Section IV

Descent into the Abyss

Chapter 24

Increasing Instability

On November 7, 1882, Theresa died at age seventy-two, a shadow of her once robust self. She had been close to John and Johanna and their children. Her long bout with cancer had been painful for them and they sighed in relief when she died. She had begged the Lord to take her. Nonetheless, they mourned her passing as bitterly as if she had been John’s birth mother. She had raised him, stood by his family financially in tough times, and sat with all of them in their illnesses. She was the matriarch of their family.

Daily in 1883, weather allowing, Pat pulled four-year-old Annie in a wagon between Broadway and Seneca Streets looking for “Employee Wanted” signs and just people watching. Annie talked nonstop, asking her father questions about whatever she saw. Pat obliged, basking in the admiration and love of his youngest.

The near-East Side was the crossroads of the city where Irish, German, Jewish, Negro, Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian populations resided. Factories were going up. There were new open-air markets. Ground floors along every major thoroughfare converted to stores for blocks on end.

Over the years that he worked for Turner in the Hydraulics neighborhood between the First Ward and the East Side, he had watched the construction of two manufacturing buildings at 663 Seneca Street, which opened as J. D. Larkin & Co. and employed hundreds of workers.

For information on the company, he turned to Hugh Mooney, who had sold his tavern on Ohio Street and opened a saloon on Seneca Street that was patronized by many Larkin employees.

“His employees are very loyal to Mr. Larkin and the company is growing fast,” Mooney told him. “It manufactures soap. Sells its products door to door.”

“What do the employees say about working there?” Pat asked.

“They say it is like no place else. Larkin believes his business is a partnership with his employees and his customers. Work conditions are the best in America. I say you should walk into the Larkin Building and see for yourself.”

A week later, with Mary’s encouragement, Pat dressed in clean, Sunday-best clothes and walked to the main entrance. He asked a guard at the door if he could observe the factory floor. The guard took him to a spot on the mezzanine overlooking the manufacturing area and explained the operations below. Scents, some mildly foul and some pleasant, perfumed the air as workers were converting tallow and ashes into soap.

Men were working at a steady pace, but supervisors did not hover over them. The workers operated steam-driven equipment, which did most of the heavy lifting. The floor was well lighted and ventilated and the machinery spaced, so that workers were not crowded together. After fifteen minutes watching the floor, Pat decided this was the place for him. He entered the administration office on the first floor and approached a nattily dressed young man, who was seated at his desk among many other office workers. He was slim, with a boyish face, brown hair, and a well-groomed beard and mustache.

Pat introduced himself and inquired about any openings.

“Well, we’re not hiring for the shop floor right now, but we always need salesmen to sling soap and to call on retail stores. Can you sell soap?” The man gave Pat the once-over, trying to size him up on the spot and determine what kind of appearance he would make on the street selling Larkin products mostly to women.

“I can sell soap to pigs.” God’s gift to the world was how Pat saw himself.

The manager decided to take a chance on Pat. He seemed to have a salesman’s gift of gab.

“Anyone with that attitude can work for the Larkin Company.”

The next day, Pat appeared at 8:00 a.m. sharp and joined a dozen men and two women for an orientation session conducted by the president of the company, Mr. John D. Larkin, the same man Pat had talked to the previous day.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know you are eager to get started, so I will only take a minute to tell you about the Larkin Company.

“I learned the soap business from the ground up in Chicago, doing all the things men are doing on our shop floor. Three years ago, I moved back to Buffalo, where I was born, with my new bride and formed J. D. Larkin & Co. in a rented building, not much more than a barn, at 196 Chicago Street. It had one other employee, my wife, Frances. I made the soap and she packaged it. In the first year, Larkin Company lost $3,000. The second year we quadrupled sales and made a profit of $3,000, largely because of a sales program invented by my wife’s brother, Elbert Hubbard. Today, we have nine product lines. Elbert, who recently turned twenty-seven, has a sales force in four cities east of the Mississippi. We have products women want and a unique method of sales called ‘soap slinging.’

