The City of Chicago

“Oi that you Fitzy?”

“Tis! Who else would be stopping in at this time? Damned cold outside.”

“Gread leat! Put a log on that there fire then if you’re cold.” 

Three others sat around the wood table, unadorned except for a dusty bottle, as Michael Fitzpatrick dusted snow off his hat and jacket in the doorway of the low room. He tossed a log on the fire as instructed before taking up one of the empty seats. He mopped the last vestiges of snow from his dusty brown hair, melt dripping down his brow. The lines running from the corners of his eyes betrayed a man who was in actuality much younger. “Sorry lads, boss put the screw in.”

“Bahh sod them,” Daniel O’leary said. The oldest of the group, he leaned back in his chair, belly extended and gray beard and hair tumbling flat over his suspenders. 

Across from Michael, Patrick Flannery kicked his boots up on the table. “Thought we were done with the bosses? Wasn’t that part of coming here?”

“Off with that you! That’s only you that’s rid of them. May we all be blessed by your presence oh holy one.” Daniel pushed the boots off his table, drawing a smirk from Patrick. 

Michael tried to smile but it was impossible for him to remove the sullen look from his dark eyes; God played cruel jests on some men. Michael poured himself a drink from the bottle. There had been more, once, seated around the fire in a very different place, and while they’d all lost, none lost more than Michael. 

“Better a piss boss than laying railroad again. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, I’m never again cutting through a forest for a damned train,” Michael said. 

The last of the four, Finnegan O’Donnell stared off into the embers. His amber eyes almost looked on fire. They matched the color of the whiskey untouched on the table before him. 

“What’s wrong with you, lad?” Michael asked before taking a strong drink that warmed his chest. Talking felt better than silence. 

“It’s fucking cold out.” 

The other three laughed heartily. “You say like it’s never cold out when winter rolls in. Maybe you haven’t noticed but it is December," Daniel chuckled, his chest reverberating. The laugh died as quickly as it came.  

Finnegan dropped his head, “so fucking cold.”

Michael opened his mouth, but Daniel gave him a look and a raised hand, enough to silence the response. Instead he turned across the table, “so Patrick, how’s it you got yourself done with the bosses? Last I checked you put your boots on and walk out onto the streets every morning, same as us.”

Daniel nodded along eagerly, happy to draw the conversation somewhere else than Finnegan’s gloom. Patrick took a drink, twiddling his thumbs as he placed the glass back on the table. “Easy lads, I don’t have a boss, I have a partner. Good Mick him. Real good Mick.”

“Come now, they all tear us down enough with talk like that. Don’t mean you need to as well,” Michael said. 

Patrick just shrugged. “Good business in law there is. People need good barristers around and people like having one of their own.”

“One of their own…” Finn said to the fire. “Can we even call ourselves that in a place like this? Who the hells are we even anymore?”

“I think I’ve had enough of that over there. It’s sad enough outside,” Michael said. 

“Put me out on the street then.”

“Come now. You know I won’t do that.” Daniel said. 

Finnegan sat for a few moments. He turned ever so slightly from the fire and took a drink. “Got a letter today, from back home.”

“Go on then, what did it say?” Daniel asked cautiously. 

“Two more graves at St. Eunan’s. I’ve lost count at this point…” Finn said as the others nodded their heads in solemn understanding. They’d all read the same letter even if the names change. 

“My apologies, my friend, and my condolences. Was it famine, flood, or just God’s call?” Michael asked, leaning forward. 

“Didn’t say. Does it matter?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” 

“Best to die under that green sky, may it one day be free. Take solace in that,” Patrick said. 

“Then go back and grab yer rifle if you’re so eager to pass beyond this earth,” Finn snapped. 

“I give my money to the cause. I do what I can, but I have no great eagerness to die when living is so much more preferable.” Patrick said, stiffening. 

“Then you’re a coward. We’re all cowards here.”

“Come now, that’s harsh isn’t it?” Michael said, calmly. 

“We ran. All of us. Everything goes to hell and we ran. For what? To be beaten and broken and kicked to the gutter? Bahh.” He finished the whiskey in one gulp. “They were me own flesh and blood! I shared my mother’s womb with her and her boy shared my name! Now they’re gone and never will I read her gravestone let alone see her again. All for what? All for what?”

”I know lad.” Daniel said. His face had gone a shade of red that had nothing to do with the fire. Such hidden thoughts spoken aloud had that effect on a man. 

“At least we’ll all be together again. One day at the end, we’ll be together again,” Michael said. 

”Sod the end! They could have lived! How much grain rots on the docks? How many fields lay unworked because men have no strength in their arms? She didn’t need…” He broke down, head hung low. 

They all understood. It’s why they sat in this darkened hall long after the rest of the revelers disappeared or never showed up in the first place. Some days it was better to cry alone in the wee hours of night where none of the strangers in this foreign land might hear you. Some nights it was best to do it amongst those who were also alone, for on such a dark winter upon foreign shores such a feeling was as ingrained as the cold itself. 

They sat there when the nights got too long it felt as though the days disappeared over the horizon as quickly as the cliffs did on their fateful journeys clawing seas. 

O’Leary filled Finn’s unattended glass, then filled all the others in kind. 

