Authors: Elizabeth Adler
“You’ve saved us, brother,” he cried admiringly. “You’ve saved us from destitution, for I niver got that job today and I swear to you I was at the end of my tether and cursing Lily Molyneux to hell along with yerself.” His eyes misted over as he thought of his homeland. “Aye, and I wanted to go home, Finn,” he added mournfully. “I wanted to be back in Connemara. To be back in the woods chasin’ the pheasant and the woodcock and grouse. Walking Boston’s streets, I wasn’t seeing them, Finn. I was only seeing meself pulling a salmon from the river in that quiet beat beneath the willows, y’know the one I mean?”
Finn shrugged. He had money in his pockets and he felt like a new man. He was ready to take on the whole of the North End,
and
the city of Boston, aye—
and all of Amerikey, too,
if need be. He closed his ears to his brother’s mournful memories of Ardnavarna and said impatiently, “Ye forget we was as poor as the next Irishman. And that for one wrong look or word his lordship would have had ye back shoveling horse shit again.” He patted his pocket and said confidently, “We’ve got more money in our pockets, now, brother, than we ever would have in Connemara. This is what they mean by ‘a golden opportunity.’ Those sovereigns are gold and this is our opportunity.
“I’ll tell you what,” he cried, inspired by the excitement of their newfound wealth. “We’ll celebrate, Dan. We’ll take ourselves out to the Italian’s cafe and we’ll fill our bellies with as much food as they can hold. And then after we shall go to the saloon.”
Daniel nodded in agreement. He struggled to his feet, knotting his thin muffler at his throat in readiness and Finn said, “Wait though, I’ll just get Rory from upstairs to go with us.”
He darted up the steps into the tenement and ran three flights without stopping, then banged heavily on the wooden door. Silence fell as the family inside froze into immobility. Such a knock could only mean police trouble. “It’s all right, it’s only me, Finn,” he called, and the door was instantly flung open and a young lad grinned welcomingly at him.
Rory O’Donovan was younger than Finn by a year, sixteen to his seventeen, and he lived with his widowed mother and brothers and sisters, all seven of them in two minute rooms. The windows had been boarded up against the cold and, like Finn’s cellar, the rooms were always dark, giving Rory the characteristic waxy immigrant pallor. Rory was thin and frail-looking with sticklike arms and legs, brilliant dark eyes, and a hacking cough that sometimes shook his thin frame so badly Finn thought he would burst.
He had met Rory on his very first day in the North End. Fresh off the boat from Nantucket and jingling the islanders’ pitifully few charitable coins together in his pocket, he had stopped to ask the boy if he knew where cheap lodgings were to be found. Rory had directed him to the cellar where the impoverished tenants had agreed, for the weekly sum of a single dollar, to divide their cellar into two and rent one half to the O’Keeffe boys.
Finn and Rory had been friends ever since and Finn flung his arm around Rory’s shoulders now and invited him to come with them to the Italian’s. “I’ve had a touch of
luck, boyo.” He added with a grin, “I’ll be after tellin’ you about it over a hot meal.”
Rory went to fetch his cap and scarf, and Finn quickly took the opportunity to slip two dollars into Mrs. O’Donovan’s hand, telling her to think nothing of it, there was plenty more where that came from. She stared gratefully after him as he and Rory clattered down the splintered stairs that smelled of cabbage and urine and unspeakable grime and poverty. The two dollars would pay off what she owed “on the book” at the grocery store, so she could get more credit and feed her family for another week, if she were careful.
“He’s a fine lad, young Finn O’Keeffe,” she told her clustering children. “He’ll be going a long way in this world, y’can be sure of that.”
The Italian’s cafe was a decent walk away in Ward Eight, but tonight they didn’t even notice the distance or the cold as they laughed and talked excitedly, caps pulled low over their eyes and chins tucked down into their mufflers out of the icy wind. A few flakes of snow whirled around, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter as much as it had before and Finn felt that heady freedom of being a man of means for the first time in his life.
“I like it, old fellow,” he chortled, slapping Dan on the back and grinning broadly at Rory. “I like this feelin’ of having money. It makes a fellow feel grand. Aye, more than that. As though nothing can touch you; you’re safe from all the trials and tribulations of the world.” He patted the gold sovereigns in the leather pouch strapped to his waist under his jacket and sighed with satisfaction. “Maybe I won’t have to kill Lily Molyneux after all,” he said with a wink at Dan, and the two of them laughed as though it was the biggest joke in the world while Rory stared bemusedly at them.
