from Chapter 4
[The efficient Mick has made plans to help Timona get back on her feet -- and
out of his life.]
As they started towards Park Avenue, Timona decided to resort to basic tactics.
She grabbed at his arm and gasped. "Might we stop for a moment, Mr. McCann.
I - I think I feel a little faint."
He looked so worried she felt a trifle guilty. Not ashamed enough to actually
change tactics. "Oooo. Mr. McCann, I think I have to return to your flat.
The world is spinning."
She made a soft moan. He grabbed her arm, pulled her close and wrapped an arm
around her. It felt lovely to be pressed against his warm, solid side. At least
she didn't ask him to carry her up the stairs.
The hideous Botty trotted along after them, Mick stopped to rub the dog's back.
She figured the injuries extended to Botty's throat, for she already noticed that
he didn't bark but made a huffing growl of a sound instead. He made the noise
now, and half-closed his one eye in ecstasy as Mick rubbed his fur.
"That's enough now, Botty. I got work to do," Mick said. Botty immediately
squirmed into his spot under the bureau.
The oppressive dankness of the dim room pressed in on Timona as she lay on
the bed, watching Mick attempt to wash some of his clothes. What could he do to
entertain himself living alone in a place like this?
"Mr. McCann," she said, trying to sound weak, but not desperately
ill -- the man had worries enough. "What do you do on your free time? I mean
other than walk out with Daisy Graves."
He straightened up from the large pan, where he was trying to scrub out a shirt.
"Don't get much free time," he said. He squinted at the shirt and
poked it. "An ash must have landed here. I think this has got a hole burnt
clean through. Small at least."
"I can see you are busy." Saving every forlorn creature in his little
corner of the world was busy work. "Is there anything you do when you need,
oh, I don't know, cheering up? Play cards. Go out for a beer. That sort of thing."
He shook his head. "Can't, often. My family back home needs every spare
penny. Debts."
"Do you spend all your time here and work?"
He squeezed the water out of the shirt, threw it into the other pan, and put
some other clothes into the tub.
"I see a show now and then. New York has some fine theater. The library
is free and. . " He hesitated. The way he straightened up and began to fiddle
with the cuff of his rolled-up shirt sleeve made her wonder if he was about to
confess that he murdered and skinned kittens.
"So I do read. And I, uh, play the flute some."
She forgot she was supposed to feel ill and sat up excitedly. "Oh, do
you? I love the flute. My brother plays. Do you have one?"
He reached behind the rickety bureau and pulled out a battered wooden instrument
that didn't look like any flute Timona had ever seen.
"It was my da's. He started to teach me, but then he died. I messed about,
but never got proper lessons. Back at home, I could screech on it all day long
and no one but the sheep and the cow would care. It's crowded here, so I don't
like to blow it for too long at a stretch."
"Please, will you play for me?"
"You certain you want to hear?"
She nodded. "Absolutely."
He sat, straight-backed, at the edge of the bed, and put the wooden instrument
to his mouth. She was not prepared for the quiet, haunting music he played.
"My goodness," she breathed.
He stopped and grimaced. "I'm not trained you know, and the animals are
not what you'd call good jud -"
"Michael McCann, hush. Play. Please."
He played for about five minutes. Some of it sounded familiar to her, but not
the winding, climbing tunes that grew in complexity and then died away. His music
was often sweet but she thought she heard hints of wild and wistful sorrow. Timona
had heard beautiful music in her travels, but none that had filled her with such
longing. She wished someone would discover dinosaur bones in Ireland so she could
follow her father there, and find out if Mick played music from his homeland.
"You are wonderful," she whispered when he laid the flute on his
lap and gazed at a spot on the bed somewhere near her feet.
She would never allow him to play for anyone else. Women would fall in love
with him purely because of that flute. Or whatever it was.
He blushed and started mumbling again, nonsense about lack of training and
she interrupted. "Mr. McCann. I have heard musicians from many countries.
And I say you are wonderful."
"Eh, thank you," he muttered at last.
