Paradise Alley (57 page)

But then, as they cut into his actual living flesh, her face begins to fall, her jaw going slack. When they mutilate him she struggles up, and runs around in a little circle. Then she runs back toward them—
to where he lies—screaming at the top of her voice, screaming and waving her hands at them.

“Stop it, stop it! Oh, do stop it, for the love of God!”

Several of the women rise up indignantly, slapping at her face.

“Who is she? Who is she to speak to us like that?”

Seething with indignation, they kick and bully her down the street and off the block. Then they go on into the boardinghouse where she lives, drag out her meager possessions and set them on fire in the street—no more than a couple of threadbare linen dresses, and the wicker chest she brought from Ireland, the inevitable copy of her
Guide for Catholic Young Women, Especially for Those Who Earn Their Own Living.
As the flames grow, they rekindle their fury:

“What care did she have for little Ellen Kirk, that's what I'd like to know! What care did she ever have for any of us?”

Yet behind the indignant women, the street is quieter, almost philosophical. Men and women sitting on their stoops, smoking their white clay pipes, staring dully at O'Brien where he lies on the sidewalk, still alive.

They watch the small boys as they take turns parading with O'Brien's shiny silver sword, trying to wrap their fingers around the jeweled presentation handle. Passing around the other souvenirs they have pulled from his pockets—his paper and ring, a few bits of shinplaster money. A locket containing a picture of his wife and children, who had already fled to Brooklyn this morning.

“What was he doin', comin' back here like that?”

“Still, he's a brave Irishman—”

“Don' waste a thought for him. Shot them down, just like they shoot anyone they please!”

“On his own block, too. His own block!”

Father Knapp has returned at last, with no more success than I have had. I can only shrug helplessly when he looks at me, trying to pull him away. He will have none of it. His face swollen with rage, his neck bright red, he plunges right in again, trying to beat his way through to O'Brien.

It is no use—the best they will let him do is to give the dying man extreme unction. In the street he opens up the small wooden box he has brought with him. There is a miniature altar inside, candles and a crucifix, a tiny silver spoon and patina; clean linens and a little bottle
of oil, and the holy water and silver chalice. When it is all set up, he turns his stole back over to purple again, and leans in to hear the dying man's confession.

O'Brien struggles to raise himself up on one elbow, grabbing hold of the priest's cassock. As he does I see that they have cut the ring finger off his hand—no doubt for another souvenir. His arms and his legs are still smoking from the oil, his body nearly naked now. His face is blistered from lying out under the sun all afternoon, his lips swollen and cracked. Nonetheless, he is still alive—still able to murmur something in the priest's ear, while Father Knapp nods and cradles him in his arms.

“Does he repent the murders, Father? Does he?”

The crowd leans in.

“He goddamned well better—”

“If he don't, then no last rites!”

The priest ignores them, and grants the dying man absolution. Giving him the communion, the host out of the thin, silver patina. Chanting to him the prayer that he must repeat.

“O Lord, Who hast mercifully provided remedies for all our necessities; grant me Thy grace—”

“O Lord—”

“. . . . give me that true light, by which I may be conducted through the shadow of death . . . .”

When it is finished he drizzles the holy water over O'Brien, then offers him the crucifix to kiss with his torn and blistered lips.

“Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini . . . . ex hoc loco accessus ademonum, adsint Angeli pacis, domumque hanc deserat omnis maligna discordia—”

Next he opens the little bottle of oil and begins to anoint the dying man. Dipping his thumb in the holy oil, then making the sign of the cross on O'Brien's eyes, his ears, his nose, his lips; his hands and his feet, and his groin. Any part, any orifice that might give offense to God, here in this wretched, oozing boil of a City.

“Kyrie, eleison.

“Christe, eleison—”

O'Brien releases his grip on the priest's cassock, slumping back to the sidewalk. Father Knapp blesses him, finishing the sacrament—
and then, with the last words of the rite, makes one last try to save the man, throwing himself over his body.

“Please—leave him to me! For the sake of your own souls! He can't do a thing to you now—”

But they only pry Father Knapp loose again, carting him bodily over to the sidewalk where he can't interfere with them.

“Finish him! He's had his last rites!”

They drag him into the backyard of his own house. The women kneel over him once more, looking to finish him off. Grunting and cursing like savages as they pound and stab away at the man.

I clutch at the pistol in my coat pocket, looking down at them, my head spinning at the sight of their cruelty. Thinking still,
There must be something I can do—

I start to stagger away, to try to go somewhere, do something—when I find myself looking into the face of Finn McCool.