“We are thinking about placing small gifts in every box of soap. Eventually, we’ll offer women premiums, that is, opportunities to buy goods they all want and need around the house at pennies on the dollar, including some of the best furniture American women have ever seen. We believe in sharing whatever profits we make with our customers and our employees.” Larkin looked down at notes he had spread on a podium before him. “If you go to work with us, someday you’ll own part of the company and retire to a prosperous old age. Now I’m going to take you on a tour of our factory to show you how we create quality in every bar or can of soap we make. Then we’ll go into our show room, where you can convince yourselves these are the products every American woman needs and wants.”

For the next hour, Mr. Larkin led the prospective employees through the premises. Pat came home excited and told Mary there was no telling how far he could go with his talent for chatting up women. Mary had to agree. He sure had the Irish gift of gab.

The first day, Pat walked ten minutes to the Larkin Building at 7:00 a.m. and picked up his sales kit, which consisted of nine soaps used daily in every household and had names like “Sweet Home Soap” and “Crème Oatmeal.” He walked with Elbert Hubbard and two other new salesmen into the First Ward. They divided the Ward among them. Pat took Louisiana, South, Tecumseh, and their cross streets.

Pat talked to Mrs. Shea first. She lived on Louisiana and was known by all the women in that area of the Ward. They sat over a cup of tea talking about accidents at the Union Iron Works and Father Gleason’s latest diatribe on the schemes of Buffalo Know Nothings, inserted at the end of the noon mass at St. Bridget’s . . . just before the final blessing, when everyone was anxious to leave.

Pat chimed in patiently with short phrases that encouraged Mrs. Shea to go on with her tales and free associations. After fifteen minutes of near monologue, the old lady noticed the soap kit and asked Pat what he had there. He then uncovered the colorful packages and explained each one’s uses in glowing terms.

Using leads from Mrs. Shea, he crisscrossed his territory, calling on women she suggested and then on those they suggested. In four hours, Pat sold more product than the other salesmen canvasing the Ward combined. His commission was $5, two days’ pay anywhere else he had worked. The next day, Hubbard gave Pat the Ward, the Valley, and every street south of William Street from downtown to Fillmore Avenue, four square miles, as his sales territory.

By the third month on the job, Pat was clearing $50 a month. $45 he gave to Mary; $5 he put in his pocket. Mary was thrilled. She recovered from the melancholia brought on by the deaths of Kate and Nellie. She urged thirteen-year-old Bobby to spend time with his father. Pat came home most evenings before 6:00 p.m. His strength and stamina improved. He joined a men’s softball team at St. Columba’s Parish. The family ate supper together. Soon, Mary felt as optimistic as Pat. This was the first job Pat ever had that promised a life more like the one she had known in her father’s house.

Pat could not have been more congenial toward his family. He taught Bobby how to throw and hit a baseball. He took the children to the park with their mother. The family picnicked in good weather on the lakeshore. Pat was never more proud of himself as husband, father, and man, and neither was Mary. Their sex life improved considerably.

When he passed a Catholic Church on his route, he always made a visit and said his rosary.

Still, he missed the gang at Kennedy’s. Toward winter that first year at Larkin’s, he turned in his sales kit and receipts at 5:00 p.m. one Friday. At 5:30, dressed in his Kleinhan’s suit and blouse, Italian silk tie, and Boston shoes, he was on his old stool at Kennedy’s. As his friends came in from work, they approached him, big smiles on their faces, shook hands, and chatted.

Jim Kennedy called to the bartender to set up one of his best Canadian whiskeys in front of Pat. Soon he had five deep waiting on him. His bar mates, mostly old pals from the Iron Works, grain mills, and construction projects told him repeatedly how good it was to see him on his old stool. The men kidded him about becoming so henpecked under Mary’s heavy thumb. They admired his classy attire and poked fun at the Columbus watch he wore in his vest. How high and mighty he had become! One old friend asked him if he was running for office. He shook his head and laughed with the rest of his mates.

The next day, word got back to Hubbard that Pat was drunk at 7:00 p.m. in a bar in the Ward the evening before, telling tales about the Larkin family. He fired Pat Monday morning. Hubbard had specifically warned all new hires that good behavior, most of all sobriety, was expected of all Larkin employees on the job and in public view. He had warned them that Mr. Larkin was a deeply religious man and would allow no exceptions.

