The City Below Page 9

  "Where you want love," Bright McKay had said, quoting his father quoting John of the Cross, "put love and you will find love."

  "We love yuh, Jack!"

  The motorcade turned onto Causeway Street, but it was completely jammed, and the police were unable to clear the last several hundred yards even by bringing their clubs down on heads. For a few awful moments, it seemed Kennedy would not make it to the arena, not alive anyway. Was this South America?

  But the drivers kept their cars inching forward. In that last stretch, the look of the crowd changed, for in front of the Garden itself, it was entirely college kids swarming around the vehicles. The Young Dems had turned them out from campuses all over New England, afraid they would be the only ones in the street.

  And none of the spirited students was waving flowers, no long-stemmed carnations, no palm branches either.

  Inside the Garden, twenty thousand people let up a roar when Kennedy appeared. Party hacks from all across the state; ward heelers from Springfield, Worcester, New Bedford, Fall River, Cambridge, and Boston; machine pols and state committeemen and volunteers from the suburbs—all had been transformed, by the mere sight of Kennedy, into holy-roller worshipers, worshiping him. Cameras filmed the scene as the crowd continued clapping, stomping its feet, blustering approval for nearly ten minutes.

  Kennedy waved back at first, but then he let his arms hang as he stood immobile on that platform, taking all that they were giving him. He displayed a preternatural calm which, amid that pandemonium, made him seem even more dignified, even more unlike them. He received the outpouring as if it were appropriate, but he had not expected it.

  Then he was speaking. "And in a free society the chief responsibility of the president.. Now he was hitting the crest of his speech. He stabbed his finger at them as the waves of his voice rose into the high reaches of the Garden, above all those rapt Irish faces, above the red-white-and-blue bunting, the huge photographs of himself, the banners emblazoning his name, the flags. The throng sat absolutely silent now, each person leaning forward, ready to leap and move, listening as intently as before they had cheered. "...is to set before the American people the unfinished public business of our country ..."

  His words soared above the black superstructure from which the clocks, scoreboards, and nests of loudspeakers hung. His words carried all the way to the narrow catwalks, the network of girder bridges and klieg lights up near the roof. "...that this is a great country. But I think it can be greater ..."

  Terry Doyle was perched on one of the catwalks in the shadows above the lights, his legs dangling. Didi Mullen was beside him. Other Young Dems sat like crows along the rafters. Doyle wasn't sure about Didi, but he had a had case of the whim-whams up here. Given what had happened that morning, Terry might well have been dizzy and afraid in any case, but the height sure wasn't helping. His left arm was in a cast and sling. His ribs were wrapped with a broad elastic bandage that bulked under his shirt He wore a white bandage on the side of his head.

  Didi wasn't hurt, thank God. She'd stayed with the truck. Her brother and Squire were beat up about like Terry, but Bright—oh, Bright! He was in the hospital, and would be for a while. Terry wouldn't have come here without him, even to see Kennedy, but Bright had insisted. Now Terry was trying to concentrate on the speech, to hear every word, to know each nuance, so that he could tell his friend all about this climax of their effort.

  "... can do better ... I think we can make this move again..."

  But Terry kept losing him. He couldn't focus. His mind kept drifting back to what had happened. Didi looked at him, then turned away. He knew she could not stand the sight of his kicked-in face.

  "... for in the final analysis, our greatest common challenge..."

  Kennedy, in the beam of the champion-of-the-world spotlight, was a finger-size but sparkling mote bracketed on that platform by the crescent of politicians behind, some in boater hats, and in front, below, by a bank of flowers that separated the podium from the audience. Terry Doyle's puffed and aching eyes kept snagging on the flowers. Even from that distance he could identify the birds of paradise and gladioli shafts spiking out of the palm branches, blue delphiniums, and the showy hollyhock.

  They had rented a twenty-four-foot panel truck that morning. Bright McKay had been authorized by Gorman to sign for it, but he was afraid to drive the rig, so Terry was at the wheel. Squire was with them in the cab, sitting by the passenger door. In the back, with the cartons of cut flowers, rode Jackie and Didi. Gramps wasn't along, which had been an issue between the brothers. Squire had counted on pulling away from the Exchange before Gramps got free to join them. Given how close Gramps and Squire were, that should have been Terry's first warning. Squire hadn't wanted Didi to come either, but she'd been on board already, and she'd insisted.