He was standing directly across the street from the women, with a brace of his hulking shoulder hitters in tow. Something else, which should have given me pause—he was already looking at me. The look on his face baleful, even reproachful. As if to say,
See, I told you I had no authority over them—

I walk toward him, nevertheless, thinking that somehow I would get him to stop them from killing O'Brien. When he sees me coming, he holds up an arm, almost as if frightened—as if he were trying to ward me off. But I am as stunned as a rabbit by the awful things I have seen, the heat. I keep moving toward him, at least until I see his gesture has changed. He is pointing at me now, his eyes almost feral in the light from the growing fire.

“He's a spy! A spy for the police! For Greeley!” he is bellowing now, loud enough to be heard for two blocks over.

I stand frozen to the spot. Stupidly holding out my hands, as if to appeal to him. Everyone looking up, the
b'hoys
around McCool eyeing me now. Suddenly my disguise—my disheveled, dirty, yellow suit—has been peeled away.

“Search his coat, he's got a notebook in his pocket! Takin' down the names of everyone on the block, for the police!”

McCool's
b'hoys
begin to move now, running across the street toward me, their mouths spread in slack, malevolent grins.

“Get him! A spy!”

I turn, and bolt.
What else is there to do? Let them find the notebook—the police-issue Colt?
Instantly, I am a refugee. Running, now, as I watched poor Kennedy run—

“A spy! A spy! Stop the spy!”

The cry goes up behind me. I rush past a blur of men and women—some smiling, some grabbing at me. Their faces turning, one after the other, to see what all the excitement is about. To see
me.

“A spy! Stop him!”

“One of Greeley's spies!”

All it would take would be one well-placed stone, one leg tangled in my shins, and I would be down—as helpless as Colonel O'Brien was, clubbed down by that creature. Reduced to an object for their sport—

“Get him!”

I keep running. Looking for an alley, a doorway, for anyplace to duck into where I might be safe. My legs are as heavy as blocks now, after all my exertions during the day, my breath beginning to give out. My pursuers driving me steadily toward the south, and west, until I am near the Ninth Avenue now—only a couple of blocks from the river, the very edge of the island.

And still, behind me, I can hear the sound of running feet. Muffled laughter, too—as if whoever is pursuing me revels in the chase.

Who would ever pursue me such a distance? When they could have their fun on any street corner tonight?

Could it be that monster—their Mose from the park? It must be him, who else would laugh in this pursuit?

The streets and avenues are strewn with makeshift barricades now. Furniture and carters' wagons, lampposts and dead horses, and bales of contraband cotton, and twisted-up railroad ties—anything that can be thrown across the street.

But the battle has already come this way, the barricades broken, even charred by fire. I can still hear the sounds of fighting, the shouts and cheers, and men singing and screaming, both in the streets above and below me.

I run on toward the waterfront, all the way to end of the island, and the Hudson docks. Still looking for some refuge. Fumbling for my pistol in my jacket pocket—

Just across West Street there is one of the new street-cleaning
machines the mob has been at, broken and abandoned now. I squat down behind it, gasping for breath, unable to run any longer. Besides, there is no place to run to, here at the edge of the City.

The footsteps draw closer behind me. I am sure I hear them, even against the distant, constant roar of the riot. The steady, dissonant hum of the City, rising louder than ever now—

Behind the broken machine, I hold my pistol up. Ready to kill him—ready to kill even
him,
that awful, unkillable creature, should he come upon me here.

The footsteps keep drawing closer—real noises, I am sure of it. They start to slow, then stop altogether—as if he is feeling me out, listening for me in the deserted night.

It must be him.
Who else among them would have this sort of intelligence? The discernment of a preying animal, which has learned through long experience not to fall for the lurking snare. Instead he waits, somewhere in the shadows of the long, low warehouses down the next block. Listening, watching—

I hold my pistol up. Ready. Ready for him.

•
56
•

Maddy tried to sit as still as she could against the heat, listening to the breath rising and falling in her chest. Unsure of what time of day it was anymore. The whine of the cicadas growing steadily higher from the ailanthus tree out back, the one her mother had liked.
A Chinaman's tree,
they said. They could grow anywhere—wiry, misshapen things, emerging even from the unspeakable muck around the back lot privvies.

