Charlie Hennigan

A Heroic Effort to Help A Man Backfires

Before I tell you about today’s story, I wanted to let you know that I published short story anthology on Amazon this weekend that is titled: Gods Eighth Day - The Creation of the Texas Spirit. It’s about fifteen stories and includes all of those I’ve put on the site here. I’ve included some bonus material related to the stories in the book where I provide a bit more background into the ideas behind the story. A paperback version will be available on Amazon within the next three days as well. I’ve included the Amazon link here, Amazon Link for Gods Eighth Day and I’d be honored if you check it out and consider purchasing a copy.

I’ll be publishing two stories this week. The first is entitled Charlie Hennigan. It’s a story I wrote several years back that I dusted off and re-wrote. It tells the tale of two young men who couldn’t be more opposite who meet in Galveston back in 1840. It’s a tale about how friendships can backfire, sometimes spectacularly.

Charlie Hennigan

By: Larry B. Litton Jr.

Hardly a day passes by that I don’t think about Charlie Hennigan and the role I played in what happened to him. Thirty mostly gray, and hazy years may have passed, but I can still remember with perfect clarity the look on his face when they put that rope around his neck.

Sometimes I’ll add even another shot of bourbon to my already impressive count of daily doses in an effort to dull that vision, but it manages to shine through as bright as the morning sun. He looked at me the whole time with his head held high, and his broad shoulders proudly thrust back. He had the same look in his eyes that my father did the day he had to put down his favorite hunting dog. It was a look of pity.   Charlie was about to hang, but he was feeling sorry for me.

I believe that some men have been gifted with a disposition that can extract joy out of any circumstance. Others, such as myself, have been cursed with such a dour outlook that it’s impossible to find the good in anything. But Charlie didn’t believe that. He thought he could TEACH me to change, and bring out the best in me. But I think I proved him wrong in the end.

I met Charlie in Galveston Texas in 1840. I had taken passage on the Sea Lion, a three masted schooner that had sailed over from New Orleans. I was twenty-five years old and had just graduated from the University of Virginia the year before. I was born and raised in Richmond, and all the men from the Williams family went to the University of Virginia to study law. My father was the county Judge for fifteen years before he started his own law firm and I had naturally assumed I would follow in his footsteps. I made good grades, studied hard, and my professors proudly proclaimed me to have the sharpest legal mind in the class. But my father had other ideas. On the day of graduation from law school, he told me Uncle Samuel was down in Galveston Texas and was building a trading company and I was to travel down there and work for him. I’d never heard of Galveston, and I had no interest in leaving Virginia.

“I’ll not quarrel with you over this,” my father said. “Your uncle helped pay for your education and this is our way of paying him back.”

“I never agreed to this father,” I said to him. “I’m not going to go.”

He stood up and approached me, glowering down at me with hatred in his eyes. It was a look I had seen all too often from my father.

“You will not dishonor this family Cotter,” he said. “We owe Samuel a debt, and you will go. If I have to hog tie you, and take you down there myself, you will go.”

My father had never been fond of me. He always thought me strange. Once when I was a young boy no older than twelve, I was playing in the cellar and my folks didn’t know I was down there. I heard my father tell my mother that I was an “ awkward runt with scarecrow arms and an effeminate nature.” I was always undersized and not well suited to the rugged adventurous life he lived. He was a regular participant in the Friday night boxing matches down at the county courthouse and he always tried to get me to go with him, but I preferred to stay home and read. He would stare at me with cold black eyes, and I felt that he hated me and was ashamed of me. I had no interest in meeting people or seeing grown men fight. I preferred to be alone in my room and read the Canterbury Tales by the light of the oil lamp in my room. I loved the stories about King Authur, and I liked to imagine the chivalrous knights in shining armor riding to the rescue of the damsel’s in distress. I found people generally annoying – what I loved about books is that they didn’t demean me, or look down on me, or make fun of me the way most people did. In those books, I could immerse myself in a world where I was the conquering hero, whose father would be proud of him.

Although I didn’t particularly care about the family name, I relented. I figured it would be better working for my uncle than being disowned by my father and cut out of whatever inheritance I would be entitled to, so I ended up taking a series of trains and making my way down to New Orleans. My father at least made sure I had some new clothes and enough money in my pocket to get me going. In New Orleans I booked passage on a schooner over to Galveston seeing that the fare was ten dollars cheaper than the train and I was down to my last fifteen dollars. I spent three days unable to eat and constantly seasick on the sail across the Gulf of Mexico over to Galveston.

It was early March the day we docked in Galveston.  The day dawned with a sky that was the color of steel with a bitter northerly wind to match. As we came up alongside the dock it vibrated with the soles of dozens of feet hustling along the old wooden pier in what sounded like a random chorus of drummers pounding to no particular tune. There were plenty of longshoremen, even if they weren’t particularly efficient. Some of them pushed creaky old wooden carts with rusty nails sticking out the sides and some were gathering in lines from the ship getting ready to tie her off. A bunch of others were jockeying for position along the pier, holding armfuls of empty burlap sacks to help carry off any belongings of the passengers.

I must have been studying them in a particularly intense manner because I didn’t notice the large man that had come to stand next to me.

