Paradise Alley (78 page)

•
78
•

He limped on up the block to his house. Looking on, incredulous, at what seemed like a celebration ahead of him. Not daring to hope this much, but seeing it all there, right before his eyes—the blue tunics of the soldiers, the men running about with their rifles, bayonets fixed.
There was even artillery.
Surely no mob would even try to stand against the likes of it—

He was not too late then.
Billy let the relief flow through him. He could see his neighbors out, all along the sidewalks, greeting the soldiers like conquering heroes. They held out tea, and bread to them, the women curtseying and flirting. One of them was even embracing a man, right out in the middle of the street.
Soldiering didn't seem so bad—

Only when he got closer did he see the scars on the block. The fire engine pumping water into the smoky back lots. The busted house fronts and the piles of broken furniture, and clothes, all strewn out along the street.

He looked for his own house, saw its smashed-in front window, and door, and he began to move faster. Tangling up with his bad leg now, pitching face forward on the pavement. He pushed himself back up at once, still limping forward as fast he could go, trying to get back to the house.

“
My home,
” he breathed. Pulling himself up to the window, looking inside for any sign of life.

My home—

“Billy—Billy, you best come with me—”

Deirdre was at his elbow now. Saying something, reaching out her hand for him, but he didn't take it. Enraged already by the pitying look on her face, knowing what she had to tell him. Knowing the trick that had been played on him once again.

•
79
•

He was walking down a dark street, looking for a saloon, when the cop got on to him. Dolan had lowered his head and looked away, but the cop had come after him anyway, the way that cops always did, quickening his step while pretending to be in no hurry at all.

He went around a corner, onto Water Street, where he ducked into the first bar he could find. He took a stool in the back and ordered up a seven-cent whiskey, keeping an eye on the swinging doors up front while he waited to see if the cop would follow.

He nursed his drink slowly, killing time. The whiskey as harsh as he had expected—barely whiskey at all so much as adulterated kerosene. But it seemed to steady him, and he ordered another. Glancing surreptitiously around the saloon as he did, trying to see if anyone was staring at him with special interest.

The place looked vaguely familiar, but then what waterfront bar did not?
It was a dusty, sparse room, with a few chairs and tables, a few prints on the wall, and precious little light. In the back was a plush, red velvet curtain that Dolan assumed led to the back door—an incongruous touch of elegance, most likely masking the exit to a piss-covered alley.

He shot a look over at the bartender, as well, to see if he were paying any attention to him. The man's face looked as if it had been drained of every last drop of blood, Dolan thought—so white that it
almost seemed to glow in the darkened room. He stood silent and stoop-shouldered, drying glasses in a far corner, coming over only when the customers called for him.

Satisfied, Dolan leaned back against the bar, and soon he had ordered yet another whiskey, then another. There was no sign of the cop, but he could not bring himself to step back outside. It felt too good to finally rest in one place, after the way he had been on the move in the twenty months since the riot. Going back and forth from one waterfront, one bar to another, all around the harbor—over to Newark and Hoboken, and Elizabeth; back to Brooklyn, and the East River. Working here and there on the docks—loading ships, stealing what he could. Trying to steer clear of anyone who might remember him. Drinking whenever he could get two coins together.

He had never been able to bring himself to break away—to go back to California, or down to the Islands.
He knew that he should go, to live.
He knew that if he didn't, sooner or later he would be spotted. Another Big Nose Bunker, or some ambitious police sergeant, remembering him from the reward posters. His name back up all over town, on the walls of their precinct houses now:
Dangerous Johnny Dolan.

He had even gone back to Paradise Alley. Creeping past the awful, looming double tenement, up to the row of skinny two- and three-story houses one night. Looking down the street for them—any of them.

But he had seen nothing.
No sign of Ruth.
Telling himself what he knew to be the truth—that she was dead, that he was wanted for her murder. But still looking for her—

Thinking that he should not have hit her so hard—

Even then, he had not been spotted. He had passed a dozen men and women, even at that hour, some of them staring right into his face. But his damned luck had held—no one had whistled for a leatherhead, no one had chased at his heels, calling the neighbors out on him.
No luck at all.