They had grown in the back lot behind the apartment in St. John's Park. That was when her father had still been alive, and they had lived in two rooms, on the second floor of a brownstone. It was the nicest place she had ever lived—before Robinson had rented the house for her, here in Paradise Alley. Maybe nicer, even, though they did not own the whole of it.
But then, she owned nothing of this place—

It had been just the three of them, before her Da had fallen off the scaffolding, and even though her mother had lost the other babies, they had been happy enough. In the summer evenings they had eaten their meals by the back window, with the tree there close enough to touch, as if they were living up in the branches. She had never seen anything like it again until Robinson had installed her over the backyard of that brothel in the Seven Sisters, where she would look out her window in the twilight and gaze on the red and yellow Japanese lanterns, dotting the trees—

He would bring it back. He would put it right.
That was what she had started to believe, when Robinson had first begun to buy her things. He would put it right. She had even started to pray again—the first time since she had prayed to the Virgin as a little girl. Thinking that this was the purpose in it, to make it come out like it had been, before her Da had fallen.

After his death they had had to move to the Little Water, and then to the Shambles. Her mother had tried to keep track of her, but she had had to spend most of her time taking in all the sewing and washing work she could get, or scavenging junk off the street to pay the rent. Maddy had been left to explore the sewer culverts, and all the labyrinthine alleys of the tenement houses—

That was how she had met up with Eddie Coleman, her pimp. He had offered her twenty-five cents to go out on the streets as a hot-corn girl and she had leaped at the money, it was enough to let them eat for a week.

Still, she had been frightened by the busyness of the streets, out on Broadway and the Bowery, and down on Park Row. The avenues jammed with onrushing omnibuses and carts, and drays and streetcars. The pavement beneath her feet shaking from the roll of the newspaper presses. The spectral faces of the men sweeping past her—peering blindly, acquisitively out of the darkness, seeing what she had to sell. Then circling back around her—

Maddy had learned to give them what they wanted—whatever it was. Shivering and flirting, begging and teasing them. And at the end of her first week, Eddie Coleman had taken her into the back room of the grocery and taken off all her clothes. Running his hands over her as coolly and professionally as he might have handled a load of fenced silks from the docks.

When he discovered she was a virgin, he had auctioned her off to some rabbit sport. A drunken young man, not much older than herself, down to shoot dice in the Five Points for the night. The sport had brought a retainer—a big-shouldered man with a scar on one cheek and a neddy in his pocket—so instead of simply rolling the boy, Eddie had sold her off to him.

The sport leaning her over a rough table, in a workshed just down the alley. It smelled of machine oil, and damp sawdust, the sport smelling of gin and toilet water. He had humped and pumped at her back there, so that
it hurt a little, then she felt something wet on her thighs, and that was it. He was already gone, back out in the alley buttoning his pants, and she went home to her mother.

That was all. She had not asked for anything more, she had not expected it. Making her way as best she could, out on the fast, changeable streets. Trying to keep from being run over by an omnibus, trying to keep her ears of corn away from the pigs.

She liked it when she could bring a little money home. She didn't like it when Eddie hit her, or when he chose to take her back to the shed and saw away at her himself. She tried not to think too much about what she had seen him do to his other girls, when he was in his rage. She tried not to think about the things the other girls told her, over a glass of gin at Rosanna Peers's. Stories about men who had a strange look in their eyes, and wanted them to go someplace deserted. Stories about men who looked perfectly normal—and then, when they were alone down some slip, suddenly produced a razor, or a knife in their hand—

She didn't think much about the future, or putting anything right. She didn't think much about anything except trying to help her mother, half deaf and bent double with the rheumatism by then.

And then her gentleman had come by. Like something out of a storybook, like the religious tracts she read sometimes, handed out by the Protestant missionaries, where girls who were rescued to a life of virtue married stalwart young men, and were intent on improving themselves.

Not that she had ever believed them. Things did not get put right. People fell off scaffoldings, and were bent low by the misfortunes of life, and slashed to death by strange men in alleys that smelled of cats' piss. Besides, you had to become a Protestant for things to work out—

Then he had come, her prince. And whisked her away to a brothel.

She had tried to be whatever he wanted her to be. Standing before him in her chains, during his game, letting him see her as he wanted to see her. And nothing had happened.

At last she had gone to him, unable to believe that he did not love her in return. She had gone up to his house in Gramercy Park, and stood under the tree in his yard, and asked him if he loved her. And all
he had been able to do was to stand there, muttering that it was impossible.

After that she had tried to make herself as miserable to him as she could. It was then that she had started taking on other men. It had begun with a sailor, wandered up Paradise Alley from the dockside. He had seen Robinson leaving and had gone up to her door, assuming it was a brothel. And she had thought,
Why not,
and taken him in.

