The Streel Read online

  Author of the Claire Watkins Mysteries

  MARY LOGUE

  a The

  a

  Streel

  A Deadwood Mystery

  The Streel

  The

  S T R E E L

  A Deadwood Mystery

  M A R Y L O G U E

  University of Minnesota Press

  Minneapolis

  London

  Copyright 2020 by Mary Logue

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published by the University of Minnesota Press

  111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

  Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520

  http://www.upress.umn.edu

  library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Logue, Mary, author.

  The streel / Mary Logue.

  Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019027192 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0859-1 (hc) | ISBN

  978-1-5179-0860-7 (pb)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3562.O456 S77 2020 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027192

  Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper

  The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.

  25 24 23 22 21 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  streel: from the Irish straoill, which means

  a slattern, a slovenly woman, a harlot

  The Crossing

  As we’re crossing over the deep to the other side,

  Lord of patience, keep hold of our arm.

  While we fear the strong wave,

  Mary, keep watch for the swell.

  — Irish prayer

  1

  Galway, Ireland

  May 1877

  W hen I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended

  our own wake.

  Our family was in mourning, as they were forced to send us off to

  America. All the day and night, people came into the house. Seamus lis-

  tened to stories with father and the men, and they all acted brave and

  talked of the wonderful things to do and see in America. Seamus paid

  them little mind. But the women wailed and worried as if we were dead

  and gone and talked of how we would be missed. They all of them talked

  about us as if we were not there.

  While I was scared to my bones, I held myself very tight together. I

  knew this was my chance to make good. I would not end up like my aunt

  Mary, who was a widow, left roaming the streets of Galway, or like Biddy Rafferty, whose husband beat her when he wasn’t too far gone with the

  drink, and I never wanted a child of my own to die like my sister Kathleen, at age two from the cholera. And certainly, as much as I loved her, I did not want to end up like my dear mother, whose heart had been broken

  too many times, having watched two of her children die and now two of

  us leaving. She had my younger sister Mary by her side and the two boys, Sean and Peter.

  As the potato blight had struck again, the English landlord of the es-

  tate where we lived and worked determined he must rid himself of tenants.

  Not enough he had taken our land— no Irish could own land— but when

  these terrible times struck, he sent us away so he wouldn’t have to feed us.

  He gave Mother the money to send Seamus and myself away to America.

  3

  4

  The Streel

  My mother blessed him as if he did it for our own good. In part of my

  heart I did also. But in another part of me, which is dark and deep and I hope God never knows of it, I cursed him terrible for the tearing apart of my family.

  Another famine had come upon the country. My father said it was not

  as bad as the great one, the Black ’47, but still people were starving in the ditches. And there was talk of a terrible plague starting up in Limerick, as if we Irish had not endured enough. Our landlord claimed he had little

  food to give us, so we gathered seaweed to eat and the few slimy pota-

  toes that were left in the field. With two fewer mouths to feed, our family would be better off.

  So many of our neighbors had fled to America that, as their stories

  came back to us, I felt I knew the country. I was often asked to read the letters home because I had some schooling. Mother took education very

  seriously. She herself had learned to read in English from her father. Not that she had much time with fieldwork and the children.

  Father spoke Irish most of the time, but Mother insisted we children

  speak in English. She said it was the only way we’d get on in the world, for the English ruled our land.

  The letters from America told of hard work— scullery maid, laundry

  worker, serving girl— but also of the money that followed. I kept remarking on the many opportunities for young girls. I knew that if those girls could do it, I— with my learning and not half bad looks— would prosper.

  Maybe I would do it by marrying a rich man, maybe I would find a way to

  start my own business and make enough money to bring over my whole

  family.

  After all, my name was Brigid, named for the goddess of poetry, mid-

  wife to Mary, and the saint with the holy mantle. She was a protector of all that was wise and good.

  My mother had always said that I was brighter than the moon in the

  sky.

  In many ways, the day of my wake was when my life began. I had come

  into womanhood only months before. As she showed me how to care for

  myself during that time of the month, Mother talked to me of men. She

  said, “Watch out for the charming tongue. They will woo you and they will

  The Streel

  5

  want you. But if you give in to them, they will leave you worse off. Before you do anything, pray to St. Brigid.”

  When we left the next day, my mother cried as if the heavens had bro-

  ken and were pouring through her. I could hardly stand it. Even Seamus

  looked away. My father was still smel ing of the wicked potcheen he brewed himself. But he tugged on my hair like he always did when I pleased him

  and called on God in Irish, “Dia linn! ”

  When I stood at the stern of the ship and watched the land slip away,

  falling into the stone- cold sea, I wondered if I would ever return. A mist covered my green Ireland and I watched until my eyes blurred over. I

  watched until only the spires of the cathedral poked at the sky. Then they too vanished. We were to sea.

