.

  Mr. Clemspool turned toward the captain’s cabin. When he heard voices from the inside, he knocked.

  “Enter!” a voice commanded.

  Mr. Clemspool opened the door. Captain Rickles and his first mate, Mr. Murdock, were conferring.

  “Yes, Mr. Clemspool,” the captain said, looking up. “What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t wish to trouble you, sir, but I understand that from time to time as we sail, we meet with other ships.”

  “We do, sir,” the captain replied. “And when we meet them, we heave to and share information.”

  “Do they ever carry letters?”

  “Always and happily.”

  “Then,” Mr. Clemspool said, holding up his letter to Sir Albert, “might I request that this be sent to England when the first opportunity presents itself. It concerns important financial matters.”

  The captain took the letter and looked at the name and address. Mr. Clemspool noted that he was impressed. “I can assure you, sir, you may count upon me. The shipping lanes are full this time of year. We shall certainly bespeak someone. Your letter will be passed on.”

  “I am much obliged,” Mr. Clemspool said, and bowed his way out, shutting the door behind him. Once beyond the door, however, he lingered and listened.

  “As I was saying, Captain” — it was the first mate speaking — “that stowaway is about somewhere. And I’ll ferret him out even if it’s in Boston Bay.”

  Mr. Clemspool, having not the slightest interest in the topic of stowaways, turned back to his own stateroom, confident of his future.

  Crowds of workers, women mostly but men and children too, poured out through the gates of the Shagwell Cotton Mill Company, the night air frosting their breaths. With their way lit by glowing curbside gas lamps and hand-held flares, they headed for boardinghouses, rooms, or shanties, whatever it was they called their homes in the gloomy town of Lowell, Massachusetts.

  Amid the throng walked two men. The older was Gregory O’Connell, father to Maura and Patrick, whom they called Da.

  Though barely fifty years of age, Mr. O’Connell had the sad and grizzled look of a tired, broken man. A small slip of a fellow, he had stooped shoulders and a round creased face with dark hollows beneath his eyes. His boots and jacket were old and patched. The muffler about his neck was torn. His companion, Nathaniel Brewster, had never seen him laugh.

  A tall, gangly, broad-shouldered seventeen-year-old, Nathaniel had an awkward, often clumsy walk, unruly brown hair, lively hazel eyes, and a quick smile.

  Born and raised on a farm in Maine, he was the youngest son of a large family. Having no expectations of an inheritance and wanting neither a sailor’s life nor a fisherman’s, he decided he’d go to the new state of California in search of gold. With little more than his poor parents’ blessing, he had set off by way of Boston, in hopes of getting a ship.

  On the docks, however, he discovered that he would have to raise a fair amount of money before he could sail, for the voyage around Cape Horn was costly and of several months’ duration. Nathaniel promptly sought employment. It was in Boston, in cheap lodgings, that he met Gregory O’Connell.

  Mr. O’Connell, being much bewildered and lonely in the New World, welcomed the bold but caring kindness of one who knew American custom. As for Nathaniel, he felt better in the company of a dour elder. So it was that the two men had begun their winter-spring friendship nine months before. Together they struggled to establish themselves by sharing bed and board. For the past few months they’d worked steadily in the mills of Lowell, thirty miles to the northwest of Boston.

  That evening, as the two men negotiated the pits and holes in icy Adams Street, neither spoke. Toiling from five-thirty in the morning till seven-thirty at night had quite exhausted them.

  Suddenly — though still some distance from their rented room — Mr. O’Connell stopped. “No,” he announced as if he had come to a decision after much debate, “I’ll never get used to it.”

  “What’s that?” Nathaniel asked. Though his thoughts were on dinner, he paused in deference to the elder man.

  “It’s the dreadful noise and cotton dust in the mill,” Mr. O’Connell said. “A man can hardly breathe or think. Or,” he added ruefully, “even live.”

  “Mr. O’Connell,” Nathaniel said with his good-natured laugh, “seems to me you’re forgetting we’re being paid for our work.”

  “In faith,” Mr. O’Connell replied, “I was raised on the land. Worked my bit, may the Holy Mother bless it. An old-fashioned life, you’re forever saying, Mr. Brewster. But here, it’s eight hundred machines banging and crashing fourteen hours a day. Doesn’t the floor itself tremble?” He lifted a hand, only to drop it when unable to find the words to express himself.

  “You’ve said it all before, Mr. O’Connell,” Nathaniel reminded him, eager to move on.

  The Irishman held his ground and shook his head. “By the blessed saints, Nathaniel, I don’t suspect you’ll be hearing me say it for very much longer.”

  “You’ve said that too, so often,” Nathaniel replied. “I reckon you’ll be saying it fifty years from now.”

  “You don’t understand,” Mr. O’Connell insisted. “I’m a doomed man.”

