by Betty Smith
"I'll relieve you of it."
"I'll keep it. 'Tis no burtllen a-tall."
The young man consulted the paper. "Mr. Moore," he
read
[ 33 1
aloud, "is to be given every consideration. You are to
carry his luggage...." The young man shrugged. "Boss's
orders," he said cheerfully.
Patsy gave him the knapsack. The young man rolled it
up and tucked it under his arm. "Let us be on our way,"
he said, "to your new home in America."
Skillfully, he piloted Patsy across the street. "I'll put you
on a horsecar," he said, "and that will take you to the ferry
dock. You get on the boat and when it stops you get off
and Mr. Moriarity will be waiting for you there with his
carriage, to drive you to his home."
"I'm that obliged to you . . ." began Patsy.
"Don't thank me, Or. Moore. This is all part of my job.
Now!" He gave a furtive look up and down the street. "Do
you have any money on you?" Patsy's eyes narrowed
suddenly. "I mean for carfare and the ferry?" added the
young man quickly.
"Well . . ." began Palsy cagily.
"Here, then," said the young man. He gave Patsy four
nickels. "That will get you over to Brooklyn and buy you
a beer in the bargain."
Patsy was ashamed `,f his suspicions. "I got two notes,"
he said, "but the cabby said they was counterfeet."
"Let's see 'em." Patsy gave him the notes. The young
man examined them carefully. "Why these bills are just as
good as gold," he said indignantly. "Only you have to get
them changed into American money." He took another
furtive look up and down the street. "Wait' I'll run in here
and 'change them. Only take a minute. Be right back."
He darted through the swinging doors of a saloon. He
did not come back in a minute. As Patsy waited, he
became heavy with premonition. I le waited a few minutes
longer. Then he went into the saloon.
The plate was empty save for the man behind the bar.
He has a big man with big. mustaches and roached hair.
A smell of vvet sawdust, stale beer and dank graveyard air
seemed to rise from the barkeep like a vapor.
"Yah?" he asked.
''Wllere's the man what just came in here? " asked Patsv.
[ 34 ]
"The man who canoe in to change me pound notes?"
"No Mann ist trier," said the barkeep.
"I saw him come in. He told me to wait."
"Oudt mit you," said the man, yawning. "Reuse!"
"Not till ][ get me note, back," said Patsy. He heard a
small squeak; saw a door close stealthily in the rear. "I le's
in there!" shouted Patsy. Ele made a dash for the door.
But the bartender was too quick for him. Burly as he
was. he took a nimble one-handed vault over the bar. He
had an uglylooking blackjack in his flee hand.
"Oudt' Get oudt from mine place," he bellowed. "Du
Gottverdammten Irisher! " Patsy made it just in time. The
blackjack came down on the t`'p of one of the inswinging
doors and splintered it Patsy shuddc red and ducked
around the corner.
He walked the unaccustomed streets for hours. His
heart wept for his familiar Irish village. He was lost and
terrified. He was friendless and didn't knob where to go.
It was worse than being lost in a vast Backless forest. One
could sit down and rest in a forest. There was no plac c
on the street where he could sit down and rest.
In time, he came to a lonely side street and saw a man
in white pushing a cart in which a broom and shovel were
upended. He approached the white wing, cap in hand.
"Officer, could you be telling me, and me a greenhorn
just landed," he ,aid humbly, "how to get to this village?"
He showed him the card.
"Sure, Greerlie," said the obliging street cleaner. "Here's
what you do." He gave him careful directions.
It took Patsy six hours, three horsecars, one ferry and
miles of walking to get to Bush~vick Avenue, Brooklyn.
He stood at the bottom of the long stoop and took in the,
to him, splendor of the three-story, parlor and 'casement,
brownstone house with red geraniums in urns on ~ he
stoop railing posts. Patsy climbed the stoop. There was a
white porcelain plate next the door. It had a black button
in the cent`.r. Underneath it said: Ring bell. patsy looked
around but could find no rope to pull to ring a bell. He
did the next best thing: He tapped on the etched-glass
windovv of the vestibule door. After a while, a buxom
wench opened
1 ask]
the door, gave him one look and said:
"We don't want none."
