Light of the Diddicoy. Eamon Loingsigh
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with larger men of much might, I am lost among the crowd and quickly can’t find my uncle. As I look around in a fright, I hear the callings of the cattle pushers.
“To Pier Six wit’ ya’s!” They yell. And quickly the hopefuls begin running up the cobblestoned street, a rough road lined with freight tracks along the pier houses that break the waterfront view, “Run! Go! Who’s the best among ya!”
As we pile into the landing at Pier Six, a new voice yells at us to run north again. “Up to da bridge’n back, first ten mens guaranteed woik!”
Scrambling, men in dirty suits with broken shoes and hats in their back pockets fight amongst one another for the lead. Their suit ties are in tatters and dirt-rimmed collars flap mistakenly over their bedraggled coat as they take to the wind in hope of winning work for a day. Unknown faces spilling strange languages from their gobs and with eyes empty and bellies falling out of them with hunger to summon strength from their deflated reserves, they clamber with patchwork humility in the early-morning gales. Some men cheat and turn around for the final stretch before making it to the bridge. They are met then with shoulder bumps that put their faces in the ground and kicks that leave them moaning heavily in the cobble mud. Eventually we are led by the Dinnies all the way back where we started and lined up again. Breathing heavy. Breathing deeply with our hands on our knees, we look for the Dinnies and quickly straighten up to show how we are not in the least affected by the sprinting and fighting.
“On the line! Fix ya’self on the line, ya bunch o’ spalpeen layabouts,” I hear one of the Dinnies yell out.
“Get there! Get there. Quick, quick . . .”
“Ya nothin’ but a bunch a rotten navvies!”
“Shape-up boyos, who’s the man of the men here?”
“Who’s the bee’s knees, then?”
As I look up, four of the men barking at the mass of hopefuls push themselves through the group and make a separation to reveal their leader. And in he come. From the grimace of his toughs they clear the way for the chieftain of the dock clans.
Look at the man. Mid-twenties he strides across the face of us with a prominent stare and a fixed grin as his cronies shrink behind him, arms crossed. He does not have a happy grin though. This grin is that of a man staring into the sun. This man who emerges from the parting crowd, he who knows that each pale staring face that peers upon him is desperate for work, does not give the glaring eyes a notice as it’s he who looks upon our shoddy like to see how much work can be wrung from us. How hard we’ll give. He looks in each face. In each eye and if he finds fire, he moves on. If he finds passivity, moves on. If he finds reason, he chooses. But reason without muscle of course, he moves on.
Lost in the crowd as was I, one of his sluggers approaches and grabs me by both shoulders, pushes me between two men that know each other in line. After a moment, one of them elbows me behind him so he can be on the side of his buddy and I having to force myself back into line again from behind.
The man with men parting around him is, of course, Dinny Meehan, leader of the White Hand. And though it was many years ago, I remember it as if it were happening now and right out in front of me.
It was then, as Dinny Meehan strode through the dock aisles, that I finally figured out that the group called Dinnies were really his own: Dinny’s men, that is. And along the line he stalked like some rogue general inspecting his indigent battalion of scamps and scallies queued up as well as they could but stung with the hunger and the cold.
He stands there in my mind as if it were today. Bold and humble, a man of his time and mine. He is standing there ahead of me, scanning the bodies and the faces of the hopefuls in line. Erect like a gypsy traveler appraises a piebald vanner mare with a keen, scrutinizing eye before arguing price. He even asks to see some of the men’s teeth and if they possess all the digits on their hands. Behind him, a pier reaching out into the East River becomes filled with a backing ship and four guiding, noisy tugs. This man Meehan did not walk with the gruff demeanor of his roughneck toughs who make order on the labor lines. Instead, he answers his men’s questions with a nod or a softly spoken “Nah,” or a gentle “Yeah.”
His clothing, though a bit patchy, clings to his muscled shoulders, chest, and upper arms and down toward his flat stomach and punchy legs. His boots are soiled, as are all the other men’s, and he has the face of a hardened laborman with a wide jaw and the small ears of a fighting dog. His brown hair falls back over the top of his head without the spit or oil some use, though shocks of it are left over his temple and down close to his ear on one side. His eyes though, that’s what made Dinny Meehan. His eyes are a very intelligent green and made of a nice shape both mean and understanding.
At the time, no one had to tell me who the tribe-head here was. He carried the weight of the responsibility of things on the Brooklyn docks in his eyes, he did. As had all chieftains among their clan in the olden days back home when they ran wild through the glens, heathers, bogs, and boreens.
Up and down the line bark his boyos. Attacking a loosened piece or a scowling laborman here and there. Hissing at them in the morning wind. Pushing them off balance if they sneer too much. The dockboss of the Baltic Terminal was John Gibney, “the Lark.” His right-hand man standing behind him is the slick-haired Big Dick Morissey with the chest of a black ape and the forearms of an anchor chain. Also there, tightening up the line, is the gangly white-haired dooker with the long arms and club fists, the one everyone calls The Swede. And finally Vincent Maher, a handsome masher who was a bit younger than the rest and who smirks with the sport of a skirt chaser yet walks with the same authority as a man in the inner circle of Meehan’s larrikins.
From behind with a scare and pushing passed me without mention of a pardon is another taller sort that doesn’t have the shoulders of Big Dick or the vulgar bearing of The Swede. This man who leapt through the line from behind me came straight to the ear of Meehan and overhearing him as I did, was taken by the fellow’s accent, which can’t be mistaken for anything other than that of a true Irish traveler. A native of the country roads of Ireland where they claim no territory as their own and wobble about in covered wagons pulled by gypsycobs from riverside to horse fair. This traveler, Tommy Tuohey is he, a type I knew all too well as coming from the clans of fist fighting and knavery who sleep their drink off under the big aimless pale starry and mooned sky. With logistics at hand, Tuohey speaks to Meehan as he’d just come from a meeting with the captain of the ship for a rundown on the goods to be unloaded and an estimate on manpower.
“Fer de sake of an eerly day Dinny, sexty-two strongmen could give de ship to rest, giverteek, moraless,” said the man so quickly that I barely understand him myself.
Meehan nods to Tuohey. Then appearing from another place was Eddie Gilchrist who was good with numbers, though a bit on the soft side. His spectacles at the end of his nose clumsily, Gilchrist looks up and mumbles under his breath as he gathers quickly the difference between the money offered by the shipowners, money needed by the stevedoring company, and how much take the gang would get from the sixty men.
For the dockmaster’s final line-walk, the others snap to attention and look forward into the distance, pushing their chest out and standing tall on their feets. When he comes upon me and my youthful, bony physique, he snorts quietly and grabs my arm, wrapping his hand around it entirely. Looking in my eyes, Meehan quickly looks away again without changing the posture on his face a bit. Then moves on and picks the fellow next to me and a few others for the job. Gibney the dockboss walks behind Meehan and every here and there whispers into his ear about a man having put a dollar in his pocket to get picked, then the man emerges from the line and stands among those who would work that day.
My uncle Joseph is against the idea of paying to work, and so is his crew. Consequently he and his are rarely chosen. Across the gaggle he looks at me with a scowl as the line falls apart. Some throw their gripes in the air while the firm-eyed Meehan with all his cronies about him gives his back to us.
The Swede stands and stares into us as the others around him walk toward the ship. He dares any of us to step forward, waits for someone to back up their crying out against the old rules that still have life here on the docks of