  This woeful prediction brought another laugh from Nathaniel. “Mr. O’Connell,” he said, “keep in mind that things are different here in America.”

  “They are.”

  “And the biggest difference,” the young man reminded his elder, “is that you’re employed.”

  “I’ll not deny it.”

  “For hard cash.”

  “Four dollars a week.”

  “And you eat.”

  “I do.”

  “While in that Ireland of yours — so you’ve told me — there was no work, cash, or food.”

  “There are those, Mr. Brewster, who have no love of the Irish.”
r />   “Now, Mr. O’Connell, you have many a friend at the mill.”

  Mr. O’Connell looked up at Nathaniel. “Faith, lad, don’t you miss your family?”

  “Of course I do,” the young man returned. “But before I left, my father took me aside. ‘Nathaniel,’ says he, ‘don’t waste your time missing us. We’ll be here forever, alive or dead.’”

  “A kind man you have for a father,” Mr. O’Connell said.

  “He is,” Nathaniel agreed with a touch of impatience. “But we should get on, Mr. O’Connell. I can smell snow in the wind, and I’m roaring hungry.”

  Mr. O’Connell, however, would not move. “By the living Jesus,” he cried, “I wish I had never left home!”

  “Mr. O’Connell,” Nathaniel said, “how many times have we agreed, we did the right thing by leaving our homes. Besides, your wife and children will be with you soon.”

  “God willing.”

  “Look how quick you raised the cash for their passage!”

  “But hundreds die on those coffin ships,” the Irishman said.

  “Mr. O’Connell, you’re living proof that not everyone dies. You’ll be reunited soon.”

  “No more faithful wife than Annie O’Connell,” Mr. O’Connell was quick to acknowledge. The thought was sufficiently soothing that he began to walk again.

  “And there’s your lovely daughter, Maura,” Nathaniel added with care, “tall and strong, with thick brown hair and blue eyes. There, you see! You’ve told me so much about her, I sometimes think I’m already in love with the girl.”

  Mr. O’Connell stopped abruptly.

  Nathaniel, alarmed, asked, “Did I speak too free?”

  “Lad,” Mr. O’Connell said with considerable difficulty, “the truth is, I never felt so ill as I do now. Weren’t there moments today when I was certain the machines were about to snap me soul from me heart? I could hardly keep up, I was that dizzy with confusion. Terrible pains too,” he added, touching his heart. “Aye, I’m a beaten man,” he concluded sadly.

  “Mr. O’Connell,” Nathaniel said lightly, “you’ve been dying since I met you.” He moved on.

  Mr. O’Connell did not. His heart seemed to contract in pain. His breathing grew difficult. “Mr. Brewster!” he cried out in alarm. The young man stopped and looked back. “If something happens to me …,” he managed to say, “happens before my family comes, it’s your vow that you’ll always be their friend…. It’s that I’m waiting to hear.”

  Nathaniel ambled back. “Of course I’ll be their friend,” he replied. “And if a decent Catholic is willing to shake the hand of an equally decent Protestant, you can have my hand on it!”

  A trembling Mr. O’Connell held out his hand. Nathaniel grasped it gladly. Then, having recovered his breath, and the pain subsiding, Mr. O’Connell went on with his friend.

  But as whirlpools of old snow spun like tops all about them, Gregory O’Connell prayed under his breath. “Holy Mother,” he whispered, “just let me live till my family comes.”

  That evening the snow Nathaniel had predicted for Lowell arrived. It was borne on the edge of a sharp sleet-edged wind that sliced through the wide expanse of Merrimack Street, the city’s principal thoroughfare. Windows rattled, doors banged, store signs whipped like the wings of frightened birds. The few people and horses out and about were forced to bow their heads in submission as they struggled to find warmer, kindlier refuges.

  Though it was an evening designed to keep citizens at home, a meeting was being held in the back room of the Spindle City Hotel and Oyster Bar on the main street. It was a hotel that catered to the itinerant salesman, the mechanic, the traveling businessman. Public gatherings were often held there.

  This meeting, however, was not a public one. Indeed, a ragged boy had been posted next to the entryway with clear instructions to give an alarm if anyone else tried to enter. By the boy’s side was a box upon which was written SHINE, 2c.

  There were four people gathered. Of the three men and one woman seated at the square table in one corner of the room, three wore hats and coats. Whether they did so because the room was cold or because they wanted to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice was not clear. But now and again, as the wind blew by with its low, dirgelike sound, they lifted their heads, listened intently, and were inwardly pleased: The storm would be the most effective guardian of their meeting. Who, upon such a night, when hearths at home were heated, would desire to engage in a discussion about the menace of immigrants?

  The four shared one small lighted candle. It stood on the table close enough to illuminate the one bareheaded person in the room. His name was Jeremiah Jenkins.

