The Given Day (Coughlin 1)

It was hard work. Dusty and sweaty and chalky. The pull of pry bars and the tear of wood and the wrench of the hammer's claw. Kind of work made your shoulders tighten hard against your neck, the cartilage under your kneecaps feel like rock salt, dug hot stones into the small of your back and bit the edges of your spine. Kind of work made a man sit down in the middle of a dusty floor and lower his head to his knees and whisper, "Whew," and keep his head down and his eyes closed a bit longer.

After weeks in the Coughlin house doing almost nothing, though, Luther wouldn't have traded it for anything. This was work of the hand and of the mind and of muscle. Work that left some hint of itself and yourself behind after you were gone.

Craftsmanship, his Uncle Cornelius had once told him, was just a fancy word for what happened when labor met love.

"Shit." Clayton, lying on his back in the entrance hallway, stared up at the ceiling two stories above. "You realize that if she's committed to indoor plumbing--"

"She is."

"--then the waste pipe, Luther--the waste pipe alone--that going to have to climb up from the basement to a roof vent? That's four stories, boy."

"Five-inch pipe, too." Luther chuckled. "Cast iron."

"And we got to run more pipes off that pipe on every floor? Two maybe off the bathrooms?" Clayton's eyes widened to saucers. "Luther, this shit's crazy."

"Yeah."

"Then why you smiling?"

"Why you?" Luther said.

What about Danny?" Luther asked Nora as they walked through Haymarket. "What about him?"

"He doesn't seem to fit that family somehow."

"I'm not sure Aiden fits anything."

"How come sometimes you-all call him Danny and other times Aiden?"

She shrugged. "It just happened. You don't call him Mister Danny, I've noticed."

"So?"

"You call Connor 'Mister.' You even do it with Joe."

"Danny told me not to call him 'Mister,' 'less we were in company."

"Fast friends you are, yeah?"

Shit. Luther hoped he hadn't tipped his hand. "Don't know I'd call us friends."

"But you like him. It's clear on your face."

"He's different. Not sure I ever met a white man quite like him. Never met a white woman quite like you, though."

"I'm not white, Luther. I'm Irish."

"Yeah? What color they?"

She smiled. "Potato-gray."

Luther laughed and pointed at himself. "Sandpaper-brown. Pleased to meet you."

Nora gave him a quick curtsy. "A pleasure, sir."

After one of the Sunday dinners, McKenna insisted on driving Luther home, and Luther, shrugging into his coat in the hall, couldn't think of a reply quick enough.

" 'Tis awful cold," McKenna said, "and I promised Mary Pat I'd be home before the cows." He stood from the table and kissed Mrs. Coughlin on the cheek. "Would you pull my coat from the hook, Luther? There's a fine lad."

Danny wasn't at this dinner and Luther looked around the room, saw that no one else was paying much attention.

"Ah, we'll see you soon, folks."

" 'Night, Eddie," Thomas Coughlin said. " 'Night, Luther." " 'Night, sir," Luther said.

Eddie drove down East Broadway and turned right on West Broadway where, even on a cold Sunday night, the atmosphere was as raucous and unpredictable as anything in Greenwood had been on a Friday night. Dice games being played out in the open, whores leaning out of windowsills, loud music from every saloon, and there were so many saloons you couldn't count them all. Progress, even in a big, heavy car, was slow.

"Ohio?" McKenna said.

Luther smiled. "Yes, sir. You were close with Kentucky. I fi gured you'd get it that night, but . . ."

"Ah, I knew it." McKenna snapped his fingers. "Just the wrong side of the river. Which town?"

Outside, the noise of West Broadway dunned the car and the lights of it melted across the windshield like ice cream. "Just outside Columbus, sir."

"Ever been in a police car before?"

"Never, suh."

McKenna chuckled loud, as if he were spitting rocks. "Ah, Luther, you may find this hard to believe but before Tom Coughlin and I became brothers of the badge, we spent a fair amount of time on the wrong side of the law. Saw us some paddy wagons we did and, sure, no small amount of Friday-night drunk tanks." He waved his hand. "It's the way of things for the immigrant class, this oat sowing, this fi guring out of the mores. I just assumed you'd taken part in the same rituals."

"I'm not an immigrant, suh."

McKenna looked over at him. "What's that?"

"I was born here, suh."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything. It's just . . . you said it was the way of things for immigrants, and that may be so, but I was saying that I'm not--"

"What may be so?"

"Sir?"

"What may be so?" McKenna smiled at him as they rolled under a streetlight.

"Suh, I don't know what you--"

"You said."

"Suh?"

"You said. You said jail may be the way of things for immigrants." "No, suh, I didn't."

McKenna tugged on his earlobe. "Me head must be fi lled with the wax then."

Luther said nothing, just stared out the windshield as they stopped at a light at the corner of D and West Broadway.

"Do you have something against immigrants?" Eddie McKenna said.

"No, suh. No."

"Think we haven't earned our seat at the table yet?"

"No."

"Supposed to wait for our children's children to achieve that honor on our behalf, are we?"

"Suh, I never meant to--"

McKenna wagged a finger at Luther and laughed loudly. "I got you there, Luther. I pulled your leg there, I did." He slapped Luther's knee and let loose another hearty laugh as the light turned green. He continued up Broadway.

"Good one, suh. You sure had me."

"I sho' did!" McKenna said and slapped the dashboard. They drove over the Broadway Bridge. "Do you like working for the Coughlins?" "I do, suh, yes."

"And the Giddreauxs?"

"Suh?"

"The Giddreauxs, son. You don't think I know of them? Isaiah's quite the high- toned- Negroid- celebrity up in these parts. Has the ear of Du Bois, they say. Has a vision of colored equality, of all things, in our fair city. Won't that be something?"