“They look to be an eager lot, don’t they?” said the young man. He looked to be around my age, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. Only this man was tall, with big broad shoulders and shoulder length hair the color of the darkest night. And he had this smile like I imagined one would have if they had discovered all the secrets to the universe.

“They look hungry to me,” I said, trying to dismiss this interloper. I wasn’t interested in company and I didn’t much want to talk to anybody. Strangers terrified me. The idea of investing time in a conversation that would likely end with them disliking me was something I tried to avoid. I looked back to the crowd of men below and I saw how most of them were wearing nothing but rags and more than a few wore trousers fashioned out of the same type of bags they carried. They were string thin and some of those without shirts had ribs that stuck out like sickly skeletons. A lot of those men were barefoot and they were covered in mud and I wondered how they could stand it in that wet, windy cold. I said a silent prayer that I not end up like one of those poor souls.

I turned and saw that the man was still standing there, that same knowing grin on his face like he was reading my mind.

“I guess some of them do look a little hungry,” the man said, laughing from deep in his belly. “You say hungry and I say eager. Why do you think that is? We’re seeing the same bunch of folks aren’t we?”

I stepped back, just to get some distance from this man, unsure if he was trying to pick a fight with me. It wouldn’t have been the first time. In New Orleans I’d been accosted by a man who told me I looked like “damn Yankee blue blood.”

I didn’t say anything, thinking if I just ignored him then he would go away. About that time the captain had started yelling at the longshoremen near the stern of the ship to tie off the lines to the cleats that were located on the pier. Some of the other hands on the ship were beginning to lower the gangplanks down to the dock as the longshoremen scrambled to help secure the planks so they could be the first ones up to help those customers disembarking.

“Maybe they’re both,” the big man said. “I got an idea.” He left for a second but quickly returned with a small bag of oranges.

“Hey fella’s,” he screamed down at the crowd on the pier. “Who wants some oranges?”

He then tossed the bag down into the crowd below. You’d have thought he’d thrown all of king Midas’ gold down there to see those boys go after those oranges. One of the men, a scraggly older man with wiry gray hair emerged with the bag but a much younger man punched him in the gut and took the bag, running off down the pier.

“Aha,” he said to me. I just looked at him dumbfounded. “You see. We’re both right. They’re hungry and they’re eager. The difference is I see men who are eager to work and you see men who are just hungry. We’ve got brighten your outlook boy.”

He pounded me on the back nearly knocking over the gunwales of the ship while laughing like a loon.

“My name is Charlie Hennegan,” he said, extending his huge hand.

“I’m Cotter Williams,” I said.  His hand swallowed mine. His grip almost made me wince.

Charlie hesitated a moment and grabbed my shoulders in a friendly manner, the smile now gone.

“It’s your lucky day Cotter,” Charlie said. “You look like you need a friend. Guess what? I’m your new friend.”

About an hour later we were walking down muddy streets that were covered in horse and mule shit that had liquefied and merged and turned into a reeking layer of what I called mud-shit.

I remember thinking this was the most god forsaken land that God could have ever created. My father had told me Galveston was going to be the New York of the gulf coast and I now knew he’d had a good joke at my expense. If I ever needed proof that my father hated me, I now had it.

I watched mules that looked almost as sick as their drivers pulling carts leaden with various goods being delivered to the shop fronts. I saw street vendors peddling dirty looking clay bowls and pots. There were a couple of street performers, one was playing a banjo rather poorly and the other was juggling. Most of the people seem to be mindlessly strolling through the streets not paying the performers any mind. My mind couldn’t grasp how this low-lying barrier island could ever be transformed into a livable city. But at least I had a rich uncle with a high paying job waiting for me. At least there was that.

“Ain’t this just grand,” Charlie says, jolting me from my depressing thoughts.

“What are you talking about?”

“This,” he says, waving his arms around and taking in the town. “We’re here at the beginning my friend. One day this will be a great city. Just think how great it could be.”

“It smells like shit,” I said, more to myself than to him.

“There you go again,” he says. “You smell shit and I smell possibilities. Somebody’s got to clean up all this mess. And that somebody will be a rich man.”

He still hadn’t asked anything about me which started to get me a little suspicious. I heard just about his entire life story. He was born in New York right after his parents arrived on a boat from Ireland. His mother died in childbirth and his dad raised him with the help of a neighborhood prostitute named Anna. He said he’d gotten his sunny disposition from her. I asked him what she had to be so sunny about and he laughed and said she always felt humping men for money was better than working as a seamstress in the brutal textile factories.

Her thought was why get married and give it away for free when she could sell it and make a very decent living. He decided to leave New York when he won five bucks from an old Indian in a card game. He said he had a dream where his dead mother came to him and told him he was to go seek his fortune in Texas. So, he took the five bucks with another couple dollars his dad and Anna had given him and started making his way down south doing odd jobs from town to town to pay for the trip down here. In New Orleans he said an old Gypsy lady had said Galveston was the new land of opportunity, so this was where he had to come. It’s safe to say that I had pretty much concluded that Charlie was about as crazy as the mad hatter.

