Bold Sons of Erin (28 page)

I was dismayed by his queries, for I had grown quite fond of Mr. Seward, despite the moral violence of his vocabulary. I did not wish a breach between us, and certainly did not want him for my enemy, but could not break my trust with Mr. Nicolay. Or Mr. Lincoln. There appeared to be discord between men I admired. And I found myself between their lines of battle.

I began to stammer out an apology, although I was not certain one was in order. But Mr. Seward proved deaf to interruption.

“You just listen to me, Abel, and I’ll tell you what’s what. Goddamn it.” He drew on his great cigar as if to swallow it. The tip flared up and sparked like a gunner’s fuse. A moment later, our secretary of state belched smoke like a twenty-pounder. “Tsar’s about the only friend we’ve got. And I wouldn’t trust the man with a bag of rotten apples. But we need him, damned if we don’t.”

He straightened his back like a rooster primed for a match, although it made the good man little taller. Two “banty birds” we were, as he once put it. But small of body does not mean small of heart.

“Listen here,” he said, yanking the cigar from his lips again, “if the Russians are up to some sort of trouble, you just leave it to me. You tell me first. Anything you find out up there. You don’t need to go running to Lincoln’s little lapdog with everything. I’ll handle de Stoekl.” He grimaced. “Pompous son-of a bitch. German blood himself, you know. Russian minister, or not. ‘Baron’ this, ‘baron’ that. Hell of a combination, Germans and Russians, when you put ’em together. A body’d expect the combination to turn out smart and sturdy. Instead, you get the
dreariest drunks on earth. And de Stoekl’s dull even before he gets to his liquor. I’ll take an Irishman, anyday.” He snorted. “Though I can’t say I’d want to take him very far—any chance we’ll ever persuade those micks to vote right, Abel? What do you think? Have the Copperheads got ’em so spooked they can’t see past the next swig of liquor? My people are worried sick about New York City, and to Hell with some two-bit coal mines.”

Again, he did not pause to let me answer. He hammered my knee, leaning in with that big-nosed, little face that put me in mind of a hawk. “I’ll handle the Russians. Those beer-pot Germans, too. Anything you learn, come straight to me. Nicolay’s got other things to worry about. Plenty of ’em, besides his sauerkraut and pig’s knuckles. And the president’s got enough on his mind. More than enough. No need to worry him with the minor dilemmas of foreign relations.”

He drained the smoke from his shrunken cigar, gurgled, and puffed out a cloud. “I’ve got plans for the Russians, damn it all. When this war is over. When we’ve won. They’ve got something I want, and I’m going to get it from them, if I have to take a cane to Thad Stevens myself along the way.”

“Father!” Fred Seward exclaimed. He always sought to tame his parent’s speech, but I fear Mr. Seward relished the lad’s discomfiture. They were not unlike the Adamses, ‘
pairy-fill,
’ as those Frenchmen say. “You know that Congressman Stevens is one of the finest—”

“Oh, turn off the tap, Fred,” our secretary told his son. “Abel and me, we’re old friends, the two of us. We’re pals.” He offered me a “between us” sort of glance. “I trust him. And he trusts me. As for old Thad Stevens, Lucifer himself couldn’t stand that self-righteous bastard.”

The son gave the father a doleful glance, but kept himself quiet thereafter.

“Thing is, Jones,” Mr. Seward started up again, “the Russians are broke. Flat busted. Haven’t got a penny. Still haven’t recovered from that mess in the Crimea. Trying to build up their
army and navy. And they haven’t got a pot to piss in.” He grunted. “Oh, this war has our government plenty tight, too. I can count a damned sight better than Chase, when it comes to that. But the war won’t last forever. And, by God, the world’s going to see us come out the other end as the richest people on earth. Mark my words. And, before I die, I’m going to see these United States even bigger.” He puffed what little was left of his stogie and threw himself back against the plush of the carriage. “They’ll call me a fool. Let ‘em. I’ll have the last laugh.”

He dropped his cigar on the floor, where other stubs had preceded it. Father and son evidently had waited much of the evening for my return. “Right now, I don’t want trouble where trouble doesn’t need to be. This General Stone of ours is dead. Stone, or Stein, or Bierstein, or whatever his name was. Can’t bring him back by making a diplomatic row, can we? Just to please a pack of four-eyed Germans who couldn’t fight their way out of a beer hall.”

He punched my knee again. Twas my bothered leg, but no matter. “You find the Russians had a hand in this business, you let me know. And, by God, I’ll tear into ‘em! But I know how to do it, Abel. Without spoiling anything we don’t need spoiled. Understand me?”

