Men of No Property (9 page)

“If yous don’t find me da tonight,” the boy said. “I know somit more’n a blind man.”

“After the chores are done,” Mary coaxed, “Jamie’ll take you for a walk as far as the park. I’ll give you the price of a sweet.”

“I’ll go with you,” Peg said. “I’m dyin’ for a sight of the city.”

Mary started to protest, but Norah laid her hand on her arm.

“Are you comin’ out of it, Denny?” Kevin said.

“Do!” Mary cried. “You’ve my nerves unraveled, the two of you, with your goin’ and not goin’.”

“We’ll see the priest first,” Kevin announced grimly when they reached the street. “We’ll walk up to the Square and take the bus.”

Dennis strode alongside him, content to share the silence. It was as though they had entered a pact to lay by plans and recollections until the distractions were settled. The gaslights had come on, but the streets beneath them were dark, and the few people out forlorn and cold looking, October having no kindness for them without heat after the sun’s going down. The shops were closed up for the night and the buildings seemed no more than great humps of emptiness although the cry of a child, a rattle of talk might come from one now and then, or a bit of song from a basement snug. The sky all to the west of them was bright, and almost bright to the north. The hum of traffic from there increased. Then, as they neared Chatham Square the city seemed coming alive, the life in it coming to meet them: a torchlight parade with a drum booming out and in a minute smothering that, the blare of a German band. They stood in an alleyway while it passed and in the light of the flares, Dennis noticed all manner of faces poke out from the buildings he had thought deserted. The Dublin slums had faces no worse, he thought, but it might be the dancing light making monkeys of them as they squinted from darkness. They must take to their beds early, poor devils, he thought.

The music stopped and a chant began as the marchers passed. The words were no sooner started than a chorus of “boos” and “aways” drifted down from the watchers.

“What are they sayin’?” Dennis asked.

“Free soil, free speech, free labor and free men,” Kevin chanted in imitation of the marchers.

“Jesus,” Dennis said, “that’s for me. Let’s give them a cheer.”

“Free niggers. Is that for you, too?” Kevin snapped. “Keep your tongue in your head where you’re going tonight and don’t show your ignorance.”

Father Shea was an assistant at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He met them in one of the rectory sitting rooms with as solemn sadness as he had left them on the pier. This time he had reason. Thomas Dunne had been buried alive under a landslide in the laying of a new track for the New York and Harlem Railroad. The funeral had been held from the Cathedral parish two months before. Father Shea had been fairly sure of it when Kevin met him on the dock, but they were not tidings to be given if there were a chance of error.

“Couldn’t there be more than one Thomas Dunne?” Dennis asked, his eyes pleading the lost cause.

“There could,” the priest said, “but I went around to his lodgings, and there is no doubt he was your man.”

“Did he have a place for them he was bringing over?” said Kevin.

“He did, but it’s taken.”

“Did he leave them anything itself?”

“If he did, that’s taken too. He lived near the Five Points.”

Kevin shook his head. “Well, wherever they go, they’ll be better off than they would there, God help them.”

“If he’d no decent place to take them,” Dennis said, gathering that the Five Points was far from a respectable neighborhood, “what did he send for them for in the first place?”

“That’s a question we ask every time a boat lands,” Kevin said.

“A man must live in hope,” the priest said. “Thomas Dunne was a good man. He worked hard as an Irishman must in this country if he wants a better life. They’re not all as fortunate as your brother, Mr. Lavery—meaning no disparagement of you, Kevin.”

“I know what you mean, Father,” Kevin said. “I came over in a different boat, or I might not have made it.”

“But that’s what they all hope for,” the priest said.

“You live in hopes if you die in despair,” Dennis said. “Oh, God Almighty.” He turned away, for the tears rose in his eyes as he thought of the man whose high, lost dream it was to take his children out of the slums and degradation and who, by the sound of the two of them here, had no more chance of success even if he had lived, than a dog in a ratpit.

He took a deep breath and rubbed the tears and the drip from his nose away with his hand and dried that on his pocket. “Well,” he said, turning back, “they never knew the man, and what they didn’t know, they won’t miss. I’m obliged to you, Father, for your trouble.”

“It’s late now,” the priest said, looking up at a clock on the mantel. “If you’ll come in the morning after the eight o’clock Mass, I’ll take you down the street to the orphanage.”

