The City Below Read Online Free PDF Page A

wide sidewalks, the tidy squares of grass, the hedges and flower beds, the neighbors minding each other's children, burying each other's dead. They knew nothing of the churches—his own St Mary's, but also St. Catherine's and St. Francis de Sales—where the people, all the people, met each other regularly in one common acknowledgment not only of needing grace but of having it.
    The views into Charlestown from the elevated bridge ramps featured, in addition to the blank walls and smoked windows of the warehouses, the housing project that North Shore suburbanites would see as one of the grim neighborhoods they associated with the decaying inner city they left behind each night. They would imagine vacant-eyed, unattended teenagers with freckles bridging their noses, and pregnant mothers tugging at their children's ears. They would picture Irish gypsies, young hooligans and drunks, knowing nothing of the lengths to which those mothers went to keep the threadbare clothing of their children clean, or of the natural genius corner boys had for cracking jokes, or of the rare camaraderie of tavern haunters who thought nothing of putting half their gin rummy winnings in the St. Vincent's poorbox, which sat by the pickle jar on every tap counter in the neighborhood.
    Passersby would see none of that from their autos, and in feet, from his vantage on Bunker Hill, neither did Terry. He had no need to. He saw nothing of the Town but the slanted asphalt-and-shingle planes of the rooftops he took for granted, as he took for granted the essential virtue of the people who lived in the rooms below them. The city proper was what he saw and what he wanted, without knowing why.
    "Hi, Charlie," a girl's voice said from behind the bench. The sound was close enough to startle him, but because of the name, he did not assume she was speaking to him.
    She was, and when he realized that it was the damn moniker they'd laid on him at the K of C, he bristled, even before he knew who she was.
    He stood up and faced her.
    The girl took a few steps toward him in the shoulder-bouncing, hand-flapping style of Charlie Chaplin. A decent imitation, in fact. When he only stared at her, she stopped.
    "Your mother called to see if you were out here."
    He recognized Didi Mullen, Jackie's sister. She was a tall, thin girl who'd graduated the year before. That crucial year had, in the social system of Charlestown, kept her and Terry from being friends, and now that she took the train out each morning for her job in an office downtown, the gulf between them was wider than ever. The Mullens lived on Monument Square.
    "She said you're late for dinner."
    "Hi, Didi. I was just going to finish this smoke." He held up his cigarette. "Want one?"
    At first he thought she hadn't heard him, but then her face broke into the goofy, wide-mouth grin for which she'd been teased in high school, the flat-chested Martha Raye. She held her hands out and he tossed her the pack. She laughed when she caught it, and he thought, You shouldn't use so much lipstick, or not such a bright red, or something.
    "You're no gentleman, Charlie," she said. She lit her own cigarette, then approached his bench.
    "I'm no 'Charlie,' is what you mean. You may call me Terence." He sat as she kept coming. His casualness was not quite the act with her that it was with girls in his own circle. If he blushed, it was because he felt she'd just caught him at something.
    She smiled and threw her head back to clear her hair away from her face so she could put the cigarette to her lips. Her hair was a rich, shimmering red, the best thing about her. Terry remembered seeing her from behind in the school corridors, that very hair pouring down over her shoulders, a promise that when she turned around, this would be one beautiful girl. When she did turn it was always a surprise. Her mouth was made for a bigger face, her chin was pointed, the rims of the glasses she wore curled above her brows, making her look bug-eyed, more