Small Mercies

The Rally Against Tyranny takes place at seven o’clock, as the sun is beginning to set outside the Suffolk County District Courthouse on East Broadway in South Boston. The courthouse is just east of where East and West Broadway meet, and that intersection is already clogged with people. With no traffic getting through, they line the street and sidewalks outside the courthouse, and the various leaders speak from the courthouse steps.

The fifth speaker, Agnes Toomey, a woman few have ever heard speak above a whisper, has no trouble finding her voice with a bullhorn. It goes against God’s plan, she tells the crowd, to force a neighborhood, a culture, a place of pride and honor, to change its ways to accommodate those who are too weak or too lazy to help themselves.

Mary Pat, moving along the fringe of the crowd on the far side of the street, catches herself thinking that a woman whose husband kills people for a living might want to lay off the God talk.

The crowd doesn’t get the irony. They’re eating it up.

“If they want better schools,” Agnes calls through the bullhorn, “let them build them. No one’s stopping them.”

Up and down Broadway, people honk their horns.

“If they want a better life,” Agnes says, “let them get off their heinies and work for it.”

Heinies?

The crowd cheers. The horns continue to honk.

“The American Dream is no handout.”

The crowd goes fucking wild.

“The American Dream is roll up your sleeves and make your own way. Without welfare!”

A tidal wave of applause.

“Without government help and government orders!”

A group of men walk by Mary Pat, carrying pale white bodies under their arms, or that’s what it looks like until Mary Pat looks close and sees they’re life-size dolls, clearly as light as air in the big men’s arms. The crowd lets the men pass. One of the men, she realizes, is Terror McAuliffe, Big Peg’s husband. He looks right at Mary Pat, checking her out — face to breasts, breasts to face — and then he moves on.

No recognition.

“Francis and I have four children,” Agnes is saying, “three of them at Southie High. But they’re not going to school tomorrow. Because I won’t let them go. Southie won’t let them go! Am I right? Southie won’t go!”

The chant rolls up and down Broadway: “Southie won’t go! Southie won’t go! Southie won’t go!”

Agnes stands back, beaming, and her eyes drift to someone in the crowd, off to her right, about fifty yards from where Mary Pat stands. Mary Pat catches a glimpse of curly black hair in that section of crowd.

Mary Pat moves through the crowd. All her cockiness about her disguise suddenly feels like false confidence. Barroom bravado. Anyone, at any point, could turn, see her profile an inch away from their nose and...

What?

Scream her name.

That would do it.

Tom O’Rourke has the bullhorn now. Tom is also on the school committee. But he’s a dry speaker, a cure for insomnia is ol’ Tom, and even though he cycles through the usual greatest hits — tyranny, reverse racism, disruption of community and culture — he’s got everyone’s eyelids drooping when a cheer rips through the crowd. Mary Pat follows dozens of turned heads to see the men with the dolls swinging ropes over the streetlamps and flagpoles up by the courthouse. They’re not practiced at it — only one rope holds fast on the first try — but the crowd gives them so much vocal support that Tom O’Rourke calls it a day. Which brings another round of cheers.

Mary Pat nears where she thinks she saw Frank Toomey, but the sun’s gone down at this point. It’s not yet full dark, but deep shadows have fallen across the crowd in jagged swaths. This makes it harder to discern faces than it would be in full dark, where your eyes tend to adjust. And the sunglasses sure don’t help. Someone with black hair passes close to her, but when he emerges from the other side of the couple between them, he’s got a beard and a double chin, and she recognizes him as one of the Clarks from I Street. She turns in the crowd and he’s coming toward her, his eyes locking with hers, Frank Toomey himself, all brute force and Old Spice as he works his way through the crowd with a gruff “’Scuse me, ’scuse me” that sounds less like a minor plea and more like a major command. He comes right for Mary Pat; she can’t move. They’re packed in there too tight, people jostling and turning to see whatever’s going on by the courthouse at the moment, but Mary Pat’s realizing too late she should be reaching into her purse, which is twisted to the back of her right hip, as Frankie is almost on her, his mouth curving into a cruel smile as he gets in close enough for her to smell his breath and says, “’Scuse me, hon, I just gotta get by.”