Men of No Property (30 page)

“I will go unto the altar of God, of God who gives joy to my youth…” He knelt as the low Mass began. He had served as altar boy in his childhood, and God sustaining their life, Johnny and Michael would serve in theirs. At the rail on Our Lady’s side was the Christmas crib. Norah, beside him, was saying her beads, her eyes on the crib and not on the Mass at all. She would be praying to the Virgin, he thought, to the Virgin Mother, having excused herself to the Lord for not attending Him directly. It was this the bigots despised in Catholics, he thought, so much they would banish Christmas altogether if they could because it was the one day in the year they had to admit Christ had a mother. It was all so clear and natural, he thought, this reverence for the Virgin Mother: what man in the world wasn’t honored himself when honor was paid his mother? And yet they came out of a rush, the Natives, to cheer a street-corner bigot and make a martyr of his arrest. Peace on earth to men of good will!

The archbishop himself preached the sermon, for it was the children’s Mass and he did love them. The Christ child was their brother, their baby brother, he told them, and it was their duty to protect Him, to watch over Him, and see that He was not abused by the wicked, by the Herods of our times. It was too bad, Dennis thought, His Eminence couldn’t come home with them and explain Vinnie’s relationship as well to Kathleen when she sat down in the chimney corner to puzzle it.

What a chorus of piping voices sang the Communion hymn!
Adeste Fidelis,
and what a procession to the altar then, hands palm to palm, heads bowed. This they feared, the fools! Popery, they called it, treating the word like a blasphemy. And what did it mean, the Pope? Papa. Father. A kindly word, and yet for the saying of it, No Irish Need Apply! No Irish—Know Nothing. God forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Home they went to their breakfasts set at the kitchen table. They could have but an egg apiece including the grownups for at two o’clock would be dinner. And the goose began to crackle before the eggs were vanished. Into the parlor then, draped with holly and lit with candles, and stockings stuffed hung from the mantel, packages heaped and a hobby horse rocking, and into the midst of it, squirming and wiggling and wagging his tail clear, it seemed, from his belly, an Irish setter pup which Dennis called Boru. Vinnie dashed from assembling Emma’s dollhouse to the window, for his presents would come with Mr. Finn. Mr. Finn was not in sight but Vinnie had company in his vigil: Boru at his feet and Kathleen at his knee. She brought a doll and clothes she could not put on it until he held it in his arms for she had selected him to be its father. “Father-brother,” she called him then, and that throughout the day. “Father-brother, lift me up. Please give me a sweet, father-brother.”

Mr. Finn arrived at last laden even beyond Vinnie’s expectations. Norah’s father went out to help him. The two men shaking hands, their mufflers in the wind, touched Vinnie in a way he could not have explained. They could not be quite of an age, though not far from it, Mr. Hickey near sixty as close as Norah could place it (for he would not place it at all). Nor was there much in their past to make comrades of them, Vinnie thought. And perhaps that was it: they were congratulating each other without saying a word of it on their good fortune this Christmas day. There were icicles at the horse’s bit, and while Mr. Finn paid the cab, Mr. Hickey ran his hand over the horse’s neck, pulled its muzzle against his chest and broke off the icicles at its eyes as well as its mouth. Vinnie remembered hearing that he had been a blacksmith by trade in Ireland before he was tricked by the bottle.

The door was not long closed on Mr. Finn when the Kevin Laverys arrived. They had come by way of the Broadway bus, as cold as an Englishman’s heart, Mary said, and proclaimed an Irish house the warmest thing in the world. She went from curtains to lamps to cushions and tested every chair with her ample bottom, crying out in her hearty voice that never did a girl have the taste of Norah in furnishings. “And not many a husband as providing,” Kevin added. Vinnie thought he would question the taste if not the providings, but what odds if it was to their liking? He was glad to be here now although a quiet pipe and a book would suit him well when it was done. He shook hands with Jamie, the oldest of the Lavery children. A “townie” they would call him at New Haven, meaning he was of the age and appearance of a college student but not one. Jamie managed the Essex market for Dennis, a man’s responsibility and at a man’s wage. Vinnie suspected Jamie to hold him in small esteem, still living off Mr. Finn’s bounty. They had nothing to say to each other, so Jamie picked up a dish of nuts and tossed them one by one into Johnny’s drum through which someone had already put his foot.

