Exile on Bridge Street (33 page)

When we land back on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, all three are helped off the tug onto the wharf. We walk back through the maze and while doing so, I think about how odd it is to escort my family through an area where I'd seen so many fist fights, men beaten, bludgeoned, and even killed. At the trolley station on the corner of Columbia Street and Atlantic Avenue, we wait with our bags on the ground in front of us. Reticently I look across the street at the saloon I spent a week inside, drinking my insides out.

The girls have never ridden a trolley before and are almost as enamored by the street train as they were the tugboat. Down the tracks, we change to the Flatbush trolley and afterward continue on down the Prospect Park West line and finally get off at Ninth Street. From there we walk the three blocks to 518 Eighth Avenue. Standing in front of the thin brownstone building built back in 1893, my mother looks up, then looks over at me.

“We're on the third floor,” I say, knowing just how strange the stacked city tenement homes look to her.

We walk up the stairwell and eventually make it to the front door. I reach across everyone and unlock it, open it for my mother and sisters to enter.

“Oh my,” my mother quickly says.

The new lace curtains are open for the natural light to come through the kitchen window, and a small folding table is flush against the wall with four chairs under it, a rocking chair to the side and a round rug in the center where the hole used to be. The floors are sanded and smell a bit of lacquer, the walls of fresh paint and new cabinets filled with glass dishes and one set of china, a new teapot on top of the Quincy oven. In the women's room there are three beds with metal headboards and footboards and bedskirts with new sheets and shams for the pillows and rugs under each one with small nightstands to the side. A closet we built with little running doors on them is opened, showing three Sunday dresses, and three hats, three pairs of new shoes, and two small dressers against opposing walls await their filling, a low window with lace curtains splayed open, showing the fire escape attached to the building and a view of Prospect Park a block away where the treetops can be seen swaying in the breeze over the building across the street.

“One day maybe we'll get something bigger, Ma,” I say. “I know it's small, but . . .”

“No, no, no, no,” she whispers, choking back her tears while sitting at the kitchen table alone, next to her rags and bags from Ireland.

“What's wrong, Mam?” Brigid asks, kneeling down.

My mother sits at the little table and buries her face in her hands as she weeps. She gasps and takes a deep breath as her face is swelling with redness and tears and exhaustion.

“Where will you sleep, William?”

“In there,” I point to the door to the right where Harry and I built a room only big enough for a small bed and a small nightstand to its side.

Without even looking at it, she holds both hands over her face again, ashamed that she is crying.

“What ails ye, Mam?” Abby asks gently.

Catching herself finally, she manages, “I can tell ye two clean't the place spotless before we arrived here today.”

“Yeah, we cleaned it up.” I look at Harry with a smile.

“That means more than anyt'ing else in the werld to me, William. Anyt'ing.”

We spend the late afternoon and dusk unpacking in the orange, swaying candlelight even as there are gaslights available.

“Would ye like me to wet ye a sup o' s'more tae, Harry?” my mother asks.

“Thank you.”

We heat up some stew and open the table in the middle of the kitchen. Harry and I smile at each other as we are all sitting exactly over the hole that once reached down through the second floor. Without a fifth seat for Harry, he uses a nightstand to sit on. Abby smiles with Brigid while looking at him, and when my mother notices, she pokes the girls in the thighs. Sitting taller than the rest of us, Harry either does not notice them or ignores it all out of respect for their youthful age and his being a guest.

“Do you two work on the docks?” Mam asks.

“We do,” I say.

“Must pay very well,” she smiles. “This home is grand.” Harry and I look at each other again and with half-lies I say, “In America, hard work pays.”

Harry looks away, shame-faced.

A knock at the door echoes in the kitchen.

“Is someone here?” Mam asks quizzically.

Harry walks over to it, reaches across his waist for the handle to his shiv as my sisters and mother watch him closely. A second knock comes that scares them all.

“Who is it?” Harry asks.

“Burke. Is that you, Harry? Listen we have big . . .”

Harry opens the door quickly and lets himself out.

“What is all this about?” my mother asks.

“It's the man downstairs, he has a family. Very nice people, I'll introduce you to them, but for now, I have to go and see what is happening, all right?”

Instead of answering, she watches me closely as I step outside.