The letdown and embarrassment was too much for Mary. She stood erect and in a quaking voice told him, “For the past few months this family lived like the best American families. We actually could see the day when our grocery bill would be paid off. We’d be able to send Bob to school beyond the eighth grade. I’d be able to replace the broken-down furniture and buy a set of matching china. Pat, what in the name of all that’s good and holy is wrong with you? Sitting in a bar drunk and telling stories about the family that pays your bills and feeds your children? How foolish I was to fall in love with a low-class chaw!”

Mary’s words hurt Pat deeply. His face twitched in anger and he raised his hand to slap her in the face. Bob pushed between his parents and his father ran from the house . . . all the way to Kennedy’s. Mary burst into tears. Pat spent the whole night on his favorite bar stool touting himself as the best salesman in the company, lambasting Hubbard for not recognizing the fact, and berating Larkin and all the elite British bastards in the Larkin family. That night he slept in a small room above the bar and the next morning he was on the same stool when the bar opened at 6. He returned home that evening drunk, dirty, angry with himself, and despondent.

Later that week, when his money ran out, he talked to Jim Kennedy. The next day he met with Jack White, First Ward alderman, whom he knew well. Jack was a regular at Kennedy’s. At Kennedy’s request, Pat had delivered cards for White across the Ward during his reelection campaigns.

Jack got him a job as a guard at the county penitentiary on Georgia Street. Pat understood that in return he was to contribute to White’s next campaign and work to get him elected. His new job was to sit at the guard station, lock and unlock cells to let prisoners in and out, and bring prisoners their meals. It paid a little less than the print shop and far less than Larkin, but required no heavy work. Pat was proud to walk in his uniform along Main Street after work with his revolver strapped to his hip. Often, he took the trolley to the Ward and returned home late at night in a hack, too drunk to walk the mile to Lord Street.

Their home was a house of stress. Mary spent more and more time in bed with headaches, pains in her chest, and violent coughs. Her sister-in-law, Johanna, came over as often as she could, but she had three children and Lord Street was an hour’s walk from their home on Alabama Street, so she could not come as often as she was needed. Garrett paid for a two-week hospital stay for Mary at Sisters of Charity Hospital.

Then in mid-1884, the American economy went into recession. Major banks failed. Businesses bankrupted or cut their workforces and expenditures. Garrett’s sales dropped by half. There was no money to hospitalize Mary further. He paid for a physician to see her at home.

Dr. Hanley came once a week on a Saturday afternoon. “I don’t like the way Mary looks and sounds. She has pneumonia and she should be in a hospital or sanitarium. I can put her in, but how will you pay for it?”

Pat panicked. Her illness made him realize how much Mary meant to him. She was the center of his life and that of his children. “I don’t know, Dr. Hanley. We don’t have the money. I’ll see if I can borrow from Father Gleason, but he’s not a rich man himself. Maybe Jim Kennedy or Hugh Mooney would be good for it. How much are we talking about?”

“She could be in the hospital for ten days, or she could be in for a month. One never knows with pneumonia. It will cost $5 a day at least.”

Pat wheezed a sigh of despair, “Oh my God! Where will I borrow that much money?” He had no idea. Once again, he stopped drinking, entirely this time.

Happily, Pat did not have to test his friendships. During the day, Johanna, other women friends, and Bobby nursed Mary. Pat shared care duties after work and on weekends. Mary recovered sufficiently over the next month to resume her role of wife and mother, although still relying on Bobby for housework. Distrust and cynicism toward Pat had possessed her from the moment he was fired at the Larkin Company. Even though Pat tended her with affection, she resented having to submit to his care. She could not conceal her hostility, even in front of the children. After she was up and about, there were still days when she was very weak and had to return to her bed for hours or even a day. She blamed her condition on her husband

John had made his first claim for additional pension disability in 1879. The Buffalo Surgeon Board found no ratable basis for increasing his monthly pension beyond the $2 granted when he left service in July of 1865. The scar left by the wound was clearly visible on his back under his left shoulder. That was all the surgeons were willing to certify came from the war.