“So I figure you for the son of a wealthy business man,” he finally got around to saying to me. So here it comes. The whole reason he befriends me is so he can try to get a job.

“What makes you think that?”

“Maybe it’s that sunny outlook of yours,” he said sarcastically.

But he dropped it after that. We were passing a pub and he said that we should go in so he could buy me a drink. I told him I didn’t want to go, that my uncle was expecting me, but he insisted.

“I’ve got a dollar left and you and me are going to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Just being here,” he said like I was the dumbest person in the world.

We walked into this little saloon which on closer inspection really wasn’t more than a lean to. The building looked like any substantial breeze would bring it down. The support beams look to be made of oak logs that were rotted and mildewed and the wood slat walls had jagged rips and holes strewn here and there. The floors were made of clay that had started to turn into mud, but at least it wasn’t the mudshit that had lined the streets outside and the smell was at least manageable. It was dark inside, and most of the tables were taken with bearded men who looked hardened and weathered and not particularly happy. Most of them drank what looked like whiskey and the men at the tables were playing cards. There was a table over in the corner that Charlie pointed to.

“Grab that table,” he said. “I gotta go out and have a piss.”

After he left, I thought about leaving but something made me stay. Maybe it was the prospect of getting a free drink and I only had a few dollars left myself. I sat at the table. After a minute I saw a couple of girls come down the stairs.  They were prostitutes. In the dim light I couldn’t see very well but I could see good enough that these were some rough looking girls. One of ‘em was bigger than Charlie and of course she was the one who came up to my table.

“Whatcha doin there sweetie,” she said in a voice that was amazingly high pitched.

I didn’t say anything, but I nodded at her. I wanted her to go away, and I wanted Charlie at the table. Small talk with a prostitute was not something I had much interest in.

“You want to go upstairs,” she asked.

“I’m fine here,” I said, looking back over my shoulder to see if Charlie was on his way back.

“Come on now,” she says, coming over to sit in my lap.

“Please go away,” I said, the thought of her writhing around in my lap made me want to throw up. She waddled away casting me an evil glance over her shoulder.

A few seconds later two guys come over to the table, neither looking very hospitable.

One of the fellas wore a wide brimmed hat and was probably two inches taller than the beast of a woman who had just left. In fact, the cowboy looked almost just like her. It had to have been her brother. The other man was a foot shorter, but broad as a bull and with a beard that had food stuck all in it, and he looked mean, like he was ready to kill me or anybody else who got crosswise with him.

“Daisy said you were rude to her,” the Cowboy said. I could see he was clinching and unclenching his firsts.

“I wasn’t trying to be rude,” I said. “I told her I wasn’t interested in any company.”

“That’s not what she said,” the Cowboy said. “Now you got some company boy. Only my company ain’t going to be as pleasurable as her’s woulda been.”

I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe hanging out with Charlie for the past couple of hours had put some kind of curse of me. I was almost shaking I was so scared, but I said it anyway.

“Believe me,” I said. “Nothing about that beast would have been pleasurable.”

His face turned red, and he took a step towards me. About that time Charlie finally showed back up.

“What do we have here?” Charlie asked, grinning from ear to ear. Thank God he made it back because the Cowboy was getting ready to kill me.

“Nothing that’s any of your concern,” the cowboy said.

“Well, I believe it is my concern,” Charlie said, just as calm as if he was talking to a little child. “This boy is my friend. If you have a problem with him, then you have a problem with me.”

The saloon went silent. All the men at the other tables stopped what they were doing and turned to watch what was happening between Charlie and the Cowboy. The Cowboy looked a bit uncertain, not expecting a challenge and with all the eyes on him I could tell he was feeling compelled to do something.

Without warning he lunged towards Charlie while throwing a wild roundhouse punch. Charlie deftly took a little step back like he knew it was coming and threw his own jab that connected squarely with the cowboy’s jaw. The cowboy dropped straight onto the floor. Charlie smiled the whole time like he was enjoying himself.

The Cowboy’s friend just stood there looking unsure as to what to do. Charlie studied him, but didn’t move.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Charlie said, loud enough for everyone in the saloon to hear him. “And the answer to your first question is no, the answer to the second question is yes, and the answer to the third question is yes.”

The man just stared at Charlie.

“You’re wondering if you can get one good shot at me and knock me out and the answer to that question is no,” Charlie said, taking a small step towards the man.

“Yes, if you take that shot and miss, I will beat your ass into next week,” he said, taking another menacing step towards the man. The man subconsciously took a step back.

“And yes you’ll look like a scared little Mary by leaving. But believe me, it’s the best decision you’ve ever made in your life.”

The man thought another second and then decided that Charlie wasn’t joking and he turned and left the establishment.

At that moment I decided that having Charlie Hennegan as a friend may not be the worse thing in the world.

“I guess I owe you now,” I said.

“You don’t owe me nothing,” Charlie said, sitting down at the table.

“I’m going to work for my uncle who runs a trading company,” I said. “I’m going to see if I can get you a job there too. It’s the least I can do”

“I don’t want a job there,” Charlie said. “You think the reason I did that is because I want something?”

I didn’t say anything. Charlie smiled again, clapping me on the back.

