They served us a Christmas feast. The food was delicious and new to us. “Turkey,” Patrick said, and yellow potatoes, and something he called cranberries.
Patrick Kelly seemed a different fellow here, joking with Chief Robinson, complimenting the women in their own language as we settled on the fur-covered floor near the fire.
Chicago, Chief Robinson said, was settled by men like him—fellows of mixed ancestry and their Indian wives and families. I remembered Lizzie’s stories of those early days—only twenty years before.
“Tell them about Billy Caldwell,” Patrick said. “A fellow from County Armagh, and an Indian chief.”
The boys had maneuvered themselves near Patrick. The Robinson children moved near their father. A story was coming. Get a good place. Fadó here, too.
“Billy Caldwell’s father was an officer with the British army in Canada, his mother was a member of the Mohawk tribe. Billy was an educated man. He knew Latin as well as English, French, and five or six Indian languages. He was called the Sauganash—the Englishman—but his tribal name was Tall Tree. He became a chief of the Potawatomis, always dressed in buckskin, like your uncle here.”
Patrick patted Paddy’s head. Jamesy moved over to get a pat—then the others, even Thomas, jostled closer—almost like puppies. Patrick gave each one a quick cuff.
I thought of Michael, playing the Giant with them. How the boys had enjoyed that rough-and-tumble. Their da gone, they’d had none of this physical male back-and-forth. Is there a kind of animal need to tussle with the pack leader, be accepted by him?
The boys sat cross-legged, imitating Patrick. They leaned against him, and Patrick put his arms around them as we listened to Alexander Robinson. Here’s the brother who would put a lonely little boy on his shoulders and go galloping around the course at Gallagh Hill. A man other men follow.
The beard suits him, outlines his jaw, shows the high cheekbones. No wrinkles at all—young-looking for a fellow near forty.
Patrick looked right at me, as if he’d sensed my eyes on him, and winked. Jesus Christ. Winked. I nodded at him. He rubbed Jamesy’s head.
Chief Robinson had a precise way of telling a story. He said that he and Billy Caldwell had helped organize the first election in Chicago, when twenty-eight people voted, and started St. Mary’s, the first Catholic church. Billy Caldwell was married to the daughter of a Potawatomi chief.
I remembered Lizzie McKenna’s stories of those early days. “Wasn’t the tavern where they all danced called the Sauganash?” I asked Chief Robinson.
“Named for Billy. Shows you the regard he was held in.” But then fellows came in from the East. Those Yankee traders cheated the Indians, gave them whiskey for their furs. Later they sold them the stuff on credit and claimed Indian land as payment. The Yankees were determined to push out the Indians completely. The U.S. government went along with them, making all these treaties for Indian land. The settlers made Chicago officially a town in 1833, Robinson said.
But he and Billy Caldwell had signed the Treaty of Chicago in 1833 as representatives of their tribes. “No choice, otherwise the Indians would get nothing,” Robinson said, and described the great war dance two years later when the Indians got their final treaty payment and had to leave—thousands of Potawatomis dressed for battle, pounding drums and stomping around the Sauganash Hotel. “Billy and I wanted to paint our faces, put on our feathers, and join them. Give the Yankees one last scare.” Chief Robinson said Billy stayed for a while but then went west to Iowa with the Indians. “Died there seven years ago. Sixty years old.”
“Billy Caldwell, the Sauganash. A man I admire,” Patrick said to the boys. “Fellows like him made Chicago. Tell that to those Yankee teachers in Bridgeport School.”
“Billy Caldwell sounds like you, Uncle Patrick,” Paddy said.
Alexander Robinson laughed.
It was late on Christmas evening when Patrick carried Bridget and Gracie up into the boardinghouse. I held Stephen, his forehead cool, breathing easily, asleep in my arms. Máire helped Paddy and Jamesy, Johnny Og, Daniel, and Thomas struggle up the stairs.
We settled them in our room on the straw pallets, well fed and warm, under the furs.
“Fine sons you have,” Patrick said to Máire and me as we sat again at Molly’s table. “I see bits of Michael in both Paddy and Jamesy. And nothing of the Pykes in your two, Máire.”
“Thank God for small favors,” she said.
Good, she’s warmed to him a bit. I don’t see much of a chance of a match between the two, as Molly’d said, though it would be handy.
“So now, what’s this about you and the O-O-O . . . ?” Máire asked.
“Ojibwa?”
She nodded.
