Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“Nora,” Danny said.

Luther stepped back to the car and took the bottle from Danny. “What about her?”

“I’d like to know how things progress with her and my brother.”

Luther drank, eyeing Danny, then let loose a laugh.

“What?”

“Man’s in love with his brother’s girl and he says ‘what’ to me.” Luther laughed some more.

Danny joined him. “Let’s say Nora and I have a history.”

“That ain’t news,” Luther said. “I only been in the same room with you both this one time but my blind, dead uncle could have seen it.”

“That obvious, uh?”

“To most. Can’t figure out why Mr. Connor can’t see it. He can’t see a lot when it comes to her.”

“No, he can’t.”

“Why don’t you just ask the woman for her hand? She’ll jump at it.”

“No, she won’t. Believe me.”

“She will. That rope? Shit. That’s love.”

Danny shook his head. “You ever known a woman acted logically when it came to love?”

“No.”

“Well, then.” Danny looked up at the house. “I don’t know the first thing about them. Can’t tell you what they’re thinking from minute to minute.”

Luther smiled and shook his head. “I ’spect you get along just fine all the same.”

Danny held up the bottle. “We got about two fingers left. Last swig?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Luther took a snort and handed the bottle back, watched Danny drain it. “I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. How’s that?”

“Fair. Eddie makes a run at you, you keep me informed.”

Luther held out his hand. “Deal.”

Danny shook his hand. “Glad we could get to know each other, Luther.”

“The same, Danny.”

Back at the building on Shawmut Avenue, Luther checked and re-checked for leaks, but nothing came down through the ceilings, and he found no moisture in the walls. He ripped all the plaster out, first thing, and saw that plenty of the wood behind it could be salvaged, some with little more than hope and tenderness, but hope and tenderness would have to do. Same with the flooring and the staircase. Normally a place that had been this fucked-up by neglect and then fire and water damage, the first thing you’d do would be to gut it to its skin. But given their limited finances and beg-borrow-steal approach, the only solution in this case was to salvage what could be salvaged, right down to the nails themselves. He and Clayton Tomes, the Wagenfelds’ houseman, worked similar hours in their South Boston households and even had the same day off. After one dinner with Yvette Giddreaux, Clayton had been enlisted into the project before he knew what hit him, and that weekend, Luther finally had some help. They spent the day carrying the salvageable wood and metal and brass fixtures up to the third floor so they could get to work on installing the plumbing and electrical next week.

It was hard work. Dusty and sweaty and chalky. The pull of pry bars and the tear of wood and the wrench of the hammer’s claw. Kind of work made your shoulders tighten hard against your neck, the cartilage under your kneecaps feel like rock salt, dug hot stones into the small of your back and bit the edges of your spine. Kind of work made a man sit down in the middle of a dusty floor and lower his head to his knees and whisper, “Whew,” and keep his head down and his eyes closed a bit longer.

After weeks in the Coughlin house doing almost nothing, though, Luther wouldn’t have traded it for anything. This was work of the hand and of the mind and of muscle. Work that left some hint of itself and yourself behind after you were gone.

Craftsmanship, his Uncle Cornelius had once told him, was just a fancy word for what happened when labor met love.

“Shit.” Clayton, lying on his back in the entrance hallway, stared up at the ceiling two stories above. “You realize that if she’s committed to indoor plumbing—”

“She is.”

“—then the waste pipe, Luther — the waste pipe alone —that going to have to climb up from the basement to a roof vent? That’s four stories, boy.”

“Five-inch pipe, too.” Luther chuckled. “Cast iron.”

“And we got to run more pipes off that pipe on every floor? Two maybe off the bathrooms?” Clayton’s eyes widened to saucers. “Luther, this shit’s crazy .”

“Yeah.”

“Then why you smiling?”

“Why you?” Luther said.

What about Danny?” Luther asked Nora as they walked through Haymarket.

“What about him?”

“He doesn’t seem to fit that family somehow.”

“I’m not sure Aiden fits anything.”

“How come sometimes you-all call him Danny and other times Aiden?”

She shrugged. “It just happened. You don’t call him Mister Danny, I’ve noticed.”

“So?”

“You call Connor ‘Mister.’ You even do it with Joe.”

“Danny told me not to call him ‘Mister,’ ’less we were in company.”

“Fast friends you are, yeah?”

Shit. Luther hoped he hadn’t tipped his hand. “Don’t know I’d call us friends.”

“But you like him. It’s clear on your face.”

“He’s different. Not sure I ever met a white man quite like him. Never met a white woman quite like you, though.”

“I’m not white, Luther. I’m Irish.”

“Yeah? What color they?”

She smiled. “Potato-gray.”

Luther laughed and pointed at himself. “Sandpaper-brown. Pleased to meet you.”

Nora gave him a quick curtsy. “A pleasure, sir.”

After one of the Sunday dinners, McKenna insisted on driving Luther home, and Luther, shrugging into his coat in the hall, couldn’t think of a reply quick enough.

“’Tis awful cold,” McKenna said, “and I promised Mary Pat I’d be home before the cows.” He stood from the table and kissed Mrs. Coughlin on the cheek. “Would you pull my coat from the hook, Luther? There’s a fine lad.”

Danny wasn’t at this dinner and Luther looked around the room, saw that no one else was paying much attention.

“Ah, we’ll see you soon, folks.”

“’Night, Eddie,” Thomas Coughlin said. “’Night, Luther.”

“’Night, sir,” Luther said.

Eddie drove down East Broadway and turned right on West Broadway where, even on a cold Sunday night, the atmosphere was as raucous and unpredictable as anything in Greenwood had been on a Friday night. Dice games being played out in the open, whores leaning out of windowsills, loud music from every saloon, and there were so many saloons you couldn’t count them all. Progress, even in a big, heavy car, was slow.

“Ohio?” McKenna said.

Luther smiled. “Yes, sir. You were close with Kentucky. I figured you’d get it that night, but …”

“Ah, I knew it.” McKenna snapped his fingers. “Just the wrong side of the river. Which town?”

Outside, the noise of West Broadway dunned the car and the lights of it melted across the windshield like ice cream. “Just outside Columbus, sir.”

“Ever been in a police car before?”

“Never, suh.”

McKenna chuckled loud, as if he were spitting rocks. “Ah, Luther, you may find this hard to believe but before Tom Coughlin and I became brothers of the badge, we spent a fair amount of time on the wrong side of the law. Saw us some paddy wagons we did and, sure, no small amount of Friday-night drunk tanks.” He waved his hand. “It’s the way of things for the immigrant class, this oat sowing, this figuring out of the mores. I just assumed you’d taken part in the same rituals.”

“I’m not an immigrant, suh.”

McKenna looked over at him. “What’s that?”

“I was born here, suh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”