Men of No Property (18 page)

“Vinnie,” he called out as though he were first spying the lad.

The boy pretended as much surprise on discovering Dennis.

“Walk my rounds with me a bit,” Dennis said. “What do you think of Lavery’s Market?”

“I’m smut with it,” Vinnie said, grinning.

“You’re what?”

“Smut. It’s a word we use. Like smitten, only smut.”

“I see,” said Dennis. The “we” he supposed were lads at the grammar school where Vinnie had just started. “You’re not cribbin’ time on your studies, comin’ here?”

“I’ll make it up,” the boy said. He stopped and looked back and then up into Dennis’ face. “Dennis, I wish I could help. Could I?”

“’Tis scarce the place for a gentleman like yourself,” Dennis said slyly.

“Shit,” said Vinnie.

Dennis was at a loss to know how to react to the vulgarity. Vinnie was a boy one minute and a man the next. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess I asked for that, but ’tis strange language to be comin’ out of a grammar school. Of course, you can help. I’m countin’ on you to go over the accounts with me.”

“Right now I mean,” said Vinnie. He jerked his head at Jamie who was hurrying by with the empty cart. “He’s no more to you than me, is he?”

“Bless you,” said Dennis, “my own child is no more to me than you and your sister. Hop to it and welcome. Thrupence an hour and supper when all is done.”

He called out the last words to Vinnie for the boy already had a hand on the cart, and when Dennis came round to them again, wherever and whichever of them got it, they had a cart apiece, and both loaded.

Even Peg who had all but vanished from their midst through the summer appeared at the day’s end, stepping out of a hack if you please, and beckoning for someone to come to her aid. Dennis, on his own time at last, looked up from a barrel and lost his count of the pickles. There, he thought, was a girl living within somebody’s means but not her own. Kevin skipped like a goat to her aid and Vinnie beside him. Vinnie got a kiss before the eyes of all, and Dennis thought, behind the eyes of all Kevin might have done as well. He caught a drop of sweat from his nose before it fell into the brine. He saw then that Peg had come with more than her elegance. She was loading the arms of Kevin and Vinnie and cousin Eamon with trays out of the hack. God forgive my ungrateful mind, he thought, wiping his hands and going to her aid himself.

“What are they at all?” he cried, looking down to a tray after accepting a kiss on his own cheek without conscience.

“They’re French confection,” said Peg, “direct from Broadway, and for all that they’re a day old, you’ll make an excellent penny on them.”

“Aye,” said Dennis, testing the cream off one with his finger. “If they can’t stomach them they can wear them. What’ll they cost me?”

“Nothing for this batch,” said Peg. “If they go, we’ll make an arrangement.”

To Dennis’ amazement and Norah’s delight, Peg took from the bag dangling at her side a fancy tea apron which she shook out and tied about her waist. She folded back her frilled cuffs and set about clearing a counter space for herself. When she was set she looked up at the gaping family. “Madame?” she said to Mary Lavery, sending the woman into a great “Oh-h-h” that resounded over the whole marketplace. Then showing her pretty teeth in a smile, she turned to cousin Eamon: “Monsieur?” He bowed and pulled out a fat purse.

“By the glory,” said Dennis, “I’d be leery of an arrangement like that!”

More than one merchant stopped by after his own closing to wish well to the Eight O’clock Market and as many as stopped took home a French confection. Any who lingered an hour more saw a great venture launched. Half the population of the ward turned out, it seemed, men along with their women and prodding them not to be squeezing their pennies. A gang of newsboys cleaned Peg out of her sweets tout de suite as she said, devouring them as fast as they dredged their pockets for twopence. The cream frothed from their lips, and some that melted trickled down their wrists until caught by their tongues. “My eyes!” cried one, pointing to the groove of white flesh his tongue had licked clean, “I’m white an’ nut black as they tuld me!” “Aw,” said his chum, “yer muther was a striped bass an’ yer futher a minnow.” “An’ you wuz hatched by a rooster! Hey, Muss, ain’t you gut some yer hidin’ fur yer fella? I’ll be yer fella fur anuther o’ them!” “Puddinhead!” cried another, leaping up on Puddinhead’s back. “Take me, Missie, I’m prettier!” Peg looked into their pert and impish faces. Pinched by necessity they were, but not trapped by it. Free-swinging, free-betting, free-spending, urchins of democracy, its petty merchants, the youngest of Young America, its plague and its promise, for these were the b’hoys of tomorrow, not one of them doubting his rights as a man and claiming them now to be certain; they owned what they paid for if it was no more than a dozen copies of the penny
Sun,
and there was not a craven peasant heart among them.

