Paradise Alley (73 page)

There was a terrible throbbing in his right leg. Looking down, he saw that it was bent at an impossible angle, a large bolt of wood lying on top of it. He understood, then, that he must have fallen through the first floor of what had been the armory, into its basement. He was
lying there now, on a pile of charred beams, and old gun casings. The leg was obviously broken, and he could feel some blood dripping down his calf, wondering to himself if the bone had gone right through his skin.

“Nig-ger! Where are you, nigger?”

The taunting, leering voices right above him. A great pile of the rubbish above had fallen down the hole after him, he saw, or the mob would have been able to simply reach down and pluck him out.
God only knew what would have happened to him then.
Above him he could make out orange shafts of light through the planking, and he realized that they had stoked up some kind of bonfire in the rubble of the armory, on the site of their conquest.

“Nig-ger!”

Billy had forced the top half of his body up, pulling gingerly at the wood that lay on him. He was trying to make as little noise as possible but it was a large beam, and when he gave it one last push, it fell over on the stone floor of the basement with a deep thunking noise.

“Didja hear that! Did ya!”

“He's down there, all right!”

He could hear the feet, scrambling like rats through the rubble, toward him. But he was free then, and able to push himself away from where he had first fallen, even deeper into the blackness. Soon, sure enough, he could see a grotesque goblin face, in the orange light of the flames, peering down blindly into the darkness.

“D'ya see him, then?”

Billy reached in his pocket for the Colt—gratified to find it still there, at least. Wanting to fire another round right into the searching, sodden face above him.

Instead he held back. Preferring they stay afraid of what might or might not be down there in the dark.
Waiting with Ruth in the bramble, for the slavecatchers to move on—

“Where's he got to? He didn't come out—”

“He's gotta be here. Somebody ought to go after him.”

“You go on down, then. You go on down an' look for a nigger with a pistol in a dark cellar.”

For the rest of the night he listened to them trying to goad each other into it. The heat in the basement was even worse than what it had been in the police station, and when the smoke from the fires
drifted down, it was all he could do to keep from choking and coughing. He had tried to breathe shallow, fighting down the panicky feeling that he would smother here, right below the mob.
Chased like a dog, from one cellar to the next—and still so far from Ruth and his home.

He was able to splint his leg, at least. It was broken, all right, just below the knee, but it had not gone through the skin, as he'd feared. He tore his burlap shirt into strips, and used them to strap a stray musket stock to the limb, trying to do it all as quietly and deliberately as possible. In the end he thought it would serve, though he did not see how he could possibly run on it, was not even sure if he could boost himself back up from the basement.

There was nothing more for him to do, then, but prop himself up against the wall and wait, thinking the Irishers would have to get bored, or run out of liquor, and leave. But they had stayed right where they were. As the night went on, the fevers came on him, and he had drifted in and out of sleep—awakening again and again to hear them still carousing above, shouting out their raucous songs. Trying to think of what he could do.

He had to get back.

By the morning, when slits of real sunlight had replaced the glow of the flames, and the smoke had finally cleared, Billy thought they would at last have to leave, or sleep. But they were still there. Scuttling and combing through the rubble above him, looking for some way to get at him—to drive him out. Back to their old pursuit:

“Nig-ger, oh, nigger!”

He knew then that they would never leave—not until it was much too late. If he was to get back, he would have to figure out some other way himself.
But how?
He had the Colt, but the leg still hobbled him. He could shoot as many of them as he had bullets for, it didn't matter. Inevitably they would run him down, cut him off; he was like wounded game to them now.

In desperation he began to hobble about the Armory basement. Even this was dangerous, he knew—trying to make as little noise as he could, waiting and listening until he heard them moving about themselves, before he dragged himself forward again. The old floor above him was potted with holes, and he never knew when one of them might look down and spot him. In other places it was sagging
heavily, too, under the weight of all the debris piled on it, and he knew that at any moment he could be crushed like a miner in a cave-in, unable to so much as jump out of the way with his leg.

