Paradise Alley (68 page)

He had seated Dolan between him and Billy—hoping desperately that he wouldn't catch on until they reached the ship but taking his precautions just the same. Thinking that it might just work, that Dolan had seemed drowsy from the drugged whiskey at the bar, and all but ecstatic over the lie that Ruth had told him about his dead brother.

“So he's there waitin' for me, is he?” he had yammered. “To help me get on away?”

“Aye,” Tom had nodded, tending to his oars, fearful of saying too much.

“And alive all this time! I knew he was, I knew he had to be. To get out a the black gable—that's somethin'. I thought it was only me that could, but he did it as well.”

“Sure.”

Going on like that, while they searched for the ship through the crowded, fog-shrouded harbor. But inevitably, he had begun to see through it. Maybe it was how little Tom was saying—or the more that Dolan himself talked, the more he knew how unlikely it all was. Tom could see his face change even as he watched him. The realization slowly sinking in that there was no brother, there could be no brother rescued from Ireland, waiting to help him. His words trailing off, his eyes darting, looking out at the water—then right at Tom.

He had just started to make his move when Billy Dove threw the burlap sack over his head. Tom had seen it—Dolan coming off the bench, right at him, while he could only sit there mesmerized. But Billy had caught him by surprise—apparently not figuring that the black man, rowing the boat, would be good for anything but following Tom's orders. Billy had thrown the sack over him and followed with a short, quick punch to the head, then another one, but still Dolan had struggled—striking out in all directions from under the bag with his fists and feet. One of his blows had caught Tom on the side of the head just as he'd moved forward to help, nearly knocking him out of the boat. Dolan had almost gotten the bag off, when Billy had hit him again with the butt of the grappling hook. Tom joining in then, both of them flailing away at the hard, ungiving form underneath the burlap, loosing their fear and their anger upon him. Smashing away until the covered form lay still beneath them—standing over it even after the bag lay still, letting the boat drift, in case it was one of his tricks.

But there was no other sign that he was even still alive, and they had tied him up with rope that Billy had been farsighted enough to bring along, and shoved his supine form down into the bottom of the dinghy.

Their night had still been far from finished. They had lost one of their oars in the struggle, and it took them a long time just to discover where they were now in the fog-ridden river. Tom checking the body beneath the bag from time to time for breath, or a pulse. Not wanting to have Dolan's death on his soul after all, even if that might have been the best thing for all concerned.

At last they had reached the ship the Break o' Day Boys had arranged, and banged on the side with the grappling hook. The vessel looming dark and sinister in the river, with barely a running light along its bow. Tom giving the signal he had been told—lifting up a lantern and cloaking it, then letting it shine out again. After a few unsettling minutes wondering if they had come to the wrong boat, or if it was a trap after all, an answering lantern had appeared along the gunwales.

But a moment later a broad webbing of rope was unfurled over the side, and two men in pitch-black coats and caps had scuttled down. They were silent and quick as cats, their eyes red and suspicious in the
lantern light, and Tom had truly understood for the first time just what sort of a business shanghaiing was.

He and Billy had handed Dolan's shrouded body up to the men from the ship, who still did not say a word. The two of them warily keeping their distance, as far as possible, from the silent men—knowing that they would just as soon take three bodies as one. And when it was done, the covered, still-supine body disappearing on up over the rail, they had rowed away as quickly as they could, putting water between themselves and the darkened ship as fast as they could manage.

It had been the worst night's work he had ever done, shipping another man off to God only knew where.
And she had known about it, and given her approval, but still it had never been right between them after that.
Especially afterward, when he had discovered Ruth and her family up in the park.

When he had brought the niggers on the block.
It was not just an affront to Deirdre's airs of respectability, he knew now. More than that, it was a reminder to her, as well, every day, of what Tom had done—of what
she
had done—to her own brother.

He didn't know how he could have been so foolish. But he had felt too bad for Ruth, turned out of her home, up in the colored village. For Billy, too, a good enough sort, colored or no, and for their babies. But mostly it was for Ruth, he knew—still suffering, still pathetically trying to get by. Tom had not been able to help himself, and he suspected that Deirdre had sensed that as well, the way she could sniff out almost anything.

Whatever the case, it had never been the same between them, after that. They had gone on working as always, reading together in the evenings. Having more children. Even so, there had been a coolness, a distance between them that was plainest in the bedroom. He had started to stay out as much as he could. Lingering behind at the job, or at the firehouse, wishing that he could go along with the lads on a spree. But not really—even more miserable outside his home. The taste for the whiskey gone in him, after so long a time. Bored by the idle, silly chatter of the
b'hoys,
after so many years talking about serious things with his wife.
A horse too long in harness to be let loose now.

