If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  “But it hasn’t been done yet, has it?” she retorted, her tone equally spiteful.

  “Mother, our lives are here now. We’re not going back to Ireland. I’d like for it to be free, same as you, but I don’t think it’ll come by throwin’ parades and wearin’ emerald sashes and epaulets and phoenixes and sunbursts and shamrocks, and makin’ endless speeches. I send money to you, for the family.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk, with your fancy pantaloons and shameful stockings!” Her voice choked with sobs. “I want to go home, my work’s done. You’re the last one—and somebody I scarcely know. I don’t want a life here, as you call it. I want to be with my Andrew, lyin’ in the sweet ground beside him.”

  There was embarrassed silence.

  Andy said tensely, “We shouldn’t do this, with my friend here.”

  “Sure, an’ as it is I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But ’tis God’s truth I’m not long for this life, and it’s me wish, son, to go home.”

  Andy looked wretched. Gavan shifted uncomfortably.

  “There isn’t money, Ann,” he said softly. “The cost is divilish high. Even steerage’d require a year o’ me wages.”

  “It’s me wish! Sister Clara Antonia told me—”

  “Oh, no,” Andy interjected. “You’re feedin’ her again, too?”

  “She has the gift—seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.”

  “I’m sure she took the worm test for you,” he said sarcastically.

  “No need of that,” she replied calmly. “Though it’s well known I gave it to every soul in this house. Small wonder the wee thing thrived with you!”

  Andy threw up his hands in surrender.

  “She said there’d come a deliverer. To release me from this life and send me to my Andrew—forever.”

  “Fine,” Andy said wearily. “Did she offer to foot the expense?”

  “That she didn’t.”

  “Well, how about the society? Surely O’Neil’d jump to help a good Irishwoman in her time of need.”

  She said nothing. Her eyes met mine across the table. For a moment they were not filmy. Something happened between us. It was as if she’d asked a specific silent question.

  “Your daughter,” I said, fumbling for words. “Your other daughter . . . ?”

  “Yes, my daughter,” she agreed, smiling vaguely. Her eyes were filmy again. The subject seemed concluded.

  As we rode the horsecar east toward the township of Irvington, I asked Andy why his mother’s wish to return to Ireland upset him so much.

  “Wouldn’t it rile you,” he answered, “if your mother wanted to leave, just when you were makin’ something of yourself? Something for everybody to be proud of? Here I’m the only one earnin’ money worth speakin’ of, and she thinks I’m playin’ a boy’s game instead of followin’ a trade.”

  “Still, wouldn’t you send her back? If she really wanted it?”

  He sighed. “I’ve come to believe it is her true desire.”

  I changed the subject. “What was that about a worm and having the gift?”

  “Old Cavan beliefs. The gift is healing—laying on hands and such—and prophesying. The worm test tells whether a child has the gift. When the worm’s placed in the hand and shrivels up, that signifies the child was born with the gift.”

  “But she said it thrived in yours.”

  He smiled ruefully. “Likely so.”

  I asked him to tell me about his family. It turned out he’d known his father scarcely more than I knew mine.

  “I was three,” he said. “All’s I recollect was him there, skin white as paper, laid out amongst us. Brighid lifted me up to see . . .”

  . . . lying alone, beneath the pale light . . .

  “. . . women keenin’ and cryin’, men drinkin’ from jugs. . . . And that’s all I can remember. Next we was on the boat, everybody moaning and throwing up.”

  “Coming here?”

  “Yes, and lucky too. By then, ’forty-nine, a million had died. Blight set in, and the praties—’taters—failed three straight years. Folks swarmed to cities and died in the streets. We tried to hang on. Father wouldn’t hear of leaving the land. But conacres—wee parcels he rented out—stood vacant. Finally our crops failed too, and since the linen mills and gypsum mines had closed long before, the game was up.”

  “What part of Ireland?”

  “County Cavan, near Swanlinbar. Hills and lakes. Father couldn’t leave. He died of heartache—and of whiskey bein’ cheaper than meat.”

  . . . like putting a gun to his head . . .