She must have been under a spell. "Mr. McCann."
"Mick."
"Mick. I was just wondering, would you consider marrying me?"
Mistake. He blinked at her. Then, thank goodness, instead of screaming in horror,
he laughed. "I play that well?"
She forced herself to smile. "Yes," she said. "You do."
She cleared her throat. "So you don't mind if I call you Mick? Would you
call me Timona?"
"Timona? What kind of a name is that when it's at home?"
"I was named for one of Shakespeare's characters."
He rubbed his bristly chin and squinted at her as he thought for a moment.
"Timon. Wasn't he the whatyemaycallit? The lad who didn't care for the company
of his fellow man."
Timona gaped at him. Many well-educated people didn't know the play Timon of
Athens -- thank goodness.
"Yes, that's the one."
"Mighty peculiar name to give a baby girl," he said, and she nodded
her vigorous agreement. "D'you mind if I call ye Timmy?"
If anyone else had said such a thing, she might have drawn herself up and said,
yes, she did mind. But the way he said it, drawn out in his melodic, slow voice.
. . "Temmay," was so sweet. And intimate.
"Please. Be my guest," she said weakly.
He finished washing out his clothes and a stack of the Tucker kids' clothes.
He shoved them into the pan to take out to the clothes-line. She pretended to
sleep and actually dozed for a while.
She woke to the soft sound of splashing water. He had his back to her. He'd
stripped the waist and was leaning over to rinse off in the large pan.
Well. There stood a sight she would never grow tired of. She wished the board
that covered most of the room's one window was gone and the window faced something
other than another building's wall. Anything so there'd be more sun lighting the
scene.
His shoulders and back were almost ivory colored, and smooth. His arms were
golden until just above the elbows. Perhaps the tan lingered from his days at
the farm, for she did not imagine he rolled up his sleeves on his policeman's
beat.
His back was broad at the top and narrowed down to his hips. The muscles under
his skin moved as he scrubbed at his neck and shoulders.
If she were taking a photograph of a man's back, this would be the back she'd
choose. And the angle she'd want. More light was all that was needed. He'd show
up massive, strong as a mountain. Yet his shoulder blades and spine added a delicacy
to the lines of his back's broad planes. As marvelous as any landscapes she'd
attempted to capture.
In the 1880's, the New York Police department acted as a money-making arm of
the city's corrupt government. Patrolmen collected graft from brothels, bar halls
and gamblers. The police pocketed some of the loot, but most of the money made
its way into Tammany Hall's coffers. Systematic corruption encompassed nearly
every aspect of life in the department: cops had to buy their promotions. If they
didn't have ready cash, Tammany politicians would lend them the amount, and charge
interest, of course. The promotions weren't cheap - a captain's position went
for as much as $15,000.
The press occasionally demanded that the city to clean up the police force,
but the era of the flagrant kickbacks and corruption only declined in 1894 when
a new police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, began a dramatic and well-publicized
clean up of the department.
Want to Explore New York History?
(or find out more about the life of a New York cop?) Some of the sources I
used:
My Father’s Gun by Brian McDonald
Low Life: Drinking, Drugging, Whoring, Murder, Corruption, Vice and Miscellaneous
Mayhem in Old New York by Luc Sante
Five Points: the 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap
Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum by
Tyler Anbinder
1886 Professional Criminals Of New York by Inspector Thomas Byrnes [the
Lyons Press has a good reprint. It's a WONDERFUL book!]
Diamond Jim Brady: Prince of the Gilded Age by H. Paul Jeffers, a biography
of one of the era's most flamboyant symbols.
1893 King's Handbook of New York City by Moses King, two volumes, complete
with photos taken in the late 1800s. It lists everything you'd want to know about
the city . . .and plenty you probably don't give a hoot about.
Jacob Riis, a journalist and photographer of the period, wrote How
The Other Half Lives Studies Among the Tenements of New York.
Want to learn an
Irish phrase or two?
The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell. These are essays written
in the 1940s-1950s but I'm including them because they're wonderful -- and they
are about New York.
