Redemption Falls

by Joseph O'Connor

  On the night of August 26th, 1866, Father Jeremiah O’Reilly is awoken by three callers to his cabin. He is hand-bound and hooded and taken away by the men. They ride for perhaps two hours.

  He is unhooded in a clearing. The surrounding pines are thick. By the moonlight he sees an assembly of heavily armed guerrillas. A Confederate banner has been slung between two junipers. Someone is strumming a guitar.

  No harm is plotted against him, one of the masked men assures. He is needed for a work of God. An apology is offered with food and drink – a little wine only, for the sake of the stomach. He may walk about the camp but not stray too far. He is asked, if he will, to be patient.

  He walks about the camp, speaking to any man who greets him. Some of them request to pray. He speaks quietly, gently, and he finds that his apprehensions are diminished by the starlit prayerfulness. He does not ask questions. It is obvious who the men are. For a son of the gospel, no person is untouchable. Every sinner is some mother’s child.

  From the tent comes their leader, who is aged about thirty. His eyes are a striking china-blue. A Catholic, he wishes to make confession. He kneels on the forest floor and asks forgiveness of God, for his sins have been many and brutal. In a time of war, hard things are done, and he did not always pause to examine his conscience before doing them. He considered himself a soldier, though they have called him a murderer. If a murderer is what he is, he is sorry.

  Next from the tent comes a ghostly girl, clothed in the apparel of a man. She is pallid and looks ill. She is with child, she tells the priest. He gives a general absolution, for she cannot now remember all her sins. Among them was the fact that she had prayed to voudoun Gods. She has lived a fallen life.

  The ways of the Lord are mysterious, reflects the priest. Unwise, the man who questions them. Happy night when two souls are returned to the claim of the Prince who bled between thieves.

  There is one further service he is required to perform. He balks. It is impossible, he says. Such a thing cannot be done without adequate preparation. There are rules, procedures: it is a matter of canon law. It is explained to Father O’Reilly that the requirements of the Pontificate will have to be set aside in this case.

  They are married, Eliza Mooney and Cole John McLaurenson, by a priest with a gun to his temple. No McLaurenson child will enter the world a bastard. God, it is hoped, will understand. The bride has seen the cruelties of the world to the fatherless. Her child will have the protection of a surname.

  It is hard to speak the rite in such circumstances as these but it is made clear to him, repeatedly, in unadorned words, that the sun will come up on a matrimony. When he inquires of the bride if she will take this man, she answers, with calm firmness, that she will. Quite sure, she says. She has not been compelled. As a matter of fact, she was instigator. She is owed amends for a deeply grave wrong. This marriage is what she has demanded. The father of her child may have been kin to the groom. He is now deceased, it is sworn. The ring is a quarter with its center shot out. She greases it onto her finger.

  The priest is taken back to his cabin near New Lochaber, given seven hundred Yankee dollars for his work among the Cœur d’Alènes, and warned that if ever he breathes a word to deny this marriage, his head will not be found for burial. He must write in his holy book that the ceremony was performed, the date, the names, the names of the witnesses, and register that paper with whoever needs to see it, and never in his life refute it. It is not the last shotgun wedding at which he will ever officiate, but it will probably be the only one, so he often reflects, where the weaponry was wielded by the groom.

  The Register of Marriages records the bare facts.Eliza Mooney, spinster; Baton Rouge, Louisiana. C.J. McLaurenson, smallfarmer; Tennessee. There is an addition to the document, a poignant detail: ‘Only daughter of Mary Mooney, of Connemara, Ireland; missing, presumed deceased, in Louisiana.’

  Eliza McLaurenson and her outlaw husband retire to their separate tentquarters. They are kin now, they have agreed, but since there is no natural fondness, she will not be forced to conjugal servitude. It is better, for that promise, that they take their rest alone. Man awakens beside a woman, so her husband avers, nature and his loneliness can conspire in the darkness. It has been six long years since he lay by a girl. He might not be capable of battle.

  ‘I got lusts,’ he says. ‘The devil ever which where. I told you the thoughts blow through my head ever day, you’d think I was evil itself.’

  ‘I seen evil,’ she says. ‘Seem the whole world got evil.’

  ‘Seem to me I got more of it than most.’