Burke has the look of death on him while Harry has already left. “Dinny and The Swede and Lumpy and Vincent all have been arrested. They found a bunch of shoes in the basement of Lumpy's brother's restaurant. Hanan shoes, remember? Harry went to get Dead Reilly.”

“Oh shit,” I say, then look up. “Time for Mickey Kane to step up. Us too.”

CHAPTER 27

Everyone Knows

H
ARBOR
TRAFFIC
HAS
DIED
OFF
A
bit since the ending of the war. Contracts voided, bought out. No new ones needed. Still the wind rings up, yet there are not as many ships coming in. Not as many needed going out. The longshoremen that load and unload goods are less in demand, but the jobs left are highly sought after. Money tightens up, for there is not as much in circulation. Still though, we own the rights to those jobs and the bites of money that come in, The White Hand.

Gathered outside the Dock Loaders' Club and at every terminal are angered labormen that are wanting for work, desperate for it. They line up and grumble when not picked. Cast slurs. Some pleading mothers come too, their hands holding the hands of children. Facing starvation and already malnourished, they brave the winter weather at the waterfront, keening for help to those that own sway. They don't give a care that our leaders are locked up. The Swede, Vincent Maher, and Lumpy Gilchrist. Least of their worries is that Dinny Meehan is not here. He who always knows what to do. The January cold is here, though. But the wind and the cold and the lack of work are no enemies to challenge, beat back.

The gusts are in my face. Make me blink. This is my day. My day on the docks. The day I become myself. Larger than myself. Bigger than how others have seen me. I stand up to the wind and the banshee screeching of the Manhattan Bridge above me.

I look across the icy East River toward Manhattan a block from the Dock Loaders' Club in front of the freight house of the marine-rail terminal at Jay Street. A float bridge is being pulled by a tug from the Lower East Side to us along the waterway. I can see it coming slowly. The first of six. We are to connect the train cars onto a locomotive that will take the thousands of bags of raw sugar to the Arbuckle Refinery at 10 Jay Street and unload them. This morning's work, though, Cinders Connolly is back at Bridge Street filling in for Dinny upstairs at his desk. I in Cinders's place here. Mickey Kane too, holding down the fort above the Dock Loaders' Club. Learning as they go, the two of them.

“You ready?” Burke says to me as a flag is shimmied up a dock shed by the super. A pier house whistle rips open the morning air and everything begins to stir. The metal stevedore's table is carried out and three men sit behind it, their backs to the water. A chain of train cars are slowly pulled from the walkway by a locomotive. Philip Large is licking his lips and holding a fist, and coming up from the Baltic Street Terminal I can see Big Dick Morissey here to help me like a good man. Many others begin strolling out of the Dock Loaders' Club down Bridge Street, and to the east, others saunter and amble half-asleep from row houses and framers in Irishtown.

“Liam,” I hear, yet no one has called me by that name in well over a year. “Liam.”

I see a man crutching down the ugly cobbles of Marshall Street from Hudson Avenue in the middle of the road. He has one leg, a shaved head, and is thin by all means of men.

“Liam, it's me. I heard ya takin' over the Jay Street Terminal 'til Dinny an' them get out,” the man says, ably crutching at a quick speed and talking at the same time.

My first inclination is to ask who the man is. His shorn head has long, healed scars across it, and though he is younger than thirty, his jowl and throat are drooping with extra skin and his eyes are circled with a black that shows his lack of sleep or fair rest.

“Happy Maloney?” Big Dick says.

“Yeah, it's me. I'm back. Gee, ya sure are taller than I remember, Liam.”

Big Dick and Philip and myself look down to his leg, though Burke has never met the man before.

“Got shot'n it infected so they cut it off. Listen, can I work wit' ya t'day? I ain't eaten since two days now and I knew ya guys'd help me so . . .”

“Ya heard about Johnny Mullen?” Big Dick asks.

“Eh, what about 'em?”

“Died.”

“Oh, that's too bad. Him and I was good friends back when, but we got split up over there.”

“Ya learn how to shoot a gun, did ya?” Big Dick says.

“Yeah, I did learn how to . . .”

“Take this then,” Big Dick pulls out his revolver. “Sit right there on that cleat and hold that piece in ya hand. Look nasty too. If the tunics come, throw it in the river.”

“Right,” he says walking toward the water with the Manhattan Bridge above us.

