Light of the Diddicoy (11 page)

Suddenly in my view is Vincent Maher after he has pulled a .38 from the back of his pants, then leans over me with his legs opened around us.

“This is ya last chance, kid. Last chance to walk outta this place alive! Ya gonna answer this question or else we're gonna dump the remains of ya in the river.”

He pushes the gun on my nose and on my cheek enough so that I can see it on my face.

“Who does Wolcott want dead! Answer me! Answer me!”

More tears running down and into my ears, the anger builds in me so high and terribly that the obstinate feeling makes me happier than the relief giving way could ever achieve. I look at his face through the lack of breath and tremble to answer. Large's hold is so strong now that even if I want to answer, I can't. My back is beginning to bend and the more I try to muscle it back into a normal position, the more yearning I can feel from Large to squash it. Then I hear Connolly whisper and Large's grip slackens a bit.

“Who's he want dead?” Maher yells, gun to face.

“Your mother!”

The room burst in excitement and laughs. Large lets me loose at Connolly's request and the whole lot of them pull me up and backslap me with big broad smiles. The congratulations come like the way men used to congratulate others back in those days, with a simple shake of clasping hands and a proud look in the eye. To be happy for me. That's how it was back then. To be happy to see me enter a new place with them under the crushing force of a world that turns its back on people in the low, as we are.

Then from the stairwell I hear footsteps and we all look up at the slow figures coming down. It is Dinny Meehan upstairs all along and as he calmly swung to our direction, he looks at me in my pitiful state with Eddie Gilchrist behind him.

“Ya know what honor is? Honor?”

“I think so.”

“Paddy, get the man a drink, can ya?”

Keenan pulls down a bottle from behind the rudimentary shelf and fills a small glass of whiskey, pushes it in front of me.

“Have a sip, den,” says Dinny Meehan confidently as he sits next to me while the others stand behind.

I did so.

“Wipe off those tears from ya face, kid. . . . There ya go.

Don' let me see 'em again. Just self pity. Do ya pity ya'self? Do ya? Sure ya do. We all do. It's alright to do that, of course, but it don' help ya for nothin'. As long as ya know that. Honor is knowin' things ain't right. But still needin' to survive, ya make what ya can wit' it. Make the best for the people you care about. Go to the end o' the earth for just a single moment of happiness for 'em. Honor is goin' through hell, never talkin' about it to ya wife an' fam'ly. To ya mother. Honor's feelin' empowered by listenin' to others complain about things, then fixin' it wit'out even bein' asked to fix it. These men here? Us? We don' need a fire to bring back the blood of life in us. We are the blood of life. We're made for struggle, that's what we are. We are the struggle, dig? It's a code and those that don't know the code will never know it. Because the code's ingrained in ya, locked in the blood, can't be taught. You know who Patrick Kelly is?”

I looked at Dinny, then looked away. Then looked back. “I am.”

Dinny nodded his head and looked at the others in pride of my knowing the answer, “Everybody's Patrick Kelly in here.”

The Swede stood over us, still not convinced. Never convinced. The others smiled however.

“Ya think this country's here for ya? The police? The gov'ment? The businesses? They here to help ya? They're not. Don' give a fuck for ya. These men,” Dinny waved his arm. “They care about ya. I care about ya. The only way we can survive, carin' about each other. Been like that for a long time here. We survive because we make survival out of it. Not because o' fate or coincidence, nah. To believe in fate is a sickness. We make our survival by the power of will. And what we talk about ain' no one else's business. No one's. Death or starvation can't break that from us. Torture either. Nothin' break's the code. That means silence is all they get from us. Ya understand? Ain' nothin' stronger in this world than the silence. Ya understand? What is it?”

“Silence.”

“I don' know any Wolcott,” Dinny said. “Who's Dinny Meehan?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Gibney the Lark?”

“Don't know him.”

“Tommy Tuohey the tinker?”

“I don't know any tinkers.”

“Vincent Maher?”

“Can't recall that name.”

“The Swede?”

“Plenty of them around, Danes too. Norway, Germany, Finland . . .”

“He already knows,” says Maher happily. “We all thought you was soft since ya didn' grow up around here. Like maybe ya'd turn a tout on us 'r somethin'.”

“Nah,” Dinny said. “He grew up in a place teaches ya from the day ya break ground. They don' even teach it, it just is. It's in the soil and the songs. Seven hundred years of it.”

