1842 Chapter One Deep In The Cold Heartland Of Pennsylvania

1842 CHAPTER ONE Deep in the cold heartland of Pennsylvania mining country, draining into the mouth of the murky Susquehanna, nestled in the rocky, ridged mountains of the Appalachians, there is Schuylkill County. Huddled masses of textured red, blue, and pale olive shales defiantly keep watch like ancient gods, fine-grained sandstones the proud relics of once-mighty kingdoms long since conquered by civilization. Coal fields, blackened with precious anthracite, scar the somber greenery, and generations of poor Irish and German immigrant laborers have sweated in their bottomless mine shafts and white-hot smelting pots, cutting deep into the soft earth, stripping naked her bony carbonate ore. Pottsville is the county seat, and to its west is Minersville, a scant village of a few thousand souls. Harsh is life in Minersville. Time-worn women wash endless laundry in the numbing outdoors. Ragged children play in the soggy, disheveled streets. Shabby horse and carriages ceaselessly relay coal from the fields. Stained factory stacks cough poisonous smoke into the colorless sky. Almost daily, an ill-fated workman is injured or killed in the shafts. A mother knows not if her son will return unharmed, or return at all. Wives are made widows. Children are made fatherless. In one of several humble brown cottages on Quality Street lives Thomas James Fitzpatrick and his family. Thomas has an oldest son, of whom he is proud. This is my story. On a bleak and bitter winter day in 1822 I was born, the fourteenth of February. The haggard sun rose and fell the same as he had on the thirteenth of February. My father worked in the mine from sunrise till sundown as he had on the thirteenth of February. My mother, heavy with child as she was, still worked the kitchen, still baked bread and washed sheets and carried water as she had on the thirteenth of February. I arrived suddenly and without patience, forcing myself unforgivingly into the world, filling my aching lungs with as much cold air as I could swallow. I cried. My mother cried. My father cried. Quality Street cried, nay, rejoiced, for Tom Fitzpatrick had a firstborn son. My father held a feast in my honor, as his father had for him, and as his grandfather had for his father. Every dusty inhabitant of Minersville seemed present, celebrating this marvelous occasion. For the Irish, a birth and a death are the most important events in life. You really only see all your neighbors, all together, when someone is born and when someone is dead. What you do in between coming and going is your own business, but your friends have the right to welcome you at the start of your life and bid you farewell at the end. My father gave countless toasts, pint after pint of blustery Irishman boastings. When my son grows to be a man he will would be double the man his father is, if Tom Fitzpatrick has any say in the matter. My mother beamed, glowing with happiness and contentment at the merry scene. She nodded graciously as one by one her visitors congratulated her and wished her much health and prosperity. They christened me Daniel Augustus Fitzpatrick; Daniel, the prophet who had withstood the den of lions. A strong name, a brave name. A man could be proud of a son named

Daniel. Father Fogerty blessed me with holy water (in between liberal libations of fire water) and christened me the newest and loudest member of the parish. Everyone laughed and smiled and sang and joked, a welcomed respite of joy in their dreary lives. The next morning they would go back to their mine shafts and their smelting pots and their baking and their washing, but tonight they would eat, drink, and be merry, for Tom Fitzpatrick had a firstborn son. You see, a son is a future. Children are a man’s legacy, his only lasting stamp upon this earth. When he leaves this earth he can say, I have left something to commemorate my stay. My seed shall complete what I could not. A daughter, Mary, had been born two years prior, in 1820, but was delivered dead in the womb. My mother never speaks of it. My brother, Edward (named after my father and his father) was born when I was three, in 1825. Edward is the favorite son, the good son, intelligent, mildmannered, bookish, fond of Shelley and Keats and long contemplative walks in the forests, pondering the alignment of the planets and the futility of human existence. My first sister, Elizabeth, was born when I was five, in 1827; my second sister, Ellen, was born when I was seven, in 1829. They are good girls. Elizabeth, dark-haired and demure, is the mature one, wise beyond her years, always at my mother’s side in the kitchen or at the spindle, of quiet spirit and gentle manner. Elizabeth is a mast, guiding the ship when Mama is tired and weary, which is frequently of late. She will make a good man a good wife. Ellen is the spirited one, like a young colt prancing about for all to admire and praise. She plays the harpsichord and takes lessons for a quarter-piece in the parlor of the vicar’s wife. Ellen, rambunctious, mischievous, lively little Ellen, makes us all laugh. I sometimes think this house would be a graveyard were it not for her sprightly little