Paradise Alley (City Of Fire Book 2) by Kevin Baker

Author:Kevin Baker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: United States, Fiction, Literary, Historical, Civil War Period (1850-1877), History
ISBN: 9780061748981
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2006-01-03T08:00:00+00:00

Bless me, Father, but I hate it.

He went along because he liked the company of men. Still dirty, and bloodstained and sweat-soaked from their twelve hours’ work. He liked to be around them, to hear them cursing and guffawing, even to smell their rankness near him. He liked the company of men—but not what they liked.

The bull was always as fierce an animal as they could find. The rare kind they would get every once in a blue moon at The Place of Blood, that did not seem stunned or panicked into submission by the very sight of the slaughtering yards, or the smell of fear from so many of its fellow creatures, but only the more fearless and enraged for it.

Yet for all its bravery, its fate was always the same. The bull holding its own at first, huge and thick-chested, but Tom knew better. When they let the dogs into the ring, it wielded its head like a pair of swords, skewering them on its horns whenever they dared to lunge in too close. The butchers and the skinners and the apprentice boys jumping up and yelling in their excitement. The workies throwing down their bets, their few pennies on the bull.

But the dogs were half-starved, and canny, and the smell of the bull before them drove them to work together. Becoming a pack before their eyes. They darted in, one after the other. Tearing out the tendons in the bull’s back legs until it stood immobilized and exhausted before them. Still chained to its pole, staring out at them with yellowed eyes, filling up with blood. When they had tired it enough, the dogs would run in and tear out its belly, and its throat. The butcher boys cheering louder than ever—as if they did not see enough of this, every day of their working lives.

That was what had convinced Tom to go and find her. What had convinced him that there must be something more than this, what he did and what he ate, and what he sat through for entertainment every Friday night.

He liked the company of men, but not what they did.

He had gone up to Gramercy Park, where he had heard she was working as a cook. Wearing the best coat that he could get hold of, borrowed from Feeley, at the firehouse. He had walked up from the Five Points on a Sunday, arriving there near the evening on a warm spring day, while all the servants were still taking their long promenade around the park.

He only watched them at first—how slowly they walked, as if trying to extend their last few hours of freedom. Wondering what it must be like, to belong so completely to another man. Moving around and around the park itself, the rectangular patch of flowers and trees, and the pretty gravel paths, all locked off behind a high, iron fence.

There were women strolling in pairs, and courting couples. A few solitary men such as himself, walking with their heads down.

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