Pushing in and through the boys and scattering those at anchor were the beggars turned shoppers. Women bundled cabbages, tomatoes and slabs of cheese into their shawls, men nestled eggs in their caps; meat was weighed into the pot it would cook in and butter slapped into jars greased by nothing sweeter before than salt pork drippings. Corn sold at three ears for a penny; potatoes were high, sixpence a bushel, but that quartered if you had but a penny and a half. No prices were haggled the night of the opening, and no wares were unsold by lantern time. As Dennis remarked on the way home with his money-box loaded, a mouse couldn’t find a crumb, not even if he came with a gold nugget to lay in its place. All nights were not as good as the first, but none of them were bad, and even the perishing storms of November could not destroy Dennis’ daily profit. Before long peddlers were bringing their hand carts from Chatham Street into the shadow of Lavery’s and hawking their second-hand clothes, trinkets, coffee-sacks, old shoes and pots mended-to-new. Let them come, Dennis said, so long as they don’t bring produce. Well he knew that the stomachs of the poor made the first and loudest demands upon their scrabbled pennies, and he often remarked of himself that he was not a greedy man. By the end of the year he resigned his job as city roundsman, and began to look to the opening of another Eight O’clock Market.

O
F ALL THE TIMES
that Dennis had been to see Jeremiah Finn, he had always been received in the office. He had been in the household apartment but once, that when Finn was away and when invited by Vinnie to see his room. So much out of place had he felt then that he scarcely observed the house at all, except to wonder if it was safe to live under the same roof with as black a woman as Nancy. Climbing into the omnibus after Vinnie on a Sunday afternoon in January, he felt a spark of pride that Mr. Finn had sent for him to tea. He was glad now that Finn’s patronage had not extended to friendship until he felt himself almost the equal of the little man. He shuffled his feet through the straw in the bottom of the bus and thought he would have been even more equal to the invitation if they had taken a hack. Vinnie was huddled in his greatcoat, his breath shooting out of the collar like steam.

“Is it business or social?” Dennis asked, leaning near the boy’s ear.

“I didn’t ask,” Vinnie muttered without lifting his chin.

He was beginning to take on airs, the boy, Dennis thought. When he came round now, he kissed the cheek of Norah and of his sister where before you had to corner him to give him a bit of affection. But more loving then was he than now with his courtly kisses. A few months to a boy this age made a great difference. Whether it was shyness he was overcoming or the snob bubbling out of him like the pimples, Dennis could not tell. When they got out of the bus at the corner of Chambers and Broadway, he made the boy wait while he brushed the chaff from his own trousers. Vinnie said nothing, but when they reached the lower hall of Mr. Finn’s, Vinnie took off his coat and hung it on a peg, and there took a bristle brush to his own suit.

“Why didn’t you tell me we could brush off here?” said Dennis.

Vinnie looked at him in surprise, as though, Dennis thought, the boy had come of his natural growth with a bristle brush in his hand. “Because I thought you were ashamed to be seen on the street with straw on your legs.”

“Vinnie…” Dennis thumped him on the chest. “I grew up with it in me hair.”

The boy laughed but not hard enough to destroy himself. More politeness. Dennis gathered his gloves to carry up with him. Vinnie touched his hand to a bell as he opened the apartment door to give fair warning, Dennis thought, for he heard at the same time a woman’s laughter. And Peg herself it was, planted on the sofa as though she had grown there. He was irked then that Norah had not been included. But seeing how completely at ease was Peg and in the home of a bachelor with the black woman as their lorn chaperone, he wondered if Norah’s neglect wasn’t a compliment to her. By the glory, it came to him all of a rush, this might be where Peg was feathering her nest! But of Jeremiah Finn he had expected better. The dapper little gnome wore such a look of sanctity on the street he could vanish a whorehouse by blowing his nose.

Mr. Finn rose and shook his hand and took him to the fire. Tea was soon served, Peg pouring and presiding and palavering until Dennis slopped his tea in the saucer with their bloody distractions. He cursed them as well as himself for his awkwardness. She had the air and the speech and the giddiness of a lady—as though that was all it took to make one.

