Whiskey Island (28 page)

He wondered, as she lay sleeping beside him, if it was worse to create a child and have it die as Tommy Sullivan had, or never to create one at all. What a terrible trick God had played, if the pleasure they took in each other’s bodies was all the joy they would ever have from them.

18

October 1882

K
atie Sullivan had a storehouse of proverbs from the old country that covered every occasion. “If you haven’t your neighbor, you have nobody, Lena. There’s no need to thank me.”

Katie balanced one-year-old Annie on her hip as she stirred the open kettle on Lena’s stove. Three-year-old Laurie, now the oldest Sullivan child, played quietly in the corner. Katie’s arm barely extended to the farthest burner, since her swollen belly forced her to stand well away from the stove. Katie was due to deliver again very soon.

“You work too hard,” Lena told her friend.

“It’s glad I am that the work needs doing.”

“There’s more work than I ever dreamed, and far less money in it.” Lena mopped her brow with the bottom of her apron. Despite the chill of encroaching winter, the room seemed overly warm. The stove had burned hot since well before dawn, with ten loaves of soda bread in the oven, and both soup and stew simmering on the top.

“That’s because you work for men poorer than you. What can they afford except the pittance they pay you? And how many of them do you feed for nothing?”

“They’re good men, all of them, and they need to eat.”

“You’ll find no argument from me. You might well be feeding my Seamus once I’m confined with the new babe.”

“What a pleasure that would be, after everything you’ve done for me.”

“Granny O’Farrell says ‘twill be a boy.”

Granny O’Farrell was the local midwife, and well known for her accurate predictions. Lena decided it was well past time to bring up Tommy’s death. “And will he remind you too much of darling Tommy?”

“I need no reminders. Tommy visits me in my sleep.”

Despite the heat, Lena felt suddenly cold. “Katie, what are you saying?”

“He comes to me, Tommy does. He misses me still. He’s not at peace, you see.”

“He was baptized, Katie. He’s with the angels. You said it yourself at the moment of his death.”

“He’s with the angels, but he misses me still. Can you not believe that?”

Lena fell silent. What did she know of the bond between a mother and her son? Perhaps Tommy did come back in Katie’s dreams. Perhaps her greatest comfort came from knowing that her darling boy had not forgotten her, even in the company of the hosts of heaven.

“You’ll understand someday,” Katie said.

“Will I? I’ve been married nearly three years, yet never with child. And not because we don’t try,” she added, before Katie could chide her.

“That much I’m sure of, dear.”

It was too hot in the kitchen to blush, and Lena was too long married, anyway. Instead she laughed weakly. “Perhaps we try too often.”

“Have you asked the good Father to pray for you?”

“Yes.” And Lena imagined Katie herself had been adding her prayers for some time. “Perhaps we’re simply meant to bring our families here first. We’ve saved nearly enough, you know. Now that my mother’s with her cousin in Dublin, she’s managing there, but Terry’s mother and father need to come to us soon, before they’re too sick and old to make the voyage.”

“It’s a blessing, then, that you’ve not yet started your family. Perhaps it’s God’s answer.”

A rebellious voice in Lena’s head pointed out that the answer might have come quicker. Between sending money to Ireland and saving for the Tierneys’ passage to Cleveland, the months had dragged on. She had hoped that her earnings would make light work of it, but instead her contribution had only made their goals possible.

She realized she was coming perilously close to self-pity. “Well, today’s dinner may bring in an extra penny or two. I’ve cooked more than usual. The colder the weather, the more the men eat.”

“The wise bird flies lowest. You’ll get ahead by paying attention to such things.”

“Katie, please let me bring you some of the soup and bread for your trouble this morning. It will save you from cooking when you go home, you who should be off your feet.”

Katie surprised her. “I might allow it at that.”

“Well, fine. I’ll deliver it on my way.”

“You might bring enough for Granny, too.”

Lena froze. “What’s that you’re saying?”

“Just that Seamus may be a da again by nightfall.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We have to get you home right now. Shall I keep Laurie and Annie with me?”

“And deliver dinner to the docks with a child under each arm?” Katie laughed. “Granny will watch them or call in a neighbor to help. Besides, I’d like them near me, so I won’t worry.”

