Footsteps at Dawn

By Steven McCann

In the early pre-dawn on a day in May of 1963 as sunlight glimmered in the offing of Lake Michigan, Chicago awakened to the promise of a fine spring day. Jimmy Flores and Paddy O’Halloran, friends and scholarship track athletes, saw the first glimmers of a world beyond their college graduation, scheduled for later that morning on the Loyola campus several miles behind their rapid footsteps along the Lake Shore Trail. In the next ten years, a period beginning with Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor unleashing fire hoses and police dogs on demonstrators protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, and ending with the resignation of Richard Nixon, Chicago and America went through enormous turmoil and profound changes. My novel, ‘Footsteps at Dawn’ interweaves the careers and fortunes of my two heroes during that period with those of Chicago, and by extension, our country. From the floor of the commodities exchange, to an interviewer’s desk in a state employment office, to a classroom in an elementary school for immigrant children, to an alderman’s seat in the City Council Chamber, to Michigan Avenue amidst violent clashes between police and thousands of anti-war demonstrators during the Democratic Presidential Convention of ’68, they venture through their rapidly changing world with intelligence and humanity, experiencing both tragedy and joy as they seek a new dawn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669863113

Steven McCann

Steven McCann is the author of novels, novellas, stories, plays and poems, and a 2021 recipient of a City Artist Corps Grant. He was born in 1948, graduated from Spring Valley High School in New York where he excelled in three sports. He enrolled at the University of Kansas, and later at NYU, majored in English and received a BA. His work experience is varied; nightwatchman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hotel detective at the Plaza, home renovator and shipping manager. In 2005 he was stricken with paraplegia and has been wheelchair bound since. He lives in New York City and remains passionate about Central Park, the Shakespeare festival, the Met Museum, Lincoln Center, the opera, and the people of New York.

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Copyright © 2023 by Steven McCann.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/16/2023

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 1

A slender ray of light, tinged with gold and golden promise, appeared in the east, lighting the far offing of the vast lake that lay still and silent below the dark sky. There were hardly any sounds from the lake itself, from the near highway, or the monumental structures bordering the highway where its proud citizens still slept, hardly any to accompany the steady rapid patter of two sets of feet filled with the urgency of youth. When they approached an overhead trail light their silhouettes came into view, tall broad-shouldered young men, thin, muscular, almost identical in size and build, moving faster than any casual joggers, their legs and arms almost perfectly synchronized. Then as the light got brighter differences appeared, one man sporting a full head of reddish-brown hair and sharper, more prominent features, his companion owning wider flatter nose and cheekbones, and short clipped hair like a military officer.

Are you meeting your mom, before the ceremonies start, Jimmy? the man with longer hair asked the other, without the slightest gasp, or loss of breath, despite having run three miles already.

She’s coming a little before noon, Paddy. She’s coming up to our place of deep intellectual pursuits, before it’s passed on to the next pair of worthy scholars, answered the man with the shorter hair. When are your folks coming?

An hour later than your mother, Jimmy. I’m taking them for a little tour. My parents have seen the entire campus already four years ago when they thoroughly inspected it all, but now they want another tour. My father wants to leave a lasting impression on everyone, while he has an excuse.

They ran on for another five minutes, the lakefront trail becoming lighter with a marina basin out on the water less than a hundred yards distant where the masts of small sailing craft caught the first glimmers of sunlight stretching westward. When they reached within a few yards of the Chicago River at its entrance into their great city from Lake Michigan, they turned around and started back.

Are your folks having a celebration of any kind for you, Paddy?

Nothing that appeals to me, Jimmy. My father offered to pack me off to Ireland for a little vacation where he has some distant relatives and connections, but I’ve found a way to weasel out of it. I think he was hoping I’d meet some sweet colleen over there to bring back with me.

The speaker gasped slightly with this utterance, more from the content of his words than from loss of wind. The pair might have run the length of Chicago, it seemed, before that would happen.

They’re gonna gather for a spread at the Emerald Loop. I didn’t mention it to you earlier, Jimmy, because I didn’t want to trap you with a dozen red faced bloated Irishmen standing over you, while you’re chewing on smoked brisket. But you know, Jimmy, you and I should do something special before we jump into our careers. Maybe a trip east to New York, or down to New Orleans.

I wish I could, Paddy. But I’m starting teaching in two weeks. I signed up to teach summer school.

Over in Pilsen?

Yes. It was a way of securing a teaching position for the coming fall.

You’ll be close to your mom and the apartment you spent your high school years in.

It’s a small place, Paddy. I should have you over sometime. My mother insisted I take the only bedroom where I could close the door to study and she take the front room. It’s where she set up her work table.

How’s that going?

It’s going well. She started bringing her work to craft fairs as soon as we came to Chicago, halfway through my sophomore year, when I started at Saint Ignatius. She has a steady clientele now.

She creates beautiful jewelry, Jimmy. Her silver work carries me to Mexico, without having been there.

She likes you, Paddy. She rarely says that about anyone, but she likes you. After she met you freshman year, she told me you were a, ‘gentil hombre,’ She’s happy I’ve met good people.

What a difference! Growing up with a beautiful little woman making works of art out if silver, and me with the Chicago police force and its army of Irish cops hovering around our house.

That was only from thirteen on, Paddy. Remember what I told you about the early years in Kansas. I wish I’d been surrounded by Irish cops.

