The Island of Doves by Kelly O'Connor McNees Read Free Book Online Page B

Riley, whom Edward had hired a few months back, rubbed his neck where the other man had gripped it. He spit a clot of blood and mucus onto the ground.
    “Blasted Irish,” Edward said. “Nothing has any use to you if you can’t punch it. Or drink it.”
    Both men waited for him to say more, their hands hanging at their sides. All the nearby workers waited too. Edward hesitated. Some factory owners tolerated fighting as a part of this kind of business. It was rough work and you needed strong men to do it, men whose fathers’ knuckles had beaten all the bright ideas out of them. But the knowledge that other men in his situation made allowances only redoubled Edward’s anger. He felt it race up his spine, and his voice took on the eerily calm tone that signified his most intense rage.
    “You’re no better than garbage, both of you. As of today, you no longer work here. And I’ll be damned if you ever work anywhere else in this city.”
    The men stood there, staring at him. Colm’s bottom lip hung wet and swollen, like the underside of a slug. They were the kind of men you might see fishing on a Sunday morning, relaxed, patient, as if there were nothing else in the world to concern them. Edward had known that particular serenity as a boy: watching the surface of the water, the dance of the slack line in the sunlight as his small boat bobbed. Nothing pleased his mother more than a pail full of cold fish, and he loved feeling that he had done something, really
done
something useful to assuage her worry, even if only for an afternoon. But he had outgrown the hobby. His father’s beatings had seen to that. He could only see his mother cower for so long before he lost respect for her, and for himself. The violence had warped him, made him see sympathy as a weakness. He learned that there was only one way to get power, and that was to take it.
    Things got worse in the afternoon when Nathaniel Root came to inquire, his tone casual, without suspicion, about financial records the city needed in order to renew its contract with Edward’s company for building supplies. He wanted information about Edward’s backers for the factory.
    This created a minor problem, for Edward’s only backer was Edward himself. When he had borrowed all he could from the New York banks and they cut him off, the grim bankers shaking their heads, he drummed up credit elsewhere, in Pennsylvania and Ohio. These funds Edward used to expedite the construction of new homes, to build the jail he had boasted about at the dinner with Beals and Root. But the money only went so far, and profits were slow to come in. When the note on the loans had come due, he couldn’t pay.
    A lesser man, one without any gall, would have curtailed his projects, perhaps waited until the first crop of homes sold so he could pay off the loans, then wait some more while he saved enough to begin again. But Edward saw tremendous opportunity for gain, and he was loath to sit around while someone else grabbed it. He felt like the king of the city. His fingerprints were on every construction project, and thoughts of his legacy crowded out any impulse toward moderation. He understood that he was spreading himself very thin, but that was only in the short run. If only the banks could look down the line, consider the opportunities. But they were unwavering in their disdain for his plans.
    “Suppose the market were to fall,” a rat-faced man in Manhattan City told him. “Suppose we were to have trouble with Britain in the Northwest Territory again. Or Nat Turner’s ghost incites the negroes to burn up all the cotton in Virginia. You’ve got no equity, no security. You must exercise some caution, Mr. Fraser. This boom cannot last.”
    It was lack of imagination, Edward thought. But then, they were small men, happy slaving their lives away in little offices, moving stacks of paper around. They weren’t willing to take a risk on creating something important, something big that would