River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  A disaster.

  She whirled to see Rose lumbering toward her as fast as her pregnant condition would permit. Sweat trickled down her forehead. “A bad accident! I don’t know exactly what, but they’re saying it’s bad!”

  “Mother of God.” Nora hoisted Helen into her arms. Tade? The thought struck. No. Unthinkable.

  The women joined a crowd surging uphill to the Neversweat. Helen’s top tumbled from her fingers, bouncing behind them on the hard earth. She struggled to get down, but Nora tightened her hold until the child stopped, too astounded to protest.

  “It’s only a toy. Just a toy.” Nora muttered. “A toy can be replaced.” Nora’s breath wheezed in her pulsing throat. It would be another woman’s husband. Not Tade.

  Father O’Toole met them as they panted up the last steps to the mine’s biggest shaft under the tall frame known as the gallows. A cacophony of rescue teams’ shouts and pleas, sobs, horrified groans of families surrounded them as they arrived. The priest’s face, his tear-filled eyes, terrified Nora.

  “Tade?” Nora’s harsh voice exposed her dread.

  “My Patrick?” Rose quavered.

  The priest’s hands reached out to them. “I’m so sorry. Your men were among those caught in the fire. It swept through several of the shafts.”

  “Caught in the fire? Where is Tade, Father? Where is he? He’s all right, isn’t he?” Nora’s entreaties merged with frenzied, angry protests and other frantic women’s horrific cries. Useless. Death hovered, a victorious presence. When the priest shook his head, Nora sank to the barren, ash-covered ground. It might have been ice, she felt so cold. Helen, never having seen her mother do such a thing, broke into wails, her hands in fists at her sides. Rose clamped her hands across her swollen belly, her questioning eyes on the priest.

  “Nora, dear, you must be strong.” The priest hoisted Nora to her feet with swift determination. His eyes bored into hers. “Tade died instantly in the first blast. The good Lord took him with no suffering. The men who got out told us where he was. The Lord is all knowing, Nora. All knowing . . .” Father O’Toole’s practiced voice trailed off at her anguished look.

  “Patrick?” Rose’s shrill cry distracted him from Nora. “Father, what happened to my Patrick?”

  “Alive, Rose, thank the Lord, but he may not be able to look on you again. I don’t know if it’s permanent, but Patrick is blind. They’ve taken him to the Miners’ Hospital.”

  Rose threw her arms about Nora’s shoulders and wept in mixed relief and shock.

  Nora had turned as gray as the scene about them. Although rescue workers rushed past, and relatives still cried out for news of missing loved ones, she heard the noise as though her ears had filled with cotton. A silence barricaded her. Tade made her life possible. Tade and her life meant the same thing. He couldn’t be gone. But Father O’Toole wouldn’t make it up. She clung to Rose, leaning on her, too stunned to weep.

  Death had now visited Nora in four forms, her mother by consumption, her brother by the gallows, her father by drink and carelessness, and most cruel of all, her beloved Tade, taken by the mines.

  Helen’s gulping sobs finally summoned Nora back to unbearable awareness.

  “Helen.” She stood and pulled Rose’s arms from around her neck with no thought to her roughness. She scooped up her daughter, but didn’t try to comfort her. “Rose, go find Patrick. I’m taking Helen back—” She found that the word home stuck in her throat.

  Rose turned and ran heavily through the crowd toward the hospital.

  “Nora. I’ll come by this evening,” Father O’Toole said. “We’ll make plans for the funeral and the wake. They’ve taken the five who died to the undertakers. Can you make your way now? I must break the news to other bereaved.”

  The funeral? Tade at the undertakers? “Yes, Father.”

  Nora looked at the smokestacks and the crowd, but not at the priest. As she turned away, Helen sobbed against her shoulder. Numb, Nora didn’t see the pitying glances or hear the murmurs of condolence from those who’d already heard her man lay with the dead.

  With every step down the hill, she pictured Tade. What a hard worker he’d been. What a good and gentle man. Tade. Never to hold him or rest her head on his shoulder. Never to find her home in his solid arms. Cold captured her again, turning sweltering summer to winter, herself into a frozen woman. Nora staggered as she passed a mercantile.

  “Mrs. Larkin, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Bat Moriarty stood in front of her, his face a looming balloon. She stared at him, through him, took two unsteady strides and buckled to the boardwalk. Helen screamed for Nora, or was it Tade?

  The world turned to merciful nothing.

  Nora jerked awake in a single spasm, panic clanging through her body. She lay on her own bed now, but still dressed, her scuffed lace-up shoes pigeon-toed on the floor. Someone had pulled the coverlet over her. In a moment she remembered the reason for this awful terror. The horror of Tade’s death. She rolled to her side to clutch his pillow, kneading it, burying her face in it to breathe her husband’s scent. If she didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes, she could pretend he was just out of bed, still in the room with her.

  “Nora? Are you awake?” Bridget Kennedy from the Centennial stood in the doorway. “Oh, Nora, you know I’m that sorry.”

  “Bridget?” Nora sat up in the darkened room. “How is it you’re here?”

  “Bat Moriarty sent word what had happened and asked Mr. Newkirk to send me over. It appears even Bat can be kind when the spirit takes him.”

  “Where’s Helen?” Nora asked, rubbing her puffy face.

  “The little angel is sleeping, too. The poor babe was near scared to death when you fainted. Bat finally convinced her you only fell asleep.”

  “What’s the time?”

  “It’s seven. Father O’Toole will stop by soon. The poor man sees to unhappy houses tonight.”

  Nora pushed the wool coverlet off her wrinkled skirt and groaned. “I’d better see to myself. Everything is in such disorder.”