For the last two of their ten-mile run, a morning exercise they’d completed almost every day since arriving as freshmen scholarship track athletes, they ran in the warm glow of morning sunlight and air tingling with freshness. Their features were now much clearer; a young red-haired Irish American with touches of freckles on his nose. cheeks and arms, despite the years of windswept running; his companion showing obvious signs of his mother’s Mexican heritage in his flatter features and darker skin to go with a curious streak of blond in his hair that wasn’t dyed. Yet they gave the impression of brothers with their almost identical builds and slightly better than six-foot -stature; light and strong with not an ounce of wasted flesh, or any loss of vitality.

Their footsteps turned onto West Sheridan Road, then northward into the heart of the campus. The massive Art Deco Mundelein Arts Center rose on the right some 200 feet above the sidewalk with a guardian angel flanking each side of its imposing entrance. Well kept lawns spread out, exuding the fresh scent of mown grass in the morning air. The Madonna Della Strada Chapel, another Art Deco geometric design, greeted them on the right with seven arched stain glass windows along its southern wall bursting with sunlight in a rainbow of colors. A large cross sculpted into its rounded façade kept silent vigil over the campus, below a slender steeple looking out high above to the west and to Lake Michigan, only a few yards behind to the east, The broader squatter Cudahy Science Hall appeared on their left, a turn of the century brick and limestone structure with a pitched roof and a silver dome reminiscent of the Yerkes observatory. The East Quad had already been prepared with row upon row of white folding chairs facing a raised makeshift stage adorned with red, white and blue bunting above the maroon and gold colors and the crest of Loyola University celebrating the graduating class of 1963.

Suddenly the campus came alive with students walking about in suits and ties. Here and there professors appeared, while electricians and carpenters hammered and bleeped adjustments to the stage, the mic and the sound system. The Art Deco Cudahy Library passed on their right with its arched green entrance doors topped by a round window made of glass pieces arranged in a cross next to a tall tower suggestive of a minaret. Across from the library a wide garden of calliopsis adorned venerable old Dumbach Hall, another turn-of-the-century brick and limestone structure with yellow flowers exuding a soft sweet fragrance to mix with the morning smell of grass. Behind Dumbach Hall the runners caught a glimpse of Gentile arena where they cheered their national championship basketball team the previous winter. They crossed over Sean Earl playing fields, evoking memories of the tag football game they competed in the weekend before freshman enrollment. Finally, they entered their residence hall.

After hitting the men’s shower room and grabbing quick breakfasts in the cafeteria below, they went separate ways. Paddy O’Halloran visited several fellow classmates in another residence hall, bringing thank you gifts for helping him study towards an economics degree, requiring higher math and statistics, subjects he loathed and wasn’t good at. His real interests lay in the arts and in literature, but his father’s money and overbearing personality, endured since childhood, pressured him toward business with promises of connections at the Chicago Board of Trade and vast wealth. Paddy often referred to commodity trading as a means to a quick fortune and an escape from his father. When Jimmy Flores finished breakfast that morning, he paid visits to two professors, offering thanks for their guidance and encouragement; one his biology professor, the second the dean of the education school.

Each in their turn gave a thoughtful glance around their small dorm room before leaving it, with its twin beds, twin desks at opposite corners, twin cabinets, twin closets and twin windows looking out from the third floor over treetops to the sky and the lake beyond. They had landed in that small room as strangers one day before first year orientation and returned to it after their first-year practices, their first year classes, their first year track meets, their successes and failures, during those first nine months of college. Both immediately requested the same room and roommate for the coming year, before leaving that first June. With one of their last opportunities to look around it before the grand ceremony awaiting them only hours away, each gave a sigh of regret. The world outside in the great city of Chicago would offer opportunities for growth, advancement and romance, but both these young men sensed that they were leaving a world of simple joys they would never find again.

It didn’t take long for them to become fast friends. Jimmy ran the half mile, Paddy the mile. The grueling first year practices, followed by hours of exhausting study late into the night at desks in opposite corners of the room would probably have been enough to seal a life long connection, but there was a deeper bond that they discovered one night returning to campus after the Christmas holidays, and finding themselves a day early, sat on their twin beds, backs against the wall, feet outstretched on their mattresses, a paper coffee cup in their hands from the lobby vending machine, sharing a conversation that ostensibly began about the holiday celebrations and led them to talk about their fathers.

I’m surprised there are only two kids in your family, Paddy. The Irish families I’ve heard of usually have four, five, or six kids.

My father willed it, and I don’t believe they used any birth control, only what is called the ‘rhythm method.’ But he willed it, and my mother, silently complying to his wishes in everything, just refused to have more than two.

He sounds very strict, Paddy. Did he beat you as a kid?

I never gave him the chance. I was petrified from an early age. Once when we were driving on the highway here, my mother beside him in the front seat and my little sister with me in the back, I was five and Abbie only three, we were passed on the left by another driver with several kids in the back seat. Their window was open and one of the kids about Abbie’s age was poking a head out the rear window to catch the breeze. Well, my father races after them, catches up, pulls alongside and beeps his horn, while both cars are speeding down the highway. The other car pulled over and my father did likewise. Some enormous guy steps out of the other car and stalks over to the side of our car, his face red with fury. He must have been six-six, two sixty or better, ‘What the hell are you beeping at, Asshole?’ he demands when my father rolls down the window. ‘Your rear window is open and you got a kid leaning out who might tumble onto the highway,’ my father replies in a level voice. ‘What business is it of yours, Dipshit?’ the guy rages, and he kicks the side of the front door of our new Chevy. My father pushes the door open and deftly steps out to face the man who roars with sarcastic laughter. Then the guy kicks our car door violently a second time. They started to fight, fisticuffs, with myself sitting looking out the rear window only feet away, the other man towering over my father, who stands six-two, an inch bigger than me, but a rock hard two hundred. My father slips inside this guy’s tall reach quicker than I could have believed. Right to the stomach and up to the head. Left to the stomach and up to the head. Right cross to the head, Two left hooks to the head. And one last right that knocked the guy back against his car hood where he slides off to the ground. My father, not even breathing hard, gets back in our car and slowly pulls away.