When the tea was done Mr. Finn approached the matter on which he had summoned him, and though it might be to his own interests Dennis could not put down the resentment he felt at their ease. He sniffed charity in the air and having reached the place where he imagined himself able to dispense it, he found it the more difficult to accept.

It had come to Finn’s attention that in the Common Council of the City of New York there was rising agitation for strict enforcement of the closing hour in the city markets. “It would seem, Dennis,” said Finn, “that your enterprise has won you enemies. It is my observation, however, that no man is a success without them. Eh?”

Dennis glanced at Vinnie and Peg. They apparently concurred in Finn’s notion of his success. This served at least to take the curse off the charity. “Is there a regulation closing hour?” he asked.

“Sundown, it seems.”

“Well,” said Dennis, “’tis a certainty I can’t keep the sun up from his bedtime. Who is it that finds me a bother—for that’s the gist of what you’re sayin’, isn’t it?”

“It is. And I should say the complaint comes from the gentleman who first brought us together.”

“Mulrooney?” Dennis rang the chandelier with his laughter. He stopped abruptly seeing a look of pain on Mr. Finn’s face.

“I should join you,” the little man said, “if I were not aware of his powers of mischief. It is not only your Eight O’clock Market at issue. I suspect he sees in you a threat to his domination of the ward.”

“And he’d stunt my growth at the beginnin’,” Dennis mused. “Does he have the full power of the council in this? Have they nothin’ better to do than swat flies in the city markets? What more am I to men of their importance?”

“He has the power of the council—until they are reached and persuaded against him.”

“Are they persuadable?”

Mr. Finn put his fingertips together. “Easily by money…”

“And where would I get the money?” Dennis interrupted.

“If you had the money, would you pay it?” said Peg then. Pure as a dove, Dennis thought.

He whirled on her. “Who the hell are you to be askin’ a question like that? I’m not stealin’ sovereigns from under the head of a crippled man at least.”

“We put them all back,” said Vinnie from over a book he had taken apart from them. “All excepting one.”

Excepting one, Dennis thought. Quelled entirely by recollection he sat quiet.

“Vincent,” said Finn, “stir up the logs like a good lad. I have never believed in testing my own strength against the winds of probability. Nor should I care to be judged for my temptations. I shall fare poorly enough on performance. I was about to say, Dennis, that however easy it is to reach the council with money, it is possible to do it also with what we shall call ‘promise’. If I were you I’d call on certain of the aldermanic gentlemen. Make a show of your wit and ambition—a modest show—as we have seen it. They know a potential candidate almost as well as they know their own credit. We shall see. We may find it propitious, should the matter come to a Council vote, for you to make an appearance in the chamber.”

Dennis’ heart began to throb harder. “Do you think I’m ready for that yet, Mr. Finn?”

“No, but you may be after confronting each of them singly.”

Dennis arose to leave in high spirits, as confident of winning as he was of making the fight. Jeremiah Finn had a way with people. He gave a man a grand sense of his own importance, the power within him which, if it wasn’t for the likes of Finn, might never be primed at all.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,” said Peg, smiling.

He grinned down at her. “Aren’t they now? Ah, Peg, you’re a grand woman entirely and I’m not holdin’ nothin’ against you.” He took her hand in his for a moment. “Come round soon and see your sister. She’s missed you. She’s near the style of yourself—but not quite.”

“Thank you,” said Peg.

Vinnie went down with him and held his coat. Dennis ventured to give the boy a hug. “You’re apprenticed to a prince, lad, a prince in his castle.”

Vinnie, shy of the embrace, said: “Yes, sir.”

Dennis slapped him gently on the chest. “Look who he’s sayin’ ‘sir’ to.” He fitted his hat carefully to his head, examining the fit in the hallstand mirror. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s not altogether undue, the ‘sir’. It was me responsible for bringin’ the two of you together.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vinnie again.

Dennis turned from the mirror and took the boy by the arm. “But to be serious for a minute, it’s you that’s responsible for that up there.” He jerked his head toward the stairs.

“For what, Dennis?”

“Try for Norah’s sake if you can to get them to marry. I think we could find a lenient priest.” Vinnie’s mouth fell open. “You’ve eyes as well as me,” he went on, irked at the boy’s show of surprise. “You’re near a man now and more a one than ever I was at your age. You’ve a responsibility to me too, you know. There’s nothin’ quicker to blight a man than a scandal in his family.”