Men of No Property (32 page)

Maggie cracked the knob of her cane on the bar. “Hey, you bloody old crow!” she cried at the man before the stove, “get off yer perch and warm the fiddle.”

The man, whose hair was white, sighed, got up slowly and straightened a drooping candle where it sat on the shelf above his fiddle. He tightened the bow, took down the fiddle and sawed a few strings.

Jamie leaned near Vinnie’s ear. “They’re common-law man and wife.”

The fiddle tuned, the fiddler closed his eyes and struck up a jig as lively as any ever coaxed a dancing foot.

“Black and white,” Vinnie said, and put his arm across Jamie’s shoulder. Suddenly he felt the world and its wisdom to be his. “Top and bottom, the Irish are democrats, and to hell with the in-betweens! Maggie Shins, will you pour us another round of ammunition?”

Maggie grinned at him, her teeth as yellow as the pipe between them and marked the pocketbook from which he paid her. They were off in pairs then, boys and girls, into the dance, whispering slippers and clattering boots. Vinnie clapped time with his hands and the crockery rocked on the shelf. George Washington dropped to one side and Maggie straightened him with her cane when she turned. Did ever the father of his country expect to look down on such children? And could he in life have stood the fumes of the grog now wafting up past his beak of a nose? By the look of that nose, Vinnie thought, it had thrived on more than fumes.

Maggie poked Vinnie with her cane to attract his attention. She nodded at the dancers. “Is none of them yours?”

“Not one, alas!”

“Yer a different sort by yer looks. What d’you do?”

“I’m a locksmith by trade,” said Vinnie, and by a long stretch you could find truth in it, he thought.

Maggie leaned over the bar, the smell of her pipe ahead of her. “And yer don’t have the key to a woman’s heart?”

Vinnie shook his head that he did not. Maggie shook hers in sympathy. The first dance was done and the girls flounced down on the benches while the boys brought their drinks to refresh them. Maggie hobbled round the bar and carried her man a cup of grog. Vinnie thought it a comfort to see the brew drunk in the family. Whatever she said to her husband, he stretched his neck to look around her at Vinnie. They were scheming something, and Vinnie resolved, seeing the black man lay down his fiddle, wrap a scarf about his neck and go out, to stay the night within hailing distance of Jamie.

“’Tis a pity,” said Maggie with a grin when she again took up her station behind the bar, “to see the likes of you wastin’ yer company on the likes of me.”

“How could you call it waste and you the fairest of the lot!” cried Vinnie.

“Oh, yer a blarneyin’ blatherer!” Maggie crowed.

“Where’s Tim and his fiddle?” said Jamie, coming up. “Or do we go now to Pete’s?”

“Go to hell if yer so anxious to get there. The devil, I hear, ’s a great hand with the fiddle. Tim’s gone upstairs to fetch somethin’.” There was the tone of conspiracy in her voice.

Vinnie thought he caught her winking, but he had looked up too late. Jamie gave a knowing “ah-h-h,” and clapped Vinnie on the back. “He’s a fine lad and I’ll give him recommendation.”

In a few minutes Tim returned and took his fiddle to
Turkey in the Straw.
“Haw, haw, haw,” cried Vinnie, and spying the broom in the chimney corner he caught it up and danced it into the middle. The girls squealed and clapped as he danced it around, all of them thumping and howling and rocking the house. Vinnie danced his broom to Jamie, thrust it into his hands and whirled his Sally up the line and down again, exchanging her then for the broom which he stood at arm’s length and bowed to. Maggie herself came to the rim of the dancers and with a haul of her arm whipped a strange waif into the dancing ring with Vinnie. The girl near dropped at his feet for want both of balance and courage, thought Vinnie. He flung the broom to the corner and caught her hands in his. The others danced by and about them, and Vinnie swayed his companion lightly and tried to study her face. Great solemn eyes looked into his and quickly away and her smile paid him but the briefest of visits. For all the childlike size of her and the face of a wayfaring angel, her shape was mortal enough and a woman’s.

“I’m Vinnie,” he said, “who are you?”

“Eileen.”

He made her repeat it to coax speech from her. “It’s a lovely name.” He danced her apart and in a moment was sitting beside her on the bench at the furthest corner. “Are you lately over?”

“No.”

“Long?”

“No.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Wicklow.”

