Exile on Bridge Street (25 page)

“The fook ya doin', Darby? Y'ain' even watchin' the entrances. . . . Richie?”

“Richie ain' here, Bill,” James Quilty says.

“Oh yeah . . . Frankie?”

“Yeah, Bill?” Byrne answered.

“Man the posts, we gotta unload this ship out here.”

Confused, Byrne looks at Darby, then leaves.

“Let's go Darby, for fuck's sake,” Bill slurs.

Walking out with Bill, Darby notices some twenty laborers lined up ready for work, but does not ask where they came from. Keeps his tongue. He immediately finds that a few of them look Italian, points at them, “Wops.”

“Wha?” Bill says, turns round. “Never fookin' learn, do yaz? Never learn, no fookin' wops in Red Hook,” Lovett screams in the face of one man, then pushes another.

On the deck of the ship above, a lone captain is looking down at the assembly of laborers. Counts the number of them with a finger.

The Italian man that has just been screamed at looks down the line to his left, then nods. Looks down the line to his right, winks.

“
Il mio nome è Sammy de Angelo
,” he says with a boasting, confident stare while pointing at his own chest. “Dis is our neighba'hood, so says Dinny Mee'an.
Ora si muore
.”

Sammy de Angelo's bubbly lips curl as he pulls from his coat a pistol and points it at Bill Lovett's face, fires. Smoke plumes out from the gun as Lovett falls to the ground holding his head, blood leaking over his knuckles and inside the arm of his coat.

Sammy de Angelo walks with a swagger and a proud, downturned mouth toward Lovett for another bullet to the brain. He is cocksure amidst the chaos as two other Italians jump out of the line with clubs and knives and beat upon Frankie Byrne's crew and Joey Behan. All the rest scamper away, wanting nothing to do with the violence.

“Ga'bye, Pulcinella,” de Angelo says to Lovett, but is tackled by Darby Leighton.

Another shot and a plume of smoke comes from the brawling group below the ship captain on his deck. He watches the laborers struggle from his belly now, cannot know the difference between them. Who is good and who is bad, wrong and right he would not know.

From the ground and the scuffling, Bill Lovett stands. The right side of his face and head immersed in blood. Stands quickly, his lips red, cheeks blossomed in a natural rouge, one floppy ear covered in a thick, maroon fluid. He wipes his mouth and spits within the struggle and jumps on the outstretched arm of Sammy de Angelo with his knees. Jumps on the arm that is holding the gun. Ripping it from the fingers, Bill shoots one of the Italians clubbing Joey Behan. Shoots him in the ribs from a very close range. The man looks at Bill gravely and begins running sideways toward Union Street, holding his lower trunk. By the time Bill has turned to the other side, another Italian is running off in a different direction toward the perimeter and the safety of tenements. Lovett throws the gun to the ground behind him and pulls out his own .45.

Sammy de Angelo looks up to see his Pulcinella standing over him, blood running down the clown's face and arm, teeth gritting and a terrific stare in his eye. Held by four men, de Angelo is then shown the .45 that is to rip the life out of him. With only seconds, Sammy lips his lone request in a soft whisper, “Save our souls.”

Darby Leighton hears a deep crack in the air by his ear. Holding de Angelo down by the neck he watches, blinks his eyes as the head bursts. He feels the tension in the body of the man suddenly depart and go loose. He stands, almost losing his balance and looking at the stained pavement where once there was a face. Looks to Bill Lovett who is speaking to him, but he cannot hear a thing.

CHAPTER 21

Lonergans' Tumult

M
AY
, 1917

I
T
'
S
A
S
UNDAY
AT
THE
D
OCK
Loaders' Club. Filled to overflowing, yet it's a muffled crowd. And when the conversations move past the whispering, they are hushed by Paddy Keenan and others. Stilled to respect the occasion for grieving.