“I was with them for a year,” he said, “in the North Woods.”
“What was it like?” Máire said.
Patrick turned to me. “You know the stories of the Fianna, the Warriors of the Red Branch—the old Irish?”
“I do.”
“The Ojibwa live as they did—hunting, fishing, moving from place to place in the great North Woods. Beautiful country, one clear lake joined to the next. What Ireland must have been. No towns or Big Houses. No Sassenach. Clans, families living together. Strange to say, but among the Indians I felt truly Irish for the first time in my life, because I was free.”
“Free,” I said.
“I often thought of Michael and wished he . . .” Patrick stopped. “Sorry,” he said. “So many things I wanted to tell him about America. Tonight . . . at times I forget.”
“I know, Patrick.”
We sat in silence for a bit, then Máire said, “But, Patrick, tell me, how does running around with Indians help Ireland?”
We heard footsteps on the stairs. Molly came in the door, followed by the returning boarders. The roads were passable now. Everyone home. They surrounded Patrick, laughing and patting his shoulder.
“Will you have a look at this fellow?”
“Thought you’d never come back!”
“Hough will be surprised!”
“The bosses will be glad the canal is closed for the winter, that’s all I can say!”
Molly hugged Patrick. And Patrick kissed her on the cheek. She tugged on his beard. “Don’t like that,” she said. “There’s a fine-featured man under all that.” Molly drew me away from the circle of men. “So, Honora, he’s come at last.”
“He has,” I said.
Máire began telling the boarders how we’d almost frozen “all because that tightfisted hoor of a gombeen man cheated me.”
She was ready to polish the knots and knobs of her struggle with Croaker, but the lads said let’s get James McKenna to open the tavern for one to welcome Patrick home, and off they went.
“Thank you for my sweet Tip-Top tobacco,” Molly said to Máire as we sat smoking together.
I brought the smoke in and out slowly and started coughing.
“She’s not able for it,” Máire said.
“Her condition,” said Molly, taking the pipe away and tamping out the burning tobacco. “I’ll save this. So. Tell me about what Patrick’s been up to.”
“He won’t say,” I said.
“Probably talking revolution to the boys in the lumber camps and lining up the Indians to sail to Ireland with them—take on the Sassenach.”
“Your boarders seem to have a lot of time for Patrick Kelly,” Máire said.
“They do surely. He led the big strike. Bosses cut the wages, just like that. Men were dying already from twelve hours of digging and hauling rock, standing up to their knees in water. And those tents—sleep too far from the stove, you’d not wake up.
“Patrick Kelly was working out near Summit, eight miles south of us. Payday comes and the money’s short. Foreman says, ‘Too bad.’ What could the men do? The next day, Patrick lines up the fellows and they throw their shovels down. No work until wages are right. Then Patrick lifted up that golden staff of his and started along the canal. ‘Put down your shovels, put them down!’ he said. And they did. Patrick walked the whole eight miles, stopping the work as he went. By the time he got to Lock Number One at Bridgeport, who was waiting for him but the canal commissioner, Mr. Archer himself. Patrick Kelly went toe-to-toe with him, stood there a good hour or more talking, and then Archer stomped away mad. ‘What did he say?’ I asked Patrick. ‘They don’t believe we’ll stick together. They sent out a cart with whiskey—a drink for every man goes back to work.’ Patrick walked the eight miles back, that staff held high above his head. Not a man took the whiskey and went back to work. Three more days and three more meetings and the commissioners gave in. They paid the fellows what they were owed, didn’t cut wages. The lads never forgot Patrick, nor did the bosses. Got to be any time the men were being treated unfairly, they’d ask Patrick to have a word with any of the bosses. Oh, he and Hough had many a go-round, but even Hough respects Patrick Kelly.”
Hours later I heard the boarders come home, and the next morning I found Patrick sitting at Molly’s kitchen table, waiting for Paddy, Johnny Og, and Thomas.
“Saint Stephen’s Day,” I said to him. “In Ireland we’d still be celebrating Christmas—in the before times, at least.”
“The before times,” he repeated.
The boys came in, heavy-footed and sleepy.
“Come on, you lot,” Patrick said. As they left, I heard Patrick saying, “First to Hough’s to tell him you’re quitting.”
“But I don’t want to leave,” Thomas said.
“Then don’t,” Patrick said, and they were gone.