As soft as the word itself was her voice. “I know a man from Wicklow,” Vinnie said. “Stephen Farrell. Have you ever heard of him?”

“I’ve not.”

“Is Maggie Shins a relation?”

The girl nodded her head that she was. One thing certainly: if she was meant for his company, she was not to burden him with conversation.

“Will you have some grog, Eileen?” She nodded she would. “Hot or cold?”

“Medium, please.”

She was either simple as a cricket, Vinnie thought, making his way through the dancers, or wise as an ant. To bring her a medium drink he needed to buy two, for Maggie would ladle but a full cup at a time and that hot or cold. Willing she was, though, to give him the extra mug in which to do his own mixing.

“She’s my niece,” said Maggie, “a tender thing. My youngest sister’s youngest daughter, and she’s pale still from a terrible crossing.”

“Ah, that’s it,” said Vinnie.

Then as blithely as she sold her grog, Maggie said: “Yer can have her tonight for two dollars.”

Vinnie could feel the blood rush to his face, but no words would come to his tongue.

“Is it too high? ’Tis New Year’s Eve.” Vinnie shook his head. “I’m sparin’ of her to one man only and waitin’ the night for a proper sort. She’s an uncommon girl, yer know.”

Vinnie brought out his wallet quickly, the quicker to quiet Maggie.

She took the notes, folded them, and tucked them, of all places, under the comb in her gray nest of hair. “’Twill go to her dowery,” she purred, “yer can have it all back one day if yer like. I’d not mind yer sort in the family.”

Vinnie made a sound in his throat and rushed the two grogs to the back of the room. He could hear the rattle of Maggie’s laughter like the noise of old bones shaken up in a sack. He gave the cup into Eileen’s hand and sought out Jamie.

“Let’s move on if we’re going. The witch has sobered me.”

“Hunk with me,” said Jamie. “Yer’ve found company, eh?”

“Do you know the girl?”

“I’ve met her.”

“On other nights like this?”

Jamie looked at him as though he had never met so stupid a man. “In church,” he said.

Vinnie returned to Eileen. “We’re going on if you’ll come,” he said.

She put down the cup which she had not put to her lips, and without a word went to where she had hung her cape by the door. Vinnie followed her and took his coat, hat and gloves. “Have you no muff?”

“I don’t need it. I’m used to the cold.”

She had spoken a sentence at least.

Jamie put his hand on Vinnie’s shoulder and drew him aside. “For Chris’sake, are yer on a lark or a crusade? Facts is facts, man. Enjoy yersel’ or go home to bed.”

Yes, Vinnie thought, facts is facts. He had been pretending to himself it was all an enchantment, like a tale to be told a child of a broom’s transformation into a princess. He laughed aloud at himself and led the way into the street, his arm about the princess.

Where they drank and where they danced along the street and in what festooned cellars, Vinnie could not say. He called her Princess Eileen and she smiled. He kissed her cheek and a fountain statue would have been no colder to his lips. If he sought her lips with his, he wondered, would he feel his heart turn to ice? He could not escape the fantasy and the more he drank the deeper it engulfed him.

Then, near midnight, they came at last to Pete’s Place where Vinnie’s fantasy turned to riot. Crowded and noisy the place seemed when they arrived, and near half the attendance was colored; three Negro musicians tuned up and a few couples faced their partners. Their first steps and glides to the fiddle were almost satirically decorous. What happened then was like an explosion. The drummer took over the rhythm, doubling and tripling the time, the fiddler juggled his fiddle while dancing the bow on its strings, and the third man staggered and reeled under his screaming horn plucking at it like something afire he could not tear away from his lips. “Cooney in der holler” and “hi-eee-oh!” Never was dancing done like this unless by the damned in hell: black men shivered all over and lifted their girls to the beams, swung them down then to slide ’twixt their legs and leap up strong and vibrant to be swung upon and whirled again wildly, obscenely, gorgeously, never a muscle still save in jerks and breaks of private rhythm bringing bursts of applause from the watchers…and over it all the horn, the Goddamned screaming, torturing horn, Vinnie thought, stabbing like a liquid tongue. Jamie and Sally were leaping upon the dance floor, a palsied imitation of the blacks. Vinnie felt soaked with sweat. At the opposite bench the butcher boy was nibbling the neck of his girl, her eyes half closed and her mouth hanging open in giddy pleasure. Vinnie turned to the princess. Half smiling she was to see his distress, and yielded her lips when he kissed her—her bought cold mouth to loveless passion. Vinnie threw back his head in relief. The dance was done. The horn sobbed itself into silence.