“And counting,” say I, and wipe blood from my chin to coat.

I wanted to say something. Held it in tight. I wanted to say it, though it wasn't the right time. Why did you flaunt my name to Wolcott? Like I was a trophy. Thos Carmody? My uncle Joseph? Why have I been taken in like a king? But it wasn't the right time. Not yet. I lifted the whiskey to my mouth and bit at it again. It spread like fire in my mouth and as I swallowed the heat down through the chest, my lip burned where it had been split and the whiskey and the blood mingled in the grit of my mouth as I tapped the empty glass down on the mahogany.

S
TARTING NEXT DAY
D
INNY IS AGAIN
urging me to wake with his deep voice in the peaceful morning coos of L'il Dinny's breathing. Sadie patches me up a bit and out the door we are. Maher is again at the stoops and again men come from behind tenements and under elevated stairwells to meet us here and there. Plans are made for the day and when completed, they all go in different directions except Gibney and Morissey who always seem to go in the same direction.

Bill Lovett appears too while his right-hand, Non Connors, waits a block away and acts as if he were a stranger to us with his hat over his eyes and his hands dug into trench pockets. The Swede stands, staring down the road at him for they are mortal enemies, The Swede and Non Connors, for reasons I was not to know yet. Eddie Gilchrist mumbles to himself waiting for his orders, I stand next to Maher and Tuohey.

“Welcome back,” Dinny says to Bill.

The small man with the cherub face just wavered around and nodded, staring firmly ahead.

“I'm only gonna say this in a nice way, Bill,” Dinny said. “You can respect my home. You can not respect my home. That's ya choice.”

“You went to see Wolcott?”

“Yeah, he's worried about unionizin'. Recruits and whatnot. You hear o' anyone tryin' to recruit down in Red Hook, that needs to be taken care of?”

“I don' speak I-talian,” Lovett sneered.

“These are Irish too, ILA.”

“Yeah?”

“Some Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen feller testin' the water. I'm gonna go see some people in Manhattan soon and see what's the deal wid' it.”

“What's the name o' him?”

Dinny looked away discouragingly. “Thos Carmody. Ya know'em?”

“Nah.”

“ILA's talkin' about a big strike, funded by the Germans. Wolcott thinks Thos Carmody's the point man. You see or here of 'em, you say somethin'?”

“Sure.”

“See ya back at the Loaders' Club.”

From there we go straight to the Jay Street Terminal where a ship is awaiting us. Ragtag soldiers in floppy hats and coats that got too big for them due to the loss of weight stand as best they know how when Dinny walks up. Tuohey goes straight for the ship's captain and Gilchrist for the stevedoring table.

“Not even a thanks for Tommy fillin' in like he did,” The Swede grumbles about Lovett.

“Dat's alright, look where we are, Jay Street,” Maher says happily. “If it was his gang, he'd be here. Not stuck down in the shit wit' all them guineas.”

The Swede turns to me. “Liam, go down to Atlantic and ask Reynolds if he's got fifteen men to send up here. Only the good ones. Ask him which ones the best are.”

I look up at The Swede who hadn't spoken a single word to me since he threw me off a bar.

“G'on!” he says.

“Which way is it?”

“That way, keep runnin' ‘til ya see Atlantic Avenue. Take a right to the water. Ya remember what Reynolds looks like?”

“I do.”

“Don' say his name, though. Run!”

I run under the bridges and everything barely seems recognizable. After the bridges I see the train yard by the Sands Street Station and keep along the waterfront. Middagh, Cranberry, Orange, Pineapple, Clark, and I am concerned that I may have taken a wrong turn. Pierrepont, Montague, Ramsen and I really start to worry. Grace and then Joralemon streets come and I can't even see the next crossroad so I'm surely lost, and my head is tingling and I'm throwing doubtful curses left and right so I'm forced to ask a stranger, “Where's Atlantic?”

The man hears my brogue and wonders if I'm looking for the ocean.

“I'm not,” says I. “The street.”

“Atlantic Avenue?”

“Oh yeah, Avenue.”

“Keep goin' south.”

Finally I see Atlantic Avenue and a relief comes over me that I feel like I won't be demolished by The Swede for getting lost. Then I can't find Harry Reynolds and the worry comes over me again until a black man with sharp features comes upon me.

“Kid, what ya lookin' for?”

“Nothin'.”

“Hey,” he says as I'm walking away. “You're the new kid, come're.”