From within the darkness of the house, Patsy heard the
sweetest voice in the world say: "Who is it, Biddy?"
"A peddler, Miss Mary . . . some tinker's son," said Biddy.
"I'll attend to it."
She came out of the darkness to Patsy and his heart fell
when he saw that the sweetest voice in the world belonged
to, according to Patrick's standards, the plainest face and
plainest figure in the world.
"I come from Countv Kilkenny," he began.
"Oh!" She clasped her hands and her face brightened up
with the sweetest smile in the world. "You must be the
new boy. Come in."
He followed her into the house, his heart sighing: Oh,
if God had only gone A little further after he made her voice
and her smile!
"Papa," she called, "the boy is here from Ireland."
Patsy stood on the l urkey-red carpet and looked around
the dim room. The windows were hung with Brussels lace
curtains and maroon velvet draperies tied back with
golden cords, and green velvet portieres, hung from a
fretwork arch that led into an alcove, were tied back to
display a shiny upright piano with a velvet-covered stool.
There were silver-framed photographs on the piano and
a whatnot in a corner, its shelves filled with little
"friendship" cups, and Boston ferns on the window ledges.
And gilt chairs upholstered in pink and blue satin and a
love seat. A big statue of a blackamoor was on the newel
post of the stairs leading to the second floor. The
blackamoor held a bowl over his head in which a gas light
flickered. On the stair landing was a concave, oval, leaded,
stained-glass window.
Patsy thought it was all beautiful . . . beautiful. He
promised himself that he would have a house like that
someday. Until I get ale own, he thought, I'll be content to
live here.
Moriarity came into the room and greeted him
boomingly. Then he shouted for his wife. A timid little
woman scuttled into the room.
"Missus, this is the new stable boy," he said. "Boy, this is
your
[36]
Missus." The Missus bobbed her head in a s
cared way and
scuttled back into the shadows of the room.
"And me daughter, Mary." The plain girl gave Patsy her
sweet smile. "American loom," said Moriarity. It was
obvious that he was proud of his daughter. "And she
studied to be a teacher. This here is Biddy, the cook. She
comes from County Down." He addressed Biddy.
"Biddy, me bird, Yathrick here is a fine-looking feller.
Nov. don't you go making eyes at him when the both of
youse should be working."
Patsy looked at the big-busted Biddy with aversion and
she looked at him with distaste. There's nothing there what
I ~*'ant, thought Patsy.
"And afther, I'll introduce you to me two best girls,
Jessie and Daisy," Mike said to Patsy. "And now: Where's
your satchel? "
"A young man took it off me. He said he worked for
you and that you said he should." Patsy thought it best to
say nothing about the two pounds.
"He took your satchel? '
"Yes. Me 'sack."
"Are you standing there and telling me you was taken in
by that old thrick?" He laughed. "Yah-ha-ha! Yah-ha-ha!"
The booming laugh scared The Missus. She threw up
her hands in fright and scuttled from the room.
"Yah-ha-ha!" laughed Mike. "Wait'll I tell the boys down
at headquarters."
"Now, Papa, don't laugh," said Mary Moriarity.
"Remember the same thing happened to you when you
came over. Only the man said he was your uncle's cousin.
And he got your trunk. And all your money, too."
Patsy gave her a grateful look. Ah, she's kind, he
thought. But then, 'tis the nature of plaits women to be kind.
"Har-umph!" The Boss cleared his throat. "'Tis so. Was
so. But sure 'twas only an old thmnk filled with rags.
Mary, go below stairs with Biddy and see that she fixes a
dish of hot supper for the new boy." The women left.
"And now Pathrick, me boy, I'll show you to your room.'
