Footsteps at Dawn

Steven McCann

Description

In the early pre-dawn on a day in May of 1963 as sunlight glimmered in the offing of Lake Michigan, Chicago awakened to the promise of a fine spring day. Jimmy Flores and Paddy O’Halloran, friends and scholarship track athletes, saw the first glimmers of a world beyond their college graduation, scheduled for later that morning on the Loyola campus several miles behind their rapid footsteps along the Lake Shore Trail. In the next ten years, a period beginning with Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor unleashing fire hoses and police dogs on demonstrators protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, and ending with the resignation of Richard Nixon, Chicago and America went through enormous turmoil and profound changes. My novel, ‘Footsteps at Dawn’ interweaves the careers and fortunes of my two heroes during that period with those of Chicago, and by extension, our country. From the floor of the commodities exchange, to an interviewer’s desk in a state employment office, to a classroom in an elementary school for immigrant children, to an alderman’s seat in the City Council Chamber, to Michigan Avenue amidst violent clashes between police and thousands of anti-war demonstrators during the Democratic Presidential Convention of ’68, they venture through their rapidly changing world with intelligence and humanity, experiencing both tragedy and joy as they seek a new dawn.

Sujets

• Footsteps
• Footstep
• Story
• McCann
• Steven
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 16 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669863113
• Langue: English

Extrait

Footsteps at Dawn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Novel by
Steven McCann
 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 by Steven McCann.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-6310-6