  I crossed myself, said a short prayer for my travels. I was going to this new country for a better life. I swore I would find it.

  Even though Seamus acted as if I was a bother, I could tell he was glad

  to have me with him on the trip. He patted me on the head and said, “We

  will be back with bags of gold.”

  I laughed. I liked the idea. But I never believed in the gold.

  Soon, I saw the air was clearing. Blue sky stretched out all around us.

  A good sign. I felt into the pocket of my cape and touched the small packet of dirt that mother had put there.

  “Don’t forget Ireland,” she had said. “Don’t forget us.”

  On that first day to sea, Seamus brou
ght two boys to meet me. My brother made friends easily.

  “This is my sister, Brigid. She’s the smartest cailin in all the country-side round Galway.” With those kind words, he waved in the direction of

  his two new friends. “Paddy and Billy.”

  “Dia dhuit!” they said in greeting to me.

  “Good day,” I answered. I would not speak Irish to them. We were on

  our way to America.

  The two of them were from farther south, near Donegal where there

  had been much unrest of recent times, the people revolting against the

  English who owned all our land. Paddy spoke of the Molly Maguires, a

  6

  The Streel

  secret society trying to take the land back for the Irish, tel ing stories of their daring.

  The older, taller one’s full name was Padraic Hennessy. He had black

  hair that hung over his face like a curtain and steel blue eyes. For all that he had a sweet smile. But his eyes did not smile. Closer to twenty, Padraic had worked cutting peat to save money for the passage. Of the two he was the quieter, but his mind seemed to be always working.

  Billy was the younger and smaller, the same age as Seamus, with bright

  red hair and light blue eyes. When he smiled, his eyes sparkled like the sea.

  He smiled often. I’d have bet he was a good dancer at the ceili. He boasted that his uncle had lined up work for them with the railroad. He bragged of the money that he would make in this new land.

  When Billy and Paddy left us, I turned back to Seamus. “Do they re-

  ally have work?”

  “Oh, they talk big, but they’re just poor exiles like us. We none of us

  have anything for sure.”

  In the cramped quarters of steerage, where all the poor travelers stayed, I had the upper bunk to a woman named Maureen Kelly. She had a sweet

  young daughter named Kate, who was after turning two. They slept to-

  gether in the lower bunk. Kate had a face as wide and as dear as an angel.

  She could say, “mam” and, “da,” and she learned to say, “Bigid.” Maureen was going to join her husband in Brooklyn she said. She told me that was a town very near New York. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two years.

  “The babe’s had no father,” she crooned, rocking the sweet rosy thing

  in her arms.

  Over the next few days, the baby grew sick. The little girl could keep

  down no food, crying all night long. The second day, I went to fetch the doctor. But the steerage captain, Mr. Vance, stopped me.

  “There’s a child very sick,” I told him.

  Mr. Vance looked like an ox. His shoulders were broad under his fine

  trimmed jacket and his face was wide, with a heavy beard covering his

  The Streel

  7

  chin. His voice was low and deep. There had been complaints about him

  already among the Irish. I knew he would not plead our case.

  “One of the passengers in first class is not wel . You’ll have to wait.”

  So I waited, leaning up against the railing of the ship and watched the

  water. A shark followed in the wake, his fin cutting through the sea like a knife. The sailors told me it was a bad sign to see one stick so close to the ship. I watched the sky turn dark and the ocean black, and still I waited.

  Billy and Paddy came up and asked me why I was sitting there so long.

  “There’s a baby sick. I’m afraid for it,” I said.

  “Don’t say that so loud. No one wants to hear that about any sickness.

  It could run through the boat.” Billy shushed me.

  “I’m waiting for the doctor.”

  “I’ll go fetch him,” said Billy.

  But he too was turned back by Mr. Vance.

  All through the night, I waited, from time to time running down to my

  bunk to check on the child and Maureen. Then I would go back to waiting

  on the stairs, sleeping what little I could sitting up.

  Toward dawn, Mr. Vance came strol ing up to me. “I would go to bed if I

  were you. In fact I’d take you to bed myself. You’re a toothsome little wench.”

  His tone frightened me, but I ignored it as best I could. “You would let a baby die too, I see.” I readied myself to slip down the steerage stairs if he made a move toward me.

  He turned on his heels, then came back and said quietly. “I have no

  control over this. They have the money to pay for the doctor’s attendance.”

