“I don' know why you two should have the pennies, I'm the one what gave 'im Mike's rooms,” said one.
“You ain't gettin' my warm spit” came the quick reply. “I'm the one rolled the hoop out in front of McGee's wagon.”
“Yeah” came a littler voice. “An' who came up wi' the idea? Besides, that's me family's rooms. He's here about me da, I'll bet.” That last even sounded like his brother's voice. Tom hesitated, a sudden sadness taking hold in the dark stairway. He stopped for only a heartbeat, then continued up the stinking stairs, thinking of their shoeless feet.
The heat seemed to weigh on him and press him back with every step. But the heat was only part of it. The smell of such concentrated humanity hit him in the gut, taking the wind out of him. Suddenly breathing didn't seem all that important. Breathing through his mouth was a little better, except he could almost taste the place. It smelled like a five-story outhouse, or worse, because the smells of cooking were mixed in with the rest. And then there was a hard-to-define smell of sickness and disease, and more than one deep, wracking cough echoed down the dark hallways. It was altogether a hellish place. The thought of living there turned Tom's stomach. But the place was full of people, even at this time of day, when men were usually out to work. He could hear the laughter of women and children, a song of the Old Country, in a voice cracked with age, and a loud, strident argument from somewhere above. Coming to a landing between the second and third floors, he passed a pair of men smoking their pipes, lounging on the stairs. They gave way grudgingly.
Tom knocked on the second door back of the stairs. He heard the faint sound of deep, fluid hacking from somewhere inside. He knocked again and was answered with a woman's voice, calling:
“Keep yer britches on, I'll be there in two shakes.”
The door opened and Tom asked, “Mrs. Bucklin?”
“Ey, and who wants to know?”
“I'm Detective Braddock, ma'am.”
“Have ye found my Terry that soon then? I only put in the report this mornin' down at the station house. They said it might take days, or weeks even. Didn't seem to give a damn if he was missin' or not, ye ask me.” Tom watched her as she said this. She was much too old to be Terrence's wife, he thought. She must be all of fifty-eight or so but looked ten years older. Her hair was combed but oily gray. Her face showed the wear of a hard life with deep creases carved into the soft flesh. She had probably been pretty once; she had the eyes of a doe still, if you took the time to notice. Her clothes were neat, but old and frayed at the hem. Freckles and age spots blotched her parchment-thin skin.
“You're Mrs. Bucklin then?”
“I'm his mother. Is Terry in some sort of trouble? He's never been one to get on the wrong side of the law. It's a good boy, my Terry is.”
“Ma'am, could I come in for a moment? I'm afraid there's been some trouble.”
“Oh, bless me, sure, come in. Here you're tryin' to help me and I'm leavin' ye out in the hall.”
“Who is it, Patricia?” came a voice from the back of the room. Tom could see there was a corner that was separated from the rest by a sheet draped over a line. The voice seemed to come from there.
“It's a detective named Braddock, here about Terry, it's all right,” she said with a look at Tom.
“Have they found him, then?” the voice behind the sheet asked. “It's not like Terry to be out for days like this, nor miss a meal either.”
“Don't worry yer head, Pa, ye'll start a fit again, an' yer weak as a kitten as it is. So ⦔ she said, turning to Tom. “What's the trouble? Did he run afoul of some of them Protestant hooligans over on Hester? I've told him to keep well clear o' there. Never had any trouble before.”
“No, ma'am, I'm sorry to tell you, Terrence is dead.”
A low choking moan from behind the sheet curtain broke through the mist of Tom's words. Patricia Bucklin put her hands up to the sides of her head as if to block the words from her ears. Her hands were clenched, her knuckles white. She turned and wandered back to a chair, all the while holding her head, and with a soft moan she slid into it.
“Me boy, me boy, me boy.” She sobbed, rocking back and forth, the chair creaking in time. Slowly Mrs. Bucklin let her hands drop to her lap, where they worked her apron into a ball. She hardly made a sound as her shoulders shook silently.
