NO SAFE PLACE Read online

  “It seems not well enough,” Liam said softly. “Tell me, do you knowwhy you fight?”

  Kerry did not want to answer. But this was Liam Dunn.

  “I hate bullies.”

  It hurt to say this, Kerry found. Something seemed to move in Liam’s eyes. “Your mother . . .”

  Kerry’s stomach clenched like a fist. “Your mother,” Liam repeated, “is afraid for you. Do you want that?”

  Kerry could not look at him. He felt Liam’s large hand on his shoulder. “If you want to fight, Kerry, then you need to learn how. There’s a place for that, a man who can teach you boxing.”

  Slowly, Kerry turned.

  Liam’s eyes met his. “What do you say?”

  Kerry nodded. It was as if Liam Dunn had willed it.

  “There’s a condition,” Liam said.

  Kerry felt himself stiffen. “What is it?”

  “That until you learn, there’ll be no fighting. For your mother’s sake.” Liam smiled now. “Not to mention your own.”

  As Kerry gazed at him, Liam stuck out his hand.

  Kerry took it. “Good,” Liam said. “We’ve made an arrangement.”

  He stood.

  Kerry knew that this was a signal—Liam Dunn had other things to do. They walked in silence to the school, Liam seemingly preoccupied.

  Liam stopped at the edge of the playground. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “There’s a favor you can do for me.”

  Kerry was surprised. “What?”

  “On Sundays, after Mass, I visit the bars to chat a little, see people who may want to see me. Some Sundays I may need you to help me remember things.”

  Kerry doubted this, and, had it been true, Liam had four sons of his own, helpers to do his bidding.

  “What about my father?” Kerry asked.

  Liam’s eyes grew hooded. “It’ll be fine with Michael,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

  * * *

  Every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, Kerry Kilcannon went to the CYO gym to box.

  It was a half-lit rabbit warren of rooms with pictures of forgotten Golden Glovers on the walls. Kerry felt small and out of place; when his coach, Jack Burns, asked him to hit the heavy bag, a fifty-pound leather sack hanging from the ceiling, Kerry uncorked a series of angry left-hand haymakers. At length, he missed entirely and the heavy bag, swinging toward him, knocked the ninety-five-pound twelve-year-old to the floor.

  “I guess you’re left-handed,” Jack said.

  Jack was large, gray-haired, and patient, with the tonsure of a monk and a placid expression to match. After three lessons, Kerry decided that a man who never raised his voice or lost his temper could know nothing about fighting. Only his promise to Liam kept Kerry there.

  It was hard. For the first three weeks, Jack tried to teach Kerry to fight as left-handers did: using the weaker arm, his right, to lead with a jab, then following with the left. But to Kerry, the left hand was his only strength; all he wanted to do was throw a wild left hook and try to decimate whatever stood in his way.

  Finally, Jack put Kerry in with another twelve-year-old, Terrence McCaw, a bit more experienced and far more disciplined. Kerry’s wild left never landed; the equally slight Terrence simply stepped inside and peppered Kerry’s face with jabs. Only the use of oversized gloves kept this humiliation from causing damage.

  Jack stepped in and took Kerry aside. “Getting powdered, aren’t you. Just like out in the world.”

  Kerry stared at the canvas.

  “Thing is,” Jack added, “you can do much better, especially with the left. But that would take practice, using your brain. So how do you want to go through life—as good as you can be, or as bad as you are now? Besides me,you’ll be the only one to know what you decide.”

  This stung Kerry. “I want to be better.”

  Jack nodded. “Then there’s a way. If you’ve the patience for it.”

  He began teaching Kerry to box like a right-hander.

  This meant that Kerry’s stance caused him to use the left hand not as a power punch but as a jab. Hour after hour, Jack stood Kerry in front of the heavy bag, while Kerry learned to fire short left hands, just to keep the swinging bag from hitting him.

  “One,” Jack would say. “One, two.”

  Whack, whack, whack.

  Kerry’s left jab became more like a piston—stiffer, stronger, quicker. Kerry felt his anger surge through each punch. Suddenly the rage he did not understand became his friend, his servant. He was tireless.

