Chapter 8
Maggie surveyed the looming expanse of Jackson Park, the half-finished buildings gleaming bone-white under a hot summer sun, with a mixture of dismay and awe.
The site of the Columbian Exposition was both a hive of activity as well as a maze of construction, even on this Sunday afternoon, three days after Danny had told her he’d had word of their father.
Piles of bricks lay next to an empty stretch of water that was, Danny assured her, soon going to have illuminated displays and a glorious, enormous fountain.
Pillared and colonnaded buildings stretched all the way to the flat horizon, all of them bigger than any edifice Maggie had ever seen before.
And laborers—stonemasons, carpenters, builders and bricklayers—were everywhere, sweaty faces covered in dust as they moved with weary purpose, an army of workers fighting a war of architecture and time.
“Danny,” Maggie said, raising her voice over the sound of hammers and saws that clanged from below them. “How on earth are we going to find Da in such a huge place?” She would not even know how to begin. “There must be a thousand men here, or even more.”
“There are,” he confirmed, sounding proud rather than daunted by the notion. “There are over forty thousand men who have been hired to work on the site, you know.”
“Forty thousand…” She shook her head in wonder. It was the size of a city.
“There’s an office for the foreman,” Danny told her. “We can ask there.” And with jaunty confidence, he started down the muddy slope that led to the park below them, moving easily among the carts and wheelbarrows, the piles of bricks and stacks of lumber.
The Exposition, Maggie knew, was meant to be dedicated in October, and while many aspects of it looked nearly finished, judging by the construction materials and scaffolding about, the many roofless buildings, it still seemed as if there was plenty of work to be done.
They wound their way through the maze of paths that led through the many buildings, around what would be the Grand Basin, to a humble-looking house, little more than a shanty, that belonged to the office of the foreman.
Danny knocked once before entering; a hassled man in his shirtsleeves was standing at a desk sorting through papers, and he looked up irritably when her brother came into the room.
“Yes, what is it?” he demanded.
“I wished to inquire,” Danny said with plummy politeness that would have had Maggie rolling her eyes on any other occasion, “if a Declan O’Halloran, arrived recently from New York, has been working here.”
The man’s bushy eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “How the hell should I know?” he demanded.
Danny’s genial, gentlemanly tone dropped as he stared at the man in dismayed confusion. “Don’t you keep records?”
“Son, we’ve hired over forty thousand men to work on this site,” the man told him, unknowingly parroting Danny’s proud words right back at him. “Do you think we can keep record of all those fellows?”
“But…” The childlike disappointment on her brother’s face made Maggie feel a rush of tender affection for him.
He might have considered himself a man, and he was starting to look like one too, but at fifteen, he was still her little brother, and she knew how desperately he wanted to find their father.
The trouble was, Maggie wasn’t sure their father wanted to be found.
“You really don’t keep track of their names?” Danny asked in a small voice.
The man sighed, impatient now. “We have employee passbooks for some of them, it’s true, but not everyone.
Half the men here just arrived from somewhere else, and I can’t even pronounce their names.
” He gentled his tone slightly as he added, “If you really need to find someone, then ask around. But be careful when you do! We’ve already lost twenty men to this blasted project.
” His weary gaze flicked to Maggie. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. ”
Outside, standing in the dusty road, the sun beating down relentlessly and men scurrying all around them, Maggie felt almost as disheartened as her brother. “Remind me, what did that man you met say to you about Da?” she asked, although Danny had already told her.
“He said his last name was O’Halloran and he had dark hair and a twinkle in his eye,” Danny repeated, his voice caught between stubbornness and disappointment. “Doesn’t that sound like Da?”
And a thousand or more other Irishmen, Maggie thought, but she nodded. “Yes, I suppose it does.” She hated to cause Danny any further discouragement, but the likelihood of them stumbling upon their father seemed terribly unlikely. “When did he last see him?”
“Not for a few weeks,” Danny admitted, “but he’d moved from the horticulture building, where Da was working.”
“If it was Da,” Maggie felt compelled to say. “We don’t know for sure and certain, Danny.”
“It was Da,” Danny replied. “I feel it.”
“Have you asked around the horticulture building?” Maggie asked.