Every man claimed by The White Hand has dressed himself in his cleanest togs on this day, if he has it. The regulars have a place on the bar while the rest spill outside onto the sidewalk and the street, though every man's movements are gentle, somber. On their faces reside the promise of no faction fighting on this day, yet by the end of it that promise will wane. But for the moment they are shoulder to shoulder with their voices low. Soft sips of beer are pressed to lips in the morning's mourning, for it's at Dinny's order the whiskey and home brew are under lock and key. I'd never seen the saloon so packed with sorrowful men, but with the war here now I'd see many more wakes and rites and processions. The passing of a child, though—it brings the heart out of us.

The United States government has committed itself to the war in Europe, and so it needs to whip up support, fill the ranks. In the Navy Yard and outer neighborhoods we can hear the patriotic banding through the streets. Hovering over us, it seems. The age-old summoning. Even as we are busy at our ways. Gangs of firemen in their sashes and scepters and banners and brassy, out-of-tune horns and their puffed chests stamping a few blocks away in militant files, with elderly Civil War veterans egging them on. In the background we hear their soldiering with their snares
a-rowdy-dow-dowing
and their bass drums round the necks
a-ploppety-plop-plopping
. Though they mostly avoid our neighborhoods for fear of being pelted with stone confetti from the open-windowed mothers above warning them away from their little ones. Patrolmen, too, singing along and joined by army men to stick posters of recruitment on light posts, gluing them to brick walls, the old slogans and the glories of war.

The papers can't get enough of the frenzy of going “over there” and with all of it, even some of our own disappear off the docks without notice, enlisting quietly of their own will and slipping on Navy white or Army gray. And off they go to forever, as it's to be a war that chews up the poor in great bunches yet again. Johnny gets his gun to go and kill the Hun in France for America at England's gain while the quiet in Irishtown keeps, as long as Dinny Meehan is in charge.

Next to The Lark and Big Dick at the bar, Red Donnelly looks at his union card, shaking his head. Henry Browne from the Navy Yard ILA at his side, holding his own.

“My father was killed by a union man,” Red says. “Now look at me.”

The Lark and Cinders Connolly consoling him from two sides.

It is on the lips of every man in the murmurs of this Sunday morning. Banding with the ILA and making a deal with Italians to establish a border. Partitioning Red Hook; north for us, south for them. Some say it is a contract exchanging the soul of us. That letting them cross the Gowanus Canal is a sign. An indication. Don't see how we are to benefit from it, the gain for us too difficult to wrap heads around or ingest. Some even go on to say that it was the New York Dock Company and Wolcott's plan all along, dividing our territory.

“Five short years ago, pushin' The Black Hand off the Red Hook brought us all together,” I hear one man whisper. “Now this.”

“Sold us out,” another whispers. “Red Hook was always ours.”

I sip from my beer, listening to the men.

“Hoosh now,” Paddy tells them.

And as the voices lower, I can hear in the distance the whining of bagpipes a few blocks off. Asking for us. Asking more of us. Providing a pedestal for our lonely souls to stand on and be cheered. And to take a bullet for America and England. And then the distant bands and
run-tumming
and
thum-thumping
drums are drowned out by a passing train above,
ca-click ca-click ca-click
and the rolling, thunderous swooshing acoustics over the East River we live with.

“Hoosh hoosh, I say,” Paddy says to the rising voices as he pushes five or six froth-topped glasses across the mahogany. “A child's passed fer Godsakes.”

From the ceiling we hear the creaking of steps. The slow, ominous creaking of footsteps for which every single one of us turns our heads to look upward. We watch Dinny coming, boots first and surrounded by men on the stairwell. Among them are the faces of three I've never seen, and if I'm to heed the voices around me, then they are the witnesses the District Attorney will be calling on for the trial of Bill Lovett, who is charged with murdering Sammy de Angelo. One of the men looks moon-faced and from rumor I gather that there's another witness recovering from a bullet in the ribs.

Dinny's contract binding him to death is slung across his face by a look. It was always like that, of course, his face knowing death. But when you see it coming for yourself it makes a look. And he had it.

