Paradise Alley (25 page)

“Hey, Juba!” one of them called, the grin tightening at the edges of his mouth. “Hey, Juba, give us a breakdown!”

He almost walked away, some little defiance left in him still, from the whiskey or maybe just himself. But then he looked back down at the eel, still fighting for its life. Humping its way blindly along the dock, trying to find some path back to the water. Still not giving up, the blind and hopeless thrusting toward life—

He picked it up in his hands, wrung the head of its slick, shapeless body until it stopped wriggling, and stuffed it into his shirt. Looking up again, he saw that the white men had begun to hoot and whistle impatiently—more of them gathering now, tars and shipmakers and mechanics, striding proudly down the wharf. And slowly, methodically, carefully studying their every move, he started to dance.

•
29
•

He paced up and down the hall of the orphanage. Not even daring to look at the clock above the directors' office. Staring instead out the window at the children—trying to distract himself by the sight of them, spinning and running in their separated courtyards.

Boys and girls.
Their own yards and their own beds. The day scheduled down to every last minute, from when they were awakened by the ringing of the matin bell, to when the monitors doused the lights. A good enough life—though what a shock it would be when they had to go out into the world again, the larger City that still awaited them.

The Colored Orphans' Asylum.
An asylum it was all right, at least for the time being. He thought of the name, chiseled proudly above the pillars outside. Worrying that on this day it made the place a target—

He had his first thought of the iodine then, kept up in the medicine cabinet. Of the bottle of peach brandy, locked in the kitchen, its level marked off with niches, cut by one of the Misses' rings. They were temperance, the Misses, but they were also practical Yankee women,
acute
Yankees, as his master used to say. They kept something on hand for when a thirsty donor might come by, but marked the level with the cut of a ring. Of course that was easy enough to fix, just add a little water or cut a new niche, the ladies would not notice—

No,
he stopped himself—even as he recalled the beautiful russet color of the brandy, three quarters of the way up the bottle.

No, it does not control
you. You
control
it.
My failing—

Yolanda came around the corner just then, rattling her tin bucket behind her. One of the charwomen, a small, sinewy Island woman, skin bronzed almost red by the Caribbean sun. Eyeing him suspiciously as she toted her mop and pail.

“Ya, what're you malingerin' out here for?” she asked, in her high, lilting, ironic voice.

“Never mind, woman,” he told her impatiently, but she only snorted.

“What d'ya mean,
me
never mind? I got to mind. You got to come back with me after I do the hall, get breakfast for the children. The cooks ain't in today—”

Standing up to her full height, not more than five feet from the floor in the thin Island sandals she liked to wear in all weather. Bright yellow cloth wrapped defiantly as a flag around her head.

“The cooks didn't come in.”

“That's what I
said—
”

Yolanda shrugged, crooking her head at him as if she were trying to figure out the angle of some corner confidence man.

“And the other women—”

“I'm the only one. Why'd ya think I asked you? No cooks, no teachers—nobody come in today. It's just you, me, Old Bert, an' the Misses. Bert's out mindin' the children right now, I got to clean—”

Billy turned away from her, looking in supplication to the green-curtained office.
Now he would never get his money. They would never let him go, not with the rest of the staff out—

The office door opened, and Miss Shotwell and Miss Murray came out. Erect and grey as ever, the grey in their eyes and their hair and even in their long, straight, faded-purple dresses. A police captain followed them out, bowing apologetically. Broad, red Irish face looking down and away toward the floor as he made his way out.

Billy went up to them as soon as the captain had left, though he could see they barely noticed him, their own faces grim and distracted.

“'Scuse me, Misses, but I got to ask you about my wages,” he began. “You see, my wife is sick. She needs a doctor—”

Miss Shotwell turned her gaze fully upon him then for the first time. Her hard, grey eyes filled now with real concern and even pity—
so much so that he knew what she was going to say and he hated it.

“Oh, Billy,” she told him, in the same soft voice she used for the orphans. For those orphans who had parents, to tell them that they would not be coming this month and they would have to stay over again.

“Oh, Billy, perhaps we can send a message down. There are doctors I know who will see her for free, though I do not know if they will go out today—”

“I don't need it for free,” he told her, trying to speak slowly and respectfully, and keep the rising exasperation out of his voice. “If I can get my wages, I can pay ‘im myself. I just need to get back down there—”

“But that's impossible.”

He saw then, too, a glint of fear in her hard eyes. Then she looked away—down the hall and out toward where the children were still playing.

“No one should be out today,” she said urgently. “The police say there are already men in the streets.”

“I know that, Miss. I know, I saw 'em, but I got to get back, she's sick—”

Knowing already it wouldn't do any good—

“I am afraid we could not pay you, in any event. The messengers have not come from the bank with the payroll. I doubt very much if they will come today.”

