A Quick One
November 16, 1895, Cleveland, Ohio
It was mid-November, but the night was balmy. The coattails of fall. Home was not a place any man wanted to be on a Saturday night. Especially with the babies. Though as soon as he thought it, Matty felt bad.
“Come on, Matty, just a quick one,” Pat said.
“It’s never just one with you,” Matty said. “I have to get home.”
“It’s barely dark.” Pat looked incredulous. But he had no family. How could he understand that being out on a Saturday from morning until 7:30 at night would test Delia’s patience? Though she was a good wife and would say nothing, he would feel the chill all the same. And now that she was down on the Lodge and the goings on at the mill, she was even more likely to blow her stack.
“But what of my Delia, lovely Delia, my Bedelia,” he sang, loudly and off-key, to make light of what was becoming a real problem. Delia wanted him out of the PJ Mundie Lodge, far from workers’ rights or any such nonsense, especially since Murray’s a right eejit, she always said.
He wasn’t, though. Murray was right. No one could survive on the wage. Or so Matty had been told—so many times he half believed it. Sometimes, the other half of him remembered the real hunger they’d endured in Quilty and wondered if a roof over one’s head, a bed, and food on one's plate wasn’t heaven enough.
He was startled out of the thought by a thwack on the back. “Just one pint,” Pat said. “Don’t worry. She’ll be waiting with your hot toddy, mark my words.”
They crossed Superior Avenue, dodging a milk cart, then continued towards the Williamson Building and the streetcar ticket stand. It was such a nice night. No chill coming off the water for once.
“I’m with Murray,” Pat said. “Not saying otherwise. But if blokes don’t see the value in joining with the Lodge—if they don’t see the value in the Cleveland scale—I’m not a fan of compelling them.”
Some of Murray’s men had been there in the 80s for the rolling mill strikes. They knew what they were doing. Or Matty trusted they did anyway. Still, one day early in September, he arrived late and faced the terror of Murray and his gang with their mallets and bats blocking the door. He did not want to do that. Period.
“I know what you’re saying,” he said to Pat. “Delia worries, too.”
“Well, if Delia’s worried, then I know you won’t dare,” Pat said.
“Did I tell you what she read in the paper yesterday?” Best to change the subject; cut the strike talk off at the pass. Pat would go on and on if Matty let him. If they failed to “compel” people back to work, what would happen? Who knew? But they didn’t have a choice. Why pretend otherwise? Murray ran the show.
Some things in this life are preordained, Father Maloney always said.
They cut through more people in the square, laughing and merrymaking, some staggering under the weight of their Saturday shopping. It was so warm that even though they were deep into November, a mist was rising on the river.
“So she’s still keeping up her reading, eh?” Pat said.
It made Pat feel bad, Matty knew. It made him feel bad as well. How had she picked it up? It was hard to say as they’d both missed out on schooling. And he’d never been able to catch up. But Delia? She read the paper from cover to cover every day now that she was home with the babies, and he paid handsomely for it at ten cents a week. Still, she served every meal, and the house was spic and span. What harm in a bit of reading? At the end of each day, she saved the best stories to share while he sat with his feet up and a bit of sup.
A horse tied up in front of the streetcar station was leaving a princely dropping in the street.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Pat said, waving his hand in front of his nose before throwing the door open. There was a long line at the ticket stand: disgruntled people, most overloaded with packages.
“We’re not going to make the next one,” Pat looked at his watch. “It leaves at 7:22.”
“You never know,” Matty said.
As they waited in line, Pat said, “I’m sick of the wires. I want to be out on the water, not stranded here in the forest city answering to a bunch of nincompoops.”
“No water for me, thank you,” Matty said. When he’d gotten off that ship, he could barely stand. Down almost a stone when they checked him over, gums raw. “Not for me. Never again.”
A girl in a green hat stood before them, golden ringlets like ladders to her shoulders. She held two paper packages, and she grasped them tighter at the sound of Pat’s voice. As usual, he was shouting as if on a podium.
“Just because you work there now doesn’t mean you always will,” Matty said. “You have no family here. You can save up and go back home. Buy a farm.”
When Matty pulled out his money at the counter, he felt for the Cuticura soap, Delia’s one request. For the rash on little Mary’s bum. Delia would boil him with the spuds if he didn’t bring that home. His other pocket held a bottle of Mrs. Winslow’s Coughing Syrup for John, who suffered with toothache. He’d better quit it before his father ended up in the poor house.
