By my third week, I’m sick to death of having doors slammed in my face. And when a rival gang, the Plug Uglies, recruits two of the men sleeping in our eleven-person room, the Dead Rabbits decide I’ve offended them by association. When I go to look for work, I get hostile stares from men holding clubs and flashing butcher knives. I take to sneaking out before sunrise and slipping back in cloaked by the dark, avoiding all the gangs, which is pretty hard to do in the Five Points.

Every day it’s the same. No Irish.

I get up early, picking my way through the bodies still sleeping, and I traipse through New York determined that this will be the day that I find something. When I come up empty again, I’ve no stomach for going back. I walk downtown and sit at the harbor feeling in my pocket for my Ireland stone.

I stay there hunched on a barrel, sitting right through the evening and into the night. When I get up to go it’s a ways past midnight.

I’ve only walked a few blocks when I hear a scuffle in an ally. I peek in to see two ruffians beating and kicking a man on the ground.

“Stop, you!” I call out.

One of the two digs in the man’s pockets and they take off running. The gentleman on the ground is in a bad way. They took a boot to his face and who knows where else. When he breathes, I hear liquid in his lungs and when he tries to talk there’s blood. I can’t be here. There’s no helping him. If I stay, I could be blamed.

I stand to go, but I hold off from leaving. I think how easy a man could find a job with that white cotton shirt and those leather shoes.

Before I know what I’m doing, I take off his shoes and I go for his trousers. He stops breathing while I’m pulling at his jacket. When I have it all, I bundle the clothes in my arms and run.

Huddled by the Hudson River, I scrub the blood from his shirt with river water and change into his clothes. I kick my old things into the water, watching as they float and then sink.

At first light, I walk up and down the city looking for anyone hiring. There’s a blacksmith with a sign warning: No Irish Need Apply. I march right into the shop and, flattening my vowels in the American way, I ask for the job.

He looks me up and down and asks my name.

I say a silent apology to every O’Toole who came before me and hope they understand.

“Henry Taylor,” I tell him without a flinch.

“You have any blacksmithing experience?”

“Some,” I lie.

He tells me to put on an apron and stoke the fire, and by God I do.

Later that night, lying in my new quarters above the shop, my hand goes for the rock in my right pocket, but it’s not there. Then I remember. I left it in my old trousers. My piece of home is lost somewhere in the Hudson River.