  Andy’s tone lightened. “Old Hickory’s folks lived in County Antrim, near us. I’m named for him, in fact. Andrew Jackson Leonard, same as my father.”

  “I’ll be damned.” I nearly told of Grandpa naming me Samuel Clemens. Instead I said, “What happened after he died?”

  “Mother and Gavan sold the land for pennies—barely enough to cross in steerage. By the time we set foot at Castle Garden, Liam, my wee brother, was dead of consumption. Gavan found work as a tanner in Newark, so that’s where we went. Not too many Irish there yet, though Sweaze’s folk lived near. We had to learn the new ways quick. I had the easiest time, bein’ the youngest. Mother never changed a lick, Irish to the core. Even Brighid’s still a good half Old Soil.”

  “What about . . . Cait?”

  He paused so long that I wondered if he were going to answer. “She’s in Cincinnati.”

  My heart did a funny little beat. “So you’re close?”

  “These years we haven’t a great deal to say to each other.” A tired sound came from him. “It’s a sadness for me.” Again he was silent.

  “What exactly are Fenians?”

  He looked at me. “Why?”

  “Well, you and your mother disagree about them. Also, somebody said it was Fenian money that McDermott lost at the Haymaker game.”

  “They’re tryin’ to get a free Irish nation,” he said slowly, as if threading through a complex subject. “Over here it’s called the Fenian Society, but it’s properly the American wing of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood.”

  I envisioned TV-screen images: IRA youths fasting . . . howling, rock-throwing mobs choking Ulster streets . . . Tommies in armored cars . . . bomb-blast carnage. . . .

  “A terrorist group?”

  “You’re talkin’ Dutch, Sam.”

  “You know, operating in secret, using violence.”

  “Well, in Ireland they tried to be secret—but now they’re all in jail. Over here they’ve been in the open all along, marching in their green uniforms and holding picnics and benefits to raise cash.”

  “Sounds tame enough.”

  “Well, they did invade Canada three years back.”

  I looked to see if he was joking. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why’d they do that?”

  “Intended to work a ransom game. Give England back its territory after Ireland was free.”

  “Andy, are you kidding me?”

  “Rumors have ’em trying it again soon. Read the papers, you’ll see.”

  “Isn’t that pretty farfetched?”

  “I dunno, Sam, tens of thousands of Irish boys fought in the war. On both sides. They’re trained troops—that’s what Fenian means in the old legends; from Fianna, for ‘soldier’—and most still have their service weapons. In ’sixty-six, all trains runnin’ north to the border were suddenly full of armed men.”

  “What did the government do?”

  “Steered clear and let the Canucks handle it. Which they did, once the surprise wore off. But the society claims it’ll be proper organized next time.”

  “How could we just steer clear?”

  “Easy. England ain’t ’zactly the cheese, you know, since they helped the Johnnies.”

  For some reason I had the sudden shocking realization that the nation wasn’t even one hundred years old. There were people—many people—who carried vivid memories of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin. Incredible.
r />   “Irish votes carry weight now,” Andy continued. “Politicians’re anxious not to rile us.”

  “Okay, but stand by and let part of the population—an immigrant army, at that—invade a neighbor country?”

  “Governments can’t control everything.”

  “If McDermott lost Fenian money,” I said, changing tack, “he must be in trouble. But how’d he get it in the first place? Is he one of them?”

  “No, but he lays in stores for ’em—stores not easily come by, if you take my meaning. Word is he’s trusted by General O’Neill. Sits in on the councils in New York, privy to the inside workin’s.”

  “How’d he manage that?”

  “Dunno. He come out of the war with a medal—nobody knows for what—and puffed himself hard. For my money he’s a chin artist and crooked as a crutch.”

  “What about the O’Donovan your mother mentioned? The one who came visiting with General O’Neill.”

  “He’s O’Neill’s chief of operations. Mean-tempered as an adder and short as piecrust. Even McDermott wouldn’t want to cross him.”

  “And yet he takes care of your sister?”

  Andy looked at me silently for a good ten seconds. “Sam, I can tell you’re freezin’ to know about Cait. I saw you studyin’ that old picture.”

