Captains and The Kings (5 page)

The priest spread out his hands humbly, but could not meet the boy's stare. "I believe she saw his soul, and he was waiting for her," he whispered. "It was a joyful reunion, and you must not grieve. They are safe with God." Now he looked at Joseph and what he saw made him wince. "It was two months ago, Joey. He died of the lung fever." I must not think, yet, thought Joseph. I must hear and know it all. "I believe he came for her, with the Mercy of God," said the priest. Joseph's white mouth twitched, but it did not lose its fixed sternness. "And my uncle, Father?" The priest hesitated. "He has married, Joey." "And he has no room for us." "Joey. You must understand. He is a poor man. The two dollars he sent you is a sacrifice. This is not a land of gold at all, at all. It is a land of bitter labor, and the worker is driven like cattle. It is all your uncle can do for you." Joseph chewed his underlip and the priest wondered at his impassiveness. The lad was young, and an orphan, and he was unmoved. Joseph said, "Then I need not spend the fifteen dollars to come back to New York from Philadelphia. There is naught to return to. There is no one." The priest spoke with compassionate eagerness. "You must keep the money, Joey. There is an orphanage in Philadelphia, managed by the Sisters of Charity, where these with us are bound. I, too, am to live there. They will welcome the children of Danny Armagh and love them as their own." He paused. "And it is possible that some good man, with money, will be joyful to adopt the little colleen, and Scan, and give them rich homes with warm fires and fine food and clothing." For the first time Joseph stirred and showed emotion. He stared at the priest in total amazement and outraged fury. "And is it mad you are, Father?" he exclaimed. "My brother, and my sister, my flesh and blood, given to strangers so that I will not know how they fare or where they are? Is that permitted in this America, that my kin be taken from me? If so, we will return to Ireland." "Joey," said the priest sadly, "I have the paper from your uncle, consenting." Joseph said, "And let me see that famous paper." Father O'Leary hesitated again, then felt inside his habit and brought forth a paper and silently gave it to Joseph. The boy read: "I hereby grant to religious authorities the privilege of conveying adoption in the matter of my deceased brother's children, Daniel Padraic Armagh, for they have neither father nor mother. Signed, John Scan Armagh." The paper was written poorly but clearly, and dated this morning, March ist, and signed. Joseph, slowly and deliberately, and watching the priest balefully all the while, tore the paper into shreds, over and over, and then stuffed the remnants in his pocket. The priest shook his head. "Joey, Joey. That will do no good. I have but to send to your uncle for another paper. Ah, Joey, you are not dull. I taught you myself for nine years. You are but thirteen. How can you care for Scan and the babe?" The blows of the last hours now began to ache agonizingly in Joseph, but he held himself still. His heart had started to run like a racer's, and his voice was stifled and gasping when he spoke. "Father, I will work. I am strong. I will find work in this America. The children will be with the Sisters until I can provide a home for them. I will pay the Sisters. They will not be on charity. I will pay. And if I pay they cannot be taken from me." The priest could have wept. "And what can you do, Joey?" "I can write a fine hand, and that you taught me, Father. I can work in the fields and in the manufactories. Perhaps there will be work in the oqjhanage a strong man can do, fires to keep, walls and roofs to repair. I have worked, Father, and I know what work is, and I do not fear it. But you must not take my brother and my sister from me! If you do, Father, I will kill myself, and that I swear to you!" "Joey, Joey!" cried the priest in horror. "It is a mortal sin even to speak of that!" "Mortal sin or not, that I shall do," said Joseph, and the priest, with dread, knew that he was not speaking as a child but as a man. "And you will be responsible for my lost soul." lie made a small secret grimace and something in him smiled with rage and contempt as he saw the priest's old anguished face. "You do not fear God," said the priest, and blessed himself. "I never feared anything," said the boy. "I shall not begin now. But mark me, Father, what I must do I will do." He looked at the priest with renewed hatred. "And that was what you were doing so long, Father, with my uncle this morning, while I waited. You were plotting against the children of Daniel Armagh, and telling my uncle how to write the letter. You were uncommonly sly, Father, but it has come to nothing." The priest studied him with both pity and dread. "We thought it best," he murmured. "We thought it best. It was no wickedness we plotted against you, Joey. But if it is your will, then so be it." He left Joseph then and returned to Sean who was licking his fingers after eating the apple. The priest's eyes filled with tears again, and he held Sean to his breast. "Mum?" said Scan, and his face twisted as he began to cry. "I want my Mum." Joseph stood beside the priest. He thrust the two-dollar bill into his hand. "This I owe you," he said. "I take no charity. Say a Mass for (my mother for what is left." He looked at the priest with daunting strength and aversion. Then he took his brother from the priest's knee and held his two hands in his own and looked down into the large tearful eyes. "Sean," he said, "I am your father, and your mother, now, and w-: are alone together. I will never leave you, Sean. I will never leave you." He lifted his hand less than in a vow than an imprecation, thought the priest with a dim terror. The ship was weighing anchor. It began to move from the harbor and the snow and rain hissed at the portholes and the wind howled in the lifted sails, and their last hope gone the men and women in the steerage put their faces in their hands.
