Exile on Bridge Street (12 page)

“They say Mick Gilligan shat himself before Vincent, Richie, and Abe killt 'em last April,” Beat yells over the engine, bouncing in his seat.

“Well I don't know about that,” Hart says. “But I was there when he came runnin' outta the Dock Loaders' Club scareder'n I ever seen a man. That Jew German boy o' Lonergan's shoved a gun in his face before he scampered away with that kid'n Vincent Maher on his tail.”

“That right?” Beat asks, always the story gatherer. “True they shot at him as he was jumpin' the fence?”

“Got 'em too, in back o' the leg. I seen it.”

“That right?” Beat confirms, notching another piece of the puzzle together for future stories as he is known to. “Vincent told me he shat himself right before they tossed him in a soap silo.”

“Heard that myself,” Hart said. “But I wasn't there for it.”

“All right then.”

Old man Beat McGarry has stories about everyone, but about Vincent Maher he has many.

“Oh they love 'em down at the Adonis Social Club,” Beat tells me as we drive along, bouncing in the seat of the automobile truck. “It's there women are paid to give pleasure. But this guy? Maher? I heard they don' charge 'em because he's got the length of a horse, so they say. If ya know what I'm referrin' to. Like they wanna take turns on him, right? Not to mention, he'll talk a lassie's ear off, which makes them hot and ready, talkin' does. A dirty talker. A real masher, that one. Once he hurt one of the owner's top girls from the insides, ya know? Like he went too deep in her and she was out of commission for a week. Jack and Sixto Stabile, the owners of the Adonis confronted him, demandin' to know what he did to their top-earnin' whore. Well Maher, ya know what he did? He unbuttoned his pants, dropped 'em right then and there to show 'em his middle leg and holding it up with one hand, smilin' like a mischievous boy he says, ‘She asked me to go to the hilt.' And what do the Stabile's do to him? They laugh and buy him drinks.”

“Really?” I ask after getting out of the truck.

“It's true,” he says assuredly as we enter a building and walk up a stairwell, then qualifies himself. “That's what I've been told at least. The I-talians think highly of 'em 'cause he's like an Adonis himself.”

We knock on a second-floor tenement where through a hallway window behind us we watch outside as the Myrtle Avenue Elevated rumbles by over the street at eye level— the truck parked below it where Bridge Street crosses as deep into Brooklyn as I'd ever been. A woman answers with two children under her dress.

“Hello, Mrs. Gilligan,” Beat says, as we all take off our caps. “We're here to help. Are ya ready?”

“Where is what I was promised?”

I step between the two large men and ask if we can have a word alone.

“Come in, child,” she says and leads me to a room that has clothes and bed sheets stuffed into paper bags and other meager belongings packed and ready. “What happened to your nose?”

“Uh . . . how are things, Mrs. Gilligan?”

“Fine.”

“Uh . . . the man says he is very sorry for your loss.”

“And?”

“He wants to help you get started in a nice safe place out where your mother and father live in Grays Fairy.”

“Grays Ferry it's called. I know that already child, what else?”

“By St. . . .”

“St. Gabriel's Church, yes.”

“And to get started with a nice place, I have this . . .”

“How much is it?” she asks, grabbing the envelope from me. “What is this all over the envelope?”

“Uh . . .”

“Is this blood'r somethin'?”

“I don't know how much is in it.”

She takes a deep breath, “This is . . . it's generous, please tell Din— Um, please tell the man that it is very kind.”

“I apologize for your loss.”

“Don't. It's the best thing that coulda happened to us. I shoulda never agreed to leave Philadelphia for that idiot and this shithole in the first place,” she says. “Let's get this junk loaded and get the hell outta Brooklyn.”

“Yay!” yell the children as they run through the bagged-up apartment.