Six dollars. Surely you must have six dollars here, somewhere.
The pink-russet color of the brandy, three quarters full—

“It's out of the question,” Miss Murray cut in, sounding exasperated. “We have two hundred and thirty-seven children to take care of—children of your own race! None of the staff came in today, none of the teachers!”

“They're my race all right, but they ain't my children,” he told them as bluntly as he dared. But neither lady was listening anymore.

“Maybe we should move them.”

Miss Shotwell was thinking out loud.

“Maybe we should move them. Right now.”

“Oh, Anna. And take them where?”

“The police cannot spare anyone. You heard what the captain said.”

“But where?”

“Take them up to the park, maybe. Into the trees.”

“How would we keep them together? How would we
get
them there?”

Billy found himself looking at Yolanda while they argued, her eyes narrowed into wary slits. Thinking, he was sure, what he himself was thinking—that it would all come down to them.
I and I.
Bert, out in the yard, was a grizzled old man who walked with a limp, barely spoke at all—

“It's just us,” he said to himself. “Just us.”

He went, then, leaving the Misses still arguing in the hall. He walked rapidly back down the halls to the grand entrance under the portico and pillars, with only Yolanda's plaint pursuing him.

“Where're you goin'? Where you goin', you get
back
here—”

He went out through the front door, thinking one thing:
To get back downtown.
Get back to his family, even without his wages, and see if they couldn't do
something.

Never should've left. A mistake, another mistake.

He went out into the door yard—but stopped well before he got to the iron picket fence, falling back into the shadows of one of the giant, bent willows.

Fifth Avenue was already full of white men. All of them streaming uptown—cutting him off. Carrying crude pieces of wood, pulled out of the trash heaps on every corner, or torn off of fences. The cruder words cut or burned into them, with knives and matches.
No Draft
and
No Draft No Niggers No War
and
No Niggers.
Their eyes hard and unforgiving, and yet also full of dreadful anticipation.

Oh, to be invisible. To be a shade, moving over water—

He shrank back behind the trees, stumbled into the asylum where he could hear the Misses still arguing, Yolanda still calling after him. He had to get back. But it was impossible, now. He stumbled back, into the orphanage, thinking again of the pink-russet color in the brandy bottle, three quarters full. Thinking of the iodine.

•
30
•

King Mob.

The charivari is fully under way. Unchecked, the mob forces its way back downtown—still baying and shouting, banging on its pots and pans. There is a new sound now, thousands of running feet, as more and more men, women, and children come running from all over the City to join us.

They spread out over the blocks and avenues, weaving back and forth to the East River, then over to the Fifth Avenue, and Broadway. Looting whatever they can, especially saloons and jewelry stores. They sack the old Bull's Head Inn, and the Croton Cottage, and even the Palace Park Hotel. Smashing in the plate-glass windows and running out with bottles of port and champagne in their arms, clutching thick handfuls of Havana cigars.

It is a little game they play. The cry goes up that the draft records have been hidden in this hotel, or that house, and they force their way inside. There they hurl everything they can out the windows—papers, mattresses, whole desks, sheets and bedding billowing up like sails as they fall. Once it is in the streets, they turn it all into a bonfire. They even switch on the gas pipes, set fire to the green store awnings out front.

Hardware stores are a particular favorite, for it is there they can find guns. Remarkably, some of these even open up for the mobs. I
watch as one enterprising merchant in Fortieth Street moves his whole inventory of firearms, keeping his Colt leveled on the mob with one hand while he takes the customers' money with the other. He sells them everything, right down to his stock of black-market army grenades. Then, once the mob is fully armed, they train their new guns back on him, force him to hand over all the money he has just made, along with his watch and boots.

Soon they begin to loot the better houses along Lexington and the Fifth Avenue. Always spurred on by some cry that they belong to Republicans, or abolitionists—that they are owned by Greeley himself. On Forty-fifth Street, I watch them attack a pair of three-story townhouses. Even as they smash in the front door and windows, a covey of women and children go running out the back, flushed from their home like so many quail. They hurry across the yard, the women lifting the children over the back fence, then vaulting over it themselves as best they can in their long skirts and corsets, running on downtown.

The mob lets them go. They are too busy throwing everything they can out the windows—books and plateware and silver; carpets and oilcloths; chairs and mirrors and tables, even the drapes and the tablecloths.

“It's Washington! For God's sake, don't burn Washington!”

Some drunken bummer stumbles out of the next house, clutching to his chest a fine oil painting of our Founding Father. A second thug pursues him with a razor, trying to cut the portrait out of its frame so he can steal or burn it, but the other looters chase him off and set the portrait reverently against a street lamp. There the mob gleefully takes up the drunk's imprecation:

“For God's sake, don't burn Washington!”