“It might not be all bad, but it isn’t home,” Patrick said, much to Michael’s surprise. Of all of them, America had been kindest to Patrick Flannery. 

“Loss is part of life, such it is. God bless us for company and warmth.” Michael raised his glass, thinking of a land far beyond the dirt and dusty streets beyond, beyond the hills and waves. Finn still had a family here to walk home to on the cold winter night whereas Michael…well. His was gone, long gone, left on a dock over a dying horizon with no money for post. He arrived in New York as little more than an orphan. It was something he was reminded of every morning when he woke, bed occupied by another or not.  

Orphan he may be, but here he sat with glass and fire roaring, scrambling for something resembling peace amongst men doing the same. That was worth something. “We’re here now. That’s all we can do.”

“Come now?” Finn said to Michael, an edge in his voice.

“We’re here now. That’s all I’m saying.”

“They don’t even want us here,” Finn said. 

Face red, Daniel disappeared behind the bar, empty bottles rattling before returning with another.

“They don’t but I don’t mind it. Makes us all sit together, ehh?” Michael said to the flames. “They’ll come around one day. Or perhaps they won’t and if that be that then we’ll keep sitting here together.” 

Finn turned and for a moment, Michael thought suddenly his friend was going to leap across the table to throttle him. Instead, ever so slowly, Finn’s frown disappeared. Not quite a smile replaced it, but the change was enough. Maybe it was each other, maybe it was the amber whiskey, or maybe it was just the fire, but it didn’t feel so cold anymore on their little dusty patch of home.  

From somewhere unseen, Daniel produced his fiddle, plucking each string in turn before starting off a slow but happy tune. 

They drank and sang until the wee hours of the morning. “To the hills of Donegal! May we one day again look upon them,” Daniel said after a flourish of his bow.

“To the hills!” The men responded in kind. 

They drank deeply until all the vestiges of the cold Chicago winter disappeared entirely. 

Daniel O’Leary leaned back and patted his portly belly, cheeks still red but eyes heavy, “well, last orders then? Need to close up for the night, though suppose it’s really morning now ehh?”

They looked around at one another, those who’d all crossed the long and lonely sea, their number whittled down to four. 

“Aye one more for the cold and the road.” 

They finished the last taoscán of the night before disappearing into the streets. 

***

A little before the men finished with their evening, two gentlemen passed outside. Two men who, strictly speaking given the hour and address, should not have been passing, yet they were all the same. The slow fiddle notes wafted out of the room followed by the clinking of glass, all backlit by a roaring fire, chasing away the cold Chicago night. 

“Bahh, always so loud. Always so loud,” Mr. R. J. Bucholz said, pulling up his scarf. 

“Sie sind Snicklefritz!,” Mr. Shultz spat before switching to English. “Can never be like civilized people, them Bogtrotters.” 

“Right you are, my friend. Turn up a cheek. In time, they’ll be forgotten. Such base kinds…This is our city through and through. They won’t despoil it.”

“Right you are. Right you are.” 

“Ein Bier? It’s damned cold.”

“Ja, ein Bier." 

The pair disappeared into the cold Chicago night. 

***

Emily leaned against the churchyard fence, a line of black soot and gray dust leaving a line on her White Sox hoodie. It was peaceful there, and while at first glance she was…curious as to why people would have a picnic next to a graveyard, she now fully understood. No honking of cars, no rushed conversations, just laughs and birdsong, something so very different from her apartment by the L. 

She traced the weathered lines of the nearest grave marker beyond the fence, far older than any words she’d ever read, at least that she’d ever read before this trip. Not that it should have been surprising. Home noted its history in decades, not centuries, while such sites, such stories filled every crevice of his country. When she dreamed of taking her first trip across the pond, she imagined her world getting lifted and crushed by some French boy on summer holiday, not by a long-gone stranger’s gravestone. Alas…

And this was only their third day. 

“There you are! What did your mom say about running off?”

“Hey now, I’ve been here the whole time,” Emily said to Anna as her friend appeared, coffee in hand. 

“Spooky cemetery ooOoo,” Anna said, taking a sip of her coffee with a face that said she wasn’t quite sure if she preferred it over their last Starbucks. 

“Graveyard.” 

“What now?” 

“Technically it’s attached to a church so it’s a graveyard, not a cemetery.”

Anna laughed, “you nerd.”

Emily shrugged and nodded toward the weathered grave marker. “What do you think her story is?” 

“Hmm Kathleen O...something. 1847. Who knows, could be anything. People used to die from the weirdest shit. Glad I live in a world with modern medicine, and like showers.”

“Suppose you’re right.” 

Above, the bells of St. Eunan’s clanged the hour. 

“Let’s go find a pub, Shultzy.” 

“You know we’re supposed to go hike some cliffs tomorrow and it’s eleven AM right?”

“Yeah but when in Rome, er Ireland and all that. I want to hear some fiddle!” 

With one final look back, Emily etched the gravestone and the lady named Kathleen who once walked these streets on a similarly beautiful Irish day into her memory. 

The pair disappeared back into the streets.

A/N:

If this one gains any traction (AKA any of you fine people tip me for it, or if Vocal blesses me with a gilded badge), I might do a "story behind the story" piece.

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