I don't remember any black in the gang, but there he was shaking my hand and congratulating me and telling me not to worry, he knows where Harry is and his own name is Dance, Dance Gillen, “just ask aroun', everyone knows me. C'mon, I'll take ya to Harry.”

Harry says calmly, “Sure I got fifteen, go wit'em, Dance.”

“Wait,” I say to Harry. “Which ones are the best?”

Harry Reynolds looks at me strangely, but with a great and distant sense of dignity.

“Make sure the kid only gets the best o' the best, Dance. Very important, no spalpeens. We don' want him to look bad.”

“Uhright,” Dance says, and he and I and fifteen happy laborers walk in a pack back toward Jay Street under the bridges and when I arrive, The Swede sends me to the Navy Yard to check on Red Donnelly and if he needs anything.

“Run!”

“Which way is it?”

“That way.” The Swede points in the opposite direction as he had last time. “When ya see Hudson Avenue, keep goin'. If ya find yaself on Navy Street, turn around.”

“What's on Navy Street?”

“Ginzos.”

I don't know what ginzos are, but they sound like a menace.

“If ya find yaself on Grand Avenue, turn around.”

“What's on Grand?”

“Sheenies.”

Don't know what those are neither, though I should because it's an Irish word but it only sounds like a tribe of cannibals or savages of some sort, so I steer clear of those places carefully. Next thing I know I've been to the Baltic Street Terminal twice and the Navy Yard three times and the Dock Loaders' Club four times running messages back and forth all day long and somewhere along the line I hear someone call me a runner. That's what I am, then. A runner. And I don't mind being a runner because at the end of the day Dinny gives me money, which I give to Sadie since I don't know where to put it or what to spend it on.

“Why not ask yu muva if she wants to come to New Yook?” Sadie says, stashing it away on a high ledge in the kitchen.

That's when I tell her that I've been waiting for responses from my mother, father, brother, and two sisters back in Clare, but because all my letters had my uncle Joseph's return address, I'm not sure if they ever responded. Only three weeks earlier I sent a new letter with 452 Warren Street as the return address and I don't even know if that has arrived in Ireland yet.

“Where's the closest post office to them in Clare?”

“Tulla town, about a twenty-minute walk, but a postman comes by bicycle to the farm when letters come in.”

“Well, wif as much as yu makin', yu'll ‘ave'm 'ere in no toime. Yu know Liam, yu make f'ree toimes as much as a fact'ry worka wif fif'een yea's sperience, yu know. Yu lucky, yu know. I've a cousin oo works as manager at a fact'ry. Shameful wages! Dat's why so many people 'ave to live togeva 'round 'ere. Not enough work o' not enough wages when they do work. O' bof! Yu lucky, Liam.”

“I know,” I say.

As February turns to March of the year 1916, my role with the boys on the docks evolves. The more I run, the more I work, the more I get to know things. Every morning at 4 a.m. I am down the stoops with Dinny and Vincent waking the roosters on Bond Street that always anger at our passing. Sometimes there are requests for The Swede's assistance up in the Navy Yard or Jay Street or Baltic Street and sometimes they request Vincent Maher, so I run back toward 25 Bridge Street. The messages are often cryptic, encoded, and rightly so since it is often that I run by the Poplar Street Police Station where Head Patrolman William Brosnan keeps a blind eye on us and then I run by the Adams Street Courthouse where Judge Denzinger's harsh sentences are known far and wide.

“No talkin,” Vincent reminds me. “What's ya name?”

“Patrick Kelly,” I say.

“That's right, you know what Patrick Kelly means, right? Shut ya face the fuck up. No touts around here or ya'll get the clouts. Everybody's Patrick Kelly, now go'n take this envelope to Mrs. McGowan's home. Let'er open it in front o' ya and after she's done readin' it, ask'er if there's anything else Dinny can do for'er, dig?”

I nod my head.

“Then tell'er everything's gonna be all righted now.”

“Everything's gonna be all righted now?”

“Go.”

I can't help but read what's in the envelope and as soon as I get around the corner, I pull out a letter and twenty ten-dollar bills inside. All three of the McGowan girls and the widow are to show up Monday morning for jobs at the new clock-tower building on Main Street between the bridges, fifth floor.

“Do you have any questions for Dinny?” I ask the mother who is surrounded by her girls.

“I don't believe so,” says Mrs. McGowan smiling, the eldest daughter kissing her wrinkled cheek. “Can ye tell the man many t'anks from us?”

