Paradise Alley (76 page)

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He looked worse than ever, she thought—even worse than the first time she had ever laid eyes on him.
Back in that deserted village, with the dogs—

His hair was all but gone, the terrible boils bulging along his scalp again. His face grizzled and unshaven, covered with soot and ashes and powder stains. Nearly blackened, now, much like her own face was, much like every face in the crowd was from the fire spreading around them. Some strange carved length of wood hanging down over his chest—

She saw him there—and she knew that he had seen her, too. He was already moving straight for her, toward the broken door of the house. Deirdre hurrying out now. Trying to get between them, speaking very rapidly as she held up her arms.

“It was me that put you on that boat,” Deirdre started to say. “It was me that put you on it because I knew you weren't fit to be with decent people—”

Dolan hit her with a left and then a right hand, the combination sending his sister sprawling into the street, on her face. The mob gawking and laughing uncertainly.

“Hey, now, that's an Irishwoman!” the goblin-faced man started to say, coming up, but he didn't dare to actually try to restrain Dolan, and no one else did anything. Ruth was busy, still trying to pull Milton back.

“Get away. Get away,
now—
” she urged him.

But there were no words between her and Johnny Dolan. He simply moved in on her—his face twisted in that same rage she remembered so well. His arm darting out before Ruth even saw it, as quick as ever. He knocked her backward, then flung her away, her head bouncing off the paving stones. Turning his attention to her son—

“You leave my mother alone!”

Milton swung at Dolan—his brave child's cry still hanging in the air. He managed to hit him with a wild left—his fist disturbing the soot and exposing a sudden small white mark on Dolan's cheek. The punch put him back on his heels for just a moment—the great chunk of wood banging against his chest. Then, as Ruth watched, Dolan ripped it off and swung it at her son, catching him on the side of the head and knocking him to the ground at once.

She was already on her feet, running toward them. The arms of the mob reaching out to pull her back—

“Easy, now, missus, our quarrel's not with you—”

“Let me go!
For the love of God, let me go!
”

She pulled free, throwing herself at Dolan. He was already standing over her son again, hitting him every time he tried to rise, punching him viciously back down to the pavement. She grabbed his arm, but he flung her off. Reaching down for Milton again—lifting him halfway up off the ground by his shirt front before he hit him once more with the block of wood. Kicking at his head as he fell—

“Goddamn you!”

She launched herself at him again. Flinging her arms around Dolan's thick neck, trying to choke him somehow.

“Get off.”

The same rough, angry voice, barely able to make a human sound at all. He pried her hands loose, spinning her around to face him.

“Get off now, you got this comin'.”

“Kill me,” she told him, trying to think of some way to provoke him—to get him away from her son. “Go ahead. Kill me instead. I'm the one ya want to kill—”

Trying to hit at him—

“No.” He held her arms in his fists, smirking grimly at her. “No,
he's
the one I want to kill.”

“It was me who put you on that boat. It was me saw you shanghaied, me who sold ya—”

“Don't I know it.”

He threw her aside again, picked Milton up from where he still lay on the paving stones. Hauling him up by his neck, like a dog with a rat, her son barely conscious, his eyes rolling in his head. Dolan ripped off the boy's shirt, began to work methodically at pulling off all his clothes.

She yanked him back, going at Dolan's face this time, clawing at his eyes. Trying to sink her knee into his groin, trying to do something, anything, so that he could not ignore her—so that she might enrage him into killing her despite herself. He only hit her in her side with the block of wood—so hard that she heard something snap, and break within her. She doubled over in shock, and he turned his attention to her son once more, but somehow she managed to raise herself, and grab him around the legs before he could get to Milton.

This time he pummeled her, raining one blow after another down upon her head and shoulders. He hammered her to the ground with his block of wood, hitting her until the thick chunk of wood split in two, half of it bouncing away down the street.

Then he went back to her son again. Pulling off the rest of his clothes. Milton trying automatically, even half conscious, to cover himself, put his hands over his shame. Ruth watching from the street, trying to get up, the blood streaming down her face. Dolan hauled her son naked across the street, where a group of laughing white boys had already thrown a rope up around the lamppost. Others—other men and women, even from the block—hurried over now with knives, with a lamp full of kerosene, giggling and shouting.

“Burn him! Burn the nigger now!”

Still more men—grown men, now—brought over a bucket of water from the pump. They poured it over her son's head—slapping at his face, forcing whiskey down his throat.
Trying to revive him. Trying to revive him, so he would be sure to feel it when they cut his flesh, and poured in the oil. So he would provide all the more entertainment for them.

Milton's eyes opened—but she could see the first veil of death already falling across them.

She was back up then, moving back across the street. One leg dragging, her right arm hanging at an odd angle from where she had tried
to ward off his blows. Some of the white women from the block tried to hold on to her—actually looking sympathetic. Mrs. McGillicuddy even put a hand on her elbow, trying to keep her back.