What did your mom do, Paddy?

She sat silently watching the episode like me and like the other wife sitting in the front seat of the other car. It was shortly thereafter that I discovered my father was once heavyweight Golden Gloves champion of Chicago.

Did he ever hit you?

Not once. After seeing him in action at five years old, I remained frozen with fear at the thought of angering him. He didn’t have to even raise his voice. My father could kick my butt right now, if he were eighty.

Was he a good father?

Not really. Not unless you consider having someone else run your life as being a good father. He wanted me to play sports, probably because he thought it would look on a resume someday. I didn’t want to play football and got out of it, before the issue was raised, insisting that I loved to run. I ran and ran and ran, just so I would look busy with an athletic pursuit. But over the years, I began to love running. Running saved me from my father.

He sounds like a terror, Paddy.

Oh, believe me, he is! He pays any expenses I have beyond my scholarship, but he insists I go into business at the Chicago Board of Trade where he has a contact. He’s been planning on my becoming a wealthy trader since I was born.

Do you ever feel anger towards him?

All the time! I’ve dreamt of murdering him, but the truth is, I couldn’t even do that, if I wanted to and were prepared to accept a twenty-year prison sentence. He knows everything about guns. I’d be afraid to stab him, because the knife might break and he’d overpower me. I couldn’t poison him, either. He’s a captain on the police force and well acquainted with attempts people make to kill police chiefs and judges.

Maybe he’ll die sooner than you, Paddy.

Not a chance! The man eats only lean meats and vegetables and only drinks Irish whiskey and the best Scotch in moderation. He’s got his police captain’s eye always peeled for trouble makers.

As bad as it sounds, Paddy, he’s a far cry more civilized and decent than the father I grew up with and had to live with, until I turned thirteen.

Did he die?

No. Something even better. He got both arms cut off in a farming accident.

Where is he now?

Tucked away in a Veteran’s home in Indiana someplace. He should be in prison, or in hell on a slow burner.

What crimes did he commit?

He kidnapped my mother from Mexico and brought her here at sixteen, after getting a phony Texas preacher to issue a marriage license. He found her in a brothel in Juarez where she’d been brought the night before by a band of criminals who got her from her corrupt uncle in Toluca who owed gambling debts. The uncle had adopted her, after his brother died of cancer. It was from her father that my mother learned her jewelry craft. She was driven to the brothel in the back of a windowless van and brought out by a madam into the parlor with several other girls for this bastard, who I can’t really admit to being my father, to choose from. He immediately saw the opportunity for a free live-in maid and traded his Ford convertible for her with the brothel owner. Got her over the border somehow with a fake passport, married her with the help of the phony Texas preacher, and brought her back to Kansas where he’d taken over a farm from my grandparents, good people and Russian immigrants, who had moved to Saint Petersburg, Florida. He brought my sixteen-year-old mother back to the farm, instructed her how to feed chickens and do chores, and proceeded to rape her repeatedly, until she became pregnant with me. He’d been a drill sergeant during the war and apparently killed some recruit at basic-training, which was why they discharged him from the service, before he went back to my grandparents’ farm. But he was a stupid son of a bitch and that did him in. He purchased a new corn picker, didn’t know how to run it properly and never read the instructions. When the blades jammed on a cornstalk, he jumped down off the driver’s seat, without shutting the engine and tried to yank it free, and quicker than a bolt of lightning, the roller blades spun free, dragged him forward and down, and released him with both arms missing.

Were you there at the time, Jimmy?

I saw the whole thing, along with a crew of farm workers riding a flatbed behind and sorting the cornstalks into boxes.

How did he survive without bleeding to death?

One of the workers, a white Texan who’d lost his own farm due to heavy drinking, a decent guy who helped my mother and me afterward, sprang forward and tied belts around his stumps to cut off the bleeding enough for him to be air-lifted to a hospital. From there they brought him to a VA home and I never saw him again. People began to visit the farm who’d stayed away previously, and when my mother’s story came out, first to a minister, then to a state representative, they gave her US citizenship and her rightful name restored, which is the one I’ve adopted. They helped her sell the farm and relocate us to Wichita where I attended my first two years of high school. My mother found out about the Mexican settlement in Pilsen, and we packed up and moved again. A Mexican priest in Pilsen helped me get admitted to Saint Ignatius Prep and I started running track.

Did your father abuse you those first thirteen years?

Like you, as a small boy I was petrified with fear. My mother and I moved about the house and farm only exchanging brief whispers in her broken English and my broken Spanish. But one day when I was twelve, I didn’t add apple cider vinegar to the chicken feed and two chicks died. My father led me out to the barn that night, ordered me to pull down my pants and bend down over a water trough and beat me with a bridle strap so bad I couldn’t sit down on the school bus, or in class next morning. When a school nurse examined my injuries, this bastard was brought before a judge and threatened with child abuse charges. But somehow, he got out of it. Not two more days passed, before he brought me out to the barn again, tied my hands behind my back and held my head under water, yanking me up as I desperately gasped for air, informing me that he could torture me in ways that wouldn’t leave marks.