Lena knew Katie would always worry, even if the children were directly under her feet. Since Tommy’s death, she had passed beyond watchful to haunted.

Lena tried to reassure her. “I’ll deliver dinner then, and I’ll come back to your house the moment I’ve finished, to take care of them.”

“You’ll be most welcome. And now, I’ll be on my way.”

“I’ll come with you—”

Katie waved her back. “You have my word, dear. I won’t drop the babe between here and home. I have an hour or two of hard work ahead of me, and the walk will do me good.” She called to Laurie, who had set up a family of clothes-peg dolls in a straw basket and had to be coaxed to leave. Lena promised the child she would bring the very same clothes-pegs—which looked exactly like every other—with her when she came later that afternoon. Placated, Laurie took her mother’s hand and disappeared out the front door.

Lena scurried around the kitchen, finishing what chores were left. She had more reason than usual to be on her way. Katie might laugh, but it was common enough for a mother who had given birth several times to have each new babe quicker and quicker.

Terence and Rowan had built Lena a cart to pull her wares to the dock. Now she brought it around to the back door and began to load it, taking extra care with the kettles, which were both hot and heavy. She packed the bread around them to keep the loaves warm and to help cushion the kettles, then went back for a basket of tarts she’d made the previous night with the last of autumn’s stored apples.

Finally she gathered together her store of cutlery and tin plates and bowls. She always served the men, then waited for them to finish so that she could return home with her supplies, which she washed and used again the next day. The dishes had cost her dearly, even though Rowan had gotten a bargain when one of Whiskey Island’s saloons closed its door. But until Rowan had found the plates and bowls, she’d only been able to sell food the men could eat with their fingers.

The trip to the docks took fifteen minutes, because a stinging, malodorous wind was at her face, and because she stopped at Katie’s along the way, just to be certain she and her daughters had arrived home safely. Granny was already there and predicting the Sullivans’ new son would be born before his father returned from work. From the bedroom Katie called to Lena that she wasn’t to tell Seamus, who would only worry.

“We’ll surprise him,” Katie said, sounding a dab less cheerful than she had in Lena’s kitchen. Lena, who had helped at several births, including one where the mother had died, was secretly glad to have the next hour to gather her courage. She left soup and bread and extra tarts, and continued on her way.

No matter how many times she went to the docks, she was never ready for the sight of the giant wooden ore carriers, which loomed along the riverbank. Terence had told her that the shipyards, abundant and as greedy for Irish labor as the docks themselves, were beginning construction on ships of iron. “Some say they’ll never float,” he told her. “But the first man to build a raft of logs surely heard the same.”

Whiskey Island was a rough-and-tumble place, home to gangs of thugs who made trouble their business. Fights were common, and here on the docks, theft from the warehouses was common, too. Rowan had told her of a watchman who had not made it through one murderous night, and of another who had barely escaped with his life. Men were often waylaid outside the saloons, so a clever man drank up whatever money he had before he walked out the door.

Despite this, Lena felt safe enough. Crimes against women were rarely reported. The men might make victims of their own kind, but a deeply ingrained respect for their women seemed to rule even the roughest of Whiskey Island’s hoodlums. A man might cuff his wife or even force himself upon her, but any man who harmed another’s wife or sister knew that her family wouldn’t rest until they had found their own brand of justice. Lena seldom went out at night, so as not to tempt fate, but in broad daylight, even in this male bastion, she was unconcerned.

She knew from Terence that the ore boats each held as much as three hundred tons of ore, and what took one hundred men four days to store inside the hold in Michigan took the same number of men a full week to unload in Cleveland.

When Darrin had worked here he’d been issued a shovel and a wheelbarrow, which he had loaded, then pushed up a series of planks to the gangplank and, finally, the dock, where the ore was loaded on railroad cars. When one of the planks had collapsed beneath him, he had been buried alive.

Terence was luckier. A pulley system existed now, and the men in the hold filled buckets pulled up from the bowels of the vessel by teams of mules. He didn’t have to fight and strain to push a heavily loaded barrow to the surface, but neither did he have any opportunity to see the sun during his twelve hour workday, except at his brief dinner break.

