City of Dreams (30 page)

“Where you been, Pa?”

“Doin’ a little job for Squints O’Day. Fixin’ a leaky tank bottom up on a roof.” He handed the boy a tool belt. “Let’s go to work.”

And they headed for Daggett Tavern. . . .

Uncle Billy didn’t show up at the job that day.

The father said that was not surprising. Billy often missed work after a holiday, and it was better not to have him throwing up every time he walked out to the wagon.

On the ride home that afternoon, the father told Timothy that if Uncle Billy asked again, they should stick to the story: they had found some curious pieces of paper—don’t call them bonds or money—and Boss Plunkitt was simply looking into it for them.

“So long as Billy gets his share, he’ll be happy,” the father said. “But I don’t want him blabbin’. It might get back to the McGillicuddys.”

Then Timothy said, “I never saw you take the box out of the house, Pa. Where is it?”

“Hid good, son. Someplace so safe, not even your mother would think of it. And there it’ll stay till we’re good and ready to bring it out.”

“Can you give me a clue anyways?”

The father did not answer immediately because a train came thundering over. Once it passed, he brushed a few bits of coal ash from his son’s shoulder, clucked to the horses, and said, “Remember the cloud of commerce I told you about the other day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, the clouds are filled with rain to pour down water on the good and the bad alike. Water makes things grow. It washes away dirt and sins, too, if you been baptized. In America, the cloud of commerce pours down money so we can grow better lives. Now, money don’t wash away sins like baptism does, but havin’ it makes it easier to live the straight and narrow, since you don’t always have to be schemin’ how to get it. Without water, there’s no life. Without money, there’s no America . . . or no New York anyway.”

“That’s it?”

The father chuckled. “You asked for a clue, and I give you a philosophy. Be thankful you have a father so smart.”

The boy might have pressed further, but something caught his eye as they came into the block between Forty-eighth and Forty-seventh.

McGillicuddy’s Saloon, also known as Mother Mag’s, was about halfway down the block on the west side. And there was Strong, leaning against the building with his arms folded—

“Like he owns the street,” said the father.

—and he was talking to a burly woman who wore a man’s shirt and trousers tucked into cowboy boots.

“Himself and the miserable bitch who whelped him,” said the father.

Tim had heard about the woman called Mother Mag. People said she sharpened her fingernails to points, so that if a man didn’t pay for his beer, she’d give his face a scratch so deep it would leave a scar. She carried a carving knife in her boot. And she kept a sawed-off shotgun behind the bar.

Then Timothy noticed Uncle Billy staggering up the street. “Hey, Pa—”

“I see him.” Six-Pound Dick gave out with a whistle.

Uncle Billy turned to the wagon, waved them away, then lurched into the saloon.

“Damn fool is on a toot,” said Six-Pound.

The boy knew what that was. The neighborhood was full of men who went “on a toot” now and then. The word made the deed sound harmless, but a toot often led to a beaten wife, or kicked kids, or spilled beans somewhere in somebody’s life.

“Ain’t you gonna stop him, Pa?”

“You can’t talk to Billy when he’s drinkin’. You can’t control him, either. If I try to stop him, he’s like to take my head off, then tear that saloon to pieces.”

And Strong McGillicuddy shouted to Six-Pound Dick, “Don’t you worry none. We’ll see he don’t drink too much.”

“You do that,” shouted Six-Pound Dick. “And if he ain’t in work tomorrow, I’ll come and see you.”

“You do that.” Strong tipped his hat. “But don’t bring no hammers. They give my brother the shakes.”

Another train came rumbling over, and the Rileys rode on.

T
HEY TURNED AT
Forty-sixth and rode down to Eleventh Avenue, to O’Day’s Cooperage, on the west side of the street.

Men were working late in the big dusty yard and in the one-story shop next to it.

“Hello, Squints!” cried the father.

Half a dozen carpenters looked up from sawhorses and workbenches.

But it was easy to pick out Squints. He was the one with the big belly under his apron and the narrowest eyes the boy had ever seen. They looked like two slits cut into the fat of his face.

“You fellers sure are workin’ late on a hot day.” Six-Pound Dick jumped down.

