We were trailing him somewhere along Ninth Avenue late that afternoon, me, Billy, Eddie and Click, pretending to be just humming around. The street was full of kids, as it always was: urchins in knee pants and cloth caps, girls in long dresses, hanging around, with nothing to do and nowhere to go except home. Most of their parents were either working, drunk or dead, and so they were left to fend for themselves all day and well into the night. Some of them worked, some of them loafed and some of them even went to school. Nobody looked twice at a boy or girl, not yet six years old, standin’ on the street corner begging alms or worse.
Two boys, about ten years old, were having an imaginary gunfight as we passed, shooting at each other with their fingers and dying all sorts of horrible deaths. One of them was beefy and Hunnish; the other was lean, and he hopped around like his pants was on fire.
“Bang! Right between the eyes and Harry goes down!” screamed the first one.
“Pow! Two slugs shred his heart and there’s Butch, bleedin’ to death on the sidewalk,” shouted the other.
We motioned them over and they came on the double.
“What’s your name, yegg?” Chick asked the Hun.
“Crazy Butch.”
“What about you?”
“Harry the Soldier.”
Chick looked at me and the boys. “Who wants to smack these punks around?”
Billy and Eddie each grabbed a kid and pinned his arms back behind his back so hard it almost brought tears to their eyes. Neither of ’em cried, though.
“Where’d you learn names like them?” Chick demanded, for sure weren’t Butch and Harry sainted gangsters of the time, and this duo most certainly weren’t them.
“Heard ’em in the alley,” says the first kid, whose real name turned out to be Art Biedler. “Dint we, Johnny?”
Johnny McArdle, the hoppy one, nodded like his head was going to come off. He had a funny way of parting his hair, way over on the left side of his head a few inches above his ear, then combing the whole thing over his head so it flopped on the other side. It almost made you laugh except there was something about the kid that dared you to, and so probably nobody did.
“So you want to be gangsters, huh?” says I, as if I already was one.
Both punks nodded yes.
“Well, then, you gotta earn your names—you can’t just crib ’em. That’s like stealing.”
Chick joined in. “Just you watch it. Chowderhead goes around pretending to be somebody else, the next thing he knows he gets his noodle conked but good.”
“And his stuff stole,” added Billy.
“And his dames plucked,” said Eddie.
Chick nodded and Art and Johnny were free, but they stood put. “Beat it,” I snarled, trying to sound tough.
Johnny was looking at me queer. “You’re Owney the Killer,” he said.
“Who told you?”
“We seen what you done to Fats,” said Art.
“Gave him a hell of a shanty,” said Johnny.
This was my second tough moment of the day. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to deep-six the two of them for being material witnesses, or bring ’em both on board.
“Pow!” shouted Johnny, emulating me whacking Fats a good one.
“Right on the bean!” screamed Art.
I looked at Chick. “Whaddya say we let ’em tag along, maybe they learn something?”
“Your call,” said Chick, and I realized I’d just made my first gang decision.
“Okay,” I says to Art. “You too, Hoppo. But screw up and we’ll be feedin’ ya to the fish.”
And so off we all went, to look for Branagan.
We found him soon enough, and the good news was that he was alone. Now, this was highly unusual in our neck of the woods because normally the coppers was hardly ever seen on our streets unless they was traveling in pairs or packs, which meant Branagan was either planning on cooping, or he was up to something. Which proved to be the explanation, because even back then you had your odd honest copper or two, like poor Dinny Sullivan, and a fat lot of good that done him.
Branagan was shaking down Mollinucci’s fruit stand. “I’ll be thanking you very much, Signor Milluci,” he was saying, for he never could get names quite right, especially Italian ones. Branagan was one of those dumb micks who thought all foreigners were funny, which if you ask me is the English influence on the Irish because limeys really do think all foreigners is funny, especially us.
He left the fruit stand munching on an apple and whistling to himself while the family gave him the evil eye, especially Luigi the son, who was about my age. I would have felt sorry for them except that I didn’t like Luigi much because I’d heard he had been making lewd remarks about May at St. Mike’s School, and I filed away in the back of my mind that I needed to have a chat with him about that real soon.