  This routine went on for months. One day, Kerry realized that he loved the smell, the feeling of his own sweat, of fighting through fatigue. He imagined Johnny Quinn in front of him.

  “I want to fight now,” Kerry told his coach.

  “Soon enough,” Jack told him. “First you need to do something with the right.”

  The something was simple. After throwing left jabs, moving right to keep away from his imagined opponent’s power punch, Kerry would step straight inside and deliver a right hand to the face. His right was weak, but Jack assured him that it would come.

  Finally, Jack let him go another round with Terrence McCaw.

  “You don’t hate him,” Jack said. “You want to win, is all.”

  The first time Terrence hit him, Kerry swung with a looping left hand. Terrence hit Kerry again and knocked him down.

  Tears of anger came to Kerry’s eyes. “Which Kerry is it?” he heard Jack ask.

  Kerry got up.

  As Terrence came in, eyes alight with the vision of another knockdown, Kerry made himself see not a boy but the heavy bag.

  Three straight left jabs—whack, whack, whack.

  Terrence blinked, off balance, and then Kerry threw his right.

  It was weak, a powder puff. But Terrence was so astonished that his feet tangled and he fell to the canvas.

  Kerry felt triumph and pride surge through him. He couldn’t wait for Terrence to get up.

  Jack Burns stepped between them. “Touch gloves, boys,” he said. “You’ve both learned something.” Pausing, he said to the bewildered Terrence, “Next time, you’ll have to watch for Kerry’s right. It’s coming on.”

  Kerry’s heartbeat slowed. He no longer wished to pummel Terrence McCaw. He wanted to practice his right.

  On his way home, Kerry realized that, outside the gym, he had not been in a fight for perhaps six months. He was keeping his word to Liam Dunn.

  * * *

  His other new activity was with Liam himself—going to the bars on Sundays.

  Kerry’s mother hated drink for what it did to Michael. To Kerry, bars were a dark mystery—the place where his moody father became the devil who seemed more furious every night he held Kerry hostage or, as his helpless son listened in mute agony, beat Mary Kilcannon.

  “The Irish disease,” Liam said of drunkenness. “But there’s more to the bars than that.”

  There was.

  After Mass on Sunday, they would be jammed by one o’clock. Liam called this the spiritual yielding to the temporal. The taverns served as community center, employment service, political intelligence system, and meeting place for single men and women. A politician who didn’t know the bars, Liam said, was a fool waiting to discover himself.

  So they would go to the bars, Liam and Kerry, sometimes with one or more of Liam’s sons—up and down and around South Orange Street, the main drag of Vailsburg, to Higgins’ Tavern; Lenihan & O’Grady’s; Cryan’s Tavern; Malloy’s Tavern; Lynch’s Ark Bar, run by a widow from Ireland; Paul’s Tavern; McGuinness’ Bar. Liam taught Kerry to remember names: in six months, he came to know twenty-five to thirty Irish tavern owners in Newark.

  “The Irish,” Liam explained to Kerry, “ran politics in Newark from the 1920s till just a few years ago, when the Italians elected Mayor Addonizio.” He paused, adding mildly, “The Italians won’t have quite so long a run.”

  It took Kerry a few more months to see what Liam meant.

  Kerry came to like the bars f
or their gregariousness, their Celtic memorabilia, their dark wood, the smell of beer, the sound of men and women laughing, the Makem Brothers on the jukebox, the large “family rooms” filled with tables, where Liam or other politicians would sometimes stand a party. Kerry listened, and he learned.

  Liam Dunn would join the crowd, let people have a private word if they wished. They often did, about sewer problems, the hope of a job for themselves or a cousin on the way from Ireland, the need of money for a promising boy at Seton Hall or a daughter whose leukemia had drained the family coffers. Liam never lied: he said only that he’d do what he could, then usually did more than he implied was possible. Liam remembered not only names and special days—he had a book for that—but the central themes and details of people’s lives and the lives they held dear, for which there was no book.