  It was shortly after ten when Terry pulled into the alley that ran between North Station and the huge Garden service building. The alley became a tunnel under the third-story bridge between the arena and 150 Causeway, then it opened into a cinder courtyard that abutted the Boston & Maine storage yard where rolling stock sat idle. The enclosure reeked permanently of elephant urine and horse manure—all those circuses and rodeos.

  The courtyard was clogged with deliverymen, concession stockers, bull gang workers, and the easily identified campaign staffers: effete young men in button-down shirts and prim women in wrap-around khaki skirts. A dozen trucks of various sizes were backed against the clock that ran the width of the building. Supplies were being offloaded by forklifts, dragged onto wheeled pallets, and tractored up broad ramps into the arena above the railroad station.

  Terry tried to seem relaxed as he struggled to find reverse.

  "Grind me a pound, Charlie," Squire said as he and McKay elbowed each other.

  Terry grunted as, with the gears screeching, he rolled the truck backwards toward a narrow space between a Coca-Cola truck and a laundry van. He pulled forward, then backed up, and forward again. The secret was to move slow.

  When the guys in back finally yelled out "Whoa!" as the rear bumper kissed the loading dock, Terry shut the ignition off and slumped over the wheel with relief. He rubbed his hands together, noticing for the first time how wet they were.

  Bright nudged him. "Where'd you learn to drive like that?"

  "Right here, just now."

  "Shit, you told me you had experience." But then McKay slapped his thigh. "My God, we're all becoming like Kennedys. We can do anything!" With sudden exuberance, he threw an arm around each of the brothers and pulled them close across his own body, so that their heads almost touched.

  Terry pulled himself free to look at McKay—dark-eyed, black-skinned, and determined. Bright had been cautious in Nick's presence all these weeks, but Terry sensed now that this display of affection was more than the infectious enthusiasm of the campaign. That McKay could include Squire in their friendship moved him and opened the door on his own oldest feeling for his brother. The bond between them was unbreakable, no matter what Bright still had Nick's head in the vise grip. Terry reached over and rubbed his knuckles on Nick's scalp, the old Indian burn.

  "Don't fuck with the hair!" Squire slipped free and swiftly knotted the college boys' ties together. "And don't you"—he broke into song, hopping out of the cab— " step on my blue suede shoes!"

  By the time Terry and Bright had untied their neckties, Squire and Jackie had the two hand trucks out and were unloading the boxes of flowers. As he piled one carton onto another, Squire kept jitterbugging, "Blue, blue, blue suede shoes ..."

  Didi was in the truck pushing the cartons out, and she danced too.

  When the dollies were loaded, Jackie and Squire each took one. Before rolling his off the loading dock, Squire said to Didi, "You stay here, okay?" He tossed his head toward the fifteen cartons of long-stem carnations still in the truck "Somebody's got to watch those. We'll be back in a few."

  Disappointed, she glanced at Terry. This was his second warning, but he missed it.
>
  When the Doyle brothers, McKay, and Mullen emerged from the low-ceilinged entrance tunnel, the sight of the arena stopped them. After the ill-lit, smelly passageways and ramps leading up from the street, the cavernous space wrenched open their eyes and, for that matter, mouths. Workers stood on ladders and craned over railings to drape the red-white-and-blue and to hang the huge posters. Technicians in the rafters were adjusting lights, and television men were setting up cameras on perches jutting out from the balconies. At the far end of the arena floor, where one of the Celtics' baskets should have been, carpenters hammered away at the speaker's platform. Even though it wasn't finished yet, soundmen were already wiring the microphones. In front, on floor level, a lone man was bent over cartons that struck Squire Doyle, for one, as familiar.

  Despite the activity, all four boys noted the vast emptiness of the Garden. They'd been to dozens of games there, but they'd never seen the thousands of seats vacant before, the glistening wood, orange in the lower levels and green in the upper. In the absence of screaming fans, the buzzers and horns, the place seemed, despite the hammers and drills, almost silent.