ways and cheery smiles. She calls me Augie, which she knows infuriates me. The youngest child, Stephen, was born in my twelfe year, in 1832. Born partly lame, a deformity of his right leg, he is small and sickly, but the sweetest child you could encounter. There is a special place in my heart for Stephen. He never has a cross word, a harsh tone, always kind and caring. He bears his burden with a smile and an uncomplaining spirit. And he looks up to me, which I sometimes cannot bear for my unworthiness. He calls me Danny. No one else in the family calls me Danny. Mother and father and Elizabeth call me Daniel, and Edward calls me Dan, if he calls me at all. But little Stephen--my God, when I think of him now. He is a dear boy. I began work in the mine in my thirteenth year, as do all eldest sons in Minersville once they come of age. My father woke me at sunrise. Get up, boy. There’s work to be done. Mustn't be late on the first day, you know. Make a good start, lad, and it will go easier for you with the boss. I staggered groggily out of the refuge of my warm sheets into the frozen battlefield of the icy early morning, the rough planks of the wood floor the enemy’s first line of attack. In a daze, I hurriedly threw my clothes on and swallowed the cold cornbread and milk my mother, still in her nightshift and wrapped in a blue shawl, handed me before stumbling out the door into the menacing fog. I shall tell you, a mine is hell. Villainous clouds of soot and coal dust invade your senses, choke your lungs, blind your eyes, grit in your teeth, and the masks issued do little to repel their

assault. The pervading blackness and coffin-like spaces produce a mild fear to raging panic to the uninitiated. I began to realize how truly wonderful and miraculous light is, and learned to savor every last fading sliver of the sun’s rays as the earth ingested me into its cavernous womb. The stale air became more precious the farther down the shaft the descent into the inky abyss. The miner lives in constant fear for his life. Mine fires, caused by coal breakers made from wood timbres catching flame, break out regularly, and one is lucky to escape without a burn or worse. Deadly explosions, triggered by pockets of gas embedded in the coal escaping and striking an exposed lamp or some careless use of dynamite, may happen at any moment. Such an existence numbs the mind, causes a man to lose all regard for his soul, only the immediate safety of his body. The miner is constantly dirty, his fingernails permanently blackened, his hands discolored, his face perpetually stained. He may go home and bathe with the hottest of water, the harshest of soap, scrub until he can swear his skin is scraped off and he can see bare bone, but the clinging soot, that malevolent scum, will not wash away. A miner is a prisoner, and I sometimes think I would rather occupy a jail cell than work a mine shaft. On my first day in the mine, a boy of nine was killed. I do not know his name, but the memory seared my brain. While manning three loaded cars to the surface (a task for a grown man twice his weight and years) he slipped from off the top and fell under the heavy cars and was crushed. I watched as the workmen labored to remove him from under the cars, but his small frame was badly mangled, and as time passed his injuries began to slowly take his life. I remember he did not cry out in pain or scream or pray or ask for his mother, uttering not a sound or word. He only stared empty-eyed and serene, almost as if he welcomed his approaching fate, thankful for the respite. I imagined he smiled faintly once at me, which scared me worse than the gruesome scene. When at last removed from the wreckage and laid upon the cold hard ground, his bruised, broken body was limp and his eyes frozen, stone-dead. That face. My God, that face. I studied it, a lump rising in my throat. Swollen and bloodied, yet almost happy, content. I shall not forget that twisted, angelic death-mask as long as I shall live. Hours upon hours must have passed that first day of work, drop upon drop of sweat fallen to the ground, but I cannot recall them. I imagine my father must have showed me the inner workings of the mine, given me my first task, introduced me to his grizzled workmen companions, ate lunch at the first whistle and resumed work on the second. But I cannot remember. I only remember something my father said as we trudged home that day through the muddy streets as I stared silently at our dirty boots. Shame a young lad like that should meet such an end so quickly. But such is life in the mines. Learn to stomach it, boy. I nodded my head and said nothing. Learn to stomach it. We ate dinner at the same time as if nothing happened, read from the Book of Leviticus like every first Monday, and retired at the usual early hour. I lay in my bed silently, thinking of that face. Suddenly, I began to softly sob. I made not a sound, but the tears began gliding down my cheeks like falling stars. I know not whether I wept more for that little boy or for myself, knowing his too could be my fate. Many times since that day I have dreamt of that boy, this grim, tranquil visage appearing before me and fading like a phantom.