“’Tis handy,” Dennis murmured. He too was looking at the clock, and thinking it a strange thing, the two pieces on the mantel, a clock and a crucifix. He shook his head as a peculiar notion chased through it: at what o’clock was Christ to get off the cross? As though it were part of the same notion, he remembered making Vinnie give back the gold sovereigns. It worried him, where that thought had come from.

“Would you like to stop a minute and see the Cathedral?” Kevin asked as they reached the street.

“I would. I’d like to light a candle for Thomas Dunne—and one for his mother. It must’ve been a great surprise to her, findin’ him in the next world ahead of her.”

In the church while the words of a prayer were on his lips, his mind slipped back to the gold sovereigns. Suddenly the thought was whole: Christ had been crucified between two thieves; one of them went to paradise and welcome.

“T
HIS IS MY BROTHER
, Dennis, the one I was telling you about. He got off the boat today.” Kevin jerked his head around. “Dennis: Daniel Mulrooney, alderman of the Seventh Ward.”

Dennis held back the hand he was about to extend because there was none offered to take it. Whatever an alderman was, the seventh or the seventieth, Mulrooney was no gentleman. They had trailed him from the fire house to one pub and then another, the praises of Cass and Butler, Walworth and O’Conor, yes O’Conor, hanging in the air after him. All the while Kevin had laid down the law to Dennis: he was to take whatever Mulrooney said with a grace and if he didn’t like the looks of him, he was to keep his taste to himself. He understood Kevin’s fears now, for when they found him, Mulrooney shook hands with Kevin without lifting his backside from the chair. He looked more an Irishman’s notion of John Bull than an Irishman. Instead of a greeting, he gave Dennis a slow going-over with his eye, and that half-closed.

“Two more bog poteen!” he called out to the barkeep, which, by the signs around, Dennis thought, was his word for Irish whiskey. “Two more and to hell with old Zach Taylor!”

“To hell with Zach and the whole Whig pack,” came out of the half-drunken refrain.

Someone clamored above it: “And here’s to Van Buren, that ol’ potful of urine!”

The din grew louder and still Mulrooney took Dennis’ measure. Half the eyes in the barroom plucked him apart in time with Mulrooney, Dennis thought. The place was a lather of smoke. They lit up when Mulrooney passed the cigars and drank when Mulrooney toasted. If Mulrooney farted, he thought, they could launch a balloon.

The politician finally spoke to him. “How tall do you measure?”

Kevin, near as anxious as the rest to please Mulrooney, answered: “He’s six foot and an inch.”

Mulrooney grunted. “If he’s a hundred and sixty pound, he’s no more.”

“He’ll have some flesh on his bones in a week. McGovern at the station is taking him on if we get him a job. He’ll outrun and out-pump any man on the engine.”

“Will he know a Hunker from a Barnburner by election day?”

“He’ll know them before this night is out,” Kevin said.

“Send him down with a shovel in the morning and we’ll start him from the bottom.” He squinted up at Dennis. “Didn’t you bring a tongue with you over from Ireland?”

“I did,” Dennis said, the heat in him whiter than he had ever known it, “but I didn’t bring it to lick your ass with.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Kevin said, and they were the last clear words Dennis heard for a while.

Mulrooney slapped the flat of his hand on the table, and instinct told Dennis to sidestep something coming at him from behind. He did, and as a giant of a man lunged past him, he gave him a kick that sent him sprawling over Mulrooney’s table, his face puckered into his master’s. Behind him Kevin, the barkeep and his helper were trying to block the rush of howling men from the front.

“Ho, there, young man!”

He looked to the voice and spied a small man at the back waving for him to come. He was no match for a dozen, Dennis knew, though he’d love dearly to blister Mulrooney and chum. He decided to chance their next meeting, and that maybe on higher ground, snatched his hat from the floor and answered the little man’s beckoning. The stranger opened the door and waved him through it with a bowler hat, much as he might have cheered a runner past the last hurdle. He followed him out, closed the door, turned the key in it, and then when he joined Dennis on the pavement, flipped the key into the gutter.

“You’re either a fool or a wise man,” he said. “Come, we shall see.”

A thing most distasteful to Dennis was to walk a street with a man much smaller than himself and especially when only the small one knew where they were going. He felt like a bull on a chain. His companion, near skipping to double his steps, led the way down a foul smelling alley, then into the street, a long street at the corner of which they jogged into another and from there Dennis could see the Square he and Kevin had walked to hours before.