[ 37 1
Patsy turned and went toward the stairs. "Not up there."
The Boss laughed. "Across the yard. Folly me."
They had to go through the downstairs hall to get to the
yard. Patsy heard Mary and Biddy talking in the kitchen.
Biddy was saying: "Hot dish, me foot! Cold dish! I'm not
the one to cook after hours for inny greenhorn just
landed."
"Now, Biddy," came Mary's gentle voice: "Don't call him
that. You know you didn't like people to call you
greenhorn when you came over five years ago."
Ah, she's the sweet girl, thought Patsy. But plain. Ah, the
pity of ill
Patsy was introduced to the two mares, and shown a
ladder which led to the loft above. "Your new home is up
there. 'Tis small but you'll be as snug as a bug in a rug,
ha-ha. Now get yourself a bite of supper and go to bed.
I'll let you ok work until tomorrow."
Patsy had his supper, not the hot one that Mary had
ordered or the cold one Biddy had threatened: a slightly
warmed-over dish of leftovers. When she had finished,
Biddy told him that he'd use the water trough to wash in
and the water closet in the basement. She gave him a
towel and a cake of soap and a box of kitchen matches.
Patsy was disappointed to know he had a kerosene lamp.
He had expected gaslight.
He climbed up the ladder and lit the lamp. He surveyed
his kingdom. It was a small room with one window. It had
a cot, a chair, a kitchen table with the lamp on it, and
three nails in the wall for his clothes and towel.
'Tis barer than a convent cell, he thought. And in America
the horses do be living better than us honest immigrants. He
sat in his cubicle, dead tired, but too wrought up to sleep.
What am' I doing here, he mused, in this strange place
amongst strange people? Why did that sport give me that
card and none other? Some of the other boy-sis on the boat
got cards for jobs to build a railway that ran on tracks over
your head; the elevated, they called it. And they to get grand
wages for it, and meself here. Was I born, now, to be a
servant? No! Ah, he sighed, the good Lord must have had
it in for me, the way He sent me here.
He fell asleep but woke up in the middle of the night.
He woke up in a panic because he didn't know where he
was. He walked
[3~]
lopsided across the dark room to find the lamp. 'Tis
strange, he thought, the boat still rocl ing Old did I not get
or front it this morning? He found the table and lit the
lamp. He looked around the tiny roonn. 'Tis Lo dry am,
he told himself. I am here, alone amongst strangers. I am
without one mother and one girl and me f riend, Rory-Boy.
Maybe, he mused, that ballad tlJat Henny, the Hermit,
made up afloat me was not bad a-tall. Had I but stayed to
hear the all of it, I might not be here this night.
Too many things was dance to one this day. And from
now oil, I'll make everyone who pelts a finger to one life do
penance for .eh,7t has been done to me, to me? I'atrick
Dennis Moore.
~ (~HA l'TER Fl VE ~
.``II~l. iNloR'.RIrY, called ions all file lloss, was a stout,
ruddy man with a big belly and big mustaclles. He wore
his pepperand-salt hair parted in the middle with a thick
lap on either side which looked like a pair of
gra,v-and-black pigeons nesting on top of his head. He
wore a black broadcloth suit with a white vest that looked
as though it never had been spotless even when new. A
watcl1 chain, the links big enough for a dog leash, bisected
his belly. I le was never without an uptilted cigar in the
corner of his mouth. Outdoors, he wore a square-crowned
derby tilted over one eye to almost touch the tip of his
up-tilted cigar. He looked like a caricature of a Tammany
ward heeler.
He was a Tammany ward heeler.
Molly, his wife, known as The Missus, w as a person
soon overlooked. She was tiny, four feet ten, and weighed
eighty pounds. She was forever frightened and put in her
days scuttling back and forth, up and down the house.
Mary Moriarity, but for her kind ways, would hate
walked through life unnoted. Her face was plain. She was
too tall for a woman and she lacked the curves that one
looks for in a w omen. One didn't notion e her plainness
at all w hen she spoke
1'91
or smiled. But she was not given to talking much and she
smiled rarely.