CHAPTER TWO By my sixteenth year, I was an old hand in the mine, cheating death more times than I can number. Those years seem but a blur to me now, an unrecognizable black parade of sweat and steam and soot. I cannot say much on them, for I cannot remember them with any clarity, and I doubt they would make for compelling reading in any event. But in my sixteenth year, I discovered something that would effect the course of my whole life. I wished to be a writer. I would smuggle myself in my room or in the woodshed or in some solitary tree where I was sure I was safe and nobody would find me. I would sit and scribble little bits of words and sentences on scraps of paper and loose pieces of bark, nothing concrete or of substance, just morsels of youthful musings and jumbled adolescent dissertations. Something deep in me was released when I wrote down these curious lines and verses: I could see what was inside me. I had given physical form to an amorphous thought, and this pleased me exceedingly. From hence, I knew this was what I wanted to pursue; no longer was I satisfied the son of a miner, slaving and sweating my life away in a mine, only to die long before my time, unknown and forgotten, passing from dust to dust without ever making a mark in the dust I would become. I kept a small maple sewing box under my bed where I saved all these scraps of writings, my secret treasure chest. I kept these things hidden, you may ask, because I was deathly afraid my father should discover my new obsession. For a hard-working, God-fearing Irishman, wasting time writing words and the vain pursuit of ‘art’ is a sinful, worthless practice. Along with the theater and politics, it is a dirty business, populated by harlots, charlatans, criminals, thieves, degenerates, drunkards, blasphemers, whoremongers, sodomites, vagrants, parasites, and Jews. It is enough a man knows the Scriptures, can read and write his own name, and provides food and shelter for his family, doing a days worth of honest work for a days worth of honest wages. All else is vanity. One can see how my pastime would not fare well with my father. But let me tell you something about my father. One must understand a man to understand a man, if you comprehend my meaning. I cannot fully tell my story if I neglect to tell at least part of my father’s story. Tiarnán Séamus Edward Fitzpatrick was born in 1793 in Clogheen, a small village in the south of County Tipperary, the eldest son of Donagh Diarmaid Edward Fitzpatrick, an uneducated country miller. His mother, Bláithín Ó Brógáin, of solid Welsh stock, was from Ballygarvan, County Cork, the only daughter of a six-shillings-a-week clerk and a seamstress. She was a devout Catholic, and raised her family as such; they attended Mass twice weekly and memorized their liturgies with particular zeal. When he was ten years of age, in 1803, the Fitzpatrick family moved to Kiltimagh, County Mayo, as his father had scraped together every last shilling to his name and purchased his own mill, yes, the sole owner and proprietor. Young Thomas (for that was what they called him in the village, the Anglicised simplification, to avoid confusion with the local magistrate’s son, also named Tiarnán, who refused to share the title with one of such lower rank and class) went to work in the mill for his father on his eleventh birthday.

Schooling and books were for the sons of rich men and ne'er-do-wells. A good head and a pair of good hands were all a man needed to make his way in the world. My father worked the mill until his twentieth year, in 1813, when his father lost the mill to a crushing gambling debt and died of drink shortly after. (The details of such I do not know, but I know these events affected my father greatly, and I never knew him to touch drink, save for very special and rare occasions, and he spoke violently against the iniquities of gambling and the bottle.) The creditors descended upon them and seized their house and possessions, and the Fitzpatrick's were promptly put out onto the streets. His mother, strong-willed though she was, could not bear the strain and sorrow of their destitute condition, and died of malnourishment, overwork, and a broken heart nine months later. Orphaned and unable to care for his now fatherless and motherless three younger siblings, a boy and two girls, he tearfully placed them into the Kinsale beggars workhouse and he made his way up the River Lagan to Belfast to make his living. I do not believe he ever heard from or saw his siblings ever again. In Belfast, he worked various jobs to keep body and soul together, degrading, menial jobs the bloated businessmen and grubbing merchants reserved for a culchie--uneducated country trash. He did not complain at his unfortunate lot in life. Learn to stomach it. A good head and a pair of good hands were all a man needed to make his way in the world. In 1819, five years after his unostentatious arrival in Belfast, he met my mother, Brighid Geoghegan, a linen factory worker and Protestant girl from Ennistymon, County Clare, the daughter of a washwoman who never left and a fisherman who never came back. They agreed, despite conflicting religious persuasions, it