He encouraged his brother to file again. H. Bowen Moore sat on the Buffalo Pension Board. It was to him that Patrick filed his second claim in 1883, eighteen years after leaving service.

He sat in Moore’s bare office, door closed to the reception area, feeling poorly dressed before this lawyer who wore a three-piece suit. He moved his body from side to side and stammered when answering Moore’s questions. Believing a larger pension was his due in justice for what he had suffered in the war, he caught himself, straightened his posture, and spoke in a firm voice.

“Mr. Moore, I need an increase to at least $8 a month. I’m not able to work full time. I’ve never gotten over the years sleeping on the ground in rebel prison camps. I lived in a hole for six months at Salisbury. They starved me. I lost sixty pounds.”

“Mr. Donohue, what specifically is wrong with you?” asked a bored Mr. Moore.

“My shoulder healed cockeyed from the shell blast it took. It wasn’t reset right. I tried to tell the surgeons that in the hospital, but by then the muscles had gone stiff. I have rheumatism throughout my body, catarrh in my lungs so bad I can’t hardly breathe. I never got over the dysentery, which comes back every year. The piles are so bad sometimes I can’t walk. And I know something is wrong with my heart . . . I have pains in my chest when I do heavy lifting.”

“Unfortunately, these are all difficult things for the surgeons to certify, and even if they do uncover them, they must swear under oath they came from the war. We’ll set up an appointment for you to be examined by the Board of Surgeons again, but the law is very clear. It allows a pension for disabilities due to certifiable wounds. Yours are not even visible and probably cannot be certified.”

As the interview went on, he could read Moore’s contemptuous attitude by the tone of his voice, the way he posed questions in legal language that he knew Pat did not understand, and by the negative commentary he added to Pat’s answers.

John and Pat took a Saturday off to attend the funeral of 164th Captain Timothy Kelly at Immaculate Conception Church on the West Side of Buffalo. The church was a three-mile walk for both. They met at Hengerer’s Department Store and talked about Tim.

“Pat, I don’t begrudge Tim the full pension he got. He was not wounded, just sick and weak for the rest of his short life. The war takes another one of us. They say he died of TB in him from his prison days.”

“I didn’t envy the man at all. He was one helluva captain, maybe the best in the corps. I saw him after he got out of Danville Prison. His own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. I saw him again a month ago and he was back looking worse . . . dragging his body around the house . . . dependent on Rose and the kids for a drink of water.”

The two men walked silently on, melancholic about a friend and heroic officer, his young wife and children, and about their own unhealthy states.

The following Saturday, as Mary was scrubbing the kitchen floor, Annie, to get a rise from her mother, skipped across the shining floor. “Annie, stay off the floor while it’s wet,” her mother warned. “You’ll fall and hurt yourself, do ye hear me, child?”

Annie giggled and slid across it repeatedly. Then she fell hard on her right hip and cried in pain. When Pat came home, she was still shrieking like a cornered cat, so he rented a hack and took her to the Buffalo General Hospital. The doctor pushed into her hip with his fingers until she screamed loudly, pronounced it fractured, and with help from a nurse built a lower body cast. He told Mary to keep her in bed for the next six weeks. Mary was as unsuccessful in keeping her youngest quiet in bed or in a chair as she had been keeping her off the wet floor.

One month after her fall, Annie got out of bed. She walked without pain, but with a decided limp that would be with her forever. The sight of his daughter walking like a cripple tore at Pat. Annie became her father’s pet. He carried her on his shoulders and in a wagon wherever they went. He bought her candy at expensive shops on Main Street. He invented games they played together in the park off the basin.

He defended her spoiled behavior before her mother, whom Annie delighted in taunting with every mischievous act that came into her fertile mind. She became yet another source of conflict in an already anxious marriage. After years of doting on and spoiling Minnie, now Pat neglected her.

On January 16, 1884, the local Board of Surgeons issued their pronouncement that Pat, as Moore predicted, had no legal disability that would prevent him from doing physical labor. Moore sneered after Pat left the board hearing and muttered out-loud: “That man is another of those Irish, shirking their duty to support their families.”

