Galway Bay (47 page)

“Sorry, a stór. Now you look powerful. You’re a wild brave boy, Paddy, off to do a man’s work. Your da would be proud of you.” I kissed him on the top of the head.

Máire gathered Johnny Og and Thomas to her, one in each arm, kissing their faces.

“Oh, Mam!” Johnny Og said. “Stop!”

Thomas wiped away the wet spots Máire’s kisses had left on his cheek.

“Our boys should be going to school, not setting off to wade through blood and cow guts,” I said to Máire as we stood in Molly Flanigan’s front doorway, watching our three join the stream of workers.

Paddy walked with slow, deliberate steps, looking straight ahead, some dead man’s jacket hanging off him.

“We shouldn’t have let them,” Máire said. “They’re only children.”

“They haven’t been children for a long time, Máire.”

It was dark already when Máire and I stepped outside as the laboring army tramped home. White dust—from the lime kiln, I suppose—covered some. Dirt streaked the faces of the quarry men.

Paddy, Johnny Og, and Thomas trailed behind a knot of packinghouse workers. As the boys came closer, I saw dark splotches on their clothes.

I couldn’t wait. I rushed up to Paddy and took his hand.

He pulled it away. “I’m covered in blood, Mam.”

Máire and I half carried our exhausted little boys up the steps to our room, where we’d filled a three-foot-high laundry tub full of hot, soapy water. Jamesy’d been told to keep the other children in the kitchen, but he and Daniel and the little ones stood on the top landing as the older boys trudged up the stairs.

“Paddy, I saved you some of my bread!” Jamesy called out to him.

And Daniel shouted, “We found a place to play the Red Branch Warriors, Johnny Og! You can be the general, Thomas!”

“Go back in the kitchen with Molly,” I told them. “Shut the door. Your brothers will be ready soon.”

Thomas made for the big round tub, pulling off his shirt and trousers. The first one in, he ducked his head under the water. Máire handed him a bar of the brown soap Molly used for laundry. He rubbed it into his hair and dived down again.

“I’ll get you out of these clothes, Paddy,” I said.

“Thanks, Mam,” said Paddy. “I’m too tired to lift my arm.”

I picked at the dried blood that closed the buttonholes of his shirt and pried each one loose. Clots of blood in his hair, streaks of it on his face.

Johnny Og told Máire he could undress himself. He couldn’t. Máire helped him take off the trousers and boots. “Shit all over them,” she said to me, then to Thomas, “Come on, get out.”

He did, wrapping himself in one of the three burlap bags Molly had given us.

Paddy and Johnny Og stepped in the warm water together.

“Thomas got it dirty,” Paddy said to me.

“Don’t worry, a stór. I’ll get clean water for the rinse.”

Máire and I washed the boys’ hair with the brown soap, then I heated water in Molly’s kettle and poured it over their heads.

“We’re first tomorrow,” Paddy said. “Thomas can wait.” He flicked some of the dirty water over at Thomas, who sat on the floor, still wrapped in the burlap bag.

Around us we heard the shouts and laughter of the boarders and their footsteps on the stairs.

“They don’t bother with baths,” Molly had told us. “A pitcher of water over their heads, a quick rub with a scrap of rag, then into their tavern duds, a bit of dinner, and they’re out.”

Once a week she washed their work clothes, charging each one ten cents. Máire and I would be helping her scrub them now.

Molly had told me the first days would be the hardest for our boys. “Your fellows, the cleaners, don’t stand on slotted wooden floors like the others do. They’re down in the muck and mire,” she’d explained. “But they’ll get used to it.”

As soon as the three were clean and wrapped in their bags, the little ones came running in.

“You worked, Paddy!” said Jamesy.

“I did.”

“How was it, Johnny Og?” asked Daniel.

“Hard, but we did it.”

“Disgusting. Awful,” said Thomas. “One hour in there, I went out and threw up!”

“But you went back to work, didn’t you, Thomas?” Máire said.

We couldn’t pay Molly with only two wage packets.

“I told the foreman I couldn’t bear the smell, and he said would I like to take my complaint to Mr. Hough, and I said I would and all the men laughed. They said it’d be a good joke on the boss—so they took me up to Mr. Hough.”

“And?” I asked.

“And I told him to please give me a rag to tie around my nose or I couldn’t work.”

“Not a bad idea,” Máire said.

I thought of Patrick Kelly and the gloves. “And what did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. But the fellow who brought me up said, ‘Stop talking smart to Mr. Hough, or you’ll feel my boot in your ass.’”

