Small Mercies

The next day at work, news reports reveal that Auggie Williamson’s car had broken down, and that he likely went to the subway as the quickest way back to Mattapan, but ran into trouble there. Nothing suggests that he had a criminal background, and when one of Mary Pat’s coworkers insists that he must have been a troublemaker who got simply what was coming to him, Mary Pat counters that people who attribute stereotypes to Black people usually exhibit the same qualities they criticize. Reports claim that Auggie fell or was pushed onto the subway, but the position of his body suggests otherwise.

When Mary Pat leaves work, she is met by crime boss Marty Butler, who invites her into his car. He asks her about the upcoming rally, and states that societies are better off when different races do not mingle. He offers to have her apartment painted, and when she asks about why they would renovate her place when they’re already renovating Butler’s, Butler is confused until the driver mentions a project to clean up his kitchen. (Mary Pat remembers, however, that Brian had mentioned renovating the living room.) They get out of the car and walk on the causeway, and Mary Pat insists that she is merely trying to find her daughter, while Butler counters that she is causing trouble. He also knew about the relationship between Jules and Frank, but tells Mary Pat that with the news of Jules’s possible involvement in Auggie’s death, they must do everything possible to protect the neighborhood from public attention. He promises that no one in his organization has harmed Jules, and suddenly, a man on a bench stands up and offers Mary Pat a paper bag filled with money. Butler reminds Mary Pat of Brian’s theory that Jules went to Florida and suggests that she go there herself to find her daughter. Butler states that whether or not she decides to go, the topic is closed. When Butler and the mysterious man leave, Mary Pat weeps with the knowledge that Jules is dead.

Detective Bobby Coyne and Detective Pritchard interview a witness to Auggie Williamson’s death. Bobby thinks about the culture of Southie and how different it is from his nearby home of Dorchester, for in Southie, people turn from great generosity to savage violence in moments. Even so, he admires their innate sense of belonging, as his time in Vietnam and resulting heroin addiction have left him struggling to find meaning in his life. The witness is reluctant to talk but eventually confirms that four white teenagers (two boys and two girls) were screaming at one another as he got off the train. Combined with other witness testimonies, Bobby deduces that four white teenagers (believed to be George, Rum, Brenda, and Jules) chased Auggie into the station, taunting him and throwing beer bottles. He surmise that Auggie was hit by a train and fell to the platform. However, this witness states that when he got off the train that supposedly hit Auggie, the young man was actually lying at the feet of the four white teenagers. However, the witness quickly left rather than investigating or trying to help Auggie.

That night, Detective Bobby Coyne returns to the house that he shares with his five sisters and brother, none of whom are married. They banter, and one of his sisters, a secretary at a police barracks, predicts serious disruption in the near future due to the busing crisis. They talk about Auggie Williamson and speculate that if Marty Butler has any proximity to the crime, he can make life extremely difficult for the police. One of Bobby’s sisters warns him not to anger Butler, who might then threaten his nine-year-old son, Brendan, or at least make his life worse by causing Bobby to lose his job. Bobby assures his siblings that the case will probably not be important enough to merit serious charges against anyone, much less a Butler associate, but he later ponders the injustice that the four white kids are unlikely to be punished for the death of a young Black man. He thinks of the people he killed in Vietnam and reflects on how easy it is to dehumanize people in order to justify killing them. He resolves to arrest all four teenagers the next day.

Officers apprehend Brenda and Rum, and when Bobby and Pritchard go to interrogate them, Bobby predicts that Brenda is ready to crack. He shows her a picture of Auggie from the morgue, but she insists that she wasn’t there and that the eyewitnesses are lying. Suddenly, Brenda inadvertently confesses to having been on the outbound platform, but before she can say anything else, Marty Butler’s attorney arrives and stops the interrogation. As the detectives leave, Bobby notes that an attorney from the same firm is with Rum.

After work, Bobby goes to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Roxbury and confesses that his experience in Vietnam filled him with a sense of both power and guilt, for he destroyed beautiful things and could only reclaim that beauty by using heroin. After the meeting he meets a woman who says that Bobby arrested her two years ago but drove her to a clinic instead of the police station, and six months later she began her journey to sobriety. Her name is Carmen; her conversation gives Bobby new hope.

Mary Pat sits numbly in her apartment as she comes to grips with the certainty of Jules’s death. The classical music she is playing gives her a feeling of tradition and connection to her ancestors. She is alone in her grief; only her sister Pat attempted to visit, but Mary Pat ignored her, knowing that it is useless to accuse Marty Butler of having Jules killed. She finally opens the door to a group of Southie Women Against Busing (SWAB), who have come to bring her to the rally. They dress her up, clean up her apartment, and bustle her onto a bus, insisting that she needs to be part of something bigger than herself. The bus arrives at City Hall, where there are seemingly thousands of people, and she even recognizes a few people among the counter-protestors. Speakers rehearse familiar arguments about the authors of desegregation living in their own segregated neighborhoods and bemoan the destruction of a way of life based on mutual trust and communal accountability, claiming that God ordained the separation of the races.

Mary Pat starts to lose interest, especially when she sees a girl in the crowd who reminds her of Jules. Suddenly, the crowd realizes that Senator Edward Kennedy has arrived. He is drawing criticism for his liberal position on race and busing. The organizer of the rally refuses to let Kennedy climb the stage to speak, and before long, the crowd is taunting him and even spitting on him. Kennedy retreats into the federal building, and the police gently push the crowd back. As the crowd breaks into racist chants, Joyce, a woman from the SWAB group, gets into an argument with her daughter and punches her. Mary Pat interferes, and when Joyce approaches her, Mary Pat punches Joyce and fends off other SWAB members with vicious street fighting tactics. One of the SWAB women declares that Mary Pat is no longer part of their community, so she leaves.

Mary Pat returns to her apartment and cleans up her injuries. She has always been a fighter, beginning in childhood when she chased down and beat up a boy who splashed mud on her and her doll. She grew up in a house rife with violence, and her mother delivered just as many beatings as her several brothers and her father. Now, she welcomes the pain as a relief from the numbness she has felt since realizing that Jules must be dead. She puts on classical music again and resolves to keep fighting for Jules while she can. She pours all the alcohol in her house down the drain and finds the toolkit that her first husband, Dukie, once used while working as a burglar for the Butler crew. She takes Butler’s money and leaves the apartment, wondering if she will ever return.