A watery groan from behind the sheet took on a bubbling quality, and a
wracking, desperate coughing started. Tom knew that cough for the consumption. He had heard it often enough. From the sound of it, Mr. Bucklin didn't have many coughs left in him. Tom heard him spit up with a final effort. Mrs. Bucklin didn't seem to notice. She wilted into the old chair as if the life was draining out of her.
Tom stood silent, and at last Mrs. Bucklin said, “So was there an accident at the bridge? Been too many men come to grief on that damned job. I've told Terry to be careful, but after Julia and the baby died I don't think he cared anymore.”
“No, ma'am, it wasn't an accident. We strongly suspect foul play.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Patricia came out of the chair like she'd been scalded. “Waddaya mean, foul play? Terry never had an enemy in the world!” Before Tom had a chance to answer, she raged on, her words rushing all in a flood. “Always seen the good in people,” she said, pacing around the small room. “Folks liked Terry, an' they was sorry for his troubles, what with Julia and the baby gone to the angels. What kind of bloody monster would do such a thing?” she demanded, waving her arms at Braddock. “Do you have him, this murderin' bastard?”
Tom took a deep breath. “Ma'am, we don't know much, just that your son was found in an alley, back of Paddy's saloon, on Peck Slip. It appears he was hit from behind. The blow ⦠was strong enough to be fatal. There weren't any witnesses that we know of, but we're investigating, and we hope to have a break in the case soon.” Braddock felt the urge to give them some hope, however slim. “I need to know more about Terrence, and I was hoping you could help me. Did he have any enemies or owe any money, that sort of thing?”
As Tom said this, the sheet curtain was parted by a frail hand, pushing it slowly to one side. Mr. Bucklin rose from his bed. Tom could see the effort etched on his face though he tried to hide it. He looked like the life had been drained out of him. He was gray as a corpse. His clothes hung loose on his wasted frame. He shuffled slowly toward his wife, who silently moved to meet him in the middle of the room. They held on to each other in their grief, drawing what strength they could one from the other. The yellow afternoon light filtering through the dirty window framed them in a sort of halo. As Tom watched, it almost seemed as if the light was coming from them, shining out from their essential selves, the spiritual beings they really were. It seemed to Tom that he saw them in a younger time, before the age and the work, the troubles and the deaths brought them to this place. They were shining and luminous, tight-skinned ⦠vibrant. The years had not touched them nor worn away their beauty. It was a vision as unexpected as it was fleeting. Tom blinked, and it was gone, leaving the old couple in its wake. But Braddock
knew what he had seen. He wasn't one to doubt, or sneer, or pass it off as a trick of the light.
They clung together like that for long minutes and Tom looked away. He noticed a tintype of a soldier on the dresser; his serious face, young and earnest, looked stiffly at the camera. It was Terrence. The markings on his uniform were those of the Sixty-ninth Regiment. Tom knew the Sixty-ninth and had admired their spirit on many fields. The great green flag they carried, the symbol of the country they left behind, always flew at the front. Many were the times when he had watched the Second Corps go by, with the Irish Brigade in ranks. He realized he must have seen Terence among those ranks years ago. He had a new respect for the man. Tom looked closer at the picture, noticing the new Springfield musket, its barrel polished, bayonet fixed. Tom thought he saw the look that he had seen in his own mirror long ago. He felt a certain kinship with the man in the tintype, a bond and an obligation. Tom took his obligations seriously.
Patricia and Eamon Bucklin sat in their tiny kitchen and, over the next hour or so, told Tom Braddock the story of their lives in America. They had come to New York when the “bloody-handed British” raised the taxes on their land and the rent on their house.
“Eamon's family,” Patricia had said, “worked that land for near one hundred twenty years, and they threw us off like so much boot scrapin's.”
“The children screaming hungry, an' the bastards drive us out our own home. The shame of it is they had Irish constables to back 'em up,” Eamon said, shaking his gray head. They had borrowed money from relatives, sold what possessions they could, and took ship for New York. Their oldest, a girl named Shannon, had taken sick on the voyage. By the time they reached New York and went through Castle Garden, she was so weak she could barely stand.
