A Passionate Girl (26 page)

“Look at that nigger's thing,” someone said. “Shows what he'd like to do to every white woman in Jackson County.”

“Only one way to make sure that don't happen,” said the Cyclops.

I stood there, refusing to look, half mad with terror and shame. How could such men exist? What could drive men here in the center of America to such acts of loathsome cruelty?

“Hey, the Irish beauty ain't lookin'.”

“Got her eyes closed.”

“Open your eyes, Ireland,” said the Cyclops.

The whip struck me. I opened my eyes and looked at my fellow prisoner. His sexual organ was half erect. “It's all right,” he said. “It's only nature.”

I looked him in the face, amazed by his calmness. I saw an indomitable pride there, which was prepared to survive every kind of humiliation and defeat, even death. My revulsion for him vanished. I felt a great bond with him and his people. I felt capable of loving him in a better time. Did he see any of this on my face? I will never know.

“We got the proof we need,” the ruler said. “We have seen this nigger lustin' after a white woman. He's got to be made an example to his kind. Take him away.”

Two of them dragged the black man into the darkness. “Give Ireland her nightdress,” the ruler said. “And take her back to her bed. If she knows what's good for herself and her friends, she won't say a word about this little lesson she's learned tonight.”

They threw my nightdress at me. I put it on, and two of them tied my hands and feet and inserted the foul gag in my mouth again. I was tied over the haunches of a horse and carted back to Jackson. At the tavern, the two cut me loose and carried me up the back stairs to my bedroom. They threw me unceremoniously on the bed and paused. I instantly knew what they were thinking.

“Seems a shame to just say good night, don't it,” one of them whispered.

“The Cyclops said…”

“What he don't know won't hurt him. We'll take turns. You watch the door.”

He cut away the ropes tying my feet and pulled my nightdress up to my waist. I could just make out his shadowy bulk in the darkened room as he fumbled with his pants. Then he loomed over me, his hand groping along my thigh. I drew both my legs together almost to my breasts and drove my feet into his face. He went crashing out of the bed on his back. “You goddamn bitch,” he snarled. He lunged back into the bed, but I was no longer there. I had rolled out of it and across the floor to the wall on the other side of the room. My hands were still tied, my mouth gagged, but I was able to pound with my head. Dan McCaffrey and Mike Hanrahan were sleeping next door. My one hope was to wake them.

The Kluxer came after me. I rolled away from him into the night table on which sat a pitcher and bowl. All went over with a crash. “Jesus Christ, let's get outta here,” called the man at the door. At that moment his friend managed to get one hand on me. He swung at me with his other hand, cuffing me cruelly on the side of the face. With that farewell the hero followed his friend out the door.

“Bess. Are you all right?” came Dan McCaffrey's voice a moment later. He found me slumped against the wall still bound and gagged, tears streaming down my face. I looked up at him by the glow of the single candle he was carrying and thought of the tender love I had felt for him not so long ago and the bestiality I had just confronted. I began to weep uncontrollably.

Dan rushed back to his room and returned with a knife that freed my hands and the gag from my mouth. “What happened?” he said.

“Ku Klux,” I sobbed.

“What did they do?”

“They warned me to tell no one. They said it could be the death of all of us.”

“You let me worry about that. Tell me.”

I told him. He cursed savagely for a full minute. “Let me see your back,” he said.

I turned and let him pull up my nightdress. “Jesus,” he said. “You've got welts a quarter inch deep. Only one thing for them. Bear grease.”

He went downstairs and woke the tavern owner, who had a supply of this sovereign Tennessee remedy on hand. By the time he returned I was aware of my wounds. They gripped my back in a web of pain. He rubbed the grease gently, tenderly, across them, and their ache diminished somewhat. Perhaps it was simply the sense of his concern that helped. “They won't be so stiff in the mornin'. Heal a lot faster, too,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Can't do nothin' for that blue and black mouse on your face.”

“You could hold me in your arms for a minute.”

He put his arms around me with alacrity. “Seein' as we got to fight the whole world, maybe we should stop fightin' with each other,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He kissed me gently and pressed me back on the pillow. “Get some sleep,” he said. “If you can.”