The rest had soon followed. His shipmates, and sailmakers and carpenters from the docks; innkeepers and draymen, and barbers and bootblacks. Black men and white, just so long as they could pay what she asked.

She didn't care. She didn't care what the other women on the block thought, they already believed her to be a whore. She only made certain that
he
knew about it.

But even that had not driven him away. He had kept coming back, day after day, week after week, wanting to play his little game, wrapping the chains around her. Although he was even tiring of that—she could see the signs. The eagerness in his eyes fading, his breathing less ragged. Small hints of boredom, of distraction creeping in. Certain he would tire of her altogether—

Still, she had gone on with it. Letting him back in, even when the touch of his hand made her cringe. Filling her wardrobe with the clothes he bought her, but not wearing most of them. Hanging on to something—hoping somehow that he would see her again, past the chains.

Then had come the baby—something that had never occurred to her before. She took her precautions, learned like so much else from the women at the brothel in the Seven Sisters. But she had never been so much as a week late, so she figured that it would not happen, had gotten lax about it—

But there it was, after so many years she had found herself with child and she had had to tell Robinson, knowing he would take care of it. She had let him take her up to Madam Restell's and the small, inner room in her garish mansion—the one he never saw. The shades all pulled down, and the walls and even the floor painted red, in case there was too much blood.

And after it was all over, she had laughed and told him that it was impossible for her to have another. Wanting to hurt him—wanting
him, she realized, to guess that it had been his. For him to want more than anything that they should have another.

But he had not. If anything, he had only looked relieved to be rid of one more burden.
One more Paddy.
Just as glad to have snuffed it out, and to go on seeing her as he liked.

And what would she do, then? With no boy and no girl to take care of her? What would she do when he finished with her, without a child of her own and no friend in the world?

There was a noise from the street, and she roused herself, and shuffled over to the shutters again.
The bitches were all out there now.
Every one of the white women from Paradise Alley, plus some who must have come over from other blocks. Cackling and gesticulating among themselves, gathering something up in their skirts and aprons—

Rocks,
she saw at last. Pried-up paving stones, and pieces of loose brick and masonry, scavenged from the construction sites.
Was the riot that close, then?
She tried to concentrate on it, to think what she might do. Try to make her way through the streets to his house on her own? Stay and wait—knowing he would be back?

Or that someone else would be back first. She thought again about the threat that the wizened little man had made a few nights ago:
We'll see to your niggers—

She sat back down at the kitchen table and looked at the jug. Wondering if she should pour herself a glass—wanting one, but wanting to be presentable for him, when he came back to fetch her to his house.

To take her right up inside, as if she was his own wife, almost.
That was something. She had not expected even the riot to draw such a thing out of him—some abiding affection, at least. If, that was, he meant it. If she still didn't end up working as his maid, his scullion, while he took some younger bride up to his bed—

It was when she had found the book that she was sure she hated him. It was only another novel she had found in a street stall along the shilling side of Broadway, run by a courtly, greying Negro vendor who liked to call himself Peter Bookman. Maddy stopped there sometimes when she could not stand being in the house any longer and had to go out for her walks. Moving as fast as she could in her long skirts, paying no attention to the people who stopped and stared to see a well-dressed woman walking so fast. Roaming obliviously, all over the
City, until she could see clearly again, and the throbbing in her head had died down.

Then she might take something home to read. This one was a popular novel, no more than four bits, bound in a simple, brown pasteboard cover. The title stamped in gold on the front and the spine,
Paradise Alley, a Tale from the Streets of New York.
She had no idea it was his, a pseudonym printed on the title page
—by Dr. E. C. Argent—
only later had she learned what the pun meant.

She had taken it home and started to read. Barring the door, and turning away all visitors as she went on, though it was an excellent night to make money. Becoming steadily more engrossed in it, reading on through the evening as the usual commotion from the streets outside slowly died down. Reading into the small, quiet hours of the night, although the City was never completely quiet. The sound of some drunken revelry, some cry of dismay, even a scream, still drifting up to her from somewhere.
Some other poor soul, learning something in the middle of the night.

The book had been all about her, she had figured it out quickly enough. The names had been changed, and the events, of course. That was to say, the whole thing was a lie. Her life—made into some lesson on the evils of drink, and being poor. Her father was a drunk, and her mother as well. It was they who had put her out on the street, selling her hot corn. It was they who had benefited from her ill-gotten gains. Beaten her when they thought she hadn't brought enough home. Fed her whiskey for dinner, to get her through the night.