But he kept searching, painstakingly, around the basement. Looking for something, anything—groping along the walls with his hands, in the darkness. The City, he knew from long experience, was catacombed with tunnels—dug by the gang
b'hoys,
or for abandoned bank vaults, or as secret basements for who knew what ancient purpose. There was a hole in a backyard in Mulberry Street, where everyone knew you could go in, and come back out on Elizabeth Street, two blocks away. It was unlikely, of course, there would be any such passage in the basement of the armory, a government building, constructed to certain specifications, but still—

At last he heard it. Behind the wall he was gripping, there was a sound like rushing water.
An underwater stream? A culvert?
He hobbled along until he found the place along the foundation wall where the sound of the water was at its loudest, almost right against his ear. Yet he could see no opening of any sort there, only more brick and masonry.

He pulled out the penknife he always carried with him, and began to chip and wedge away at the bricks. They were already loosened, obviously damaged by the collapse of the building—though this did not especially encourage him. He knew that he could easily bring the whole wall and the floor above down on himself, smashing him flat. Nor did he have any idea what he might dig through to. The City was full of long-buried streams, swift currents forgotten beneath the pavement, that periodically burst through to swamp basements and spill out over the streets, mystifying the passersby.

Better that, though.
It was the choice he had really made so long ago.
Better to be drowned than to stay here, slowly smothering.

It took him a maddeningly long time to remove the bricks, having to pause and listen to the sounds above him every few minutes. But at last he was able to squeeze his way through the wall, even with his hobbled, throbbing leg. He stepped in—and almost fell into the fast-moving water below him.

The sewer.
The dark, swift current below flowing, as he knew it must, in the direction of the river. He was balancing on a thin ledge above it, not so much as a foot wide, and there he hesitated for a long
moment, wondering if he could maneuver along the ledge with his broken leg. Knowing that if the rain came suddenly again, the tunnel might fill in an instant, sweeping him away. Knowing, too, that many of the river gangs used the culverts to move about the City, and that he could just as easily meet his death down here.

But he owed her that much. Ruth—and the boy, Milton, and the rest of them. The family he had brought out on this earth. Too long neglected in favor of his yearnings, his bitterness, the grievance he'd nursed against the whole course of his life. He owed it to them to try, exhausted and crippled as he was.

He prepared himself to start, trying to figure out where the culvert might come out. Edging his way out along the ledge, against the flow of the current—refusing to look down at the rushing black water below him.

•
71
•

“They're coming! They're coming!”

In the morning she heard them running. Out in the streets, and in the back lots. The sound of their feet, their cries racing past the house. Surrounding them already, leaving them no choice but to fight or to hide.

“Here they come!”

Ruth ran out of the back room where she was sleeping with her children. Deirdre moving past her in the hallway already, pulling her dress up over her shoulder as she did. She shrugged into her own shift—feeling the heat wrap around her like a wet cloth, listening to the wild, exultant cries of the women outside.

“Where are they?” she asked, coming into the kitchen where Deirdre was peering out the window, into the back privvy lots.

Deirdre pointed—and as Ruth looked a shadow swept by, then another.
A man,
she saw then, shouting something and whacking a rude wooden club against the side of the house.

They were already in the back. Cutting them off, just like that.

“She's sure to tell them,” Ruth swore. “That bitch is sure to tell them—”

“In the front,” Deirdre said, running through the house. But when they got to the parlor, Maddy was already staring out through the half-opened shutters.

Mobs of men were swarming in the street. Suddenly, they were there, after the block had been all but deserted for the past two days. The war come to them at last.

The men were not doing anything in particular yet. Most of them were just milling about, talking excitedly to each other. A few of them running aimlessly up and down, as if they were too excited to control themselves. Others reeling drunkenly around in circles, drinking from open bottles of brandy and wine and rum. All of them looking ragged, their coats ripped and shredded, their faces bruised and bloodied and covered in soot.

All that terrible noise, and here it was. Just a bunch of men who still didn't know their own minds.

So far, at least, they didn't seem to have anything in mind for the block. Many of them were already drifting away, looking for fatter pickings, no doubt—a block with a saloon, or some wealthy Republican's house.