And yet, he had to go somewhere. He had taken to stopping over
at Ruth's more and more often—supposedly to steal a drop of the creature with Billy Dove, but really to see her. Unable to get enough of the gratitude he saw in her face the moment he walked in. Showing off, blowing about who he knew down at the Wigwam, or in the greater City, insisting on leaving money about the house for her, as if he were as rich as Croesus. Gratified to see how she ate up every penny, every compliment he threw her.

It was a desperate situation, he admitted it. He had even contemplated paying a visit to Maddy Boyle, that pretty little trollop down the street. Pausing in the street once to wish her good day—just to see the surprise and the gratitude in
her
eyes. Wondering what it would be like to visit her in her house, where the sailors and the Yankee gentlemen all went. To see, perhaps, still more gratitude—the bigger a tip he left her, the more polite words he could throw her way—

But he had wished to go even farther, to bust loose of all of it, the whole, straitened world of the block, and his job, and his duties. Tired of trying to please his wife, who would not be pleased. Telling her, remonstrating with her that he did not want to go to the war.

But in the end he had gone. Leaving his wife and children, and all he held dear behind him. Going off to this charnel house.

He had been so glad to get Deirdre's letters, then, when he was in the hospital in Washington. Grateful for her confession, written in the agony of not knowing whether he was dead or alive. Unburdening herself of all she had thought and done—all that he had suspected. He had lain in his hospital bed, still barely strong enough to move, and read over every word.

Writing out his own confession, then. Sparing her the details, how close he had been to dying, though he thought she could guess it. Speaking to her one heart to another, the way they had before. Confessing to her that he had wanted to go, taking the whole blame off her. Even getting the picture made that she said she craved from him, had begged him for.

He had hoped to see her as soon as he could get to New York, on furlough, but then the orders had gone wrong. Mislaid somewhere, forgetting his leave and his convalescence. They had rushed him back to the regiment instead, as Bobby Lee headed north and the whole, enormous army had wheeled around to chase after him.

Tom had had to go back. It was another thing he had learned about war. It did not get any less cruel simply because you had learned something. He had joined his company again near Frederick, Maryland—what was left of it. The Irish Brigade barely even a brigade at all, anymore. The regiments all thinned out, half the men boys from Boston, or Germans from Pennsylvania now. Even Meagher himself gone, resigned in some fit over the most recent debacle at Chancellorsville.

Yet Snatchem and Feeley, Larkins and John J. Sullivan were still there, at least. They had seemed delighted to see him back again, even looking as he knew he did—staring at the picture he had had made for Deirdre, bearded and gaunt and all but unrecognizable. Every one of the lads but Black Dan, remarkably, had survived the fight at Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, to boot. They had fattened him up as best they could, stuffing him with extra rations and George's “requisitions” as they marched up into Pennsylvania, chasing Lee up to Gettysburg.

And now he was here, full circle—or almost. Back to the dock in Hoboken, waiting to cross the river to his home. He could hear the boatmen, bringing the flatboats up at last. Dark figures out on the darkened water, ready to take them back over the water, to the burning town.
Back to her.

“Back to the old Frog ‘n' Toe,” Snatchem said, moving past him.
No doubt already plotting whatever schemes he could get up.
But even he looked grave, and ready to do what was needed. Shocked as they all were by the sight of the burning City there before them.

The boats thunked up against the wharf pilings, the sergeants yelling and pushing them into line. But the troops were already hurrying down on their own, even though they knew, in the way of such things, that transporting them across the river on the flatboats was likely to take up the rest of the night. They didn't care—already standing on deck and staring over at the City, chafing to get back home. And when they did, there would be hell to pay.

•
62
•

For the rest of the afternoon and evening they listened to the white women cavorting about in the street. Staging their own small purposeless imitation of the riot. While the race women of Paradise Alley—the blacks and Creoles and mulattoes, and Indians, and all those women who were married to the same—kept themselves low, hidden away in their houses and cellars.
As she was—but not even hidden in her own house.

For all that, there were no more assaults. The worst they did was to hurl another stone or two at Maddy's house, or to urge their children to do the same. Yelling some taunt or another that Ruth guessed was meant for Maddy or herself.

Of course, Deirdre insisted on going out twice to refill their buckets, even though they still had plenty of water. Striding defiantly over to the green Croton pump, looking the women gathered across the street right in the eyes—all but daring them to say or do something. Returning to the house triumphant, happy just to have done something.

“
They
won't be causing any trouble,” she said, then nodded at Maddy, still sleeping on the couch. “She's right enough about them, the cowards. It's just a matter of getting enough men to clear the streets and it will all be over.”