The portrait remains against the street lamp, while they finish sacking and torching every other house on the block. When they are done the drunk carries it off—another icon to lead their host. Behind them, the townhouses are left burning and desolate—doors and roofs caved in, their window eyes put out.

Where are the police?

Maddy was right, they would not come, not even to protect the homes of the richest and most prominent citizens of the City. Not that
they spare the homes of the poor, or the middle classes. I follow them into a new tenement, off the Second Avenue, where they bang on the stairs with their homemade clubs, laughing and shouting.

“Turn out, turn out!”

“Turn out or we'll burn you out, goddamn you!”

They pull the terrified families out of their homes, and rifle through what little they have. An old woman begs them to let her keep a watch her mother gave her, her only possession. They push her aside, take it anyway. Another, younger woman tries to face them down, standing outside her apartment door.

“Damn you, get out of the way!”

They slap and beat her, then toss her over the third-floor railing. She hits the banister, and lies moaning helplessly in the first-floor hallway. A couple of her neighbors drag her outside to safety, before the mob sets the house on fire.

The looters stagger back out, still laughing. Their arms full of whatever they can find—bedclothes and linens, bundles of clothes. Most of it so obviously old, so threadbare and worthless they simply throw it on the ground, start up another bonfire. A man from the tenement, balding and bowlegged, skips around the flames, gingerly trying to pull out his meager possessions. The mob seizes and beats him, too. Yelling wildly—“
Throw him in the fire!
”—before he is just able to run off with his life.

I try to look into the faces of the men who would do such things, stealing glances at them as inconspicuously as possible.

But there is nothing. That is the damning thing. There is no demonic cruelty, nothing in their faces to reveal the sort of cruelty they are capable of. They look only mildly amused, mildly drunk as they go about their business. No more entertained than they would be at a bull-baiting, or a game of base-ball.

I can barely stand to watch them, even though there is a horrible fascination to it all, like watching an omnibus crash in the streets, a steamboat wreck out on the Hudson. But what else can I do? I don't have Raymond's pistol anymore. I try to search out some help, some relief somewhere. But even the nearest precinct house is locked and deserted, the Metropolitans off fighting the riot on another block—I hope. I wander back, helpless. My words to Father Knapp now like a curse in my head:
I watch and I tell.

The sky above is a completely corrupted yellow now, the air thick and dank as bile.
When will it rain?

The mob begins to look for new targets, all out of houses for the time being. They find one in the Fifth Avenue at Forty-third Street—the Colored Orphans' Asylum. The only wonder is that it has taken them this long. They rush up the plantation-house steps, smashing in the front doors—no longer merely clamoring for loot now.

There is no sign of the orphans themselves.
Could it be that they have escaped? But how, and where would they go—now, in this City?

Soon a thin trail of smoke begins to rise from the upper windows of the building. If any of them are still inside, they will surely be trapped, burned and smoked to death, if the mob doesn't find them first.

Where are Kennedy's damned police?

Instead there is the sound of another fire bell, the laddies rolling an engine into the grounds and right up to the steps of the orphanage.

“Make way, make way!”

I wonder what fresh mischief this can be. But it is only the Honey Bee company again, one of the oldest and fastest fire companies in the City. The familiar gold-plated hive swinging between its brakes. John Decker, the chief engineer of the fire department is with them, and he pleads for the crowd to stand back and let them put out the fire.

“They're all gone, all gone inside!” he cries out, and I can only pray it is true. “The wee children're all gone, let us put out the fire before ye burn the whole City down!”

By now, though, the mob is not even willing to listen. Decker is slugged at once, and they chase off the rest of the Honey Bee—turning over their fine engine and pulling it to pieces. Many of them treating even this—even the burning of the orphanage—as one more great lark. I spot a little girl, no more than ten, hopping and skipping through the smoke, playing her games under the shadow of the burning building as obliviously as if she were playing hopscotch back on her street.

“There she goes!”

A plume of flame bursts through one of the upper windows. There is a great cheer, and the crowd rushes the offending building as one person—ripping off its wood paneling, hacking at it with axes and
hatchets and knives, even tearing it apart with their bare hands. From the upper stories more of the looters throw down the pitiful possessions of the orphans—tiny white dresses and trousers, a few scattered photographs and other keepsakes. All thrown in the fire.

“Look out, look out!”

The cry from above is too late. A whole chest of drawers comes hurtling down, and there is a terrible scream. It has fallen on the little Irish girl that I just saw, skipping and dancing around the fire. Men hurry to pull it off her, but it's too late, the girl dies gasping in agony. The rest of the mob tearing at the orphanage all the more furiously, as if it is to blame. Shouting, as they do, “
Revenge! Revenge!
”