  “Well, okay, why won’t anybody talk about her?”

  “Me’n her were close once, the two youngest. Now we don’t get along.

  “But the whole family avoided talking about her.”

  “Cait’s gone her own way.”

  “Well, if it’s too painful . . .”

  “Sam, I see how you came to be a newspaper feller.” He slapped his leg in frustration. “You can’t stop pumping!”

  I laughed and said I’d ease up.

  “No, I’ll spill, but there’s a lot to it. Goes back to just before the war, about when that picture was made. Cait was bein’ sparked by John O’Neill’s nephew, Colm, who’d never liked the name Margaret and so called her Cait. She’d loved Colm since they was little kids. They were set to marry. But when the fighting started, Colm took it into his head to fight for the Union like his uncle, then a cavalry lieutenant. Irish lads were pouring into the armies by the tens of thousands. Course, many didn’t have a choice, as they hadn’t cash enough to buy a substitute in the draft. Still, signin’ on was the thing to do. Colm joined Meagher’s Irish Brigade.”

  “How’d Cait feel about it?” I asked.

  “Oh, she was dead against it. Said it wasn’t his country, nor his fight. But Colm was a charmer, could talk anybody into anything. He had his way.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got killed.” Andy’s tone was flat. “At Antietam. Holding the green regimental flag up even in death, we were told—though I always thought that part was malarkey.”

  I felt a strange tumble of emotions, a sense that things existed just beyond my understanding: dream wisps tantalizingly near consciousness.

  “It changed Cait like day to night. She’d taken care of me as far back as I remember. But after Colm’s death she didn’t care about me anymore. Or anything else, exceptin’—”

  “Wait a second,” I said, charged with currents of excitement. “Didn’t your mom say the portrait was taken before her marriage?”

  “There wasn’t none.” Andy looked at me. “Cait had Colm’s baby, but there was never a marriage.”

  “Had his baby? You mean, after . . . ?”

  “A boy, born seven months after Colm died. Soon as the war ended, John O’Neill came around spreadin’ the same old blarney. ’Cept now he was a Fenian general and instead of savin’ the Union it was savin’ Ireland. The war had all been a big training ground. Now all the boys that wasn’t dead or maimed would have a go directly at the big thing—a free Ireland.”

  “Was that supposed to console Cait?”

  “I don’t know what happened between ’em directly,” Andy said.

  “But O’Neill was part of what changed her. She got a new purchase on life, a partial one anyhow. Along with the baby she had the Fenians. Took to ’em like religion.”

  “So that Colm hadn’t died in vain?”

  “That’s my guess. She’d carry on his work, so to speak.” He gave me a shrewd glance. “You’re some quick.”

  “I gather you didn’t think much of it.”

  “Mother sided with her, long as they’d pretend she was married. But I fought Cait every step, arguin’ that the family came first, that she’d already given up enough; but she acted like I wasn’t talking to her at all. Finally she moved out. And by then even Mother realized how far it’d gone—too far to ever change back. So we lost her.”

  “I’m sorry, Andy.”

  “Makes me sick. The politicians speechify, the generals make battle plans, the old women sew and give their pennies, the boys rush out to die, and the girls they marched off from ain’t never the same.”

  I tried to think of comfort to offer.

  “Colm was a fine lad,” he said softly. “I looked to him as my hero. Cait was lively and vital and laughed so sweet it’d make your heart jump to hear her.” He took a slow breath. “Well, she still looks enough like the girl you were studying’ so close, Sam. But now she never laughs, not even with her son. And I don’t care how many glorified speeches they make, Colm died like an animal led to slaughter.”

  My vision danced oddly. McDermott. . . O’Neill. . . O’Donovan . . . Cait. What was it about the confluence of those names that stirred a vague dissonance in me? “O’Donovan takes care of her and the boy now?”

  “So Mother thinks,” he said. “They work in the Fenians together is all I know. O’Donovan was Colm’s pal, though most of us couldn’t see why Colm let him be around so much. They went off to war together. It was O’Donovan who brought back the tale of the flag. I never fancied him, even before. I never liked the way he eyed Cait. But she’s gone his way, not the family’s.”

