Exile on Bridge Street by Eamon Loingsigh Page A

treated like queens ya will be, and wit’ kids fat’n happy. I promise ya that. As a man, I promise it.”

CHAPTER 3
    The Old Protective
    I LOOK IN WINDOWS . A LONE , IT takes me three long hours to find Greenwich Village from Park Row where City Hall watches the trolleys climb down from the Brooklyn Bridge. Now here on Hudson Street, I see scores of children I mistake for an entire class but are really only three mothers and some twenty-five kids with nosefuls of dirty fingers and a wave of high-pitched voices.
    I ask an old man, “Do you know where I can find the County Claremen’s old protective, uh, association?”
    â€œEvicted Tenants Protective and Industrial Association?” he says with a toothless mouth and a melodious lilt.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGo see Lynch in his tavern at 463.” He points and shuffles off.
    I come to a brick building on the corner and inside are the whites of eyeballs staring from the sides of sulky heads among the obscured light from the front windows. They look the same as the longshoremen of Brooklyn who wait for the flag, the whistle, and the shapeup in local saloons.
    A very tall, sturdy man with a vest and full head of hair opens the growler hole behind the bar and takes some cash from a faceless hand outside, sends a filled cup through, then calls for me, “Help ye, bhoy?”
    â€œIs there a Mr. Lynch here?”
    He is looking in my eyes with a coldness about him that I can see he means to run this tavern as a real and respected business, “What’s yer need?”
    â€œI want to go back to Ireland and help set her free.”
    The men at the bar bob in a muffled, cynical laugh, holding their glasses of liquor in front of them.
    â€œIs that all?” Mr. Lynch says, bringing more chortles.
    I stare at him from the doorway.
    â€œDon’t stand there, bhoy, are ye in or are ye out? Make up yer mind.”
    I walk in.
    â€œSo,” Mr. Lynch booms after dropping a beer for the man next to me. “It’s a soldier ye wish on bein’, like the ol’ songs,” he says, a dull light on one side of his face.
    â€œUh . . . I want to go and fight, yes.”
    â€œYe know they’ve surrendered? The men in the GPO and the others,” the tall man, Mr. Lynch, explains. “They’ll be executed. And the locals, the Dubliners, even the Catholics there . . . spat on them bhoys as they was frogmarched t’rough the streets. Dumped chamber pots on ’em, they did.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œLackeys, jackeens,” Mr. Lynch says standing well above the other men hunched along his bar. “They see Home Rule as bein’ put in place after the war, I s’pose. So why start an armed rebellion and ruin their city? That’s what they say at least.”
    â€œBut England will never follow through with Home Rule, not if the Ulstermen have something to do with it and there’s no history that shows we should trust England.”
    â€œTrue t’ings, all that ye say there, but it’s complicated. Here in the States, more and more we’re seen as German sympathizers and with Roger Casement and the arms he tried to bring to Ireland t’rough the German cargo vessel, they’ve got their connection. . . . Think about it, bhoy, one-hundred t’ousand or more Irishmen have volunteered to fight with Britain against Germany. And this Easter Rebellion is what, a t’ousand men or more? I support their efforts, don’t hear me wrong, I want a free Ireland like the next fella, but those men’re martyrs.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with martyrs?”
    â€œNothin’, ye want to be one yerself?”
    â€œMaybe I do.”
    â€œThen stow on a transport ship ’cause England’s blockade won’t allow ye go back Ireland way, but ye’ll get caught ’cause every ship’s searched in Dover’n Dunkirk.”
    I look down to the wooden floor,