I slept poorly and awoke in the dawn, thinking of the black man. When the sun was well up I rose and examined myself. I was appalled. My nightdress was a grimy mess. I smelled like a stable. My back was striped by a half dozen ugly welts, and my right cheek was bluish and puffy where my would-be rapist had struck me. But the bear grease did make my welts more limber. I was able to bathe and dress myself with only moderate discomfort.

At breakfast, I was greeted with solemn looks by John O'Neil and Mike Hanrahan. Dan had told them of my night. Mike was mortified that he had slept through it all. He agreed with Dan and John that the instigator of my ordeal had to be Captain Kennedy.

“Can't we have him arrested?” I asked.

“What evidence have we to offer a court?” John O'Neil said. “You can't name a single one of your abductors.”

“This is Tennessee,” Dan said. “We don't settle this sort of thing in a court of law.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked nervously.

“We'll let you find out when it happens,” Dan said.

“I don't want us killed on my account. I brought some of the trouble on myself with my bold tongue,” I said.

“Just go upstairs, get packed, and come on down to the train with us,” Dan said.

I did as I was told. Mike Hanrahan carried my bag and his own to the station, telling me funny stories of army days, like the time his friend Tim O'Toole asked the captain for a leave to see his wife. The captain told Tim that his wife had written him a letter, telling him not to let Tim come home because all he did was get drunk. “Sure the two biggest liars in the army are face-to-face here,” said Tim. “I've never been married in me life.”

“What is Dan planning to do, Mike?” I asked, refusing to be distracted by such blather.

“He's going for him. Kennedy. The worst gouger in Tennessee.”

“What's a gouger?”

“He's got a fingernail on his thumb like the blade of a Bowie knife. It can cut a man's eye out of his head with a flick.”

“I won't let him.”

Dan was striding ahead of us with John O'Neil. I started for him and Red Mike caught my arm. “It would be a waste of breath,” he said, “and might distract him.”

At the station our fellow passengers—about twenty in number—were milling about, waiting for the train to start. Snuffling steam, the engine and the four wooden coaches were before the depot. We learned that the detachment of Union soldiers had not arrived from Memphis. They were expected within the hour.

“Hello, Kennedy,” Dan said.

The captain stepped out of the crowd, looking fresh and self-satisfied. “Greetings, Danny-boy,” he said. “How is the Fenian band this morning? Did Miss Harriet McBeecher O'Stowe have a pleasant night in Jackson?” His sneering smile was a tribute to his gall. He apparently expected me to have been terrorized into silence.

I never had to answer him. Without a word of warning, Dan smashed him in the jaw. The punch knocked Kennedy twenty feet into the cinders beside the track. “Get up, you Ku Klux son of a bitch,” Dan said. “We know you're good at fightin' women and niggers in the dark. Let's see how you do against a white man in daylight.”

Kennedy scrambled to his feet. I glanced to right and left and saw John O'Neil and Mike Hanrahan had drawn guns. “This is a private fight between two men from Tennessee,” O'Neil said. “It will be settled according to the usual rules. The loser will be the man who can't get up or is too maimed to continue. If Captain Kennedy wishes to use Bowie knives, Major McCaffrey is agreeable. Otherwise, Major McCaffrey agrees to open rules, including gouging and kicking. He is determined to give Captain Kennedy a beating he will never forget.”

“Open rules,” Kennedy said. “I don't want to kill him. Just cripple him for life.”

I knew nothing of how men fought in Tennessee. I was about to find out. Kennedy stripped off his coat and shirt. Dan did likewise. Kennedy's physique was formidable. Beneath his fine clothes he was a bruiser. “Say some prayers,” Mike muttered to me.

