Redemption Falls

by Joseph O'Connor

  ORSON RAWLS II, UNDERTAKER AND AUCTIONEER

  My father was undertaker in Redemption Falls at the time. Come up from East Texas in the spring of sixty-five. Couldn fit to the negro walkin around bird-free. Come up to the north cause it cold up here in winter an he figured the negro wouldn never follow the cold…He was prejudice when he was a youngfeller. He changed some later. Come time he died, he hated ever one about the same. I guess you’d call it progress.

  And I recollect seein the kid in the town right around then. Went to school with him a while. Right there in Redemption. Well, it’s a ghost town now. Sad, sorry place. Schoolhouse was there on the corner of Fitzgerald, just down a little ways from the logjail. John Connolly’s Dublin Quartzmill was up there afterward, right where the main street was at when I was a chicker – but that’s all fell down too. No, I dont care to go up there, now the folks all gone. Nothin but rats and ruins up there. My grandson goes sometimes. He’ll dig around with his cousin. No, me, I dont go no more…

  Melancholiest face you ever did see. Always lookin sad. Never spoke him a word. Stone-dumb he was. Cause he was born without a tongue. Say his mother was a certain type down Atlanta Georgia, took the snakeroot or somethin for syphilis. So he was born deformed. He once showed me inside of his mouth. Well, not actually me, but my cousin Jimmy Cultrane. And Jimmy swore me blind he was tongueless as a fish. Which was about the most disgusting thing I ever heardof up to then. I dont rightly know why. But it was.

  Matter fact my Pa got this scheme cooked up in his mind about the scudgie. He seen in some old book where the folks over in England hire these kiddies for to walk at a funeral. ‘Mutes,’ they was called. Cause they go along silent. Cause those miners, you know, some of those boys liked a fancy funeral. Your Irish fellas especially, and your cockneys. Mean they’d fool away a fortune, send a buck on back to Momma…But come time to go above, they’d pretty much want the whole pony…Wreaths and a catafalque and ever damn thing…An a stone you wouldn cut for a sultan…Well I believe he ast O’Keeffe if he could hire the whipper for that: set him walkin behind the hearse in a little black suit and topper. But O’Keeffe wouldn suffer it: dont rightly know why. Heck the youngun might haveenjoyedit a piece you know. Might have give him an interest. Took him out of hisself. Believe it was a book of Charles Dickens he seen that in. But now dont you go quote me, could as well of been Twain…My Daddy was always readin the hell out of some book or another. You got time on your hands when you’re undertakin you know. Folk dont die just to order I guess. You tend to be waitin around some.

  OWEN MCDONAGH, TAILOR AND GENTLEMEN’S OUTFITTER

  My store fronted onto the main street. Tone Street, they called it then. Wolfe Tone was some big britches over in Ireland I guess. He fought the Limeys, yes sir. Give em fifty kind of trouble.

  So my wife and me would see em of a mornin and I openin the store. Lord now, I dont know, sir; good question; I dont know. Just…mullockin along. Doin a business in the stores there. Or seein him to schoolhouse for I know he went up there. Kit Doherty run the schoolhouse. Kit’s alive yet in Grantsville. And Kit was about the prettiest girl in the mountains that time. Sweet as a pudding. Just a really nice girl.

  O’Keeffe was a heavyset fella – you probably seen him in pictures – so the boardwalk out front of the store would sag when he walked on it. Sag just like that. Cause it wasn ever made true. See the wood was all bowed and bent dont you know. Queer the things you remember when you come to an age. Cause I always figured he’d break it.

  But they was kind of a nice sight, I always thought so, yes. Like a father and son. Closer in some ways. Give you a Christian feelin to see it, just the two of them mousin along. And he seemed a mannerable little fella – to me anyways. So he didn’t say much. What matter?

  I knew O’Keeffe, of course. No I wouldn’t say friends. My Grandaddy come out of Wexford where he come from himself; but I dont know why, I dont remember ever talkin to him about that. But yes, sir, I cut him a uniform or two in my time. He’d go for your fancier uniform: lots of braid and so on. ‘Chickengut’ we called it, the yellow braid a general got. Man had enough chickengut on his arm for a coop. My wife use to call him General Chickens.