John went before the board around the same time. Afterward, they exchanged notes. “Pat, did you hear that Tommy Sanders of the 164th was given a pension of $8 because of the wound in his right shoulder? He can only do a few hours’ work a day. His lungs are bad, got catarrh, diarrhea on and off since ’64, just like you and me.”

Pat’s face reddened in anger. “I say we march up to the Pension Board and demand to know how he gets $8 and you and I get $2.”

“Pat, there are two things we must do first. One is to join the GAR. The Grand Army of the Republic is building homes for poor vets and fighting for us in Congress. The second thing is to hire a lawyer.”

“I hate to give them even a penny of our pensions,” Pat responded, “but we’re no match for the likes of Bowen Moore. I know that bastard’s a Know Nothing. No handouts for fakers the likes of us Irish Catholics.

“I’m with you, John. Look into hiring a lawyer and let me know how you make out.”

The brothers parted for their flats, a mile apart.

On his way home with full uniform and gun of a Saturday afternoon, Pat stopped off at the Irish Bogrunner Tavern downtown. There was entertainment that night: the noted New York showman Ned Harrigan, whom Pat had seen perform before. His jokes were no longer caricatures of rural Irish living in big cities. He sang and told funny and sad stories about the Irish grown up in New York. He varied his act with clog and soft shoe dances. He was a hit with the clientele, mostly immigrant and first generation Irish.

Afterward, before a bar full of patrons, Pat grew loud and raised toasts to his Irish parents, grandparents, and himself as a Fenian Irishman. “More Irish than the last mick off the boat,” he shouted. “Who’s done more for the Irish and the nation than one of Grant’s men? Who’s spent months in Confederate prisons?” He stopped and raised his glass. “Who’s invaded Canada to win Ireland’s freedom, but me?” The people at the bar began moving away.

Later, still at the bar, he told stories about the chaws of the First Ward from the Beach and did a bit of a soft shoe. Only a few drunks remained to cheer him on. By the time he got home, it was 6:00 a.m. and the sun was just rising. His loud entry woke up Mary. She backed away as Pat weaved forward. As he slumped onto the couch, she began to question him about the pay he had received at noon the previous day.

“Now, Mary, hald yer nasty mouth, or I’ll slap it. It’s me money and I’ll spend it as I will.”

He closed his eyes and fell into a light slumber. Mary went through his shirt pockets in search of money he had not spent. Pat woke up, pulled his gun, and shot it into the floor at her feet. Her eyes bulged; she screeched and fell back onto the floor. Bobby and the girls jumped out of bed and rushed into the living room in shock, the girls crying and yelling, Bobby and Minnie ready to take on their father when they realized what had happened. Minnie had grown increasingly sarcastic toward her father as she grew into her teens. She grabbed a pan and was ready to attack him with it. Bobby clutched a poker and he too would have hit Pat over the head.

Pat stretched out on the couch and this time fell into a deeper sleep. Mary grabbed Minnie and Bobby and pulled them into the dining room, where they stood silently holding one another until they saw Pat was no longer a danger. Bobby then retrieved the gun and hid it in the shed. They talked angrily with one another about what was happening to their home because of their father’s drunkenness. Finally, they toasted a few pieces of bread and heated the teapot in the kitchen. They nibbled at the toast and sipped tea until it was time to go to church. Minnie walked out of mass after communion, shaking in anger at her father.

A week later, Pat came home from Kennedy’s, where he had been showing off his uniform. He was proud of himself after years of taunting from the regulars about not showing up at work. “Mary, I want my shoes off. My back is aching and I can’t untie the laces.”

Hoping to avoid a fight, Mary knelt down, untied the laces, and took off his shoes. She felt weak and wasn’t sure she could get back up. She called her son for a hand to steady her as she stood up.

“That’s it, Bobby, you mama’s boy, help your mother up. What about your old man? He could use a hand from you once in a while. There’s more respect for me at Kennedy’s than in my own house.”