At first Dan depended on his fists. He drove a swift succession of blows into Kennedy's face. Kennedy staggered back, then lunged low for Dan's waist, clung there for a moment, then reared up and butted him in the chin. Dan staggered back, and Kennedy was after him with a terrific kick that sent Dan flying into the crowd. Kennedy dove after him, and for a moment I could see nothing. Out of the crowd hurtled Kennedy with Dan after him, pounding him in the belly, the face, the belly, the face, followed by a tremendous kick in the belly that lifted Kennedy high in the air and slammed him down on his back. Dan aimed another kick at his ribs that would surely have ended the fight, but Kennedy seized the foot in midflight and sank his teeth into Dan's ankle. Dan roared with pain, and Kennedy twisted his leg, flinging Dan down on his back. In a flash Kennedy was on top of him thrusting his thumb down at Dan's right eye. Dan caught his wrist inches before the stroke drove home. For the first time I saw the long, murderously sharp nail on Kennedy's thumb.

It was a desperate contest of strength. Kennedy's whole weight was flung forward on the cruel weapon he had fashioned from his own body. Inch by inch it moved closer to Dan's eye. A stroke! Dan turned his head and took it on his cheek. It opened a wicked gash. Still Kennedy had him, pressing down, down. The crowd gave a long, low growl of savage anticipation.

Dan sank his teeth into Kennedy's hand. He screamed like a woman. In the same instant Dan gave a tremendous heave and threw Kennedy off him. He rolled frantically away, but Dan was after him. One, two, three times he lashed his foot into Kennedy's ribs. Even with the crowd roaring we could hear the bones crack. Dan dragged him to his feet and pounded him down with a round house swing. He did it again and again and then went back to kicking him.

“Stop him,” I said to John O'Neil. “He'll kill him. We'll all end in jail.”

“No, no,” O'Neil said. “He can take a good deal more. You're just not used to fighting in Tennessee.”

Dan was merciless. Kennedy kept trying to crawl away. Each time he moved, Dan kicked him in the belly. He lifted up his head and spit in his face. He flung him over his shoulder full length into the dirt. Finally I could bear no more. I stepped between them and said, “He's had enough, Dan.”

“That's for him to say, not you,” Dan said, wiping the blood and sweat off his face.

On his hands and knees, Kennedy glared up at us. His eyes were half closed, his teeth broken and bloody. “The—South—will—rise—again—” he gasped.

Dan kicked him in the face. “Maybe,” he said, “but I don't want no part of it.”

Kennedy lay still. I looked at the crowd and did not like the menacing expressions on several faces. Before anyone could speak, much less act, we were jolted by a shrill whistle. Steaming into the depot was the train from Memphis with our armed escort of Union soldiers. They boarded the last car of our train, and we hastily got into our seats in the first car. Mike Hanrahan washed Dan's battered face at the water cooler while John O'Neil sat at the window, a pistol in either hand. As we pulled out of the station, two men lifted Kennedy to his feet and carried him into the wooden depot.

A half mile out of town, just as we began picking up speed, the train came to a jolting halt that almost flung us to the floor. John O'Neil peered out the window. The conductor rushed past us, and in a moment Union soldiers were running alongside the track. “What is it?” I said, trying to look past O'Neil.

“It might be better if you didn't see it,” John said.

“What in the world are you talking about?” I said. I jumped up and hurried the length of the car to the door. Dan and Mike had preceded me. They stood in the cinders staring ahead at something that was higher than the train's roof.

“It's your nigger friend,” Dan said as I joined them.

Dangling from a telegraph pole, a rope around his neck, was the black man I had kissed last night. The Union soldiers were in the process of cutting him down. We walked up to them as he reached the ground. Pinned to the dead man's white shirt was a note.

Deliver this nigger to Oberlin College in Ohio, where they taught him to kiss white women.

“Now I wish you'd killed Kennedy,” I said.

“The quicker we get out of the South, the happier I'll be,” Red Mike Hanrahan said.

I began to wonder if any of us could escape the South, any more than we could escape Ireland.

“Is it not fair to suppose that the Irish Republican government will find as liberal friends among the Americans, not to mention the Irish-Americans, as the South found in Canada and England? I think the Navy Bureau will have its hands full in equipping cruisers like the
Alabama.
The names will be different; we will have the
Robert Emmet,
the
Wolfe Tone.
Of course I expect that our practical commonsense President Andy Johnson will follow the example of Her Most Ungracious Majesty Queen Victoria and declare the Irish Republic a belligerent.”

