Paradise Alley (64 page)

But Dolan stayed over him. Before Noe could rise he stomped a foot down on his chest, pinning him to the ground. He went back down with a small, tired sigh, and Dolan hit him again with the iron bar. He was still trying to squirm away after that, so Dolan held him in place with his foot and hit him again, then again and again. Sending the walking stick flying across the floor, knocking the spectacles off his face—breaking his other arm and smashing away at him until at last the old man lay still beneath him.

“Whatta you know about work?
Whatta you know about work?
”

Noe's eyes unshielded now, still wide with their final realization.
Seeing the monster before him.
Dolan had the thumb gouger out and in place before he even fully knew it. Digging in at the left orb, feeling the tendons stretch before the dull, awful pop.

That had been enough, finally. He left the other one, still staring up at him, just as horrified and senseless. Its twin, safely ensconced in his gouger—looking out at the world with a new and rounded objectivity.

Still, he had to do something about what remained. He had untied the red handkerchief from around his own neck and knotted it around Old Man Noe's head—around both sockets, empty and filled. Ready to leave, now that this task was completed—with no stomach to go back up, finish tearing out the gutter.
Besides, what if someone had heard?

Yet he realized that, throughout the whole struggle, the old man had made no sound—did not scream or yell, or cry out to anyone.
He must've been alone, with no chance of rescue.
Those eyes, reflecting the full horror of the mistake he had made. Thinking himself, as a brush-factory owner, invulnerable to such a fate.

Take him off and make him work. Breaking rocks, walking the capstan. Damned if he would.

He had rifled through the old man's pockets. Pulling out the watch and fob, and chain. A diamond tie clasp and gold cufflinks, a small wad of banknotes, and a little silver. Then he had fled. Noticing only at the bottom of the stairs the dog-headed walking stick, where it had rolled.

He picked it up instinctively, twirling it even as he carried it out of the factory. Whistling tunelessly, forcing himself to seem as unconcerned as possible for whosoever might be watching—might have noticed a man with a stick go into the factory.

But Greenwich Street had still been all but deserted as he strolled away, the church bells ringing all over the Village. He had sauntered up the street—belatedly making sure to conceal the head of the cane, at least, under his hand. Knowing he should have simply left it with the old man's body but unwilling to let it go, enjoying the heft and elegance of it in his hand, the open, leering mouth of the dog, caught in gold.

It was only when he was on the corner, waiting for the omnibus, that he realized James Noe's left eye was still on his thumb.

•
60
•

He would have liked to sit down, and rest his leg, but the large, vaulted waiting room in the Hoboken station was filled with refugees from the City. Most of them were Negroes, their black and brown faces like so many others he had seen down in Virginia.
The contraband, fleeing to the Union lines from their households and plantations.

Yet those faces had at least been full of hope, exhausted and half-starved as some of them were. These in the station looked only despondent, and infinitely weary. Many of them battered in some way or another; cut and bruised, the women and children—even the girls—as well as the men. Most of them without anything save for the clothes on their backs, and some without even that. He saw men and women clearly naked but for the rough horse blankets the railroad employees had given them to wrap around themselves. They sat themselves anywhere they could, slumped over the waiting benches, cross-legged along the tiled floor—as if waiting for something, something that was never going to come and could hardly suffice if it did.

Snatchem came over to him, having made his usual reconnaissance, his face grim.

“Sounds bad,” he said, abandoning his usual loquaciousness. “More than some Dead Rabbits riot. A regular fight in the streets, wit' rifles an' pistols.”

Tom swore.

“We got to
get
there—”

The officers and sergeants were bellowing at them not to walk away, to prepare to fall in at any moment. But that was only more army puffing. An hour had already gone by since they had detrained, and there was still no sign that anything was happening, or that anything ever would.

“The boats is all over the East River still,” George told him. “They got 'em movin' all the gold over to Governor's Island.”

Of course, they would get the gold off first—

His leg was still throbbing, but he could not sit still. At least he was able to find a tobacconist in the station, packing his clay pipe full as he wandered outside by the docks again.

