Paradise Alley (74 page)

“That's one!” Deirdre hissed triumphantly as they whipped the bosun's chair swiftly back over. But there was the sound of human voices from below now, some of the men looking up to the sky.

“What's that, then?”

“Is the buildin' comin' down?”

They had to wait until the voices died down again, the men speculating on the nature of the shadow that had passed over them. Soon, though, they could hear the pounding start at the door and the shutters again, which was no more reassuring.

“They'll be up any minute,” Ruth said frantically, unable to help herself.

And with Milton there to meet them on the steps.

“Hurry—”

They slipped Vie into the bosun's chair next. The little girl too scared to cry—shaking so hard they could barely tie her in. Ruth kissed her head and face all over as she did, whispering to her to look to her brother, still standing on the Mendelssohns' roof.

“See Elijah, see Elijah there. You're just crossin' over to him now.”

Ruth was terrified that she might start to scream at any moment, but they yanked her across the gap before she could open her mouth. When they plucked her out, she stood hugging her brother tightly—the two of them staring back incredulously at the height they had just passed over. The chair slithering back over to them—

“Listen!”

There was a sudden burst of laughter from down in the back lots, and then they could smell something sharp and familiar.

“What is it?”

They were burning the privvies. Wisps of putrid black smoke began to curl their way up to the roof.

“Hurry now, there won't be much time—”

Mana was hoisted across next, then Frederick. The smoke from the privvies was growing steadily thicker now—so much so that Frederick could not help it but coughed and cried as he went over. They stopped the line in terror as soon as he was safe—but the men below were choking on the smoke themselves, still too busy with their ruckus to notice what was going on above.

“Let's burn
all
the shite! Burn all the
niggers!
”

Ruth shivered on the roof. Maddy beside her was looking down in contempt, forming her mouth to spit before they pulled her back.

“Look at the sons a bitches down there—”

But there was no time. Even up on the roof, tears were streaming down their faces from the rancid, filthy smoke.

“Now your children,” Ruth told Deirdre—much as it pained her, much as she wanted to send for Milton, right away.

But what if the line broke under him? And who would mind the stairs?

They swung Deirdre's brood over as quickly as they could, but it still took time, their arms slowing with fatigue. And as it was, the metal pulleys rasped and bent toward the edge of the roof with each new passage. The line sagging steadily lower over the smoke—the children trying to hold their breath or gasping desperately for air. They arrived at the Mendelssohns with their faces and clothes covered with the soot. The faces of Mrs. Mendelssohn and her daughter were just as black, but they stood their ground, the children helping with each pull now.

“Now for Milton!” Ruth cried.

“That's it, now! Just your boy—” Deirdre agreed, as soon as they had pulled her Eliza over.

There was the sound of a great crash from somewhere below, then a muted cheer. Milton was coming up through the trapdoor, running out onto the roof, pistol in hand.

“They broke the front door!” he told them, breathless. “They got the top panel busted in, it won't be but a few minutes before they get the rest of it—”

“All right, then, you're next,” Deirdre told him.

“How d'ya know it will hold him?” Ruth asked.
Seeing him plunging, screaming, down into the burning privvies as the rope broke.

“We don't, but what choice is there? Besides, we'll send him over with the pistol, that way even if he drops—”

“Look, look! It's burnin'!”

Maddy had come forward now, and was pointing toward the line—her own pale face and hair and the tattered red gown blackened with smoke as well, so that she looked fully mad.
But she was right,
they saw at once. Halfway over the chasm between the houses, smoke was rising from the clothesline itself.

“Jesus, no, Jesus, no—”

“It's going, there's no helping it.”

The rope was in flames now. The Jewish girl's clever bosun's chair consumed at once, the fire skipping quickly up the line toward where they stood. Deirdre seized the pistol from Milton and began to batter at the pulley, prying it loose and knocking it off before the burning line could reach their house. Across the back lot the Mendelssohns stood on the roof, holding their children, watching helplessly.

“Go on now!” Deirdre called to them. “We'll be fine here. Go on, and get them inside!”

Fine, with the mob downstairs.

Mrs. Mendelssohn nodded quickly—though from her look Ruth knew that she didn't think they would be fine at all. Her daughter was already shielding the children's faces with her arms and dress, limping back with them, away from the edge of the building and downstairs.

“What now? What now?” Ruth cried, looking around at Deirdre and Milton, behind her. “We got to hide him! That's what we can do, where can we hide him—”

“They'll tear up the whole damned place, you know they will!” Maddy yelled wildly. “And if they find him, then—”

“Maddy!”

“Maybe we'd be better off just closing the trap,” Deirdre said. “Pray to Jesus they don't come up. Hold them off with the gun if we have to.”

“But what if they just burn us out?”

“Wait. Maybe I know—”

Deirdre was already leading them back down to the second floor. There she threw open the window in their upstairs front room.
The mob still downstairs, thank God.

“Come on, now! Give me a hand with this!” Deirdre called, grabbing hold of anything she could—anything that looked valuable—and tossing it immediately out the window, down into the street below.

But your things,
Ruth wanted to say, though she knew there was no choice now.
They had to do something fast or her boy would die.
She could hear the men downstairs, clearing away the rest of the ruined door. Pushing in the parlor window.
Soon they would be clamoring up the stairs—

“There! Take that!”

She shoved a huge quilt out. Ruth knew it was one that Deirdre had made herself—forty-eight squares, each one depicting a scene from the life of Jesus. It had taken her two years, she remembered. Now it fluttered brightly out the window and into the street. Distracting the men downstairs from their work, at least for a moment—staring at this strange offering from above.

“Come on! More! That won't concern them for long!”