  “Can’t he just come for a moment? The poor thing is wasting away. It’s

  all but col apsed.”

  “Tell me the symptoms.”

  When I told of the color of the child and her labored breathing, Mr.

  Vance seemed shaken.

  “Don’t go near to that baby. I’ll try to hurry the doctor.”

  Late morning the doctor finally came. He checked on the child and

  told Maureen to keep her warm and force- feed her if need be, but he didn’t sound hopeful. He ordered me to sleep away from them. I knew then that

  what little Kate had was contagious.

  8

  The Streel

  I said a prayer for the sick as my father had taught me. All my life my

  father had told me the prayers to say for everything we did: prayers for waking in the morning, prayers for lighting the fire, prayers for praise, and prayers for the dead. I hoped in my heart that I would not have to say the latter anytime soon.

  After my long vigil, I slept hard that night on the floor. Even though

  the planks were hard and cold beneath me, I slept until I no longer knew where I was.

  When I awoke, dear, sweet Katy had joined the angels she so resem-

  bled. The women wrapped her tiny body in a sheet. The captain said a few words and the keening went up from the women. Maureen shrieked and

  tried to follow her child as the bundle was dropped into the sea. The men held her back by the arms. I remembered my own sister’s death and a sadness filled me like the sea.

  On the estate so many Irish babies died before they could even walk.

  My mother’s words came to me, “If a child makes it to the fifth year, then it might live to see its own children born.”

  The ocean opened and closed, and Katy was gone. But I prayed that

  her small white soul would fly to heaven like a dove to the sun.

  Maureen stayed curled up in her bunk and cried. I brought her soup

  but she would not eat. She said she wished she were dead. I reminded her that her husband was waiting for her. Surely there was some good there.

  “Perhaps he can give me another child,” she said, and tasted her soup.

  Was this enough? I wondered. I swore that I would have more than

  children as riches.

  Halfway across the ocean, the weather stayed fine and the steamship made good speed. The fever had not spread and we were all breathing more

  easily.

  At night the sea glowed. The phosphorescence we moved through

  made the water shimmer, the sailors told me ’twas nothing but a tiny sea creature. I hung over the side of the ship, enthralled by the light that rose from such darkness.

  The Streel

  9

  An older man pulled out his fiddle one night and played at the end of

  the hallway. A few people started to dance. God knows, we needed the merriment. The children jumped to the music and people tapped the floor and swung their feet. When another song began, the fiddle quieted and a dark woman wrapped in a shawl stood and sang “The Wearing of the Green”:

  Then if the colour we must wear be England’s cruel red,

  Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed.

  You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,

  But ’twill take root and flourish there, t
hough under foot ’tis trod.

  After her voice faded away, there was not a dry eye in the crowd.

  The bottles of liquor came out and moved from hand to hand. Hap-

  pier music and more liquor put that somber mood away. I saw that Seamus

  was in the drinking line. I hoped he would not follow in the path of our father.

  I closed my eyes and imagined I was back in Ireland, going to a cross-

  roads dance. Then I felt my hand grabbed and smiling Billy pulled me to

  the floor. Just as I had thought, he was a fine dancer.

  Seamus’s stance grew crooked with a bottle hanging from his hand.

  Paddy, standing off to the side, watched it all but showed little. I longed to know what it would take to make him smile.

  One night I hid in the shelter of a life boat until I could not keep my eyes open any longer. The night was stormy, but I couldn’t stand the sickly

  dead- meat smell of steerage and the confines of the bunks.

  Just as I was about to take myself to bed, Mr. Vance stepped out on

  deck. I huddled closer to the canvas, but he saw me move.

  He came toward me slowly, like a dog approaching a bower of baby

  rabbits, straight on to snap their necks. But when he stopped before me, he was very civil.

  “Not a good night for taking the air.” He laughed, a heartless laugh,

  that of a bully used to getting his way.

  10

  The Streel

  Trying not to show my fear, I stood up. “Then I will take myself off.”

  He stepped right in front of me, which brought my face up next to his

  chest. He made three of me easily. His large hand reached out and cupped my chin. “Not so fast.”

  So quickly he grabbed me that I had no time to prepare myself. In a

  moment he had a hand on my mouth and one wrapped around my neck.

  He bent over and his heavy breath whispered in my ear. “It will be easier if you give in. I will show you what a man can do for a woman.”

  He pushed me into the hull of the boat and came in on top of me. I

  knew the Virgin Saints fought to their death, and while I have never been that holy, I figured I could learn something from them. I struggled away from him, but he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back down. Lifting my skirts up, he ripped away my undergarments.