Land of a Thousand Dreams (4 page)

“Well, b-boys,” Evan said, thinking to delay their desertion if at all possible, “it's g-good to have you here today. You're all wo-working hard, I can tell.”

Daniel looked acutely uncomfortable. “Evan? We were wondering…could we speak with you? Just for a moment?”

Evan nodded, making no reply. His heart sank even further.

“The thing is—” Daniel stopped, darting a quick glance at Arthur Jackson. The black boy merely raised his eyes and began studying the top of the tent with excessive interest.

“Yes, Daniel?” Evan prompted halfheartedly.

Again the lad hesitated. Evan pretended not to see the Dalton boy nudge Arthur, who still appeared intent on his examination of the canvas roof overhead.

Obviously, the black youth had been appointed spokesman, albeit a reluctant one. In spite of his disappointment, Evan could not stop a faint smile. “Was there so-something you wanted to ask, Arthur?”

Arthur lowered his gaze from the tent top to Evan. He pursed his lips, still hesitating. “I wouldn't want you to take me wrong, Mistah Evan,” he finally said.

So they
were
quitting. Evan took a deep breath. “You m-may say whatever is on your m-mind, Arthur.”

The boy dug his hands even deeper into his pockets, shifting from one foot to the other. “The thing is…we was thinking that if you was to use—maybe a different kind of music…”

His sentence died away, unfinished. Evan frowned, puzzled. “A different k-kind of music?”

The black boy's eyes brightened. “Uh-huh, that's right. A different kind.” He paused, shooting a look at the other boys before going on. “The kind of music you been using is just fine, Mistah Evan—for old folks.”

Evan winced. He saw Daniel frown and poke Arthur in the ribs.

The black boy gave Daniel a puzzled look, then turned back to Evan. “Oh, you're not old, Mistah Evan! I just meant to say that maybe the music is…well, kinda stuffy.” He stopped. “Maybe.”

Evan blinked. “St-stuffy?”

“Uh-huh. That's right. Stuffy.”

Evan looked from the black boy to Daniel, who was now examining his shoes intently. The Dalton lad had his head down as well.

They weren't quitting, after all!

“I see.” Evan cleared his throat, delaying his reply. “Well, then—what sort of m-music would
you
like to sing, Arthur?”

The boys looked at each other.

“See here, b-boys,” Evan said gravely, “I would very much like to hear your opinions. It's p-perfectly obvious that things aren't g-going well. If you have suggestions, let's have them.”

Daniel looked at him closely. “Truly, Evan?”

“Truly.”

Too eager to be tactful, all three boys began speaking at once. Evan quickly caught their point: The music was dry. The music was dull. The music was boring.

“We need to sing more
movin'
music,” Arthur Jackson put in.

“
M-moving
music?” Evan repeated.

The black boy once again took the initiative. “Uh-huh,
movin
' music. Music that makes you feel like you just can't stand still, like you just gotta
move,
maybe even shout a little! That's what kind of music we'd like to sing.”

“Arthur knows a lot of grand music, Evan,” Daniel put in, “the kind of music they sing in…in—”

“Miss'sippi,” Arthur finished for him. “Where I come from.”

“Sure, and there's a great deal of lively Irish music as well,” Casey Dalton quickly pointed out. “Mother plays it on the flute, you know. Jigs and reels and the like.”

“We could even sing some of the sea chanties the sailors and dock workers sing,” suggested Daniel.

Evan raised an eyebrow.

“Without the curse words, of course.”

“We could maybe use different instruments, too, Mistah Evan.” The black youth's dark eyes danced with enthusiasm. “I can play the harmonica,
and Daniel, he's learnin' how to fiddle. He could save the harp for the slow songs, if you still want to sing some of them, too.”

Evan considered the three with guarded interest. “It sounds fine, b-boys. But I'm afraid I d-don't know very much about other kinds of music. I'm familiar only with the traditional music of the church.”

The three boys exchanged disappointed glances.

“Still,” Evan said firmly, straightening his shoulders and giving the lads a smile, “even old folks like me can always learn something new.”

He paused. “With a bit of help, that is.”

Michael Burke was on his way out of Five Points when he spotted the crowd at the church tent in Paradise Square. Fearing trouble, he turned back and crossed the square to have a look.

As he approached, the singing from inside the tent grew louder. Much louder.

He had heard this kind of singing before. Loud and spirited, with an irresistible rhythm, it was the music of the freed blacks in the city.

He parted the spectators at the entrance to the tent and went inside. The scene that greeted him made him stop and stare in amazement.

At the front of the tent, a number of youths, mostly black, were singing and swaying to the music. Their faces were creased in good-natured grins, and as they sang, they clapped their hands to the rhythm.

Leading them was Arthur Jackson, the young black boy the Daltons had taken into their home a few months ago. He seemed to be having himself a fine time, stamping one foot and pounding his hands together as he led the others in song.

Up until now, Michael would have thought he could no longer be surprised. Presumedly, after fifteen years on the New York City police force, he had just about seen it all.

But he had not seen the likes of this, and that was the truth! Black and Irish stood shoulder to shoulder, singing together, swaying together, grinning at each other—almost as if they had forgotten their bitter enmity. Even as he watched, two boys moved out of the crowd of spectators and went to the front to join the other singers.

But the most astounding sight of all—the sight that made Michael blink and gape in disbelief—was not Arthur Jackson or the unlikely choir. Somewhat off to the side, but still very much in the thick of things, stood the always correct, somewhat straightlaced Evan Whittaker, rapping his baton on the music stand and tapping his foot to the beat. The man was beaming a wide, boyish smile.

Michael knew for a fact that the Englishman's idea of great fun was a night at the opera or the lecture hall. Yet here he was, clearly enjoying himself as much as his singers!

“Ain't that somethin', Captain?”

Michael turned to look at the big black laborer who had moved in next to him. Skipper Jones stood, his cap pulled low over one eye, his thick-muscled arms crossed over his chest, nodding in time to the music.

Michael looked from the black man to the singers. “Aye,” he said, shaking his head in slow wonder. “That is something indeed.” Even as he spoke, his own foot took up the irresistible rhythm with a sharp tapping.

By the end of the day's rehearsal, the recently established Five Points Choral Society had a number of prospective new members, the beginning of an entirely new repertoire—and a brand-new name.

With the consent of their somewhat dazed director, the singing group would henceforth be known as the
Five Points Celebration Singers.

As he started across Paradise Square to his borrowed carriage, the always correct and somewhat straightlaced Evan Whittaker had all he could do not to click his heels in the air.

He could not
wait
to get home to tell Nora!

2

Shadows on the Heart

Pulse of my heart,
What gloom is thine?

F
ROM
WALSH'S IRISH POPULAR SONGS (1847)

N
ora Whittaker stood at the front window of her new home in Brooklyn, hugging her arms to herself as she waited for Evan.

They had been married close on five months now, but his daily homecoming was still an event. An hour before he was due, Nora would begin watching the window and listening for Evan's key in the door. They would embrace, share the news of the day, then collect the Fitzgerald children and take them for a walk in the park before dinner.

This evening, however, she was finding it difficult to summon any real excitement. Once again, her hopes had been dashed, leaving her spirit as barren and empty as she was beginning to fear her womb might be.

She had been so sure this time, almost convinced, she was finally with child. But, just as before, she had been wrong.

At least she hadn't told Evan. Had he known, he would, of course, conceal his own disappointment. Never did the man so much as hint that their life together was anything less than ideal. Their marriage was still new, he would say when he caught her fretting; they had plenty of time, after all. Besides, he would remind her, he neither wanted nor needed anything more than what he had.

But Nora
did.
From the beginning of their marriage, she had prayed for, longed for, a child. Her deepest wish was to give Evan a son. The only child of elderly parents, it was up to him to carry on the family name. A son would be her gift to him—the finest gift she could possibly give to this man who had given her so very much.

Lately, though, she was becoming increasingly anxious, even fearful, that she would never again experience the miracle of birth. They were not young, she and Evan. He was nearly thirty-seven, she thirty-four. Her child-bearing years would soon be over.

At times like these, when disappointment washed over her like a bitter wave, Nora had all she could do not to give in to the dread that she might be barren. It was her greatest fear, and one she could not bring herself to voice to anyone—not to Evan, not even to Sara Farmington, her dearest friend.

Before leaving Ireland at the height of the famine, she—like thousands of others—had lived for months at the very edge of starvation, warding off
disease as her flesh wasted away, until she was only a shadow of herself. Then, the past winter, the scarlet fever had felled her, leaving her deathly ill for weeks. She could not help but wonder if that prolonged period of hunger and illness might not have caused some terrible, irreversible harm to her body.