Then, just like that, Chicago sprang up on us.
“Wabash Street,” Thomas said. “The center of Chicago.”
Total confusion.
Slews of people, men mostly, knocked against one another on narrow plank sidewalks raised a few inches above streets that teemed with horses and wagons and carriages of all kinds and descriptions. Stumble and you’d be crushed. One street was more crowded than the next; Thomas named them for us: State Street, Lake Street, Michigan Avenue. Some were called after American presidents, he said: Washington, Jackson, Adams.
“This is Dearborn, for Fort Dearborn—where Chicago started,” Thomas said.
Barney McGurk had told us that an Irishman had commanded the fort when Indians wiped it out about thirty years before. Not a long time in Ireland, but forever ago in Chicago.
The stink of manure mixed with the smell of smoke rising from a forest of chimneys. A storm of noise. The wagon drivers shouted at crowds trying to cross in front of them, then whipped their horses—
crack!
Wheels screeched, then yells of outrage . . . A constant
bang, bang
as we passed building crews, one after another, with only a few paces separating each site. It seemed as if they’d started building the city this morning and were determined to finish it by tonight.
“An awful mess of a place,” I said to Máire.
But Máire was smiling. She’d worn her red shawl, though there was no warmth in it and she would have been better to borrow a blanket from Molly, but she’d insisted. And now, didn’t she open out her arms. Wind filled the silk.
“See my wings,” Máire said. “Will I fly right over it all, boys?”
Jamesy and Daniel laughed.
“Mam,” said Thomas. “Stop.”
Máire whirled around. A fellow passing stopped and tipped his hat to her. She smiled at him. “A mad place,” Máire said. “I love it.”
Thomas jigged ahead, turning back every few steps to shout out, “That’s Saint Mary’s Church, the brick building. That hotel’s the Tre-mont House. That’s the courthouse . . . there’s Collins’—they make boats.” Knowledgeable already. “That’s Rice’s Theatre.”
Jamesy stopped before the barnlike building. “What’s a theater, Mam?” he said.
“Where they act out stories,” I said.
“Is it lovely to see?”
“I don’t know, Jamesy. I’ve never been inside a theater, though I walked past one in Galway City.”
“Was I ever in Galway City?” Jamesy asked.
“You weren’t. None of you children were.”
“Hurry, Thomas,” Máire said. “I want to see the shops, the saloons.”
Thomas and Daniel and Máire went ahead, but Jamesy wouldn’t move.
“What’s that say, Mam?” He pointed at a poster that hung on the side of the theater.
I read the broadside aloud to him: “Extraordinary Novelty! Mr. Murdock in Schiller’s great
Tragedy of the Robbers
. . .
The Farce of the Artful Dodger:
Mr. McVicker—Tim Dodger, Mr. Rice—Harding.” I went on, “Songs! ‘We’re all a-Dodging’—Mr. McVicker, ‘Heigh-Ho for a Husband!’—Miss H. Matthews.”
“A whole building for singing and pretending,” said Jamesy.
“Theater’s closed now,” said a fellow who was taking posters down from the walls opposite. “You could try Mooney’s Museum—Tom Thumb the midget’s playing there—or go see the Virginia Minstrels—you know, white fellows who wear black on their faces and sing colored songs, though most of them are Irish fellows singing Irish songs. You wouldn’t know about that. Just got off the boat, am I right? Lots of people get that stunned look their first time seeing Chicago.” He smiled at Jamesy. “You should learn to be a carpenter—always good work in Chicago for a boy who can hammer a nail.”
“Seems like it,” I said.
“Chicago’s got a quick way of building—a balloon frame, you call it—no beams or braces, you just nail up the frame. Of course, first you have to drive posts through the sand and hard clay, and . . .”
Máire was waving for me to catch up with her. Jamesy stared at the poster.
“Thank you, Mr. . . . ?”
“O’Leary,” he said.
“Come, Jamesy,” I said.
“I can read a few words, Mam!” he said, pointing to the poster.
“You’ll read it all soon!” Thank God he’ll be at school right in Bridgeport. To take on this place every day . . .
Thomas, Máire, and Daniel stood in front of a wooden single-story building with a sign: “Croaker’s Dry Goods.”
“Finally!” said Thomas.
But Jamesy had stopped in front of the shop next to Croaker’s. “Mam! Mam, look!”