  Liam, Kerry decided, truly cared what became of people who needed help—people like Kerry. Kerry could never imagine Liam Dunn practicing his speeches like Jamie, though Liam could introduce a fellow politician as if the man was Bishop Sheen and, when he wished to, capture a room for himself. Once, when Kerry asked why Jamie was not here learning politics, Liam said only, “He’s a gifted boy, doing it his own way. He may go far, that one.”

  “But shouldn’t he be working with you?” Kerry asked.

  This made Liam smile. “Last thing Jamie needs or wants, Kerry. In many ways this is a bitsmall for the lad, and more power to him. Perhaps he can build us a highway or two.”

  Kerry puzzled over the meaning of this. But Liam Dunn was much quieter in private than in public, and what he said was sometimes elliptical. It was as if he had learned politics a person at a time.

  One day, walking home from Lynch’s Ark, Liam tried to explain.

  “People,” he said, “mostly worry about themselves and their own—money, health, what have you. But if they feel safe about that, then they’ll see ways they can help others. Including me.

  “That’s why this neighborhood of ours is such a fine thing, of which my job as councilman is a small part. Vailsburg’s a seamless web: the family, the church, the schools, clubs, sports—all the ways we know each other and have things in common. No one will ever starve; widows will have the slack taken up and their kids’ way paid. It all has little to do with me or anything in government. People areglad to help, because they know if their turn comes round they’ll be taken care of.” They stopped in front of Kerry’s white frame house. “Of course, it helps that we’re all Irish. Or Italian.”

  Kerry nodded. Something in Liam’s tone reminded him of his comment about the Italians: that their day would be short.

  “So,” Liam asked abruptly, “you’ve been with me all these months. What are people most worried about?”

  Suddenly Kerry saw it—the problem people muttered about after their third beer, the way his father spewed hatred at the foot of Kerry’s bed—and knew that Liam believed everything would change.

  “Black people,” Kerry said.

  Liam nodded. “Blacks. And it’s a fool who thinks there’s anything for it. Or should be.”

  Kerry was quiet. “Da hates them,” he said at last.

  For a time, Liam said nothing. Then he asked, “Would you like to stay the night with us? Mrs. Dunn would be glad of your company.”

  Kerry’s heart rose. He looked at Liam’s ruddy face with a kind of love. Then he thought of his mother, alone in the darkened house, waiting for his father to come home. He could not leave her there; his father seemed worse each month.

  Kerry did not know how to say this. He stared at a crack in the sidewalk.

  He felt Liam watch him, then touch his shoulder. “Sure,” Liam said. “Things to do.”

  He did not ask again.

  * * *

  Michael Kilcannon emitted a breath so deep and shuddering that Kerry could smell the whiskey even as he felt the hatred—as clearly as he knew that, even more than usual, something was terribly wrong.

  “Niggers,” Michael repeated. “They came near to ruining this city in the riots, and now one of the fooking monkeys wants to bemayor . So they’ll burn the city again, use it to do bar-be-cue. And then they’ll barbecueme .”

  Kerry did not understand what his father meant about himself. But he could remember the riots, by smell and sound. He had been nine. The riots began with an incident between police and blacks in the West Ward: through the open screen of his bedroom window, Kerry could smell the smoke, hear the sirens. An older boy, nearer South Orange Avenue, swore to Kerry the next day that he had seen flames dance against the night sky and thought the city would burn to the ground.

  For the next five nights, Kerry listened in his bed to the wail of sirens, the repeated popping that was surely gunshots. Though untouched, Vailsburg felt eerie, besieged: the bars were closed; the doors were locked; and the patrol cars were everywhere, packed with three or four cops, their shotguns sticking out open rear windows, reminding Kerry of an aircraft carrier. And then one morning all was silent again, and Newark was never the same.

  A few days later, his father took Kerry for a ride in his squad car. There were still groups of blacks loitering near looted, burned-out shops. The majestic city hall—its steps flanked by fierce gold eagles, its airy mass topped by a glistening gold dome—was a focus of city history and civic pride, the prize contended for by warring factions of ethnic whites. Kerry was shocked to see some lots around it reduced to charred shells.

  “This is what these animals do,” Michael said. “And they’ll do it again unless we stop them.”

  Kerry could see, clear enough. It made him angry.

