On the Waterfront (15 page)

When you have squeezed out of them the confessions of these monopolies and the like, drawing them out by many and cautious questions, you will be more easily able to settle how much of other persons’ property they are in possession of, and how much they ought to make restitution of to those they have defrauded in order to be reconciled to God, than if you should ask them in general whether they have defrauded anyone. For to this question they will immediately answer that their memory upbraids them with nothing. For custom is to them in the place of law, and what they see done before them every day they persuade themselves may be practiced without sin. For customs bad in themselves seem to these men to acquire authority and prescription from the fact that they are commonly practiced.

Father Barry put the book down and picked up his rosary. Give me, O Father, the wisdom and the know-how and the moxie, he prayed.

There were the chimes again, now striking five. He pulled on his shiny, shapeless black suit and his battered, black hat and hustled around the corner to the twenty-four-hour diner where an old woman kept an all-night newsstand. “Hullo, Fadder, you hopp oily dis mornin’!” From one of the obliterated countries of the Baltic, she spoke with a thick accent that thirty years of Boheganese had not displaced, but only embellished.

Father Barry bought the local Bohegan tabloid, the
Graphic,
and the Manhattan scream sheets that had just been trucked through the tunnel under the river. He sat on one of the diner stools and tipped his hat back, then spread the papers before him on the counter. He felt hungry from the night’s exertion, but his lips were meant this morning to touch the blood and body of his Lord. Coffee and doughnuts would have to wait. He had half-expected the Doyle killing to be front-page, but the big headline was for the capture of a young, good-looking sex maniac who had bludgeoned a waitress. Lighting a cigarette, he turned the pages full of sin and violence—teen-age beatings, angry divorces, paternity suits, public-housing scandals involving party girls, breaches of promise, malfeasance in office, a small-town week-end orgy, wife-swapping, a sailor’s beating of a sex deviant, a mouth-smacking exposé of midtown Manhattan after midnight—the tabloid’s daily confession of the city’s inability to keep the commandments. The towns around the harbor wallow in sin and filth, Pete Barry read between the lines, like big and little hogs in a mudhole.

Still looking for the headline on Joey Doyle, he came at last to a filler lost among the ads for relief of backaches, headaches, piles and pimples:

Joseph F. Doyle, a longshoreman, 225 Market Street, Bohegan, died last night when he jell from the roof of the apartment house in which he resided. He lived only a few minutes after being discovered by neighbors in the courtyard behind the tenement building a block from the waterfront. Whether the fall was accidental or due to foul play police were unable to determine in an on-the-scene investigation. According to a spokesman for Chief of Police William Donnelly, “All possible efforts will be made to ascertain the facts.” Surviving are …

Father Barry drew hard on the cigarette. Joey Doyle had been reduced to a few lines of filler in the Bohegan
Graphic.
The cynicism of Katie’s Uncle Frank swung back at him like an Australian throwing stick: “If the police just turn their backs and forget about it—like Uncle Frank says—isn’t it up to you to do something about it?” Father Barry looked at the big clock on the diner wall. 5:20. He would have to get a move on to get ready to celebrate the Mass. He hurried back to St. Timothy’s with such a rapid stride that a milkman called out, “What’s yer hurry, Father?”

In the sacristy when he tied the cincture around his waist he thought of its meaning in a way that had not occurred to him since he was first ordained; he was actually girding his loins for battle. And at the low Mass at six, which he had to admit to himself he often had run through mechanically and even sleepily, he felt to an almost unbearable degree the passion of the sacrifice. The chalice into which he poured the wine would hold the blood of Christ, the pledge of martyrs, of Joey’s too.

He liked to think he was as rugged as the fellows who swung the hooks, but his hand trembled this morning when he realized that once more, at this very moment, others were dying with Christ—and only last night Joey Doyle.

The sleepy-eyed dockworkers and sailors and truckdrivers and bartenders and a few of their wives became aware that Father Barry was living this Mass with words and gestures that were spontaneous and not left over from other Masses. The Passion was his passion, the wine had tasted like blood and the wafer had pressed on his hand as heavily as the body of the crucified. In Father Barry’s mind the Mass was beautifully, dangerously unified. The altar at which the sacrifice was offered and offered again had become Calvary on Market Street.
Et verbum caro factum est,
he said almost angrily. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

As soon as he had finished saying Mass, unvested and made his thanksgiving, he hurried back to his room, changed into his street clothes and paced off the nearly three blocks to the Doyle flat.