Then she saw Mrs. McGillicuddy's head, above the other white women, coming up the alley to meet them. As Ruth watched in terror, she planted herself across the street from Deirdre's house, pointing vigorously toward the window. She could see the men looking over, already beginning to take notice.

“Oh, you damned fool!”

Deirdre had the shutters slammed and bolted at once, rushing them all back into the depths of the house. She shoved through the bolt on the back door, as well, shouting out orders as she did.

“Ruth, get the children from the back. Quick now! Get them up the stairs!”

But Ruth had already rousted them from the back room, was herding them upstairs. Milton, as always, right by her side, already dressed and alert, scooping up Vie and Elijah, in his arms, pushing Deirdre's youngest along with his hand. She and Deirdre grabbing up the rest—even Maddy pulling along Mana as best she could in her skinny arms. They all but flew up to the second floor, pushing and dragging the children two at a time.

None too soon.
She heard the bricks begin to thump off the front of the house at the same moment they reached the upstairs landing. The shouts from the men rising outside—Mrs. McGillicuddy and the other white women urging them on.

“The back! The back! Don't let 'em get out the back!”

“What is happening—what is happening to this block,” Deirdre was panting under her breath.

“Maybe—maybe we can still beat 'em out the back—”

“No! Too late already,” Deirdre said, and looking down from the second-story windows Ruth could see that she was right. There were dozens of men racing down the privvy lots now, whooping and laughing.

“What, then?” she asked, waiting for Deirdre to come up with something.

But what more could Deirdre do to save her than anyone else? She had been saved so many times before, who was to say there should be anyone to save her now—

Deirdre stood where she was for a moment, near the stairs, listening to the crowd, and trying to think.

“The gun,” she said suddenly.

“My pistol!” Maddy perked up. “That's it, just gimme the gun. I'll clear out the sons a bitches—”

“No. Milton—go down and get the gun. It's in the third drawer of the secretary, in the back to the right, under the good linens—”

Milton nodded, listening intently, but Ruth interrupted her.

“No! I'll do it. I don't want him back down there.”

“All right, then.”

Ruth was already flying down the stairs, pulling out the pistol from exactly where Deirdre had said it would be. As she did, she saw the front door and the window shutters beginning to shake. First the door, then the shutters—one after the other, reverberating as the mob pounded against them.

They want in—

She felt the gun in her palm. Thinking what it would be like to see the surprise on the first drunken face as he came staggering through—

There was a new pounding sound, against the back door this time. It startled Ruth back into movement.
Of course she couldn't kill them all. Of course there were too many of them—and even if she did, what would happen to her children?

She ran back up the stairs, pistol in hand, holding it out to Deirdre.

“All right,” she said, grabbing it confidently. “All right, at least this might slow them down.”

“Let me have it! I'll show 'em, the bastards!” Maddy bleated, trying to grab it. “It's
my gun—
”

“Now what?” Ruth asked, ignoring her. “Now what'll we do?”

“I don't know,” Deirdre admitted, scowling in concentration as she listened to the banging down below. “I don't know. If they get through, they still have to come up the stairs. Maybe if I shot the first couple, that would make them think—”

“Hullo! Hullo!”

They both looked out the open window, over the privvy shacks. There they could see Mrs. Mendelssohn, waving a handkerchief out of her own second-story window, and calling as loudly to them as she dared.

“Hullo!”

Of course—the Jews.

“Hullo, can you come over?” she called, leaning out the window—her daughter looking over her shoulder again, her beautiful olive face staring at them across the back alley. Drained with fear now, but also full of sympathy, or pity.

Is that how people look at you when they know you are going to die?

“I don't know—” Deirdre started to call back to her, keeping an eye on the men, still running about among the privvies. The mob was still oblivious to them, up on the second floor where they were. Focusing their attention instead on breaking down the back door—

“The roof! The roof!” Mrs. Mendelssohn was calling now, pointing upward with her thumb.

She raced on up, through the artisans' attic, and out onto the rooftop. Ruth could smell the fire in the air now.
So hot already, so hot.
All so different from how it had been just a few hours ago, just last night. The fires were very close. She could only guess that when they tired of trying to knock down Deirdre's heavy oak doors they would set her house ablaze, as well—

“Here, here! The line!”

