The Parting Glass (20 page)

Your sister,

Maura McSweeney

chapter 13

L
iam was happy enough at the job he’d found. After a week of looking, he’d been offered several opportunities, an embarrassment of riches for a young man who’d had so few in his lifetime. He had agonized over which position to accept. Until then, choices had always been simple, because there were so few available, but now he was confused to the point of dizziness. Finally, in the neat handwriting she had mastered at the tip of a sister’s cane, Brenna made a list of considerations on the back of a paper sack for them to study.

The box manufacturer lay closest to their house, one streetcar ride away. The pay wasn’t quite as good as that of U. S. Steel’s wire mill, but if he was employed making boxes, Liam would be home for more hours. There was no thought given to which job would be more enjoyable. The smell of glue at the box factory more than made up for the heat and noise of the mill. Fatalistically, Liam was prepared for either torment and chose the box factory and more hours with his wife and daughter.

At first he found himself growing woozy as the fumes collected around him. Gradually, though, he grew used to the smell, the noise, the splinters that made hedgehogs of his palms and fingers. He thought of misty, craggy Ireland and the friends he’d left behind, and he laughed to himself.

Six months later he was promoted up the line and away from the glue. He learned to operate the simple machinery that bound wooden boxes with wire and learned to keep his fingers away from moving parts. He was well-liked, a man who didn’t share his troubles and wasn’t averse to an occasional sip of the bootleg whiskey made in stifling attic stills. Liam wasn’t a man who paid too much attention to laws he hadn’t made himself, nor one who wilfully searched for trouble. His Irish neighbors appreciated him for the first, his Slovak employers for the second. Liam had come into his own.

A year after his arrival, Liam was promoted out of the factory and onto a delivery truck. The pay was no better, but he was so pleased to be outside in the fresh air and relative quiet that he snatched the opportunity like a hungry man snatches bread, terrified the miracle might disappear. That night he told Brenna what he was feeling.

“I’d put up with all of it, you know, for you and Irene. Anything to give us more ease. But to have that and a chance to be outside again…” He grinned and shook his head. “We’ll be sound as a bell now.”

Brenna looked worried. “I know you want this, and I can’t blame you a bit, but you’ll be staying on the West Side?”

“Most of the time, and coming back here every evening.”

“And I suppose you’ll be meeting a great many people?”

“But it’s you I’ll be coming back to.”

“Liam, the change worries me. I won’t pretend it doesn’t.”

He knew she was afraid that with this greater freedom, he might get into mischief as he had in Ireland. The confines of the factory had lulled her into a feeling of security. He worked hard there, and he had little time or energy at the day’s end for anything but his little family.

“The only change you need to worry about is seeing me happy again,” he promised. “And if we have any luck, I’ll be driving the truck before long and making a good deal more money. We can move to a better house, farther up the hill. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She didn’t look convinced, but she let him gather her in his arms. “I want you to be happy,” she said. “That’s all.”

It wasn’t all, and he knew it. But his arms tightened around her, and he kissed away any lingering fears.

As he’d expected, he loved this new phase of his job. He was strong, despite a deceptively slight physique, and he wasn’t afraid of hard work. At first the driver and the other two deliverymen gave him the hardest jobs, standing to one side smoking and cursing as he hauled the largest boxes on his own. But after one good fistfight in which Liam proved his mettle, the men accepted his place on their team. He breathed the fresh air, took in the new, expanded sights and congratulated himself on a job well done.

One month later, after back-to-back deliveries all day and muscles that refused to relax, he jumped down from the truck for one final delivery near his own house. Whiskey Island held no fascination for Liam, despite stories that so many Irish had lived and died here. Now for the most part the island was the meeting place of ore and freight train, a business that continued around the clock.

He had heard about the saloons here, Fat Jacks and Corrigans, that had done a thriving business before Prohibition. The saloon keepers had rarely closed their doors, and their establishments had been places where a man could find friends for the price of a drink. He’d heard stories about another called Mother Carey’s, where bank robbers once gathered to count their blessings.