“We'll get ya some breakfast here in a minute,” Big Dick says, then turns to me as men are slowly gathering. “You're on, kid.”

We shake hands. Behind us in a horseshoe shape are gathered more hungry men looking for work. Sixty, seventy day laborers, drunkards, and immigrants most of them.

I wipe a hand across my mouth and chin, gather my strength. Stomach turning. Burning. Nervous. Then turn round and yell from the belly, “We got six train cars t'unload s'marnin' and if there's a man among yez, I yet can't see'm. So in a circumstance such as this, we'll be happy to wait fer the man's willin' to werk like his name says he should, fer we don' need no feckin' navvies and we don' need no feckin' spalpeens loafin' their way t'rough the livelong day, so we'll wait then. And we will.”

I cross my arms, Philip Large at my right, Big Dick Morissey to my left, and Thomas Burke supporting them with Happy Maloney scowling on the dock's cleat, pistol on his knee.

“I wanna work wit' ya, Mr. . . .”

“Kelly, as ye know me by,” I say. “Patrick Kelly. Who else is interested in werkin' then?”

I see some hands spring up and move forward from the circle. I pick them and tell them to stand to the side and eventually all the men raise their hands and I now have their attention. But I hear a whisper. One head tilts toward the ear of another with arms crossed. And as we all know too well, there's more to hear in a whisper than a scream.

I tap on Big Dick and Philip's shoulders and as the whisperer passes in front of me, I grab ahold of the back of his coat and fling him to the ground. Burke grabs one of his feet, Happy stands up with the pistol, and Big Dick is smiling as he kicks at the back of the man's head.

“Ye got werds do ye?” I yell, as everyone turns round to see what is passing.

“Let the man go,” one laborer yells out and before he can finish his sentence, Philip Large grabs him from behind. The man's hands are stuck at his side and there is nothing in the world that can loosen Philip's grip now that his hooks are sunk in.

“Hold him up,” I say, as Burke and Big Dick and Happy and the stevedoring men and the gang of bedraggled laborers watch carefully.

“Don't, don't . . .” the man cries, his face uncovered and scared.

Barge horns bleating on the river, freight elevators chuffing, trains worming by in their maniacal metal churning on the bridge above with the dank brine of waterfront in the mouth, the Manhattan skyline leaning over us across. I wind my fist tight and strong, wrap it round my head and grit my teeth as it thwaps on the man's face, then with a left and then another right and an elbow to the brow until Philip leaves the man for the cement to have, the stevedoring company men talking amongst themselves.

“Forty-five men we need. Which forty-five wanna werk? Stand tall then. And at his attention along dis line where I p'int here,” I demand, Big Dick shoving men by their backs and shoulders to it, Philip moaning and clapping his paws together, and Happy is laughing and smiling as I point toward the bridges. “West on John Street. Left on Adams. Touch the Waring Envelope building and come back. First ten's guaranteed a spot. Go.”

“Don't trip on the tracks, fookin' fool,” Big Dick yells at a man who goes face down.

And the men run with all they have, pushing each other out of the way in a dead sprint. All we can see is the backs of their skinny hides chugging and competing against each other for the right to work.

“Look at 'em go,” Beat McGarry appears. “Just like the good ol' days too.”

I begin walking away toward the train car floats when Beat hollers toward me, “Ol' Gas Drip Bard's talkin' tomorrow night, Poe. Bring the fam'ly on over to the tavern house on Hudson Avenue by the water and you'll get to meet 'em.”

“No time for that bunk,” I yell back.

“Bunk he says.”

With one foot on the dock and the other on a car float, I help connect them to the Baldwin locomotive at the end of the cement and wave toward the driver, who guides it off the float bridge into the rail yard and then onto the cobbles and the neighborhood toward 10 Jay Street. Watching them move from the float to land, I look across the East River as the fog breaks. Look closer again, and I see a sign over a Lower East Side pier that says D
AILY
F
ERRY
TO
A
LBANY
: $2.

“Well anyhow,” Beat continues. “The ol' man was lookin' forward to meetin' ya. Maybe another time.”

* * *

W
HEN
THE
JOB
IS
DONE
, B
IG
Dick, Philip, Burke, Happy, and I report back to 25 Bridge Street where Mickey Kane is in charge, Cinders Connolly at his side divvying the day's small profits, Chisel MaGuire in Lumpy's seat.