Vinnie wiped his forehead and hands with his handkerchief and drained the last drop of whiskey from the flask he had taken from Jamie. He could feel his own lips stiffen against his teeth. “When did you die, Eileen?” he said.

She looked up at him and her eyes were no longer mirthful. “When I was fifteen. I bore a child and died with her.”

“Forgive me. I intended to be cruel…and I succeeded.”

“When God is cruel,” she said, “what hurt take I from a man’s try at it?”

“We are not what we seem,” Vinnie murmured, not knowing what he meant except that he was thinking that things happen in the end which are not contemplated in the beginning. “What I mean is,” he tried to explain to himself as well as to her, “it isn’t right to lay the outcome of our troubles to the interference of God when we undertook their beginnings ourselves.”

“Are you a priestling on a lark?”

“I’m not. I’m a student.”

“Of what?”

“Of life you might say.”

She looked at him and smiled in a way that made him blush. “You’re only a boy,” she said, “and a strange sort to be at my elbow. Have you ever known a woman?”

“No,” he admitted, blushing higher.

“New Year’s Eve,” she mused.

They were alone at the table, the others having plowed off for refreshment which they must fetch themselves at Pete’s place. She was quiet a moment, looking ahead and seeing only what was in her own mind. “I was in the field when he came,” she said, and Vinnie needed to lean close to hear, for she spoke softly and whatever story she was telling had its beginning in her memory only. “I was tending the goat and he asked for a sup of milk. He was brown as gorse in the autumn and I thought him handsome as no man I ever seen. I gave him the milk and he thanked me and went. Every sundown he came then for a week and supped of the milk. He laid his hand upon my head and then to my breast and never a word we said but laid down together in the long grass. I remember the curlew screamin’ off as the trumpet cryin’ tonight, and the goat bleatin’ a welcome when I came back and he went down the hill. He waved and touched his fingers to his lips to me and never came up the hill again. I would not tell his name for I did love him and the child was his and dead.”

Vinnie realized he had been holding her hand limp in his. He squeezed it softly. “Are you only a month in this country as your aunt says?”

“I’m a year and a month,” Eileen said and looked at him sadly. “Have no hopes for me, my gentle friend. I was shipped out apprenticed to a whoremonger, and what care I when a cruel God holds my bonds?”

“Not God, but the fiends who profit by your flesh.”

She loosed her hand from his and laid her head upon his shoulder. “God took the child and gave no other.”

They sat in silence then, his arm behind her on the cold wall that she might rest more easily. When the fiddler again was seeking his tune on the box, Jamie came back to the table.

“Me and my Sally’s goin’ now, will yer come?” He moistened his lips while he waited the answer.

“Come,” said Eileen, getting up, and Vinnie followed.

Jamie had arranged it all: a cab was waiting them on the street and already occupied by the butcher and his girl. Even the driver had been instructed, for Jamie said not a word to him, seating himself in the corner of the hack and with Sally on his lap. Vinnie held Eileen on his and she burrowed her cold face into the soft warmth of his neck. He was moving by rote, he thought, his will suspended between fear and desire. At their feet the butcher boy was loving his girl in the dark.

They were put down Vinnie knew not where, save for the ghosts of market stalls. Jamie took his key to the door of a gray shed, and within it, lighted a lantern and led the way to the loft. Eileen held Vinnie’s hand tight in hers and when the straw-littered floor was in view to them all, Jamie blew out the lantern. Eileen put her arms about Vinnie, groping through his clothes to his flesh. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, “and don’t be bashful. Sure, I’m not. I was bold the first time, and I’ll be as bold the last, I’ll warrant.”

V
INNIE AWOKE WITH A
torturing headache which was made none the easier by the realization that he had earned it. Nancy brought his hot water and a pot of coffee and spared him comment save for a few clucks at where his clothes were. He had managed to hang them neatly enough, but in the most extraordinary places. Nancy remarked at the door that he would have company any minute. Vinnie rinsed his mouth and gathered his clothes, and struck what he hoped was a sober pose when the tap came at his door. Mr. Finn, he supposed.

“Stephen!” He ran into Farrell’s arms.