At his knock, Katie came to the door with a dustpan. Then she stepped back in surprise, self-consciously moving her hands in a futile effort to smooth her wrinkled skirt.

“Mornin’, Katie,” Father Barry said.

She hesitated whether to ask him in. She was still in the middle of her straightening up, and the kitchen into which he was looking was littered with the dirty glasses, dishes and ashtrays she had gathered from the other rooms.

“Oh, Father—if I had known you were coming I would’ve lit the hall light.”

“That’s okay, Katie. Last night you lit a big light”—his hand tapped his temple nervously—“up here.”

“I’m afraid I spoke out of turn,” Katie said with conventual courtesy.

Father Barry hadn’t come all this way for schoolgirl amenities.

“Listen, kid, you said what you meant. You belted me good. It kept me up all night, taking a long, hard look at what I’ve been doin’. What I began to see didn’t look so hot.”

He watched her run her fingers through her long blond-brown hair in embarrassment.

“I walked. I looked up a lot of stuff. I thought about some of those saints you threw in my face.”

“Father …”

“A couple of hours ago I asked myself the sixty-four-dollar question. Am I just a gravy-train rider in a turned-around collar?”

“
Father
…”

“Well, that’s what you think I am, don’t you?”

Her silence hurt them both.

“Don’t you?”

“I—I wouldn’t say
that.
I only thought …”

“I know. I know what you thought. You think I ought to live my religion, not just preach it. Am I right?”

Katie blushed. She was sorry for the young balding priest with his red eyes and his angry, pleading look.

“Okay. You don’t have to talk. Last night you did the talking. Now it’s my turn. So I asked the question, Katie, am I ready to take my lumps or am I just taking an easy ride?”

A look of doubt, of fear came into her face and he smiled sadly. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. There’s plenty of those jokers in the Church. Always has been. The play-it-safe, play-it-smart boys who go through all the right motions and wind up as Monsignors or better. There’s plenty of them uptown, I mean at the Chancellery. Katie, what I’m trying to say is, when I asked myself the question, the answer hit me—bang!” He paused and looked into her eyes, which were now frightened and believing. “This is my parish. I’m going down to the docks. And I’m going to bone up on this. I’m going to talk to everybody who’ll stand still for me. I knew it was there all the time, but you gave me the eyes to see it. I don’t know how much I c’n do, but I’ll never find out, I’ll just be taking the easy out, if I don’t go down and take a good look for myself. I’m no saint, Katie. I’m just barely gettin’ by. But you nailed me on the button last night. Now I’m ready to throw some punches myself. Anyway, no more hiding in the Church for me.”

“I’ll go with you, Father.”

“Down there?” He shook his head.

“Please.”

“I get it. You think I’m giving you a snow job. You want to see if I deliver.”

“Father, you musn’t talk like that.”

“Well, maybe seeing you down there’ll soften ’em up some.” His grin warmed his face for a moment, then quickly faded. “Same way you did me.”

“I would never have thought a priest had to be …”

“A priest is a man,” he reminded her. “A priest isn’t holy because he wears this thing.” He flicked the collar. “Last night you were blowing your stack because you believe something that too many of us—yes, I mean us in the rectory—only go through the motions of—and are willing to call it a day.”

“I just felt so—helpless.”

“We should all be so helpless,” Father Barry said.

When she smiled her eyes that had been crying and sleepless came to life again.

“Get your coat, Katie. We’re going down and take a cut at the ball.”

T
HE LONGDOCK BAR AND
Grill, at the other end of the block from Friendly’s on River Street, had served for years as the coffeepot for the dockworkers on Piers B and C who worked through Johnny Friendly’s Local 447. By seven o’clock every weekday morning it was crowded with longshoremen grabbing cups of coffee and maybe some ham and eggs-over before drifting across the street to the shape-up. They were men of all sizes and ages, clean-shaven and unkempt, young war veterans in their service issue and weather-beaten men in their 50’s in baggy denims, worn wool shirts and ancient windbreakers that looked slept in and lived in. It was a bitter cold morning, with snow in the air, and among the Irish caps and peaked ski-caps there were some black, round woolly jobs suggesting the head-dress of Russian peasants. Some of the men were ex-cons and some were ex-pugs, with sunken eyes and flattened noses, trophies of battles not only in the ring but on the docks and in the barrooms. Some of them were mean and quick-triggered and surly with drink and some of the hardest-faced were simple, amiable men who liked to buy the beers and talk the day away.