You must have been jubilant when he got his arms cut off.

The happiest moment of my life, Paddy! I ran inside the farmhouse immediately and lifted my mother into the air for sheer joy.

I don’t understand how evil survives in this world, Jimmy.

I don’t either. But it’s always with us and with the poor children bearing the brunt of its foulness and cruelty.

Their athletic careers at Loyola were successful, yet neither qualified for the Olympic trials, or the Millrose games. Jimmy Flores did slightly better than his friend. He won most of the duel meets in the 880-yard run with other midwestern universities, and in his junior year won the Drake Relays. Paddy O’Halloran won the indoor mile event at the city college championships his junior year held at the Chicago Amphitheatre. But neither had plans to compete after college. Their success in the classroom was similar, both solid B students, neither graduating with honors, or showing any interest in graduate school beyond the qualifying credits needed to make their living.

Jimmy had a vague sense that he would marry a Mexican woman and felt a subtle prejudice against his slightly darker skin and Mestizo features when he met well-to-do White women at college mixers. His social demeanor remained modest. He drank a glass, or two when alcohol became available, but never got inebriated. He never engaged in loud raucous pranks, never fought with other students, or debated hotly on the political issues of the day. The fear he’d spoken about from his childhood had carried over to a dignified reserve as an adult. The injustice his mother had endured never left his conscience, nor his dealings with people. And he never forgot the good people and the good fortune he’d met with at Saint Ignatius and Loyola. He felt an intense desire to help Mexican American children and was eager to instill in their young minds hope for a better future.

Paddy O’Halloran was basically more outgoing, more argumentative, more prone to loud laughter, to having a drink too many. It was only the fearful shadow of his father that kept him in check. He had an instinctive love of poetry. Instinctively, he was drawn to sentimental expressions in the arts. Yet he had an awareness that those instincts were unmasculine in the eyes of his father and his father’s friends. He brought a small turntable from home to their college dorm room and purchased LPs of Italian operas. But he kept them hidden in the top of his closet, rather than show them to other students who occasionally frequented their room, lest he be thought too, ‘soft.’ It was only with his non-judgmental roommate that he shared his enthusiasm.

His father had obtruded on his romantic love interests along with everything else, frequently mentioning the unmarried status of the beautiful daughter of a fellow police captain and the beautiful unmarried women in Galway where he had relatives. Paddy was forced to nimbly find excuses, without failing to exhibit an appropriate attraction for the opposite sex.

At twelve noon they met again in the dorm room to dress in caps and gowns for the graduation ceremony. No sooner had they completed these preparations, taking turns in front of the single small mirror to brush their hair and knot their ties, when the room intercom sounded.

A visit for you, Jimmy. Your mom is here, came the voice of a lower classman working the front desk.

Send her up to the third floor on the elevator, Howie. I’ll meet her when she steps off.

Want to meet my mom again, Paddy?

It would be an honor, Jimmy.

Paddy waited inside the room with the door open, while Jimmy went to meet his mother. Several other room doors along the hallway were open. Most of the other students there were graduating themselves, some expecting visits like Jimmy and Paddy. Windows inside the rooms admitted a fresh current of cool air greeting visitors as they entered the hallway. Paddy hadn’t waited more than five minutes when voices approached, speaking Spanish. Two small women suddenly appeared in the doorway,

Hello, Mister O’Halloran.

Hello, Misses Flores! Step inside this humble abode where Jimmy and I spent our last four years of study."

Paddy immediately recognized Jimmy’s mother, having met her four years earlier. She had changed very little during that time. Like her female companion, she wore a colorful embroidered Mexican shawl draped around her shoulders and down over her front. At thirty-seven years of age, her hair was still a pure lustrous black and her skin had the velvety glow of a young girl. Her features were wide, soft and subdued, but her brown eyes were large and bright. She had retained a girlish shyness, but the excitement at seeing her son’s room on this special day manifested itself in the brilliant smile she gave Paddy.

This is my friend, Gloria Ramirez.

Hello, Misses Ramirez! I’m Paddy! Come in! Come in! Should we get chairs for them, Jimmy? I can run next door and borrow some of Bert’s, who left earlier.

No, Paddy. We’re only staying a few minutes, before we head over to the chapel.

This was Jimmy’s desk, Misses Flores, and the bed closest to the windows was Jimmy’s.

Jimmy tells me you want to be a businessman, Mister O’Halloran.

Please call me Paddy, Misses Flores! Yes, I hope to be a businessman, but it’s not what I want. It’s born of necessity and what my family wants. I’d really like to be an artist like you. Is that bracelet one you made yourself?

Yes.

And this necklace I’m wearing, Paddy, said Gloria, a heavier older woman who stepped forward, so that Paddy could touch the finely wrought silver necklace she held out from her bosom.

So beautiful, Misses Flores! Jimmy told me you started working with silver as a young girl.

Yes. My father taught me and his father taught him. It goes back in my family and with my ancestors many generations all the way to the early sixteenth century.

A proud history, Misses Flores! I read about it from a book Jimmy gave me.

Is your family coming, too, Paddy?

Yes. They’re making a visit to this room in about a half hour. That’s what we planned. Then I’m showing them the campus, before the graduation ceremony.

Jimmy tells me your father is a police captain.

Yes, he is. I have to remain a good boy, or he’ll arrest me on trumped-up charges.

Then it’s helped you! laughed Gloria.