“Ye saved the rest of 'em, after all. It's just the one that you're gonna lose—”

Ruth shook her off. Wiping away the blood that kept running into her eyes, but still moving toward Dolan.

He saw her coming, his lips slightly parted in that same grim smirk. Letting her son slip back down to the sidewalk for the moment. She went straight at him and he braced himself, ready for her—but at the last moment she ducked her head and ran headfirst into his stomach, just under his fighter's stance. Grabbing on to him, still clinging to him even as he punched and shoved at her.

“Do me,” she told him again. His face only a blur above her now, through the blood.

He tried to peel her off, but still she clutched to him—knowing, as she did, that if he got her off it would be all over. Knowing that he would kill her son. The other men watching them, hanging back a little now, unsure of what to make of any of this.

“Do me. You know it's me you want.
Do me.
”

“No.”

His eyes above her, yellowed and maddened with rage and pain, just as she remembered them.

“No, I want your nigger spawn. I want you to live to see me kill him.”

He pushed her off then, flinging her to the ground. She wrapped herself right back around his knees, and when he kicked her loose she clutched onto his chest again.

“Kill me an' you can have your box. I still got it, you know. It's just in the house,” she breathed, barely able to get the words out but still trying to think. Trying to somehow make him kill her instead. “That's what you come for, ain't it? Don't you want it ‘fore one of these others gets their hands on it?”

He cocked his fist, and punched her left eye as hard as he could. It closed up at once, but still she hung on.

“You son of a bitch,” she spat at him. “But you know it's all junk, don't ya? Ya know it's just all useless junk, the man was right. An' you wanted it.”

He cocked his fist again, rammed it into her mouth, knocking the teeth back in her throat.
Trying to do as much damage to her as he possibly could,
she knew, but she hung on.

Somewhere in the background she could hear people yelling and screaming, but no one interfered. She wondered dully where Deirdre was, if she were still alive. It was as if they were alone, just Ruth and him, fighting in the street in the middle of the City. And her son.

“You liar,” she kept talking at him, as best she could through her ruined mouth. “You lie, you never was dead. You never thought you was dead. You'd do anything to stay alive. That's why you let your brother die—”

“Goddamn bitch!”

He punched at her now with both hands—but she still managed to shrink down, hold him around the waist somehow. She was nearly blinded from his blows, the blood covering her face, but still she turned it up to him.

“That's it. You never did want to die—”

“I did. I was dead—”

“No. No, you never was. You lived—you lived on meat.”

“No, it's a goddamned lie!”

He shoved at her but only weakly now—backing up, trying to pull away from her.

“You let him die, an' you lived on meat. You think I don't know? You think I don't know how you stayed alive in that village, after everyone was dead? When all the dogs was skinny, an' you was fat? You think I don't know what you would do to live?”

Dolan made a howling sound then, and shoved her away. Pushing her hands off him, stumbling down the street. She scrambled about, feeling for her son, barely able to see anymore. Finding his poor boy's body, lying naked in the street. She threw herself over him, covering him where he lay.
Still warm, still breathing, she was sure of it.

Three or four more men crowded in on her at once. They tried to pull Milton out from under her, to get back to their lynching, but she hung on. They kicked and punched at her, flailing at her with an iron cart rung they had brought from somewhere. Hitting at her so fiercely with an ax handle that she screamed out loud.

“That'll move the nigger's whore!”

But still she hung on. Trying to cover her son as best she could
with her own body. Trying to keep him burrowed down there below her, shielded from everything else, as their blows came faster and faster. She could feel the cold currents of the river, grasping at her feet, pulling her under. But she held fast to him—keeping him warm, and alive beneath her.

They kept thrashing away at her, more and more furiously the tighter she clung. Hitting at her in a frenzy now, with anything at hand, hitting her with ax handles and the cart rungs, and with their fists, and with sticks and clubs and pieces of brick. But it was if she could feel nothing, now, inured to all their blows. Enduring, holding herself in, holding her son, safe, beneath her. The men still hitting—until at last, they stopped.

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Her brother's fists threw her back across the pavement, smashing her head into the curb. His punches were harder than anything she had ever felt, but even as she went down all she could think of was Ruth.
How did she take it? How did she take it all that time?

She was back up as soon as she could get her wits about her, lurching toward him again. Trying to get to Ruth and Milton, sure that Johnny would kill the both of them if he could. She staggered toward them, trying to regain her balance. The taunts and jeers of the other women on the block filling her ears—emboldened now, with the men back on the block. Mrs. McGillicuddy jabbing her arm, gap-toothed mouth wobbling excitedly.

“There! There! Ya see, you're not so high an' mighty now, defendin' the naygurs!”

