Shanty Irish (14 page)

T
HE
Illinois authorities learned too late of John Lawler's release from the Ohio Penitentiary.

He arrived in a Canadian town on a windy wintry day. He had with him an old valise and twenty dollars. He secured work as a coachman. He literally lived with the handsome team which pulled the banker's carriage.

The citizens asked no questions of the man who loved horses.

No one knows just why he went so deftly and surely to a particular town.

It may have been that he carried a message.

A wealthy family perhaps learned that their son had died—a missionary in China—instead of a gallows-birds in Ohio.

It is all mysterious—except:

John Lawler was a trusty in the penitentiary the year Blinky Morgan was hung.

Morgan was even more silent than my uncle. The people of Ohio strangled him without ever learning where he was from, or his real name.

These things have been mysteries for forty years.

He was a sombre, slow moving, quick-thinking Gael.

Morgan had some connection with people in Canada. He was on his way to that country when arrested for murder committed in Ohio.

Any confidence Morgan may have placed in my uncle during the ten months he awaited execution was never violated.

A fur store was robbed in Cleveland.

A week later two detectives went to Pittsburgh in search of the robbers. A suspect was arrested.

The officers started for Cleveland with him.

Several other men boarded the train about fifty miles from the Ohio city.

The detectives, their prisoner handcuffed between them, stared out of the window.

The men entered the car.

An iron coupling pin, wrapped in newspaper, crumpled one detective to the floor, broken-skulled, dead.

The men drew revolvers. The other detective escaped, screaming.

Three men, Morgan among them, were captured some weeks later while attempting to flee to Canada. Morgan had an alibi. It did not save him.

He was sentenced to hang.

The governor of Ohio, Joseph Benson Foraker, later to die in disgrace as a political grafter, refused to give him the benefit of the doubt, by commuting his sentence to life imprisonment.

Morgan had regular features. He was about forty years of age. His manner was that of a clergyman.

One of his eyes had been injured. He was called Blinky.

He wore glasses to hide the defect in his eye. His clothing was always dark. His scarf was either severe white or black.

He was polished, suave, debonair.

The prison guards became fond of him. They doubted his guilt.

He read everything possible. He would discuss all subjects but his own case—and religion. Unlike most Christians who are hung, he did not acknowledge God.

As he did not wish the news reporters to garble any verbal statement after his death, he wrote one to the warden. “There will doubtless be people who will not hesitate to declare that I died with a falsehood on my lips, simply because my assertions cannot correspond with their beliefs and prejudices … I am being judicially murdered to satisfy the clamor for a victim.”

At his request only the visitors he invited were allowed to see him hang.

At five in the evening he ate dinner. He lay on his iron cot in the death chamber until eleven that night and stared at the ceiling. What his thoughts were—no one knew. Two hours before dying he rose and wrote letters.

At one that night the warden appeared with the death warrant.

The man about to die asked if the rope was ready. The official nodded. Morgan rubbed his neck, and said, “This is an awful business, Warden.”

He arrayed himself with precise care. He pinned roses and heliotrope in the lapel of his coat.

The march to the gallows began at 1:17.

A minute later the scaffold door suddenly opened. Morgan stood before the invited assemblage with the warden and two other official murderers.

While the rope was being adjusted a friend made some disturbance. He was ejected. Upon Morgan's request he was re-admitted.

Morgan looked around the room of death as the warden read the death warrant.

The doomed man sobbed several times, as the sentence was read. His glasses were wet with tears.

The black cap was adjusted. The officers stepped quickly from the vicinity of the trap.

Morgan dropped into eternity with two words on his lips. His throat rattled as though he would repeat them. He never did.

They were:
Good-bye, Nellie!”

J
OHN
L
AWLER
'
S
relatives never divulged his whereabouts, even the children were fiercely silent concerning him.

A man of iron, his spirit was not crushed by thirteen years in one of the most terrible of American jails.

Stronger than a cable of steel was his will. It never snapped. Unyielding to the end, he became a sardonic red and gray old man.

A close cropped mustache and beard hid the strong, tight, brutal mouth.

His eyes were ever those of a haunted man.

It was said of John Lawler in his younger days that all who knew him for an hour regretted it a lifetime. This may have been true. It could not have been said of his later years.

Cold, diffident, with a musical voice and a slight brogue, he went quietly down the long hill of life with the poise of a Chinese man-darin. In thirty-eight years he never left the town. He lived in the same house for thirty-four years. He would say no word for hours at a time. Several of us visited him. We were welcome always.

Like my mother, the ex-horse thief never knew how to laugh. Humor had early been strangled in his throat.

He married a banker's daughter. Her name was said to be Nellie. He died—owning the bank.

His identity was never questioned. The brigand easily became the gentleman of finance.

His daughters, educated at exclusive colleges, were not aware that their father was a convicted horse thief.

After being convicted his father said to him—“Did ye have no mercy on the team ye burned?”

Always inscrutable, the young man looked at his father with the expression of one too tired to answer the question of a child.

There was something in his favor. He had none of the insincerity which makes possible all social intercourse.

The hauteur of his mien gained the respect and fear of lesser and luckier men.