would be advantageous to throw in their lot together, to share the burdens of life as one rather than two, and were married promptly the next month in a solemn, unadorned ceremony attended only by her factory supervisor, to make sure her hiatus from the workroom was truly on account of the blissful state of holy matrimony. But life for the young and penniless in the big city was just as hard for two as it was for one, they soon discovered. They could barely put food on their table as it was, but should more mouths to feed arrive, their current quarters and income would just not do. Then my father hit upon a solution. America. My mother was wary. I dunna know, Thomas. America ain’t a brisk walk down to the Shankill Road market. Come on, lass, where is your spirit of adventure? But we dunna know enna-thing about America, Thomas. Ach, ain’t it better than slavin’ and sweatin’ here in this pig sty? The boys down at the shop read letters and papers what say that America is wide open for the takin’, jobs just waitin’ to be picked off the branch like ripe apples. Well, it is your choice, Thomas. I will follow where you lead, you know that. Aye, lass, you are a saint. So they gave their notices, packed their meager belongings, scraped together every last shilling to their name and purchased two one-way fares to America, following their Irish brethren through the Golden Door, the land flowing with milk and honey. The ship, a crowded, creaking, rotting, rat-infested vessel known as a Coffin Ship, departed that very next day. On the tumultuous sea journey, my mother became violently ill, vomiting with a savage fever and swore never again to step foot on a ship. Dirsan lemm! Am trú-sa trá! she would say over and over. (Which in the native tongue means something akin to ‘Woe is me! I am doomed for sure!’ but the

exact wording is not important for the general sentiment is clearly understood by the hearers.) Dry land was good enough for her. When finally touching that fabled shore a fortnight later, the tired couple passed through customs on Castle Clinton, a small, newly-opened immigration station on the southernmost tip of the island of Manhattan. With no fanfare or friends, they straggled through the filth-filled streets with their meager belongings until finally finding lodgings in a congested, decayed tenement in the Gas House District on 18th Street, between a rusty-gated brothel and a two-nickel grog shop. For the next seven months they lived (if you can term it living) hand-to-mouth in these conditions, sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter. The ripe jobs had all been picked long ago or had withered on the branch and died. America had been a lie, it seemed. At least in Ireland, an unskilled man could find unskilled labor, hard labor albeit, but it was honest work. In this city, a poor Irishman was cursed at, spit upon, and unceremoniously shown the door. Never in his life had he been treated so like a dog. My father was a proud man, proud of his heritage, proud of where he came from. He would not stand for such persecution and slight much longer. And to worsen matters, Mama was pregnant, a girl, the red-faced old doctor said. This was not a place to raise a family. They were near-starving as it was. Papa was for returning to Ireland. No, Thomas. We’ve come this far. No use swearing at the bad luck. Let’s keep on for awhile? They say this land is bigger than the back of God’s hand. Let’s cut ourselves off a piece of it, eh lad? Aye, lass, that’s the fightin’ spirit. So they kept on for awhile. But tragedy struck first. Papa came home from an endless day of scouring the city for a job to find the neighbors at their door. Mama had lost the baby. Labor had come prematurely, swift and deadly, and she had no way of contacting him or a doctor. They named her Mary, after the mother of Christ. In the morning they placed the tiny body in an unmarked shoebox coffin and laid it in a mass graveyard, and Papa solemnly spoke a few Psalms as well-wishing neighbors consoled my mother, too grieved to even cry. She just looked down at the freshly-opened ground and would not take her eyes away. She would not say a word about it and has never to this day. Bear with it, Bláithín, like a strong lass. It was God’s will. The next day they pawned the few pieces of miserable furniture they owned and a broach Mama’s grandmother left her and purchased two one-way stage fares to Pennsylvania. Papa had seen a pamphlet: coal mines in Pennsylvania were hiring any able man with two hands and a mind to work. The pay was fair and decent housing was provided, so the pamphlet said. Mama was skeptical, but willing to try. She was sick of cities, their grime and dissolution and poverty and death. She was a country girl. She needed to breath clean air again, see the morning dew on the grass, smell the honeysuckle on a bright summer afternoon, watch the fireflies dance in the evening twilight. One hot, dusty week later their coach pulled into Philadelphia, before taking a smaller coach ninety-seven miles down the west bank of the Schuylkill River to Pottsville and four miles east to an austere, God-forsaken hamlet named Minersville.