Deirdre punched her in the mouth, knocking her down on the sidewalk. She shoved past the other women easily enough, for all their fearless, drunken ranting—but she could not get past the men. She ran at them, pounded and kicked at them, but they only hauled her back. They would not let her break through the ring they had formed in the middle of the street—the ring where she knew her brother was killing Ruth and her son.

“Here now! Get on with ya! Be glad
you're
still alive.”

She stumbled back, her head still throbbing from where she had
fallen—trying to make herself think. There was no one on Paradise Alley who would help her. The women were still jeering and pointing, the men standing with their arms crossed, watching and laughing while he killed them.

Somewhere else. Off the block—

She began to run—still wobbly, moving as fast as she could. Bumping off the sides of houses, and stumbling in the slick gutters. Running for the Jews' place now, around the corner on Water Street—knowing they would help her if anyone could, though she had no idea what they could do. This was nothing that could be helped with a clothesline, or a crippled daughter.
At least they might fetch more help—

Mrs. Mendelssohn was out on the high front stoop of their house, the beautiful lame daughter right behind her. Running down the stairs to her, already—her face puckering as she noticed the bruises on Deirdre's face, the blood on her head and dress.

“There you are! Thank God, thank God! And where is the other?”

She was already bundling Deirdre back up the stoop, toward the house.

“Your children will be so glad. Where are the rest of them? Are they coming?”

Deirdre clung onto the stoop banister, forcing her to stop.

“We got to help them,” she breathed, trying to explain what was happening, what the mob was doing. Mrs. Mendelssohn's eyes narrowing in her almond-shaped face, her lips pursing.

“You have to help,” Deirdre repeated. “They'll kill her. They'll kill her boy, and her, too—”

“All right. Jake! Jakey!”

A middle-aged man was already hurrying up the street toward them, from the other direction. He wore a workingman's clothes, with a revolver shoved into the belt, his long, drooping mustache twitching with worry.
Mr. Mendelssohn, the glazier.

“Thank God you came—” he started to say, bounding up the stoop to them.

“You have to help,” Deirdre repeated, as calmly as she was able, trying to get the words to make sense. “He'll beat her to death. I know he will. You have to help—”

Mr. Mendelssohn held her in place, his brown eyes narrowing.
Deirdre knew that she must appear half mad to him—with the blood, with her face and clothes blackened with smoke. She started to explain it to him again, though she knew there was no time, that he would kill them both—

“Ruth! It must be Ruth! You must help her!” the daughter shouted, and then the mother was yelling at him, too. Doors were opening up and down the rest of the block, men and women looking out. More men were walking down the street, the air thick even here with the smell of smoke—

“I have to protect my wife. The children—” Mendelssohn started to say.

“Then give me the gun,” Deirdre begged him. “Just for a minute. There's no
time!
”

Mrs. Mendelssohn made an impatient gesture.

“
Go,
Jakey!”

“All right!” He pushed them back inside, kissing her impatiently. “Go back in, go in! Don't open the door for nobody! I promise you, I'll be back!”

Then he was running with her. Other men on the street were calling to him, asking him what was happening, but Mendelssohn ignored them, understanding her urgency at last.

They ran back around the corner—the fire from the privvy lots, the shortcut, too hot by now for anyone to pass through, they could feel it from the sidewalk. Deirdre thinking bitterly,
That would have been a few seconds, that would have been a few seconds at least but for those idiots.
Not even noticing that the whole block was in imminent danger of burning down. The air itself broiling by now, so thick and heavy they were panting for breath after a few yards, the powdery black flakes of ash falling on their heads and shoulders like snow.

They turned the corner to Paradise Alley—and Mr. Mendelssohn pulled the pistol from his belt as soon as he saw the scene ahead, but he kept going. The white women jeering when they saw them approaching, but falling back out of the way when they saw the gun.

“Get away! Get away from there!” Mendelssohn called out angrily.

They moved back, but the men seemed oblivious to them—huddled where they were in the street, mesmerized by what they had down on the ground, still flailing and pulling and shouting, like men at a dice game, or a rat baiting. Mendelssohn had to go right up to them,
and yank them back by their vests and collars, pulling them away like a man pulling dogs out of a fight.

Until at last Deirdre could see them—Ruth's oldest boy, lying in the street, naked and senseless, at best. And Ruth still lying over him, still trying to shield him, while the men swarmed over her like so many flies. One of them was even now beating at them with an iron wheel rim, another with a fence post—another simply smashing at her with his fists and boots. Trying anything to get her to move, cursing and beating at her in their frenzy—while Ruth held on to her boy.

Deirdre could see then that she was still alive, still conscious. Turning to block their blows from her son however she could, with her arms and legs, with her own body, until at last Mr. Mendelssohn brought the gun up. Levelling it at the chest of the closest man and pulling the hammer back with a loud click, although even then he had to scream to get their attention.