Chapter 4
"No," said Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh, "I am not Irish. I am a Scotsman." "Well, you don't look Irish, that's for sure. But that's a funny name, Armagh. What is it?" "Scots," said Joseph. "An old Scots name. I am of the Established Church of Scotland." "Well, that's better than Irish," said the fat man, with a smirk. "Still and all, you're a foreigner. We don't like foreigners, in this country. What do you mean, the Established Church?" "Presbyterian," said Joseph. "I'm nothing, myself, though I'm no atheist," said the fat man. "Anyway, you're not a Roman. Hate Romans. Trying to take this country over for the Pope. And, you know what? What they do in them convents of theirs?" He snickered and leaned towards Joseph across his huge belly, and whispered obscenities to him. Joseph's face remained shut and smoothly bland. He kept his hands loose, for he wanted to kill. The fat man tilted his cigar and chuckled. "Well, anyways. How old are you?" "Eighteen," said Joseph, who was sixteen. The fat man nodded. "Big strong fella, too. And you got the mean look I like. Hold your own. That's what I need, driving these big wagons. Know anything about horses?" "Yes." "Don't talk much, do you? Just yes or no. Like that, too. More men been hung by their tongues than by the rope, hell. Well, now. You know how these blue-noses in Pennsylvania are. The blue-noses are agin drink of any kind, with them Pennsylvania Dutch and their funny hats and hacks. Amish." The fat man spat into a spittoon lavishly. "So, the po-leese don't like wagons hauling beer and such on Sundays. Godless." The fat man laughed again, and then fell into a fit of asthmatic coughing, his puffy face and bald head turning scarlet. "But there's folks who need their drinks on Sundays, and who should be agin them? And saloons run short. sq, we haul the beer and likker on Sundays when we get calls. Saloons ain't supposed to stay open on Sundays, but they do a good backdoor business. That's where we come in. You haul the beer and likker in a nice respectable-looking wagon with 'grain-feed' on it, and you deliver and collect, and that's all there is to it." "Except the police," said Joseph. "Yeh," said the fat man, suddenly and sharply scrutinizing the boy again. "'Cept the po-leese. Ain't likely to bother you, though. Just drive sober and straight. Farm boy going home or something, or out for a Sunday lark, driving his boss' wagon. Just don't lose your head. You don't look like the kind, though, that would. Feed bags on top of the stuff. Let 'em look if they want to. Invite 'em to. That makes them sure it's all right. Then you drive on." "And if they do more than just take a look?" The fat man shrugged. "That's what I'm paying you a whole four dollars for one day's work, a week's wages, son. You get stupid. Someone gave you a little money to drive down a few streets. You don't know where, and you're supposed to meet a fella somewheres on a corner, and he's supposed to take over. That's all you know, see? The po-leese confiscates the stuff, and you get thrown in the pokey for a couple days, and that's all. When you get out you get ten dollars, from me. And the next Sunday you're on the job again. Simple. On a different route." Joseph considered. Four dollars a week! He made but four for six days a week, twelve hours a day, in a sawmill on the river. It would come to eight dollars a week, a fortune. He looked at the fat man and loathed him. It was not just the fact that Joseph suspected that here was no mere grain- and-feed and harness merchant but a probable bootlegger transporting illegal whiskey from Virginia and adjoining Southern states. (Joseph, remembering Ireland, had no reverence for duly constituted authority, mainly British.) But the man exuded a dirty slyness and crafty evil that revolted him. "If you're thinking that I wouldn't pay you the ten dollars," said the man. "I've no fear of that," said Joseph. "After all, if you didn't, I'd go to the police, myself, and let my tongue wag." The fat man howled with laughter and slapped Joseph's knee. "That's what I like! A man with spirit. Loyal, that's what it is. I treat you fair, you treat me fair. No quarrels, no argufying. Fair and square. And you'll deliver right, too. I'm a man that keeps my word. And I got friends that help me, if a man does me wrong. Understand?" "You mean thugs," said Joseph. "Hell, you're a man after my own heart, Joe! I love you. Call 'em thugs if you want to. Who cares? I put all my cards on the table, see? Nothing up my sleeve. Come next Sunday. Six in the morning. 