I cannot say in truth I understood. For I did not think Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nicolay sought discord with the Tsar of all the Russias, either, although they faced political calculations. Of course, I knew enough of government to see that Mr. Seward was the fellow who bore the official responsibility for foreign matters. But there is more to government than official duties. It is, above all, a matter of personality, though not, unfortunately, of character. The man is more important than the office, and power ebbs and flows on personal credit.

I feared that Mr. Seward would seek a promise of me, which I would need to decline. But the secretary was clever enough to know each fellow’s bounds. Behind his bluster, he judged men with a keenness. And he loved books, which speaks well of any man, although he did not reveal that taste to the public. He
never read where his voters might see him enjoying it. Americans do not like learned leaders, see, but wish to think their politicans plain. Gruff to the world, Mr. Seward acted the common fellow. But he had a mind near rich as Mr. Lincoln’s.

I was relieved when he drew out a fresh cigar, for his manner said our conversation was ended.

“Well, now we know where we stand, goddamn it. Fred, make room for the major to get down. Get out of his way, for God’s sake! Go on in and get your supper, Abel, old friend. Sorry to sneak up on you so late in the evening. But, damn it, man, you should have come to see me, instead of making me hunt you down like a goddamned Indian.” He smiled to show old teeth and wrinkled skin. “Between the two of us—you and me—we’ll handle this. No need to worry Lincoln with trivialities.”

I was dismissed and went gladly. With more to ponder than a fellow likes. I even wondered if Mr. Seward really had expected me to satisfy him, or had only made a display of his queries for another purpose entirely. That is how these diplomat fellows are, see. They say one thing, but really mean another, and calculate each passion they pretend. Worse, Mr. Seward’s career had been in politics. Although I liked the man, who had been fair to me, I knew enough of the world to fear that the wedding of a political mind with a diplomatic position was as risky as mating Beelzebub with Lucifer.

I was out of sorts as I climbed the steps to my boarding house. Fortunately, Mrs. Schutzengel had set a lovely cutlet of pork in the pan for me, which lifted my spirits at once. She made fresh coffee, then she gave me pie.

“JAYSUS, I’M HAPPY,” Jimmy Molloy declared. “I’m a horrible happy man, Sergeant Jones—beggin’ your pardon, it’s ‘Major Jones’ I’m meaning.” He had been waiting for me after breakfast, when I come back in from my business down the yard. Now he stood before me in the hallway, waving a cup of Mrs. Schutzengel’s coffee, as if he meant to splash the walls and the
world. “She makes me so happy, that Annie does, that I’ve never been so miserable in me life.”

He looked at me with the sorrowing face of a private soldier the morning after pay-day.

“Now, Jimmy, I meant it when I told you that you are to call me ‘Abel.’ For we are in America now and friends, after all, and you have become a respectable married man. As for being misera—”

He started up again, unable to listen for long. For he was Dublin Irish, see, and shed words as freely as storm clouds shed their raindrops.

“It’s just that she’ll never leave off her making me happy, morning, noon, and night, then morning again. And when she’s not making me happy, she’s doing this and that for me own blessed good. Oh, it’s a wicked thing for a man to have to suffer! And her with them eyes that don’t even close to sleep, I swear it on the grave o’ me late, sainted mother, and on the graves of all o’ me lovely fathers in their dozens, and an’t it always done for me own good? She’s got an eagle eye, that one. Oh, she ought to have been a peeler, not a woman. Turn her loose, and she’d find a snake in Ireland.”

He canted his head to the side, like a fellow playing a comedy. “ ‘Annie Fitzgerald,’ says I, ‘I’ll not be regulated constantly by a woman,’ and ‘Oh, won’t you?’ says she, ‘It’s only for your own good. And me name’s Annie Molloy these days, as if ye haven’t noticed the change.’ Oh, she’s the devil got up in a petticoat, the way she comes after a man to tell him which o’ his buttons to button up first. And all for his own good.” He shuddered at the intrusion of another intimate memory. “Jaysus, she’s a nasty one for the washing up, as well, with her baths and her scrubbings and her ‘Change your linens, or ye’ll have no dinner this evening.’ Sure, and it ought to be a crime to be made so happy as that woman wants to make me.”

Molloy looked at me with eyes that aped the saints in those oiled-cloth portraits that Irish women buy of nuns come peddling.
He might have been that fellow pierced by arrows, for all the agony he put on. He ever has been one for exaggeration and even something of a trickster in his time, although his comportment has shown a marked improvement.