“We work late ’cause we got work,” shouted Squints. “This is gettin’ to be a big business. Water tanks goin’ up on roofs all over New York. If stayin’ in business means twelve-hour days, well”—Squints squinted at the others—“never a man here afraid of hard work.”

“That’s the spirit, Squintsy, my boy, the spirit that made America.”

“You got more good wood for me?”

Six-Pound Dick began pulling long planks off the back of his wagon, each of them marked with an X. “Take a look at these. Lifted nice and careful by my own son here. Say hello to Tim.”

Squints looked at the boy and opened his eyes a bit wider, as if it was something he saved for newcomers. “Hello, son.”

Timothy tugged at his hat. “Hello, Mr. O’Day.”

“Nice boy, Dick. You’re trainin’ him right.” Squints examined one of the boards, squinted down its length, ran his hand over the surface. “Fir twelve-footers, eight-inch wideboard, never waxed. That’s good.”

“There’s two more rooms of’em,” said Six-Pound Dick.

“Well, it’s plenty dry,” said Squints, “but I don’t like it that there’s nail holes.”

“They’ll swell as soon as the water hits ’em. Use a double thickness, they’ll make a fine tank bottom, and remember, Squintsy, my boy, what you call me—”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘the best tank-bottom man in New York.’ But still—”

While the men haggled, the boy climbed down and walked around the yard. He was curious about the work the men did. His father told him that it was a good trait, curiosity about a man’s trade, because it would help him to appreciate his own work.

He noticed that all the carpenters were a bit squint-eyed, as if they were related.

“Come to watch the men work, have you, son?” said one of them.

“You fellers are cuttin’ and shapin’ and planin’,” said Timothy. “But I don’t see much hammerin’. And where’s all the water tanks?”

“We’re coopers,” said the man. “Good coopers don’t need nails. We cut the wood for the tanks down here, but we build ’em and band ’em in place, right on top of the buildings. We’ll cover New York in tanks before we’re done.”

“That you’ll do, so long as we deliver the wood.” Six-Pound shoved a few bills into his pocket and called to his son. “See you with another load tomorrow, lads.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Six-Pound Dick woke Timothy at five thirty and told him it was settin’ up to be another hot day, so it was best that they start work early.

In the front room, Uncle Billy lay snoring. He had come stumbling to their door just after supper, too drunk to find his way to the El. His appearance had calmed the little household, because over dinner, the father had announced that he was thinking of going out for a bit of a stroll, and mother and sons knew that he meant to go looking for Billy, even if it meant walking into McGillicuddy’s. And no good would have come of that.

Six-Pound gave Billy a kick that raised a few loud snores. “Let him sleep it off. He’ll find his way to the job when his head stops poundin’.”

Billy caught his breath in the back of his throat, farted, and kept on snoring.

A
FTER AN HOUR
of pulling nails from X-marked floorboards on the third floor of the ancient house, Timothy decided to take a break. His father was working somewhere downstairs and had left the boy to his own devices.

So he climbed into the cupola for his daily look at the city of dreams. He leaned against the little interior railing, gazed south, and dreamed.

And the first person to appear in his mind’s eye was Doreen Walsh. What would she say if he invited her up here? What would she smell like in the hot little space? What would she feel like if he pressed against her? And it started to happen. And it was not unpleasant. So he leaned a bit harder against the railing and thought of Doreen’s pretty breasts pressed against . . . any part of him.

But his reverie ended with the sound of voices in the yard below. At first, he thought Uncle Billy had arrived. He peered down, but the big oak blocked his view. Then he heard one of the horses make a noise. Then he thought he heard something fall, something as heavy as a horse.

He started to climb down.

But his father was rushing up the stairs, looking into the room where Timothy had been working, calling his name.

“Up here, Pa!”

Six-Pound Dick appeared in the shaft of light directly under the cupola. “No matter what you hear, stay there and don’t come down.”

“But, Pa!”

“And quiet.”

“But—”

“No matter what you hear.
Quiet
.” The father slammed the trapdoor.

Then the boy heard the ladder sliding back into place, locking him in.