  "Jesus," Squire said. And he knew that the impulse that had prompted his thrust into the tiny opening between Kennedy's new power and the old turf boundaries had been right Tins was worth it, and after today Kerry Bouquet would have a toehold here, which he would make into a niche. Squire thought Terry wanted a like toehold, but with Kennedy. Both boys wanted to cross the river into Boston itself, the route the Pilgrims had taken out of Charlestown three hundred years before. "Beautiful," Squire said. The Garden was Boston, pure and simple. That's why Kennedy was coming here. Squire too.

  Terry touched his brother's sleeve. "Jeez, Nick, wouldn't you love to play here? Don't your fingers itch for the ball?"

  "The fast-break twins."

  Their eyes met "Yeah," Terry said. "The good old days."

  Nick shook his head once. "We're going to miss you this year, kid." He hit Terry's shoulder. "We're all coming down here to see you play for BC. Enough of this politics, Charlie. Get back on the old parquet"

  "I'm going to."

  "Oh, really?" McKay said, taking Terry's other arm. He pointed up to the press box, which floated, a fluorescent rectangle, under the ledge of the second balcony. Inside the box were three men who stood looking down like gods.

  "That's Mike," McKay said.

  Mike Gorman was head of the campaign in New England. He had been one of Kennedy's buddies in the navy, and his present status as one of the candidate's true inner circle made him seem to shimmer. In Terry's weeks as a volunteer, he had dealt with Gorman only in relation to these flowers. Gorman's presence here, now, attending to pre-rally minutiae, reinforced Terry in the feeling of his own importance. And to think he'd fought Squire at first on their bringing flowers into this.

  "And that's Larry O'Brien," McKay added.

  "Christ," Terry said, "it is!"

  "Let's go, fellows," Squire said, "before you wet yourselves."

  The four young men moved onto the raw plywood flooring over which the fabled parquet would be laid for basketball.

  "Hey, Cous!" Jackie called over to Squire, two-stepping his hand truck between racks of folded chairs.

  "Pick!" Squire cut by a stack of risers. The Cous, Ramsey, and Russell—Terry would have joined their skylarking, but just then he was distracted by the figure of the stooped man below the speaker's platform. The man straightened up, unfurling a large bunch of palm branches.

  Squire saw him too, and instantly understood what he'd refused to take in before. He looked left and saw figures—eight or ten men in suits—moving down the aisles of the stands from the deep shadows of the rearmost seats. "Shit," he said.

  Terry saw the cloud in his brother's face before he saw what caused it. He had heard the sick alarm in that word "shit," but he didn't understand it, any more than he understood that his brother had been trying to pull a tablecloth out from under crystal and china here. And now the crystal and china were going to break.

  The thugs had cut them off and were on them so quickly that the three Irish kids, and the one black, had no real choices to make. Squire shoved his hand truck at the one who came at him, a would-be body check But the man sidestepped it and reached for him. Squire ducked and had his belt pulled halfway out of its loops, his only weapon, but another man hit him from behind. Jackie Mullen leapt over chairs and seemed about to get away when he was caught. He landed one solid punch, and he felt the cartilage of the man's nose jolt, which was one small satisfaction as he was then savagely pummeled.

  Bright McKay and Terry fought back briefly, but a knot of four or five men beat them down. Terry's teeth sliced much of the way through his own tongue. He gagged on blood. Bright lost consciousness when the toe of a stout black shoe connected with his head. "Nigger! Nigger!" The man repeated each time he drew his foot back and then swung it forward. He kicked McKay's head again and again in a fury. "Nigger! Nigger!"

  Long after Bright stopped hearing the word, Terry, crumpled beside him, would hear nothing else.

  Squire had covered his head with his arms, an apparently defensive posture, but he uncoiled twice, a pair of well-aimed, vicious kicks, one of which visibly snapped his assailant's jawbone. That man would have killed Squire, but his comrades dragged him off.

