William Kennedy - Quinn's Book

“It’s in both arms now,” said the man, and his left arm went limp. With his right hand he took off his hat, exposing a bald head, and put the hat on a step above him.

“At least get the last bit of sunshine on the pate,” he said, and his right arm went as limp as his left.

Lydie dropped her broom. “God bless us and save us,” she said.

“A prayer is a blessing,” said the man, “but it doesn’t bother death. Now it’s in the stomach. And now the neck.” He closed his eyes. “There it is in the chest,” and he opened his eyes like two full moons. “Now I’m dead,” he whispered, and dead he was, with his eyes as open as the sky.

Everyone thought of this as an isolated incident. Not until the others died was the man who had tracked the course of his own death seen as both carrier and emissary of the plague. It was a fiery hot summer, the worst time for it, the time when death grows fat. I was working for food with Emmett Daugherty, my father’s great friend, helping him rebuild his shed and privy. Emmett lived two miles north of Van Woert Street, and because of the distance I stayed with him, and so I wasn’t home the week death first walked up our street.

The McNierney family across from us had four die in two days that week, and the four others who lived on fled to no one still knows where. Two desperate stragglers from Vermont found the McNierney house empty and open (Pud McNierney didn’t even close the front door when he ran out), and they went in and helped themselves to food, drink, and beds. Both were dead in those beds three days later.

Maud, I won’t tell you all the horrid matter that comes out of the body when the cholera invades people; you probably know for yourself. But the sight of such things recurring so often put the fear into everybody in the city. A good many remembered the plague of ’32 that killed four hundred in Albany, and so people locked their doors, wouldn’t go out, wouldn’t let anyone in. Prayer vigils were called and some brave souls came out to hear our preachers tell them their sins were causing people to die. One stranger stood up and called the preacher a madman for saying that and yelled out how it was pigs running loose in the city, not sin, that caused the cholera. But he didn’t get far with that. They hit him with a plank and he stopped yelling.

My mother got sick while I was at Emmett’s house, and when I came home she was in bed, smothered in blankets, shivering. She’d had the sickness for two days and the doctor gave her Veratrum to take on a piece of sugar. It didn’t help at all, even with greater dosage, so Pa gave her Spirits of Camphor and she said she felt better. That same day Pa came home from work at the lumberyard (they wouldn’t let him stay home) and found my sister Lizzie face down on the paving stones near the house. She was alive but very ill. Pa carried her to bed and gave her the Spirits of Camphor right off, along with the Veratrum. That was the day I came home from Emmett’s house. I sat vigil with my mother and Lizzie both, and I never got sick, though I still don’t know why I didn’t.

We heard that looting was going on down the block, which was news, because after the first flurry of deaths nobody went near any of the death houses; for who could be sure which things were uncontaminated and safe to steal? But for some the lure of larceny is greater than the fear of death, and soon every empty house was a target for thieves in masks and gloves. When my mother heard this she told me to find our birdcage and bury it. I asked her why.

“Because I brought it from Ireland,” she said, “and because a birdcage isn’t all that it is, but you needn’t mind about that. Just remember what I say. Study it well and mind you that there’s value in it you can use someday. God knows the value. Now do it, boy, do what I say, and tell no one where you bury it.”

The cage was empty. When my father lost his old job laying railroad ties he blamed our yellow bird, said it brought bad luck, and he let the creature loose in the trees, even though we’d had it for years. My mother cried and put the cage in a crawl space under the roof, up with the suitcases and blankets she and Pa carried for the months they spent on the boat coming over. When Pa saw me with the cage he asked what I was doing. I told him and he said, “Remember where you bury it and cover it with leaves or they’ll see the fresh-dug dirt and go in after it.” And then he said, “Take care of it, lad, and it’ll take care of you.”

When I came back from burying the cage Pa was sitting vigil with Ma and he said to me, “Go see Lizzie.” I went down to our room and saw she was gone from us. Pa had put a rosary in her hand but it hadn’t helped her. I looked at her awhile and went up to Pa’s room and sat with him while Ma shivered and wailed. I heated the hot-water jars for her and rubbed her with Spirits of Camphor but that didn’t do any good either.

After she died Pa never shed a tear, but his face went loose. He couldn’t control its blinking and twitching, or keep the whiteness off it, or banish its shapeless grief. He went to get the priest because Ma was close with the church. She used to go to Mass three or four mornings a week, whenever the weather was good. She loved the religion and was good friends with the pastor. But Pa found out the pastor was sick himself from visiting so many people with the plague, so he only brought back Jigger Kiley and his wagon, which was the hearse on our street that month. Pa said there wouldn’t be any Mass or funeral for Ma just now. Maybe later. Then he took himself to bed and let himself be sick all the way. I sat vigil with him, doing the same useless things I did for Ma, until he, too, shivered and died without a word.

I went and got Emmett Daugherty, and he came back with his own wagon and helped me pack the things he said were valuable and the things I wanted to keep. We locked up the house and got in Jigger’s wagon with Pa, and we dropped Pa off at the new body depository near the arsenal, because that was the law. The old Dead House out at the Almshouse couldn’t handle so many corpses. The rats were eating them before workers got them into their graves.

I went to stay with Emmett at his house beside the canal and live out the summer and winter there. I cried a good deal over my sister and my lost parents and I stopped going to church. I couldn’t abide it anymore, all the talk about Christ. I liked Christ fine, but who didn’t? I felt like that stranger who didn’t believe the preacher’s talk about sin. I didn’t know what to make of things, but I knew I had to do something for myself, that I had no more time to be a child. And so in the spring of ’8, when Emmett heard that a canaler named Masterson needed a helper, I asked for the job and got it, because I couldn’t live off the Daughertys forever. Emmett’s niece was about to arrive from Ireland, and Emmett himself was still ailing with the lung trouble he’d picked up on a land-buying expedition with Lyman Fitzgibbon, the merchant-scientist.

I thanked Emmett for all his help, for saving me from God knows what, for being as close as blood. He said I was welcome anytime and he’d keep my things till I wanted them, and then I went off to work on the canal with Masterson for four of the worst months of my life. He beat me like a mutt and refused to pay me wages. I ran off when I saw how to get away clean, and I found work on John the Brawn’s boat for three months till it sank. Then John bought the skiff and we worked the river out of Albany as ferrymen and haulers, water rats who’d go anywhere with anything between Albany, Troy, West Troy, and Greenbush.

One day on our river I saw you step into Carrick’s boat and saw the boat hit by an ice floe. We put out to rescue you, I saved you from drowning, and that’s how we met. My life was used to subtractions, not additions of beauty the likes of yours.