  He come in latish enough one evenin for to get the child fixed: I mean woolens, good boots, a trapper’s fur kepi. These shirts we used to carry that the miners wanted. Strong canvas you know. Oh, those was shirts. We’d get those in from St Louis; they was tough as a tent…And my wife cut him a little tucker jerkin of a wolfskin, I recollect that. Because we never did make one so small before. And we measured him a rain coat, I suppose a slicker you’d call it now. And as well a Sunday best for the chapel and so on – and that was a story, because we hadn no frieze for to make it. But O’Keeffe would have a suit for him and that was all about it. Then Julia says what about that suit we cut before that time, you know the one I mean, for Tommy Brogan, Lord rest him. Westkit, britches, coat and bockers. And I wrought that suit for a poor child as died out by Morton’s mine. Tommy Brogan was his name. But the poor cavvy drowned. And here it fit this little feller like a godmade skin. So O’Keeffe said he’d take it and not to let on. And I dont know but it made me feel good to see this newboy goin around in them clothes. Maybe it shouldnt have. But it did. It just caught me…Cause you take a consolation from a sight like that. You dont know why exactly; but you do.

  SEAMAS ’JIMMY’ FOLEY, COPPERMINE OWNER

  The ladies liked O’Keeffe. Oh, they liked him fine. He cakewalk down Tone Street and the flutter of lashes was like a damn flockin of butterflies. Fine clothes on his back. He be baited for widow. Catnip, he was. Nearabout knelt and adored him…And he had an eye on him too but I dont think he ever strayed…Say he took the starch out of a duchess or two before he was married…More luck if he did…Who wouldn’t?…But you know how it go when a man showin kindness to a child. Dont matter if the fella’s ugly…Probably helps a piece if he is…I mean, there’s somethin in the ladies, they see that goin on, it’s Daddy won’t you carry me home…It’s nature, is all…It’s the way of the world…Mean, there’s times you’d see him with the child, I’d of about jumped him m’self and I aint so inclined, not at all…You take Ingrid Schmidt. Ever hear tell of Ingrid? Well, Ingrid run a hotel if you know what I mean…Exactly…That type of hotel…Do the can-can in there and it come to the chorus, they bend over and show a little understandin…And I mean Ingrid – Lord forgive me – it aint Christian to say it – but this was one scarifyin, evil-lookin old pullet of a woman. She’s haggard, pale – bowlegged, limp. Bout as ugly as a sore on a hog. Brothers Grimm woman, if you know what I mean. And also not a particularly nice person…Give that strapper an orphan, she’d about eat him on rye. But she’d see O’Keeffe and the little squirt just scootchin along Tone Street and I dunno but she’d come close to a smile. Well, close to a smile as Ingrid ever did get. Which weren’t all that close. But still.

  ANNE-KATHLEEN O’LEE,néeDOHERTY, SCHOOLTEACHER Letter, 1887

  The boy did not speak; this was the difficulty. At least, this was the obstacle around which other impediments cohered. I was aged only nineteen and found the situation troubling and difficult. I am certain that I did not manage it very well.

  It became evident to me, quickly enough, that he knew how to read. Moreover, I would say that his reading was already quite advanced for his age; yet because he did not read aloud, it was impossible to know for certain. He was happiest – if he was ever happy – sitting alone at my table, scrutinizing, always silently, whatever primer I could find for him. His fingertip would trace a progress through the lines of the page. Sometimes his lips would move.

  He took no part whatever in games and suchlike. He appeared not to notice the other children. Often, they would rag him and call him hurtful names. (I am afraid Redemption’s children were not unusual in that regard.) He only stared at them as though they were somehow not real…

  Miss Longstreet, then in service at the Governor’s House, used come to me in the
evenings for reading lessons. She told me several times that she had overheard him singing. I cannot say that I myself ever heard this singing, and I asked him very often if he wished to sing. But there was a sort of concentration in his gaze when one of the other children sang. He did not look directly at the singer, or, if he did, I do not remember. But he seemed present in a way that was not always the case. His eyes would lose fleetingly their dreamy expression. And then, when the song ended, it would return. The same effect was observable if a poem or rhyme were chanted aloud, in the singsong way that children have. Something in the rhythm seemed to arrest his attention. It was not that it gave him pleasure. More, simply, that he had noticed it.