The holds were deep and sloped sharply inward, freezing in the early part of winter before the lake froze and traffic was halted, clammy in autumn and spring, stifling in summer. No man with a horror of enclosed places could be tempted to work in them. Each morning, within minutes, dust from the disturbed ore clouded the air and sifted into the men’s lungs. Not a one of the terriers was free of a cough. Lena had lain awake many a night listening to Terence’s and worrying.

She crossed train tracks, jumped at the sound of a steam whistle, then sidestepped a mule team and a group of terriers heading as far away from the hateful holds as they could for their brief respite. The men lifted their caps to her, exposing hair not yet as red with ore dust as the rest of them. One man stopped to buy a chunk of bread and a tart, but all of them knew she would not serve soup or stew here. She had a place on the riverbank where she set up each day, and the men had to come there and stay as they ate. Otherwise she knew her dishes and cutlery would disappear.

She searched for Terry in the crowd being disgorged from the belly of the boat, but at that distance, in their dust-coated shirts, suspenders and caps, the men all looked the same. She pulled the cart over bumps and ruts and settled on a low rise beside the water. She was a little earlier than usual, and the men swarming out of the boat were taking their time, scratching and stretching to relieve tired muscles. Despite the chill wind, despite the winter clouds that obscured the sun, they were glad, to a man, to be outside again.

At last she picked out her husband in a group of men heading her way. He was the tallest of the six men, and the thinnest. He had pulled on a heavy sweater she’d knitted for him, and wrapped a wool scarf around his throat. She knew he was still cold. He was always cold, in need of more weight and more rest. But he was a strong man, and he never complained.

Seamus Sullivan was beside him. Seamus was short, dark haired, and plump for a poor man. Although Katie was not the cook that Lena was, she fed her family well and prided herself on every pound they gained. And Seamus gained easily.

Seamus’s round face broke into a grin, and he waved when Lena raised her hand in greeting. He was as easygoing as his wife was conscientious. After his son’s death, he had grieved loudly, drunk heavily and recovered quickly. He had not loved Tommy less, but unlike Katie, Seamus understood how little a man could do to influence fate.

“Have you seen my Katie?” he asked, when he was within hailing distance.

“Aye. I made her stay home to rest. And I told her I’d feed you today.”

“By the light of all that’s holy, she’s birthing the babe, is she?”

“What would make you say such a thing?”

“Only that she wouldn’t miss bringing my dinner unless she was confined.”

“I have nothing to say on the matter.”

“You won’t even tell a man if he’s about to be a da again?”

“I won’t if the man’s wife tells me I cannot.”

He grinned, showing two ore-dusted dimples.

Terence didn’t kiss her or put his arms around her. But his expression warmly welcomed her. “Have you brought us something good on this cold afternoon?”

“I have.” She lifted the kettle lids. “Make your choice before the others arrive. Seamus, you first.”

The smell of Irish or “Mulligan” stew perfumed the air. She had filled it with turnips and potatoes and carrots, the way the men liked it. She used whatever she could lay her hands on cheaply, creating endless variations on dishes she knew the men enjoyed.

“The stew it is,” Seamus said, reaching in his pocket for coins.

“Put your hand where it belongs,” Lena chided him. “I would no more take money from you than from my own mother.” She ladled up a steaming bowl and tore off a chunk of bread to go with it. “There’s an apple tart waiting when that’s eaten.”

She turned to her husband. “And for my lord and master?”

Terence smiled. “And what is it I’ll be having for supper?”

“Whatever doesn’t get eaten for dinner.”

“Then I’ll take the stew.”

She ladled up another bowl, adding what meat she could find, as she had for Seamus. The other men would not be so lucky.

“There’ll be snow by week’s end,” Terence said, taking the bowl. “I can feel it in the air.”

Lena could, too, and she looked forward to it, despite how much harder it would be to make her way with the cart to the docks. In the early hours of the first good storm, the snow blanketed everything it touched, a clean white shroud over shanties and foundries and rotting garbage. Until factory soot blackened the landscape once more, the world would seem new again and the air purified.