Not really, Misses Ramirez. It’s stunted my personality.

One would never guess it, meeting you for the first time, Paddy.

Thank you, Ma’am. I suppose we all have to accept our families, don’t we? Anyway, I try to take the middle road and find ways to agree.

We all have to do that in life, Paddy, said Gloria.

The visitors remained for another fifteen minutes, inspecting the typewriters, textbooks, the photos on the walls over the beds and on the desks of track meets and award ceremonies where they won events, in addition to the view out the window beyond the campus to Lake Michigan. Several times Jimmy’s mother reached out her small hand to touch her son’s books and mementos. When it was time to depart and she hinted at a handshake, Paddy eagerly extended a hand with a big smile. Gloria, the more outgoing of the two, volunteered her own hand, before Jimmy ushered them from the room.

I’ll bring my folks over to you, after the ceremony, Jimmy.

Sure, Paddy, when we’re all milling around out there.

Goodbye, Misses Flores. Goodbye, Misses Ramirez.

Goodbye, Paddy.

Paddy felt a strange sense of loss, left in the room alone, as if he had said goodbye to a part of himself. He yearned to meet other artists and artisans like Mrs. Flores, but didn’t know where to begin. All his life thus far had been wrapped up in running track and pursuing studies to conform to his father’s wishes. The large campus had thousands of students majoring in the humanities, but he’d known very few, since most of the track athletes majored in the sciences, engineering, or pre-med. The road ahead led to the busy commodities exchange, to salesmen, to ticket tapes, to the sporting events these men attended, the bars they frequented, the women who sought them for the security of wealth.

Rarely had Paddy been presented with a free day, even a half day independent of his family and his athletic pursuits. When they became available, he instinctively gravitated to the campus chapel, not to pray before the altar so much as to sit silently and study the beautiful stain glass windows and the religious statues. If it were springtime, he roamed the campus by himself to study the sculptures in the gardens, or simply to sit by himself in his dorm room with the door closed listening to his opera classics: La boheme, Madama Butterfly and Carmen. He felt connected in some deep intimate way to them, yet he knew he was being pulled away ineluctably by the waves of money obsessive businessmen, masculine bravado and his father. A voice coming from deep within, a feminine voice from Heaven, reminded him that a different world existed, a voice he heard echoes of moments ago in the voice of Jimmy’s mother.

He began to make a quick study of the books and keepsakes he would donate to other students and those he would take with him the following day when the university expected the graduates to empty out their dorm rooms. He sat at his desk for fifteen minutes, pen and pad in hand, until suddenly a faint rustle of clothing caused him to look up at the open doorway and his father appeared.

Hello, Dad, You’re early. I didn’t expect you for another twenty minutes.

Why is that? I told you sometime after twelve. Do I have to give you minute by minute instructions? Get your head straight, Son.

Sorry.

Come on in, Mom. You, too, Abbie.

The three O’Halloran family members entered the room with Captain James O’Halloran in the lead, followed by his small submissive wife Harriet, a woman whose entire person from her short, permed graying brown hair, gray eyes, small features and slight bone structure would have gone unnoticed in most any social gathering. Daughter Abigail came last, a bright good-looking girl of nineteen who’d recently completed secretarial school in LA, who at a glance looked more like her father than her mother. Captain O’Halloran’s bearing in his royal tartan Harris tweed jacket, impeccably starched white collar and conservative tie was as forbidding and imperious as it would have been in his decorated Captain’s uniform with junior officers in the rear. His silver hair looked as flawless as his white collar. His silver gray eyebrows lent his alert stern glance a bristling quality. When he spoke, he exhibited strong white teeth. His prominent features, especially his high forehead, glowed a ruddy red, Not a millisecond passed between father and son that left any doubt which was the leader, which the follower. Even while sitting down, Paddy’s posture bowed a little and the lively young man that the previous visitors had met with was gone.

Should I get chairs from next door? Would you all like to sit down awhile? Paddy asked, standing up.

No. We’re not staying long. The graduation announcement we received said two pm. I assume they’ll stick to that.

I’m sure they will, Dad.

Well, then it doesn’t give us much time to look over the campus, does it? Abbie’s never been here. We want to show her the chapel.

When did you get home, Abbie? Paddy asked, making an effort to sound cheerful.

Just last night, Paddy. I caught a train from South LA.

How did your exams go"

So, so, Paddy. You know, some requirements I had to complete, a speech course, a business writing course, a bookkeeping course. That kind of stuff.

I know, Abbie. I had to do required courses here. A lot of it is nonsense.

What is nonsense about college, or elite professional schools? Please tell me, since I’m paying for it. Is it nonsense I’m paying for?

No, Dad. I didn’t mean it that way.

Well, say what you mean then. Where’s a photo of the city colleges championship meet that you won?

It’s this one here, said Paddy, lifting a small desktop photo and handing it to his father.

Don’t you have a larger photo than this?

I gave it to my coach, Dad.

Why the hell did you do that?

It was a thank you gesture.

What about us? Don’t you think we deserve a photo? What about Abbie and your mother? Don’t you think they’d like a photo?

They can have any of these, Dad.

Paddy indicated the photos on the wall behind his bed.

Yes, but that was your biggest win. You weren’t an Olympic champion, Son. It was the only time I could brag about you to the other officers.

Paddy didn’t answer. He was visibly upset by his father’s speech. He sighed deeply and turned to the view outside the windows where even the blue sky and the green treetops had lost some brightness, where the buildings of the campus were no longer his, somehow having been taken from him.