Three days ago, when Danny had nearly burst in on her and Brendan, Maggie had been too discombobulated to think sensibly about what Danny had been excitedly telling her.
Her mind had been whirling, her lips burning from the kiss Brendan hadn’t given her.
She’d felt both a flicker of relief and a deep, deep disappointment.
She and Brendan had turned their attention to Danny and his news, and neither of them had looked at each other once as Danny had told them what he’d discovered—that a man had worked with someone named O’Halloran, newly arrived from New York and something of a charmer.
It had sounded like their father, but did it even matter?
Maggie wondered. They still couldn’t find him, and yet Danny insisted that they try.
So now they were here, on their Sunday off, scouring the huge site and hoping to stumble across the man they’d come all the way to America to find.
“I did ask around at the horticulture building,” Danny told her a little sulkily. “But no one there had heard of him. They were all Lithuanians. Most of them barely spoke English.”
“Well, then,” Maggie asked, trying not to sound exasperated, “what do you propose we do?”
“You don’t even sound like you want to find him,” Danny threw at her. “And he’s our father.”
“I do want to find him,” Maggie replied quickly, but she knew she didn’t sound convincing and, with a jolt, she wondered if her brother was right.
She certainly hadn’t been as motivated as he’d been since they’d arrived in Chicago, to find their da.
Maybe it was because she was six years older than Danny, and she remembered how many promises their father had broken.
The nights back in Ireland when he’d crept in so late.
The look of weary despair on her mother’s face.
The sour reek of whisky on his breath, the money that disappeared from the dented tin on the mantle, the empty grate when there hadn’t been money for coal.
If they managed to find their father, Maggie wondered suddenly, would he even be much help…
or would he be another burden for her to bear?
“I suppose we could have a look around,” she told Danny reluctantly. “And ask a few workmen if they’ve seen him.”
“All right,” Danny said, already brightening at the thought, while Maggie pulled the back of her dress, damp with sweat, away from her shoulder blades. It was going to be a long few hours.
It was long, as well as completely fruitless.
They wandered through the site, dodging workmen trundling carts or hauling lumber, asking whoever was willing to listen—and not many were—if they’d seen an Irishman named Declan O’Halloran.
Most men, harried and hot from their toil, shook their heads before Maggie or Danny had even finished.
Others, as her brother had said, did not speak much English.
No one seemed to know, or want to know, anything about an Irishman named Declan O’Halloran, twinkle in his eye or not.
“Let’s stop for now,” Maggie suggested when they’d tramped the park from one end to the other, both of them sweaty, dusty, and tired.
“I’ll treat you to a sarsaparilla,” she added, to blunt the sting of disappointment at not coming any closer to finding their father.
She’d been paid yesterday, and it had been sweet indeed to finally have her own money once more.
“All right,” Danny agreed, kicking up dust as he scuffed his boots along the dusty road.
They left Jackson Park, taking the Cottage Grove line down Sixty-Third Street back toward home. A new elevated railroad was being built above the street for the Exposition, but it hadn’t opened yet, although the rails loomed above them, sparkling in the summer sunlight.
At the corner of Sixty-Third and Wallace, they went into the drugstore run by Dr. Holmes, the man whose blue eyes Harriet O’Malley had titteringly talked about.
Maggie had yet to lay eyes on him, but it was a young woman with wispy, blond looks who stood behind the soda counter, blinking at them both nervously as she and Danny slid onto stools.
“And how may I help you?” she asked.
After ordering a cherry soda for Danny and a sarsaparilla for herself, Maggie turned to her brother, determined to be encouraging.
“We can try again next Sunday,” she said. “If Da has worked at the Exposition, someone else will remember him.”
“Maybe,” Danny replied. He sounded glum.
“I mean it, Danny—”
He shrugged, his disconsolate gaze moving over the newspaper advertisements for various medicines and remedies the drugstore offered that were on the wall, next to a long, gilt-framed mirror that ran the whole length of the room.
Just as Maggie was summoning the enthusiasm to say something positive about their continued search, Danny turned to her, his face alight.
“I know what we can do, Maggie!” He nodded toward an advertisement for a brain tonic he’d just been looking at. “We can place an advertisement!”
