Two classmates at St. Ann’s become Willie’s friends. William Happy Johnston and Edward Buster Wilson. That’s how newspapers will most often refer to them. Everyone in Irish Town knows, Willie is the smart one, Happy is the handsome one, Eddie is the dangerous one. Everyone in Irish Town knows, you better watch your step around Eddie Wilson.
He used to be such a sweet kid, Irish Towners say. Then his aunt and uncle took ill. The lung sickness. They had to move in with Eddie’s family—it was either that or a pesthouse. In no time their doctor bills wiped out Eddie’s family. This was just after the Panic of 1907, the country spiraling into a Depression. Irish Town passed the hat, saved Eddie’s family from being put on the street, but Eddie felt more embarrassed than relieved. Next, Eddie’s old man lost his job as a driller. Again the neighborhood passed the hat, again Eddie cringed. Finally Eddie’s mother got the lung sickness, and there was no money left for a doctor. She and Eddie were especially close, neighbors whispered at the funeral.
Overnight, everyone agrees, Eddie changed. His royal blue eyes turned stormy. His eyebrows drew together into a permanent V. He looked wounded all the time, ready to fight. When the Italians started to encroach on Irish Town, Eddie decided it was his job to hold them off. He was forever muttering about them Eye-ties, them fuckin Dagos. Every other week he was in another hellish battle.
The first time they meet, Willie sees only Eddie’s courage, not his pain. Something about Eddie reminds Willie of polished, martial steel. Also, he seems equally loyal and lethal. And Eddie sees Willie through the same rosy lens. Assuming Willie’s many bruises are from street brawls, not his brothers, Eddie grants Willie his deepest respect. Willie, in need of a friend, doesn’t set Eddie straight.
Happy never had to earn Eddie’s respect. They’ve been friends since birth. Their families live across the street from each other, their fathers are thick. That’s why Happy is always laughing at Eddie’s bad temper, because he remembers the old Eddie. To Willie, laughing at Eddie seems like asking for trouble, like the lion tamers at the street circus putting their heads between those pink dripping jaws. But Eddie never snaps at Happy. Happy is so happy, so damn good looking, it’s hard to be mad at him.
Some say Happy was born happy. Others say he’s happy about the way he looks. Unbearably handsome. Unfairly handsome. Most agree that some percentage of his constant cheerfulness is traceable to his family’s nest egg. The Johnstons aren’t rich, but they’re among the few Irish Towners who don’t live on the rusty razor’s edge. Happy’s father got hit by a trolley years ago and the family won a settlement. Moreover, they were smart enough not to put their windfall in a bank, hundreds of which have gone bust.
Daddo asks Willie about his new friends. He’s heard Happy’s voice from the street. He says Happy sounds handsome.
He is, Willie says. He has black hair and black eyes and the girls in school all love him.
Daddo chuckles. Bless him. What I wouldn’t give. And the Wilson boy?
Yellow hair. Blue eyes. He gets in fights. And steals sometimes.
Be careful, Willie Boy. Sounds like he has a bit of the Old Nick in him.
The what?
The devil.
Willie doesn’t understand what Daddo means. Until an older boy down the block, Billy Doyle, gets pinched. Housebreaking, shoplifting, something minor. What makes it major, what makes it the talk of Irish Town, is that Billy has given up the names of his confederates. The cops beat the names out of Billy, but that’s no excuse. Not in Irish Town.
Right after the cops turn Billy loose, he sits on his stoop, his jaw broken, his left eye purple and running with pus, a rotted plum. He’s a pitiable sight, but people walk past all day long as if he’s not there. Even mothers pushing prams give him the standard Irish Town treatment for rats. Silence.
Eddie, who grew up with Billy’s brothers, and likes him, watches from up the street for hours. After a while he can’t take it anymore. He crosses, walks up to Billy, asks how he’s feeling.
Not so good, Eddie.
Eddie leans in, puts an arm on Billy’s shoulder, tells him to hang in there.
Billy looks up, smiles.
Eddie spits in his eye.
Weeks later Billy Doyle drinks iodine. There is no funeral.
Sutton sees a family walking along the street, dressed for church. Dad, Mom, two little boys. Father and sons are wearing identical suits. In the old days, Sutton says, his voice weak, the worst thing you could be was a Judas.
Reporter glances into the backseat. Are you referring, by any chance, to Arnold Schuster?
No.
That whole ratting thing, that whole Code of Brooklyn—where does that come from?
Sutton taps his chest. From in here kid. The deepest part. When I was ten years old the cops found a man lying in the middle of our street, a baling hook in his chest. He was a stevedore, got crossways with some of the boys on the waterfront. As the cops took him to the hospital they asked who did this to him. He told the cops to go fuck themselves. Those were his last words—imagine? Three days later the whole fuckin neighborhood turned out for his funeral, including the guys who offed him. There was talk of petitioning the city to name a street after him.
All because he didn’t name the guys who murdered him?
People are clannish, Sutton says. We didn’t become human a million years ago until we hopped out of trees and split into clans. You betray someone in your clan, you open the door to the end of the world.
But the people who murdered him were in his clan? Didn’t they betray him?
Ratting is a hundred times worse than murder.
It all sounds kind of—barbaric, Reporter says. It sounds like people making life harder than it needs to be.
No one is making anything kid. It’s just how human beings are built. Two thousand years later, why do we know the name of Judas and not the soldier who nailed Christ to the cross?
In 1913 Willie’s brothers move out. One gets a job at a factory in West Virginia, the other joins the Army. They give Willie one ferocious goodbye beating in the shadow of St. Ann’s, but Willie doesn’t feel it. Knowing they’ll be gone in a few days, knowing they won’t be part of his world anymore, makes the blows bounce off. But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Watching Big Brother and Bigger Brother saunter away, Willie picks up his hat, licks the blood from his lip, laughs.
Sutton kneels on the cobblestones at Sands and Gold. He looks as if he’s about to propose to Photographer and Reporter.
Mr. Sutton—what are you doing?
St. Ann’s, my grammar school, used to be right here.
A gust of wind sends a few loose newspaper pages fluttering like birds. Sutton pats the cobblestones. These are the same cobblestones I walked on as a kid, he says in a half whisper. Time—the subtle thief of youth.
What? Who’s a thief?
Time. Some dead fuckin poet said that. Father Flynn quoted it all the time. Made us memorize it. He probably stood right there, where you two are standing, saying that line, which is pure horseshit. Time is a thief, but he’s not subtle. He’s a thug. And youth is a little old lady walking through the park with a pocketbook full of cash. You want to avoid being like youth? You want to keep time from robbing you? Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Don’t let go. That’s what memory is. Not letting go.