“There’s something about you I just like,” he said. “You’ve got this great potential in you. I heard what you said to those fellas. That took guts. But you also have this melancholy shroud that just hangs over you. I swear to God that even if it kills me we’re going to change that.”

***

By 1850 Galveston had changed a great deal. Where I had seen nothing but low lying swamp and Charlie had seen immense possibility on that day we met in 1840, it was Charlie’s vision of things that had come to pass. The store fronts no longer looked like they were going to tumble down and merchants had even begun to import ornate iron fronts for their buildings. The mudshit streets on most of the island had been replaced with shell hauled up from the beach.

The town council had allocated money for sidewalks and even installed gas lights if you can believe that. The New York Sun even reported: “Downtown Galveston has the appearances of a modern eastern city. The streets are wide and straight and the cleanliness is on par with New York.” Even the modern arts began to flourish in the town. We had an opera house, two publishing houses, and theatres that hosted ballet’s and minstral shows.

My career was coming on along nicely. I wasn’t getting rich by any means, but I had a good paying job and had worked my way up to First Vice President at my uncle’s firm of McKinnley and Williams. McKinnley Williams was a trading company, and if anything shipped through the port of Galveston, it went through my uncles firm first. I handled a lot of the shipping contracts for the firm. I had hoped to be made a partner, but I discovered that my uncle Samuel is every bit of the incorrigible character as my father except that he likes me even less.

He never spoke to me unless he had to and even told me once that although I do an adequate job, the only reason he had hired me on at the firm was because my father had insisted on it. When I asked him about the debt my father owed him he laughed and said my dad owed him no debt other than hiring me. I never could figure out which one of them was telling the truth.

That’s why I was surprised in the early fall of 1850 to receive an invitation for dinner at my uncle’s house. I walked the twelve blocks to his house on 35th street under a cloudless sky with a nice cool sea breeze coming in off the gulf. His house was on the banks of McKinney Bayou on the bay side of the island. In the ten years since I’d been in Galveston, I’d never been to his home, but I had walked by it before. It was a beautiful Louisiana styled home painted white with a bright red door. It was a story and a half with a porch that wrapped around the first floor. The attic was set with dormers and the roof was crowned with a large rectangular cupola and widow’s walk. The entire house was set up on ten brick piers high above the ground to avoid the storm surges that could accompany a hurricane. My uncle kept a telescope up on the widows walk so he could see the races at the horse track a few blocks away. He could also keep an eye out for ships coming into the harbor. It’s customary for the ships to flash signals to the harbor master of what they carried, so my uncle would watch those signals for interesting cargo and then hustle down to the harbor to start trading. It gave him a major advantage over other trading houses.

I walked up the wooden steps leading to the front door. I knocked twice and he answered the door himself, looking me up and down and obviously displeased that I was there.

“Cotter,” he said, showing me inside. He wore a perfectly fitted white linen suit with a black silk waistcoat on top. The coat was touched off with a diamond stick pin and he had a gold watch. I nodded to him, stepping into the grand entryway. The parlor was set on the left and I could see the rosewood piano he had shipped over from Germany. He always talked about that piano, not to me of course, but I had overheard him on more than few occasions. It was magnificent. It was huge and buffed to such a smooth finish it seemed to emit it’s own burgundy light. The keys were made from mother of pearl and tortoiseshell, and I thought it was most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And sitting next to the piano on a settee imported from France, was my old friend Charlie Hennegan.

“Well look at what the cat done drug in,” he said, grinning broadly. I hadn’t seen him in about six months. He wore a linen suit of beige and wore a tie of light blue. His long black hair was tied back in a ponytail.  I remember a painting I once saw years ago of a pirate assaulting a ship in the Caribbean and Charlie looked just like that guy, only more nicely dressed.

“Charlie,” I said, still surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?”

Charlie got up, strode over, and embraced me in that bear hug of his.

“He’s my dinner guest,” my uncle Samuel said. “You’re here because he demanded it.”

“Now come on Sam,” Charlie said, giving me a wry little wink. “Don’t be ugly to my friend. I’ll have to bend you over my knee if you’re not nice.”

Two things struck me about that. The first was that I’d never heard a soul ever address my uncle as Sam. They either called him Mr. Samuels or Colonel. He was never in the military, but it was a nickname that he liked and a lot of people around town called him that. The second thing that struck me was Charlie Hennegan, the man who I thought was crazier than a mad hatter when I met him ten years ago, had officially arrived. Any man who could get invited to my uncles house and call him Sam, and then joke with him about spanking him – and my uncle was one of the most powerful men in the whole state – was a man who was going places.

Something about that bothered me. Maybe it was he way my uncle had shunned me and obviously embraced Charlie, or maybe it was the thought that had my father met Charlie, he would have no doubt have wished he had a son more like him.

My uncle took us into the dining room where we sat for dinner. So now that I knew how it came to be that I was invited over for dinner, I still didn’t know why Charlie wanted me there.

