Pagans, Saints, and Potatoes

Cockfight
by Sheila R. Lamb
Copyright 2010 by Sheila R. Lamb 
All Rights Reserved

1875: Eastchester, New York.

“By god it’s hot.” Hugh wiped his brow. Fists up, he was ready to take on Rory Lynch. A sucker punch to the kidney was tempting. A swift upper cut to break his jaw would do nicely.

Mosquitoes buzzed around his ears. He’d curse the humidity and insects but little good it would do him. His chest and shoulders were slick with sweat. He left his suspenders on over his bare torso. No man needed his trousers falling off during a fight.

Dirt dusted up as he kicked at the bare patch earth illuminated from the gaslight that escaped from the open door of Spillane’s saloon. Humid, but no rain. Yet. Clouds pressed down upon him. He kicked at the ground again with the toe of his Brogans.

Rory spat into the darkness. “C’mon Lamb. What are you waiting for? Can’t show up a quarryman?”

Hugh’s neck tightened at the insult. A tanner, he made the leather gloves Rory wore while cracking marble. Rory was dusted white with lime at the end of the day but somehow that was more respectable than curing skins.

Men had followed Hugh and Rory out from the pub, eager for another night’s entertainment. Mostly quarrymen, they had cheered for Rory when the two men separated to pull off their long sleeved shirts. Hugh’s father arrived just as Hugh pushed Rory out the saloon door. He nodded his approval. He had heard Rory’s taunts before. No man should take the ridicule.

James Joy, however, held back from the cheers and nods the circle of men produced. Hugh glanced in the older man’s direction. A stonecutter, an artisan, Joy seemed to have risen above the petty woes of laborers. He stepped a slight foot away from the drunken men. His look was blank, as though he neither approved nor disapproved of Hugh’s impending actions.

The tendons in his neck stiffened again. It was James’s daughter he wanted. Maria. He could impress James with the fight…or not.

Whiskey had burned warm in his belly earlier in the evening. Spillane, the publican, had handed Hugh a glass while he waited for his Da to join him. The Lamb men kept to themselves.

A group of quarrymen came in and ordered pints, Rory included. Spillane slammed down wet glasses, sloshing black porter on the blond oak bar top.

Rory sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?” The men laughed.

Hugh stared straight ahead at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Unlike the men who lifted marble all day, Hugh bathed at home almost daily, an unusual habit. The strong tannic odor of piss and leather clung to him anyway.

“Who here needs their shirts mended? Lamb here can sew as well as any woman!”

Hugh gritted his teeth so that his jaw ached. It was a stupid slur on his glove-making. Rory wouldn’t dare toss the same words onto Mulchahy, the tailor.

Rory was new to the Masterton Quarry. Hugh couldn’t stand him from the beginning. Loud, brash. He had quarried in Manhattan and liked to brag about his time in the city. When the last of the Eastchester Quarry Company sites reopened, he had arrived in a wave of new employees. Few families stuck it out in Eastchester, particularly the Waverly neighborhood, during the closures. Hugh and his father, John Lamb, were proud of their loyalty. As was James Joy.

In the mirror’s reflection, Hugh spied Mr. Joy at a back table of the saloon, with another stonecutter, slowly sipping his Jameson. He admired the older man’s quiet authority. Quarrymen respected him. He rarely spoke, only raising his voice when he had to give orders when men loaded tons of marble on railcars. Hugh guessed he’d spoken maybe a paragraph of greeting to him over his lifetime.

Hugh decided that he too, would drink his whiskey with moderation and control, in imitation, as the saloon filled up around him. Quarrymen stumbled in, causing most of the commotion with their heavy boots. The more responsible men went home first and changed out of their lime-dusted clothes, ate supper with their families before a night of drinking. Farmhands trickled in last, only a few willing to walk the distance into Waverly Square.

Voices became louder as the drink took hold. A cock crowed from the fighting ring, in a newly built room in the back of the pub. He knew of some men who fought their roosters. Good money if they won their bets. Perhaps he would inquire about raising a rooster himself.

“Lamb, have you no sense of humor?” Rory sidled up to him and jabbed an elbow in his ribs.

“Don’t touch me, Lynch.” Hugh clenched his glass more tightly and wished for his father’s presence. John had to take care of Catherine, Hugh’s ill mother, first, and knock some sense into the youngest son William, who was constantly threatening to run away and be a railroad man, before joining Hugh for their Saturday night drink.

“You see James Joy back there?” asked Rory. “I have a mind to court his girl. Maria. What do you think of that, Lamb?”

Hugh placed his glass to his lips with careful deliberation. Rory must have seen him talking to Maria after Mass. The Lamb and Joy families sat one pew apart. Last week, he’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask Joy’s permission to walk Maria home. He’d spent a month getting his question just right, asking in such a way that would be balance of confidence and respect. Joy had looked to his daughter. Maria nodded, and then so did he.

“Bring her directly home.”

The Joy family walked ahead, and his family behind them (Hugh was conscious of William’s snickers the entire time). Maria’s summer straw bonnet matched her eyes with a blue silk ribbon tied under her chin. She graced him with a wide smile as he made small talk about the sun and the heat.

Rory’d use anything he could to needle him. Still, the thought of Rory with Maria made his stomach churn.

Rory jabbed the elbow again. Hugh swallowed the last of his whiskey then grabbed Rory by the shirt collar.

“Outside.” Spillane continued to pour drinks.

Hugh knew the rules. It wasn’t his first fight, but it would be his first with Rory.

He stepped forward and swung wide. His bare knuckles contacted Rory’s cheekbone with a solid thwack. Rory returned the punch. His fist missed Hugh’s face but knocked him on the side of the head, a hard crack above his ear. Hugh’s stance wavered and his vision blurred. He couldn’t lose his balance. Not now. Better a broken nose or jaw than have Rory Lynch, a bigger, barrel shaped man, get him to the ground. Hugh would never be able to push him off. Agility was his strength.

Rory swung again and Hugh ducked. They danced around each other, throwing jabs at the air.

“Don’t let him get away with that, Rory!”

“Take down the filthy tanner!”

“Hold steady, son.” His one voice of support.

Hugh ran his fist upward, delivering a solid uppercut to Rory’s jaw. The quarryman quickly rebounded. He barreled toward Hugh as if to rush him with a tackle. Hugh jumped aside. Rory crashed into the cast iron hitching post. Stunned in mid-crouch, he keeled over as blood trickled from his forehead.

“What’s that about showing up a quarryman?” Hugh glanced around the workmen, Rory’s comrades. Had one of them caught his eye, he would have fought again. He kicked Rory’s bare shoulder, leaving a mark of brown dirt from his boot.

“Good, son.” His father clapped him on the shoulder and handed him a flask. He took a pull of whiskey.

From the corner of his eye, he saw James Joy walk past. Nothing from the man. Damn.

“He thinks more of himself than he should.”

“I guess he can, Da. He’s a stonecutter, a real craftsman.”

“Admiring of him, are you, son? Twasn’t long ago when he was hauling rock just like Rory.”

Hugh wiped his arm across his mouth. Sour whiskey blended with salty sweat. He loved that taste – the taste of a hot summer night and a well fought victory. Maria.

Two quarrymen hauled Rory to his feet, where he spat out white tooth chips. The trio stumbled down Cronin’s Road. They threw Hugh angry looks, but they’d leave him alone. For now.

“You don’t regret it, do you, son? Working in the stink and hides as we do?”

“No. We’ve got our wages. They couldn’t do their job without our gloves. They know it.”

Still, he looked down at his hands, brown as the leather he worked. He wondered if Maria would let his stained hands touch her white skin.