On the Waterfront (31 page)

“The waterfront’s a funny place,” Jimmy agreed. “All quiet for years and then whammo, it goes off like a bomb.”

Half an hour later Terry was sitting at Hildegarde’s bar.

“Wha’s a matter you so quiet today, you no luff me no more,” the outrageously fat proprietress tried to joke him.

“Again,” Terry said, tapping his empty jigger glass. “Double it up this time.”

“You want I play you a new record, very saxy?” Hildegarde offered.

“Lea’me alone,” Terry said.

“I know you feel bad about little Runty. Such a rascal. He always came in kiddin’ me about us gettin’ married. ‘Hah, in the bed I won’t be able to find you,’ I useta tell ’im.”

“Okay, okay, stick the goddamn record on,” Terry said, and as she did so, his mind played a dirty trick on him and he heard the trusting, quiet agony of Katie’s voice, all mixed up with the musky voice of the vocalist, crying, “Help me, help me, if you can, for God’s sake help me…”

“Here, kid, haff a drink on Hildegarde,” the hefty proprietress said.

He nodded okay. But he heard himself answering Katie, “I have my whole life to drink …”

F
ATHER BARRY BEGAN HIS
day with the six-o’clock Mass. The attendance was better than usual because the priest had won new allies when he pulled no punches in his send-off to Runty on the docks. Most of them had held back from joining Father Barry openly, but now they got up an hour early and joined the early Mass as a way of showing silent approval of Father

Barry’s guts. “He’s stand-up,” they said to each other as they drifted into small groups from various tenements on their way to the old brick church through the bone-cold semi-darkness. “Stand-up” was the highest praise in the waterfront book.

Father Barry was still feeling nerved up from the dumping of Runty and the bitter wrath that had surged in him on the dock. When he made the gesture of washing his fingers after offering the chalice he spoke the Latin words so angrily that many of the longshoremen who usually let the unintelligible chant pour over them now bothered to check the English text on the facing page of their missals.

“O Lord, I love the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwells. Destroy not my soul with the impious, O God, nor my life with men of blood. In whose hands there is iniquity, whose right hand is full of bribes. But as for me, I will walk in my innocence, rescue me and be gracious to me.”

The words bit hard into the issue facing nearly all of them sharing in the sacrifice that morning. Dozens of longshoremen had pliantly paid their bribes to the hiring boss for years, or joined in the phony walk-outs when the mob wanted to shake down a tulip-bulb cargo or a delivery of furs. Once more Father Barry was able, without launching into a sermon, to make the Mass not a cut-and-dried ritual but a living experience rooted in the soil of their lives. “And converts to reconvert,” Father Barry recalled his own thought, remembering Xavier’s experience with the predatory Portuguese captains in India. Now as he turned from the altar which was Calvary, and looked into the attentive faces of men who had made their peace with rottenness, he wondered if the apostleship of toughmindedness was beginning to pay off at last. Once more Christ had offered Himself to the sharp nails and the hard Cross, and through the lips of Father Barry He had made His crucial promise to redeem them with His blood.

The men went out into the pale winter morning to get some eggs and coffee in them before showing up at the piers. There was scattered talk of a wildcat one-day strike to protest the push-off of Runty Nolan. Runty had been around so long that even fellows who thought he was a goddamn nuisance found themselves missing him.

Father Barry was removing his vestments in the sacristy when Father Vincent handed him the Bohegan
Graphic.
“You made the front page,” the priest said to his fellow curate.

A reporter from the local tab had been in the crowd when Runty’s body was recovered. Father Barry’s attack on the “evil triumvirate” of shippers, city officials and union racketeers was spread over two columns. “I haven’t seen the Manhattan papers yet, but I hear they covered it too,” Father Vincent said. “Well, you asked for it, kid. You’re a celebrity.”

Father Barry shrugged. “I called it the way I saw it. They can’t hang me for that.”

“Not with a rope, no,” Father Vincent agreed with him. “But where’s Father Coughlin these days? A few more of these”—he waved the
Graphic
—“and you’ll be a left-wing Coughlin.”

“What’s left-wing?” Father Barry said. “You call the Missal left-wing? You call the dignity of man left-wing? You call the Encyclicals left-wing?”