  The shaggy white hair and full fringe of white whiskers about Mr. Jenkins’s face suggested he had reached advanced years. Not so. His skin was smooth, and his eyes, beneath bushy dark eyebrows, were as bright as candle flames. He appeared to have a fire within, the strength of which helped him command the rapt attention of his small audience.

  “And what I’m telling you, friends,” Jeremiah Jenkins was saying in a voice that oozed confidentiality, “is however refined it is to talk about these problems, what truly counts in this world is the action you take.

  “Friends,” he ventured, looking into each of his listeners’ faces, “may I suggest the time for action is at hand!”

  “Hear, hear,” came a murmured reply from one of the men, a stooped, shrunken fellow who had something of a rat’s appearance.

  “Do I have to remind you people,” Mr. Jenkins continued, “of the decrease in wages now offered working men and women, the increase in crime, filth, and illness in this once-great city of Lowell?”

  “Not me, you don’t,” responded another of the men warmly — a beefy round man, middle-aged, who wore his hat perched high on his head.

  “I’m pleased you agree,” said Mr. Jenkins, reaching across the table to shake the man’s hand with something that suggested gratitude. He then swiveled about in his chair. “You there,” he called across the room to the boy sitting by the door.

  The boy, who had been daydreaming, started up. “Yes, mister.”

  “Do you have a name?” Mr. Jenkins gave a wink to his tablemates.

  “Jeb Grafton.” The boy had a raw red face that seemed to have been recently peeled to expose a perpetual pout. His trousers were ragged, his thin jacket frayed and split at the elbows. The cloth cap he wore was pulled so low that he seemed to look upon the world as if from under a ledge.

  “Come over here, boy,” Mr. Jenkins said kindly.

  The boy shuffled over and stood sheepishly by the man.

  “Do you go to school, Jeb Grafton?”

  Jeb gave a contemptuous grunt. “I suppose I did — for a while. I’m thirteen now.”

  “And how many in your school were foreigners?”

  Jeb screwed up his face. “Pretty much half.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  The boy shrugged. “They were too stupid for me.”

  “There, you see,” Mr. Jenkins said with a slap of his hand on the table so loud and sudden it made his listeners jump. “That’s what it’s come to! The foreigners have even taken over the schools from our children. Now, friends,” he continued in a somewhat modulated voice, “you know very well who the worst of these foreigners are: the Irish.” The word Irish was spoken slowly, in two equally stressed syllables, the second slipping out with a hiss.

  “Even as I speak, they are crowding onto our shores. By the thousands. By the tens of thousands! Starving beggars, each and every one of them. All expecting to live on handouts from the government, your government.

  “Are they grateful? Not a bit. To whom do these Irish give their allegiance? To the Roman Catholic Church, that’s who. To priests, nuns, bishops, and popes. Friends, I’m here tonight to warn you that the republic is under attack by these people. I say we must fight back.”

  “And what are we supposed to do about it?” The woman who asked the question was named Betsy Howard. She was you
ng, with a broad open face and dark hair. “They take low wages, and they don’t mind how fast the machines go,” she added.

  “Where do you work?” Mr. Jenkins asked.

  “Shagwell Cotton Mill.”

  The smile on Mr. Jenkins’s face withered. He leaned forward. “Are they taking on Irish there too?” he asked.

  “Quite a few.”

  Mr. Jenkins sat back in his chair, visibly shaken. For a moment he seemed lost in thought. His eyes flashed. His fingers fidgeted. Then, as quickly as the emotion had come, it subsided. He smiled wryly.

  “What are we to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I do. There’s an inn in Boston, the Liberty Tree Inn. Right on the docks. The immigrants often head there directly from the ships. I wait for them there, and when I see them — you can always recognize them — I tell them to get out.” He chuckled silently.

  “But there’s something we can all do. It’s a new movement, friends, a new spirit aborning of which I have the pleasure to be a part. For the time the movement is secret, as this meeting is secret. I selected you to be here.” He looked at each of his listeners in turn and smiled. Each was pleased to be so included.

  “Friends,” Mr. Jenkins continued softly but with determination, “people like us are coming to power in this land. Join us, and as we grow strong, you’ll grow strong. When we grow strong enough, we’ll drive these Irish from America and restore the nation to all its ancient republican virtues.”

  The ratlike man shifted uncomfortably. “What’s the name of this organization?” he asked.

  “A reasonable question. It’s the Order of the Star-spangled Banner. But if anyone asks about it, all you need to do is this.” Mr. Jenkins pointed to his right eye, then to his nose, and then made, with his thumb and forefinger, the shape of a circle.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the woman asked.

  Mr. Jenkins smiled slyly. Once again he pointed to his eye. “I,” he said. He pointed to his nose. “Knows,” he said. Finally, he made the circle with his fingers. “Nothing,” he said.