“Let’s get this done quick,” the driver said. Herman was a giant with a pencil-thin mustache and overalls that ended above the ribbed cuffs of his hand-knit socks. When he lent his considerable weight to the task, the crew could finish twice as fast.

Liam looked for a sign in front of the small warehouse but saw none. The building was long and low, and the watchman who let them inside used a shotgun to point to a dirt-floored corner where a space had been cleared. After the first flash of interest Liam hauled and stacked boxes mindlessly until Herman cocked his head toward the corner.

“Some of that whiskey you Paddies like so much starts out right here,” he said in a low voice.

Liam raised a brow. If he’d given the matter any thought he would have known. The building lacked a sign or any evidence of real work being done. The Volstead Act had created an entirely new breed of businessman, not only those who operated small stills from their basements or attics, or even those who supplied them with corn sugar and markets for their product, but an entirely different type of bootlegger. Rumrunners, they were called. Canada was directly across the lake, and Canada had no intention of changing its own laws just because its foolish neighbor to the south was so self-righteous.

“I just stack boxes,” Liam said. “What they do with them is their own concern.”

Herman straightened and rested his hands against the small of his back. “We’re done. I’ll do the papers. Wait outside if you want.”

Liam made his way outside, glad to be finished for the day. Brenna had promised fish for supper, a rare enough treat even though a lake as large as an ocean taunted them with its hidden splendors. Afterward he had promised Irene a stroll, just the two of them through the crowded streets of the Angle, the larger area surrounding Irishtown Bend, while Brenna cleaned the kitchen. He had no memories of such simple pleasures with his own father.

The other men were leaning against the truck smoking, and since he had used all the tobacco for his own pipe there was no point in joining them. He decided to walk along the dirt lane running away from the warehouse to stretch his legs. Herman would stop and pick him up on the way back to the factory, but in the meantime, he would get a little air. He shouted his intentions to the others and started up the hill. At the junction with another larger road he turned right. This section of Whiskey Island wasn’t well traveled, but two cars quickly passed him, whipping up a dust storm in their wake. He had just enough time to jump to the roadside, and he frowned and cursed. “Be Jaysus!”

He marched to the center of the road and shook his fist after them until there was nothing but the glint of a rear bumper in the dust cloud. He was so angry he almost missed the roar of another car coming up behind him. He jumped to the roadside again, still cursing, and whirled to see this car coming directly toward him. The driver had the entire road, but in one horrifying instant, Liam saw that the man’s head was turned, as if he was watching for something or someone behind him.

Liam scrambled backward and shouted, but before he could leap far enough out of the way, the car had swerved farther toward him, and suddenly he was flying through the air.

He landed in a broken heap fifteen yards away. The driver didn’t even slow down. Liam, unfortunately still conscious, watched him speed away.

The foreman at the box factory was truly sorry, but what could he offer Liam now? There were no jobs available in the office, even if Liam was fit enough to do them. Until it was entirely mended, Liam could not stand for hours manning machinery on his bad leg. He could not lift crates with an injured back that might never heal properly. The company was family owned and certainly not heartless. Out of respect they gave him two weeks’ pay and their sincere condolences.

“What will do we do?” Brenna asked, staring at what little was left after she’d paid that month’s rent and bought potatoes, flour and milk. “I’ll do anything I can, Liam, but I don’t know where to begin.”

Liam knew that this was the moment when having family was important. Unfortunately, his subdued inquiries hadn’t turned up any leads in that direction. He and Brenna were alone in Cleveland, and there was certainly no one in Ireland to turn to.

“One thing the sisters taught well was how to care for a house,” Brenna said, when he didn’t answer. “I’ll find work of some sort, but will you be able to care for Irene while I’m away?”

Liam knew better than to sink into false pride, which wouldn’t keep food on their table. “I’ll mend quickly. You won’t have to scrub a rich woman’s floors forever, Brenna.”

She kissed his hand; then she plumped the pillow behind him. “It was just like you, wasn’t it, Liam, being right in the thick of things? Even when nobody seemed to be around?”