“Don’t waste your ammunition on me,” Father Vincent said, lowering the sleeveless white chasuble over his head. He was to say the next Mass. “You better save your strength for the Vicar General.”

“What do you want to bet the Pastor backs me up?” Father Barry said.

“And what do you want to bet the Monsignor will be in there steaming up the Bishop inside of an hour?” Father Vincent countered. “When you step on the toes of the Police Commissioner, City Hall, the longshore headquarters and the Interstate Stevedores you’re treading on some powerful digits.”

“The bigger they are …” Father Barry shrugged.

“The harder
you
fall,” Father Vincent warned as he muttered the last of his vesting prayers.

When Father Barry returned to the rectory, all hell was breaking loose. Reporters from the metropolitan newspapers were calling for interviews. A delegation of longshoremen from the West Side, across the river, had come over to ask for advice on how to organize opposition to the criminal clique that had their local sewed up. There were even a few callers from the Jerry Benasio preserve in Brooklyn. There was an assistant hiring boss from the East River, another Italian-mob territory, who had worked with the boys for years, but was uneasy with his conscience. At 9:30 an assistant counsel from the Crime Commission called to make an appointment. He wanted to dis- cuss the possibility of Father Barry’s appearing as a friendly witness at the waterfront hearings. The priest could testify as to what the deceased Nolan had told him of corruption and violence in Bohegan. Also, a Commission investigator had informed the counsel that Father Barry was working on a plan for harbor reform.

Father Barry made dates to meet the press and the Commission counsel, and was conferring with Jimmy Sharkey, Moose and Dino Lorenzo, a tough Jersey City recruit, on the leaflet plan, when word came that the Pastor wanted to see him.

Father Donoghue was having a cup of tea in his old-fashioned sitting room when Father Barry came in.

“Pete, I’m troubled by these headlines,” the elderly Pastor said. “I feel you have, well, not exactly disobeyed my orders, but chosen to ignore my advice. As you know, I am not at all opposed to what you are doing. I have come to agree that the waterfront workers in our parish do need our help. But there are ways to do these things. Discretion is often the better part of valor. And I could hardly say you were discreet in these remarks of yours on the docks.” He nodded toward the
Graphic
and the black headlines on the tea table. “Before you went so far as to impugn the character of our local officials I should have liked to prepare the ground a little bit with the Bishop. We’re only a small church, one of the poorest in his diocese. But I must say he has always treated me very decently. Now I’m afraid Monsignor O’Hare, whose position I realize is diametrically opposed to your own, will undoubtedly have a chance to influence the Bishop against you. I might even say
us
—before we have a chance to explain what we are trying to do.”

“Father, believe me, I never intended to buck your authority, or your good advice,” Father Barry said quickly. “It’s just that events got behind me and started pushing me faster ’n faster. I had no idea they were going to get Runty when I promised to do my work from inside the church yesterday morning. And when I got down there, Father, and thought of the stinking evil of this thing, men who have turned away from God, juggling the lives of human beings like so many Indian clubs—when I thought of the so-called leaders of the community who are even worse than the goons because they ought to know better, well, I guess I did blow my cork and I hit ’em with that stuff about Christ in the shape-up.”

“And very moving it was,” Father Donoghue agreed, sipping his tea. “I think it would have made an excellent sermon as part of the Mass, a special Labor Day Mass, for instance. I’m simply not sure of the propriety of involving yourself so directly in the temporal affairs of the port.”

“Father, the men were telling me of a big wildcat strike five or six years ago that the Communists were able to move in on,” Father Barry argued. “Nearly all of these men are Romans. How could the Moscows get any hold on them? Well, now I begin to see why. These men have a problem, economic insecurity, physical safety, their lives. They’re generations behind the average American working stiff. But their leaders are nearly all racket guys, really company-union stooges on the take from the shipping companies.”

“On the take?” said Father Donoghue.

“Accepting bribes,” Father Barry explained. “Playing footsie with the boss stevedores.”

“I quite understand,” Father Donoghue said.