In a loud voice, he exclaimed about the way his family treated him and slapped his son across the head. Mary burst into tears. Bobby was stunned but recovered quickly. It was not the first time. Minnie cursed at her father and told him she’d take a butcher knife to him when he fell asleep if he ever hit her mother or brother again.

Pat showed up for work at the prison the next morning looking as though he had slept in his uniform. The deputy sheriff in charge became suspicious, checked Pat’s holster, found a bullet missing from his gun belt, and fired him.

A month later, Pat talked Alderman White into getting him a job as bridge tender on the Michigan Street Bridge alongside his brother, John.

“John, this is a good job for you and me. No heavy lifting or shoveling. All we do is pull the lever whenever we see ships approaching. We should be set for life. And the view through the harbor is the best in town.”

“I agree, but there’s more to the job than that. Your friendship with the boys in City Hall paid off again. Who got you the job?”

“Well, there were two men who worked it out with the alderman. One was Jim Kennedy and the other was Father Gleason. I owe them.”

“Pat, I think you’ve already paid off Kennedy, a few times over. You owe him nothing. As for Father Gleason, you know what he wants.”

“I do. I know I’ve got to curtail the drinking.”

A month later, Bob came running up to John’s house on Louisiana at 7:00 a.m. and banged on the door. John had worked second shift and was just getting up.

“What’s the problem, Bobby? Is your dad down with rheumatism again?”

“He is, Uncle John. And he asks you to cover for him this morning.”

“I can do that. Tell your dad not to worry. Now get yourself home and get ready for school, lad.”

“I will. I never miss. This will be my last year. I’ve got a regular job lined up at the Elk Street Market, evenings cleaning the stalls.”

“How old are you now, Bobby?” asked John.

“I’m fourteen and I want to start working.”

“I wish you would finish eighth grade and go on to high school and not work in the terrible stuff your father and I work in. There’s no future in it and it’s hard on you. Let’s talk about it next Sunday, okay?”

“Okay, Uncle John, I like our little talks.”

With that, Bobby ran off home to get ready for school.

Two years passed before Pat applied for a pension increase again, armed with information he had picked up in the Buffalo Courier and at Kennedy’s. He had returned regularly to his old haunt.

On Tuesday, February 2, 1886, Pat appeared in H. Bowen Moore’s office. “Mr. Moore, I’ve brought two witnesses with me who will tell you what we went through in the war and the condition I was in when I came back from the Confederate prison camps.”

Moore frowned. “Mr. Donohue, your friends will have to make out depositions, but remember the law is very clear. A Civil War veteran must prove, before a board of surgeons, he is unable to do manual labor as a normal man would, from causes that stem from his war experience. There’s more and more of you men hoping the federal government will take care of you for the rest of your lives, just because you served in the war. That’s not how the law reads.”

“Mr. Moore, I’m not looking for a handout. Before the war, I worked at the Union Iron Works and kept up with the best of them.”

“Okay, Mr. Donohue, wait in that room over there. You can take off all your clothes down to your drawers. I’ll take statements from your friends here.”

Hugh Mooney testified to the soldier Pat was. He described conditions in the field. He said he had seen Pat when he came back home. He had a hand in employing him at the Central and found him to be in a weakened state, unable to do heavy manual labor.

Pat McCabe had been with Pat in the 155th until his capture and saw him when he rejoined the unit after being released from prison. He said he was no more than skin over skeleton.

The board surgeons dutifully examined Pat’s whole body, paying particular attention to his left shoulder. They had him stand, extend his arms toward his toes, rotate his head left to right, and perform a few other movements. They found no disability from their examinations.

Mr. Moore’s written disavowal of Pat’s claim indicated that this was a case of a flagrant malingerer whose witnesses were not credible.

Unable to do regular manual labor and reduced to fragile states of economic existence, both brothers returned several times in desperation to the local pension board. Pat’s wound was not visible to some examining doctors and slightly visible to others. John’s was clearly visible. Both men had a $2 pension for wounds inflicted while in service. Both continued to receive that amount and only that amount.