“Problems?” Kane asks Philip and I from Dinny's desk.

Mickey is nervous. Before I can even answer, he is looking out the windows behind him at the men gathered in the alley. A toll is taken on him for not having slept for days since his cousin's arrest. Overseeing business at the Dock Loaders' Club day and night.

As Mickey's back is turned, I look up to Cinders. Downstairs there is a scuffle, loud voices, and before any of us can comment, Mickey gets up and leaves the room to check on it.

“Don' worry about him,” Cinders says, walking past me to close the door Mickey left open. “He'll be all right. Tell me how things went today.”

I shrug and look at Philip. “We can't do this forever. We're vulnerable here. Philip and Big Dick and the other guys that helped me were great, but they can't stick with me on the Jay Street Terminal forever. We need more men. Every day there's Polish, Russian, Germans, Finns looking for work and don't care who we are. They're ready to take us on. I have my family here now. They need me. I can't turn up dead or arrested, Cinders. When is Dinny getting out? And The Swede and Vincent and Lumpy?”

“Doesn't look good, but we been here before. Been t'rough this,” Cinders says sitting on the desk in front of Philip and I. “Dead Reilly'll figure it out. The worst of it is, eh . . . the papers'r callin' him the leader now, Dinny. So now everyone knows. An' Brosnan's talkin'. Ya know ever since they did those stories on all the crime and murders in Brooklyn that go unpunished, that fookin' Brosnan's opened up. Talkin' an' gabbin' about how he arrested Dinny back in 1904 an' sent 'em to Elmira. Arrested 'em again in 1912 wit' Vincent'n McGowan'n Pickles. He's recitin' the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in the newspapers so everyone knows he's on the right side. Won' even talk to us anymore. He even told a reporter that Dinny's boastin' about how they'll never be able to send 'em up to the penitentiary.”

“Dinny would never say anything like that.”

“That's what I says. An' you know it too, right? But the readers? They don' know nothin' 'bout nothin'. At the trial for killin' Christie Maroney back then, they said he was unable to speak, ya know? Like he was deaf an' dumb like. Like he wasn't even there in the head. O' course, that was Dinny's plan, since he don' want nobody knowin' he's the leader, but now they know. Everyone knows. An' these yokes on the Waterfront Assembly'n Wolcott, Jesus. Fookin' Wolcott again. He's talkin' 'bout Dinny too, how he was the leader in 1916 when we hit Red Hook, remember? Burnt down McAlpine's Saloon wit' people in it, killt I-talians left an' right and that we're in like Flynn wit' the ILA. . . . That he ordered Silverman killt in 1917. That Dead Reilly represents us. The newspapers? They're even quotin' Father Larkin from St. Ann's about Dinny. It's Dinny Meehan this, Dinny Meehan that. . . . An' then there's them dried-ups say he's a saloon owner shillin' whiskey. Jesus, man. Goes on an' on. Everyone knows who he is now.”

I look outside at the laborers in the alley below the window, “Should I be, uh . . . if I get arrested . . .”

“Chisel?” Cinders interrupts me.

“Yeah?”

“Give us a minute, yeah?”

Chisel stands from Lumpy's desk and walks out, but Cinders does not speak until he hears footsteps down the stairwell.

“Listen,” Cinders says with Philip still behind me. “Here's what I do. I took a wad o' money I been savin' an' put it in a bank. Added my wife on the account so if anythin' happens to me . . . ya know?”

“I understand.”

“You should do the same. Add ya mother's name to it and tell her where to go if anythin' happens.”

“I don't really want to . . .”

“Gonna have to, William. Otherwise what?” He comes off the desk and goes back around to Dinny's seat. “An' keep a few bucks in ya pocket just in case ya gotta lam it. Things'll get better though, don' worry.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yeah, listen. I'm gonna see the ol' man on Hudson Ave tomorrow night at the tavern house. The Bard feller. A little time away from it all, ya know?”

“You are?”

“Yeah, sure, wit' the kids an' the wife too. Ya comin'?”

“Don't think so.”

“It'll be good for ya. An' I was hopin' to meet ya fam'ly, right? Ya ma, sisters'n . . . any word on ya father?”

“Just missing.”

“Yeah, just missin', hmm. Ah, sorry to hear that but uh . . . Philip's goin' tonight too, right, Philip?”