The Trainmasters (5 page)

Until the blight struck in 1845.

After that there was scarcely a penny available for the O’Rahillys and their band of players. What they had, they got as a
result of the presence in their band of Malachy Patrick Rafferty, a Jesuit priest who was using the troupe as a disguise for
the priestly activities that the British occupiers forbade. He also taught the children of the troupe letters and numbers,
lessons that Egan and Teresa learned especially well. Even as the horrors of the famine grew worse, Rafferty always seemed
to know how to scrounge a bit of food; he always knew somebody who could spare a little for him and his friends. But after
the crop of 1846 failed worse than the crop of ‘45, even Rafferty’s resources were expended. He advised the players to emigrate.

Egan would never forget the scenes he witnessed in Cork and Galway and Kerry and Tipperary. The streets crowded with gaunt,
hopeless wanderers; the mobs of starved, barely clothed women around the poorhouses, clamoring for soup tickets; the ghastly,
scarcely living skeletons huddled on filthy straw in the corner of some hovel; the frozen corpses, half gnawed by rats. The
men were indistinguishable from the women, for all evidence of their sex seemed to have shrunk and withered away. The children
were like mummies with bloated bellies and terrified eyes.

But the landlords didn’t starve. By God,
they
kept eating well. And they continued to take profits back to England from the devastated land.

Egan O’Rahilly hated the English with all the passion and fervor that he loved Deirdre and Peg.

The cage was down again.

“All right you bog-eatin’ bastards,” yelled Tom Henneberry, the boss of Egan’s gang, “your turn.”

Henneberry had a thorn in his brain about Egan: Egan was smart, educated, and sensitive. That annoyed Henneberry, who was
none of those things. He enjoyed tormenting every man in his gang, but he enjoyed tormenting Egan most of all. He never passed
up a chance to deride Egan.

This afternoon, as the cage ground to a stop, Egan was daydreaming. He often did so to save his sanity.

“You! O’Rahilly! Move your tender sweet ass,” Henneberry hollered at Egan. If they’d been close enough, Henneberry would have
aimed a boot at Egan’s rear, as he had done a dozen times before. But Henneberry was on the other side of the group.

“Sure, sure, hand-fucker,” Egan yelled back. Returning Henneberry’s insults also saved his sanity. “You ignorant son of a
turd.” And with greatly exaggerated lethargy, he boarded the cage, which with a sickening lurch moved toward the patch of
light hundreds of feet above.

Henneberry fumed a moment before he answered.

“O’Rahilly, you stupid fuck,” he yelled from across the cage, “you take those words back or I’ll have you working the jack
in the pilot next shift.” Working the pilot—the small tunnel that was dug in advance of the main tunnel— was the most dangerous
job in tunnel building. The most perilous part of the work in the pilot was the job of transferring the load on the tunnel
roof from temporary to permanent shoring. And working the big jacks was the most dangerous part of
that
job. Henneberry’s crew was scheduled to work in the pilot on their next shift.

“You’ll do that anyway,” Egan said, “rat face.”

Henneberry kept muttering, but Egan paid him no more heed.

Some day, Egan knew, he and Henneberry would fight it out. And one of them might not come out alive. Although Henneberry was
as beefy and heavy-muscled as he was mean, and Egan was slight and slender, Egan knew that he had a better than even chance
when the inevitable moment arrived. He was quick and clever and decisive. Others had tried to take him on, but after every
fight, they had been the ones to leave with scars.

After Egan and Teresa had arrived in Philadelphia, he thought he would be able to support what was left of his family, including
Deirdre, and soon after that a child, with a clerical job. But he soon found that was impossible. He was more than well qualified,
and there were plenty of such jobs to be had, but not one of them was open to a man from Ireland. He grew to know intimately
and painfully the refrain that so many of his countrymen were to hear again and again and again: No Irish need apply.

He of course would have done anything to join a theatrical company, but there was no position in even the Irish troupes that
entertained around Philadelphia for a young immigrant with no parents or friends to back him.

So Egan did what thousands of others did: He hired himself out to a contractor for the railroad.

