Bloodlines (8 page)

O'Connor followed suit, then shivered as his bare feet hit the cold beach.

"You'll be warmed up in a minute," Jack said.

The moon shone bright over the water and sand. Jack began to show O'Connor how to hold his fists, how to throw his weight into a punch, how to protect himself from a counterpunch. The sand both braced and slowed his feet, and twice when he overstepped, it cushioned his falls. Some of Dermot's lessons came back to him, but now made more sense.

Jack rolled up his pants legs and dropped to his knees, held both hands up. "Okay," he said, "come at me. Hard as you like."

After a few hesitant punches, Jack said, "Harder."

O'Connor punched a little harder.

"Harder," Jack said again. "Pretend I've been mean to Maureen."

O'Connor began walloping Jack's open palms.

After a few minutes of punishment, Jack yelled, "Okay, okay! Truce! Uncle! Hell, I'm not going to be able to hold a pen tomorrow." At O'Connor's look of horror, he said, "Just a joke, kid. Just a joke. I'm fine. How are you?"

O'Connor was breathing hard, and as Jack had predicted, he felt warm from his exertions. But the breeze off the water was cooling him, the sand was soft beneath his feet, and he knew he had boxed better this time than he ever had with Dermot. He smiled. "I'm fine."

Jack stood and brushed off his legs and feet. "We'll have another lesson tomorrow."

"Do you mean it?" O'Connor asked.

"Sure. But don't try this out on anybody until you've had a chance to really learn what you're doing."

"Oh, I don't aim to start fights."

"Kid," Jack said as they began to put on their socks and shoes, "if I thought you were aiming to start fights, I wouldn't have taught you anything about boxing."

"Who taught you?"

"My father."

O'Connor was silent, suddenly seeming to need all his concentration for his shoelaces.

"Your dad ever teach you anything?" Corrigan asked.

O'Connor looked up. "Oh, sure. Lots of things. When I was little, he taught me how to tie my shoes. And when I get big enough to shave, I'll know how, 'cause he used to let me watch him do that. And he used to sing, so I learned a lot of songs from him."

Corrigan was quiet as they began to walk back to the Wrigley Building, heading up American Avenue. Nearby to the north, eerily silhouetted in the moonlight, were hills so crowded with oil derricks they seemed cloaked in a strange black forest of identical leafless trees. "That's where my dad worked," O'Connor said, pointing. "He built some of those wells."

"Roughnecking--that's some of the hardest work anywhere," Jack said.

O'Connor nodded. "My dad likes hard work. Maureen remembers him better than I do--from before the accident, I mean. He never drank in those days. Not a drop. And even now, I know...I know it's not what he really likes. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so, yes."

"I keep praying that the Lord will cure him. I don't understand why he doesn't. I mean, Jesus suffered on the cross, but he didn't stay up there for years at a time, now, did he?"

"I'm not the man to teach you about religion, Conn. I'll be a poor enough boxing coach."

Jack saw that the boy was making some earnest reply, but just at that moment, a Red Car came by, rumbling its way down the rails to the next stop.

"What did you say?"

"I said, never mind boxing--I mean, I won't mind learning it. But what I really want you to teach me, Mr. Jack Corrigan, is how to be a newspaper-man."

**CHAPTER 8

THE NURSE CAME BACK TO CHECK ON CORRIGAN, BREAKING THE SPELL reminiscence had cast on O'Connor. She attempted another round of banter with O'Connor, but after his third one-word reply gave it up and left him to brood over Corrigan alone.

He watched Jack, still filled with wonder that the man had taken an eight-year-old boy's ambitions so seriously. Jack had told O'Connor to begin by keeping a diary, to note what he had seen and heard each day, and his thoughts on any matter that struck his fancy. "That will be private," he said. "So I'm going to trust you to do that on your own. I'll give you assignments to turn in to me."

O'Connor had borrowed paper from Maureen that evening and wrote, "Jack Corrigan told me this will help me learn how to be a newspaper reporter. I hope he is right. P.S.: He gave me a boxing lesson, too." A week later, Maureen presented him with a gift, a small cloth-bound diary with gilt-edged pages and a lock and key. She had earned the money doing mending for the lady their mother worked for, and O'Connor knew it must have taken the whole of her earnings to buy it. When he wanted to pay her back with his lucky silver dollar, she said, "Oh no--never give away your luck. Besides, this is an investment on my part. I want to be able to brag that my brother is the famous newspaper reporter Conn O'Connor, whose name is on the front page of the Express. So you do what Mr. Corrigan tells you and fill up this diary."

Several months later, another visitor had stopped near his corner.

Mitch Yeager stood eyeing him for long, nerve-wracking moments before he approached O'Connor. O'Connor knew that Yeager had managed to weasel his way out of the jury-tampering charges, a subject Jack had discussed bitterly and at length with his protege. Yeager had power and powerful friends. He even had influence over Old Mr. Wrigley, according to Jack, because Old Mr. Wrigley--under pressure from advertisers who were Mitch Yeager's business partners--had forbidden Jack to write any more stories about Yeager. That made O'Connor angry, but it also made him believe that Mitch Yeager was someone to fear.

Not much older than Dermot, O'Connor thought, watching him come closer. But Yeager's youth didn't soften anything about the man.

He stood staring at the boy. Conn swallowed hard and said, "Paper, mister?"

He heard laughter behind him and saw Yeager look up with a scowl. He turned to see Jack Corrigan.

"Picking on schoolkids now, Mitch?" Jack said. "You start bullying Wrigley's paperboys, he might be willing to let the ink flow again."

"The kid would have been better off going to school instead of hanging out in a courtroom," Yeager said. He looked back at O'Connor. "A kid can get in trouble playing hooky."