  I rubbed my eyes and saw the portrait again in my mind: the dark hair tumbled on her head; the lips with an echo of a smile; the prideful glint of something—mischief? challenge?—in her eyes. It was hard to imagine her perpetually somber.

  “She’s never married, then?”

  “No, nor likely to; that part of Cait’s sealed up.”

  “She must still be nice to look at.”

  “You’re not the first to be taken with her looks, friend Sam.”

  Maybe so, I thought, but how many had grown up in another century with a piece of her dress on their quilts?

  Chapter 10

  The Irvington ball grounds baked beneath a brilliant sun. It was the hottest day yet. Sunshades and straw hats dotted the crowd. The Stockings were loose and relaxed, out of New York with the winning streak—I with my life—intact. Andy and Sweasy got celebrity treatment. Surrounded by family members and reporters, they signed autographs, greeted friends, and gave youngsters tips. The rest of us were clearly secondary, even George—which probably accounted for his lackadaisical play: the star shortstop muffed several grounders and failed to hit with his usual authority.

  There were no pool sellers here, no whiskey vendors, no fancily dressed sports. I stashed the derringer in the bottom of the cash box and stretched out, luxuriating in the sunshine, enjoying the game like a fan.

  It wasn’t much of a contest, despite the young Irvingtons’ surprising fielding. We finished seven innings in two hours, all we could spare before returning to Jersey City and the evening train to Philadelphia. Scoring in each frame, we rolled to a 20-4 decision. Andy smacked two doubles and a single; Sweasy also doubled, all of which delighted the home folks. Brainard bamboozled the local hitters, striking out four. Allison was dazzling behind the plate.

  The difference between Harry’s well-drilled pros and the talented amateurs was dramatized when an Irvington player struck out with runners on first and second. Allison deliberately fumbled the ball, picked it up, and stared coolly at the batter, who suddenly realized that he had to run.
Allison whipped the ball to George at second, and it went on to Gould for a double play. The shocked crowd applauded the tactic good-naturedly, unaware that we practiced it routinely.

  Hurley played the final innings, and I hit for Harry his last time up. Feeling rusty, I drew admiring oohs with a sizzling foul shot outside third, then popped ignobly to short. But just being out there was enough this fine day. And wearing the Stockings’ uniform was increasingly an ego boost. I had no trouble basking in reflected glory.

  Before boarding our coach I joined Andy’s family as he embraced them and said good-bye. I could see that they were proud of his performance on the field.

  “We’ll be back in September to take away the pennant,’” he told his mother, who looked about to cry. “I’ll visit then. Or you could take the train out West beforehand, you know, to see me ‘n’ Sweaze and Sam . . . and Cait.”

  She shook her head, a tear trickling down her cheek. Brighid took her arm. Andy kissed her and turned away. Then Brighid surprised me by saying softly, “She fancies a moment with you.”

  “With me?”

  “Aye.” Brighid stepped away, and Mrs. Leonard edged close, birdlike, peering up at me questioningly. “Mr. Fowler?” The tiny voice was tremulous. “You’ll care for my Andy?”

  “Like a brother, Mrs. Leonard.”

  “He’s a good lad.” The words held a hint of fierceness. “Everything his father’s heart desired. Why doesn’t he see that I must go home?” With an effort she kept control. “I’ll not see him again in this life, Mr. Fowler.”

  “Now, ma’am—” I began.

  “No, ’tis dying I am.” She clutched my arm with a feathery grip. “A matter of weeks. It’s up with me.”

  I stared at her. “Why are you saying this? What can I do?”

  “You musn’t breathe a word to Andy, but I must go home. If I’m buried here, ’tis a certainty misfortune will strike my children. And their children, too. If they’re to have their bright new lives here, Mr. Fowler, I must return to my Andrew.”

  I tried to understand. “Are you saying there’ll be a curse?”

  “Something like.”

  “But how do you know?”

  She peered at me as if resolving a question. “Would you take it into your heart, Mr. Fowler, that I’ve laid eyes on you before this day? Sister Clara Antonia helped me to see you in a dream. You were our family’s deliverer.”