Moose was one of these, a brawny, bull-throated roughneck on the outside but a gentle and sentimental do-gooder in his heart, a familiar Irish dichotomy. He led the way into the Longdock now, with Runty, Jimmy and Pop in tow. There were empty stools for a couple of them at the short-order counter across from the bar that wouldn’t open until eight. Fred, a pink-faced old man with a cherubic expression under a few carefully combed wisps of hair, presided behind the counter with a carefully preserved brogue.

“Hey, Fred,” Moose’s big voice rose above the clatter-chatter, “how’s about four cawfee’s over here?”

“I c’n hear ye, Moose,” Fred said primly. “We’re not in Madison Square Garden.”

Coming up behind Pop was the little man they called “J.P.” Morgan, the money lender, who had a way of slithering up to you without being heard, so that his big-nosed, bat-eared, prairie-dog face was always looking into yours before you were ready for it.

Runty caught a glimpse of the obsequious “J.P.” over his shoulder and elbowed Pop.

“Don’t look now but Mr. John Pierpont Morgan is breathin’ down our necks.”

Pop and the others looked straight ahead as Fred served them their coffee while the loan-shark leaned forward over Pop’s shoulder.

“Condolences,” he said.

Pop sipped his coffee.

“J.P.” was used to this. “How ya fixed fer cabbage this mornin’?”

Now Runty wheeled his stool around. “Oh, me ’n me chum is just rollin’ in the stuff.”

“That’s right,” Pop chimed in. “Everybody knows we only woik down here fer a hobby.”

“Lookit all the fresh air we get,” young Jimmy Sharkey added with a grin. “We’re down here for our health.”

“Haw haw—you fellers tickle me,” Moose boomed, and they all laughed together.

“J.P.” Morgan gave a small, patient sigh. As the money lender for the Friendly mob, whose benificence was bestowed at wildly usurious rates, he had to absorb a good deal of abuse from hard-pressed longshoremen who dared vent their feelings on him while fearing to strike at Johnny Friendly himself.

“You’ll be needin’ a few dollars fer yer extras, won’t ya, Pop?” The voice both needled and wheedled.

“Extras,” Pop muttered. Bitterness stopped him from saying more.

“You’re three weeks behind on the last twenty-five but I’m willin’ to take a chance.”

Pop sniggered and shook his head. “Some chance—at ten per cent a week. And if I git too far behind ya get Big Mac to throw me a few days’ woik—an’ ya collect the check at the end of the week. Some chance.” Years and years of seeing “J.P.” and other shylocks turn in to the stevedore paymasters the metal work-tabs of longshoremen like himself piled up in Pop. “Some chance. I oughta belt ya one.”

“J.P.” withdrew a few feet with an air of bored persecution. “Raise a hand t’ me and yer off the pier fer good.”

“Listen, Pop’s been woikin’ these piers thoity years or more,” Runty reminded the money man. “He don’ need no scummy loan shark t’ teach ’im the score.”

“Not so loud,” Jimmy cautioned the chesty old man. “Look who’s sittin’ over there. The fifth stool down.”

It was Terry Malloy, flanked by a couple of young-punk admirers, Jackie and Chick. But Terry wasn’t talking to them. He was chewing moodily on a powdered doughnut.

“Aah, he’s nothin’—I c’d take him right now—all three of ’em,” Runty said, but he lowered his voice a little just the same.

“J.P.” Morgan had the money in his hand now, green, soiled and inviting.

“Now, Patrick,” he said, his voice soft and old like the money, “how much will ya be needin’?”

“All right, slip me half a bill,” Pop said, ashamed. His voice tightened. “And may ya rot in hell, ‘J-P.’ ”

“J. P.” dealt the bills from a pack of tens. “Insult me, humiliate me,” he whined. “When I’m dead ’n gone you’ll know what a frien’ I was.”

“Drop dead now, why dontcha,” Runty suggested, “so we c’n test your theory?”