For close on two weeks I remain inside and become a burden to my uncle Joseph who tells the truth about things with the drink in him. A scarecrow of a man with his spindly legs, bony hips, and hunching shoulders, he seems to have a right opinion about it all whether someone asks him for it or not. I don’t remember much of him from home though, as he’d made his way to New York back in 1908 for the labor work in the building of the Manhattan Bridge. Wasn’t around much when he was in Clare anyhow. I realize that he is a figure among other men, but I am unsure of his crew’s place along the docks in Brooklyn. Most of his men are Irish, true, yet I see in all of them a bit of the outsider. With broken beaks and loose teeth, suits that are torn at the seams, sunken eyes, and a hungry look on their mugs, I know that to the bottom of them they are ill at ease. And the more I look on my uncle Joseph for the assurance I need, the more my stomach sags and slides with uncertainty. Every morning except Sundays he gets up and walks from the brick tenement on Water Street next to the Sweeney factory with his crew of ragged cullies.
