Free Suspension by Richard E. Crabbe

regiment left whole parts of themselves on those battlefields or didn’t come home at all. When he was released from the service in ‘64, he came home, grown and different, but still the son they loved. He met “his Julia” at a social at the Hibernians hall, and they married in the spring of ’69.
    Tom sat patiently through their ramble in the past. He sensed they needed to tell their lives and make some sense of what had happened to them. He could feel their urgency to explain how they had come to this place. It was plain from the furniture, their clothes, and the way the rooms were kept that this was not where they belonged. They were hardworking people, but work alone had not been enough. Here, near the end of their hopes, they wanted it to make sense. Tom understood that well enough. He wished that life always made sense. Most times it was hard to tell. He sipped his tea and listened.
    It was just after he took Julia Tompkins as his bride that Terry got work on the bridge to Brooklyn. He labored at laying up the three-ton blocks of cut stone that were to become the Brooklyn tower. Terry worked on that tower
for five years, Pat had told him proudly. The family prospered, with Eamon and Terry bringing in good wages. They bought a small row house on East Third Street together, and in ’71 Julia had given birth to Mary Elizabeth.
    â€œShe was the light o’ his life, that little girl. You should have seen him, Detective.”
    â€œTom … call me Tom,” Braddock said, Terrence’s tintype cradled in his lap.
    â€œTom. He and Julia would take her for walks just to show her off. She was a sweet one too, with beautiful eyes and a lovin’ manner. We were happy then …” Patricia’s voice trailed off.
    Mikey came in ‘73. “He was a fine strappin’ boy with a good set o’ lungs and a strong hand,” as Eamon had put it. Terry finished work on the Brooklyn tower that year and then started work on the approach on the Brooklyn side. He wanted to work in the New York caisson for the extra pay that was in it, but Patricia and Eamon and especially Julia had talked him out of it. If the caisson disease got him, like it got so many, there was no amount of pay that was worth it, they told him.
    â€œHeard o’ too many men crippled or dead with that caisson disease. I told Terry he had a family to think about and that was that.”
    Things were good till ’78, when Eamon started coughing. The consumption worked fast. In six months he was let go from his job. The coughing became so bad that he couldn’t hide it anymore. The bosses were afraid he’d infect the lot of them.
    â€œThought it was just a cold at first, but after two whole months o’ coughin’ I knew it was more. Doctors, remedies, laudanum, I tried it all. Just kept coughin’. Doctors told me to go upstate to Saranac Lake, wherever the hell that is, for the cure o’ the good air.” Eamon coughed once and spit in his bucket. “I couldn’t afford to move across the street. Here’s where I’ll die, I guess.”
    Patricia looked away out the lone window and after a while she said, “Little Mikey and Mary Elizabeth were a comfort to us then. We could see the future growin’, an’ we had the hope that comes with children.” Things were hard, with only one salary coming in, but they made ends meet and held onto the house, till the fire. It started in a house three doors down. A chimney fire got out of control. Before that February night was over, half the block was gone, and their house with it.
    â€œAt least we managed to save most o’ the furniture ’fore the fire took the house. There we were with our parlor chairs, an’ beds, clothes, an’ pots an’ pans, sittin’ in the black snow. Nothin’ left but a pile o’ smoke.”
    Tom had heard footsteps, running up the hall. Mikey came into the