But from what Ruth could hear, she suspected that it would not be anytime soon. At least Deirdre kept them busy with one thing or
another—all of them, even Maddy, after she finally woke up. Never allowing them to simply sit and wait for word, but keeping at them to help her clean the house, mind the children, and get the meals—all the while keeping watch through the shutters.

Ruth had helped her to go over all her meticulous preparations, combing over the house from cellar to attic. There was still plenty of food, with the tinned fish and the salted meats she had stocked in. There were veritable barrels of water now, in every room, enough to drink and wash in for days, if need be—or to put out any cinders. Enough milk for the younger children, stored up in the icebox in the cellar, along with roots and bottled preserves and—potatoes. What seemed like a whole year's worth, back in County Clare, stored up on a board.
And never a one to go bad here—

Ruth was glad for the tasks, happy to have something to fill the time. Grateful even for Deirdre's officiousness—filled with awe again by her talents at running a household. Until at last, when the day had finally trickled out and the children had been put to bed, they had gone up to the roof to try to escape the heat. Leaving Milton posted vigilantly below by the windows—Maddy's gun well hidden.

Ruth didn't know that she had ever been so high up before—climbing out on the flat, tar roof, some two and a half stories above the ground. From where she was she could see, just to the west, the slanted grey walls of the Tombs prison, with their mysterious Ægyptian markings. The dark pile of the Shambles tenement just to the north, looming over them as always—the whole, long sweep of the City beyond it. Each block packed full of stubby slanted houses much like her own, along with the longer slabs of the tenements and warehouses, the church steeples sticking up over them all like so many spiky thorns.

And to the south, all around the rim of the City, she could see the ships—their masts and rigging craning up over the roofs. Hemming them in like a stockade, or the spears of some silent, deadly army—marking both the ends of the island, and the way off. She remembered one of the rumors the women on the block had brought
—those white carrion birds—
telling them that the government was bringing in the navy to shell the town.

“Jesus, d'ya think they will come to blow us up?” she asked Deirdre, shivering a little in the heat just to think of it. “D'ya think they'd do it, just to keep from losin' the City?”

“Don't use the Lord's Name in vain,” Deirdre scolded her. “But no, no, they'd never do that. The Archbishop would never allow it—”

All around them, she could see the fires suddenly flaring up, through the windows and even the roofs of houses. Here and there, along the darkened streets, she could see tiny, individual lights as well. Moving along together, the luminous insect skitterings of a mob, of a dozen mobs, with their torches. Scuttling up one street, then stopping. Waiting, listening, the very way the cockroaches seemed to listen in her kitchen when she lighted a candle and caught them in the middle of the night.

Then the little bundles of light would fly apart, like so many sparks from the hearth. Or skitter off suddenly in another direction, or vanish around a corner. Accompanied by wild yelps and screams, dying away in the night—leaving her to wonder what they were after, out there.

Something else to loot, to root out? Some poor, trapped Yankee or Negro? My Billy?

She shuddered, and raised her gaze again, looking out toward the north of the island, as much as she could see of it. It made her think of that night she had watched Billy, unseen, on the hillock by Seneca Village, the thousands of tiny, lighted window squares down below her.

But the humanness of it—the order and the warmth—was gone now. Snuffed out in favor of these malignant, glowing insects, bustling about at will. The human world gone out, reverted to the cold, arbitrary world she had seen from the tossing ship's deck.
The beast returned, immeasurably beautiful, and cold, and meaningless.

“Don't worry. Nothing lasts for very long.”

She felt Deirdre's arm around her shoulders, pulling her to her, and she let herself be drawn closer.

“Not in this City. It'll burn itself out. It always does.”

“Yes.”

“They'll put it down tomorrow, for sure. The Archbishop's sure to be doing all he can.”

“Yes.”

She wanted Billy Dove back, right now, to sit beside her on this rooftop. She wanted him with her, even if he couldn't stop the mob. Just to know that he was all right, and to have him hold her, and put his hands on her once more. To know that she was not alone, watching the beast.

There was a movement in the darkness, over along the roof by where the trapdoor was. They both flinched at once—though they knew it was impossible. There had been no commotion on the street, there was no way that even
he
could have come up, unheard, through the whole, locked house. But there it was, the trapdoor opening—and out came Maddy. She stopped, looking just as surprised as they were, then walked a little sheepishly over to them.

“I just come up for a smoke,” she said, holding up her cigarette of rolled newspaper scrap as if by way of explanation. Looking submissively toward Deirdre for permission.