CHAPTER 6

Black Tom's

I
N
THE
EAST
,
A
DAYBREAK
HINT
of amber sun rises behind us at the Fulton Ferry Landing, beyond the bridges. An empty Finnish steamer awaits our loading there, five hundred barrels of corn syrup made in the neighborhood to be sent out to the world. All the men are in place, eighty-five laborers standing together to answer the morning whistle and the flag, handpicked by Dinny Meehan with Cinders Connolly, the dockboss, whispering in his ear, confirming selections with a nod. The Swede in his dangling height and Vincent Maher with a tilted cap stare into the crowd of men—those what await work and those too that grumble for not being picked. They look into each man's eyes as Dinny is pressed into multiple conversations with Connolly, then Lumpy Gilchrist, and the stevedoring company's representatives concerning wages and hours.

Climbing down from the steamer is both myself and Tommy Tuohey from the stern's rope ladder. The ship captain stands cross-armed in the pilothouse above. His crew, too, stand open-legged looking down at the longshoremen. The steam winch engine turns over with a rousing and the drum-end man cranks the boom of the crane round to the pier with ragged gloves covering his hands. Connolly reaches up to the hook as it is lowered toward the barrels that had already been unloaded from a freight bay early in the morn, stacked and organized on the pier planks in a great massing by the old Fulton Ferry house where the elevated train terminates.

“Take the hook off that burton fall,” Dinny says to Connolly. “Hand it to me.”

Connolly does as told and with his long, shouldery arms he unlatches the hook from the chain, holds it heavy at his side and walks with it. Walks toward Dinny Meehan standing in front of his men and eighty-five laborers in the shape of a horseshoe facing the steamer, separated by gangs of hold men, hatch men, pier men, and deck men.

“Ain' the listenin' type 'parently,” Tuohey explains in his Pavee tongue, speaking of the captain. “Say he don' favor to be bulled.”

I look at Dinny Meehan from the side of him. The thick brown hair felled back over the top of the head, shaved short above his small ears, which look like a fighting dog's that are cut short. The thick shoulders on him are of an age-old farming man many moons in siring. Eyes of a strong and verdant color, I watch him at work. His face looks up and into the pilothouse where this captain awaits. Taking hold of the winch hook, Dinny turns round to the band of laborers behind him who of a sudden become quiet. Their long faces gaunt without dinner. Or breakfast. Willing to work. Hoping for it, they move their heads about to see the face of Dinny Meehan among the crowd and the words what he is ready to speak.

“Men,” he yells, now with his back to the ship, though he points toward it with the heavy hook. “This ship denies you work. And they'll have us waitin' out in the heat, too, for all their concern.”

The men grumble.

“They say they can make a better profit if they load these barrels with their own winch chain and cranks and engines. That they can do it themselves. Don' need muscle. Don' need us to stack it for the sea journey the way it should be stacked in the hull like we know how.”

The men turn their eyes from Meehan's words up to where the captain in his navy blue coat is still standing cross-armed in the pilot room estranged to their caste. And we look up too to where his fifteen sailing men stand on the deck waiting.

“No matter that we unloaded and sheafed this load and got them ready for the sling. That makin' a profit for some company far away is more important than the meal for your family. What's to be done here? I ask you.”

“Burn it.” A man bellows out as Cinders Connolly smiles a toothy grin.

“Take their money.”

“Send 'em back to Europe empty as they come.”

“Now let's be judicious,” says one of the men from the stevedore's table with a straight-sounding, Anglo-American accent. “Can't we work something out here?”

Dinny yells in response, “Yes. Yes. Good point. May I have your attention, men? Listen, It'd be easy to force them to our terms, would it not be?”

The men all agree.

“In good faith, I offer the crew of this rig two kegs of beer and five bottles o' whiskey not to work.” Dinny then turns round and points, repeats to the men on the deck. “Two kegs of beer and five bottles o' whiskey. An offer not to work today. After we load ya, come over to 25 Bridge Street, though I do ask that ya tip the tender. His name's Paddy and he don' serve for free. Is that fair? Is it?”

The crew, tired from their journeys and waiting in the low sun, talk amongst themselves. Point to the captain above them and send three men up to speak with him. After a few more minutes, this captain comes out of his perch and casts slurs across the bow at Dinny Meehan and the crew of men behind him.

“Better dealing with unions than you boys,” the captain admits defeat. “At least they respect authority and don't undermine it.”