When father, mother, sister and brothers wept over his conduct, he remained calm until they had regained control.

Many women loved him. With the exception of his wife and two daughters—he betrayed them all.

Married at forty, after a long prison term, he was either too tired or indifferent to interest himself further in women.

He was never known to have responded to a human emotion.

“One may as well kiss a block of ice,” my mother once said of him.

But neither did he ever say an unkind word to the three women who clung to him until he was a very old man. The cold blood congealed in his heart at last. Like his father, he died of heart failure.

His house was large and white, with green shutters. It was shielded from the road by immense trees and shrubs.

A weather vane—the bronze figure of a running horse, was on the front gable of his barn.

Two iron horses were used as hitching posts in front of his house.

Large iron negro jockeys stood at the sides of the horses. Their right arms were extended as if to grasp the lines. A joyful expression of welcome was upon their faces.

Schoolboys on a Hallowe'en prank, stole one of the horses.

The banker's wife was irate when it was discovered next day along a country road.

As a future precaution the banker had the iron horses imbedded in concrete.

He divided his time between his house and his vast ranch.

He seldom left his home at night.

During long winter evenings he would sit in his immense living room, while his wife and daughters made gay the house.

His girls studied music, and he developed appreciation for the more thunderous rhythms of the masters.

When they tried to tell him something of Wagner's life, he would turn to “The Breeder's Journal.”

His mania for horses never left him. It increased with age. His hands were always firm on lines or bridle.

He could detect the least blemish on a horse. He would stand at its head, his eyes oblique, his face stern. Thumb and forefinger would lift the horse's upper lip. He would look at its teeth and tell the horse's age instantly. His stern presence could control the mood of a stallion.

His ranch was stocked with many breeds of horses.

He would seldom accompany his family on Sunday.

That day he spent in the country. Horses whinnied when he drew near.

No horse on his ranch was ever traded or sold. A veterinary surgeon inspected them each month. An animal had once broken a leg and torn a hoof loose. The ex-horse thief was three weeks in deciding to have it shot. After it was put out of its misery, he remained away from the ranch for over a week.

He once bred an Arabian mare to a Percheron stallion. The offspring was fire and docility.

Though he had no use for it as a stallion, he would not have it neutered.

For some reason it appealed to him more than the other horses.

His youngest daughter named it Ali Baba. He called it Babe.

With the ex-horse thief and banker on his back Ali Baba would lift his knees high and prance down the road. He would keep the same pace for hours; his dark red body a grace-full mass of muscle beneath his somber burden.

He had a passion for feeding apples to horses. A boy would follow him each Sunday with a basket full of the luscious fruit. By deft manipulation he would insert the apple in the horse's mouth. The horses would neigh and trot across the meadow. One apple, and a pat on the nose was each animal's portion.

He never lost his carved-granite appearance. Age merely accentuated the hard fiber of his body. His step was ever elastic—and firm.

He was always reluctant to ride in an automobile. He never learned to drive. Only on rare occasions would he accompany his family in a machine. At such times he would remain in the rear seat and gaze at the passing landscape as he had on the way to the penitentiary.

Once in a while he would ride with his youngest daughter in her roadster. He would remain deep in thought while she dashed, hair blowing, cheeks red as fire, over the countryside.

The other Lawlers perpetually spouted the smoke of life. He was ever a furnace in which the fire had either gone out, or was under control.

With increasing age he became more aloof, even snobbish, as though people were not worth the bother.

The foundation of his wife's fortune had been built while he was stealing horses. It grew in value with the years. He merely allowed it to grow.

Silent, with an immense head, a Roman nose, a thin-lipped firm mouth and heavy chin, there grew up about him a legend. He was considered a wizard of finance.

He would sit at his heavy desk in a heavy chair. His very presence filled with awe the little unimaginative men who dabbled in figures.

He delighted in having his daughters' girl friends at the house.

For hours he would play checkers, or solitaire with cards. One after another the girls would try to vanquish him at checkers. He would sit, calm as Buddha, his strong mind concentrated on the game until he had won.

Roars of girlish laughter would follow each victory.

One winter night when a chinook wind drove across the avalanche of snow that was Saskatchewan, John Lawler's daughter read aloud to him the story of a western lynching.

Several girls were at the house. A game of checkers had been finished.

The banker gazed at the blazing logs in the fire.

…. A man served a year in jail for stealing a horse. When released he was threatened with death if he repeated the offense. Arrested for stealing another horse, he was found hanging from a limb next morning, his head tilted sideways—arms and legs stiff. A placard was fastened to the bosom of his shirt. On it were the words: “We gave him a chance to live—but he committed suicide.”

“What a terrible story,” said the banker's wife—“isn't there enough misery in the world without reading such things aloud, Patsy?”

The banker rose and placed another small log on the fire.

“Play something, Patsy dear,” said her mother.

The girl's delicate hands thrummed the piano keys.

The one time horse thief looked at the fire and listened to the music.

When the others had gone to bed, John Lawler picked up the newspaper.

The chinook wind rattled the windows and doors.

Slowly he read again the story of the horse thief who was lynched.