Jack put a hand on O'Connor's shoulder. Conn was ashamed to feel himself shaking beneath that hand.

"He's a smart kid," Jack said. "Why don't you be smart, too, Mitch?"

Yeager gave a small nod. "Sure. A smart man can wait for what he wants. Someday you'll find out just how smart I can be, Jack Corrigan."

He turned and walked away.

"Who told him?" Conn asked, his mouth dry.

"I don't know, Conn," Jack said. "Could have been someone on the paper, or a cop, or someone in the D.A.'s office..." He frowned, then sighed. "No, it's probably my fault."

"Your fault? No!" he said fiercely. "You never would have peached on me to the likes of Mitch Yeager!"

Jack smiled ruefully. "Appreciate the faith, kid, but my guess would be that Lillian told Mitch just to spite me. She's a little irritated at me."

"What does she care? She's married now. To that rich Linworth fellow."

Jack didn't say anything.

"She wanted to marry you," O'Connor said, deciding to get something that had been troubling him out in the open, "but she doesn't like me. I made her mad at you."

"No, kid. No, that's not true. As far as Lily was concerned, I was just fun and games. Hobnobbing with the hoi polloi, that's all. She flirted with men like me and Mitch because it was exciting to her, but she was always going to marry money. When you're older, you'll understand."

"Does it make you sad?"

"Hell, no," Jack said.

After a moment, O'Connor ventured to say, "I'm glad you didn't marry her."

Jack laughed. "So am I. She's got one hell of temper, and she's probably mad at both of us. At Mitch, too. Probably told him that a kid caught him at his game--kind of thing she'd do, just to piss him off."

The memories of those early days with Corrigan were bittersweet to O'Connor. The years had brought many changes in his life, some good, some bad. Jack Corrigan's friendship had remained a constant.

"Through the best of times, and the worst of times,"he said softly to himself.

Some of the worst came quickly to mind. Jack's near-fatal car accident, which left him with the limp that kept him out of the service. A dozen other dark days, but without any hesitation he could name the worst of these: April 6,1945.

Maureen and his mother had both found high-paying jobs at one of the war plants--Mercury Aircraft. It had allowed the family to move into a nicer place. Maureen worked days, then took care of their father in the evenings while their mother worked second shift. O'Connor worked part-time, from six to eleven, four evenings a week at the Express--by then he was a copyboy, and had even sold a few stories to the paper. Despite the late nights, he did well in school and was close to graduating.

He remained devoted to his sister, and protective of her. Every evening, when Maureen's shift ended at five, he was there at the gates of Mercury Aircraft, waiting to walk her home. Often, a neighbor who worked at the plant would join them on this walk, but he liked it best when it was just the two of them, away from their neighbor and away from their parents, able to talk and dream of the future. They did that more often in those early days of April. The war was coming to an end, it seemed--the Allies had crossed the Rhine.

O'Connor knew the end of the war meant that men would be coming home and taking their jobs back, and that Maureen and his mother might lose their jobs, but he couldn't be sorry about it. Who could think of that after all these years of war? When you saw Gold Stars hanging in windows of those who'd lost loved ones, who didn't wish for every mother's son to come back home safely? One of his older sisters was a war widow. O'Connor's only regret was that it looked as if it would all be over before he was old enough to enlist.

If the war didn't end soon, though, he feared Maureen would end up an old maid, taking care of their parents until she was past the age of marrying. He was seventeen, and felt sure that Maureen was nearly at a nuptial dead- line--that she only had until she was about twenty-two to find a husband. His mother and older sisters had all been married before the age of nineteen.

It was just the two of them still at home, Conn and Maureen. Dermot had moved out to a place of his own years ago. Most of the care of their father had fallen to Maureen and his mother, although O'Connor shaved him. He also took on many of the household tasks that might have otherwise been his father's.

O'Connor had been glad when Maureen took the job in the factory, thinking she'd meet more fellows. She had a job in purchasing, so she got to wear a dress to work--his mother had a higher-paying job, on the line, and wore slacks, which had nearly thrown Da into a fit until he saw the check she brought home.

Dresses or no, he lost hope for Maureen--he soon realized that with the war on, it was nothing but women and old men there at the aircraft plant, anyway. She hadn't a chance of meeting a man who was near her age, unless he had some problem that made him 4-F. She told him that he was judging them too harshly, and that if he didn't stop standing by the gates of Mercury Aircraft, scowling at every man who talked to her after work, she'd never meet anyone.

Once, when he complained that one of her dates was 4-F, she reminded him that Jack was 4-F because of his ankle--but the moment she said it, she apologized. They both knew how hard it was for Jack not to be able to enlist. After that, O'Connor never used a man's handicap to as a reason for Maureen not to date him. Since he was good at finding information on people, it wasn't too difficult for him to find other reasons to criticize a would-be suitor.

He began to suspect that she had stopped telling him about the men she was interested in. Lately, he noticed she wore a heart-shaped locket, hidden beneath her blouse, but he saw it fall free of its hiding place when she bent to pick up a paper she had dropped. He questioned her about it, and she told him she had purchased it herself to keep men from annoying her--told them she had a steady beau. "Who's annoying you?" he wanted to know, firing up.

"You are!" she told him.

That Friday night in April, he didn't meet her after work. He had a night off from his job at the Express, and he had a date. For months now, he had been one of the many young men who sought the attention of another high school senior, Ethel Gibbs, and she had finally agreed to go out with O'Connor, surely the shyest member of her court. Maureen had been more excited about the prospect of her brother going on a date than perhaps he had been himself. A vicarious bit of pleasure for her, he thought, since she seldom dated.