“If you’re tryin’ to lose me,” Dennis said, “I just found my way.”

His companion stopped. “Oh my, I’d forgotten. You’re new to our city.”

“I feel old to it, but I landed today.”

“Do you know where you live?”

“I do. Thirty-nine Cherry Street.”

The man settled his hat on his head, and then disturbed it again looking up. “I haven’t introduced myself, have I?”

“You’ve not.”

“Jeremiah Finn at your service, Mr. Lavery.”

“What do you do, Mr. Flynn?”

“Finn. As in a fish but I’m not,” the man said precisely. The same quickness that was in his gestures and walk was in his speech, and Dennis found it hard to follow. “I’m a locksmith by day and a follower of the strange ways of men by night.”

“Are you an Irishman?”

“I’m afraid not, but you mustn’t hold that against me. I’m very fond of the Irish, but I confess there are times when I think the world would be in a sad state if we were all Irishmen.”

“Oh,” Dennis said, “call on Ireland herself as your witness.”

“Do you like coffee, Mr. Lavery?”

“I’ve no notion,” Dennis said. “I never tasted it.”

“Then I’ll stand you a first cup and show you a bit of New York as well.” Jeremiah Finn settled his hat and skipped to the corner, his finger in the air to signal the first empty hack.

It’s a dream, Dennis thought, for the weariness had begun to take hold of him, but not a bad dream, with this queer little man mincing through it, and he was in no hurry to waken before Kevin was home and asleep. He had many things to settle in his mind, if he could but settle his mind before the night was over.

“Can I do you something, chuckie?”

Dennis started at the voice. A woman was standing near face to face with him when he turned, and the sick sweet smell of her wafted the rest of the distance.

“Here, be off!” Mr. Finn cried, scurrying back and waving his hands up and down.

“Call off yer dog or I’ll snitch his gigg,” the woman shrieked at Dennis, kicking out one foot and then the other at Mr. Finn. Then she called over her shoulder. “Hey, Jack! Here’s a pair!”

“Come along,” Finn said. “We’ve to run for it now or have a muss here.”

Dennis followed him toward the Square, the little man holding his hat on his head while his coat tails flapped out in the wind like a duck’s feathers.

“There!” he said when they were settled in the cab and he had caught his breath. “That’s Daniel Mulrooney for you. A decent citizen can’t put his foot out the door after ten in the ward. He has a fortune to spend on elections, and where does he get it? Blackmailing blackmailers. He has a piece from every crib, fence and brothel and they are legion. Oh, I tell you, Mr. Lavery,” and his voice quivered with the words, “it’s a long tail he wags, but he’ll soon get it nipped down to a bloody stump.”

“I’d like to make him eat it,” Dennis said.

“Which, God bless you, is why I came to your rescue. What is your trade, Mr. Lavery?”

“I’m a day laborer. I’ve no trade, Mr. Finn.”

“You were a day laborer, let us say. I am not without connections of my own.”

It was a dream after all, Dennis thought. Mulrooney’s thug had knocked him into it. “I’ve a fair power of words,” he said then, “though I couldn’t put one o’ them after the other if I’d to do it on paper.”

“Mmm,” the man beside him said, meaning, Dennis thought, that he had expected no more. A strange sort, this one, with a nose long enough to be half his journey before he left the house. He might be forty or fifty, for Dennis could not guess the age of a man who had passed his youth but was still that side of old age.

Mr. Finn leaned forward. “There on your right is City Hall park. A pretty place for a den of thieves. On your left is the motherhouse—that frame building there—Tammany Hall.”

Dennis mulled the word “motherhouse.” “I’m a Roman Catholic, Mr. Finn,” he said.

“I’ve never known an Irishman who wasn’t to start with,” Finn said.

“I’ve started and I’ll end that way, and if yous don’t like it, you can put me down.”

“Bless you, I shouldn’t care if you were a Shaker. Ah, here, my friend, is Broadway. You’ve not seen it at night, I dare say.”

Nor was he going to see it that night, Dennis realized. It was a blur of color and a blare of sound and he was becoming sick with weariness. He heard music and hawking, and Mr. Finn’s voice as he pitched it high to celebrate wonders as they passed by. It was all a far sound wafting over the grind of the cab wheels and the wheels of multitudinous hacks and carriages debating the street with theirs. Dennis leaned back and closed his eyes. If he could but fall asleep for a minute, he thought, it would settle his stomach and keep him from disgracing himself.