He finished another whiskey, and searched deep in his pocket for some coins. All he could find was a nickel—pulling it out, holding it up before him. An Indian head on one side and a buffalo on the other, bathed in the red lantern light. Regarding it sadly there.
Two cents short of a whiskey.

He would have to go. He stood a little shakily, and pulled his coat up around his ears, bracing himself for the wind along the dockside, still cold even this late in the spring. Looking out the front doors once more before he left, just to make sure the cop wasn't still around. There was a noise above him and he looked up, at the small wooden sign there, flapping in the breeze: “The Sailor's Rest,” it read—a name that sounded familiar to him, though he could not remember why.

The barman appeared before him—snatching the nickel that he still held in his hand, waving off his protests. His drained, sepulchral face actually smiling at Dolan.

“It's all right, sir,” he told him. “You been a good customer. The rest is on the house.”

He pulled a huge glass out from under the bar—more like a great glass bowl than a cup—and began to pour a punch into it, mixing whiskeys and brandies so furiously that Dolan could not even follow it. At last he finished—a fizzing, swirling bowl of punch, glowing red in the dim gaslight—and placed it carefully before him.

“There ya go.”

Dolan was scarcely able to believe it—saloons along the waterfront not known for giving out free drinks, no matter how many one had bought. He stood where he was for a moment, wondering if he had misunderstood in his drunkenness, if there was some price to be paid after all.

But the bartender only leaned over the counter, and pointed toward the plush red curtain that veiled the back doorway.

“If ya please, sir. Over there—the Velvet Room. For special customers only. You're welcome to spend the night.”

Dolan walked cautiously over, balancing the precious bowl in both hands. Noticing, even as he did, that the few other drinkers there were in the place seemed to be smiling at him. That puzzled him, too, even as drunk as he was—yet once he passed through the red curtain he saw the bed, and all thoughts of anything else slipped away.

The curtain did not mask an exit, or an alley at all. Inside there was only a small room, with more red velvet cloth covering every wall, a red rug over the center of the floor. The only furniture was a chair and the narrow bed, and he sat down on the latter to steady himself. Sipping slowly from the punch, wanting to make it last—though the liquor in the bowl never did seem to diminish.

He lifted it to his mouth again with trembling fingers, feeling it spread and glow throughout him, much as it looked in the bowl. The drink was really fine, better than any whiskey he had poured down his throat before, and when it was done he would sleep. And then, tomorrow—he would find something to do, something to make him more money, to keep him going.
Something to keep him living.

He had tried to lift the bowl again, but found it was too heavy in his hands now. Trying to lower his lips down to it, instead—to lower himself to the ground so he could drink—

The red rug slid away beneath his feet. Only then did he see, to his astonishment, the shape of a small door cut into the floor.

It was the last thing he remembered.

•
80
•

Ruth had lain in the bed in Deirdre's back room all the rest of that summer, clinging to life. Her waxen, smashed face staring up at the ceiling. Her breath came in long, ragged snores they could hear throughout the house, at every hour of the day and night, so that her presence hung over them like a cloud at all times, causing them to lower their eyes and speak softly whenever they came in the door.

Deirdre had waited at her bedside day and night. Soothing her head with a wet cloth, and feeding her what broth she could take.

She had even brought Ruth's children by her bed, hoping they would give her more of a will to live, though, in truth, she did not know how Ruth could possess more of a will than she had already. She wasn't sure if the younger children should really see her in such a state—her whole face still so discolored, her cheekbones and nose horribly flattened. Nor could she tell if Ruth recognized them. She would drift in and out of consciousness, and when she was awake she was usually delirious. Deirdre could not even be sure when she was smiling, her mouth was so twisted and broken.

Yet Deirdre knew that she would have wanted to see her own children at such a time—so she brought them into Ruth's room in their best clothes, trooping solemnly by where their mother lay in the bed. Milton was the only one she had hesitated to bring in. The boy was still wobbly on his legs from the beating he had taken, and Deirdre
wanted to weep every time she saw how bruised and scarred his fine young face was. It had taken him weeks before he stopped having dizzy spells, or spitting up blood whenever he coughed.