Colonel William Roberts thundered these words from a crowded platform in Jones's Wood, a picnic grounds on the East River just south of the district called Yorkville. Twenty thousand New York Irish-Americans roared their approval. Behind Roberts sat Head Center John O'Mahoney and the council of the Fenian Brotherhood. The listeners did not know that behind our seeming unity lay murderous division. Nor did they have the slightest idea what their cheers now meant to the troubled heart of the Fenian girl.

It was mid-September of 1865. We had just returned from our six weeks' tour of the South and West. It had been a financial success. We had sold over three hundred thousand dollars in bonds of the Republic of Ireland. But it had complicated my personal life. Soon after the encounter with the Ku Klux Klan and the fight with Captain Kennedy, Dan and I became lovers again. John O'Neil and Mike Hanrahan managed to accept our unsanctified match without cavil. Far from flaunting it, we were as discreet as humanly possible, rarely exchanging a word or gesture of endearment in public. We traversed Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky without a breath of scandal.

The reunion was made not without grave doubts on my part. Touched as I was by Dan's concern for me and the warrior revenge he exacted in my name, I no longer had any illusions about love magically transforming him or me. We remained strong and not always harmonious personalities, seldom inclined to yield in argument or change our very different ideas about life. He was still determined to acquire money and power as quickly as possible, and persisted in seeing our plan to conquer Canada as a route to this dubious goal. I insisted we should think more of politics and statesmanship than of personal gain. The nakedness of Dan's self-interest troubled me, though I respected the honesty with which he told me of it. But his acknowledgement was like a secret glimpse of the real motives of too many Irish-Americans.

Now that we were back in New York, the city where money seemed to be the only God, my doubts had become more acute. Some of this could be blamed on my brother, Michael, who preached this nasty accusation day and night. In our absence, he had entered deep into Fenian politics and was now one of John O'Mahoney's closest advisers. I found myself suspended between the two groups, attracted by Dan's cold-eyed realism yet repelled by his motives lured by Michael's idealism and repelled by his impracticality. My brother seemed to think that by guarding the purity of every Fenian word and deed and motive, we would achieve the liberation of Ireland by some sort of spiritual magic.

The rally at Jones's Wood had been called to put Fenian bond sales over the first million dollars and send them bounding on to the second million. The titans of Tammany were all on the platform in silk-hatted array. Bill Tweed leaped up to pledge five thousand dollars. Dick Connolly and Peter Sweeny topped him with seven thousand each, and John Morrissey beat them all with ten. But the cash of these powergods no longer meant so much to me. I had come to value far more the money of the thousands of humbler Irish. Whether they lived in Chicago's Kilgubbin or New York's Sixth Ward, their wrinkled greenbacks had come from the bottom of a jar in a tenement kitchen or from beneath a mattress in a fetid bedroom. The money represented a fragile barrier between them and want, yet they gave it to us for Ireland.

They were the only true idealists in the Fenian Brotherhood. Often they placed the bills in my hands with words of simple praise and hope. I heard them that day in Jones's Wood, after the speeches, as I had heard them in St. Louis and Cincinnati. Two homely servant girls, who could never hope to compete with the beauties of Broadway, each gave me forty dollars—a year's savings at least. “'Tis part of my dowry,” said the older of the two, “but I'll wait a year if it helps to free Ireland.”

“I was goin' to send it home to my da, to make sure he don't end up beggin' on the road,” said the other girl. “But he won't have to do that in a free Ireland, will he now?”

“No,” I said. “There will be no beggars in a free Ireland.”

I found myself envying their chastity, their simplicity, their trust. I vowed to remain true to their sacrifices, no matter what it cost me in physical pain or spiritual loss. This morning I had had a letter from Robert Johnson—the crown prince, as I thought of him—telling me that he was coming to New York soon and could not wait to see me.
I will even do that for you
, I thought behind my confident smile.
I will sell my body and my soul for you. Can anyone do more?