Behind a large glass window was a display of musical instruments: fiddles, trumpets, concertinas, flutes, and also, there in the corner, a set of pipes. Bagpipes, not the Irish uilleann pipes like the ones that lay buried with Michael at Knocnacuradh. But still . . .
“Mam!” he said again. “Pipes. Different, but pipes.”
“I see, Jamesy.”
“When Da played the pipes, he’d let me put my fingers over his. Remember how he taught me to play the whistle?”
“I do,” I said. Jamesy tugged me toward the door. “Jamesy, we can’t buy anything at this store.”
“Only to see, Mam, please!”
“Please let him, Aunt Honey,” said Daniel.
Thomas and Máire stood at the door of Croaker’s, arms folded, tapping their toes—so alike, I had to laugh.
“All right, Jamesy. Five minutes. Máire,” I called out to her, “come in with us.”
Máire shook her head first but then walked back to us. Thomas went into Croaker’s.
Warm in the music store—a potbellied stove heated the place, and two kerosene lanterns on the counter shed a dim light. A small, neat man came toward us.
“
Guten Morgen
,” he said. Here’s a man kept his language. “May I help you?” he asked.
“We’re only having a look,” I said.
He smiled at the boys. “You play music?”
“A little,” Jamesy spoke up. “I learned from my da. He’s a piper.”
“You are Scottish, then?”
“We’re not that, surely,” Máire said.
“Irish,” I said.
“Of course! I should have known. My wife is Irish. We German and Irish are the most people in Chicago!” he said.
“Let’s get together and have a go at the Yankees,” Máire said.
He looked confused. “I don’t understand. My English is only on the top. You understand?”
We nodded.
“My wife speaks for me. You Irish are lucky having English.”
“We had a perfectly good language of our own,” I said. “I wish the English had kept their language and let us keep our country.”
“I know your history and a bit about your language,” he said. “I was a professor at Tübingen University. My name is Edward Lang.”
“A professor? And you left?” Máire said.
“Did your pratties die, too?” Jamesy asked.
“It was not potatoes, but politics sent me to Chicago,” he said.
“I’m sorry for your troubles, sir,” I said.
“Well, you’ve bought yourself a fine store,” said Máire.
“Oh, I’m only a clerk, not the owner. Though I do like working with music.”
“We’ll be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”
“Tell your wife two Galway women send greetings,” Máire said.
But Jamesy was away. I found him standing in the back of the store, staring up at the violins and trumpets on the shelves.
The professor came up to us. “Perhaps there is an instrument—”
“Come, Jamesy,” I said. Then, to the professor, “Really. We have to buy him clothes for school.”
“Moment, moment,” the professor said, and he walked through a curtain.
“Thomas is waiting,” Máire said. “We should go.”
The professor came back holding a long, narrow box. “Here.” He opened the box and took out a tin whistle.
“Oh, Mam!” said Jamesy. “Please, please, can I have it?”
“Jamesy, a stór, we can’t. We—”
“I would charge you only ten cents,” Professor Lang said.
Jamesy looked at me. “Please, Mam. I’ll feel close to Da when I’m playing it,” he said.
Michael’s musical talent blooming in his son. I looked over at Máire.
Máire shrugged. “Maybe he can play on a corner, collect pennies in a hat. Except he has no hat.”
“I will,” said Jamesy. “Like Lorenzo and Christophe.”
“I could dance,” said Daniel.
“You’ll see, Mam. We’ll make loads of money!” Jamesy said.
“Very American already, your boys,” said the professor.
Jamesy blew into the tin whistle as we left the shop and walked into the noisy street—“A Na-tion Once A-gain” part of the clamor now.
Jamesy took the whistle from his mouth and grinned at me. “I’ll have the tune for the teacher, and Daniel can sing the words.”
“Hurry. Thomas will be cross,” Máire said, gesturing us into the store.
Thomas had said Croaker’s Dry Goods carried already made clothes—no sewing. “Gets them from New York,” he’d said.
Two young fellows were talking to Thomas, clerks, I suppose.
“Of course, real gentlemen only wear suits made by tailors,” Thomas said to them. “But these boys need the clothes now.”
Mr. Croaker himself brought out pants and jackets and shoes, telling us that he bought all his stock in the East. “I’m a Yankee myself, come from Boston. Now there’s a city!” Croaker was short and square, a bald bullet-head with round eyeglasses.
He had no time for bargaining, though Máire tried.
“
One price
” was all he said. No pleasure at all in buying and selling in this dark, cold place, not inviting like the music store. Nothing to see—the bolts of fabric and boxes of clothes sat piled on shelves behind dusty curtains.