  “But youwill stop them?” he asked his father.

  Michael Kilcannon’s face had been a grim line . . .

  “You see,” he told Kerry now, “two nights ago, I shot one—robbing a store. Nineteen years old, and a blessing he died before killing someone worthwhile. The friends of this Gibson man, the nigger who would be king—it’s not enough they want their own to skip over whites and make sergeant before they canread .” Suddenly Michael leaned across the bed and jerked Kerry by the T-shirt until his face was inches away. “They’re saying your father’s amurderer . . .”

  Kerry felt himself shiver. He could imagine his father and his close-mouthed partner, a bottle of whiskey in the back of their patrol car, finding a black man in an empty store. Even now, his father’s eyes were like gray-blue bullets.

  “They’re saying your father’s a murderer,” Michael repeated, “and your fooking friend Liam won’t touch it . . .”

  * * *

  When Liam Dunn decided to support the black mayoral candidate, Kenneth Gibson, against Hugh Addonizio, Kerry could not understand.

  There were murmurs in the bars, hard faces, threats on Liam’s telephone to murder his sons and give his daughter to a gang of blacks. Liam went about his affairs, taking no overt notice of the fact that business at Dunn’s Tavern was off, that fewer people spoke to him, that a popular ward leader, Paul Slattery, was making the Sunday rounds to talk of running against Liam when his council seat came up.

  To Kerry, the bars felt like a gauntlet. But he stuck by his godfather out of loyalty and anger at how some people shunned him. Kerry would apologize to no one.

  At the end of one tense Sunday, Liam took Kerry to the same bench in Ivy Hill Park.

  “I hear the boxing goes better,” Liam said. “School, too—no more Ds, and not a fight to your name.” He patted Kerry roughly on the shoulder. “All that, and you begin to understand politics as well. No telling how well you can do.”

  Thinking of Jamie, and then the hostile faces in the bars, Kerry clenched his fists. “I’ll never run for anything.”

  “No need to,” Liam answered. “You’ll find the thing that’s right for you.” He paused for a moment. “But, about me, don’t think that what you’re seeing is all there is. It’s just something that peopleneed me to go through.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re scared,
so they’re angry, and they want me to tell them it will all go away—the blacks slowly moving into Vailsburg as friends talk about leaving, the crime they feel spreading, the loss of their own power, which began well before they noticed. But it would be stupid to tell them that hating blacks is an answer. Let alone a program.” He turned to Kerry. “Telling the truth when it’s hard is what political capital is for. Unless you want to be an errand boy.”

  But how can blacks be worth it?Kerry thought. Finally, he said, “It seems like people hate you.”

  Liam looked at him. “You don’t hate me, do you?”

  Firmly, Kerry shook his head.

  As Liam stood, restless, Kerry sensed the pressure beneath his godfather’s air of calm. “Do the right thing, Kerry, and things tend to come out right in the end. But the first is the only part you control. And sometimes going to bed square with yourself is a day-to-day kind of thing.” For the first time, Liam smiled. “Of course, some of these fools can’t count. Like Slattery.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That I may need black votes going forward, but blacks also need some of mine. And that the victory margin Paul Slattery thinks he’s tallying is moving to the suburbs.” Liam’s eyes were distant, sad. “Don’t know there’s any man can stop it—me included. Your brother James is well out of this. But then I wonder if he didn’t see it coming.”

  “What?”

  “The end of things, this life we have in Vailsburg. Slow but sure.” He paused again. “Not a burden Jamie should have on his mind, running for state senate in Princeton. A nice, safe, liberal place like that.”

  Suddenly Kerry had the sense that Liam had talked to James, and recently. In the next instant, he understood that a policeman father found to have murdered a black youth not only would make life terrible for Kerry and his mother but could do Jamie’s career great harm. And then the last piece fell into place. To his father’s arrogant pleasure, the most vocal members of the black community had suddenly dropped their demand for his indictment. Liam’s new allies . . .

  Kerry clutched Liam by the sleeve of his coat. “Didyou save my father?”

  For a time, Liam appraised Kerry with what, beneath the heavy lids, seemed a very intense interest.