Bridget, that is, Biddy, the cook, could not possibly be
ignored. She w as all pervading. Patsy hated her at first
sight. She wore her coarse, black hair in two walloping
braids around her head. She had the biggest bust Patsy
had ever seen and he came from a land of big-breasted
women. Her bust was pushed up and out by tightly laced
and high-riding
corsets.
If she had turned up in the old days when he and
Rory-Boy had been friends, he would have told Rory-Boy
that it looked as though she were carrying a tray before
her on which were two loaves of unbaked bread. Rory-Boy
would have laughed and inspired Patsy to build up the
story.
"And sure," he would have said, "the buttons on her
waist look alive the way they do be fighting all the time to
get out of the buttonholes. And the third one from the
top goes in and out like a eye that does wink at you all
the time."
But there was no Rory-Boy as friend; no one to talk to
like that; no one to laugh with. So he saw no fun in Biddy.
She revolted him.
The two matched mares revolted him, too. When he
washed or curried them and the skin rippled beneath his
hand, it gave him the creeps. He hated their coarse
eyelashes. He wondered why they needed such big yellow
teeth only for oats and hay. He was disgusted by their
ankles, which seemed too thin to support the heavy
bodies. And tears of indignity filled his eyes when the
horse's rump 'before his face blotted out the light of the
day as he stood there braiding red ribbon into a
coarse-haired tail.
He hated the manure which he had to garner each day
to deploy around the base of the snowball bushes in the
yard because The Missus had told him, with fright in her
face, that it must be done because the Illmps were pure
gold to the bushes and would make the flowers icy blue in
colon
He hated the tiger cat that lived in the stable with the
horses to keep the rats and mice away. He hated the way
the cat sneaked around the stable all night. Often, he
would have given it a good, swift kick but he was afraid its
yowls would bring The Boss's
1 4 ]
wrath down on him. He squatted on his heels when he
saw the cat, tail upright, come weaving toward him hoping
for a stroking. Hands on knees, Patsy glared into the cat's
yellow eyes and the cat glared into Patsy's blue eyes. The
cat was the first to turn away. Patsy was expert in the
game of outglaring the cat.
Each day, Patsy had to walk the horses four times
around the block for exercise. He had to wear a bibbed
apron, made of mattress ticking, while he walked the
horses. How he hated to wear that apron!
The first day's walk was full of incident. Some kids
playing hookey from school followed him yelling: "Mick!"
and "Greenhorn!" and "Why don't vou button your dress
in the back?" They got sick of that soon enough and went
away.
An ambulance bore down on him. He had to get himself
and the horses up on the sidewalk to avoid being run
down. An intern or doctor leaned on the strap in the
back. Patsy stared at the visored cap on top of a
pompadour. He'd never seen a woman doctor before.
Then a COp came along and gave him hell for standing
on the sidewalk with two horses.
"Try that again," suggested the cop mildly, "and I'll run
you in. You and the horses."
A street walker, off duty and returning from shopping,
invited him up to her flat to see her birdie. He blushed
raspberry red until he saw that she NV:IS actually
carrying a box of freshly purchased birdseed.
She does lie having a birdie ii, a cage after all, thought
Patsy. And may all the saints forgive me for thinking the
other way.
The third time around the block, he saw a brassy blonde
leaning out of a window. Her unconfined breasts bloomed
out of her kimono and lumped on her arms which were
folded on the window ledge. Patsy stared at this bounty
with stars in his eyes.
'Tis as they say, he thought. America is a free country.
Everything is free.
But she made shards of his pleasure by calling out:
"Hey, Mister! Your petticoat's hanging down. P.H.D."
Then he had to stop while one of the mares obeyed a
call of nature. He was shamed to death. A street cleaner
appeared from nowhere with cart, broom and shovel.
to'']