He dropped to his knees and put his ear to the floor of the cupola. At first, there was silence. Then low voices. Then the voices grew louder. It sounded as if there were three, four, perhaps five. He couldn’t be sure. Then he heard the sounds of fighting, thumping, banging, cursing, and raised voices, all but his father’s.

His father’s voice stayed low and cold.

Timothy thought he heard someone ask, “Where are them little papers?” A muffled response. Then a question he could not understand and . . . did he hear the words, Billy the Drunk? “Where did you hide them little papers? The funny money?” A muffled response. “Then where’s the boy?” Another muffled response. Then the sound of more beating. Then a
bang
! As if someone had slammed a six-pound sledge off of something.

Timothy had to get out, get out somehow, get out and get down, get out and get down and help his father. The cupola was six narrow windows creating a glass hexagon. He pulled on the first. Stuck. Then the second. The same. But the third window, the one that faced east, slid open.

He put a foot out onto the heavy slate. If he could skitter down to the little dormer below, he could catch it, then swing a leg around and slide down the side of it and step through the window. Then he’d use that pinch bar like a club and rescue his father.

So long as he didn’t wet himself.

He got both feet out of the window and held tight to the sill of the cupola.

The slope was not too steep. He could do it. He could go down ass first, on all fours, down onto the little peak of the dormer, then slowly slide . . .

He touched the sun-broiled slate with the palm of his hand and it felt like a hot stove. He muffled a cry. He lost his balance and began to slip down the scalding roof. He hit the dormer and rolled and kept going, but he grabbed the corner of the fascia board, where the dormer cut into the roof, held tight, and stopped just a foot from the gutter.

A branch of the old oak reached over the roof and shaded this spot, a cool little valley between the dormers.

“Hey, kid!” the voice growled from somewhere. “You up here? Show yourself. We won’t hurt you.”

Timothy grabbed the rafters of the dormer and pulled himself close against the side of it.

“Kid! Come out. Come out, wherever you are!” The voice came from the cupola.

Timothy did not recognize it and could not see the cupola. So the guy in the cupola could not see him.

“Come on, kid. Show yourself and we’ll call a doctor for your old man.”

Timothy Riley pulled himself tighter against the wall of the dormer, and a slate began to slide. He stopped it before it went over the edge and gave away his position to anyone who might be down on the ground.

“Come on, kid! Your pa told us you was up here. Quit hidin’. He told us what you found. Just show us where it is and we’ll leave you alone.”

The bonds
. They had come for the bonds. But how did they know? Plunkitt? Uncle Billy?

“Hey, kid!”

Whatever they had done to his father they would do to him. So he lay there on the sloping roof, pulled tight against the wall, half hidden in the shadow of the old oak.

“Fuck it,” said the man in the cupola. “He must’ve stayed home or somethin’.”

Had it not been for the shade of the oak tree, the boy would not have been able to stay on that hot roof. But he waited until he was certain they had left, ten minutes, fifteen.

Then he crawled toward the dormer on the south side, but when he tried to raise the window, the stop broke and it dropped like a stone. So . . . slide to the other dormer, the one with the open window? But the tree branches were closer.

He had climbed down the side of the tenement fire escape once, so he was not afraid. He grabbed the big branch, reminded himself not to look down, then shimmied out to the trunk. When he got there, he fit his foot into the knothole and heard the owl stir. Then he lowered himself to the next branch, then the one after that. He was halfway down the tree when he saw the horses.

Both were dead, their throats cut, and a river of blood flowed down the drive toward Broadway. He dropped the last ten feet and ran into the house.

H
E FOUND HIS
father on the grand staircase.

They had taken a six-pound hammer to him. His face was battered. There was blood coming from his ears. His eyes seemed oddly swollen, as if something was pressing against them from behind.

Timothy could not believe that the pulp he was looking at had been his father’s face. He could not believe that any of this had happened. But he was certain that he saw what was left of his father’s mouth curl into a smile at the sight of him.

“Pa.”

He felt his father’s hand close around his, saw his father’s lips move.

“What, Pa. I . . . I can’t . . .”

“The bonds. They . . . they . . .”

The words faded. Then the father moved his other hand on the floor. He was holding his chalk, and with it, he wrote an X on the step.