midnight, at bob’s bowery bar.
outside, the wind was howling, and a snowstorm which was predicted to last for two or three days had just begun.
inside, willie the weeper had just finished telling a story.
that was a pretty sad story, willie, said father frank the whiskey priest, but i have a much sadder one. in fact, this is the saddest story i ever heard.
father frank began his tale.
sally o’hara lived with her family on tenth avenue, and worked as a cleaning lady in an office building in columbus circle. she was probably the youngest full time cleaning lady in new york. when she was sixteen she had hands as red as lobsters boiling in a pot.
sally was not exactly a beauty, and was not very bright, but she loved her mother and father, and her five brothers, and the virgin mother, and a couple of saints whose names i forget, and the new york giants.
and she loved birthdays. she always loved birthday parties, even with just two or three people, and she loved receiving and sending birthday cards. she kept track of the birthdays of all her aunts and uncles and cousins , including many whom she had never met, in america and in ireland, and who were barely aware of her existence. sometimes she bought them cards at the five and ten, more often she made them herself with paper and crayons.
one year her father was unfortunately not at home, so there could be no birthday party for him. but sally wanted to send him a card, one that would be sure to reach him exactly on his birthday.
i don’t know, sally, her mother said. i don’t know if it can reach him on time under the circumstances.
but sally was persistent, and wished to deliver the birthday card herself. so her mother ordered her two unemployed brothers, peter and paul, to accompany sally to upstate new york to try to deliver the card. mrs o’hara herself, and the other brothers, could not make the trip because they did not wish to ask their employers for the time off to do so, or explain why they wanted it.
so, sally and peter and paul got on the bus at the port authority station and made the long trip upstate. the bus was slow and stopped in a million little hick towns and broke down twice and it was almost midnight before they reached their destination.
there was no crowd outside the prison, and no reporters,. sally’s daddy was the smallest of small time hoods, and his arrest, trial, and sentencing had barely been mentioned in the papers.
the guard they approached was polite, but explained that they should have planned ahead and notified the proper authorities if they wanted to be gained admission to the proceedings.
sally handed the birthday card in its envelope to the guard and asked if he could have it delivered to her father.
after a moment’s hesitation, the guard told her he would “see what i could do.”
sally and her brothers went back to the bus station.
at midnight, sally’s daddy went to the chair as scheduled, but he never received her birthday card.
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