I’ll find a way to have a bigger photo of that meet made for you, Dad.

How often did they do your sheets and laundry here, Paddy? asked his mother.

Once a week, Mom, he replied, still looking out the window.

Are they going to award you with any special honors today, Paddy’?

Not a chance, Abbie. Maybe nice guy second place, if they have such an award.

There isn’t much to look over here, is there? Unless you have a girlfriend stashed away in the closet.

No, Dad. No girlfriends stashed away anywhere. No girlfriends. No time for girlfriends. All of it spent finishing as a B business major and a grade B track runner.

Let’s go then. Show us the campus. And try to imagine you’re not a second-place son and brother. Your mother wants to take some pictures. Let’s go, okay? Everybody ready?

Sure, Dad. We can start at the north end and walk south.

Paddy mustered up some cheer and followed the other three out of the room. By then, Jimmy, his mother and Gloria had visited the Madonna Della Strada Chapel themselves. Chapels and churches were especially sacred to Jimmy’s mother. As a small girl in Taxco, Mexico living with her parents, and with her father alone after her mother passed away, she walked each morning over the winding hilly cobblestone streets surrounded by white houses interspersed with jacaranda trees blossoming over the rooftops with blue flowers to the church of Santa Prisca. They sat in the shady Plaza Borda enjoying religious festivals, during Holy Week and the brilliant red and green Christmas poinsettia plants originally cultivated by her Aztec ancestors. The Santa Prisca church with its high stone bell towers and rose-colored façade, its enormous ornate white columns supporting an exalted vaulted ceiling and cupola, its nine floor to ceiling altarpieces covered by myriads of golden religious figures, was deeply connected to the love she felt for her parents and the fine silverwork of her father.

When she entered the Madonna Della Strada Chapel at Loyola, a feeling of utter transport came over her. The round marble fountain at the entrance led to seven stained glass windows on each side of the long nave, each window celebrating its own saint. Walls of the purest white rose to a white ceiling supported by rounded arches. A marble floor embedded with geometric designs led down the center aisle to the curved steps of the chancel and a simple white marble altar in the shape of a table. Behind the altar a wall of gold arched upward with images of angels on each side of a Christ figure in gold and the Madonna in brilliant blue, The beautiful white marble in the vast chapel, the glowing contrast of stained-glass admitting sunlight, the vivid contrast of blue and gold, and the image of Christ and the Virgin brought Mexico back to her as if the angels ahead were singing the hymns of her childhood.

Do they have weddings here, Jimmy? she whispered to her son, when they stopped at the fountain for one last look, before departing.

Yes, Mom, he answered softly.

They strolled on again in the fine May weather past Cudahy Science Hall and the busy East Quad to the expanse of blooming yellow calliopsis in front of Dumbach Hall. Inspired by other families taking pictures on the bright green grass in front of the fresh yellow blooms, mother and son posed for several photos, Jimmy, tall and handsome in his cap and gown, an arm around his beautiful Mexican mother in her colorful embroidered rebozo. Then Jimmy took the camera and snapped photos of his mother and Gloria, the dear friend she first met moving to Pilsen with her fifteen-year-old son.

At Cudahy Library they inspected the ornate green bronze entrance doors, the round window above them and the tall pavilion peaked tower hinting at Spanish architecture. They spent silent moments within, admiring the tall arched, leaded glass windows giving light to the spacious reading room where a thirty-foot high ceiling in soft dreamy blue looked down benevolently on scholars. The long line of oak tables with their green lamp shades, the enormous mural on the end wall depicting missionary work in the Great Lakes region during the 17th and 18th centuries aroused in Jimmy precious memories of research study, exams, trials and adventures of college learning, For Mrs. Flores, the library inspired a deep pride in and reverence for her son. They moved on again in the bright sunlight of a perfect day, caressed by a gentle breeze coming off the lake.

They didn’t see Paddy and his family, until after the ceremony of scholarly speeches and the parade of graduates onto the stage draped in patriotic and Loyola colors looking out over a thousand family members and friends wearing joyful faces and festive attire. Paddy’s family made only a brief visit to the chapel and the other buildings on campus, until they reached the athletic arena where his father had numerous questions about the training equipment, the locker room facilities and the recent basketball championship. When they finally met in the crowd afterward, the parents shared only cursory greetings and congratulations, before Mr. O’Halloran recognized a relative of another police officer and drifted off with his wife and daughter. Mrs. Ramirez took several pictures of the two friends standing together holding their diplomas, giving Paddy a moment of relief to enjoy his special day and his friendship in the warm sunlight, under a perfectly serene cloudless sky.

Chapter 2

The roar and tumult of voices within belied the September downpour outside as convincingly as it would have a noisy parade, or a fireworks display. The glaring artificial lighting overhead in the enormous room and lack of windows along the sides did the same to the morning sunlight most days not far away on Michigan Avenue, State Street and Grant Park. To Paddy, the time might have been 8:30AM, or 12 noon, or 2PM, instead of 9:45AM, because he didn’t have even an instant to glance at his watch, nor the self-possession to do so, and having arrived at work three hours before, he had completely lost connection, not only to the time of day, but to his past and his future.

He carried four new orders rubber-banded inside a small notebook sunk deep into the inside chest pocket of his bright red blazer, and when he scrambled up the five steps to gain access to the soybean pit, he kept one hand pressed tightly down on that notebook, lest the life and death message within should fall, a transgression more unpardonable in this place and these circumstances than foul bloody murder.

Eight for ten! Five for ten!

