Turning the key to his fifth floor apartment in a five-story walk-up in the Bronx, the man enters and begins to remove his orange shirt. The shirt reads, “NYC Carpenters Local 157. Union Pride.” His wife, with her belly ready to burst, is asleep on the couch. The wee one was kickin’ away in the night again, and her morning sickness had made another appearance in what seems to be the final stretch of things. After a quick shower, the man starts in on the dinner. Though not the ham or lamb that Mammy used to make back in Derrybeg, the man takes pride in his choosing the haddock at the market, and he slices and fries his own potatoes for his signature fish and curry chips. The woman, though not feeling like herself, is content with having a little taste of home.
After the dinner, the woman turns in for the night, asking the man to do the same soon. The man says he will, but she knows that is a lie as she watches him head to the front room of the apartment. In here is his workshop, and he still has a few hours of work ahead of him. Slabs of birch, maple, and oak are strewn across the room. Hand saws, power saws, hammers, and chisels each have their own corner of the room. In the center is his latest and probably most important project. Properly calving a cow and fishing with a net were not skills that could easily land you a job in the Big Apple, when the County Donegal man came over at nineteen years of age. Like thousands of his countrymen before him, he was offered a carpenter’s job while in a pub in the Bronx. Those skills learned on the job have allowed him to keep a roof over his head and provide for his wife for almost ten years. They will also allow him to give his first-born child their first gift: A crib to sleep in.
The next day, bursting through the maternity wing’s door in a green and white Gweedore GAA jersey and steel toe work boots, the man is directed towards his wife’s delivery room. After an hour, the doctor comes in, and they begin the push into the next stage of their lives. Thomas Gallagher is the fifth generation in a line of first-born men who share that name and the first generation that is American-born.
After a few days, the man and the woman are allowed to bring wee Thomas home. The man lays the boy he created in the other object of his creation. Carved into the top of the headrest in a language that will not get passed down to him, for it has no use in the country in which he was just born, is his family’s surname “Ó Gallchobhair”. A name so popular in the distant and rocky land in which his family comes from, it seems like everyone might be a cousin. But Thomas Gallagher will probably never see that land in the Northwest of Ireland, for there is no one left there worth visiting. Never know the smell of turf burning in the range, because the Concrete Jungle has no bogs from which to cut it from. In this crib crafted by the man after which he is named shall he find warmth , but also the burden of living in the land of opportunity. The product of the blood, sweat, and tears of his father and the many Thomas Gallaghers from those windswept North Atlantic shores before him, but he will never be the same as them. Wee Thomas Gallagher is different; he will have to become his own man and forge a new path for the Thomas Gallaghers to come.
Chris Coll is a writer from the Bronx, New York. When not writing, he can be found training in Kyokushin Karate and/or reading thriller novels. His short fiction and short nonfiction work can be found in the Wilderness House Literary Review.
Featured image by Ricky Kharawala on Unsplash.
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