Pete Hamill - Forever

As they finished, one of the Africans looked at Cormac with recognition in his eyes. They moved together out the back door, where Cormac began collecting the remains of the crate to use as firewood.

“Hughson’s?” Cormac said.

“Yah.”

“I’ll not be there for a while.”

“Yah.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

He stared at the young white man.

“I’m looking for a man. An African. A… friend. His name is Kongo.”

He looked at Cormac in a blank way that said more than he intended; the name Kongo carried weight with him.

“If you see him, tell him Cor-mac is looking for him.”

“Yah,” he said, and walked off toward the waterfront.

Back inside, Mr. Partridge sat on the lip of the fireplace, staring at his wonderful machine. He wiped his sweat-blistered brow. Cormac sat beside him and gazed at the press. It looked to him like some strange, godlike giant insect. An immense grasshopper. Or a praying mantis. They stared at it together, then stood up, exhausted by heat and toil, and bolted the creature’s feet to the platform. When they were finished, Cormac felt like singing a hymn.

“By God,” Mr. Partridge whispered, shaking a fist, “we’ve done it, lad. We’re in business.”

Not quite.

That evening, as they sat on the edge of the platform eating fish and chips from a tavern in the light of candles, Mr. Partridge grew silent. His exuberance ebbed. His body slumped. It was as if the past three days had drained him of some invincible spark.

“Are you feeling all right, Mister Partridge?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You… don’t seem all right.”

“Well…” He sighed. “The truth is, lad, I’m almost out of money. And we still need many things here…. Paper, above all. And ink, of course. And other things. This has been so bloody expensive. The storage fees at Van Zandt’s—”

Cormac unbuckled his money belt. Along with the paper money, there were eleven gold crowns left from those passed to him by his father. He pocketed one for himself and handed ten crowns to Mr. Partridge.

“Here,” Cormac said.

The older man looked embarrassed. He wouldn’t accept the money, and Cormac laid it upon the edge of the platform. He sat down with the heavy coins between them.

“No, absolutely not!” Mr. Partridge said. “You’re a boy, an apprentice—”

“I’m not a boy, Mr. Partridge. I’ve already killed a man.” He looked at Cormac with eyes wide and steady.

“You have?”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe two.”

He sketched his story for Mr. Partridge. He revealed his true name and told him everything he could remember about the Earl of Warren and what had happened in Ireland. He explained the oath of blood and tribe that had sent him here, to New York. He left out many details. But the words flowed from him like water breaking through a weir, and he felt his rage rising again as he told of the day his mother died and the day his father was murdered for a horse. While Cormac talked, the eyes of Mr. Partridge never left him. And when the young man finished, the older man stared at him for a long moment.

“How sad,” he said finally. “How infuriating. And how very sad.”

Cormac stared at his hands, which had already wielded a sword, and must wield one again (soon, he hoped, soon), relieved now that one lie had been removed between himself and Mr. Partridge: the lie of his name. Martin O’Donovan was, for the moment, dead. Cormac Samuel O’Connor was now living here on Cortlandt Street. He looked up from his hands. Mr. Partridge was staring out through the polished windows in the double doors to the unlit street.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Cormac said.

A pause.

“Not directly.”

In the confessional intimacy of the large warm room, Mr. Partridge began to speak.

“This was eleven years ago,” he said, his voice containing a kind of echo, enforced by the emptiness of the workshop. “In a terrible London winter. I was married then to my Esther. My beloved, thin, sweet Esther. We had four children. Robert. Michael. James. And the baby girl, Catherine. I was then certain that I wanted to move us all to America, to this new land, to a place far from kings and princes, dukes and earls, a place where the children could grow up strong and prosperous. A country that was new, where men and women could correct all the mistakes of the Old World.”

He cleared his throat, turned to Cormac. The money Cormac had offered was still lying on the lip of the platform made for the press.

“I had made one trip,” Mr. Partridge said. “Bringing printing supplies to Mister Bradford, and that journey convinced me. When I told her all about it, Esther shared the vision.” He turned uneasily on the edge of the platform. “Such a move would take money.” His eyes moved toward Cormac’s money for a moment. “So I was working then at two printing establishments, day and night and Sundays too. Saving money. Saving for a press and the passage and some money to begin again in America.” He exhaled strongly. “To save money, to save bloody money, we lived in a filthy slum. You don’t know London, do you, lad? Of course not. Well, the neighborhood was vile, criminal, evil. But the rent was low, which is why we were there, and my Esther somehow fortified our little piece of it while I worked, and we both saved. She was following my vision, my belief that one must sacrifice in the short run so as to have an amazing future.”

He stood up, touching the press, walking around it with a heavy tread.

“Well, one night I came home from Sorby the Printer’s, very late, after midnight. There were constables blocking the street. What’s this? Hello, what’s this? And they told me the cholera had taken the street, that it was quarantined. Nobody in, nobody out. No, but I live here, I said, my wife is here, I said, my children are here! Sorry, nobody in, nobody out. There were others like me, of course, those of us who worked in the watches of the night. And when we tried to push through, to see wives, children, they beat us with clubs and charged us with horses and arrested some of us. Starting with me.”

His hand involuntarily touched his head and he ruffled his graying hair.

“I woke up in an alley by the Thames, where I’d been tossed. My face was bloody, and my clothes too, and my shoulder wouldn’t work.” He made a grinding movement with his right shoulder. “And when I reached our street, long after dawn, with the rain falling, they were all dead. My Esther. The children. Along with twenty-seven others. All dead. Dead of bloody disease. Dead of bloody filth. Dead because of me.”

His eyes were brimming, but he didn’t cry. He sat down again, talking as much for himself as for Cormac.

“After I buried them, I took the America money and got drunk for seven months,” he said. “I spent it all. Every shilling. On rum and spirits. I slept in filthy rooms, praying for the cholera to take me too. I slept in alleys by the river. I was crawly with lice. I was as thin as a bird. I howled at easy ladies and their ponces, at constables and doctors. I raved outside Westminster. I was moved on, moved on, beaten, pummeled, laughed at, as I wandered in my frayed and filthy rags.”

He looked at Cormac in a steady way. The younger man was holding back his own tears.

“And then one morning, I woke up in a brickyard, huddled for warmth against the side of a kiln. I stared at the sky, and the clouds, and heard the whistle of some bird, defying the city: and got up. I was scabbed, hurt, scarred, broken. But I said then: enough. Just that word. Enough. And I stood up. I went to a shelter run by some upper-class ladies. I had a bath. I donned some old clothes that didn’t quite fit. And I said: Esther, I am sorry. My children, I am sorry. But now I will do something that will give this all some value. I’ll begin again. I will go to America. In your name.” A long pause. “And I’m here.”