T
HE
years passed in dramatic parade. Virginia had always wanted to bring her mother's stray brood together. In a desperate fight against hunger, my brother Tom left for the Philippine Islands with the United States Army. Hardly seventeen years of age, he told the recruiting officers that he was twenty-one.

The rest of us were in St. Marys.

Another sister was too young to work.

The Ohio winter settled, dreary and monotonous. We lived in two rooms over a grocery store. Virginia was too tired after work to keep house. Anna was too young.

Virginia painted a glowing picture of the house we would at last have together. Children with hearts ignorant of homes listened intently. Two rusty second hand bed springs were stretched across pine boxes. A thin black curtain was between. A conglomerate collection of worn cooking utensils and chipped dishes were given by relatives.

We lived together like jackals seeking shelter from the cold. There was between us none of the polite deferences which make human propinquity bearable. Virginia was kindly always. Everything pressed upon her. Now she, who had never been known to spend a dime wisely, tried to run a household into which little money came. Alone in the miserable group was she unselfish. Alone was she worthy of the strong peasants who had preceded us.

Never during the long winter was there an hour's peace in the makeshift home.

I went to my work each morning at five. Through snow and mud and rain I would trudge two miles to the chain shop in order to prepare the fire for the chainmaker. The cold bit my sparsely clad body and filled my heart with venom against life. After an hour's work upon the forge the heat would be turned on in the shop. The working hours were pleasant—and warm. I often dreaded it when the day's work had ended.

Only people who were more miserable than ourselves came to our flat.

On Sundays, when the saloons were closed, I would often read a paper backed novel. Whenever a travelling theatrical company came to the town I would climb up the fire escape, pry open the window and sneak into the gallery.

Hunger and squalor were more easily endured than the loneliness of a groping boyhood.

With never a dollar to spend in a month, I would nightly wander in and out of saloons and recite doggerel, tell stories or trade anything possible for drinks. I acquired then a habit which has never left me. I learned to read faces by watching them reflected in the mirror in front of the bar. Thus, I learned never to look directly in a person's eyes. With people, it has helped me greatly. They always reveal themselves when not conscious of being watched.

All I know of human nature was learned in a saloon before I was twenty. I learned to distinguish between a laugh from the head and one from the heart. I gauged sincerity by the intonations of speech. I caught boredom with the lift of an eyelash at the bar. I have since found that men and women in far places of the world and in different social strata are fundamentally the same as those I first met in my formative years.

My oldest brother slept, when he worked, in a livery stable.

Each morning he brought the odor of horses with him to the breakfast table. Being the elder, and dogmatic Irish, he soon made laws for the family. The rest of the children, being of the same breed, resented his laws. With the exception of Virginia, it was a snarling household.

Every two weeks I was paid by the chain-maker for whom I toiled. A drunkard, he often lost several days' work during this period. As I only made a dollar in the two weeks, it went for board and lodging. As a result, Virginia often gave me twenty-five cents to spend at the end of my two weeks' labor.

My work with this chainmaker lasted several months.

Exasperated at the enforced idleness and loss of wages which his drinking entailed, I wrote with chalk upon the link room door:

Chainmakers and link heaters read the ungrammatical doggerel with laughter.

Ryan discharged me.

It was an occasion for a strike on the part of the link heaters. With sooty faces and tattered clothes, each boy left the fire at which he worked.

Ryan refused to allow me to work for him further.

The strike was settled when another chain-maker “traded boys” with Ryan. My new employer kindly gave me three dollars regularly every week. During the rest of the winter I had a little money of my own to spend.

My oldest brother and Virginia fought over the bills which steadily mounted higher. There was never quite enough money between us to pay for rent and food.

We had neither enough heat nor bed clothing. Between extreme poverty and jangled nerves our home became a nightmare. The saloon was my escape from its sordid atmosphere.

I would loiter at different bars until midnight. I often became intoxicated.

It was the only place of amusement for the homeless youths of the town. There was not even a vestige of a library.

Early spring brought many changes. Tom returned from the Philippines. Out of his salary of thirteen dollars a month as a soldier, he had saved nearly one hundred dollars.

He gave Virginia twenty dollars and spent the rest of the money within a week.

“I got sick when I crossed the State line,” he said, reeling with me from the bar of Coffee's Saloon.

He had become heavy-shouldered, with tousled red hair.

Like his Uncle Dennis before him, he walked westward one April morning and returned no more.

There was more evident in Tom the wild blood of the Lawlers. Incapable of restraint, he served half his army term in the guard house. But he had a superior strain. It was Tom who first gave me books to read in the orphanage. Through him I first learned about Napoleon and Alexander the Great. He early planted in my mind the seed of ambition. His knuckles were broken, his fingers twisted from many brawls.

He had the gift of phrase and the love of beauty. He could endure solitude. He ended, a gold prospector in Mexico.

After Tom had gone, Virginia cried for a few days as my mother had so long before when Dennis Lawler left.

“It's never to be—for I'm going away too—we're better off apart.” All six of us had been together but one hour since our mother's death.

There followed an evening of weeping in the wretched home.

Then came Virginia's decision. She took her young sister and a tin trunk to Chicago.

I took to the road, the ring, and the jail.