“Well, I suppose, why not—”

Maddy grinned—an unexpected, still girlish burst of enthusiasm suffusing her face—and lit the smoke with a locofoco. A sudden whoosh of flame before it receded into a bright, red glow at the end of her smoke—one more glow like the random others, lighting what there was of the City below them.

She sucked away at it placidly—so different from the wild thing they had dragged in off the street that morning. After several more wild, screaming attempts to run out in the street, or retrieve her gun, she had ended up sleeping through most of the day, there on the reclining couch where she had first dozed off. And when Deirdre put her to work she had dragged herself torpidly about the house, but no longer protesting, or refusing. At supper she had not said a thing, but had worked through her potato and the salt pork as single-mindedly as she had eaten the stew earlier.

“It's nice up here,” she said now. “Cooler. I never go up on the roof on my house. ‘Course, it's slanted.”

She leaned forward, gazing out toward the north with them.

“Lookit all ya can see.”

“Yes.”

Maddy held out the smoke to them. Deirdre shook her head no—but Ruth took it from her hand and drew a long, deep drag. Hoping that Deirdre wouldn't think the worse of her for it but unable to resist. It was the first smoke she had had in a long time, save for the occasional puff on one of Billy's pipes, and she savored the taste of it filling her lungs and head.

“I wish Billy was here,” she said, despite herself. “I wish he was here right now.”

“I wish Tom was here,” Deirdre said, to Ruth's surprise.

“Oh, I do, too. I wish he was here, too.”

Deirdre stared out over the City, crossing herself as she spoke:

“I'd give anything for Jesus to keep him safe, to hold him in His infinite mercy.”

She looked back at Ruth then—her eyes somber in what dim light there was, mostly from the fires raging out over the City. Her beauty clouded, out here in the dark, the wonderful brown eyes no longer matching the color of her hair.

“I'm sure that He will—” Ruth tried to reassure her, but Deirdre ignored her consolations.

“It was me that sent him out there. That's the thing. It's not like with your Billy, may the saints protect him. You didn't push him out there, but I did with Tom. I got him to the war, and anything that happens to him now is on me.”

“But surely Tom wanted to go, in the end,” Ruth told her. “Surely he thought it was his duty—”

“No. You know how Tom is,” Deirdre said flatly—and Ruth had to admit she was right. “He'd never have gone to the war by himself—not some war five hundred miles away. But
I
read about it in the newspaper, and told him it was his duty. And so he went.”

“My Billy
wants
to go to the war.”

“He's just sayin' it,” Maddy said, startling them for a second time. They had almost forgotten about her presence, she had been so silent—sitting there beside them on the roof, with her legs tucked up under her arms in that child's way again.

“He's just sayin' it,” she repeated. “Men say all sorts a things they don't mean. Trust me, no man wants to go to a war.”

“So why is it they do it, then?” Ruth wondered. “No, no, lookit 'em all down there.”

She gestured toward the luminous insects, darting here and there through the streets below them.

“There's plenty of 'em likes a war all right. Even Billy. They might not like how it comes out, or how it goes, but they like it well enough. They like to get in theirs. It's a chance to get back.”

“I can bear the thought of him coming back home on a crutch,” Deirdre said. “That would be a hard thing, but I could stand it, at least. That would be my punishment, and I would bear it and praise God for His mercy every day, just to have him back—”

“Ah, now, but it won't come to that—”

“But to think of him dead! To think of him dying from the
tamh
in one of those hospitals, with all the poor, suffering souls around him! Ah, me. I don't know that I could take such a thing.”

“It just said a leg, Deirdre, that's all it said. It didn't say it's comin' off, or nothin' like that. It didn't say a thing, save that he's alive.”

“Yes.”

“After all, he survived the chest, an' that was
severe,
you said so yourself.”

“Yes, that's true.”

They fell silent for a while, listening to the bacchanal below. The wild cries and screams, the sudden, startling reports of muskets and pistols—even a coordinated volley or two, making them jump.

Maddy finished her smoke, and lay back on her elbows. Then she rested her head in Deirdre's lap, just like a child, and Deirdre let her—slowly stroking her head and her tangled hair as she might one of her children's. Ruth leaned in closer, until the three of them were huddled there together, even in the heat. Listening to the wild sounds slowly dwindling below them, watching the torch lights blink out one after another.

“How's for you, Maddy?” Ruth asked. “D'ya wish you had your man here?”

Maddy snorted.

“Not much chance gettin' rid of him. He's prob'ly down ringin' me bell right now.”

There was a light suddenly eye level with them—a lantern, flickering along the roof of one of the buildings behind them, across the back lot.
From the top a the Jews' house,
Ruth realized.