“You need a woman’s touch in here, Mr. Croaker,” Máire said.
“I have asked my wife for her advice, but she has no interest in business.”
“A woman clerk would transform the place,” Máire said.
“No store in Chicago employs women,” Croaker told her.
“All the best shops in London do. Makes it easier for women customers. I myself had such a sales position,” Máire said.
“You did? But you’re . . . you’re Irish,” he said.
“Isn’t that lucky? Aren’t we the best talkers in the world?”
“Don’t try to blarney me,” he said.
Blarney?
“I could start Monday morning.”
“Now, now,” he said. “I can’t afford to pay another clerk.”
“A percentage, Mr. Croaker. Twenty percent of all I sell. What do you have to lose?”
“Give her a chance,” said one of the young fellows.
“Five percent,” he said.
“Ten,” she said.
“Done,” he said. “You have children. Who will see to them? Will I be able to depend on you?”
“Ah, that’s the beauty of having a sister. She’ll care for the children.”
“I’ll give you a week’s trial. What’s your name?”
“Máire Leahy. Mrs. Leahy. My sister is Honora Kelly. Mrs. Kelly.”
I nodded to him.
“Now,” said Máire. “Take that, Ma Conley!” She snapped her fingers. “Doing all right for ourselves in America!” She did a quick jig step as we walked down Lake Street with Jamesy blowing on his whistle. Máire’s never defeated for long.
“We are, Máire, we are,” I said. “You are a wonder, and you, too, Thomas, knowing your way around this wild place.”
“Aren’t Daniel and I wonders, Mam?” Jamesy said, waving the tin whistle.
“You are. Strutting along, fearing nothing, while your mother’s frightened out of her wits.”
“You are, Mam?” Alarmed.
“She’s joking,” Máire said, and Jamesy started again to play random notes as we moved through the crowd.
A wagon loaded with unsteady towers of casks stopped near us. The team of horses following crashed into it. The casks fell out and rolled in our direction.
“Watch out!” I screamed, and pushed the boys back.
But Thomas went forward, grabbed a cask, and ran off.
Many of the men passing—some very well dressed—did the same. The driver shouted curses at them, but they only laughed at him, walking away with the casks under their arms.
“Isn’t that Mr. Croaker’s clerk?” I asked Máire.
She was laughing too hard to answer me. “Thomas thinks fast, no question.”
“But he
stole
, Máire.”
“Seems the custom here. I do like Chicago, Honora.” She hooked her arm through mine and shooed Jamesy and Daniel forward.
We found Thomas waiting around the corner. He’d pried off the top of the cask.
“Only whiskey,” he said. “I hoped it might be nails. Whiskey’s so cheap, hardly worth carrying home.”
“You shouldn’t have taken it, Thomas,” I said.
“Somebody would have. Why not us?”
“He’s a point, Honora,” Máire said. “And we’ll have a nice drop for Christmas.”
“We should go back,” I said. The sun was setting. Wouldn’t want to be on these streets in the dark. Bleak and barren Bridgeport seemed a sanctuary—contained, safe.
“We’ll go home along Michigan Avenue,” Thomas said. “You can see the mansions and the Lake.”
We turned down a side street onto a broad avenue lined with grand big houses.
“Any one of these would put Barna House to shame!” Máire said.
I heard Máire exclaiming, but I couldn’t listen.
The Lake . . . I stopped still.
Jamesy tugged at my hand. “Come, Mam.”
Máire and Daniel and Thomas were ahead of us, but I stepped off the walk and onto the beach.
Lake
Michigan? A sea, surely, stretching out under the heavy sky, going way beyond the smoke of the city. No farther shore, no limits at all. Only blue gray water touched with reflected light as the sun set into the prairie behind me.
Jamesy ran up to me. We stood watching the waves breaking on the sand.
“Here’s a big one, Jamesy,” I said. “Listen to the roar, the boom.” I lifted him up. “Close your eyes halfway and look only at the water. See—Galway Bay.”
And Michael. Above me, below me, to the left of me, to my right. Near. Finally I felt his presence.
I hugged Jamesy to me.
“Honora, I’m freezing, come on!” Máire shouted from the street.
Máire chattered all the way home.
Molly said the boarders were longing to see the new clothes. We dressed Jamesy and Daniel and went to Molly’s big table for our dinner. The fellows made a great fuss over the boys. “Our scholars,” they called them.