As we sat down to eat, my uncle and Charlie discussed business. Charlie had started a business in 1841. While I thought he was joking when we first met about how the man who cleaned up the shit in the streets would be a rich man, Charlie became that man. He founded Hennegan City works and procured a contract from the city to clean up the mule and horse excrement that accumulated in the city streets. The next year, he added another service which was cleaning out outhouses and the shit barrels that accumulated on the street corners. By 1845 he convinced the city that the streets would hold up better if crushed shell was used and he got the contract to stockpile the shells at the beach and transport them into the town. Charlie had become wealthy enough to buy his own house in the ‘well-to-do’ part of town not far from my uncle’s house on 35th street.

They discussed the pending plans for the city’s new sewage system. Charlie was getting the contract for that and he needed my uncle’s help on some cast iron piping he was trying to bring in from France. After dinner, while my uncle went to fetch the cognac and cigars, Charlie turned to me.

“I’m sorry to drag you through all this,” he said.

“That’s ok. My uncle obviously likes you,” I said.

Charlie looked at me as if he was feeling sorry for me.

“I wanted to see you and ask a favor,” Charlie said.

In the ten years I’ve known him, Charlie had never asked a favor of me. We’d see each other four or five times a year, and all of those visits were initiated by him. He always sent me a Christmas gift or would insist on taking me out for a drink or for dinner. I wasn’t a very good friend to him but for some reason he always referred to me as his best friend.

I didn’t know until that night at my uncle’s place just how far Charlie had really come. And that realization made me recognize just how unsuccessful and lowly I was. Here’s a guy that came from New York with no formal education, no connections, and no particular skills, and he had become a very successful businessman. And here I sit, with a law degree from one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, with an uncle running the most successful businesses in the state, and I’m nothing but a First Vice President – which is really nothing more than a glorified clerk. Part of me hated Charlie. I couldn’t help myself. But another party of me loved him. He was the only person I’d ever known who didn’t look at me like I was some kind of slug slithering on the sidewalk.

“What kind of favor?”

“I need you to go on a date with me,” Charlie said.

“I’ll pass,” I said. “You’re not my type.”

“I meant a double date,” he said, reaching across and slapping me on the knee with a chuckle.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Have you heard of Carla Moody?”

“Sure,” I said. She was only the most beautiful young woman in Galveston and the daughter of the largest textile manufacture in the state of Texas and the whole south for that matter.

“Well,” he said, shifting a bit uncomfortably in his seat. “Well. I’ve been trying to….”

He hesitated, searching for the right words. “You know….”

Yes. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“But she’s a proper lady,” he continued. “At least to the public’s eye and she won’t go out with me alone unless her cousin comes along.”

“No way,” I said, cutting him off.

“Now don’t be like that,” he says.

“I bet she’s hideous,” I said. “If she isn’t, then why wouldn’t she already have a date?”

Charlie laughed, another of his big belly laughs that he was so famous for.

“There you go again, looking at the dark side of things,” he said.

“I’m just stating what must be an undeniable truth Charlie.”

“Her name’s Molly,” Charlie said. “She’s twenty seven years old and a beautiful lady as I’ve been told. And you’re coming with me. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

The next evening Charlie shows up right on time dressed in a dark linen suit and a burgundy top coat. I wore my best suit, a hideously boring gray thing I’d bought from a merchant down on Broadway a year earlier. After one look at Charlie, I felt absolutely ridiculous.

“You’re looking sharp,” Charlie said.

“I look like a turd,” I said. “This is a horrible idea.”

Charlie just laughed. “I need your sunny side Cotter,” he said. “Remember our objective. We’re trying to get these girls to lose their knickers and that ain’t gonna happen if you let that dour disposition run amok.”

“That’s your objective,” I reminded him. “Mine is to make it through the evening without the cousin eating me. I’m sure she’s larger than livestock.”

Charlie laughed.

As has usually been my experience when it comes to Charlie Hennegan, his vision ended up being correct. We met the girls at the Tremont Grand Ballroom for a dance being put on by the Galveston Chamber of Commerce. As we approached, two ladies were waiting for us just inside the doors. I immediately recognized Carla but I didn’t see her accompanied by a beast. Charlie greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and then Carla introduced me to Molly and I was truly shocked. Standing before me was a beautiful young woman in an emerald green ballgown that matched her eyes perfectly. She had long brown hair and the most soft, delicious smile I think I’d ever seen. I was smitten.

That night went by in a blur. I’ve never been comfortable around women. It’s not that I didn’t like the idea of being with a woman, but they scared me. I always felt inadequate, unworthy to be a mate. I’d either be too small, too quiet, too strange and what woman would want a man like me. But on that night, Molly Harrison treated me like a king. We drank wine, danced, and talked and I felt for at least that evening, what it must be like to be Charlie Hennegan.

Sometime later that night Charlie pulled me aside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile that way,” Charlie said.

I was feeling more than a little drunk. I would have put my arms on Charlies shoulders had I been tall enough to do so without looking like a fool.

“I don’t think I’ve been so happy as to be so wrong about one of my suppositions,” I said. “She’s absolutely wonderful.”

“Maybe it’s time we take this party back to my house,” he said, with a playful grin. “I bet we might be able to get those knickers off those girls.”

I was just thinking the same thing. I’d never been with a woman other than the occasional visit to the prostitutes. It’s a hell of thing to admit, but it’s true. This could be the first time I’d ever been with a woman without paying her.