Dennis came from the kitchen with a great bowl of hot grog, and Norah after him with a tray of noggins and a square of butter which she floated on the punch. Even the children were ladled a sip. The house and all in it were toasted. Jamie must have a leather-lined throat, Vinnie thought, for he could down the hot grog like cold water. He would be a boisterous lad with a few in him. He ran with the engines, no doubt, and drilled with a rifle company, and was a handy lad at elections. He would hire a gig on a Sunday afternoon and ride a girl out in it to Jones Woods. Did he roll her into a blanket with him, Vinnie wondered, and was she willing? He took his cup and followed Norah to the kitchen to offer her his help.

She went to the window and scratched a place in the frost to look out at something she wasn’t really seeing, Vinnie thought. Her face was flushed and a strand of hair had strayed from the bun in her hustle. But for that moment she was unaware of the singing kettle, the bubbling pots, the crackling goose, and of him. She gave a great sigh.

Vinnie crossed the room to her and touched his cup to hers. “To Peg,” he said.

Norah’s eyes filled up. “Ah, Vinnie, what’s to become of her at all?”

“I shouldn’t worry about her till we find her,” he said.

She downed the tears without shedding them. “Have you tried to find her?”

She was closing the trap on his lie already. “Not hard enough I’m afraid, Norah.”

“And shall I tell you why not?” she said. “Because you already found her: Mrs. Stuart, the widow of a bank robber.”

All, she had it all, Vinnie thought. “But that might not be Peg,” he persisted in the lie.

“Mightn’t it? Will you tell me I don’t know her?” Vinnie could not answer that. “Do you think she loved the man itself to marry him?”

“I don’t know,” Vinnie said, for this question had troubled him as well. Often at night sleepless with problems of his own and in the same tenor, he wondered whether if it was a sin to love somebody you couldn’t marry, it was less of a sin to marry somebody you didn’t love. “Stephen Farrell is married,” he added in the wake of his own thoughts.

“And him it was she loved,” Norah said. “I knew it. In my heart I knew it.” She picked up the basting spoon and looked at it. “Och, God help her, if she’d known her place in the beginnin’ and kept it, none of this ever would’ve happened to her.”

What was the use, Vinnie thought. He escaped the kitchen as Mary Lavery invaded it. There was in the look she gave him her estimate of his conversation with Norah. He would not accuse her of eavesdropping, but neither would he put it past her.

“Have you heard yet from your sister?” she started on Norah.

“No,” Vinnie heard, pausing himself outside the door.

“You’d think,” Mary prodded, “she’d send you some explanation and not disgrace us altogether.”

“You’ve no need to own up to her,” Norah said tartly.

“That’s exactly what my Kevin was saying,” Mary went on, having entirely missed Norah’s sarcasm. “If ever she comes back we’ve no need to own up to her. Little ownin’ she did us when she came, and small likelihood her bein’ any fonder now, save an extremity.”

“She’s welcome to this house,” said Norah, and Vinnie could hear the edge in her voice.

“I wouldn’t be rash about it, Norah, if I was you. It isn’t like she asked your leave or advice. Mind, I’m not sayin’ one thing or another about what she’s done. It’s what they’ll say she’s done, and Dennis just gettin’ himself established in the Party…”

Vinnie waited to hear no more. Valois was to have his wish. The Irish were as quick in the chase for respectability as he was. The difference lay only in their choice of respectabilities. It was all for Dennis now amongst them in this house, he noticed. The old man said “yes” to his every word, and to him Jamie Lavery would address a “sir” where he’d choke before so honoring another man. It was Dennis who was asked advice, not Kevin, his older brother, and Kevin, far from resenting it, paid tribute himself. Dennis must indeed be getting himself established in the Party.

“Things have come to a fine pass in this country,” Dennis was saying with a touch of oratory in his voice, “when Irishmen go back to Ireland to find work.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Finn murmured, and the other men nodded.

“If they’d got through the bill for layin’ the Broadway tracks, there’d of been work for them in New York at least.”

“Mmmm,” Mr. Finn said, which was neither a yes nor a no.

Vinnie got the distinct notion that Dennis, with his pauses between pronouncements, was trying to provoke Mr. Finn. He was sure of it when Dennis went on: “But that wouldn’t suit you
reformers,
of course. It’s a handy thing to plaster a man with corruption when the thing you really want is to bury the franchise.”