“Don’t you think I’ve asked myself how this happened? Fate had a good laugh at our expense, didn’t she?”

The police had questioned Liam about the accident repeatedly. Along the way he had learned what had transpired right before he was hit. The dry agent’s routine search. The bootlegger’s tire iron. The men’s escape. The dry agent had suffered a nasty concussion, but he, at least, had the government’s help as he recovered. Liam had only a raft of questions he couldn’t answer.

“And you still remember nothing of what you saw?” Brenna asked. “Nothing about the car? Nothing you could tell the policemen?”

He grimaced as he tried to move his foot, elevated on a wooden crate topped with a pillow. “Not a bit of it’s clear to me.”

Brenna looked as if she wanted to say more. But what was there to say? She’d been married to Liam long enough to know that once he made up his mind, he wouldn’t change it. If he said he remembered nothing, he would go to his grave claiming that very thing.

“Mrs. O’Reilly down the road will watch Irene tomorrow while I look for work,” Brenna said, rising to her feet. “After that I’ll be leaving her here with you, Liam, but Mrs. O’Reilly will get the midday meal.”

“The moment I’m better, I’ll find another job.”

“I know you will.” She smiled warmly. “We’ll get through this time. We had a bit of luck already.”

At the moment he was too discouraged to know what she meant.

“You’re alive.” She shook her finger at him. “And only by the grace of God.”

During the next week, he wasn’t sure that surviving had been a lucky thing. He had endured more than his share of pain since early childhood and had thought himself immune to it. But the agony in his back was nearly beyond bearing. Irene seemed to sense it, and she acted the part of an angel, playing quietly in the corner, taking naps when told to, waiting for the arrival of Mrs. O’Reilly if she needed anything.

The old woman was blunt but kind enough. She brought food at noon, helped Liam outside to take care of his needs, helped him back in once he’d finished. Brenna found a job keeping house for an old woman and her three spinster daughters, and even though they were impossibly demanding, they treated her well enough, sending food home each night and handing on clothes they no longer wore. She took some of the clothes apart and used the fabric to sew dresses for Irene and quilts for their bed, staying up late each night and working by the light of a kerosene lamp.

At the end of the month Liam could make the trip out to the privy by himself using a crutch Brenna had brought home for him. The pain in his back was still fierce, but easing a bit each day. He’d discovered that, despite doctor’s orders, a little movement made things better, not worse. He began to believe he might recover.

“There aren’t as many jobs as there were at first,” he told Brenna the next morning. Last evening she had brought him a newspaper, and he had been up since dawn poring over it and circling the few possibilities.

“The times are good, aren’t they? I always hear it’s so.”

“Aye, but apparently not here so much as other places.”

“But won’t you be hired back at the box factory once you’re well?”

He had explored that avenue when Herman the truck driver came for a surprise visit. “Not likely,” Liam told her now. “Orders have dropped. They’ve laid off men who went to work there before I did.”

“There will be something, Liam.” She laid her hand on his. “There’s always something, isn’t there?”

There wasn’t. By the time he could walk without a crutch and stand nearly upright, the economy of Cleveland had hit a downturn. On Brenna’s day off he walked slowly through the streets, waiting painfully in lines to make applications for menial jobs but never getting as far as an interview. He tried gardening for hire with Irene in tow, but found that constant stooping made the muscles in his back freeze up again. He tried washing windows and discovered that constant reaching did the same.

“I’m running out of ideas,” he told Brenna that night. He felt useless, and angry at his own limitations. Brenna’s job paid barely enough to survive on. Another crisis would destroy them.

Brenna was growing thin-faced and tight-lipped from her long hours at work, but she patted his hand without complaining. “Just keep trying, Liam. I know you can find something. I believe in you.”

The next morning he saw her off to work, then settled himself on the old bench overlooking their street of miserable hovels. Today he couldn’t see the pride, the industry of some of his neighbors, the garden two doors away with shoulder-high hollyhocks, the new paint and porch on the house across the street. He saw despair and poverty, as if a filter had been placed over his eyes, the emerald-green filter of his island home.