“You get the girls,” I said to him. I’m going to run and grab my top coat.

Charlie laughed, tickled at my excitement as he watched me stumble over to the cloakroom.

I gave the girl manning the counter a fifty cent piece and was waiting for her to fetch my coat when my uncle came up and approached me.

I think things would have gone much different for Charlie and me had I not run into my uncle that night. Charlie’s efforts to change me may have paid off. But sometimes, fate has a different plan.

“You seem to be having a grand time,” My uncle said.

“A wonderful time sir,” I said, hoping I didn’t slur my words too much.

My uncle turned to look at Charlie standing with Carla and Molly near the exit.

“Charlie Hennegan is quite the man,” he said to me. “I still don’t see why he’s so taken with you.”

My uncle was goading me, quietly berating me as was par for the course with him. But tonight, I felt good and I wasn’t going to let him spoil my night.

“Who knows,” I said, waiving my arms in the air. “What I do know is that Carla and her cousin are eagerly waiting for me.”

My uncle looked back towards the girls, and he smiled at me. It wasn’t a friendly smile.

“Her cousin?”

“Yessir,” I said. “We’re going back to Charlie’s house for a night cap.” I shouldn’t have provided him with so much information. But I was feeling good, so I didn’t really care.

“That’s not her cousin Cotter,” my uncle whispered. “I think Charlie is having you on. That girl Molly is a,” he paused a moment, now almost laughing at me. “Let’s say she’s a professional from Houston.”

The alcohol had subdued my senses, so it took a moment for that to sink in. She’s a prostitute? I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. I looked around the room and I felt as though everybody was staring at me, and I had no clothes on. The people I saw dancing and laughing gaily on the dance floor I just knew that they were laughing at me. I looked at my uncle and I saw a pleasure in his eyes and he began to laugh. I’d been had. Did Charlie do that to humiliate me or because he felt sorry for me? It didn’t matter, either way I hated him.

I looked towards Charlie and he saw my uncle laughing and saw the look on my face and he knew that I now knew the truth. He tried to get my attention but I turned and left the Tremont feeling betrayed and embarrassed that I’d fallen for a woman that Charlie had paid to be nice to me.

***

By the time 1861 rolled around, quite a few things had changed in Galveston as well as with Charlie and I. After that evening in 1850, Charlie had tried to apologize and explain why he did what he did. For the first few years he’d come calling by my house or office every so often and I’d refuse to see him. But every year I received a Christmas package from him with a card. I never read the cards, I didn’t’ care what he had to say. The gift was usually roasted pork or duck or some kind of a fancy cake, but I’d throw them in the trash. To me, Charlie was dead. I didn’t need his pity or whatever it was he had always tried to do for me. I continued to suffer through my job until 1856 when my uncle fired me. The trading business had been suffering since Houston had opened up their own deepwater port and shipping into the port of Galveston continued to decline. When the cutbacks needed to happen at McKinney and Williams, I was the first to go. My uncle did it unceremoniously and without so much as a thank you. He simply stuck his head into my office one day and said I was fired and I was to leave the premises immediately. Later that year he died of a heart attack, and I’d be lying if I didn’t think that was a pretty good day. It took me a few months to find another job, but I got on as an inventory clerk at a shipping company down on the docks. The pay wasn’t very good, but it was a job. I had thought about calling on Charlie for a job, he would have given me one. He probably would have made his number two and paid me a bunch more money. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Meanwhile Charlie’s business continued to flourish. He practically owned every city contract for municipal services and was even now branching into providing cleaning services to the local hospitals and the shipping companies. He’d gotten elected to the town council and many were talking about him running for mayor.

The political mood on the island however, was going bad very quickly. It seemed everyone in town hated everything that had to do with the union. Although slavery had never been a thriving institution on the island itself, the outputs of slavery had a massive impact on the economy of the city. A lot of folks were morally opposed to the institution of slavery, but the economic benefits were clear and unavoidable. When the election of 1860 came around, Abe Lincoln didn’t get one single vote in Galveston. Think about that. Over seven thousand votes were cast and Lincoln didn’t get a single one. Half the people in town wanted to secede from the Union and the other half wanted Texas to go back to being its own republic again.

In February of 1861 we got word that South Carolina seceded from the union and all hell broke loose. One of the local papers published an editorial criticizing succession so a bunch of residents led by a local rebel rouser name Felix Ortega went and burned the newspaper building down and threatened to hang the publisher. Sheriff Clancy had to break up that mob, even had to shoot Felix to put that riot down.

On February 23, Texas citizens voted to secede by a margin of 46,129 in favor to14,697 against.

In Galveston the vote was 764 in favor and 33 against. A few days later Sam Houston, the Governor, refused to swear an oath to the confederacy and he was forced from office. The Galveston Gazette, who I now worked for part time in order to make ends meet, started demonizing him, and labeled him a traitor.

On April 4, I was working down at the Gazette finishing a story about the fishing quota’s being debated by the state legislature.

“Sam Houston is coming into the town on the 7th ,” he said. “He’s giving a speech down at the Tremont Hotel and I need you to cover it.”