Unable to look at the burning city anymore, he stared up the river at Hoboken this time. It was a thriving, compact little town of mechanics and shipbuilders, homes and factories. Neat, square shapes in the darkness, wedged into a mile of land between the heights and the river. A few grander homes of ship captains and factory owners, up along the water, encroaching on the grounds of the Elysian Fields, the pleasure park.

So much the same as the last time he had seen it, heading down to the war. Nothing had changed but them.

They had been shipped South in irons, out of fear the men would try to desert and enlist under another name, in order to get the bonus all over again. Tom was chained up to Snatchem—who had been hoping to do exactly that. Their manacles were not removed until they disembarked in Washington City, from where they were marched on down to Virginia, and the war.

It was coming on to the end of the year when they arrived, and the army had already been encamped on the hills above Fredericksburg for weeks. The veterans sullen and clannish, cheating them at cards and filching food and money from their tents.
The Fighting 69th.
No more the boys who feared no noise, they sensed another disaster in the making. Staring at the river below, and the empty, gutted town that their artillery was slowly, uselessly reducing to rubble, trying in vain to drive the reb snipers out. The generals still waiting for the swollen Rappahannock to go down so they could cross—while every day the
rebs brought in more men, digging in still deeper along the heights on the other side of the town.

At least some of the boys from the Black Joke had signed up with him—George, of course, and Feeley, and Black Dan Conaway, and Danny Larkins, and John J. Sullivan. They looked out for each other as best they could, and it provided a certain comfort. Shivering in their tents at night, barely able to choke down the meager rations of hardtack and salt horse. Soaking the meat in water for hours before they could get enough of the brine off to choke it down.

There wasn't much that even Snatchem could requisition down there, resourceful as he was. The country was desolate by then, picked over as it had been by one army or another for more than a year. There was little enough for them to do, save to sit by the campfires, arguing over whether there would be another fight before the spring.

“They can't be serious,” George had insisted around the campfire. “It
can't
be they'll try it now, not with that many rebs up there.”

It did seem mad. The rebels were dug in along a slanting ridge, half a mile or more past the town of Fredericksburg. Just to get at them, the Union troops would have to come down from their own positions along Stafford Heights, cross the Rappahannock on pontoon bridges, march through the town, and only then charge the bluffs at their highest point—with the rebs able to track them every step of the way.

“That's right,” John J. had joined in. “Another week or two, they'll have to throw it in, go into winter camp.”

“Won't that be a pleasure!” Feeley had snorted—but then Black Dan Conaway had interrupted their speculations.

“Don't deceive yourselves,” he had told them, as doleful as ever. Black Dan had the face of a young clerk, or a schoolmaster—smooth round cheeks and spectacles, a sparse red beard and mustache. Yet his youthful appearance was always belied by his nature, bleak and pessimistic to the point of madness. Back in the ward they would have shouted him down but here, in the darkness of a Virginia December, they all fell quiet under his words.

“Haven't ya seen enough of it already? This is the army. There ain't a thing they won't consider, so long as it only means killin' some more of us.”

• • •

Sure enough, the next morning the engineers had started laying down the pontoon bridges. And soon after that the army had bestirred itself and begun to move slowly out of its bivouacs and toward the Rappahannock, like an old dog poked away from the fire with a stick.

It took them all day to actually get across. The reb snipers, still lodged in the town, started picking off the pontoniers even before dawn, firing at any sound in the dark. It only got worse once the sun rose—Tom watching as one man after another on the pontoons suddenly gave a little cry, then toppled over into the ice-filled water. When the firing got too hot, they simply gave it up and ran back to the Union bank. Then all the work would stop until the officers rallied them again, and led them back out to the bridges.

Only after nightfall were they finally able to cross, and make their camp on the other side. The tents had not come up, so they were left to forage lengths of board from the ruined town and lay them over the muddy ground. Covering themselves as best they could with their thin blankets—glad, for once, for the new overcoats they had been issued and that hung like a hundredweight on parade.

“Still, we got over easy enough,” Larkins had pointed out that night, trying to see the bright side of things. “Maybe they're just bluffin' us.”