Mrs. Mendelssohn was yelling from her own roof now, her beautiful daughter stumbling up behind her. Moving as fast as they could, running the clothesline over to them.

“It's too thin,” Ruth said, distracted, looking dutifully at the double length of rope that ran back and forth between the simple rusted
pulleys on Deirdre's roof and the Jews'.
I don't care, I won't put my children out on a clothesline—

“It's too thin, I don't know as it can hold us—”

“No, no! Look!”

Mrs. Mendelssohn pointed to where her daughter had unstrung the two ends of the rope from their pulley. Now she twisted and tied them deftly around each other, doing marvelous things with her hands.
Much more clever than anything she had ever done herself at the German ladies'.
With a few more deft turns she had looped together a crude sort of bosun's chair out of the line—tying it all together in a seat that looked as if it might well support at least a child—and attached it to the pulley again.

If they could just get the younger children over, at least. But what about Milton?

“Here, we're sendin' it over!”

The rope chair swayed out over the privvies, Ruth yanking it in from her side as fast as she could. The men below still seemed not to have taken any notice of it, for all the squeaks and groans of the old metal, and she looked it over quickly, admiring the Jewish girl's handiwork.

But would it hold?

There was the first, withering sound of wood cracking from below. She clambered back to the second-floor landing, told Deirdre what was going on as quickly as she could.

“But will it hold?”

“I can't say.”

There was another crack—the front door slowly beginning to give way.

“But we've got to see.”

“Yes.”

“Milton—you stay here. With the gun.”

Deirdre looked at Ruth when she spoke, making sure that she had her consent. But she knew it was the only thing they could do, much as she hated to leave him even for a moment.
Much as she wanted to weep, seeing her boy standing with a gun in his hand, ready to ward off a mob of men.

Milton only nodded, as solemn and aware of his responsibility as ever, and Deirdre placed the revolver in his hand.

“You know how to use this, don't you?”

“Yes,” he said, his mouth dry. “Yes, I understand.”

“All right, then.”

They hustled the other children on up through the attic, and out on the roof. Moving faster than Ruth ever thought she could go—moving with the pure dexterity born of panic now, all but throwing and thrusting the children up through the trapdoor. The tar roof already bristling hot, sucking at their feet and knees, liquefying under the broiling morning sun. Ruth tried to make them stay down, below an extra lip of cement that ran along the roof's edge—trying to make sure they were not seen by the men down in the back lot. But they wept and fretted to be so close to the heat. The fear palpable to all of them now—

“The littlest one first,” Deirdre said, pointing at Elijah.

“But—”

Ruth hesitated again for just a moment, wondering if this were right. Wondering if they shouldn't choose one of Deirdre's children, since after all it was her roof—

“They're white. You know it,” Deirdre said bluntly. “Put your own on first.”

She nodded, and worked Elijah into the little rope swing. Telling him to be sure to hang on to the line, and not to kick or fuss as she steadied him. Trying to make herself sound calm.

One at a time. That was how they had to do it, one at a time.

“Are you ready?” Mrs. Mendelssohn called from across the privvy lots—both her hands and those of her daughter ready on the line.

“Wait!”

The palms of Ruth's own hands were sweating—preparing to swing her child out over an alleyway full of dangerous men, thirty feet off the ground. She looked down into the alley once more, making sure the men there were still preoccupied with trying to knock Deirdre's door in.

“All right. Together!”

Ruth tugged at the cord as hard as she could—Deirdre and Maddy pulling on it right behind her, Mrs. Mendelssohn and her daughter pulling them over from the other side. She could barely stand to watch, whispering the Hail Mary under her breath as he moved out
through the open air, wondering if he could tip out if they pulled too hard.

But Elijah sped across the chasm like a pea in a current, carried over to the Jews and safety before he could even start to cry. Mrs. Mendelssohn and her daughter gathered him in on the other side, plucking him out of the chair and holding him to them, his mouth still hanging open in shock.