“She had the look o' sickness about her, so they quarantined her and there she died. Had to bury me darlin' in Potter's Field 'cause there wasn't a penny to be had for a proper burial,” Patricia said softly, opening an old wound. “Swore some day we'd bury her proper,” she whispered.
In spite of their tragic start, Eamon had managed to find work and things got better.
“Always been good wi' me hands,” Eamon had wheezed from the edge of his bed. He had found work at a cooperage on Canal Street. He made foreman and earned enough for them to live on with an occasional luxury. They had found two airy rooms on Spring Street, with morning sun pouring in the high windows and a bathroom they shared with only one other family. Life was good. They put away the troubles of the past.
Patricia made tea for Tom and Eamon on a tiny cast-iron stove. She wept silently as she stood with her back to them, her shoulders shaking. Tom heard the hiss of a tear as it sizzled on the hot iron. He pretended to study Terrence's picture. Looking around the room, he noticed that what little furniture they had was of mahogany, and the fabrics were fineânot like the stuff he usually saw in the tenements. She turned with the teakettle in her left hand and dabbed at her red eyes with the corner of her apron. “Terry used to love his tea,” she said.
They told him of how, just short of Terry's seventeenth birthday, the troubles started at Fort Sumter.
“Terry was always one to do his duty. Brought him up to see the right of things and do what was expected of a man. Didn't know about seceding from the Union, or the legal mumbo jumbo about the territories, or Kansas and Nebraska or any such.” Eamon paused for a moment, then, drawing a long watery breath, continued, “Never knew a black man in his life, but he knew that slavin's a curse on the land. He could see what the slavery was doin' to this country.”
“We were never prouder of him than when he joined the Sixty-ninth,” Patricia added, her head held high.
“We went over to Broadway to watch him march off with the regiment. What a day that was: the flags, an' the crowds, an' the bands. I cried to see him go, but I could've burst with the pride I had in him for goin'.”
They told him of the war years, and Terry's letters home, and the tintype he had sent them. He had been in many famous battles, they assured him, coming through it all with barely a couple of scratches. Lots of his mates in the regiment left whole parts of themselves on those battlefields or didn't come home at all. When he was released from the service in â64, he came home, grown and different, but still the son they loved. He met “his Julia” at a social at the Hibernians hall, and they married in the spring of '69.
Tom sat patiently through their ramble in the past. He sensed they needed to tell their lives and make some sense of what had happened to them. He could feel their urgency to explain how they had come to this place. It was plain from the furniture, their clothes, and the way the rooms were kept that this was not where they belonged. They were hardworking people, but work alone had not been enough. Here, near the end of their hopes, they wanted it to make sense. Tom understood that well enough. He wished that life always made sense. Most times it was hard to tell. He sipped his tea and listened.
It was just after he took Julia Tompkins as his bride that Terry got work on the bridge to Brooklyn. He labored at laying up the three-ton blocks of cut stone that were to become the Brooklyn tower. Terry worked on that tower
for five years, Pat had told him proudly. The family prospered, with Eamon and Terry bringing in good wages. They bought a small row house on East Third Street together, and in '71 Julia had given birth to Mary Elizabeth.
“She was the light o' his life, that little girl. You should have seen him, Detective.”
“Tom ⦠call me Tom,” Braddock said, Terrence's tintype cradled in his lap.
“Tom. He and Julia would take her for walks just to show her off. She was a sweet one too, with beautiful eyes and a lovin' manner. We were happy then ⦔ Patricia's voice trailed off.
Mikey came in â73. “He was a fine strappin' boy with a good set o' lungs and a strong hand,” as Eamon had put it. Terry finished work on the Brooklyn tower that year and then started work on the approach on the Brooklyn side. He wanted to work in the New York caisson for the extra pay that was in it, but Patricia and Eamon and especially Julia had talked him out of it. If the caisson disease got him, like it got so many, there was no amount of pay that was worth it, they told him.