“That's right, how can they stand against such an army?”

All night long the columns of Union blue had kept coming across the pontoons, so that it seemed as if a whole city had been moved across the Rappahannock. They had all been impressed by their own numbers—all save for Black Dan.

“They want us to come, you'll see,” he told them. “Gettin' back won't be so easy.”

At dawn the next day their blankets were covered in frost, and a glowing, white fog lay over their whole encampment. It was so thick that no one could see more than ten feet ahead of himself, and despite the cold their spirits were high as they went about getting their breakfast.

“We'll be on the rebs before they even know we're comin'!”

All along the riverbank, Tom could hear the hum of the enormous army as it made its preparations. The noises disjointed but comforting—a huge, invisible host, hidden in the fog.

“We ought to go now,” Conaway had told them. Even Black Dan's mood had lifted somewhat when he awoke to see the fog. Now he sat with his jaw clenched tight, watching it slowly dissipate.

“Ah, Dan, I thought we shouldn't go a'tall,” Snatchem teased him, but Conaway only shook his head vehemently, and stared off in the direction of the rebel fortifications.

“No, we're goin'. An' since we are, we ought to go
now,
before those up there can see us.”

But the generals seemed to be taking their time as usual, and before much longer the fog had worn away. In its place was left a bright, brisk day, the sun gleaming off the rebel rifles and guns above them.

“We can take that. We can! One good rush—”

“Why aren't they shelling us
now?
” Conaway only asked. “Why aren't they, answer me that. It's because they want us to come—”

They ate their breakfast and mustered in the ruined town with its two jutting church steeples, its ruined courthouse and homes. Father Corby came up to hear confessions, and give them communion and extreme unction. Even the priest looking uncomfortable before the men, knowing as they all did that their commanders had already blundered.

“'Take, eat, this is My Body—'”

Tom knelt and let him place the Host on his tongue. Still wondering if he had even given a true confession. He had had to rack his mind for the smallest, venial sins, partaking of stolen chickens or gambling at cards.
Not knowing how to tell a priest, at the start of a battle, I have come to hate my wife.

Opening his eyes he saw above him the two red-skinned observation balloons floating high above the church steeples, directing the Union fire. The big guns back on Stafford Heights beginning to open up, making the ground tremble beneath them.

“Jesus God, but let us go out and die already,” Snatchem was saying softly, crouching down beside him.

The other men in the company made their own preparations. The more superstitious among them tossing away their cards and dice. Writing out their names and addresses on little scraps of paper, pinning them to the insides of their tunics.

Tom thought that he should do something, too, but he could not. It was all he could manage to squat with Snatchem and a dozen other
men behind a ruined wall. Emptying their bowels, their fetid, liquid shite swirling together before it began to freeze along the ground. The smell of the shit, and the fear, reminding Tom inexorably of something:
The Place of Blood.

The bugler sounded the call to arms, and they formed their ranks. General Meagher riding down the line just before they advanced, seeing to it that each man was given a green sprig of boxwood to put in his hat.

“Is he the May queen, then?” snorted Snatchem.

Meagher of the Sword,
founder of the Irish Brigade—a big, impressive-looking man, with sunken, piercing blue eyes. The rumor around camp just the week before was that he had been so drunk he had almost fallen into a fire. Now he trotted up to the head of his men, wearing a dazzling new uniform stuffed with gold braid—and dismounted, waving them forward with a grand flourish of his sword.

“What, ain't he comin' with us?”

“Shut up there! Form your ranks!”

The little fife and drum boys struck up “The Wearing of the Green,” and they began to march, moving up through the town, and singing to keep down their fear.

Oh, I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,

And he says how's poor oul' Ireland and how does she stand?

‘Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,

For they're hangin' men and women for the wearing of the green—

Tom could feel his gut tightening like a fist. Glancing around himself at the ruined town of Fredericksburg, the neat little wood and brick houses smashed open by their artillery. What the guns hadn't wrecked, the looters had, spilling broken mirrors and chairs, disfigured family portraits, even women's underclothing, out along the muddy ground.