“Well, sir,” Dinny says as the planks drop down from the ship. “Ya think you'll get a fair deal workin' wit' King Joe'n the ILA, have at it. But he's already fat with his luxuries. These men're hungry for work.”

Lumpy, who has his eyes at the sky in his concentration, whispers into Dinny's ear some numbers after calculating the cost to the stevedoring company for the men, the hours it would take to load the cargo, the percentage the gang would earn and the loss from the two kegs of beer, five bottles of whiskey, and paying Cinders his portion of the tribute.

“Maybe we can keep some o' these barrels,” Vincent offers.

“The fook we gonna do wit' barrels o' corn syrup?” The Swede admonishes.

The steam winch engine has been cut off, replaced with brawn. Cinders Connolly has put back the hook on the burton fall, and five men on the deck, including Philip Large, begin yanking on the rope with their hands and their arms and their backs. Tearing downward in concert, the rope is run through the deadeyes and roved through the timber mast above. Wrenching down again and again, the rope is then quickly curled in a perfect circle on the deck behind, next to the sailors.

On the pier, the lanyard sling lifts upward. Ten barrels inside are swung above the pier gang. The burton fall is reeled in by the deck gang and strewn up and over the ship's deck. The sling is then steered toward the combings by the hatch gang who call down in warning below, into the echo. The hull gang clambers with the dropping casks and then stack them in such a way that the Atlantic Ocean may not maim them in the ships pitching fore and aft.

Smiling at us, the sailors stand on the deck as happy as sailors can be. And in time with the yanking of the rope by muscle, sing an old song that's particular to them.

King Louis was the king of France, before the revolution.

Way haul away, we'll haul away Joe, up.

And then he got his head chopped off, it spoiled his constitution.

Way haul away, we'll haul away Joe, up.

When first I met a Yankee girl, well she was fat and lazy.

Way haul away, we'll haul away Joe, up.

And then I met an Irish girl, she damn near drove me crazy.

Way haul away, we're bound for better weather.

Away haul away, we'll haul away Joe, up.

But all I can think of is what the captain said while Tommy and myself were up with him. That his ship has three stops in Europe, first of which is Queenstown, Ireland. And as Tommy and I leave for the next ship to work the details with another captain, all it is I am chewing on is of stowing away on this Finnish steamer. Escaping with the barrels of corn syrup to where my family waits silently for me out East on the Atlantic.

That night after the divvy the Dock Loaders' Club is filled with songs and revelry as they always are on Saturdays, for on Sundays not a man among us on the docks of Brooklyn show for work. Tommy Tuohey mans the front door, Paddy Keenan the tap, Chisel MaGuire in his outdated stovepipe hat and dusty tails awaits the occasional affray to break out for his flim-flamming a few dimes from the action, Needles Ferry wanders in and out with glassy eyes and bony fingers poking out from his unbuttoned sleeves, and the old timers drink steadily with the bucks of the local terminals, Cinders Connolly, Red Donnelly, Gibney The Lark, and their right hands like the hefty Big Dick Morrissey, dark-skinned Dance Gillen, flat-faced Philip Large, and Dago Tom too.

I am one for the drink this night and the Lonergan crew no longer stares at me seeing the weakness I once had, but instead see hard drinks in my hand and hard friends too. Lanterns sway on the beams when the door opens and candles flatten as the giant belly of the bridge above us rumbles and thunders when trains pass overhead.

“Bat'n a ball,” I say to Paddy and soon he slides across the rye whiskey and ale chaser. I hit them hard too and ball up my fists as they go down. “A man with his drink and cleansing his worries,” I say as Ragtime Howard hears and nods with me in agreement.

The Scandinavian sailors drink mightily and speak of a place called the Somme, which is much in the news these days for so many soldiers are wounded and killed that it's said the French river will for one hundred years have the tint of human blood. It isn't long before the two kegs and five bottles had been downed that they start again with their drinking hymns, arms round our like. And among them are two Irishmen who know a good song of their own too. One of them was what they called the shantyman who leads in their sea songs and who confides in me that he's tempted to stay in Brooklyn and forget his family back home. I look at him out of the corner of my eye hard-like, for I am cold with missing my family, unlike himself, and offer to switch places, as I know of their stopping next in Queenstown.