eBook
978-1-6698-6311-3
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 01/16/2023
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
850403
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 1
A slender ray of light, tinged with gold and golden promise, appeared in the east, lighting the far offing of the vast lake that lay still and silent below the dark sky. There were hardly any sounds from the lake itself, from the near highway, or the monumental structures bordering the highway where its proud citizens still slept, hardly any to accompany the steady rapid patter of two sets of feet filled with the urgency of youth. When they approached an overhead trail light their silhouettes came into view, tall broad-shouldered young men, thin, muscular, almost identical in size and build, moving faster than any casual joggers, their legs and arms almost perfectly synchronized. Then as the light got brighter differences appeared, one man sporting a full head of reddish-brown hair and sharper, more prominent features, his companion owning wider flatter nose and cheekbones, and short clipped hair like a military officer.
“Are you meeting your mom, before the ceremonies start, Jimmy?” the man with longer hair asked the other, without the slightest gasp, or loss of breath, despite having run three miles already.
“She’s coming a little before noon, Paddy. She’s coming up to our place of deep intellectual pursuits, before it’s passed on to the next pair of worthy scholars,” answered the man with the shorter hair. “When are your folks coming?”
“An hour later than your mother, Jimmy. I’m taking them for a little tour. My parents have seen the entire campus already four years ago when they thoroughly inspected it all, but now they want another tour. My father wants to leave a lasting impression on everyone, while he has an excuse.”
They ran on for another five minutes, the lakefront trail becoming lighter with a marina basin out on the water less than a hundred yards distant where the masts of small sailing craft caught the first glimmers of sunlight stretching westward. When they reached within a few yards of the Chicago River at its entrance into their great city from Lake Michigan, they turned around and started back.
“Are your folks having a celebration of any kind for you, Paddy?”
“Nothing that appeals to me, Jimmy. My father offered to pack me off to Ireland for a little vacation where he has some distant relatives and connections, but I’ve found a way to weasel out of it. I think he was hoping I’d meet some sweet colleen over there to bring back with me.”
The speaker gasped slightly with this utterance, more from the content of his words than from loss of wind. The pair might have run the length of Chicago, it seemed, before that would happen.
“They’re gonna gather for a spread at the Emerald Loop. I didn’t mention it to you earlier, Jimmy, because I didn’t want to trap you with a dozen red faced bloated Irishmen standing over you, while you’re chewing on smoked brisket. But you know, Jimmy, you and I should do something special before we jump into our careers. Maybe a trip east to New York, or down to New Orleans.”
“I wish I could, Paddy. But I’m starting teaching in two weeks. I signed up to teach summer school.”
“Over in Pilsen?”
“Yes. It was a way of securing a teaching position for the coming fall.”
“You’ll be close to your mom and the apartment you spent your high school years in.”
“It’s a small place, Paddy. I should have you over sometime. My mother insisted I take the only bedroom where I could close the door to study and she take the front room. It’s where she set up her work table.”
“How’s that going?”
“It’s going well. She started bringing her work to craft fairs as soon as we came to Chicago, halfway through my sophomore year, when I started at Saint Ignatius. She has a steady clientele now.”
“She creates beautiful jewelry, Jimmy. Her silver work carries me to Mexico, without having been there.”
“She likes you, Paddy. She rarely says that about anyone, but she likes you. After she met you freshman year, she told me you were a, ‘gentil hombre,’ She’s happy I’ve met good people.”
“What a difference! Growing up with a beautiful little woman making works of art out if silver, and me with the Chicago police force and its army of Irish cops hovering around our house.”
“That was only from thirteen on, Paddy. Remember what I told you about the early years in Kansas. I wish I’d been surrounded by Irish cops.”
For the last two of their ten-mile run, a morning exercise they’d completed almost every day since arriving as freshmen scholarship track athletes, they ran in the warm glow of morning sunlight and air tingling with freshness. Their features were now much clearer; a young red-haired Irish American with touches of freckles on his nose. cheeks and arms, despite the years of windswept running; his companion showing obvious signs of his mother’s Mexican heritage in his flatter features and darker skin to go with a curious streak of blond in his hair that wasn’t dyed. Yet they gave the impression of brothers with their almost identical builds and slightly better than six-foot -stature; light and strong with not an ounce of wasted flesh, or any loss of vitality.
Their footsteps turned onto West Sheridan Road, then northward into the heart of the campus. The massive Art Deco Mundelein Arts Center rose on the right some 200 feet above the sidewalk with a guardian angel flanking each side of its imposing entrance. Well kept lawns spread out, exuding the fresh scent of mown grass in the morning air. The Madonna Della Strada Chapel, another Art Deco geometric design, greeted them on the right with seven arched stain glass windows along its southern wall bursting with sunlight in a rainbow of colors. A large cross sculpted into its rounded façade kept silent vigil over the campus, below a slender steeple looking out high above to the west and to Lake Michigan, only a few yards behind to the east, The broader squatter Cudahy Science Hall appeared on their left, a turn of the century brick and limestone structure with a pitched roof and a silver dome reminiscent of the Yerkes observatory. The East Quad had already been prepared with row upon row of white folding chairs facing a raised makeshift stage adorned with red, white and blue bunting above the maroon and gold colors and the crest of Loyola University celebrating the graduating class of 1963.
Suddenly the campus came alive with students walking about in suits and ties. Here and there professors appeared, while electricians and carpenters hammered and bleeped adjustments to the stage, the mic and the sound system. The Art Deco Cudahy Library passed on their right with its arched green entrance doors topped by a round window made of glass pieces arranged in a cross next to a tall tower suggestive of a minaret. Across from the library a wide garden of calliopsis adorned venerable old Dumbach Hall, another turn-of-the-century brick and limestone structure with yellow flowers exuding a soft sweet fragrance to mix with the morning smell of grass. Behind Dumbach Hall the runners caught a glimpse of Gentile arena where they cheered their national championship basketball team the previous winter. They crossed over Sean Earl playing fields, evoking memories of the tag football game they competed in the weekend before freshman enrollment. Finally, they entered their residence hall.
After hitting the men’s shower room and grabbing quick breakfasts in the cafeteria below, they went separate ways. Paddy O’Halloran visited several fellow classmates in another residence hall, bringing thank you gifts for helping him study towards an economics degree, requiring higher math and statistics, subjects he loathed and wasn’t good at. His real interests lay in the arts and in literature, but his father’s money and overbearing personality, endured since childhood, pressured him toward business with promises of connections at the Chicago Board of Trade and vast wealth. Paddy often referred to commodity trading as a means to a quick fortune and an escape from his father. When Jimmy Flore