'Til six at night. Then you get your money, see?" Joseph stood up. "Thank you. I will be here at six next Sunday, Mr. Squibbs." He walked out of the gloomy anonymous little building that stood on the edge of the small town of Winfield, Pennsylvania. It was a wooden building and held but two offices and two desks and a few tables and chairs. On the side in huge white-washed letters was the legend: squibbs bros. dealers in wholesale grain and feed. harness. Behind the office building was a vast and well-kept stable of big dappled horses and vans. Behind this building was a warehouse of bagged corn and other grains, and harness. It was seemingly very legitimate. The warehouse and stables were full of men, not openly working-for that was forbidden on the Sabbath in Pennsylvania-but merely caring for the horses and watering and grooming and feeding them. Some saw Joseph emerge from the offices and studied him acutely, smoking their pipes, their caps pulled down over their brows. New fellow. Tall and hard-looking, and steady. Trust old Squibbs to pick them right. Never made but one mistake, and that was a smooth Federal spy, and nobody ever saw that one again anywhere. Nobody. And trust old Squibbs, too. If a wagon was ever traced back to him- and that was easy, his name on the wagons-he didn't know nothing, either. Some trusted employee had taken advantage of him, that's all, doing some illegal work for some bootlegger or somebody on Sundays. Old Squibbs had the chief of police in his pocket, and was a big contributor to the Party. Even knew the mayor, Tom Hennessey. Of course, the police, and even-body, knew it was old Squibbs all the time, but he never got hauled in, no sir. And none of his men ever served more than a day in the pokey, either. All the police and the Big Fellows asked was that nobody talked and made no fuss, though they had to take a little action when some blue-nose suspected and complained. Just a little action, every now and then, to keep the citizens quiet, and besides old Squibbs did do a feed and grain business open to anyone's inspection, and very profitable, too. It was the "Sunday lads" who sometimes got into trouble, not the regular boys on the weekdays. Old Squibbs took care of his own, and you could say that for him, and the good wages. Winfield was one hundred fifty miles from Pittsburgh, a dun little town which had no major industry but the sawmills on the river. Yet, it was a rich town, for many of its men dealt in illegalities, including slave- running, and other vices such as the transportation of farm girls and women to the large cities. The inhabitants preferred that the town seem to be poverty-stricken and humble, unworthy of notice and scrutiny, supported by its mills and the prosperous farmers beyond its confines. Even the very rich men lived in plain clapboard gray houses or small houses built of yellow sandstone on small lots, and their women dressed plainly and they had only traps or inexpensive buggies and one or two horses, usually kept in the local livery stable. No one was ostentatious. No one displayed lavish jewelry, or silk gowns or elegant shoes or the latest fashion or stocks fastened with pearl and diamond pins, or brocaded cravats or vests. And everyone spoke in subdued and decent voices and no one was louder in denunciation of "fast horses and fast women" than the men who dealt in them, and their friends. "Dens of vice" were almost unknown and never spoken of, though they flourished also, discreetly, and expensively and prosperously, and opulent enough for Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. Everyone supported the churches, and everyone attended services on Sundays, and everyone cultivated the reputation of being "God-fearing." All the ladies belonged to temperance societies, especially those ladies whose husbands dealt in the enormous bootleg trade and owned the condemned saloons. All decried slavery and were prominent in abolitionist organizations, especially those who, taking advantage of the Dred Scott decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, hunted and then returned slaves across the borders, and collected large sums for their efforts. Some of them, who knew an excellent thing when it presented itself under their respectable noses, even had agents in the South who induced slaves to run away and paid for their passage across the border, there to be held for a few days and then returned to their owners. All spoke of "tolerance" and "brotherly love" and honored William Penn, and no community was more ruthless and exploitative and bigoted than Winfield.