“Right there on the front page—just this last week—there was talk of an Iroquois remedy for pneumonia, Delia said—with a cat’s skin.”
“A what?” Pat looked aghast.
“A cat’s skin,” Matty repeated.
“From a real live cat?”
“They skin it and slap it down hot and stinking on your chest.”
Pat shook his head. “Isn’t that the limit?” He took out his cigarette case, extracted one, and lit it.
Pat nodded to a pretty raven-haired girl in a red coat who was hurrying past. He tipped his hat as well, but she just turned her head.
“Nice evening to you!” he called out, but on she went.
“I thought she was from home with that red coat,” Pat said.
“You can use other skins, too,” Matty said, ignoring the failed flirtation. “A doctor named Kirtland used to use lamb and sheep skins. The argument for the cats was that they have an electrical influence.”
“An electrical influence?”
“The cat acts like a living battery.”
“What shucks!” Pat shook his head.
“Sometimes Delia likes to read the stories just for the laugh.”
“Did she tell you McGinty’s running a foot race against Bethune? 220-yarder on Thanksgiving Day down at the park.”
“No kidding?”
“For a hundred-dollar purse, no less.”
“McGinty’s something,” Matty said and then felt a song coming on again. “Oh, Delia, my sweet Bedelia, she’s the best that ever came from Erin’s Isle.”
“OK, listen, we’ll go down to the south side for one pint, and you’ll be home well before your wife mounts her broom,” Pat said.
Delia didn’t say a word the night Matty broke through the front door or the night he went down face-first in the yard. Of course, he was a sight better than her own pa who favored the sup. Perhaps she didn’t say anything about his behavior because she offered it up to the good Lord.
What a thought.
One more pint at O’Grady’s, and then he’d head straight home. Even then, it wouldn’t be so late—half past nine, and not a moment later.
“I’ll tell you, the best thing in that paper is called ‘Daily Hints for Housekeepers,’” Matty said to take his mind off the gloom pressing down on him.
“Now, what does she need to read that for? If she doesn’t know how after all those years at the Whites, well then…”
“No, but they’ve got recipes too. Corn beef hash and popovers for breakfast. Dinner on the weekends of potato soup, lamb chops, and even raspberry floats. I tell you; I eat like a king now.”
Matty didn’t add that the problem was paying for the food. He couldn’t afford all her fancy meals, but he didn’t want to tell her that and let her down. Keeping a roof over his brothers and sisters back in Quilty ate a good lump of his earnings, too, and Lord knows they couldn’t survive without it.
“We’re on 642. We’re going to have to run for it,” Pat said, peering down at his ticket as they emerged from the building. He pointed to the clog of streetcars. Two and three abreast. Tracks running every which way. They lit out into the street, hurrying between them. Of course, 642 was almost a block down the last one, already moving, picking up speed. A couple of other men were already chasing it.
Pat reached the car first, like he always did, and jumped onto the rear platform. Matty followed, barely grasping the handle in time. Another man also made it, nearly knocking Matty to the floor. Another put his hand up to grab the rail, but the streetcar shot forward and he missed it.
“Ah, shucks!” the man called out to his friend, then bent over to catch his breath in the middle of the tracks, before straightening up and waving to the departing car.
The man who was standing next to Pat laughed and waved back.
“I’ll meet you there, Fred,” he called, as he opened the door and headed inside. Pat and Matty followed him.
Inside, everyone was packed like tinned fish.
“Let’s stay outside and have a smoke,” Matty said, turning back toward the door.
The streetcar rounded the bend towards the Central Viaduct Bridge, which would take them down to the south side. Matty felt momentarily downtrodden. The people inside the car had looked so grim. Soon, the days of merrymaking would be over, and then he’d be just as old and sullen as that clutch of sorrowing souls. Maybe it was time to go back home, buy a bit of land. At least, there he wouldn’t be with people who hated him just for being of the Hibernian persuasion—as old Smith liked to say.
He hadn’t said it to Pat. He’d never say it to a soul, but sometimes it felt like he’d escaped one sideways situation and landed in another, like he was tumbling about in a sack slung over another man’s shoulder. It didn’t matter that they were better off than they had been in Quilty. He just hoped whatever they did next month, whatever lengths they went to, it would lead to better wages, not a stint in lockup.