“What the Commies did was to move into a leadership vacuum,” Father Barry went on. “There are thousands of honest, decent men working the docks, our people. It’s simply that they’re divided, leaderless, helpless—terrorized. To accept their fate with a shrug and a shot of whiskey has become a way of life. The best way to keep out the Commies and give these men back their God-given dignity is to stand up for the real issues and interests of the rank and file. Murders that go unpunished—not occasionally but year in year out—isn’t it time we took an open stand on that? And this thing affects the home, the home life. Demoralized longshoremen get drunk, sink into debt, fight with their wives, the kids go hungry, they stop going to church. That’s right, Father, they stop believing in us because they see Monsignor O’Hare breaking bread or lifting a whiskey with their mortal enemies. Sure the Monsignor raises a lot of money for his church and I suppose one of these days he’ll make Bishop. But he’s not my idea of the one, true, universal Church. I don’t see him ‘walking without blemish and working justice.’ ”

“I understand what you mean—yes, deeply,” Father Donoghue said. “Just the same I’m worried for you. I want to see you continue this work. I think you can help us build a strong, more meaningful parish, closer to God. But, Pete, I am worried. I am once again as old as you are. I never had any particular ambition to ‘get anywhere’ in the Church. I wasn’t interested in a wealthy parish and making a reputation as an able money raiser. I know we have that kind. It’s our strength that we have every kind, from the most selfless, the true saint whose feet ache whenever his fellow man stubs a toe—to the shrewd makers of power plays, the politically astute—”

“Father, I took an oath of obedience, and I never intend to back away from it,” Father Barry cut in, “but I think I can speak to you frankly. I didn’t accept this calling to follow the O’Hares. I can’t play ball with these ecclesiastical climbers who go where the money is. We’ve had them as Popes and we know the disgrace. It’s to our everlasting glory that we somehow survived some of those Medici Popes, that we fought our way back to our Leo XIII and Pius XI. In this last week I’ve begun to see the moral battle we’ve got on our hands here in Bohegan. I’d like to try to slug it out, inside the sanctions of your authority—that goes without saying.”

“What I’d like to do,” Father Donoghue said frankly, “is to preserve the quality of your fervor within the bounds of—well, not expediency—shall we say practicality?”

“You don’t want to see me take such a lead off first base that I get cut down and blow my chance of sliding home with the winning run.” Father Barry grinned.

“I believe that expresses the idea,” Father Donoghue smiled, “although I still think hurling has baseball beat a mile as a national sport.”

“You foreigners have strange ideas.” Father Barry grinned.

“Now to get down to cases,” the Pastor said, wiping his lips and pushing the tea tray away. “I’m afraid I will have to forbid you to form a Longshoremen’s Committee of St. Timothy’s. I understand that was to be the name of it. I feel that would involve us far too directly in the interunion conflicts of the waterfront.”

“Check,” Father Barry said. “How about the basement chapel? Can we still use it for the protest meeting on Runty Nolan the boys are getting up for Sunday night? It’s the eve of the Crime Commission hearings. Runty wasn’t the most conscientious parishioner we ever had, but he did manage to show up for Mass whenever he was sober enough to find his way.”

“If you can put the proof in my hands—in case the Bishop should call for it—that such a meeting cannot be held safely any place else in Bohegan. In that case I’ll go along.”

“And our mimeograph machine? The boys want to hand out a leaflet on Runty. He was popular with a lot of the fence-sitters. They want to run off what I said on the dock yesterday—and pass it out along the waterfront.”

Father Donoghue sighed. “Since you have said it, I suppose they have a right to circulate it. As far as you are concerned it is a calculated risk. You’ll find longshoremen and the business and political interests lining up for and against—er, Barryism. I think it would be best if our church was not associated with that. In other words, I want to make it very clear what you are forbidden to do, what you are permitted to do with my authority and protection, and what you may do on your own as an American citizen expressing your own opinion.”

“Thanks for laying it on the line,” Father Barry said.

The careworn but oddly boyish face of the old priest lit up with a faint smile. “If some of our parishioners want to borrow the mimeograph machine to run off something on their own, I don’t believe I would have any objection.”

“Father, I couldn’t ask for more than that,” Father Barry said. “You’re solid.”

“I’m a feeble reed leaning on the mercy of our Lord,” said Father Donoghue. “But I’m an old reed. I’ve weathered some storms.”