Five at eight! Five at ten

Five for ten! Eight for ten!

The most distinct voices came from the top row. Others were muted by a gust of shouting from all sides of the pit that descended from its octagonal outer wall some 120 feet across down to a small level space in the middle 20 feet across. Hundreds of traders joined in this shouting with a tempest of vigorous hand signals, the fingers and palms of each man carrying a distinct message involving thousands of bushels of soybeans and millions of dollars.

Yet looking down and around as Paddy did, the proceedings appeared less sane and purposeful than a coral reef of seagrass underneath a hurricane. He didn’t have a millisecond to survey the space around the soybean pit. Had he done so, the mayhem and noise inside it might have convinced him that soybeans were the calm center of the trading universe. Eighteen other pits filled the hall. Bleachers rose on three sides where brokers sat taking calls from clients next to clerks writing new orders and recording sales. Together this multitude totaled nearly three thousand men.

Paddy wedged and sidled around and through the mass of traders for a few yards left and a few down to one of the lower steps.

What is it? shouted Ferrigan, the trader, looking straight ahead and continuing a hand signal, palm toward his face, then index finger on his chin, before holding out that palm to the side for Paddy’s message.

Eight at eight! Five at eight! Eight for ten! Five for ten! shouted Paddy at the side of Ferrigan’s profile, and without reading the message, or turning to the side, Ferrigan grabbed it, stuffed it in his pocket and shouted in a louder voice meant for his runner with his hands down.

Five at ten! Five at eight! Eight at ten! on the first order! You got that?

Yes! shouted Paddy.

Five for ten! Eight for ten! Five for eight! And eight for ten! on the second! You got that?

Yes! shouted Paddy, taking the paper that Ferrigan violently slapped down in his own outstretched palm, without looking at him. In the more than one hundred times during the last three months that he’d brought messages to Ferrigan, he never saw the man turn right or left, up or down. Without another word, Paddy sidled up and out of the soybean pit.

The outside passageway at the bottom of the pit stairs offered space enough to move forward, without side stepping. Twenty-five yards away, Paddy climbed up four ascending levels extending like platforms and populated to the right and left, above and below, by traders and their clerks, the former holding phones to their ears, the latter writing vigorously on notebooks with a narrow desktop surface before them. The sea of traders and clerks wore bright jackets like the traders in the pits; yellows, blues, greens, oranges, or bright reds similar to Paddy’s and all the representatives of Garrety Commodities, the company he worked for. The noise from these brokers and their clerks united with the steady roar of the pits at the center of the hall, but not a sound, or a breath in the thousands of voices communicated anything veering off the dogged path these men followed relentlessly toward wealth. Paddy sidled his way past half a dozen brokers on the fourth level and handed the return communication from Ferrigan to Harris, a thirty something balding consumptive looking clerk who snatched it greedily.

Five at ten! Five at eight! Eight at ten! on the first! Then five for ten! Eight for ten! Five for eight! Eight for ten! on the second! shouted Paddy in a lower key.

Right! shouted Harris back at him in the same lower key, while handing another order to Paddy, without looking up.

Hard Winter Wheat! Eight for ten! Five at eight! Five at ten! You got that? shouted Garrety the broker, pausing in his phone call with a hand over the receiver.

Yes! shouted Paddy back at Garrety, folding the message from Harris with its bold clear writing, stating not only the bushels to be bid and offered, but the name of the client, farmer, or food business. Without a second’s pause, Paddy wedged his way out and down again, then along the less crowded passageway between pits and brokers to the Hard Winter Wheat pit, the second pit Garrety Commodities had a trader in.

For one fleeting second, he dared to look up and around on his scamper to the Hard Winter Wheat pit. Like his former dash to soybeans, he’d made this same trip over a hundred times in the past three months. With each quick glance that he indulged in, he was reminded of the Roman Coliseum and its gladiator contests. The coliseum would have given more space to the combatants, but he couldn’t believe that the Roman spectators were any louder, or more intensely focused than these men. On each face and within each voice, young, old, as wealthy as the most successful broker, or as poor as the poorest runner, there dwelt the mystique of dreamt wealth, so palpable it could be felt in the vibrations of the air.

Men in science, in industry, in education, in medicine might stray occasionally in their hourly pursuits to lighter concerns like Hollywood movies, vacations, show girls, pop music, politics. or the weather. Not these men, not once after they entered through turnstiles into this vast hall and the selling and buying began. If a man suddenly died of a massive heart attack, they might mourn for him on the outside, attend his funeral and express deep sympathy to the wife and family. But at the moment he keeled over, they would barely pause long enough to have his body whisked away.

Paddy climbed five steps to the Hard Winter Wheat pit, descended two steps and sidled three steps to his right past shoulder to shoulder signaling traders shouting numbers for bids and asks. He relayed his message to Bentley, the second company trader, shouting the numbers that Garrety had shouted to him, handed over the written order that Harris had given him, received a shouted and written order in return, and sidled away out of the pit.

Between arriving at 6:25AM that day and leaving at 2:05PM, he made twenty-eight round trips, without stopping for a sandwich, or a drink to sooth his larynx. Bently, Garrety, Ferrigan, and Harris remained at their work when another runner, a twenty-year-old night student, came to relieve Paddy.

He struggled out of the hall, hurried past security guards through a turnstile, onto a crowded elevator, stepped out into a cool high echoing marble entrance corridor, and finally emerged under the Chicago sky that had cleared from an earlier storm, bringing a fresh current of Canadian air blowing against his sweaty brow. At the end of the plaza, he stopped to glance at the statues of Industry and Agriculture, before rushing off to put food in his clamoring stomach.