The beginning is so close to the end, his mother used to say, and why that came to mind, he had no idea. He shook his head, lit a smoke, and peered into the car through the window. A woman with a pink feather in her hat sat in the seat closest to him. She looked put out, possibly because a large woman with a head like a cabbage was spilling into her seat. A young mother stood up in the aisle to shush her baby. She looked just like Delia when he came home and found her sitting with the little ones—angelic. Not at all like his mother, who might have been run through a potato masher—eleven mouths to feed and look what it did to a person! He and Delia already had two in four years. How many had his parents had after four years?
“I’m headed in to try for a seat,” he said to Pat after he finished his smoke. But Pat paid no mind. He’d struck up a conversation with two fellows standing on the other side of him, one large and pale as a ghost with black hair on his chin but none on the top of his head. The other man was tall and gaunt, his right hand bandaged. Never a good sign.
The young mother was still patting her baby’s back when Matty stepped inside the car. It nearly knocked him over, the smell of cigarettes and sick. The baby was a girl and older than he’d thought—maybe two or three —around the same size as his own John. As he watched, the little girl pulled her mother’s beautiful hat off and was scolded. Another woman sat prim as a church lady in the opposite seat, looking disgusted by the ruckus the child was making. Dour. The man on the other side of the aisle looked forlorn, his clothes tattered, needles sticking out of his pocket, a tailor, maybe. His sore-looking red hands fiddled with the strap by his seat. It couldn’t be good working all day, every day in some dark room, threading a needle. What would he say if Matty asked about his wages? Maybe they ought to compare.
Matty found a seat two rows down from the tailor, but at the next stop, a young woman came in, accompanied by an older, thicker version of herself. Matty stood up and gave the older woman his seat, then inched back over toward the door. So much for that.
The mist was running rivulets down the windows. Matty tried to rub it away, but he still couldn’t see outside. The streetcar clacked along the track, and the conductor started making his way up the aisle, clipping tickets. He was young with bright red hair, but his face was spectral, and his eyes were half shut.
“Tickets, tickets,” he called out in a monotone.
Matty checked his pockets, first the coat, then the pants, and found the ticket crammed into the tuck pocket by his belt.
He handed it to the conductor, who didn’t bother to look at him. It was almost like being dead, the way people ignored each other in this city. In Quilty, it wasn't polite if you didn’t smile and tip your hat. Here, he had to go to a Lodge meeting or a pub to find a friendly face. This might be a great country, but it was a mean one, too.
The bridge rose up like an apparition, so foggy it was hard to see the hand in front of your face, hard to see the gate.
“Delia, Delia, sweet Bedelia,” he hummed as he opened the door to step back outside.
Maybe the gloominess in the car was catching. He felt fuzzy-headed. Probably, he’d had one too many.
One pint is never one pint, his mother used to say.
Someone whistled and Matty turned around.
“Come over here,” Pat called.
But Matty’s path was blocked by the man with the bandaged hand—the pugilist--his arms as thick as pine logs.
“Excuse me,” Matty said, but the man lit a cigarette and stared straight ahead as if he hadn’t even heard him, as if he was studying something in the mist.
The car stopped, and the conductor came through the door and jumped down to the track to flip the switch as usual. Matty wondered how he could even make out the drawbridge in the fog soup.
A few minutes later, the conductor appeared again, yelling, “Full on!” The car hitched and shot forward with a great lurch. Pat laughed loudly at something the tall fellow next to him said. He lit another cigarette.
When they got off, he would tell Pat he was headed home. He would say he wanted to see the babies, which wasn’t true. He wanted to see Delia. The babies were babies. It was hard not to be put out by all the crying, though she always went to them immediately so he could rest. It was Delia he wanted to see, and wasn’t that a good thing to still have that feeling after four years of marriage? Children would ruin it. He didn’t want so many, many children. Maybe he would tell her that tonight, and she’d be shocked.
“That’s blasphemy,” she’d say and tap his arm, and then they’d laugh.
But seriously, how could the good Lord expect so much of him?
Delia wouldn’t hold his evil thoughts against him if he said it. This might be the land of plenty. Or it might not be. Who could say?
“It’s up to us,” Murray always said. He was right, though whether he was right to compel people was another thing altogether.