But I was firmly on the side of Mrs. Molloy in this struggle. Twas handsome to see her husband so clean and clear of eye, with not the least taint of alcohol upon him. I hoped the day might even come when he would join me in the Temperance Pledge.

“Oh, can’t ye think o’ some terrible task ye could set me to? In your high capacity of a major, to which ye’ve climbed up so grandiose? Haven’t I done ye the devil’s own good in the past, from the mouth o’ the Kabul River, where the blue waters meet the brown, to those queer parts in New York, where the cold was bitter as Derry boys locked out o’ Heaven? Help me, man! Save me from the blight o’ me married joys! Can’t ye think on a way to help me escape the cruelty o’ such great and endless happiness? A fine bit o’ work for which Jimmy Molloy’d be the very man and the only one who could serve ye? For I’m cravin’ a day-sunt holiday from all me terrible pleasures, and I’m needin’ to go soon, afore that Annie nails me to a cross with all her charities.” He looked at me morosely, as a chastised hound might do. “She’s made me so happy I’m wishing I was back in jail.”

I thought the fellow would fall to his knees and weep. “Could ye not take me with ye, wherever ye have to go? For I’m beggin’ and I’m pleadin’ with ye. And wouldn’t I folly ye to the very ends of the earth and back again!”

“Now, look you,” I began.

“Oh, don’t go takin’ that terrible tone with me, I’m beggin’ ye, Abel Jones! For it’s well I know what comes after, when I hear that awful voice in me innocent ear.” He turned to an invisible audience, whose approval he meant to win. “And didn’t I know him when he was a sergeant as light on his mercies as a herring’s hopes o’ making it through a Friday in Kilkenny? I’m down on me knees to ye, Abel, me darlin’ man. “Won’t ye spend your Christian affections on a poor sinner and
rescue an old friend from the lion’s den o’ his joys? It’s fair killing me to be looked after so, all fed up and scrubbed till I’m bleedin’ to death in the washtub.”

He come closer still, treating me to the smile that landed him in the Delhi jail and somehow managed to get him out again. Although the cholera helped. “Now, don’t go askin’ where or why, but I’ve got me own resources, and what honest publican don’t have, then, and I’ve heard it’s the Irish are botherin’ ye oncet again. And who, I ask ye, is the man for sortin’ out the Irish, if not your old and devoted and loving friend Jimmy Molloy, who’s dyin’ o’ horrible happiness at present?”

He shook his head as only an Irishman can, as if the world were ending for want of your farthing. “I’m
beggin
’ ye, for the sake of old times and our comradeship, and while I’m a humble man and not one to go drudgin’ up the past for his own selfish benefit, who was it but Jimmy Molloy what follied ye into the very jaws o’ death, when everyone else in the company was fearsome and frightened? Who was it but me that come when ye stood all alone and surrounded by bloodthirsty Afghanees, and our little Sergeant Jones shouting for all he’s worth, ‘Rally, the Old Combustibles! Rally to me, you bastards!’ Oh, don’t I remember it like it was Saturday morning? And who was it carried ye back to the surgeon and safety, and you all screamin’ and streamin’ with blood, and ragin’ that I was to put ye down and save meself, and haven’t I got me own dear little Sergeant Jones over one shoulder and a great turbaned nigger comes on with a sword as big as—”

“Jimmy!”
I grasped him by the wrist to calm him down.
“Listen to me!
You’re a married man now, see. With responsibilities. And a good wife who loves you dearly. You have to settle down and try to lead a proper life. Annie Fitzgerald—I mean ‘Mrs. Molloy’—has been a very savior to you.”

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, that she has!” Molloy agreed with a glum exuberance native to the Gael. “It’s worse than the plague and the cholera, how awful I been saved by that woman.” He did not try to escape my grasp, but surrendered to
the touch, as if he were a hound that needed petting. “But what if a man an’t born to live good and proper?”

He tried to smile, but come up with no more than a ghost of his lifelong humor. “Sure, and ye know me for the man I am, Abel, and I don’t know why you’re pretendin’. I’m not the sort for parlors and lace curtains. Ye said it yourself, a thousand times, how I’m worthless and no good. And only think o’ the shame in which ye found me, and the wicked degry-dation, when I made off with the regimental silver and took me lusts to the ’oories, and I didn’t even have the daysuntcy about meself to go over the wall to the next cantonment and steal from the blackhearted Highlanders, instead o’ from me very own poor officers. Although they were a cruel pack and the buggers deserved it.”