But he asked all the time for his Ma, and there was no hiding her from him, with her gasps for breath filling the house. Billy had even insisted on it, with a hardness in his voice that made her nervous.

“Let the boy see. Let him see what they did to his mother.”

The first time Milton had stood stiffly at the bedside, trying to put his hand in hers. Ruth's fingers had only fallen limply away, her breathing more labored and terrible than ever. Then he had broken down, throwing himself over her, kissing her face until Deirdre and Billy had to pull him off, out of fear that he would hurt her.

Billy himself would hobble into her room on his own broken leg, as soon as he was awake in the morning. He would sit by her side and try to feed her—stroking her head, speaking to her in a low voice. Spending every hour with her, save for those he spent tending to his stricken son, or his other children, or when Deirdre insisted that he get some rest. Talking to Ruth about them, about how Milton was coming along, or telling her that he would never be away from her again.

“We'll go now,” he promised her, his voice more gentle than she had ever heard it before. “We'll go to the West, or up in Canada, somewheres, soon as you're well. We'll all be there together, an' you an' the children can be safe.”

Sometimes Ruth would raise a hand to touch his cheek, or murmur something back to him as he bent over her. But mostly she just lay there, staring at the ceiling, with that terrible, ragged breathing coming out of her mouth, and Billy would leave the room with his face twisted in rage.

His whole family was still living with Deirdre. Their own home abandoned and unrented, the front door and windows still smashed in. It was easier for her to look after them that way, making sure that the children were all washed and fed, and besides, she liked the company—the more people around her, the better.

They were all but shunned on the street now, though Deirdre didn't care. It was nothing vicious—no more taunts or threats about the colored. It was more as if they simply wanted the memory of that day to go away, as if they associated her family and Ruth's with bad
luck, like the crippled Jewish girl's leg. As it was, Billy and his children were almost the only people of color left in Paradise Alley, she had noticed. The rest of the race families had quietly slipped away in the days after the riot, though no one ever talked about that, either.

Ruth had hung on for so long that Deirdre had even dared to hope she could live, somehow, and spent every cent she could raise on a doctor. He had spoken to her of the need to keep the fevers down, of the fear of blood poisoning. But Ruth was able to take in less and less food as the days went by, and soon the doctor had admitted that there was probably something smashed inside her, and nothing could be done.

They were spending all their time sitting with her in the back bedroom by then, Deirdre and Billy and Milton. None of them willing to leave her alone for long, even though it meant watching her waste away before their eyes.

And was this how it had been for the rest of them, over there?
Deirdre wondered, thinking of her family.
Was that how it was? No wonder he went mad—
Thinking even of Johnny Dolan with pity, though she wondered how that could be.

It was the worst deathbed she had ever attended, even worse than the ones of young children she had seen. Ruth's poor face was so smashed, her eyes still swollen and half shut from her beating, her husband and son so beaten down with grief. Deirdre could see nothing of the work of God in it, hard and inexplicable as she knew His ways to be.

The last night Ruth's fever had risen so high that it seemed to Deirdre she must burn up like a candle. It would not go down no matter how much water she mopped across her brow, how cool she tried to make her and in the end they had only been able to sit and watch as the minutes and hours ticked past midnight.

Yet Ruth had also been more animated with the fever. She had seemed to know them then, and spoke to them, though they weren't sure what she was on about—talking about saving her brother, or begging with some old women in Limerick during the hunger. Repeating their words, as if they meant something:

“I am descended from perhaps as good a family as any I address, though now destitute of means!”

Billy had tried to keep her with them by sheer force of will. Lifting
her hand up again whenever she let it fall, clutching it in his own. Repeating the same things over and over to her, with all the conviction of a rosary.

“Don't you go, now. Don't you leave me alone. Don't you leave your boy alone.”

He had leaned in, closer and closer as the night went on. Talking to her as if they were not in the room.

“You fight it, now. You remember how it was when you had him, you fight it like that.”

She had seemed to smile then, and clutched his hand tighter, and he had taken heart in that, whispering all the more fervently to her.

“You were the only one I loved. The only good thing I had, you an' the children. Don't you go now. Don't you leave me.”

