Pete Hamill - Forever

They roared at the end, and Cormac hammered the keys in punctuation.

Then Tweed sighed in a wheezy way and collapsed slowly into his chair, everything gone out of him, even the fight.

The bells in the Essex Market tolled eleven. Luke appeared from the bedroom, to signal with looks and hands that the warden wanted them all out, except, of course, Tweed.

“Happy birthday, Bill,” Cahill said.

“We’ll keep fighting for you,” said Edelstein.

“Thank you, fellas,” Tweed said without conviction. “Thank you, it was a grand night, thank you…”

When he looked behind him through the doorway, Cormac thought Tweed was the loneliest man in the world.

Cormac, Cahill, and Edelstein stood for an awkward moment on the sidewalk in front of the jail. Butts was already on his way home. Music drifted from the saloon across the street. A few women chatted on the corner, gazing up at the dark windows of the prison. A drunk staggered across the street, heading south.

“Can I give you a ride home, Cormac?” Cahill said.

“Thank you, no. I’ll walk. It’s a lovely night.”

“It’s a lovely night in a bad part of town,” Edelstein said.

Cormac laughed. “I know the way. I’ll be all right.”

They shook hands, and Edelstein climbed into a carriage behind Cahill and the driver flicked a whip and they trotted away.

Cormac glanced once more at the jail and began to walk south. Into the past.

He told himself, Be careful now, you’ll be up all night. Be careful, you’ll be trapped again in memory.

He did know the way, walking down the Bowery until it became Chatham Street, and then turning west into the Five Points. That was the fastest way to Broadway and Leonard. He still knew every street and most of the houses but no longer knew the people who now lived in the houses. The name Five Points, after all, came from the meeting of five streets: Mulberry, Anthony, Cross, Orange, and Little Water, the noisy heart of the district. The streets were still there, although some of the names had changed since he moved among them after the countess went away. Anthony had become Worth, in honor of some blowhard general in the Mexican War. Cross had become Park, after a sour little park created from a lot left by a burned-out house, and Orange turned into Baxter Street, after another man who died in Mexico, but primarily to ease the sensibilities of Irish Catholics.

And he remembered now, as he seldom did anymore, the second night of the Draft Riots. For two days, sometimes with Tweed, he had moved through the anarchic city as men were shot down and women picked up guns and buildings were torched. Tweed pleaded with many of them, trying to save lives, and he did change some minds. But each day, the fighting got worse. When Cormac went out on Tuesday night, he strapped on the sword.

He had not carried the sword in years. It was part of the past, more an artifact than a weapon, reduced to an elegantly made relic of his father. He knew it was useless against guns. But when he hefted it in the smoky night, he was sure he felt again the sword’s old power. He strapped on the flaking leather scabbard in his room, tried a few of the old moves (which were so like the moves of boxers), and then took a long drink of water and went out. He had no aim, except to find Tweed and offer his help. Tweed had been threatened again and again, sometimes by decent men, sometimes by the Mozart Hall remnant led by Hughie Mulligan. Perhaps the sword could do its old work and save someone he wanted to save.

At the corner of Cortlandt Street, he saw a bonfire throwing flames into the night, came closer, saw a mob, came even closer, saw a noose attached to a lamppost with a pile of kindling and lumber stacked at its foot, and then saw a smaller mob coming from Broadway, carrying a black man above their heads. His arms and legs were bound. He was shouting for help. Cormac drew his sword.

“Stop, you fucking idiots!” he shouted.

And stepped into their path.

They paused. Most of them young. Many of them Irish.

“Put that man down!”

Remembering the odor of charred flesh in 1741. Remembering the screams.

“Feck off!” one man said.

He drew a pistol, and Cormac sliced off his hand. Saw the man’s astonished face and then heard his scream. Heard pistol shots, a furious roar, felt a forearm close on his neck, felt a sharp, sudden crack, and fell into a blinding whiteness.

Three days later, he woke up in a strange bed to see Bill Tweed peering down at him. His hands went to his head and felt wads of bandage.

“You’re lucky you’re alive,” Tweed said. “You’re lucky you’ve got a thick Irish skull.”

He put a brandy bottle to Cormac’s lips. The room dimmed and brightened, and he saw another man behind Tweed, saw Tweed nod, and the man slipped out. The young Frank Cahill. He saw flowers on a windowsill, and thick, high foliage beyond the glass. He heard canaries chirping from another room

“Welcome to the Tweed home,” said Bill Tweed. “Do you want some eggs?”

They sat together for a long time, as Tweed explained that the riots were over. Nobody knew the numbers of the dead: between two hundred and two thousand. There were no numbers at all for the wounded. The Colored Orphan Asylum had been burned to the ground. Many blacks had been lynched. Many had been saved, including a black man they’d wanted to hang and burn on the street where Cormac was found.

“The Five Points held,” he said. “And the Fourth Ward. Not a shot was fired, not a black man harmed, not a building burned. I suppose we should be proud of that.”

He turned away and gazed into the yard.

“But there’s nothing to be proud about in the bloody city. It was… terrible. We might never get over it.”

“You did what you could,” Cormac said.

“It wasn’t enough.”

Luke came in with a platter of fruit. Younger then, without gray hair. He laid the platter on Cormac’s lap.

“Thank you, sir,” he said to Cormac. “I heerd what you did.”

Then went out.

“It’s all right, Cormac,” Tweed said, and laughed. “It didn’t get into the newspapers, so you don’t have to worry about the gangs coming for your hard Irish head….”

“The way I feel, they could take it and make me happy.”

“Not on your life.” Tweed sighed. “I’ve got to go out now and visit the ruins.”

“One thing, Bill.”

“Yes?”

“When… when they found me, did they find a sword?”

“A sword?”

“A sword with spirals etched in the blade, and a grip made of wolf bone. My father’s sword.”

Tweed gazed at him.

“I’ll ask around,” he said. “But I suspect it’s hanging on some lout’s wall.”

From Tweed’s casual tone, Cormac knew, as he peeled an orange, that the sword was gone and might never again be held in his hand.

He saw Transfiguration Church in the distance, and other scenes merged in his mind: murders and suicides, in his days as a reporter, and deaths from cholera and smallpox and yellow fever. He remembered when the Collect Pond was still there, with the tanneries and garbage dumps at its edge. He watched as the Collect was drained (writing about it for a newspaper in 1804) and filled in (with the rocks and mud of the hill), and saw the new houses going up in 1811 before the land settled, and the way they leaned and tottered toward each other a year later, so that nobody would ever live there except the most desperately poor. They were still the only people living there.

And here came two of them, silhouetted against the distant shimmer of a gaslight.

“Evenin’, mister,” the first one said. Runty and belligerent and drunk. The other taller and gawky. Both with derby hats.