We tailed Branagan easily, a block behind, just a bunch of kids walking down the street with time on their hands and him oblivious. Branagan paid us no mind because he had more important things to do, like counting up his wampum.
He turned into a small shaded alley that ran between two of the tenements. We didn’t want to chance him seeing us, so we decided that the other fellas should hang back while I, being the smallest and least conspicuous, continued to dog him, and that if I got into trouble, I was to sing out.
He ducked into a backyard, which was as devoid of greenery as ours, except for a small tree that was putting up a good but losing fight against the city. My angle was perfect, for I could see both the tree and the alleyway. I signaled to the others to approach and turned my attention to the yard.
Next to the tree in the dimming light stood a man in a dirty apron, the kind a bartender might wear, who greeted the copper sullenly. “Let’s have it, I ain’t got all day,” I heard Branagan say as I hid in the shade of one of the buildings, tucked in behind a pile of trash. As the man walked toward Branagan, I noticed he had a pronounced limp. “God damn you to hell,” he said in thick Irish.
The copper let out one of his big stupid laughs. “Why, Mike,” says he, “what kind of an attitude is that to take with an officer of the duly constituated municipal constabulary? You shouldn’t begrudge me a little coin to encourage me to ever greater vigilance on your behalf. Surely you’d rather give up some of it to me than all of it to one of them Gopher punks what are scouragin’ the neighborhood.”
The gimp was still walking toward Branagan, and starting to reach in his pocket, when the cop suddenly leaped forward and struck him a tremendous blow across the shoulders with his daystick. This got my blood boiling, not because of any distaste for violence, but because in my opinion a fight ought to be fair, or at least fixed, and this was neither.
Down went the man named Mike, but not out. As he lay there on the ground, I could hear Branagan saying, “Ya shouldn’t have tried to reach for yer weapon, Mike, and sure no one’s going to blame me for putting you down,” With that he pulled Mr. Mike’s hand from his pocket, coming up of course not with a Bessie or a shiv but with a fistful of dough. He pocketed the cash quickly and left the poor fella lying there.
A trash pile is the punk’s best friend, for all the tools of the trade can be found there in embryo. You could fashion a club from a old pipe, brass knuckles from discarded metalwork, a shiv from a broken bottle. And of course there was always plenty of paving stones. The glorious thing about New York then was that a weapon was always to hand if only you knew where to look, which I did.
I took out my slungshot and carefully fitted a splendid stone. So intent on counting his loot was Branagan that he probably never heard the whoosh that a rock makes when it’s whizzing through the air, never felt the hairs rise up on his neck in anticipation of getting clocked. The stone caught him square in the back of the noggin, which started him to toppling, and then Eddie Egan was on him with the pipe, catching Branagan with a sharp blow right behind the knees, which of course sent him over backward, the spittle flying from his lips. He hit the ground with a thud, and then Chick and Billy were there too, kicking merrily away at his midsection until I put him out cold with a boot right in the teeth. It was a tough job getting his tunic off him, him being so heavy and all, but after a bit of bother the job was done and I had my trophy.
When we looked up from our labors, there was Mr. Mike, struggling to his feet. “You’ll forgive me for not helping you out, son,” says he. “And may God forgive me for not tryin’ to stop ya neither.”
I returned most of his potatoes, with me keeping a penny or two for my trouble. He was too polite to count the dough right in front of me. “My thanks to you,” he said, shoving it back in his pocket.
I must have looked a tad comical, drawing myself up to my full height, such as it was, but Mr. Mike only smiled. “I hold no brief for violence, but ’tain’t right what he’s been doing, and to his own people. If you ever need my help, you just ask for Mike Callahan of Callahan’s Bar, ’round the corner, and you’ll get it, no questions asked.” He put out his hand to shake mine, and it was then I realized that I’d never shaken hands man-to-man. It felt good.