“An advertisement?” Maggie repeated, startled, just as the woman placed their sodas in front of them. “What do you mean?”
“In the newspaper,” he explained impatiently. “You know, with the help wanted and situations preferred and things like that. We’ll ask if anyone has seen Da, and that they can contact us at Mrs. O’Malley’s if they have.”
“Oh, Danny, I don’t know…” Maggie began. It would be a terrible expense, and might attract all manner of grifters and hucksters, claiming to have seen their father for some sort of reward. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said uncertainly.
“Why not?” Danny demanded. “It’s the only way to get loads of people to know about it. Maybe the only way we can find him.”
“Yes, but…” She hesitated.
Surely, after all their experience, they wouldn’t get taken in by some chancer? And she supposed it wouldn’t be that much money. Most such advertisements charged by the letter, and they could keep it short.
“Very well,” she relented, more because she wanted to appease her brother than out of any genuine belief such a scheme would work. “The offices of the Chicago Tribune are only a block or two from Field’s. I’ll try to go there on my lunch break tomorrow.”
Danny’s face broke into a wide smile. “Thanks, Maggie.”
She nodded and took a sip of her soda. “And I’ll write to Kathleen O’Shaughnessy too,” she decided.
“If Da decides to write her again, she’ll know where to forward the letter on, at least.” Although Maggie wondered if their former landlady, who had treated them with grudging kindness at best, would rouse herself to do so. But Maggie knew it was worth a try.
They were just about to take their leave, when a man came into the drugstore, walking with swift purpose and wearing the white coat of a druggist or doctor.
“Ah, Miss Ellis!” He smiled at the woman at the counter, who blushed and looked more nervous than ever. This, Maggie supposed, must be Dr. Holmes of the famous blue eyes.
He turned to face them, and she was struck by just how blue they were—bright and penetrating, almost as if they saw right through her. He was handsome, albeit in a way Maggie did not particularly like, with a large, groomed mustache, heavy brows and his dark hair swept back from his forehead.
“I hope you are enjoying your sodas,” he remarked in a voice of plummy solicitude. “Are you new to the area? I don’t recognize you.”
“Fairly new,” Maggie replied repressively.
He held out one hand with a flourish, which she took reluctantly, releasing it quickly.
“I am Dr. Holmes, the owner of this establishment, and I would be delighted to see to all your pharmaceutical needs.” His eyes sparkled with humor.
“As well as your sodas, of course!” He laughed then, heartily, while Maggie managed a smile and the besotted Miss Ellis simpered.
“Thank you, sir,” she replied politely. There was no reason not to take to the man, she supposed, but something about his excessive confidence and geniality grated on her.
“And your names?” he pressed, glancing between her and Danny.
Maggie hesitated before answering, “I am Mrs. O’Donaghue, and this is my brother, Danny.”
“Mrs. O’Donaghue…” he repeated thoughtfully, and for a horrified second Maggie wondered if he’d realized she was lying. Oh, the sooner they could end this charade the better, surely, she thought as she nodded a stiff farewell to the charismatic Dr. Holmes, grateful to be gone.
And yet as they walked home through the sweltering heat, dark storm clouds gathering on the horizon for another summer storm, it wasn’t Dr. Holmes or even her father Maggie was thinking about, but Brendan.
It had been three days since they’d so very nearly kissed, and he had barely spoken to her at all.
Admittedly, he had already left for work by the time she woke up, and came back when she did, always needing to wash, and then it was supper, a spell in the parlor, and off to bed.
There hadn’t been much opportunity to talk, and if there had been, Maggie had no idea what she would have said.
She didn’t even know what she felt, let alone know how to attempt to explain it to Brendan.
When Danny had raced in and they’d jumped apart, the overwhelming emotion Maggie had felt had been disappointment, followed quickly by relief. But it had been a relief that had felt more forced than it had before, as if she had been telling herself to feel it rather than experiencing the emotion.
And yet her conviction had not changed. She had not let it, even now. Especially now. But she still felt all jumbled up inside, and she feared their almost intimacy had somehow driven them even farther apart.
As much as she told herself that was all for the best, the heaviness of her heart said otherwise.