Ruth looked around, still unsure of what she should presume to throw out the window. Then she spotted Milton, standing by the doorway, still guarding the stairs. Trying to look brave—

“Here!” She grabbed a pair of real silver candlesticks, tossed them out the window. “God forgive me—”

They clanked along the paving stones outside, the men scrambling for them. Beside her Maddy threw down a framed print of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—then a pitcher that smashed uselessly in the street.

“Save that for when they come!” Deirdre scolded her, scooping up the good linens from her very bed, tossing them out like sails that blew open and spread above them.

The men downstairs laughed and cheered. There was no sound of them down by the door now—thinking their work was being done for them by other looters, already in through the back door.

“Keep going!” Deirdre yelled at them, gathering up some of her best dresses.

It was working. Ruth didn't know how long it could keep working, but it was working for now. Even Mrs. McGillicuddy and the other white women were scrambling for anything they could get their hands on. A few others working their way down the street, looting any empty home they could find. Ruth almost wanting to laugh when she noticed some men smashing the front of her own abandoned house.

That was when she heard the voice again. It was the same one she had heard just a few nights ago, out on the street, while she huddled in the bedroom with Billy.
Maddy's customer.

“Where is she? Where is that goddamned nigger whore? We come to settle with her, now that we cleared all the niggers out—”

She could see a new gaggle of men, walking onto the block from whatever mischief they had been up to. At their head Ruth recognized the goblin-faced man. The same wizened head, shrunk down into his chest—the same withered, long-armed body, from so long ago, back at the hospital on Staten Island. No longer smiling his unsettling false grin, but smirking viciously now, his teeth showing. Calling out to the block in the same measured, deadly voice she had heard that night.

“Where is the niggers' whore? We come to take out her debt in trade.”

The goblin man was leading the mob toward Maddy's, and for a moment Ruth's heart leaped. But the white women on the block ran along with them—Mrs. McGillicuddy pointing back toward Deirdre's home.

“She run out, she run out! She's holed up over there, along with the rest of the niggers!”

The mob swayed, hesitating just below them. Ruth holding her breath, watching them, Deirdre doing the same. The crowd gazing uncertainly at the ruined door, all the detritus tossed into the street, surmising it must have been sacked already.

“It's thin pickins here—”

“Let's go over to her place, that's the lode!”

“Oh, the dresses that whore wears!”

They felt Maddy moving behind them before they saw her.

“Goddamn them, they think they can run
me?
”

“No, Maddy, don't be mad!” Deirdre shouted at her.

But she was already bursting down the stairs, cursing at the top of her lungs, waving something in her hand.

“Goddamn bummers! Goddamn Irish sons a bitches, here I am!”

“The pistol!” Deirdre said, remembering even as she said it where she had left it last, on the roof, after she had knocked the pulley off.

“Dear Jesus, if she shoots one of them they'll kill her for sure!”

They ran down the stairs after her. Maddy making for the door, Deirdre right behind her—and Milton running right after her, though Ruth screamed for him to come back.

“Get in! Get in! Get back in, they mustn't see you!
Oh, God, they mustn't see you!
”

But Maddy was already down to the first floor, bolting through the
ruined door like a rabbit. She ran right out into the street, flourishing the gun under the noses of the astonished men.

“Here's what you want, ain't it? Here's the niggers' whore!”

There was some disbelieving laughter, then a few jeers. Someone threw a piece of brick that barely missed her head, falling on the paving stones behind her. Even as it hit the ground, Maddy lifted the gun and fired.

“Jay-sus!”

Her shot going wild, whizzing over the heads of the men before her and thumping harmlessly into the wooden front of the grocery across the street. The men ducked instinctively, then began to run toward her, laughing and cursing. She fired again, running toward her house now.

“Get her! Get the goddamned whore!”

Maddy dashed inside her house—reappearing a minute later on her roof. Still firing her pistol, screaming down at them in the street.

“Irish sons a bitches! You goddamned Irish sons a bitches!”

A couple of men in the crowd were firing back at her, balls smashing the upstairs windows of her home. They began to kick in her front door, and she turned and disappeared again, dropping from sight, but still screaming at them.

“You Irish sons a bitches!”

But now the rest of them were out. They stood in the street, before the mob, without even the protection of the gun. At least most of the men had run off down the street after Maddy, though, and Ruth tried to grab her son and push him back into Deirdre's house, thinking somehow that the mob might not notice.

“Maybe we can get out the back still—”

But they could already hear Mrs. McGillicuddy, rallying the men again. The cry immediately taken up by the other women.

“Here's where the niggers live! Here's where they're stayin'!”

“Shoot at us! Shoot at us, the little whore!”

“This is where he lives, the big nigger on the block. His whole family's here!”

Men were starting to move toward them now. Deirdre and Ruth took another step or two back into the house, for all the good they knew it would do them, with its smashed-in door and shutters. Ruth
with her arms wrapped around Milton, trying to pull him back physically.

“We can go out the back door, maybe—”

“I don't know,” Deirdre said, the dread thick in her voice, but trying to stay calm and think even now. “I don't know if we can get past the fire.”

They could feel the heat from where they stood—the acrid smoke from out back beginning to fill up the bottom floor of the house, drifting on up the stairs. Ruth started to cough, loosening her grip on her boy as she reeled about, trying to get air.

“Maybe we can go back upstairs—”

“It's no good,” Milton was saying.

He pulled away from her—staring toward the front door, the men outside. His face grave and angry.

“No, don't ya do it,” Ruth said, reaching for him again through the choking smoke. “No, don't go out there, son,
don't—
”

But he was already shrugging her off, moving toward the door. His young, beautiful face alert and unswerving as a hunting dog's, trained on the mob outside.

“Who're they to come burn us out? Who're
they?
” he murmured, brushing off her hands. “They already killed my Da—”