“Oh, my, you are distorting the truth, Dennis,” Mr. Finn said, rising then to the bait. “I’m quite as much in favor of laying the tracks as you are, but I’m unalterably opposed to paying a scoundrel twice the price of another bid for the franchise.”

“Do you deny The Prince had his hand in it?” said Dennis, referring to the owner of Stewart’s Marble Palace.

“In this instant I do,” said Finn.

“There wasn’t a thought of the carriage trade in them killin’ the franchise,” Dennis said sarcastically. “The merchants’d be honored to have the car tracks past their doors. In other words, Jake Sharp is the only villain in the whole blessed city.”

“He is not, alas. The villainy is quite as ripe in the Common Council.”

“For pushing the franchise,” Dennis sneered.

“In favor of Jacob Sharp, yes! He would have paid a hundred thousand in bribes for it.”

“And havin’ it, he’d’ve put Irishmen to work for him.”

“So would any man getting the franchise,” Finn said. “Who else would they get for a dollar a day?”

“Aye,” Kevin said, “there’s the pity of us.”

“A dollar a day earned is a hell of a lot better than two of their charity,” cried Dennis, whirling around on his brother.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Kevin said. “So let’s have the matter drop there. We’ll distress the women talking politics on Christmas.

Jamie Lavery motioned to Vinnie to join him at the grog bowl. He must be desperately bored, Vinnie thought, to want his company. “Let me give yer another pull,” Jamie said, and Vinnie held his cup. “He’s a queer little cock.” He jerked his head toward Mr. Finn.

“He knows what he’s about,” Vinnie said, not wishing to be counted against Mr. Finn for a moment.

“Who says he don’t? They all do. Both sides. Yer can always find ’em on the side best payin’.”

“All who?” said Vinnie.

“Forget it. What d’yer do? Besides the books I mean?” Vinnie shrugged. “Me, I run with the engines. Number eleven. D’yer know her?”

“I’ve heard of her.”

“Heard of her! Damn yer eyes, you’ve heard of her. Barnum’s ain’t any famouser.” Jamie stretched himself on the settee. “D’yer hunt?”

“No,” Vinnie said.

“You gotta do somethin’, for Chris’sake!”

Vinnie grinned. “As a matter of fact I’m a pretty good hand with a boat.”

Jamie sat up. There was nothing, save perhaps a horse, the young bucks of New York so admired. “D’yer have yer own?”

“Next summer I might.” Mr. Finn had promised to consider it if he stood in the upper third of his class.

“Will yer tie her up here?”

“In the North River likely.”

“That’s gallus,” Jamie said in honest admiration. “That’s punkins.”

And at that moment Norah summoned them into the dining room. The room was aglare with candlelight as well as the camphene chandelier. The table gleamed with a white cloth the likes of which she had not hoped again to see after she and Peg sold their mother’s linens. There was a goblet at every place and a knife and fork. The children for their setting had spoons and a sprig of holly to match the spray of it ornamenting the big table. Mr. Hickey counted the places aloud while Norah seated her guests. “You married the one of them all,” he said and kissed her cheek while he winked at Vinnie. The eldest present, he said the blessing.

Dennis honed his knife and Norah brought in the bird, crisp and spitting hot, surrounded by apples halved and baked with spice; mashed turnips there were and potatoes nesting an egg of butter; pickled oysters to prod and pacify appetites both at the same time while Dennis set to his carving. Oh, how he enjoyed the master’s role, Vinnie thought. It was manifest even in his pride of the sharpened blade. Norah brought then a dish of red cabbage neither sweet nor sour and compounded with chestnuts, and commenced the serving while Mary attended the children and Vinnie popped the corks on the wine. It was of his selection and Mr. Finn’s providence.

Dennis, when all were served, lifted his glass. “I wish no less for any Irishman wherever he’s sittin’ down this hour.”

“Since I am Irish only by association,” said Mr. Finn, “let us extend that wish to include all men of good will.”

“Hear! Hear!” said Kevin.

“Amen,” said the women.

“Eat hearty,” said Norah.

“Drink hearty,” said Vinnie.

“And all in good health,” Mr. Finn added.

Afterwards, when the dishes were stacked for Norah’s “sweep” who would come at six in the morning, and when the youngest children were tumbled into one bed for their naps, the whiskey bottle was set out with glasses for those who fancied a nip, and a crock of tobacco for any with pipes. They were a long time sighing and wheezing for conversation and the loudest talk in the room the cackle of the coals in the grate and the squeak of the old man’s rocker.