The cage disgorged Egan’s gang at the top of the shaft, and after a few additional snarls from Henneberry Egan slogged through
the spring mud into the huts that were home to the workers on the eastern shaft. He made his way back to the tiny slat-board
shack where he and eleven others slept.

There he gathered a change of clothes, walked over to the creek that was the source of water for the camp, bathed and shaved,
and then pulled off his work shirt and pants and slipped into clean clothes.

Supper was beans, pork, and cabbage. Egan sat and ate quietly with three others from his gang: Ferdy O’Dowd, a boy of sixteen,
Owen and Cornelius Blake, twins about Egan’s age, and Patrick Geraghty, a grandfather at thirty-seven. Geraghty was a practical
joker when he wasn’t exhausted from a week of labor. Tonight he was as quiet as Egan. Not until later, with a few shots of
rum inside him, would he become boisterous and outrageously funny.

Except for Egan, all the men in the gang were from Cork. In fact each gang was composed of men from the same Irish county.
All of the men were proud of their old homes and passionate about their native hills and valleys, villages and dialects. Their
old country loyalty made them uncomfortable with mates from unfamiliar places. So a man from Galway or Tipperary would not
have fared well among the men who worked with Egan O’Rahilly. Indeed Egan had been accepted by the Cork men because his family’s
profession and travels made the O’Rahillys acceptable everywhere in Ireland.

And he in turn liked them all, with the exception of Henneberry. He especially liked the three men he ate with; and he worked
alongside them with all the energy and strength he had to give.

After they’d eaten, the men climbed a long muddy path up a steep hill. The path was the main street of the rough town that
was Gallitzin, and there were a few buildings along either side of it, including the railroad’s administration building, a
blacksmith’s, a stable, a general store, a machine shop, and the camp groggery. Only the administration building, a two-story,
barrackslike, wood-frame structure where the company engineers and supervisors lived and maintained their offices, was faintly
impressive.

The men climbing up the path were on their way to the groggery, which was a drafty shed made out of the same green pine slats
the workers’ huts had been built with. It was larger, though, and warmer, since there were over a hundred men and a few women
inside. At the start of an evening, the women would be available for dancing. Later on, they would be working on their backs
in some hut or other.

Egan O’Rahilly owned the fiddle that had been his father’s, and he played it passably well. On Saturdays he often brought
it up to the gathering and provided the evening’s musical entertainment. Everybody danced. Since there were not enough women
to go around, the men danced with one another—jigs and reels and rounds and hornpipes.

Later still, a cry went out for Egan to sing. Egan loved singing, and he knew all the old songs as well as some new ones.
Most of the songs made the men laugh, though their laughter hid their rue and sadness.

Egan sat upon a rough table and began to sing. One of his songs, “Pat Works on the Railway,” was about men like himself and
therefore one everyone loved. Everybody sang along lustily, and afterward Egan called out to the crowd, “Shall 1 sing ‘No
Irish Need Apply’?”

“Aye, by God, you shall,” came more than one voice from among the men. Then there were cheers and the rumble of feet stamping
on the hard dirt floor. The men also liked this song, for it was about a prejudice they all knew too well. Yet the Irishman
in the song fought against the Americans who would keep him down, and the Irishman won. This inspired the men, and Egan went
on to sing ten other songs.

He ended each song with “
Inis Fal,
” an old Gaelic tune his namesake and relative, Egan O’Rahilly, wrote after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. After that cursed
defeat, Irish resistance to William III and to the hated English had been crushed. The following years and decades were for
Catholic Ireland a time of scarcity and want, persecution, torture, torment, and then famine. And yet the Catholic Irish refused
to submit to the English will; they refused to die.

When Egan sang “
Inis Fal, “
the men always grew as still as mourners, for it was like a religious ritual.

Now may we turn aside and dry our tears!

And comfort us! And lay aside our fears,

For all is gone!

All comely quality!

All gentleness and hospitality!

All courtesy and merriment

Is gone!

Our virtues, all, are withered every one!

Our music vanished, and our skill to sing!

Now may we quiet us and quit our moan!

Nothing is whole that could be broke;

Nothing

Remains to us of all that was our own
.