“A real forge, Mam! And I struck a mighty blow,” Paddy said. “Like Da. And see me?” He spread open his arms. “Only soot, Mam,” he said, showing me his black shirt, his streaked face. “No blood. And there’s horses, Mam! One’s the same color as Champion.”
Johnny Og was over the moon, too. At the boatworks, Michael Gibson had let him rig a sail. “He said I have a knack for it, and I told him my da was a fisherman, though I never met him. ’Cause he’s dead.”
“Say ‘deceased,’ Johnny Og,” Máire said. Lizzie McKenna had told us to say our husbands were “deceased”—more respectable.
Patrick came to Molly’s after dinner. We were in the kitchen with Molly, washing the dishes, the children in our room.
“I sold the furs,” Patrick said. “Sit down.”
We sat at the table as he set ten twenty-dollar gold pieces in front of us.
“My,” said Molly.
“There, Molly,” said Patrick. “That should pay their room and board for a year.”
“Ten months, anyway,” she said.
“Now wait,” Máire started.
“Thank you, Patrick,” I said. “You’re very kind.”
“Wait now,” Máire said. “We can’t keep living all of us in one room. We need our own flat. There’s one for rent across Hickory Street, 2703, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a parlor. Thirty dollars a month.”
“Reasonable enough,” said Molly, “though you’d have to buy food and wood.”
“You’re better staying here, Honora,” Patrick said.
Máire kicked me under the table.
“We’re not, Patrick, and Molly would agree.”
“Well,” she said, “some of the boarders do think small children can be noisy, and I’ve never had women here before because some are awful flirts. Not that I’m accusing, but having you here”—she looked at Máire—“makes it hard to say no to others.”
I could see Máire drawing herself up to answer Molly.
“You’re right, Molly, it’s time to move,” I said.
“The decision’s yours and Máire’s,” Patrick said.
“It is,” Máire said.
“You’ll need beds and kitchen things,” said Molly. “And will the boys’ wages pay for wood and food, things for the baby—doctors, medicine . . .” She stopped.
“I’ll get a job,” said Máire. “And, of course, you, Patrick, you could get a fine job somewhere.”
Patrick and Molly started laughing together.
“Dear God,” Molly said. “Businessmen in Chicago may have to negotiate with Patrick Kelly, but they’d draw the line at hiring him.”
Patrick nodded. “I have my own work, Máire.”
“As you keep saying, but—”
“We’ll manage, Patrick,” I said. “After the baby, I was thinking I could do some teaching at home, hold Irish classes, maybe. When I speak to Paddy and Jamesy in Irish, they answer me in English. Surely other children are losing our language, too.”
“I wouldn’t count on that as a moneymaker, Honora,” Molly said.
“Well, then maybe I could write letters for the boarders.”
“Now that’s a good idea.” Molly nodded.
“If you think you can bring in enough money.” Patrick shrugged.
“We can,” Máire said.
“Your decision,” he said again, looking at me. “The hag at the well and the O’Neill brothers.”
I was surprised. “You know that story?”
“Michael told me, to let me understand the woman he’d married. So.”
Molly and Máire chattered about blankets as Patrick put on his big jacket and walked out. I followed him down the stairs.
“What is it, Honora?” he said when we came to the front door.
Only two nights ago I’d opened the door to this fellow, only yesterday morning I’d sat here in that bear skin, blaming him for Michael’s death. Now . . . I have to ask him.
“Patrick,” I said, “the crozier—Saint Grellan’s . . . uhm . . . Molly said you used it to rally the men for the strike.”
“I did.”
“I was wondering. Where is it?”
“At Saint Patrick’s. Father Donohue wanted it on the altar for Midnight Mass. Holy relics are hard to come by in America, let alone in Chicago. I’m taking it back today.”
“Oh. Well, I was thinking, the crozier’s so valuable and, like you say, rare, especially here, being gold and all. And getting by is a worry, even with your money. It’s so easy to fall behind and, I mean, wouldn’t you get a fortune of money for the crozier—thousands, even?”
“You think I should sell it?”
“Only to the right person, of course. The bishop, say, and give the cozier its own altar at Saint Patrick’s.”
“The bishop couldn’t pay a penny for it. The Church here doesn’t have money. And Father Donohue was nervous about even taking the loan of it. ‘What if the church burned down?’ he said to me.”
“But surely someone would buy it.”
“Who? There’s no Royal Irish Academy here, no National Museum. Oh, there are those who would take it for the gold, melt it down—”