Part One

PART ONE:  WILLIAM DUFFY.  January 15, 1919.

 

"Honey!" William Duffy roared.  "It's honey that I want!"

"Not this damn molasses in my cup, you dear old haunt!"

"Tis not enough I work all day with blackstrap in me nose;"

"now it's in me coffee—d'ye think I smell a rose?"

Frumping down the wooden stairs, his wife of many years

Bade him save his hellish breath – she'd not break out in tears.

"Bullyrag yer boys down at the Paving Company;"

"I scrape it from the leaking vat and so you gets it free!"

"Tastes it, too" he grimly said, his cup held in disdain,

Before he poured the contents down the noisome kitchen drain.

"Out with ye, ye sodden louse!" his wife of many years

Called after him, good-humoredly – the slushy walk she clears.

She mutters to herself about the January thaw –

"The snow may be a-meltin' but the wind is pretty raw."

"No doubt himself will come back home a-stinkin' of cheap ale."

"Hisht!  And what do I care, if he brings me one full pail!"

William Duffy wends his way down to the paving yard;

He's fifty-six and shows his age – he's breathing kinda hard.

His hair is reddish yellow and his breath is rather ripe

From drinking too much coffee and a-suckin' on his pipe.

He labors with the tar and asphalt Boston streets demand.

Hands all black and sticky as he paves the Promised Land.

He's thinking of the many years he's spent with pick and shovel,

And of the land he left behind, and of a white-washed hovel.

He loosens up his scarf to let the heat escape his chest.

He wonders if a life far from Killarney is the best.

The boyos at the Ward Club promised him some softer work

But still he's pushing wheelbarrows like any common jerk.

He's voted for the councilman, about a dozen times;

He's paid his dues to Finnians, in nickels and in dimes.

His wife of many years must still take water from a well

That's near an outhouse and retains a nauseating smell.

They've had a peck of children—and thank God they all went straight.

Here's praying that each one of them will have a better fate.

Beneath the Elevated Train old Duffy stops to spit.

Commercial Street looks barren and without a bench to sit.

At the North End Paving Yard, not far from the Charles River,

Duffy takes his coat off in the tool shed, with a shiver.

Looking out the window he can see a vast brown tank,

Full of raw molasses with a smell that's sweet and rank.

"I'd like to live where you come from" he says to yonder vat.

"And put me lips to some brown voodoo maiden."  Then he sat.

His crew has not come in yet, so he plies the linseed oil;

Cleaning off the grime and rust from handle, haft and coil.

He stokes the boiler as the tar begins to slowly bubble.

 The fumes give him a headache and a bit of sharp lung trouble.

Duffy greets each man by name as they come trooping in.

He gives them tools and tells them where the pavement is too thin.

Today . . . today . . . the weather's nice, but William Duffy lingers

Over the stove with the coffee pot, warming his bent fingers.

His crew is gone to work on Charter Street, but William Duffy

Thinks he ought to stay inside the shed – though rather stuffy.

The smell of tar with treacle is not pleasant, but at noon

Duffy has a sandwich and is searching for a spoon.

He settles on a work bench, thinking there's no need to grumble,

but then he hears a languid and a gluey sort of rumble.

Looking out the window at his world about to end,

He's seeing rivets popping and steel girders start to bend.

He cries aloud: "And me a-goin' to those blessed Masses!"

"I'm in for it, Saint Peter – I'll be drowned by brown molasses!"

The shack where William Duffy sat – 'twasn't any Back Bay --

Disappeared and was no more – a quick and candied Pompeii. 

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