But as the night had wound down, he had lapsed into silence. Still holding on to her even though her hand had gone limp. Milton had tried to speak to her, too, but when he did, he only burst into sobs, burying his head in her shoulder and stretching his arms gently around her neck.

Deirdre had watched them together—wanting to say something herself, to do something, but all she could think of was to keep changing the wet cloths, trying to bring Ruth's fever down. Even that seemed to be futile at the end, and so she withdrew to her chair. Until at last, in the hour before morning, they were all half-dozing in the little bedroom and she realized with a start that the terrible, raspy breathing they had all been hearing for so many weeks now was almost gone—Ruth's breath slipping away.

Just before the very end, she had opened her eyes once more, and clutched at Billy's arm now, speaking directly to him.

“You must help him,” she had wheezed out, moving her head slightly toward where Milton sat, across the bed. “You must stay with him and help him.”

“All right, all right, now,” Billy had tried to assure her, putting his hand on her head. “I will, then. But you fight—”

“Promise me?”

“Yes, I promise. I promise—if you fight.”

Deirdre got up to leave, thinking they would want to be alone with her, but Billy had only waved her back—a gesture she would be grateful to him for for the rest of her life. She had leaned down over
her in the bed—and Ruth had let go of her grip on her husband for a moment, and run a hand down her cheek. Deirdre had been struck by how rough it felt, the fingers and palms so calloused and worn. The hand of a workingwoman, worn from so many years of twisting together her little dolls out of junk, of grabbing up pots out of the fire, and hauling water from the Croton pump. A hand that was not young anymore
—one so much like her own,
she knew.

A half grin forming across her face. Repeating the words of the Limerick woman again:

“From as good a family as any I address—”

Then Ruth's arm dropped, and she was gone. Falling into another deep sleep, her breath harsher and more rasping than ever. She went on for another few minutes before it stopped, rattling away all at once, and they had sat rigidly in their chairs around the room, looking at each other.

At last Deirdre had gotten up, and shut Ruth's eyes, and walked out to see to what had to be done.

Afterward she had begged Billy Dove to stay on. No longer caring what the neighbor women might think, a black man staying in her home while her husband was still off at the war. Telling him that his children needed him, that the children at the Orphans' Asylum needed him.

But he would not listen. It was all over the newspapers, that they were forming a colored regiment from the City, and as soon as they had buried Ruth and his leg was healed, he had gone down to enlist.

“But you
promised
her. You promised to help him,” she had argued with him while he packed his few belongings, unable to fathom how he could break such a vow.

“I promised a dying woman,” he had said, his voice cold and remote. “Her problems ain't with the living no more.”

“I'm sure you could get hired back with the orphans. They still need you—”

“There'll always be plenty of colored orphans in this City. There's precious little me or anybody else can do about it.”

“What about your own children? Don't they need to know they have a father?”

He had turned his gaze fully upon her then, his face a stone.

“
My children,
” he had told her, biting off the words. “What my children need to know is that their mother cannot be killed in the street like a dog. My children need to know that their lives are worth something.”

“And what about the boy?” she had asked. “What about him, she asked you to help him—”

His face softening a little, looking only sad now.

“We had a talk about that, me an' him.”

“And?”

“We had a talk. He's goin' to look after his brothers an' sisters for now. And when he's feelin' better, in a little while, he'll come down an' join me.”

“No!”

“Yes, he will.” Billy set his jaw. “An' after him, his brother, an' then his youngest brother. Who knows, maybe his sisters as well before it's over. As many as it takes, or can die tryin'.”

“No, you can't tell him to go down there—”

But Billy had only shaken her hand formally, and put his kit bag over his shoulder.

“You been a good neighbor to me,” he said from the doorway. “I'll thank ye to take care a my children. The boy'll help you however you need. I already gave him my last pay from the orphans, an' I'll send along what wages the army gives me.”

“What if I don't, then?” Deirdre had tried. “What if I won't take care of your children at all—”

But it did not work.

“If you don't, then send 'em up to the other orphans,” was all he had told her. “They might as well be there, till it's their turn.”

Nine months later she had seen his name in the lists, after the terrible slaughter reported at Cold Harbor.

“In the Twentieth Colored New York, the following were reported missing following the battle: