On the Waterfront (11 page)

Uncle Frank was finishing his beer, ready to button his uniform coat and fasten his gun-belt around, or rather under, his comfortable belly. The sight of his uniform suggested something to Katie and she scurried between people to get to him.

“Uncle Frank, you’re the one. Why don’t you do something? You know Joey. You know he’d never—kill himself like that. He believed in God.”

Uncle Frank was a hulking, temperate man who was ready to slack off on his retirement pay in a couple of years and was looking forward to the vacation after having had to observe the worst side of man’s nature for twenty-eight years. He drew Katie out the kitchen door into the hallway. People were passing to and from the wake, and to avoid them they went all the way back to the corner of the hall where there was, if not actual privacy, at least tenement privacy.

“Katie,” Uncle Frank began, “you know the facts of life. I think Pop’s makin’ a mistake to keep you ignorant of them here on this waterfront. It c’n get you into trouble. A different kind o’ trouble from runnin’ around with the drugstore cowboys, but trouble all the same. It’s time you knew the score.”

“Pop’ll never talk about it,” Katie said. “And even Joey—he’d say, some day, when I was older. As if I was still nothing but a kid to be babied. But the way they acted—almost like, like criminals themselves, looking at each other, and changing the subject, I knew something was wrong.”

In the kitchen Kathleen had been taken home again. There was a pause, and then Moose’s booming voice cried out, “He had a heart o’ gold, that kid, a heart o’ gold,” to which the ample Mrs. Flanagan responded as in a catechism, “Aye, the good die young, they do, I never seen it fail …”

Katie was searching the plump, ruddy face of Uncle Frank for answers.

“Katie, down to the station house, we’ve got a file this thick of waterfront cases—deaths and disappearances and the like—at least four or five every year since I was a rookie back in Prohibition days. A hundred murders if there’s a one. And you know how many arrests? I’m not talkin’ about convictions, mind you. Just arrests?”

Katie shook her head.

“Five. And convictions? Two. Just two in all the twenty-eight years I’ve been on the force.”

“But Uncle Frank, in civics we learn … In America …”

“Katie, walk around the corner, over to River Street, and you’re out of America. It’s a jungle down there, a no-man’s land. The file tells the story.”

“A hundred murders …”

“It could be more. A fella falls in the river. They say he’s drunk and slipped off the stringpiece. Or a high-low backs into him or a sling slips. There’s a dozen different ways. There’s more industrial accidents in ship-loading than anything else in the country. I guess you know that. One in every five hundred longshoremen’s gonna wind up dead before his time. So these fellers help the accidents along a little bit. It’s hard to prove.”

“But you’re supposed to protect them. Isn’t that what you’re there for, Uncle Frank?”

“In the books you study, positively. But Katie, there’s a lot you don’t know, a lot of things about the way a city runs that never gets into them civics books. Things I’d lose my pension for telling you if it ever got back to my superiors. Donnelly, the Police Commissioner, appointed by the Mayor, used to drive a beer truck for Johnny Friendly. See what I mean?”

“The Police Commissioner …”

“Everybody knows that.” Uncle Frank nodded sadly. “I could tell you stories. Like what happened to me when I was on the waterfront squad and tried to arrest a loan shark.” Uncle Frank gave a short, bitter laugh. “I could of qualified for lieutenant six years ago except through Pop I was seeing too much of Runty and Moose who got themselves marked in Johnny Friendly’s book. Oh, I could tell you stories.”

Katie shook her head. “I knew Bohegan was full of politics. I’ve heard Pop say that much. But the Sisters say we live in a Christian world.”

Uncle Frank tightened his gun belt around his waist. “It’s a world with Christians, you c’n go that far. It’s pretty tough sleddin’ for ’em here in Bohegan—and I don’t know if we’re any worse ’n the West Side or Staten Island or Brooklyn. It all stinks to high heaven.”

He turned to go, back to the night desk and the unprotected crimes that could be brought safely to justice.

“Thanks, Uncle Frank, thanks for being so truthful,” Katie said.

Uncle Frank, a small worn cog in the wheel of Bohegan justice, turned to warn her. “Katie, I didn’t tell you all this to steam you up. It was to make you see how hopeless it is, so you’ll take this as you’ve got to take it. In pain and resignation, Katie, pain and resignation. Some day, maybe, it’ll be different. I mean better. Maybe you, or your children, will be seein’ this social justice our Holy Fathers have been talkin’ about. Maybe it’ll take Christ Himself to come back like He promised. But God knows, and I mean
God knows
there aint no brotherhood now, nor love ’n justice in Bohegan. That’s why nobody talks. That’s why I can’t arrest a two-bit chiseler on River Street. Donnelly”—years of humiliation and frustration were boiling up in Sergeant Frank Doyle—“I hope he burns in hell.”

He pulled his belt a notch tighter, taking a deep breath, a deep inhaling sigh. “Remember what I told you now, Katie. This is just between us, so you’ll know to do what your old man says and not push into it any further. If you mention I told you, whfff” (he made a whistling sound) “goes my pension.”

Then he trudged on down the stairs.

On the second landing Katie could hear Uncle Frank say, “Evenin’, Father,” with the note of boyish respect that Irish males always put on when addressing a priest. A moment later Father Barry came into view as he mounted the stairs at his usual rapid pace. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. Katie saw him remove it, snuff the lighted end and drop it into his pocket to save for later. He was a chain smoker (two packs a day minimum) who felt guilty at spending fifty cents daily on this luxurious vice. He had convinced himself that it helped him in his work. High-keyed, furiously energetic, he needed something in his hands or in his mouth to keep him occupied while he went full-speed about his parish duties. Caught between two vices, he had to choose between spending and begging, so he had become an accomplished cadger of cigarettes.

Father Barry, a pretty good ball player and something of an amateur boxer in his college days, took the stairs two at a time until he reached the fourth-floor landing.

“Well, Katie,” he said when he saw the girl standing alone in the rear of the hallway, “I’d hardly recognize you since the summer. You’ve grown up.”

“Yes, Father,” she said, in no mood for small talk.

“It’s rough about Joey,” Father Barry said. “He was the best. We’re all gonna miss him. But …”

He groped for something consoling, some assuaging promise of the hereafter, but he was a product of the Bohegan banks, raised tough and poor and he couldn’t help being a realist. No use filling them with a lot of high-sounding pap, he had often told the pastor, Father Donoghue, whom he assisted at St. Timothy’s. These were plain-talking people. They deserved plain answers.

The priest and the girl looked at each other and he hung his head, seeing impatience in her eyes and sensing it was a time for saying nothing.

“Pop is inside,” she said. “He’ll be glad to see you.”

“How’s he takin’ it?” Father Barry asked.

Katie shrugged. “He’s all right. He’s taking it.”

“I’ll be sayin’ the Rosary in a couple of minutes,” Father Barry said as he went in.

“I’ll be there, Father,” Katie said. But she lingered in the hall, with tears stinging the corners of her eyes. She waited until she was sure she had herself under control before walking back through the kitchen to the front bedroom. There Pop and his friends and the well-wishing neighbors were grouped around Father Barry. The priest would have looked and sounded like a tall, rangy, ruddy-faced longshoreman except for his shiny-worn black suit and the turned-around collar damp from body-sweat and soiled because he had been too rushed all afternoon to go back to his room for a change.

The beads in the hands of the priest were not beads but progressive stations in their Lord’s tortured last miles to Golgotha. Katie, as she responded in muffled, chanting tones with the others, lived again the five sorrowful mysteries, the sweating of blood and the scourging at the pillar, the piercing pain of the crown of thorns, the weight of the cross and the final agony of flesh and bone hanging from the crude, cruel nails. In real pain, with her heart crying tears for
Joey Joey,
she chanted the Our Fathers and Hail Marys and those mysteriously soothing words
as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end Amen …

The saying of the Rosary came to an end, with Father Barry talking rapidly and slightly out of the corner of his mouth, in the nervous rhythm of the Irish lower class, sounding much as he did when he discussed the chances of his beloved Giants, but yet with the feeling there for all to sense. He didn’t know how to pretend with these Bohegan riverfronters, how to sound pious or deliberate or even priestly.

When it was over Mrs. Gallagher brought the Father a ham sandwich and Runty said, “Here, Father, here’s something to wash it down with,” and stuck a can of beer into his face. Father Barry took it gladly, and even eyed the bottle of Paddy’s Irish, a beverage he was overfond of and had to struggle against. He unbuttoned his collar at the back and sat down to relax a little, a roughneck at heart but a shrewd, strong-minded, dedicated one.

The saying of the Rosary and the physical presence of a priest had eased Pop’s mind. Father Barry felt he had accomplished what he could. They would meet again in Paradise, he had assured them. What more could he say?

Father Barry allowed himself a second and final beer and a cheese sandwich. He was a ready eater even if his body, going soft only slightly at the waist, belied this. The fat was burned off in nervous energy. Then he set the time for Joey’s Requiem Mass, gave Pop his blessing, slapped him forcefully on the shoulder and hurried toward the door. Mrs. Glennon, around the corner, was on her way out with cancer. Her husband, Beanie Glennon, a longshore casual, wasn’t much of a provider and five kids, from two to thirteen, were going to need plenty of help.

As Father Barry took his leave with a snappy “So long,” and “See ya, now,” and “Be good, Jimmy,” and a last buck-up-God-bless for Pop, Katie followed him out into the hallway.

“Father …”

Father Barry wheeled as he was starting quickly down the stairs. He wasn’t prepared for this unexpected delay. He had strong, personal feelings about the violent passing of young Doyle, but he was a professional man too, and he had been here almost an hour. It had been a particularly demanding day, and there was this Glennon call, sure to be a trial, before he finally got a chance to flop down on his bed and read the bulldog edition sport pages until it fell out of his hands and he was deep in his six-hour sleep.

“Yes, Katie?”

“Father, Joey was
pushed,
you know that, don’t you?” She was trembling with a helpless, dry-sobbing anger. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you?”

Her rage found him and lashed him. He put his hand out to soothe her.

“Take it easy, Katie. I know it’s rough. I can’t give you the easy answers. But time and faith … time and faith are great healers.”

“Time and faith!” Katie flung his own words back at him so hard that they had the impact of a sudden blow that knocked him off balance. No ordinary Marygrove freshman would defy a priest. “Time and faith. My brother’s dead, pushed off this roof by beasts who hate the face of God. And you stand here talking drivel about time and faith.”

“It may not be enough, Katie, but I do what I can.”

Her eyes blazed. “Are you sure, Father? Are you
sure?
”

The way she breathed fire into the words made him unsure.

“Katie, be reasonable. All I can do is help the family. Pray with you and—try to ease the loss.”

But she would not be held off. “Only God has the power to give and take a life. Isn’t that true, Father?”

“Of course, Katie, you know that.”

“So if—if those filthy animals take Joey’s life, and the police—Uncle Frank told me—just turn their backs and forget about it, isn’t it up to you to do something about it? To try and do something about it? If somebody takes a life, if there’s all this evil on the waterfront, how can you pretend you’ve got a Christian parish—and, and all those fine things we’re supposed to be learning?”

Father Barry took a step backwards down the stairs, as if increasing the distance between them would diminish the sting.

“Katie, the Glennons are waiting for me. I’ll be glad to discuss this with you any time. As I was saying, I want to do what I can. I’ll be in the church whenever you need me.”

Katie glared at him and then laughed angrily. The blow of Joey’s death and the sickening resignation of her father and the painful flash of insight into Bohegan justice her uncle had just given her had all combined to depress her to the point where she no longer knew what she was saying.

“
In the church when you need me
,” she repeated, in a way that made Father Barry wince. “Was there ever a saint who hid in the church?”

The question spun the priest around as if he’d been struck by one of Specs Flavin’s .38 slugs. He went rapidly down the stairs and did not look back.

“O Mother, Mother of God, help me,” Katie said aloud.

Inside they were singing an old song that Runty’s father had passed on to him, “The Green Above the Red.” Runty Nolan was fond of saying, “My entire inheritance consisted of
The History of Ireland,
a bottle of Irish whiskey and the ability to absorb punishment like a sponge sucks up water.” Katie listened, resentfully, to the bleary voices trying to lift the spirits of the house:

“… and freely as we lift our heads

We vow our blood to shed

Once ’n forever more t’ raise

The green above the red…”

It was an old song of Irish independence and it said something about the universal yearning of man to be free, but it sounded to Katie like a hymn of lost causes, a whistling in the dark, as Pop and Runty and Moose and the rest of them made the long hard journey through the black tunnel in which they had trapped themselves.