Mary had grown very thin. Her hair was turning grey, her face ashen. She mentioned to her aging father that she had come to the end of her rope and was going to seek a divorce. She was not feeling well and Pat’s drinking, his constant bickering with Bobby, the outbursts between Minnie and him, and his spoiling Annie were driving her to the brink. “I can’t take it any longer, Dad. In ten years, I haven’t known a peaceful hour when Pat’s home.”

“Mary, we’re Catholics. Talk to your pastor. If he agrees with you, I’ll do all I can. Business isn’t great, but it’s improving.”

Mary had little faith in Father Connery at St. Columba’s. He was advanced in years and gave short shrift to the marital complaints of the women of his parish. She had heard good things about one of the friars at St. Patrick’s just up Emslie Street and decided she would talk with him.

Mary knocked on the door of the rectory and asked the woman who answered to see Father Francis Toomey. Father Francis was a young Franciscan friar, ordained less than five years, tall, broad shouldered, with dark hair, and dark complexion for an Irishman. He was popular with the young people of the parish and conducted its youth activities. Several female parishioners had a crush on him. Some families had transferred from other parishes to St. Patrick’s because of him.

Father Francis led her into a parlor and shut the door. “What can I do for you, Mary?”

“Father, I have tried to make my marriage work, but living with my husband is no longer possible.”

“Mary, sit down and tell me about your marriage. There must be some way we can help. How long have you been married?”

“We married right here in October 22, 1866, Father, so nearly twenty years.”

“And what’s the problem? Is he unfaithful?”

“No, Father. I wish he were. Maybe he’d run off and I’d be rid of him. He drinks and when he drinks he’s nasty to me and to the children.”

“How many children are there?”

“There were five, but two died of diphtheria. I just can’t stand going to bed with a drunk who wants sex almost every night. Imagine what it’s like to make love with a man who’s been drinking for five hours! When he comes home, he gets violent! He’s even shot his gun at my feet. He’s slapped me and hits his son. His daughter, Minnie, hates him because of the way he favors one sister and then the other. We’re constantly on the edge of hunger. He’s not a good provider. He’s been fired several times for his drinking.”

Father Francis then had Mary recount the history of her marriage year by year, child by child. Mary admitted there were good years and he had worked steady for two or three years at a time.

“Mary, the twenty years have not all been bad. I see hope to remake your relationship. He has at times controlled his drinking. He has been a good father when he held a decent job.”

“But it doesn’t last. Our home life has gotten worse and now it’s in shambles. Nothing good lasts with Pat.”

“Mary, as you have been taught since you were a child, Mother Church is firmly against divorce and frowns on separation. You made a vow to remain with Pat in good times and in bad. The Church did not consecrate your marriage or ordain me to allow you to give up on your marriage without making every effort to make it work.”

“I have, Father, twenty years of effort, but I can’t stand it any longer. He’s driving me to an early grave.”

“Mary, do you think he still loves you? If he does, there must be a way to reach him.”

“Yes, he says he loves me and I believe him. I’m afraid he just can’t give up the drink and hanging with his pals at Kennedy’s.”

Their conversation went on for over an hour. Father Francis ended the session by saying he would like to talk to the two of them together. Mary walked home desolate. She had hoped she could make this young priest understand just how miserable and impossible her marriage had become.

Sunday, Pat saw John after the noon mass. “John, thanks for covering for me again. The rheumatism had me stiff as a dead man.”

“Like I told you, Pat, we need an attorney. All these guys getting big pensions have attorneys who know how to deal with the surgeons or they just go around them to the Pension Board.”

“I know, but no matter the job, you got to be able to get out of bed. I’m thinking of putting myself in the Bath Soldiers and Sailors Home for a stay, but I don’t know how I’d feed the family.”

John saw an opening to say something to Pat about his drinking. He had become aware from Bobby that things were not going well at home.

“Pat, I’m concerned about your drinking. Do you have the same problem our father had, and our grandfather before him?”

Pat was taken off guard by John’s words. He and his brother had made it a rule since they married to stay out of one another’s personal affairs. His face flushed. His eyes flashed angrily. In a firm voice, he rasped, “John, I wish you would have kept your goddamn mouth shut. What I do is none of your fekkin’ business.” He did a sudden about-face and stormed off.