Thomas imitated an accent I didn’t know. Kerry? The children laughed at Thomas, but Paddy and Johnny Og shook their heads at each other.

“Then I told Mr. Hough, ‘My brother and cousin and I have to make money to help our mothers, two widows.’ And I told him about running from Bearna and the
Superior
and New Orleans and the
River Queen
, and how we spent all our money to get to Chicago because Patrick Kelly, our uncle, was supposed to help us, but he wasn’t here, and where was he? And Mr. Hough said, ‘Wherever he is, let him stay there,’ and that it was no fault of mine that he was our connection, and didn’t he himself have people in his own family he’d rather not talk about? Then he said I told a good story, surely, and would I do the captain of the
Superior
’s voice again. And so I did, and then I took off M’am Jacques, and I even showed him the dance we did with Lorenzo and Christophe. So.”

“So?”

“So, he made me the messenger boy. Don’t have to go back to the slaughtering floor. I’ll carry orders to the foremen and even the letters to Chicago!”

“Oh, Thomas!” Máire hugged him. “Good for you!”

Bridget and Gracie brought Stephen to him, who grabbed him around his leg and jumped up and down. Daniel and Jamesy clapped their hands.

But Paddy and Johnny Og stood in their burlap bags, shivering, saying nothing.

“Lie down now, boys. I’ll bring your supper to you. Put on your New Orleans clothes and get under the covers.”

“Thomas didn’t tell us what happened until now,” said Paddy. “He walked all the way home and said nothing.”

“Silken Thomas,” I said. “It’s his nature to keep secrets.” I sat next to Paddy on the straw mattress. “Can you stand it, Paddy?”

He looked at me. “They beat the cattle to death. The hammer breaks the skull, brains pour out, and then the men hack at the bodies with axes. The cattle bellow something awful. Some of the fellows laugh when blood spurts over them. Johnny Og and I couldn’t laugh. We didn’t cry, Mam. Neither of us.”

My sturdy lad. He knew—you cry, you die.

“I’ll get your dinner, Paddy.”

But he was asleep when I brought the food to him.

The next evening the boys stayed awake for dinner. Molly served beef with potatoes and cabbage. “The butchers at the packinghouse see me right,” she said. We ate at a long table in her parlor, the thirty of us. The boarders came from all over Ireland, but the fellows didn’t talk about their home places. They compared complaints, setting the miseries of Hough’s against the hardships of Stearn’s Quarry or the brickyard.

Paddy, Johnny Og, and Thomas took in every word.

“You think your back aches? Mine’s so bad, when I go to bed and fall asleep, the pain wakes me in an hour,” the man from Mayo would begin.

“At least you fall asleep! I spend all night awake, and when I get out of bed in the morning, I feel like I haven’t even been in it!” the Donegal fellow answered.

“You can get out of bed?” said the Clare man. “I have to roll off my pallet and then wait until the pain eases enough to pull myself up.”

“Backs, backs,” said a boy from Cork. “Everyone has back pain. How’d you like feet to be your agony? Since I got frostbite last year on the canal, my toes burn and prickle until every step is torture!”

“Feet? At least you can sit and get off your feet! My fingers have swollen bigger than sausages—I can hardly lift the hammer,” said the Clare man.

“Lift it? Try swinging it down when the muscles in your shoulders ache. Ever since I broke it, my arm’s never really mended.”

This last came from Barney McGurk, a Tyrone man who sat across from us.

The competition ended when one man would say, “But sure, we’re alive and working, and what more can we ask?”

After his third day at work, Paddy whispered to Barney McGurk that he got so much blood in his hair, his mam thought he was a redhead. Barney repeated it to the whole table. The remark got a great laugh. Paddy smiled at me. My sturdy lad.

Saturday made four days working. The boys ran home this night, delighted with themselves, and piled four silver dollars on the table.

“We’ll get six dollars for working the full six-day week,” Paddy said.

I added one more dollar for the rent, and Máire and I spent until near midnight Saturday doing the wash with Molly. We’d also helped her clean and cook during the week while minding our children. Busy. Molly said she’d lower the rent another dollar next week. And we still had six dollars.

All of the boarders went to Mass. “Strong in their faith,” I said to Molly as we walked to McKenna’s.

“And there are the girls,” Molly said. “Watch what goes on.”

After Mass, we women sat together at the fire again. Father Donohue came by to say he had no news of Patrick Kelly. Then he left.

