Gadarene: 15th Anniversary Edition

Text Preview - Gadarene [15th] Chapter 1

The gates swung open, heavy and slow.

Slate gray ruled the sky, its grayness far brighter than the heavy stale darkness inside Ludlow Prison. Galen blinked, green eyes adjusting to freedom’s striking aspect. Five Points crooked skyline jumbled before him.

“There you go, Driscol,” the guard said, jerking his head toward freedom. “Get on with you. And don’t come back here.”

Galen looked up at the man, one of the many who’d kept him inside the past three years, and spared him a smile. Had the guard been made of weaker stuff, had he been unaccustomed to the violence of life in the Bowery, the young Irishman’s grin would have haunted his dreams.

“You can count on that, sir.”

The pre-dawn rain left long, slick puddles around the islands of trash, threatening Galen’s tattered yet dry boots on the downstreet trek. He stepped gingerly around the moats; no sense in getting wet until he had a place to dry off.

Kearney’s opened after sun-up for the drunken bruisers unwinding after shoveling shit through the city’s bowels on the overnight.

O’Neill’s called next, an amiable hovel catering to the fresh-off-the-boat crowd with watered-down stout and meals that tasted like you were back home in County Clare if you closed your eyes and pretended hard enough. Almost. If you didn’t consider it too much while parting with the better part of a day’s wages.

Galen passed the establishment with a nod to the fresh meat loitering out front. Each shabbily dressed youth searched his face, hoping against hope for a glimpse of someone from the Old Country—but Galen’s icy American-tried visage brought them nothing.

Around the corner stood Grady’s, his home on the street. Home, or his corner at least. The battered lamppost, still standing against gravity and malcontents’ best efforts to bring it to earth, served as his childhood touchstone, a base he’d return to before setting off on yet another adventure through Five Points.

Later, it was where everyone looking for the Mongoose found him. Those looking to take care of some unpleasantness always came calling for the Mongoose.

Others had laid claim to his spot while he was inside, and such was the way of things. They’d see the light soon enough and move along. Until then, they could be useful—their eyes watched while his languished behind bars, their ears heard things while he suffered the wailings of Ludlow layabouts.

“Oy,” he said to one, a heavy-set lad, one whose belly appeared full enough to give up information for free. “I’m looking for Meggie Driscol.”

“That old whore?” The thug jerked his head across the way, down the hill a piece.  “She keeps a room upstairs down there.” His eyes turned to Galen, knowing. “But you don’t want to be troubled with that. I can get you a nice piece, half the price, half the years.”

“Thanks, but no.” Galen’s lips thinned, one against the other, but he kept his tone light. “I’ll find my way to Meggie.”

A low rumble followed his steps, punctuated by a sharp bark of laughter.

“Hey, boyo,” the fat thug called after him. “Sorry ‘bout. I didn’t know she was your Ma.”

Galen, without looking back, waved a hand in the air—your fat ass will get kicked to the gutter first once I’m back in business.

“Screw me sideways,” he said aloud, half a block later. “They’ve gone and turned the Old Brewery into a Mission House,”

Some fool had scrubbed the windows and hung the big front door back on its hinges. A small white sign proclaimed that God’s mercy awaited all inside. Despite its new veneer, the lot hanging around the steps remained the same.

“Galen, me boy,” cried Charles Clancy, none the worse for wear with a new glass eye. “Good to see you back in your boots,”

“Lad, where you been?” Murray Donovan grinned like he’d gone half-simple. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,”

“Been to Ludlow,” Galen replied, clasping the old man’s outstretched arm. “Rehabilitatin’ meself, don’t you know,”

“That’ll be the fucken’ day.” Meggie Driscol leaned out of the doorway, forearms braced to provide the stability that sobriety could not. Amply freckled breasts threatened to spill out of a bodice two sizes too small, though neither man on the stoop gave them a bit of notice.

“Hey, Ma,” said Galen.

Her expression softened, not that you’d notice if you weren’t her boy. “How’d they treat you in there?” A russet eyebrow arched upward as she looked him up and down. “You spend your days playing wife?”

“No. I didn’t play wife,” Galen snorted. “I was a man when I went in, a man while there, and a man today.”

“That’s good.” His mother turned and climbed the stairs, Galen on her heels. “You can go about getting a job like the man you are,”

Her room was no more than a bed and a washstand, and a lone pot hung on the wall by the stove, battered and black. A threadbare carpet stretched from the doorway almost to the cracked window where his mother kept her tobacco and pipe on the sill.

“I just came home, Ma,” said Galen, ignoring the raggedness of his mother’s room since anything was better than where he’d spent the last year of his life.

Grimy skirts swirled as she spun to confront him.

“Fuck you, boy,” she snapped, stabbing a bony finger into his chest. “You talk like you’ve been on bloody vacation while I’ve been near to dyin’ out here.”

Her tattered skirts flounced while she paced the tiny room, listing complaints on her fingers. “You steal, then you get your fool-self locked up, dry and warm, I warrant, with at least one meal a day.” Round eyes hardened. “More than I had here.”

Galen spread his hands. “You’re dragging me for getting locked up.”

“Your sisters never get caught, and they’re out there every night,” she scolded. “You. You’re a magnet for trouble.”

“It’s been three years, Ma,” he said, sullen. “I’m changed. I’m a new man.”

She snorted. “I’ll be believing that when I see it. A new man.” Another snort, this time coupled with a derisive shake of her head. “Next, you’ll be telling me you’ve got a new man already.”

“I been back half a day.” Galen glanced at the window, where the midday sun lingered over the island, bright enough to make the grimy glass glow.

“Not even a mollie for post-jailhouse roll?” she cracked. “You men work fast when it’s only you men.”

Galen crossed his arms over his chest. “Oy, you seen Wira?”

“Not laid an eye on him. Or her.” Meggie shook her head. “Or whatever the hell that one calls itself.”

“Don’t be like that,” Galen said, head low. “He can’t help how he was born.”

Meggie pulled the pan off the wall and set it on the stove. “Man or woman, you know better than anybody what that one is, don’ya?”

Galen brushed chestnut brown strands from his eye and peered toward the stove. “What’ve ye got going into the pot, Ma?”

“Oy, I got a man coming,” she said, lighting the cigarillo in her mouth.

He chuckled. “What’re you gonna do when the men dry up?”

She cackled and patted the front of her skirt squarely between her thighs. “As long as this don’t dry up, boy, the men won’t neither.” She jerked her head toward the door. “Now, get your feathers off my perch.”

Galen paused, one hand on the thin, splintered frame.

“When will you be done with your doings?”

“When I am and not a minute before,” Meggie exclaimed, an exasperated arm swinging in his direction. “Get your arse down to the Bowery. I hear your Wira’s working those parts now.”