As always when he sang that song, rage burned in Egan O’Rahilly’s belly. Once it was over, he sat with lips pressed fiercely
shut, staring at the rough faces before him.

There was silence for a few moments, but then Egan cried out, his voice rising and swelling like a cresting wave, “God curse
the British landlords! God curse the British gentry! God curse British fields and herds, towns and cities! God curse British
wombs!” And then he leapt to his feet: “And may the Queen’s skin make a drum for the indomitable Irishry to beat, and may
all Ireland be free from the center to the sea!”

The men filled the shed with wild cries of agreement and support, and with stamping of feet and clapping of hands.

But after the cries died down, Tom Henneberry, who was drunk pickled and thus more obnoxious than usual, yelled for attention.

“Egan O’Rahilly!” he hollered in a slurry, boozy rumble. “Egan O’Rahilly! That’s bullshit! And cowshit, and sheep-shit, and
dogshit, and goatshit!”

“I guess that’s just about every shit you know, Tom,” somebody said. A rustle of laughter was heard in the crowd.

Henneberry was standing across the hall from Egan, next to the plank laid between two barrels that served as a bar. He was
jovial, which was unusual for him when he was in his cups. And, with a self-satisfied look on his face, he was ostentatiously
hiding something behind his back.

“Egan O’Rahilly! I’m sick and fucking tired of your wormshit.” He stopped, obviously pleased with himself. “For the
wormshit,
” he repeated, “noise you been throwin’ at us, Egan O’Rahilly.”

“Shut your mouth, Tom,” Egan said through tight lips. “Or else pour something into it. You know you haven’t anything to say.
So don’t shame yourself by trying.”

The other men murmured their agreement. For though Henneberry was one of the bosses belowground, in the groggery, everyone
knew that Egan was master.

“Egan, my boy,” Henneberry said, “I just told you that I don’t need to hear any more of your noise. Now you don’t go on to
trying to tell me the same thing. You’re supposed to be smart and all that, Egan O’Rahilly. You’re supposed to know better
than to call a man exactly what he calls you. Ain’t that so?” He looked around for support but didn’t decline when none was
forthcoming.

“All right, Tom,” Egan said, with a shrug of resignation, “tell me what’s cooking in that small black kettle on top of your
head.” He now realized that Henneberry would not shut up until he spoke his piece. So Egan decided to endure it and get it
over with.

“I told you. No more of your noise. No more sad songs about the auld sod. I’m sick of the auld sod. We’re outta that place.
And I’m glad it’s gone. And I’m glad I’m outta it.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“No,” he said grinning. “There’s more, Eee-gan OOO’ Rahilly.” He drawled out the name as though it were a loathsome obscenity.

“Yes, Tom,” Egan said, as though to a child.

“Don’t you like it here in this here country, Egan O’Rahilly, what took you in and give you a good job?”

“You’re drunk, Tom,” he said. “You’re not making sense.”

“You must not like it here in this land, you sing so much about the old country.”

“I like it well enough, Tom. But I don’t see much difference between the Americans and the English. I got the same chances
here as I did back home. And so did all the rest of us.”

Henneberry weaved a bit. “Bullshit,” he said finally.

“Do you feel grateful, Tom, for the golden opportunity to dig the earth a new anus?” And then to the crowd he said, “I do
believe that Tom Henneberry likes digging into arse-holes.”

The others laughed.

“So how about some fiddle tunes?” Egan yelled out, changing the subject. “Who wants to dance?”

“Right!” came voices in the crowd, relieved that the tension was being released.

“Let’s dance!”

“How about ‘Galway Girl,’ Egan?”

“‘Galway Girl,’ it is then,” Egan said and reached behind him on the table where he had set his fiddle down.

It wasn’t there.

Egan bent over and looked under and behind the table. The fiddle wasn’t there, either.

He stood up to his full height, searching for Patrick Geraghty. “Geraghty,” he called out, “where are you? What have you done
with my fiddle?”

Geraghty called back from somewhere in the crowd, “It’s not I that has it, Egan.”

Tom Henneberry, meanwhile, had worked his way up from the bar to the front of the group.