“Now,” Molly said. “Keep your eyes on the young ones. It’d be closer for the girls who work as maids on Michigan Avenue and live in those mansions to go to Saint Mary’s or Saint Patrick’s,” she said.

“But there are more bachelors in Bridgeport,” Lizzie, who’d joined us, explained.

A small blonde stopped Big Joe Quinn, one of Molly’s boarders, as he headed back from the privy. Soon they were talking away in a corner.

As we watched two other girls waylay lads, I couldn’t resist saying, “Respectable?” very quietly to Lizzie. How could James McKenna judge Máire, with all this courting breaking out all over? And to think I’d almost chastised Máire. She would have raged at me.

Lizzie understood me but said, “No parents around to arrange the marriages. Girls have to take matters into their own hands.”

“My boarders get picked off quickly,” Molly said. “The girls coming from Ireland now waste no time—a husband, a place to live, and every extra penny going back to Ireland to bring out their sisters and brothers, their parents.”

“Some young girls on our ship. I hope they find husbands,” I said.

“A man needs a wife. A woman needs a husband. Only way to survive in this country,” Molly said.

“You’ve no husband, Molly,” Máire said, “and you’re doing rightly.”

“Because of Tom’s hard work and the help of Patrick Kelly,” she said.

“Now there’s a fellow’ll never settle. Not that women haven’t tried,” Lizzie said. She and Molly laughed.

“So is this Patrick Kelly good-looking?” Máire asked. “I’ve not met him, and Honora never said.”

“A fine-featured fellow,” Molly said, “if you look beyond the odd clothes.”

“You might be one who could tame him, Máire,” Lizzie said.

“Holy Sweet Jesus,” Máire said. “I’ll never marry again. Last thing I need’s some man thinks he can order me around.”

“True enough,” Molly said. “I’ve grown accustomed to following my own counsel. Couldn’t change my ways. Now, Lizzie here doesn’t mind listening to James plot and plan.”

“Ah well, it gives him pleasure,” said Lizzie. “What harm?”

“What about yourself, Honora? You really should,” Lizzie said.

“What? Marry again? I couldn’t,” I said. “My Michael’s only dead a few months. I would never—”

“I’m not talking about tomorrow, but you need help—all those children. You’re still young, at least. What age are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m twenty-six.”

“What day?”

“September fifteenth.”

“The Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows,” Lizzie said.

“That’s right, the Sorrowful Mother, my patron,” I said.

“Well, you’re a joyful mother today, Honora,” Lizzie said. “You and Máire, with three sons working.”

“We are,” I said.

“And how old are you, Máire?” Molly asked.

“I’m twenty-eight, though I suppose you thought me younger.”

We were laughing when Bridget started tugging on my arm.

“Mam, Kevin Sweeny is teasing me, and Jamesy won’t make him stop!”

“Calm down now, Bridget,” I said, all the while glad to hear her rushing the words out. She’d been so slow to talk and even slower to walk. Food cured so much. No matter the hardships, we had food, thank God. “All right. Time to go, anyway.” I walked over to the children’s circle. “Come on, Paddy, we’re leaving,” I said.

“It’s my turn next with the knife,” he said.

“You can have a go next week.”

“I want to play now, Mam.”

“You heard me, Paddy. Get up.”

I picked up Stephen. Bridget helped Gracie up. Jamesy and Daniel stood with me, but Johnny Og and Thomas stayed down on the floor with Paddy. All three looked up at me.

“Now, boys,” I said.

They didn’t move. An older lad, one of the Manions, handed Paddy the knife. Paddy took it.

“Paddy—” I started.

“You’re going, Honora?” It was Máire. She looked at me and then at the boys on the floor.

“I am, but the boys—”

“Want to stay a bit longer?” she interrupted me. “That suits me. I’ll bring them along soon. Gracie, mind Aunt Honey. Be a good boy, Daniel.” She turned and went back to the fire.

I left.

“How dare you, Máire!” I said to her when she came home with the boys hours later. “You cut the legs from under me in front of my own son, took my authority.”

“You’ve no authority, Honora,” Máire said.

The children were asleep, and we had a moment for a whisper of talk in the hallway.

“What do you mean, no authority? Paddy’s eight years old and I’m his mother.”

“And he brings home the money for our rent and food. They’re good boys, but don’t pick fights we can’t win, not in front of the congregation of Saint Bridget’s of McKenna’s Scanlon House and the Hickory Gang.”