I told him I’d do it.

“I want you to meet his escort party down at the docks and you’re to stay with him until the speech. I want to make sure you get everything.”

So, on the morning of the 7th I walk down to the docks to cover the visit of Sam Houston.

As I get there, I see a small group of men standing by a steamer that had just come over from Houston, and apparently Sam Houston was getting ready to come off ship. In the escort party there were several local sheriff deputies and the mayor’s assistant who’d I’d met many times named Fred Jenkins. Standing next to Jenkins was my old pal, Charlie Hennegan.

For ten years I’d managed to avoid Charlie. Not any longer. I approached the group and Charlie saw me and gave me his customary huge, warm smile. He looked good. Maybe a little heavier, his hair now streaked with slivers of gray, but he had those same knowing, friendly eyes. “Well I’ll be dipped in mule shit,” he said. “Look what the cat done drug in.”

“Charlie,” I said, not returning his smile. He came up to me and hugged me anyways, not caring that I didn’t hug him back.

“For ten years you’ve managed to keep away from me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “Looks like your luck done run out my boy.”

“I guess,” I said. For some reason I was happy to see him, but I tried to let on that wasn’t so. “When’s the governor getting off that ship?”

Right after I asked that question, Sam Houston starts walking down the gangplank.

Charlie rushes over to the mayor’s assistant and they greet the Governor.

They chat for a couple of minutes and then Charlie calls me over.

“Governor Houston,” Charlie says. “This is my oldest friend in the world, Cotter Williams. He works for the Gazette.”

The governor was a tall man, old now, but still as strong as an ox and his presence was almost overpowering. He nodded towards me without saying a word.

“Governor,” Jenkins said to him. “You should go back sir. The folks here are in a dour mood and I’m afraid you’ll not be made to feel welcome. I’m not even confident that we can keep you safe.”

The governor stood a head taller than Jenkins and he shot him a glare that could have melted lead musket shot.

“If I should go back home as you suggest,” he said. “Everyone in Texas would think that Sam Houston was scared of making a speech. I’m not leaving.”

That made Charlie smile and he winked at me. We started walking towards the Strand, and the Tremont Hotel. The governor walked with a steely determination. He looked around at folks on the street and glared at them, unafraid and unapologizing. He didn’t care if the folks of Galveston didn’t want him here. He had something to say, and they were going to hear it.

As we neared the Tremont, lines of people stood on the sidewalks four to five people deep. They jeered and booed and hollered some of the most obscene things I’d ever heard. The crowd was full of men in uniform as well as armed civilians. Any one of them could have shot us all dead in a blink of an eye and I was scared they might do just that. But Sam Houston never blinked. I think if someone would have shot at him it wouldn’t have mattered, he would have continued on without fear or trepidation.

When we reached the hotel, Sam Houston starting walking up the stairs towards the third floor balcony that overlooked the street. Charlie, and a couple of the deputies went up the stairs with him. There was a nervous murmur in the crowd, they were restless, and I sensed they wanted to hang somebody, they didn’t want to hear a speech. A few men on the front row in front of the hotel began to holler.

“Let’s hang the bastard,” one man yelled and he attempted to climb up the stairway and get to where the Governor was speaking. Charlie kicked the man upside the head and watched him roll back down the steps. Nobody else tried to climb those steps.

Unfazed, Sam Houston looked down on the crowd of thousands.

“I appeal to you for a frank confession that you have always prospered most when you have listened to my counsels. I’m an old man now. I knew you in infancy, took you and dawdled you on my knee, nursed you through all your baby ailments, and with great care and solicitude watched and aided your growth to political and commercial manhood. Will you reject these last counsels of your political father in this riotous adventure which I now tell you will land you in fire and rivers of blood.”

He paused for a moment to survey the crowd. There was an uneasy stirring. Someone laughed and said he’d be happy to drink all that blood if it meant he’d get to kill Yankees.

Charlie yelled at the man to shut up and not another soul had said a word.

“Let me tell you what is coming on the heels of secession. Soon, your fathers and husbands, sons and brothers will be herded together like sheep and cattle at the point of a bayonet; and your mothers and wives and sisters and daughters will ask ‘Where are they?’ and an echo will answer, ‘where?’”

Houston spoke for another five minutes on the folly of their current path towards sucesion and war and you could have heard a pin drop the crowd was so quiet. When Houston concluded his speech, an awkward silence hung in the air for what seemed like a full minute. I had gotten the feeling that in the next few moments, if someone wanted to make trouble, a riot could breakout with lightning speed. Charlie must have sensed the same thing because he began to clap his hands and soon, others joined and before you knew it, the entire crowd was giving Sam Houston a standing ovation. I don’t think the speech changed many minds, but in the end the crowd gave Sam Houston the respect he deserved. Charlie was the reason Houston made it out of Galveston unmolested that day.

Later that evening around nine o’clock I hear a knock on my door. It’s Charlie. I thought about just ignoring it but I decided to let him in. Seeing him today had softened my anger from all those years earlier.

He came in and I could tell he had been drinking. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair a tangled mess. He came into my small, dimly lit foyer.