  PETER MICHAEL TIERNEY, MINER†

  See, you get a child the likes of that one, he make folk feel nervous. They get to reckonin he’s watchin em – takin in what they doin. Ain nobody care for that much, not your Westerner inyhow. We’ll thank you for a little shake-room if you know what I mean. Mostly a pile of sugar gets in your stories of the West. Most all-fired courteous people you ever will meet. Help you out with your ploughin, takin in a crop. Dont care where you come from: any place you ever heardof. Cut off his own head before he ask your religion, or whoever you vote for, or things of that nature. Dont care if’n you’re blackman or white or blue – that’s my experience of it any ways. Tell a frontiersman ‘I’m sweenied’ you get every neighbor in the county ready to make a fist of helpin you get fixed. Biggest toad in the puddle[or]no seat in your pants. Your westerner’s neighborly as all get out. But he dont want you right up in his bidness neither. He’ll thank you for keepin a distance.

  Oh sure, I remember his appearance real well. Handsome little scallawag. Knee-high to a bee. Feller here told me he was a semaphore-boy in the Lincoln War. Lot of curiosities went on. That War was a thing. See these younguns got no idea of the history now. And bully for them. Whyn hell should they care? I was young now myself, I could care less for all that gum. Be out there chasin tail and makin a spectacle. But it dont mean it didn happen, that’s what my wife always says. Aint nothin ever come out of nothin.

  The things people done. Things as had to be done. Cause I could give a damn less what it tell in the books, but this is your land of the immigrant, brother, and your immigrant tough, and your immigrant hard as jackoak, cause he had to be, see, to get where he’s at. Had to leave someone behind. Loved ones. Kin. Crawl over the poorman to get where he’s at. Like my father-in-law was a Noggie,†best man you ever met: told me one time he left his likely girl behind in Tromso, every soul of his kin, so-long and much obliged. Not a once had a regret in all his born days. Claimed not to, iny-ways. Got to do what he must. Westerner get hungry, he gonna pull footrealfast. Find him some little seven-by-nine of a town, he callin it home the day after he ride in. Oh, he singin about the old country but that’s all it is. Wallerin in the beer. Done it plenty myself. But that’s all it is, the barstool blues. Cause he hightailed it out like a weasel up a rope. Stand outta my road and bury me decent. And that’s why this country wont never turn Red. Cause we come a long way to get what we got. It’s me and it’s mine and brother dont you figure on takin it, nor ask me to share it with some hoeboy I dont know. Some vaquero layin in bed and scratchin his whatever while I’m workin my plot for his keepin and beer? Thank you, Mam, no. Shut the latch on your way. Bible tell you the meek shall inherit the earth. In Paradise maybe. Not in the West. Cause I’ll draw you a line call the hundredth parallel, and left of that, brother, the meek inherit shit.

  Russia they do it different. Good luck to em I guess. But this-here aint no Russia. Aint even the States. We’re out here singin solo, that’s the way we tend to figure it. Dont want no politician. We rustle us own grub. Washington never done for the man of the West. I’d’ve care as much for China if you want the Christ’s truth. So I dont say the kiddie was good nor wicked. He was like ever one else. He did what he must.

  ’LITTLE’ JOHN RAWLINS, BARBER

  Short back. Short sides. Soldierly I guess.

  Funny thing, but it made him look younger. Yeah. Like time was going backways.[Laughs]Hated gettin it cut but a boy that age will. Mean I’m two-fifty now but I was two-thirty already then. Magraw the size of Rawlins comin at your head with them shears, you aint gonna be feelin too tranquil. O’Keeffe and Calhoun had to hold him down in the chair. Oh, he’d squirm, sure enough. But a little bub will. We had us some rassles, me and that boy. He’d about kick the belly off you. Bite you. Any damn thing. Let fly with a kick like nothin to nobody. But likeable with it. Spirited.

  Nice little face. You could see more of his face. Neat little ears, kind of a long broad forehead. And these very strikin eyes, kind of maroon yellow I guess. Believe he had Mexican in him. Was his mother one maybe? I believe he was born in El Paso.

  FLOYD LOUVAINE, MUSICIAN & GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE

  They was like as two peascods.

  BILLY CORISH, DRY-GOODS STOREKEEPER

  They looked nothing like each other.

  DANIEL HANAHOE, BLACKSMITH

  …And I dont know if that kiddie is alive or dead today. But I do know – and you can believe this or not – entirely up to you – that my brother told me he seen that child’s ghost in the street there last winter. All these years later. Still the size he was then. Right there on the prairie by where the Governor’s House used to be. With a saw in his hand. And he aint the only one ever claim to see it neither. Always a saw. Make of it what you want. I’m only sayin what I was told by my brother.