“Stop it!”

The men paused at last. Looking slightly bemused but not at all frightened by the sight of the gun. Still panting from their exertions, crouching down, arms hanging loosely by their sides, their faces and clothes covered in soot and blood.

“Stop it this minute! Get away from them, now!”

Deirdre could see, even in their black faces, that none of them was her brother. None of them was Johnny Dolan.
Where had he gone?
She looked around fearfully, but she could see no sign of him—

“Whattaya you got to say about this?”

One of the men took a tentative step toward them, bringing his arm up. Mr. Mendelssohn turned the gun on him, and he stopped.

“I say it's a shame for you to hit a boy, and a woman like that, that's what I got to say about it. You great big men, to come here an' attack a boy. Why don't you try hitting a man, if you want to fight?”

“T'hell with you, then!” the man who had been beating them with the cart rung jeered angrily.

“You just stop this now an' get off the block,” Mendelssohn said, turning the gun on him now. “I swear to God, I'll give you all the hell you like if you don't.”

The crowd began to sway slightly now, coming forward. They looked no more worried than they had been by Maddy's gun, and she knew it was only a matter of time before someone produced a pistol,
even a rifle of their own. But she was worried more about one man than the whole lot of them, trying to spot him before he could surprise them. Wondering frantically,
Where is he? Where is Johnny—

There was a commotion at the end of the alley. She thought at first that it might be a fresh mob—but then she saw to her relief that it was the Mendelssohns' neighbors, striding over from their street. Most of them Germans, their faces serious and determined, armed with wooden staves and more guns of their own.

The mob fell back before them, but it still did not give way, the women jeering at the Germans. Deirdre feared for a moment that the whole street was about to erupt in a new battle, and she was wondering how she might move Ruth and her son to safety. But then she heard a new sound, growing, from just a few blocks away. It was unmistakable, growing steadily louder—a roll of drums.

The army was here.

The goblin-faced man who had led the mob onto the block stepped forward. Deirdre recognizing him now—that assistant foreman she had never trusted, down at Tom's old fire company.
Finn McCool, that was his name.
His skin and clothes remarkably clean of any of the soot and gore that blackened the rest of them, holding up his hand to the men around him as if he were in charge.

“Come on, boys, there is no use in standing here any longer! We've done the job. There's another nest of niggers 'round in Leonard Street, let's go clear them out!”

The mob gave three cheers for Leonard Street and began to move promptly off the block, pretending they were going in their own time but moving faster the louder the drums sounded. The Germans standing their ground around Mr. Mendelssohn, watching them go every step of the way.

Deirdre was already beside Ruth in the street, trying to pull her gently back, off her son. Ruth resisting at first, thinking she was still one of the men, no doubt—her grip on the boy like death itself. Deirdre had to get down by her ear, whisper to her that it was all right.

“It's me now, Ruth. It's me, he's all right.”

She let herself be moved at last then, trying to look up at Deirdre. But her eyes were closed, and covered in blood, her face beaten almost beyond any knowing.

“My boy,” she croaked. “My boy.”

“Yes. Yes, he's all right,” Deirdre told her, cradling her head in her hands. “You did a fine job, he's all right, now.”

“He's safe? He's alive?”

“Yes, he is. You saved him, you did.”

Ruth's head lolled back, unconscious, and Deirdre looked up, already barking out orders at the women on the street. They milled around harmlessly now, gawking at what had become of their block.

“Help me move her inside. Gentle, now! And go for a doctor at once, I don't care where you have to go. Help me with the boy now, get a blanket to cover him decently!”

The women complying meekly, helping her to lift up Ruth and her son, and carry them back into Deirdre's house. Moving them very gently, indeed. Their faces were even full of pity, Deirdre noticed, as they went about it.
All back to being people. Just like that, back to forgiveness and righteousness. For themselves, at least. Everything they did already forgotten.

She got Ruth and her son into beds and set the women to cleaning them up, and washing out their cuts and bruises. The boy, Milton, was unconscious but still breathing, she was surprised to see, despite what she had told Ruth. Deirdre washed him herself, wiping tenderly through the layer of ash to the elegant dark hue of his skin. He was cut and bruised all over his body, but she thought that none of the wounds looked too deep and nothing seemed to be broken.
If he could just live through the fever—

She knew that there was less hope for Ruth, much as she wanted there to be. Once Deirdre saw the extent of her injuries, she thought that it was a miracle she was alive at all. Her face, even cleaned of blood, was a mass of huge, purple-black bruises. Both of her eyes were still swollen shut, and her cheekbones were smashed. At least one arm was broken, and some ribs as well, and her forehead was already broiling. She lay there muttering things in her fever—Deirdre unsure of just what she was saying, or if she even knew she was there.