“So, what do you want now Charlie,” I asked him. “If it’s my help on another date I think you know what my answer will be.”

“I’ve been trying to apologize to you for that for ten years,” he said. “I was only trying to bring you out of your shell.”

“I ended up looking like a fool,” I said.

He asked for a drink, so I showed him into the dining room and we sat and I poured him a shot of cheap bourbon.

“How come you never came to ask to work with me Cotter?” he asked. “I’m your friend, and I would have given you any kind of job you wanted.”

Part of me wanted to answer him honestly and tell him that I despised him for his friendly nature and the way luck and good fortune seemed to follow him around.

“It wouldn’t have been very dignified for me come begging for a job from you,” I said. “Anyways, I’m doing just fine.”

Charlie appraised me with that whimsical little look I’d seen so many times before.

“You’ve got this hard edge in you Cotter,” Charlie said. “That’s the thing I love about you.”

“What else is on your mind Charlie?” I asked. “You didn’t come over here just to tell me you loved me.”

“True enough,” he said. “Can I have another shot of that bourbon?” He got up and poured himself a drink.

“I’ve got something dark and heavy on my heart,” he said. “And I think you’re the only person I can tell that can give me absolution.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“I tried to talk to a priest but that didn’t no good,” he said, ignoring me. “I just couldn’t make myself confess what I’d done. I’ve kept it hidden these past five years.”

He sounded drunk and rambling and I had no idea as to what he was referring.

“You need to go home and get some sleep Charlie,” I said. “You’re not making any sense.”

“I killed your uncle,” Charlie said. He had tears in the corner of his eyes. “After I heard he fired you, I went to his office to speak with him, and I ended up killing him.”

I’m shocked and can hardly catch my breath.

“He died of a heart attack,” I said. “That’s what the sheriff told me.

“That’s what the police report said and the newspapers said,” Charlie said. “But when you hold a big pillow over somebody’s face long enough for them to stop breathing and kicking, it’s usually not a heart attack that kills them.”

“Why would you have killed him” I asked.

“I think you know why,” he said. “He was a despicable old man and when I asked him to hire you back, he told me he was glad to have you gone because just having you around threatened to suffocate the life out of him and all you touched because of your dreary nature.”

I just sat there still trying to process this information.

“I think he held you back for years and wanted to see you fail. To be honest, I’m glad I killed that old man.”

“Why would you tell me this now,” I asked.

“Because you deserved to know the truth,” Charlie said. “Friends shouldn’t keep secrets. I did that once before and it hurt you. I didn’t want to that again.

I still don’t know why I did what I did. Charlie had come to me, hat in hand, to make right something in his mind that he had done wrong. I know now that what he did with Molly was his way of trying to help me out. There was no ill intent there. In fact, I know now he didn’t pity me the way a man might pity a poor hungry stray dog. No. He wanted to help a friend because in his mind, I was his best friend. I could have let it all go right there, taken Charlie up on that job even. But I didn’t. I decided to go see Sheriff Clancy and tell him that Charlie confessed to murdering my uncle. Charlie committed a murder didn’t he? And by the laws of the state of Texas murder is illegal, punishable by death by hanging. Didn’t I have an obligation to turn him in? In the end, I figure I did it because Charlie Hennegan represented everything that I wanted to be but could not achieve. The sheriff arrests Charley and he told the truth and admitted that he had killed my uncle. The trial was just a formality, he pleaded guilty and the judge sentenced him to death.

The execution was on a hot day in July 1962 and was to be performed down at the county courthouse. Charlie had asked to see me and although I didn’t want to go, I decided he deserved to hear me say why I did what I did. The sheriff let me back into the holding cell and Charlie sat there with his legs crossed smoking a cigarette.

“Hey there Cotter,” Charlie said, he even smiled.

“Charlie,” I said, giving him a little nod.

“I wrote a letter to my father,” Charlie said. “I was wondering if you could see that he gets it? He was alive last year, and I figure he’s still probably kicking. Can you do that for me?”

As usual Charlie Hennegan surprised me. I told him I would and just stood there. He sat there silently looking at me and smoking his cigarette.

“Don’t you want to know why I turned you in?” I asked him. “Aren’t you angry about that?”

“Not really,” Charlie said. “I’d like to think maybe you did it on principle because I did murder your uncle. But I think that’s unlikely. I suppose you begrudge me more generally and that does sadden me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had expected Charlie to disavow me, that’s what I would have surely done. But he just sat there, patiently talking to me as if this was just any ordinary day.

“How in the world could you have ever really wanted me as your friend?” I asked him.

“I’d have an easier time explaining how ducks know which way is south in summer,” he said. “I don’t know. But my father gave me a great piece of advice before I left to come down here. You want to hear it?”

“Sure, I said.”

“He said that friendship is like the morning dew. Sometimes it falls on flowers and that beautiful drop causes the colors on that flower to intensify into radiant hues that screams to the world look at me!” He paused, then leaned forward.

“And then sometimes that dew falls on dog shit, and now all you have is wet dog shit and if you step in it the smell clings to you for the rest of the day and sometimes for the rest of your life.

Now which one of those two things do you figure you are Cotter? Which one?”