Light of the Diddicoy. Eamon Loingsigh

      

      LIGHT

      OF THE

      DIDDICOY

      A NOVEL BY

      EAMON LOINGSIGH

      THREE ROOMS PRESS

      NEW YORK

      Light of the Diddicoy a novel by Eamon Loingsigh

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For permissions, please write to address below or email [email protected]. Any members of education institutions wishing to photocopy or electronically reproduce part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Three Rooms Press, 51 MacDougal Street, #290, New York, NY 10012.

      First Edition

      ISBN: 978-1-941110-00-3

      Copyright © 2014 by Eamon Loingsigh

      Cover and interior design:

      KG Design International

      katgeorges.com

      Three Rooms Press

      New York, NY

      threeroomspress.com

       The tribe of auguries,These vehement unkempt visionaries . . .The men stride upon dirt paths, their glinting weapons sided,Guard well the motley chariots wherein their kin do dwellAnd stare long upon the harrowed horizon far off in HellAt brood on the gloomy regret childish hope once confided.

      —CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

       I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow;Who have no treasure but hope,No riches laid up but a memory of an ancient gloryMy mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,I am of the blood of the serfs.

      —PADRAIG PEARSE

       It seems to me that we can never have a complete settlement of world conditions until the Anglo-Saxon begins to realize that he is not of a superior race but that all races are equal.

      —EDWARD J. FLYNN, Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt

       I cannot forgetThat old home I leftIn that town of great renown,I long to go backTo that old-fashioned shackIn dear old Irish Town.

      —ALDERMAN PATRICK LARNEY, Brooklyn Eagle, 12/22/1940

      FOR MARY REGINA​ LYNCH,​ NÉE

      SULLIVAN/GRAMMA

      1917–2012

      Contents

       Chapter 1: Glasnevin Rebelpoets

       Chapter 2 : Four Italians

       Chapter 3: Ship to New York

       Chapter 4 : Mary’s Eldest Son

       Chapter 5: The Shapeup and The Starker

       Chapter 6: McGowan’s Wake

       Chapter 7: Upstairs, Under the Bridge

       Chapter 8: The Souper

       Chapter 9: Eating Meat

       Chapter 10: NY Dock Co.

       Chapter 11: The Code

       Chapter 12: The Runner

       Chapter 13: The Divvy

       Chapter 14: A Hard Pragmatist

       Chapter 15: The Village & the Rising

       Chapter 16: A Tug and an Envelope

       Chapter 17: On the House

       Chapter 18: Ybor Gales

       Chapter 19: Fifty Dime, Done

       Chapter 20: McAlpine’s Saloon

       Chapter 21: Donnybrook in Red Hook

      CHAPTER 1

       Glasnevin Rebelpoets

      DOWN UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE OVERPASS there once roamed a gang I fell in with. A long time ago it was, when I was young and running. It’s all I had, this life. Just as yours is yours. Don’t let yourself think mine is anything different, anything better. I won’t have it that way. It was just a life, and there you have it. But like so many born on the isle of Ireland, I am to die far from home. Though such a grief has since let me alone, as bitterness only cuts into the bone, I’m at ease with it in my age. But to go ’way with all these memories, well, I rush them out here for you to breathe them in. To read with your senses as I lay here in the brood of the night, broad awake to recite my beads, not so dutifully. Because when dying it’s no longer duty, it’s prayer. So here I am to send a story you true and fair. About blood. And honor. About the code of men, and about empathy too.

      This story will both begin and end on a ship as any good run or reel should, but we’ll start you here for good measuring.

      Cobh wasn’t called Cobh when I left it. Queenstown, and a great Atlantic crosser allowed myself and far too many others aboard in the swirling mist. Among the high masts two giant round silos breathed into the air above, black exhaust due from the belly of the iron woman’s coal-fired furnaces within. Her long reach a mile wide in black and red faded paint as she sat three-quarters full already from her port in Liverpool on stop to pick up itinerant thirds in the country that made her back in ‘89. Six-inch black iron gun heads reached from what was once a leisurely deck for more distinguished passengers of another era, ghosts now. The Great War changing and altering all of life as we know it. And just above the rusted anchorhold in sea-weathered letters, a degraded font from that bygone time, RMS Teutonic.

      Not a day for celebrants, it is the offing of the peasant ceremonial here. Lacking pomp and cheer, instead the heavy request of need and necessity fills their eyes. The hunger of orphans and their low caste beheld in their beams, bony travelers huddling for lands of hope and honey. Desperate for their utopia somewhere far off, they are. A utopia dreamed up by the imaginations of the falling and those without promise. As was true to the time it was the motley beaten Celts, pushed to the western