If he never wanted his story told he wouldn't've kept me around. He preached silence but kept a kid who was known to steal pencils next to him. A future writer. He knew what was coming. Nobody could really follow Dinny's mind, so it was all a secret. And that's part of what always kept him ahead of others. Keeping himself stronger than us, harder and smarter. But that all came natural. So much so that we never recognized the ancient face he began taking with him in those spring days, 1917. Eventually someone would kill him. Not cancer or sickness or old age or some injury. Men taking him down. And at foolish reasoning too.

Allowing part of one of your territories to secede gives words to a revolt, it is said of Dinny who relinquished half of Red Hook to outsiders. His job now is to stanch or at least stave blood, but eventually someone will come for him with knives to cleave the skin of his frame or guns to clap open his brain. Eventually.

He stands on the steps and waits for everyone to stop talking, Paddy Keenan snapping his towel at them. Standing amid the men myself, I look up to hear what he says too. Hoping him to contradict the mumbles these men begin daring to whisper of him. Waiting for us, Dinny shows no concern for mumbles or death and even looks more content and at ease than I'd seen him in some long time. As a man who is taken with challengers would be, I suppose. In love with those that protest him even, I'd say. With his eyes taking the voices down more and more by the second, I see this melancholic little objection the men have is no more than a test to him—as a woman tests her lover's love for her to see what he is willing to put up with, drawing him out of his masculine cover. But Dinny won't be drawn out. I smile knowing that he is solid for such a test and those who mumble are ready to consent . . . for now.

“It's a sad day. Let us be humble for the Lonergan family and offer our humility as a gift. We provided them wit' a respectable grave at Calvary Cemetery for the child, and there'll be Mass afterward at St. Ann's, as his mother requested,” his eyes alert, mouth almost smiling with agility. “I believe that in honor o' Tiny Thomas, we should also take steps to never again allow children to run round our neighborhoods without a pair o' shoes on their feet, and a second pair for the closet.”

Standing next to Cinders Connolly, a father himself to young ones, I hear him sniffle and see his eyes going watery at these words as he looks down to his folded hands.

“Let us be respectful of the Lonergan family on this day,” Dinny says, knowing full well that the Lonergan family is seen as among the lowest of classes. Some even call them traitors for committing to Lovett, which gives even more words to the whispers that Dinny is losing his grip. Slowly he comes down the steps as men finish their beers, wipe it from their clean-shaven faces and head toward the door in low mutterings that are no longer objections. Their hods and hooks and hammers, trowels and tape measures and chisels, and all the tools we've shaped for the work we do, that shape us too, are left in the corner.

We go up the long hill of Bridge Street. South, two hundred and fifty strong. Sullen in our climbing the pavement and spread across the old cobble road yellowed with time and uneven and burrowed with dark cavities like the mouth of an old seafaring swain.

The brightness of spring is on our necks and at the head of us is Dinny Meehan walking gently. And he walks with a great shyness and servility in him, though all know him a powerful man. A man of a greatness that harkens, within all of us, to the old times in Irishtown when the rest of the world was kept away by a great tradition of silence. And by great leaders mostly mythical in their span, the embellishments of Irish storytelling being as traditional as the drink in our hands. Leaders who became great and mythical by their acts of defiance against the Goliath of law—not unlike Dinny. Flouting their dominance boldly, openly. Then persevering after its retribution, and coming out greater in popularity from it all. Greater still after death. These men of myth and all those that followed them, kept the Anglo-American law out of Irishtown, and kept Irishtown Brehon in culture and tradition. Their names though, still to this very day even, are unarticulated. Don't exist for you and I. Only in the oral fashion had they been spoken of by Irishtown's shanachies, who called them, of course, Patrick Kelly.