“I’ll tell you all about it when you’re old enough,” Finn promised him with another wink as they herded into the steamy little storefront cafe. The heady fragrance of herbs and spices and roasting meats filled their hungry mouths
with anticipatory saliva, and they ordered a flagon of rough red wine and downed it along with slabs of salami and sour green olives while they waited for their food. And when the plates of roast chicken and savory polenta came they fell silent, concentrating on the food as though it were the only thing on earth that mattered. They finished in record time and Finn leaned contentedly back in his chair. He called for more wine and more food for his friends and thought life had never seemed so good.
His thoughts turned as always to Lily and he wondered again what had become of her. Her name had not been on the survivors’ list put up in the Hall of the Sons of Temperance in Nantucket, but Lady Lily’s name would not have been placed with ordinary mortals anyway. Somehow she would have ended up with the gentry like herself. He brooded over the story one of the sailors had told him, of how he had seen her thrown into the sea. He told himself it could not have been Lily, that things like that didn’t happen to girls like her, there would always be some poor fool at her side ready to protect her. He told himself bleakly that Lily had survived. He just knew it. He felt it in his heart.
After the steamy heat of the little cafe the cold outside struck them like a blow. Their breath hung on the air and their hobnailed boots clattered on the black ice, sending them slithering and cursing over the cobbles.
“Too cold for snow,” Rory said as the blood-chilling wind whistled through his thin jacket. This was his second Boston winter and he knew the score. Later, when the temperature rose a notch or two, there would be snow all right, tons of the evil stuff. He thought miserably of his five brothers and sisters, all needing new boots, and he knew he just had to get a job, somewhere, anywhere. He would do anything.
“You’ll work with us, fella,” Daniel said, answering his unspoken prayer, striding rapidly through the icy streets as though he did not even feel the cold. Hurrying along beside him Rory asked eagerly what he meant. “We shall go
into business with this money,” Dan boomed importantly. “Right, Finn?” He stopped and stared at their questioning faces and then he laughed. “Just ask yourselves, boyos, what do people need most? Why, food and drink, of course. And after that clothing. Pants, skirts, coats, boots. We shall open a store with our money, lads, and then one thing’s for sure. We shall never go hungry. Not with our own shop.”
“Y’think we’ve enough money to do it, Dan?” Finn asked eagerly.
“To be sure, but I’ll go speak to the ward boss. He’ll set me straight about what to do.” He slapped Finn affectionately on the back. “It’s all thanks to your quick-thinking brother,” he said, forgetting he had ever accused Finn of stealing from Lily, and his big handsome face split in an excited grin as he thought of the money and their new start in life.
Standing at the counter in Brady’s Saloon, Finn said, “It’s a fine country, Amerikey is. They give you five times as many dollars as you have sovereigns, like money grows on trees.” He glanced happily around the smoky room. As usual, it was packed with ragged men and black-shawled women sitting over a single drink they could ill afford, because at least the saloon was warm and the company took their minds off their woes. And it was a thousand times better than the dark frozen hovels they called home.
“Mebbe we should open a saloon instead,” Finn said to Daniel. “It’s certain we would never be short of customers.”
“There’s three saloons to every block in the North End,” Dan retorted, “and all of ’em filled with folks with just enough left over to buy themselves one drink. The only money being spent in here is what’s left over after feeding and clothing their families. No, boyo,” he repeated, “a store is where the money is, I’m convinced of it.”
Rory knocked back his whiskey and began to cough. The cough turned to wheezing and his face turned red. “Best
have a brandy, Rory,” Finn suggested as the boy slowly regained his breath.
Rory hung his head miserably. “Me dad died o’ the drink. And me mother always said if I was after takin’ after him she would nail me feet to the floor before she’d let me into a saloon.”
“And ’tis right the woman was too,” Finn agreed approvingly. “I’ll have no drunk in my employ.” He winked at his friend, flinging an encouraging arm around him. “Just think, Rory,” he said, his face shining with seventeen-year-old wonder as he contemplated their sudden step up in life, “one day you and me and Dan will be rich men.”