He did miss them, Ma and Pa and the rest, and he missed the cold mist off the sea, and the way a single beam of light sometimes cut through the clouds offshore and shone down on the water like the path to heaven. He missed some of the neighbors, too. He missed visiting. He missed people acting neighborly. It scared him sometimes how Delia had just let the good part go: the rock shelves above the water, the gulls, and the pubs where no one gave you the evil eye.
A cry was coming from somewhere.
The streetcar made a belching sound, and someone yelled. They’d yelled it three times before he could make it out.
“Jump! For the love of God, JUMP!”
A splitting sound. They’d hit something.
The lights went out.
Someone inhaled sharply, so sharply the sound cut through the darkness like a knife. And then, a feeling of nothing. Floating.
The car lurched forward and then tipped down.
Good God.
“We’re going over,” a man screamed.
Matty grabbed the strap above the window and held on. They were going down. It felt like they were falling forever—simultaneously, it was over so fast. The car hit something and bounced into the air. He lost his grip on the strap and went flying. Something hard hit him in the face. He struck the back of the car head-first.
When he came to, water was streaming over his face. He was lying face down on top of a pile of what? He wasn’t sure. He turned his head, gasping for air. The car seemed to be on its side or upside down. It was too dark to tell. A woman’s voice whispered, “Help me. Help me.” A hand grabbed his sleeve. A woman’s voice—the same one?—whispered, “No, no, no.”
At first, he felt heat—like he was on fire—but then he realized it wasn’t heat but cold. The water was freezing. He had to get out before the water filled the car. He tried to stand up, and his foot sunk into something soft that cracked under his weight. He felt for the windows. They would lead to the door. Where was the door? Maybe the door was on the other side. The water kept raining in. Someone grabbed his arm.
“Help me,” a woman said.
“I have to get the door.” He felt his coat pocket. Where was the bottle of cough syrup?
The water kept coming, pouring in all around.
He found the door handle but when he pulled the latch, it wouldn’t budge. A body was wedged in the doorway. A man. Matty took hold of the sleeve and shook it.
“Help me, help me,” a woman said again softly.
The water was up to his chest. He had to find a way out. The door still wouldn’t budge, even though the body had drifted away when he pulled the sleeve. From somewhere outside the car, he heard Pat’s voice.
“Pat,” he yelled. He could see shapes now through the murk and then from up above, a fuzzy light. A lantern. Shining through the water. Was it coming from the shore or a boat? There was no way to know. It looked like it was moving, but everything was moving. The car was drifting, rolling over slowly, moving away from the light. Soon, the door would be down on the bottom. Impossible to get out then. But help was on the way. He would see her again if they hurried.
“Help me,” the woman said again. Water poured in through the windows. Matty could see the woman finally, his eyes adjusting. It was the woman with the baby. He grabbed her around the waist and pushed her up to keep her head above water. She took a ragged breath.
The water was up to Matty’s neck, almost to his chin.
Pat was still yelling. How was he outside the car? Was he smoking when they went over? He’s going to make it, Matty realized. Sure, as he’s always the first in every footrace.
“I can’t,” the woman said. ‘I don’t,” and then a terrible sound. A gurgling, as if all the water around them was entering and bubbling up through her body. She rattled and shook. Matty tightened his grip on her waist, and she went limp. He had to hold her up. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, why wasn’t anyone coming? She was too heavy. If he put her down, she was done for. He wouldn’t put her down if she were Delia. He held on. The water was over his chin. Her face was in it, but if he let go of the strap, he’d go under, too. She was too heavy.
Please. Please. Please. Come. Someone.
“I’m here!” he heard Pat yell. “I’m over here.”
He couldn’t hold her up. Jesus, forgive me, he prayed.
The water rose higher. It was right under his lip. He took hold of the strap with two hands and turned his face up toward the air. There was no sound.
After the crossing. After the wire works and the babies and this desolate city. Was this the end? The water rose until only his nose and his eyes were left. All the tinned fish were done for. Something floated past him and brushed his arm. So soft.
KELLY FORDON is the host of the podcast Let’s Deconstruct a Story. She has published two award-winning short story collections, I Have the Answer (2020) and Garden for the Blind (2015). Her second poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published in June 2025, and her first poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, in 2019. Her poetry chapbook The Witness (2016) won the Eric Hoffer Award for the Chapbook and was a finalist for the Grand Prize. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, The Boston Review, The Florida Review, Rattle, and The Saturday Evening Post, among others.
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