Up in the windows as we pass are children that see in us a greatness they'll never attain, but won't stop the trying for it all the same. Behind them is the shame in their mother's eyes. A woman's derision put on men who are tasked with ensuring meals for his family by violence for which he is forced to use. That she does not agree with his methods and his damned patriarchy. Yet it seems her feelings change just moments later and with a sudden rush in her of the pride and understanding of a man's doom and fortune in their time, the men are then seen in a truer light. That they defend her love, at the least of it. For nowhere in the world does a mother's spite toward the freedom men exercise in violence at her family's defense become end and all. That it is an ugly business for them, making meals where meals are hard-won. And where many go hungry and without work, these men fight for space. And succeed too.

I feel happy to be among them and look round me in cheer, even as we are quiet and refuse the slightest remark, for in each man is the cause and the dignity to mourn one of our children's passing. We stride through Bridge Street heads down, yet The Swede and Mickey Kane, closest to Dinny now, peer upward for enemies. As we pass the Lonergan bicycle shop, Vincent Maher and Harry Reynolds walk amongst the dockbosses. I am now sixteen and my voice is thickening and I hold with a stronger grip the pipe under my coat, ready at any calling for my people. That they are now my family and knowing that I love them and knowing they love me too, as men can. But when we pass McLaughlin Park where the children of PS 5 play, I watch and wonder as there are quite a few kids my age there. Emma McGowan is there somewhere, sheltered and behind fences, me out in the wind and the streets. But at least I am with my people, I think to myself. Though I can't help but wish for an education and swear to myself I'll read the book by Walter Whitman when I get a chance.

When we come to Johnson Street, we go right in our masses and as fate would have it, the Lonergan home is directly between Dinny's Bridge Street and where Bill Lovett's Jay Street gang once headquartered, until The White Hand gripped them and pulled them in like all the other gangs. On the first floor is the wake where we stand outside, a rough lot. As we wait, a shoeless child pulls on my coat sleeve and blurts a request. Though I don't hear him, I look down and press my finger over my lips and give him a coin. It isn't until later that I learn he is one of the Lonergan children running unwatched, dressed in the funeral uniform Dinny bought, though he'd taken the shoes off. A man leaning on his cane as he slowly comes to us is treated with dignity, and we make a path in our crowding the street for him to get through. On the sidewalk, a large-shouldered Russian woman with a flowery, dirty hat tilted to the side harrumphs at our numbers and our ways, and many others watch from tenements above in their window chairs and elbows leaning on the frames.

There is only the sound of the city in the distance as we shuffle in queue outside the Lonergan home. We are very quiet now. In front of me is the fidgety Needles Ferry holding his hat at his side—the skinniest man I've ever met. Behind me is old Beat McGarry, normally with a mouth full of words, it is now closed and his eyes are to the ground in front him, hands behind.

Cinders Connolly emerges from the tenement and finds me in the line, whispers in my ear, “Come wit' me. Give condolences to Anna . . . respectful an' humble.”

I nod to him as we cut in the line ahead and soon enough men are coming out the same door we are attempting to go in. Inside we lean against the hallway stairwell for them to pass in the opposite direction and eventually I come to the room where the miniature casket, opened for all to look in, is flush against the wall and under a window. On another wall is a clock that was stopped at ten twenty-four, the moment the wee one was found.

To the casket I come and look down into the frozen face and give a little smile at the tot's new coat and tie—the first suit ever he wore. A cross is held in his tiny fingers folded so naturally that I forget for a moment that he is gone, and behind his head and above is a small whittled-wooden statue of a weeping and handsome Christ, with his thorny crown and naked breast, looking up in his agony as if he knew the child too.

I cross myself and move to the left, where wearing her mourning weeds, Mrs. Lonergan sits staring into the candle that she holds in her lap secured by a gaudily ornamented, rusted-green candlestick with a finger hole. To her left is Father Larkin holding her wrist with one hand, his beads in the other. Two women at her left sing strange, spontaneous songs and hymns, reminding me of the countryside of my youth. Mrs. Lonergan slowly rocks to the loose rhythm in them and seems far away in thought and overcome with the seemingly spurious grief that is overwhelming her.