“Is it rich, you are then?” Jack Brady, the landlord, asked, leaning interestedly on the scarred wooden counter, along with the customers crowding around to hear who had made it big in Amerikey.
“It is,” Dan said with a modest grin. “Me and me brother here. We’ve come into a fair bit of money and we’ll be settin’ ourselves up in business. A nice little store that we hope you’ll all be patronizing, because we plan to offer you the best prices in the North End.”
“Two hundred and forty dollars,” Finn exclaimed proudly. A stunned silence fell over the room as he patted the bulge under his jacket. “And me and me brother would like to buy each and every one of you, our fellow countrymen, a drop of the best Irish whiskey Brady has on his shelf. To celebrate. And so you don’t forget the O’Keeffe brothers from Connemara when yer next doing your shopping.”
Forty pairs of eyes fastened wonderingly on them as Brady passed the glasses around and they lifted them in a toast to the O’Keeffes’ enviable good fortune. Two hundred and forty dollars was more than any one of them had made in their entire lives and more than any of them could even conceive of seeing in one grand lump sum. The whiskey was downed with a cheer and then someone struck up “Irish Rover” on the accordion, and someone else on the fiddle, and then the pipes and penny whistles, and before
you knew it Brady’s was roaring with song. The whiskey kept on flowing thanks to Daniel and Finn, and Brady smiled happily at his sudden bonanza, though he said warningly to Dan, “You’d best not spend it all in one night on the booze, old fella, or you’ll niver get your fancy shop.”
Rory finished his whiskey and said, “I’ll have to be get-tin’ back, Dan. Me mother will be wondering.”
Dan was still mulling over Brady’s words. He knew the saloonkeeper was right and he knew that, with him drunk, the money would float through their fingers in one grand wonderful raucous party unless he did something about it. He nudged Finn and whispered to give Rory the sovereigns. “You take our money home with ye, lad, so we’re not after spending it all,” he said. “Give it to yer mother for safekeeping, and we’ll see you in the morning.”
Finn fumbled under his jacket and passed the leather pouch with the sovereigns to Rory. He slapped him on the back and ordered a bottle of decent brandy. “Take that to yer mother, Rory,” he said. “It’ll come in handy when the winter cold brings the ills and fever. And God bless you, me old son. You’re me best friend in the world, apart from me brother Dan, that is. And don’t forget to tell yer mother of yer new job with the O’Keeffes.”
He turned back to the bar, jingling the remaining coins in his hand. Flinging them down on the counter he said munificently, “ ’Tis yours, Brady, for whatever else it will buy to keep my friends happy.”
Another cheer went up and the music grew louder and the singing of the old songs more raucous as they raised their glasses, pouring the whiskey of warmth and forgetful-ness down their throats, lost in the wonder and magic of the O’Keeffes’ newfound riches. “Aye, Amerikey is a wonderful place after all,” they told themselves, hope rising in their hearts, for if one of their countrymen could find success then surely there was a chance for them too.
Rory was not drunk. He tucked the leather pouch containing the O’Keeffes’ precious sovereigns into his jacket pocket and pushed his way through the merry throng into
the cold. The door swung shut behind him and the reality of the North End’s mean stinking streets overwhelmed him again. Except now they were covered in a white blanket. Snow whirled around his head and he lifted his face to the blizzard, sticking out his tongue to catch the cold crystal flakes as he slithered back over the cobbles toward the cheerless room where he would huddle with his sisters and brothers, head to toe in the mess of straw that served as their bed, like a litter of frozen starving pups in a farmyard.
The snow deadened the footsteps of the man following him and he turned with surprise as he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. The man’s flat tweed cap was pulled low over his eyes and a curly black beard hid the lower part of his face. “What d’ya want?” Rory demanded, but there was fear in his voice because he knew from the gleam in the fellow’s eyes and the shillelagh in his hand exactly what it was the man wanted. The blow caught him on the side of the head and he went down without a sound.
Flinging a quick glance over his shoulder, the man knelt over Rory, fumbling with frozen fingers under his jacket until he found the precious purse, still warm from his body. He stood up and stared for a second at the boy at his feet, his blood already staining the snow. A look of desperation and agony crossed his face. “I’m sorry, boyo,” he said softly, “but I need this for me starvin’ family.” And then he ran off, skidding around the corner on the ice, running and running as far from the North End and his evil deed as he could.