Read The Banished Children of Eve for Free Online Page B

ringleader’s voice. “It ain’t gonna do you no good. Your days of takin’ the bread outta the mouths of workingmen is over.”
    â€œGet out of the way, Paddy bastard,” the black man said. “I’m givin’ you fair warning.”
    The scuff of heavy boots drew closer. The black man fired twice. Dunne threw himself against the wall. The ringleader and another man lay on the ground, writhing and screaming. Suddenly, the police charged down Catherine, flailing with their sticks. The front row of the mob offered resistance, tossing stones and bottles, hitting back with their baling hooks, but soon they broke and scattered into alleyways and buildings.
    The Metropolitans formed a cordon around the blacks and the two wounded men, a ring that also caught Dunne and several dockworkers. A sergeant of police disarmed the black man. He had the wounded men carried away.
    The old woman leaned out the window across the street. She pointed at the sergeant. “May God and His Holy Mother damn you to hell, Frankie O’Donnell! May They turn Their backs on you at the hour of your death! May They close Their ears to your pleas for water as the flames of hell devour your flesh!”
    Sergeant O’Donnell walked about as if he didn’t hear her. Finally, when she didn’t stop, he told two policemen, “Go over there and get that witch out of that window.” They ran toward her building.
    â€œYou bloody whore, O’Donnell! Selling your own into slavery, defending niggers while Irish women and children go without bread, you and the likes of you, the Noonans of this world! You’re not worth my spit!” She let go a shower of it on the two policemen who were forcing open the downstairs door.
    She shook her fist. “God’s curse on ye all!” The two policemen suddenly appeared behind herand pulled her away from the window.
    O’Donnell ordered the police to take the blacks back to the Bowery. Two of the dockworkers refused to give their names, so he had them handcuffed and sent along with the blacks. He looked Dunne up and down. He had a scowl on his face.
    â€œDo I know you?” he said.
    â€œNot likely,” Dunne said. “I’m a Brooklyn man.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?”
    â€œTook the ferry over last night to go to a minstrel show, and you know how things are, Sergeant, one thing led to another and I ended up staying the night. Just coming to the ferry when I got caught in these proceedings.”
    O’Donnell squinted as he studied Dunne’s face. “We ever met?”
    â€œNot that I remember.”
    Dunne had been arrested only twice. First time, he was thirteen. Had flown the Orphan Asylum the year before. Was pinched for trying to lift some rat-nose’s watch while standing next to him on the Broadway coach. Just a silly kid. He would have been sent back to the Asylum and been out again in a month if the Children’s Aid Society hadn’t gotten custody and shipped him west. Next time was on the day after the great battle in Paradise Square, the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies in alliance against the Bowery Boys, the Paddies versus the True Americans for control of the East Side, the last stand of the rat-noses before the Irish sent them packing and claimed dominion. July 1857. A great day it was until the militia arrived, sealed off the streets, and the Metropolitans went door-to-door, dragging out suspects. He couldn’t remember the face of the policeman who had found him in Tom Cahill’s cellar, pulled him by his hair up the stairs. Perhaps O’Donnell had been the man.
    â€œWhat’s your line of business?” O’Donnell said.
    â€œI sell tombstones at the Green-Wood Cemetery. Maybe you’ve family there, maybe that’s where we’ve met.”
    â€œNone of mine is buried in Brooklyn, thank you.”
    On the northwest cornerof South and Catherine streets, a small mob had