So that’s how the Gophers got themselves a new member. And that’s how I got my first girlfriend.
We got back to the clubhouse after dark, Johnny and Art still tagging along, and there was some minor grumbling about how the gang was goin’ to the dogs, what with kids showing up and all, but all the mutterin’ stopped right quick enough when we spread Branagan’s coat on the ground for all to see and admire, especially One Lung, who was looking more and more like he was hardly going to last through the week.
“Now you gotta give it to one of the girls,” says he ceremoniously.
I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind which moll was going to receive this particular token of my youthful esteem, but I made a show of looking around just the same. At Drowsy Maggie, and Grace the Virgin, Big Mary, Little Mary and of course Margaret Everdeane, who was already becoming a dish and a half, but in the end it was Freda who got Branagan’s uniform and as I wrapped it around her gentle shoulders everybody cheered like hell and somebody handed me a fresh glass of beer straight from the growler but I hardly had a chance to take a single sip because Freda interposed her lips between mine and the beer and the beer lost bad, although it caught up a bit later in the evening.
There was nobody in the flat when Freda and I staggered in around midnight, which meant that Ma and May was sleeping on the roof, and maybe Marty too if he hadn’t gone out somewhere. It was still plenty hot out, which meant the temperature in the flat would be like Hell on a bad day, which is why half the building was up on the roof, hoping to catch a drift of air off the river to the west.
Here’s something about roofs in them days. Like the yards, they was filled with junk, and you had to watch your step if you didn’t want to trip and break an arm, or worse, trip and stumble and go plunging over the side of the building into the courtyard below, which let me tell you happened to more than a few, especially them what had been tipplin’. So we stepped carefully over the fat belly of Mr. Wagner, who was snoring fit to beat the band, and just dodged the head of Mrs. Brancusi. Then Freda stepped right on Marty’s hand and he woke up and started in to whining and whimpering. I got my hand over his mug right quick and stifled him.
“Shhh,” says I, quietly I thought, but I guess it wasn’t that quiet, ’cause May stirred beside my brother and looked me right in the eye. Unlike Marty, when May awoke she was really awake and you could shake her in the middle of the night and ask her to do the seven times tables and she would, and no mistake. “Owen,” she said, and smiled at me.
“Hello, May,” says I, wobbly. “Say hey to Freda. We’re going to be married.” Freda just giggled, for truth to tell, in her state talking was not such a good idea.
May took this news without batting an eye. “That’s swell,” she said, but even in my condition I could tell that she didn’t really mean it, that she was just humoring me. “Wait till Ma hears.”
May snuggled up tight against her Ma, and even Marty had stopped making noises. Freda and I set ourselves down against the low rooftop wall which, before I put the things of childhood completely behind me, I used to pretend was the crenellated wall of a castle, and me the intrepid defender. Sometimes I was Ivanhoe and sometimes Brian Boru and sometimes just plain Owney Madden of Tenth Avenue, the North River was the moat and the Palisades were the fortifications of the enemy. Freda and I cuddled ourselves up together, pulling Branagan’s big coat around us in case it cooled off before sunrise, which was unlikely, but in New York you never knew.
I looked at Freda, her blond hair loose now and tumbling down to her shoulders. Her head had fallen onto her breast and she was breathing slowly and deeply. With her figure covered up she didn’t look like a woman anymore, but like the child she still was. Sir Owen of Tenth Avenue, gallantly protecting the youthful Lady Homer from the likes of the wicked Branagan clan. I drew closer to her, and watched the few city lights that I could see glinting and glimmering behind us, like a magic kingdom in which lay vast riches just waiting for the taking, and where anything was possible, even for an Irishman, and right then and there I laid claim to it all. The rail yards were quiet and still, and across the river there was no sign of an invading host, nor even any coppers, just the water lapping gently against the piers, whispering that all was well.
I kissed her once, tenderly, on the cheek, closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. Then I saw May, looking at me with that look of hers.
“Whaddya want?” I muttered.
“Not much,” she said. “Just everything.”