  The television technicians, carpenters, bull gang, and bunting hangers all stopped what they were doing to watch. Only the man unpacking flowers at the platform continued his work.

  The dark-suited, silent men—silent except for that "Nigger! Nigger!"—continued hitting the boys in clear view on the spot, approximately, where the boxing ring would stand on Friday night. No spectator moved to help at first, although one woman on a ladder with streamers draping her shoulders let out a scream when the blade of a machete appeared above their heads. From the distance, it looked like a pirate's cutlass. The machete came slicing down not on the boys' heads but on the cartons of flowers. A dozen swings was all it took. The brilliant red of chopped petals sprayed into the air like blood.

  A few dozen more swings of the blade—with a terrified but unharmed Didi pushed up against one panel of the truck outside—was all it would take, moments later, to shred the entire lot of long-stem carnations. So much for hailing the matador.

  But in the Garden now, a man's voice pierced the silence. "Hey, stop that, you! Stop! Leave them boys alone!"

  One thug released his grip on Squire, straightened up, and peered into the vacant stands. Perhaps twenty rows back stood a lone Negro in a green shirt and green pants. "You stop that, you hear? I'll call the police." The Negro held a push broom, the handle pointing like the barrel of a gun.

  The thug crashed through chairs and jumped a railing to go after him. Light sparked off the man's fist as he raised it, the polished bar of brass knuckles. The janitor tried to run, but the man caught him. Two punches broke his teeth. He fell in a heap.

  "Jesus," Jackie said later, "the only one who tried to help was this old spade." And still later that would come to seem a kind of proof, as if the janitor had responded only to McKay, that spades stick together.

  Terry was still conscious when the men in suits left, but in his memory of the event long afterward, it would seem he wasn't, because he could never quite get the time right—not the year it happened, not the city, and not even who was attacked and with what He was sure now that his ribs had been cracked right into his heart. He was sure he was dying, but dying was less to him already than a deep feeling of shame. Bloody and smashed, he was finally naked—here was the feeling—before God. And God was averting his eyes.

  He found it possible to look over at Bright. Bright was dead. His face was a mass of blood. One eyeball was hanging outside its socket on his cheek, hanging by a pulsing blood vessel.

  "This is a great country ..." It didn't sound like Squire, because the words were pushing through a thick-lipped, broken mouth. And then Terry realized that his brother was speaking even at that moment in a bro
ad, stock imitation of John Kennedy. "But I think it can be better. I think we can get this country moving—"

  "Shut up!" Terry screamed. The pain in his tongue! Spittle fell back onto his face, and he told himself to get up, but he couldn't move. "Shut the fuck up!"

  "Fuck yourself," Squire said.

  "Fuck you!" Terry knew nothing of what had happened, except that Nick had caused it. Nick had betrayed him. Bright was dead, and Nick had killed him.

  Terry lay there for a long time. His head was positioned so that whenever he opened his eyes, they went right to the figure inside the press box. Terry wanted to yell up, "Tell Senator Kennedy that I'm sorry!"

  Mike Gorman was staring down at them, like a householder waiting for the garbage men to come and sweep the dogshit away.

  Here was where Terry's memory became confused. Sometimes, over the years, instead of the indifferent Gorman high above that carnage, he saw an image of Lee Harvey Oswald looking down on Dealey Plaza. Italians hired Oswald to kill the president—that was the absurd notion he would never be able, quite, to disbelieve. The melee at the Garden seemed an a priori proof. Italians killed Kennedy. Gian-cana, Marcello, Patriarca, or Tucci—it didn't matter which one or why. Push across boundaries, was the lesson, and the boundaries push back.

  "Fuck you, Nick" As if Nick were the one staring down from the heights. As if he had kicked Blight's eyeball out As if he had shot the president and ruined everything more or less forever.

  5

  THANKSGIVING CAME and the Irish praised God for Kennedy. A few days later, Squire made his way by streetcar up to Revere. It was a cold, wet day. Outside the streetcar window, the muddy flats of backwater wedands stretched toward the Saugus hills. Shy of Revere, the rain started to fall. The half frozen raindrops hit the window like pieces of rice.