  She has no interest in hearing his truer confessions; but he seems purposed to tell her, so she listens. There will always be men who assume you wish to attend to their guilt, especially when they have paid for your time. They think you will be relieved only to have to listen, but sometimes it is less taxing to lay down for them.

  ‘I’s married one time…She’s Irish as me…People was Donegal County. Not a drop of Yankee in her. Good; pure. But come to where I was false to my wife. Had a fancygal I go to trickin with in Clarksville; in a “house”. I’s sixteen an a half. Figured pretty was the thing. But pretty aint the thing. Who you fix to is the thing. And my wife got took away I believe for a chastisement. Weren’t wedded two year, she got a snakebite and die. Cottonmouth in a river, where they don’t never bite. Washin her hair. Then she dead in the water. And our child in her belly, so the doctor said me later. And that what come out when a man break his vow. Mountain of judgment on his head.’

  ‘Why you tellin me anyways? I dont care to know it.’

  ‘Moughten care to know it but it wiser you do. No one ever gonna harm you – ary that child in you neither. And I give you my oath-of-blood. You remember it, girl. Whatever way you want it, that’s how it gonna come.’

  ‘I told you before. Only one last thing I want.’

  ‘Be warmer in Mexico.’

  ‘We aint goin to no Mexico.’

  ‘This brother of yourn…You know where he at?’

  ‘If I’d knowed I’d of told you. Canada’s all I know. I dont hardly know that much. I’m guessin.’

  ‘Canada bout the size of the moon, is all.’

  ‘He’s my blood,’ she says. ‘Aint no one belong to me left.’

  ‘He want that you find him?’

  ‘Kinda question is that?’

  ‘Then, that’s what you want – that what’s gonna happen in a while. Got a fish to catch me first, couple things want done. Then Canada sound fine for a season or two. Party up Quebec owe me money.’

  She lies on her palliasse looking up at the stars through a rent in the canvas roof. Strange wedding night for Eliza. She is thinking of her mother. Miss Havisham in the burning gown.

  It is three hours before dawn when the camp is awoken. They ride out in a hurry, some of them hardly even dressed. It is clear to the forest-bride that most of them don’t know what is happening. She herself does not know. But she follows.

  There is a new man in the company. Another Irishman she thinks. They call him Patrick Vinson. He looks edgy and cold. Sudden noises make him uneasy. And some of the other men do not seem to like Patrick Vinson. There are murmurings behind his back.

  You cannot trust a turncoat.He’s right enough, hold your pike. Man betrays his friends, he’ll turn us in, too.Cole knows what he’s at. Sure as Hell hope so.Trust a traitor bout as far as I could spit me a rat. For that’s all he is. A vermin.

  They stop at Poulanassy Cross to give the horses a breath and for some of the men to use the bushes. Dawn on Gallows Mountain. A broken fingernail of moon. She sees Vinson remove an object from the pocket of his longcoat and toss it among the rocks by the roadside. Curious, she dismounts and picks it from the stones. It is a tin-colored star, heavily scratched and bent-out. The badge of a deputy sheriff.

  Onward they ride, toward the string of the Missouri, now visible in the scree valley below. And off it, a narrow tributary wends toward those rapids.
You can see the whitening frothcloud even from here. Where are they going? What violence is coming?. The snorts of the wearying horses.

  She is asked to fix breakfast of a brace of shot rabbits for her husband and the traitor Patrick Vinson. She watches while the other men hack down the oaks on the bank, toppling them into the river. They work quickly, efficiently, in tight, small teams: two men sawing, a third with a sledgehammer, a fourth with a tackle-and-chain. They go to singing as they sweat but are ordered not to sing. By eight of the morning, the river is barricaded. Not even a canoe could pass.

  The crakes whistling fiercely. A wolf ranging the cliff top. The toil-stained, silent men.

  ‘You boys done a job,’ her husband says. ‘Aint a slackerman the whole crew round. Today we give the Yankee a sore, hard lesson. Sore, hard lesson he won’t never forget. I expect ever man here to conduct himself with honor. Valor aint enough. So’s you know where I stand. Ninety-nine and a half won’t do. We are soldiers of the Confederate States of America. Blood of the patriots is not to be dishonored. Remember it today and be true to the cause. Would you gentlemen do me the honor of kneeling with me a moment? And I wish we would all raise a hand.