“Everything will be all righted now Mrs. McGowan,” I assure her as she looks at me with only the pride holding back her tears.

And so I run, and all that food I'm eating in Sadie's kitchen is turning to lean muscle. And then when I'm working on the docks as needed, I feel like the muscles are getting bigger but Vincent says it's in my head, “Shaddup'n keep runnin',” he says. From one dock to the next I send messages back and forth but it's to the Red Hook I'm never sent, and I don't know why except maybe the danger, for it's the Italians that live in the neighborhoods inland of it. I hear things from different men, but Vincent tells me a lot of things. He talks all the time, in fact, but I don't always know if I should believe him.

“I-talians on Navy Street,” he explains as he struts downhill on Fulton Street toward the old rundown Union Ferry Company dwarfed by the Brooklyn Bridge's brick tower above. “They're different on Navy Street. They're Camorra. In Red Hook, they're Black Hand, Sicilian.”

“Oh,” I say, pretending to understand.

“Most people hate I-talians, but they love me. They think me a classy feller. Most people do, as you know. 'Specially the lasses, as you know.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

Loaded with the moon-faced Italians, Sackett, Degraw, and Union Streets in Red Hook are dangerous places for a kid like me to wander among. So I don't complain about not being sent to Red Hook as I avoid all Italians at any cost since they eat their own babies, Vincent tells me, and if you cross them, they'll chop up your mother ten years later (because they have the memory of elephants) and make meatballs out of her and serve her up with pasta and red sauce down in Bay Ridge because “they're all a bunch o' pagan Catholics, fookin' animals,” Vincent says.

In the Navy Yard, men build ships paid for by the government contracts and this is wartime, so business is good. England is buying and as far as the manufacturers in Brooklyn are concerned, there should always be wars. All day and night long steam hammers slam down on hot iron slabs in the Navy Yard foundries. And you can hear the pound of them all the way over at 25 Bridge Street, even making ripples in Ragtime Howard's whiskey glass. When I yell up to Red Donnelly to ask if he needs any messages sent, he just waves his hat in the air revealing his red hair and fat head atop a barge where he directs cranes and bellows at his boyos.

The floating piers and pier houses at the terminals under the bridges like Jay Street and Fulton Street have industrial freight tracks dug into the Belgian brick that runs along the waterfront. Cargo is hauled from ships to floating piers to railcars that amble in their clicking and their clacking through the neighborhood and pull up at warehousing units where the train cars butt against the platforms and where men with suit and tie and hats of all sort unload them by hand or by bale hook in the morning sun. It is there, under the bridges, that Cinders Connolly always shakes my hand and speaks to me like a man, smiling humbly as he is known to and with a mean set of crooked teeth and scabbing knuckles.

The terminals at Atlantic and Baltic take in shipments that mostly go onto automobile trucks to be driven over the bridges to Manhattan or east toward Queens or Long Island and wherever else, as it's New York's piers and the piers only that all goods are shipped since it is well before roads connect the cities to the farms and also before planes are to fill the skies. And everyone knows that it's New York that is the center of the industrial world, now surpassing even old London town with the completion of the Erie Canal years ago.

At Baltic, Gibney the Lark speaks with me in a serious tone and I never seem to realize that it's all a front as Big Dick comes behind me and picks me up. Spinning me upside down, he dumps me in a garbage can so everyone can have a laugh. But when he's not looking, I punch him in the stomach as hard as I can, though I'm never able to knock the wind from him.

“See, ya don' wanna go to Red Hook anyhow,” Vincent says. “Il Maschio is down there. That's trouble. Real trouble.”

It interests me greatly though, Red Hook, and so I ask around about it. In fact, asking questions becomes what I am known for and it is more than once I am told to “shaddup.” But because I have the hunger for knowing things, I never take it the wrong way. Beat McGarry tells me it's the incumbent Irish that have run Red Hook for many years, but is now overflowing with immigrant Italians. Frankie Yale knows the value of the area and so he often sends in Il Maschio to remind the pier house supers and the stevedoring managers that it's only a matter of time until the Black Hand takes over.

“Who is Il Maschio?” I ask, but nobody knows. No one. If he's a man or a group of men, no one can answer me since it, or they, slink in the shadows and when the clean-shaven Irish show up he, or they, vanish like they never existed, or he never existed. Maybe like they exist everywhere, or he does maybe.