“I will take two thousand dollars' worth, Miss Fenian,” said a soft, familiar voice on my right hand. I looked up at the smiling face of my sister Annie.

We kissed enthusiastically. “Two thousand,” I said. “That's a thundering lot of money. Dick Connolly just gave seven. Isn't that enough for the both of you?”

“This is my own,” Annie said. “Don't mention it to Dick. I sold one or two of his presents to raise it. I want to do what I can, when you're doing so much.”

I gave her twenty hundred-dollar bonds. “If all goes well, it will only be a loan at that. You'll get it back with six percent interest.”

“Dick's been very thick with Bill Roberts,” Annie said. “He told us of the great thing you've done in Washington. The president's son. A mighty catch, Bess.”

“Yes,” I said, simultaneously proud and wishing Annie didn't know of it—wishing no one knew. I smiled away and sold more bonds to poor and middling Irish while Annie watched me.

“Is he a charmer?” Annie said.

“Anything but,” I said.

“I had a few like that before I met Dick,” Annie said. “'Tis not easy, I know.”

“Yes,” I said, seeing I could never share with her my true feelings on the affair.

“Does the Holy Terror know about it?” Annie asked. She gave a nod in the direction of our brother Michael, who sat at a nearby table, selling bonds.

“No,” I said.

“I haven't spoken to him since that night he insulted me,” Annie said. “Nor do I think I ever will. Dick says he's causing us nothing but trouble.”

“How is Dick?” I said. “He looked well on the platform.” I could see Connolly off in the distance, deep in conversation with Roberts.

“He's fine,” Annie said. “Things are looking glorious for the election. They have a very good candidate, John Hoffman, from one of the oldest families in New York. They should win in a walk, as the saying goes.”

This was not the news of Dick Connolly I wanted to hear. I wanted him to make Annie an honest woman. She had given too much of her heart to him. I could not say this to her. In part I feared to frighten her. In part I sought to avoid the fear that I had committed the same mistake with Dan McCaffrey.

By the time the last picnicker staggered from Jones's Wood bawling “The Wearing of the Green,” we had mountains of money on every table. That night we met at Moffat House for a celebration. Colonel Roberts rose to announce that we had collected $250,000 and were well past the million mark in bond sales. “We're now in a position to buy the sinews of war for the army and navy of the Irish Republic,” he said.

Amid cheers and congratulations, the champagne corks popped and a band began to play Irish airs. Michael sat with John O'Mahoney and one or two other members of the council, stonily disapproving the gaiety. They continued to oppose the “final call” and the campaign to conquer Canada, but they were helpless to prevent both from going forward now.

I appointed myself a committee of one and drew Michael into a corner to change his mind. I told him that he ought to be persuading O'Mahoney to join the majority, rather than pushing him into stubborn opposition. I gave him a candid report of what I had seen in the South and why there were good grounds for fearing that blind hatred between blacks and whites would ruin the president's policy down there and deprive him of the power to help us. It was important to strike hard and soon. We lacked the power to do either of these things in Ireland. Canada was therefore the logical target.

Michael shook his head, his mind unchanged. “I still say it's an American scheme. A land-grabbing operation got up by the American Irish and their friends.”

“Michael,” I said, “division will destroy us quicker than anything the English can do.”

“'Tis not division, 'tis divorce toward which we're heading,” Michael said. “The separation of the true Irish Fenians from the corrupt Irish-Americans.”

Red Mike Hanrahan sat down with us. “What's this?” he said. “Is he tryin' to take you away from us?”

“No,” I said. “The other way around. I'm trying to talk sense to him, but I'm getting nowhere.”

“Look around you, at the furnishings of this place,” Michael said. “Those mirrors, these rugs. Look at them all, pigging and guzzling at the people's expense. We should be living no better than the poor in the Sixth Ward slums, or the peasants in their cabins in Connemara.”

“If the riches of America are behind us, what harm is there to a bit of celebration?” Red Mike said.

