CHAPTER SUMMARIES WITH NOTES

Chapter 1

One little boy is standing on a heap of gravel trying to defend the honor of Rum Alley against a group of boys from DevilÂ’s Row. He is screaming curses at them. One of his friends from Rum Alley calls for him to run to save himself, but he refuses to run. He calls the DevilÂ’s Row boys "micks," a racist term used on the Irish, and they scream at him and attack. He falls down the other side of the gravel heap under a pile of boys. He is bruised all over his body and his head has a deep cut. The other boys close in on him and he hides his head with one arm while striking out with another. The boys run around throwing rocks at him and screaming insults.

Around them, adults watch half-heartedly. A woman leans out the window of a nearby apartment, some workers stop loading a boat to watch, an engineer from a passing tugboat leans over the railing watching, and a group of convicts come out across the river to look. One of the stones smashes JimmieÂ’s mouth, causing a thick flow of blood. He is crying and screaming at once. The boys around him yell in "notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery."

Jimmie wants to know where they all were when he needed them to back him up. Suddenly he gets into a fight with one of the other boys who ran instead of fighting with him. Pete eggs him on, calling out "Smash ‘im, Jimmie, kick deh damn guts out of ‘im." The other boys stand around excitedly watching the fight. Suddenly one of them calls to Jimmie that his father is coming. Before they can get up, a "man with sullen eyes" wanders over to them and begins kicking furiously at the fighting boys. He orders Jimmie to get up before he kills him. Jimmie gets up and his father kicks him. He tells him to come home now. They walk off. Jimmie is embarrassed to be escorted home by his father.

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