  SISTER MARIE-PAUL LEFEVRE, MISSIONARY, SISTERS OF CHARITYLetter, 1894 (Translated from the French)

  They made a comical pair, O’Keeffe and his foundling. They were like nothing so much as a couple of improvisatori[clowns].The townspeople often mocked as they witnessed. Boy would walk behind man, at a distance of some paces, in the lolloping gait of a graceless child; his long arms swinging, gaze on the ground, pausing only to hitch up his britches. He seemed to find the wearing of clothes difficult; it was though he would prefer nakedness. His protector, meanwhile, would rarely acknowledge his presence, only scarcely conceding a glance at the pursuing boy. Yet curiously, there was a sort of counterpoint to their movement. One stopped when did the other. They walked in harmony. And soon – this was noted by many who saw it – the bearing of the boy became a pitiable facsimile of the General’s, even acquiring the elder’s slight limp.

  It became the boy’s practice to accompany his foster, as the General would ride out to the outlying farms or to the mining camps that then surrounded the settlement. A pony was procured for him – a surefooted little beast – ‘an ambler’, they used to call such a pony at the time – and many a curious miner looked up from his digging at Irish Quixote and his beardless Panza. The boy was not a good rider, and was thrown many times. He was once chased up a tree by the pony.

  They came to the Station one day when I happened to be there. The Governor’s horse was lame. There was of course no man among us but Sister Michael shod the bay quite as capably as any blacksmith in the Territory. We shared with them whatever refreshments we had. The little[fellow]went into a corner to play about with a kitten.

  They remained with us two days and we were happy to have them as our guests. We took them to see a titanic cascade one of the sisters had happened upon, very deep in the fir forest near Loomington Mountain. Its fall was quite nineteen hundred feet. The boy was so excited – it was marvelous to see. I remember the General saying to him, in a somber and soldierly way: ‘Jeremiah, you may be the first boy in the world who ever feasted his eyes on this wonder. Look at that glory. You shall tell your grandchildren of this moment.’ And his large, manly hand on the little[child’s]shoulder. And the little boy wide-eyed with awe. And then the General carried him pick-back home to the Station with the little fellow waving a cutlass of switch.

  He was so proud of the boy, I found it rather touching; but he would accept no compliment for his care of him…The General spoke to me in excellent finely-accented Frenc
h, inquired as to our situation out here. He helped us buy mules and a sawmill for our work and to manage all the documentation to bring the machinery up from Wilmington. I must say that I found him, always, a courteous and sensitive man. Others would differ; but he was kindly to us without fail. I feel he should be remembered in the round, as it were. Some accounts of him do not give a full picture.

  MYLES AND PETER CASHIN, SAWMILLERS

  [MC]Oh sure, sure, he’d take the kid in a saloon. [PC]Nobody said no mind to it, neither. [MC]Nobody said no mind to it, neither. [PC]Get a bullet if you do. [MC]A bullet. That’s right. [PC]I recall this one time, I was in the Shoe-Gone with some Kanzans. [MC]That’s the name of a saloon, the Shoe-Gone saloon. [PC]That’s the name of a saloon. [MC]The Shoe-Gone or the Ropes. [PC]When in come Old Hard-Stuff and the doagie behind him. [MC]In come the two of them. This is one good story. [PC]And here’s this magician feller on the stage doin a bullet-catchin trick. [MC]Where his gal shoot a gun and he catch the bullet in his teeth. [PC]It’s a old bunko finagle, he got the bullet in his beak already. [MC]Hid under his tongue. [PC]That’s it. [MC]So the girly shoot the pistol and bang, there’s the trick. [PC]Magician sput the bullet right out from between his tusks. [MC]And O’Keeffe draws his pistol and shoot that magician right in the ass. [PC]And you know whut he say? [MC]‘Catch that.’

  BARTHOLOMEW BONAR, CABINET-MAKER

  They tell you that yarn? The ‘catch that’ story?…Yeah, they spin ever one that gum as comes along. Why, them two old blowhards is so brimful of bull it’s a wonder they aint drowned in it yet. They didn’t evenmovehere till seventy-two! Never seen that child in their life, sir…I could tell you things about them two buccaneros curl the hair on your head. I reckon they aint even brothers, is the truth of it.

  JOHN F. CALHOUN, STATE GOVERNOR(formerlyDEPUTY MARSHAL)