“What harm,” Michael said, in a passion. “Those two words will ruin us in the end. “What harm to wasting money, what harm to selling $300,000 in bonds and bringing back only $250,000 to the treasury. The most expensive sightseeing tour of America in the history of travel.”

“Is that true?” I asked Mike with not a little sharpness. I suddenly remembered him and Dan gambling on the Mississippi, and some rueful talk of bucking the tiger one night in Chicago.

“The confusion was in the number of bonds we sold,” Mike said. “We miscounted the denominations. Instead of $300,000 it was closer to $260,000. Sure you can testify to how frugally we lived, Bess. Especially in the South. There were colored livin' better.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking that this explanation was what Americans called double-talk.

“Come on now, have some champagne,” Red Mike said, grabbing a bottle from the tray of a passing waiter. He filled two glasses and handed them to us. “We respect your opinion, Michael, but you've got to go along with the majority. That's the American way, you know. We don't want to lose you or the head center.”

There was a threat in those words, which I am sure Michael heard as clearly as I. Roberts was head center in all but name already. But Michael's negative politics persuaded him that it was really a confession of weakness. “You need the head center far more than he needs you,” he said. “He's made himself the symbol of Fenianism. Without him you're nothing but a pack of pirates.”

“Goddamn you,” Red Mike said. “You'd rather see us shipwreck and sink than yield an inch of your power. You've wormed your way into the old man's confidence, and you're goin' to hang on no matter what it costs us.”

“I'm not impressed by your threats nor your ability to call names,” Michael said. “You may be able to dazzle impressionable girls with your spendthrift ways and piratical plans, but the old man and I shall remain true to the cause.”

“And the South shall rise again,” Mike said. “Jesus God, you sound just like them. Brainless heroes in love with defeat. Don't you know that the American way is to win, and to love a winner? Americans don't waste time on lost causes.”

Michael stalked away without even bothering to answer him. “Mike,” I said. “Tell me the truth. Did you and Dan lose that bond money bucking the tiger?”

“We may have lost a little of it,” Mike said. “I'm a terrible bookkeeper. We had a bad night in Chicago. Both of us.”

“I'll say nothing this time. But if I ever see or hear of it again, I'll tell the whole world.”

“We'll make it up with your help,” Mike said. “When we go on the road again. In the meantime, with a million in the treasury, what harm?”

What harm indeed. It was painful to hear Mike repeating the very words that Michael had denounced. What could I do about it? With desperate recklessness I shoved fears and doubts and premonitions from my mind and hurled myself into the celebration. I tossed off a glass of champagne and sought out Dan for a dance. We whirled about the floor to the beat of a lively reel, and I felt the movement of his muscular body against me, reveled in the daredevil smile he gave me, and laughed at the antic moments of our travels around America.

Whether we or the party grew wilder, it was hard to tell. I remember Annie coming in with Dick Connolly and him dancing about with me. Compared to Dan it was like waltzing with an arthritic. Mrs. Roberts of the ample bosom drifted by laughing giddily in the arms of Colonel Roberts. There was fat Mrs. McGlinchy and her equally fat husband who had stolen a half million from the Croton Reservoir, and pretty Mrs. Meehan with a man not her husband because her husband was still in Ireland on his secret mission, and Dan again, letting me teach him a true Irish jig while everyone gathered about to clap and cheer. When Dan showed two left feet, Annie jumped in for him, and soon there was a demand for me and Annie to teach all the Irish-Americans who had forgotten Irish dancing or never learned it. A table was shoved into the center of the ballroom, and we were lifted up on it, laughing.

Away we stepped, in those lovely intricate patterns that had come down through the generations while the fiddler sawed and the Fenians around us cheered and clapped. Gazing into Annie's flashing eyes and luminous lovely face, I slipped away from New York and America and was back in the parish hall at Ballinaclash and past that, too, in the roll of time and distance to some ancient Gaelic feast where the beauties of the tribe in their silks and golden jewelry danced before assembled warriors. Dancing in spite of history and possible defeat, heads high and proud, with wine and whiskey a sweet fire in the blood, smiles a flash of white promise in the firelight.