In the three months since Paddy’s graduation, he’d yet to solve the problem of where to live. Every day during that time he stayed with his parents and sister Abbie at his boyhood home in Mount Greenwood, a train ride away in the far southwest corner of Chicago. He walked the same tree-lined streets there he’d walked as a young boy, jogged his old teenage jogging route each evening, slept in his old room with his old high school photos of track meets and banners of Loyola hanging on the walls. Neighbors he met during the summer congratulated him on his accomplishments at Loyola, gushing with pride for a neighborhood boy done good.

Pop and mom are proud of you, Paddy! We all are! And we hear pop got you a connection on the commodities exchange. Are you gonna buy a place near us here when you make your millions, Paddy? Or are you gonna live in one of those penthouses on the North Shore? asked Dan Rivers, the retired city fireman living two houses away.

Paddy didn’t want to disappoint them. Despite all the harsh complaints about his father that he’d made to Jimmy, he didn’t want to disappoint his father, either. The old neighbors, the old relatives, the dinner table at night sharing a meal with his family and fielding his father’s eager questions about the Chicago Board of Trade, questions posed with more respect for his son and more regard, now that Paddy was on that preordained path that James O’Halloran, captain of the Chicago Police Department, viewed as the only path preferable to the one he’d chosen himself; all of these things soothed Paddy’s tired nerves after hours spent in the exchange, hours of shouting, of in your face, non-stop, never ending sprinting for wealth that Paddy at heart didn’t feel connected to in the least.

His first months at the exchange pulled him in two separate directions. The first led to great material wealth, occasioned by noise, combativeness, jostling and racing in a stuffy atmosphere, unlike his track races that had filled his lungs with fresh air and revived his spirits. The second direction led to a different kind of adventure relating to art and romance, and came from a voice deep within, a soft feminine voice that had offered its alluring echo when he heard Jimmy’s mother.

He passed Misses Agriculture and Industry that Tuesday at 2:15PM, walking briskly to the nearest coffee shop for a cheeseburger special with fries, a tall glass of water and a tall ice coffee. But unlike previous days leaving the coffee shop, he didn’t hurry to catch a train to Mount Greenwood. He wandered south to a different subway and stepped off it in a neighborhood he hadn’t visited but once before as a college first-year student. The beguiling pagoda rooftops of Chinatown, the welcome sign of the community center extending over a main thoroughfare, dense clusters of businesses, their signs written in both Chinese and English above sidewalks as yet little populated at that time of day, led him further, and from somewhere distant, yet seductively close, a feminine voice called to him.

At Ping Tom Memorial Park he stood on the boardwalk overlooking the south branch of the Chicago River, giving some private moments to a contemplation of his future, before wandering back to the central business district. Old four and five story buildings with Chinese restaurants and businesses at their bases, adorned with prodigious Chinese lettering, streamed past him, accompanied by a mix of pedestrians; Oriental, White and Black American. He knew he was less than five minutes jogging time from the lakefront trail south along Lake Michigan and only minutes by subway from museums and an opera house he wanted to explore. He kept walking, and before he headed back to his boyhood home, picked up a local penny saver and stuffed it safely into the chest pocket of his red blazer. That night before turning off his light and resting his head on the pillow, he secretly studied a dozen apartment listings, printed in both Chinese and English.

Over the years, going all the way back to his first paper route as a young boy, Paddy had saved a little nest egg. It included savings from summer jobs mowing lawns, gardening and helping a local moving company. Because his track scholarship paid nearly all his college expenses, and because his father insisted on paying for anything else, including any clothes he needed, or extra books, the nest egg had rarely been depleted. It remained at nearly ten thousand dollars, far more than would be required to make a start with his own apartment and furnishings. Yet Paddy was instinctively a modest young man, by nature frugal. When he looked over the apartment ads, he searched for a studio, instead of anything larger, not quite sure himself how serious he was about getting his own place. He told no one of his search.

On Thursday afternoon, exploring Chinatown for the third straight day, he found a three-block area that he liked best. Inside one of the narrow establishments there sat a young Oriental woman quietly typing. When she suddenly pulled the sheet out of her typewriter and looked through the front window at the very instant Paddy passed through the center of it, below the name of a real estate business written in both Chinese and English, their eyes met and a spontaneous smile lit up both their faces. Paddy pushed open the entrance door and stepped inside a small carpeted room with only one other desk, beside the typist. Several wooden file cabinets lined the wall opposite with two framed prints above them, one a 12th Century Chinese landscape painting by Zhang Zeduan, the second a night photo of Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile at Christmas time. On one of the file cabinets sat a potted peace lily sprouting white flowers. The young woman rose and came around her desk.

Are you looking for an apartment, Sir? she asked in a no-nonsense voice bearing only the faintest trace of a foreign accent. Her friendly smile disarmed him, because of her delicate beauty. Framed by pure black hair drawn back over her ears, wide cheekbones and a forehead glowing with a soft alabaster light, a pair of alluring brown eyes spoke to him more strongly than her words. Her flower print blouse, dark skirt and heels were middle American.

Yes, Miss. Can you give me some idea what a studio would rent for in this immediate neighborhood?

I sure can! she said perkily. Are you from the commodities exchange?

How did you guess?

I have a client who works there as a clerk. He wears one of those bright colorful blazers like yours.

How remarkable! I guess it’s a small world, isn’t it?