Part Three

PART THREE: The Aftermath – Lawyers.

 

That spring of 1919 smelled of sweetness in the sun,

As Boston Harbor still retained the colors brown and dun.

The fish had died and piled up on the shores for gulls to feast . . .

Another kind of scavenger arose for the deceased.

Lawyers in their morning coats, with golden pince-nez specs,

with spats and watch fobs dangling and often dirty necks,

washed over the stained cobblestones, to hunt for clients quickly,

who'd had a loved one snatched from them or themselves were sickly.

Lawyer Perkins from the firm of Perkins, Glade and Mounty

Sought out Mrs. Duffy with the promise of great bounty.

"Your husband died of negligence, of that you can be certain!"

He said to her while she gazed silent through an old lace curtain

At a landscape no more kind or welcome since her Duffy

Was laid to rest in graveyard full of grit and grasses scruffy.

She listlessly agreed to let him represent her case

And signed a piece of paper he did thrust into her face.

Lawyer Perkins was just one of many fine attorneys

Who followed conscientiously a host of white-clad gurneys.

Bean Town was invaded, had a field day at the bar,

With lawyers coming in from places near and pretty far.

From Pocasset and Plowed Neck, Belcher Square and Camp Mohawk;

From Housatonac, Leisure Lee, and even Camp Greylock.

From Pocomo and Polpis, Wauwinet and distant Squam.

From pious Assinippi, where they love to sing a psalm.

The courthouse was so crowded that the floor began to groan

As the lawyers set about their mumbo-jumbo with a drone.

The judge presiding over this assembly of mouth pieces

Decided that the building was too frail with old caprices

And sent four dozen lawyers out to lessen all the stress;

They wound up in a tavern on a permanent recess.

The summer heat of Boston made the pavement roast and sweat.

That autumn the policemen carried out upon their threat.

They went on strike, while jurists dozed through countless expert theories—

Wondering, no doubt, about the recent "fixed" World Series.

Had a bomb been thrown by some infernal anarchist?

Was molasses on their secret and supreme hit list?

Was the vat fermenting in the sudden winter heat?

Could it be an act of God – foreordained, discrete?

Or, finally, was Arthur Jell and company at fault?

Never testing limits on his giant gooey vault?

The time it takes one lawyer just to summarize a plea,

Multiplied by shysters to the final nth degree,

Equals years of haggling long after the molasses

Had turned to dust and various inert and subtle gases.

But Mrs. Duffy was at last awarded by decree

Sev'ral thousand dollars, from which Perkins took his fee.

Leaving her with just enough to move in with her daughter –

Ending thus our tale of Boston's strangest, sweetest slaughter.

                                        finis

 

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