“Oh well,” he says. “I s'pose I don't really mean it in any case.”

“Me neither.”

“One fer the boyos back home then? An auld one?” He asks me and raps on the mahogany for as much silence as he can command, then begins a ballad solo standing right next me.

It hung above the kitchen fire.

It's barrel long and brown

And one day with a boy's desire,

I climbed and took it down

My father's eyes in anger flashed.

He cried, “What have ye done?”

I wish ye'd left it where t'was,

That's my old Fenian gun.

But the song only makes me sadder and angrier as I wish it's me too taking down my ol' Da's gun, though it seems never to be.

“Another round, Paddy,” I say.

And the night is hearty and the night is fun and soon enough Big Dick Morrissey carries me upon his shoulders as we walk south along the piers and I hold his black hair like it's the mane of a gypsy cob and I as free as a tinker who owns nothing but the wind and the grass and the horse hairs in his grip. And somewhere, sometime, someone says that a man is never happier with the drink than when he is at his saddest. So here I am then, filled with the drink and the sadness and happiness all motley in me. Thinking of my hopeless mother and my missing father, and anything that could become of them is up to my imagination as there's a war between us that is spreading and worsening each and every day.

“Hey, you fellers gonna unload us tomorrow or should we have another drink?” Popped out a couple of heads from a saloon where sailors know to visit off Clark Street when they dock their ships late in the day.

“Anyone unloads a ship tomorrow in these neighborhoods, they'll be dead by Monday,” The Lark yells passing by.

In Camney's Saloon off Atlantic Avenue we drink more and the hour is late, but most of the men remain awaiting Dinny to arrive as planned. After a bit and without anyone noticing, Dinny and The Swede appear in the saloon and before I know it, they are bought a round of drinks. And as was usual for the time, it doesn't take any longer than five minutes for a drunkard to challenge Dinny to a fight because with the drink, all the men of Brooklyn convince themselves of their being king of Kings County.

“Tell 'em to ask me again in a little while,” Dinny says to The Swede.

The Swede turns round and tells the man and his culchies. And as he does so, Tommy Tuohey and Vincent Maher separate them from behind, shouldering through them with cruel glances dyed in the wool of their hard-postured faces. There are not four men in Brooklyn more feared than this group. And Bill Lovett included would make five. After some while, Tuohey takes the challenge of the man who requested Dinny and before even making it outside, bloodies and fells him, quieting the challenger.

I am watching Dinny from a wall where I lean opposite the bar as Eddie Hughes and Freddie Cuneen talk excitedly amongst others. Happy Maloney and Johnny Mullen exchange words about France, the war, and the Democrat Wilson.

“He'll keep us from the war,” they say.

“Didn't help save Casement though,” Dinny turns round and tells them. “Won't help free Ireland. Presbyterian from the north counties, his like. It's in his blood to care nothin' for Catholics, hear me?”

“Yeah,” Maloney and Mullen agree. “You want the Republicans to win?”

“Both sides are of the same spawn, the American gov'ment's as Anglo-Saxon as England. Good'n all of 'em, too. Even them that claim Irish or Catholic, they get high enough in the castle and they gotta prove they're as dried up as them Puritans or else they'll be out on their ears. This Wilson feller? Just wants ya vote. Do anythin' for ya to vote his way, then he'll send ya to France for battle sausage. Mark it.”

Maloney and Mullen are respectful as Dinny turns and faces the tender, who shakes his hand while The Swede and Tommy Tuohey have their backs to him, facing the crowd. He then leans back and says something to Tuohey, who yells toward The Lark. Within seconds, The Lark is leaning on the bar with his one good hand wrapped around the other that has but two digits left on it—pinky and ring, like some odd forepaw. They talk only the two of them, under a low ceiling at the end of the bar. Dinny puts his hand on The Lark's shoulder, who immediately begins looking apologetic until he is calmed and sent back to the crowd.