  ‘Lord of Battles, God, by whose alone power and conversation we all live, and move, and have our being, we are gathered in the glory of Thy creation. We are come of many corners of this darkened Republic, justified to the work of the righteous man. We pray mercy on the enemy who this day shall see Thee; Thy courage to ourselves, Thy praise be ever on our lips. May not a one of us stray in the errors of rapine, or bring shame on the name of his parents or place. Did we stumble, give us heart. Did we fall, raise us high. Let Thy vengeance be mighty but swift. Gentlemen – patriots – free men of the south: here beginneth the end of that horrid abomination – that vile Satanic scheme named the United States. Shall we gather at the river?’

  Mumbles of assent.

  ‘Shall we gather at the river?’

  ‘Woorah!…Yeah, sir!…Fontenoy!…Faugh-a-balla!’

  ‘Let me hear an Amen, boys.’

  ‘Amen. Amen!’

  ‘Did I hear a Gloryglory?’

  ‘Glory-oh. Glory-high!’

  ‘An’tthere witness here among us know how toshout a littlebit?’

  The rebel yell rises as they stand to their feet. That high, cold sound like a Connemara keening. The leader punches the air as they whoo and yip around him.

  ‘Come time to hunt buffalo,’ he tells them.

  Vinson crosses himself beside him, looking gray, enfeebled. In his bearing, the loneliness of the defector. Sometimes he glances at her, as though he knows her from someplace. She finds herself looking away.

  You cannot stare directly into a Judas’s eyes. Mamo used to call it bad voodoo.

  CHAPTER 49

  THE WRECKING BY THE CONFEDERATE BANDIT COLE JOHN MCLAURENSON OF THE SECRET FEDERAL STEAMSHIPWILLIAM H. HARRISON NEAR FORT CODY, THE MOUNTAIN TERRITORY, IN 1866or THE LAY OF THE LONESOME OAKS

  ‘Grampus?’ the innocent ast one night, ‘on the road next t’Whippoorwill Creek,

  There’s a spot, Momma hold, where we mus’ hurry by, and nevermore tarry to speak.’

  Wull, the old-timer smiled at the curious child but his eyes was grum as the dawn.

  It happen back sixty-six, he said: the summer your Momma was born.

  Wull, a bunch of us buckies was whompin it up at the Broken Bone Saloon,

  When in through the shove, with a pistol in glove, hurries Marshal John Calhoun.

  ‘Honest men! Laivee ho! up to Liberty Falls, for to see what them renegade done!

  For they’ve wrecked-up the Federal steamship, boys, and away to the mountains run.’

  Out rapid we rode, long the Sullivan Road, and we went a precarious speed;

  For McLaurenson’s men muss be ridin’ again, to have wrought this nefarious deed.

  Sixty oaks did they fell on Ole Muddy’s high swell, for to barricade up the wide course,

  And the Federal goldshipHarrison , boys, they’ve wrecked without speck of remorse.

  Her pilot, Tom Hanley, they’ve shot from the banks, her paddle-wheel riddled with lead,

  So the ship did careen in the current so mean as she spun to her treacherous bed.

  She was broke on the rapids at Donegal Gulch; o’er the rocks to her doom did she thunder:

  Over Liberty Falls into Whippoorwill Creek, where the outlaws was waitin to plunder.

  All survivors was murdered with nary a prayer by McLaurenson’s pitiless pack;

  And her load it was stole from her smashed-open hold, as she sunk in the torrent so black.

  As he rode from that water, that whirlpool of slaughter, he’s cussed them in cruel farewell:

  ‘God drown all Yankee vessels, you dogs – and wreck them down to Hell!’

  Ingelmann, Connolly, Livingston, Cox: pray pity upon their wives.

  Phelan, O’Donnell, McTaggart, McNeill, and Colclough lost their lives.

  The brothers Dinneen, John Hall, freed slave, brave Captain James Fitzgibbon.

  In the year of eighteen sixty-six, on August twenty-seven.

  Fourteen friends met their end that dawn, in Missouri’s crimsoned foam;

  And fourteen mothers did weep for sons that would nevermore sail home.

  Sorry luck to that hand an’ his stone-heart band to commit such a cowardly wrong;

  For they’ve wrecked-up the Federal goldship, boys; and away to the mountains run.

  Now there’s some as believe, on a wintry eve, as you ride over Whippoorwill Creek,

  When the swell runs high, and the wind blows mean, you can hear an eerie shriek.

  Not a seed ever growed by that cursèd road near the murderedHarrison ’s rest –

  But fourteen lonesome, withered oaks, where fourteen vultures nest.

  PART VIII

  THE MAPMAKER

  Erin go Bray: An Irish Field Officer on his ChargerPrint displayed on the office wall of John Knox Trevanion, newspaper editor, Redemption Falls

  This disgusting Celtic viper…and his troop of yammering troglodytes have made the town a capital of drunkenness, corruption and filth. He has no allegiance to anything save his own depraved ambition. His flag is a greenback, his emblem a whiskey bottle. No robbery, great or small, is perpetrated in this Territory without tribute being paid to this loathsome despot. He flaunts love for the Union, now ‘respect’ for the South, ‘forgiveness’ for her admirers when we are not ashamed but PROUD. He would line the banks of the Missouri from here to St Louis with crucified Negroes if he thought it would preserve his power. We have lately finished a war. Do you wish to start another?…Take a heed now, Sir, for we shall not warn you again. It is time that his subtraction from this Territory were effected, else the consequences were a matter for your conscience, not ours. An Irish jig is a memorable thing to watch. Particularly when its performer is suspended from a tree.

  Sir, we are

  Certain Vigilant Citizens.

  Letter about O’Keeffe,

  sent anonymously to President Johnson, September1866

  CHAPTER 50

  SURVIVING PAGES FROM A JOURNAL

  ‘BY CAPTAIN A.M.W.’†

  Room IX, Hotel Freundschaft, Redemption Falls.

  October 31st: All Hallows’ Eve, 1866.

  Fourteen minutes of midnight.

  Night III

  I have just now returned from my first visit to the Governor – an Irishman by birth as well as in certain regrettable habits. The night is extremely cold – minus 14 degrees, a significant diminution from the seasonal average, but the wind they call ‘the snow eater’ is coming from the west so that the morning may commence a thaw. A tornado is said to be drifting southerly from Alberta. The natives blather of ancestors.

  The proprietress, a widow, a raw-faced Valkyrie, is hurrying about the premises, nailing closed the casement shutters. Below me, in the saloon, one of the miners is singing queer ballads: serenades to Lady Bottle and the outlaw Johnny
Thunders. An out-of-tune banjo spangles like an abscess. I would strangle my mother to stop it.

  I fear I am unwell. The shingles are clattering. Some creature lollops nightly in the crawlspace of the attic above me; I hear the scutter of its claws on the boards. All about me, this very edifice gives out windblown creaks and groans, wheezing in the blow, whimpering, juddering, as a vessel snowed under by tumultuous seas. My lantern flame twists with every slam of a lattice, with each remote blow of the widow’s hammer.

  Weird, black-dark, these songs of the miners. The seams in which man roots for his distractions.

  The child did say, What shall be my name?

  Good steward, tell to me;

  Thy name shall be ‘Poor Disawear’,

  Thy fate shall crueller be.

  My dreams, since I am fevered, are grown macabre as a hermit’s. Yester-evening I had a nightmare in which this room was plunged into churning water, so that I and my bunk were lofted upwards at the rafters. Aghast, I screamed out; yet my voice was not my own, but the death-wail of a Confederate trooper I saw disemboweled at Chickamauga. Next, I was astride a roofbeam of the drowned garret, being tumbled down the Niagara that the street outside had become. Onward we plunged, here capsized, now upright, spinning in the spume like a dismasted boat. The mountains encircling us at every turn seemed to liquefy as I watched them to gargantuan waves, to breakers the size of alps. To the north, I saw the pitiless eye of the sun. A voice was beseeching:Murder me, brother!

  Oh father dear, I long to hear

  You speak of Erin’s isle.

  There are trees a thousand years old in this Territory. When Chaucer was in swaddles, they were groaning. The wind screams down over dog-towns and wheel-ruts, over tepees and cabins, through mineshafts and deserted forts, from Lewis and Clarke’s Pass to the shores of Devil’s Lake, obscuring man’s efforts in dust and snow.