  “Oh, no. I did a spot of tidying. I rearranged things a bit for the wake. They’ll be bringing your poor Tade in his coffin tomorrow, closed so no one can open it.” Bridget looked mortified, then, “That is—they say the burns . . . Oh, Mother of God, why can’t I say the right thing? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Nora held up her hand to ward off any more. “My poor Tade. My poor man.” She tried to shut her mind to the image of fire. Tade lost in a fire. But tears came, and Bridget took Nora into her arms for a long, long while. Nora cried until she fell asleep again. After a bit, Bridget returned and stroked her shoulder to waken her.

  “Father will be here soon. Just wash your face and tuck back your hair. I’ll put water on for tea.” Bridget mustered an encouraging, sympathetic smile.

  Nora shuffled about the room, slumped like a crone. She felt beaten up, her face swollen from tears, her fair skin mottled from shock. The little house could belong to anyone now. The heart of it had burned to ash in the fiery shaft. Tade’s wedding suit hung in the armoire. Nora held it to her for a moment, tears welling up again. Helen’s fretful voice came from the kitchen.

  Bridget called, “Father O’Toole is coming up the walk. I’ll let him in.”

  Nora stepped back and closed the armoire doors, shutting away the precious reminder of Tade. She wiped her eyes with empty hands and went to the kitchen.

  A weary Father O’Toole sat, his elbows on the oilcloth-covered table.

  “Father.” Nora let the habit of manners carry her. “Have some tea. You look done in.” She ran a hand over Helen’s hair as her daughter sat in her high chair poking in distaste at a biscuit.

  “Ah . . . thank you. I’ve more to visit this night, so I can’t stay long. You look to be standing up well to this bitter day.”

  She knew he was being kind, but accepted the words. “I don’t know for how long, Father. How is Patrick Murphy faring?” Nora realized that she’d given no though
t to Rose’s husband since learning of her own tragedy.

  “He’ll live, but he’s lost his sight, and it can’t be brought back. The Ancient Order of Hibernians will help with some of the medical bills and finding him a political post of some sort. The family will survive. Rose is strong.”

  “Well,” Nora couldn’t stop the bitterness in her voice, “She still has her husband. I’d give anything to have Tade back, blind or broken in whatever way.” She lifted Helen and the high chair’s legs scraped along the floor, the noise no less harsh than Nora’s own voice. Helen squirmed from her mother’s arms and ran to find Bridget.

  “I know, my dear. It’s your sorrow that the Lord willed otherwise. Do you have savings?” He didn’t look hopeful.

  Nora shook her head. “No, Father. I’m not sure we can keep the house. Even if I were to take in a boarder, we’ve got to eat and make the payments as well. I can do laundry perhaps.”

  “The Chinese have the laundries mostly. The brothers will help all they can, you may be sure.”

  Father O’Toole told Nora that the five dead would have a joint funeral Mass after separate wakes at the men’s homes. Only two bachelor brothers would be sent off from Hibernia Hall.

  “It’s where our wedding dance was, Father,” Nora said, a catch in her voice.

  “I know, child, I know. Let’s pray now and I’ll be leaving to see the others.”

  Nora obediently crossed herself and lowered her head during Father O’Toole’s words. She dutifully said “Amen,” but cold anger against the God who snatched Tade away gnawed at her heart.

  Helen, rubbing her eyes, wandered back into the kitchen as Nora closed the door after watching Father O’Toole depart. His narrow, black-clad shoulders stooped in weariness and sorrow as he walked toward the next grieving household. She knew this was not the first time he’d given what comfort he could to widows and families. The clergyman had served his parish here for years. No wonder his hair stood out in wild white shocks.

  “Where’s Da?” Helen asked, looking up. “When will Da come?”

  “Ach, my treasure,” Nora cuddled Helen in her lap. “Your Da has gone to be with the saints. He’s watching over us with the angels for as long as we live.” She said the words, but the earlier rebellion crept back to mock them.

  “When will Da come home?” Helen frowned.

  “He won’t be home, Helen. We’ll keep him in our hearts, but he won’t be coming home.”

  “Yes. Da will come home today,” Helen insisted. Her face puckered. “He has to play with me. I want Da to put me to bed. I want Da! I want Da to read to me!”

  Nora hugged Helen and remembered how it was when her mother died. That awful abandonment that no one could help. She reached for the memory of one thing that had been of comfort. “When you go to bed at night, remember his dear face. He’ll be with you then. Now, let’s wash you up and tuck you in.”

  Helen shook her head in defiance and sobbed, tears clumping her thick eyelashes.

  “I’ll do it,” Bridget said. “You should eat, too.”

  “I can’t. I’ll just sit here awhile. You’ve been that kind, but I’m able to manage things now. Thank you. Thank Mr. Moriarty as well.” She embraced Bridget, who reluctantly put on her coat. Before she slipped out the door, Nora caught her rolling her eyes, no doubt still mortified at the memory of her stumbled speech about the wretched coffin lid. Bridget had always been a good friend. Of course, there could be no hiding from knowledge of the awful burns, no matter what they did with the coffin lid. Still, she wouldn’t want others to see her handsome Tade as he must now be.

  When she’d rocked and soothed her exhausted daughter into sleep, Nora sat in the kitchen until time for the whistles. She saw Tade’s practice notebook on the shelf and reached for it, crying again over his strong script. She changed into her nightgown and spent the first night without Tade beside her since their wedding, resisting the urge to carry Helen in to sleep with her, but placing the notebook on his pillow.

  She’d have to get used to this emptiness that stretched before her like an airless, charred tunnel.

  In the morning, the funereal, draped wagon pulled up and two broad-shouldered, beefy-faced undertaker’s sons unloaded Tade’s coffin and brought it in. Bridget and other women from St. Patrick’s and the neighborhood arrived with plates of bread, rolls, thick slices of ham, cakes, and apple pies. Husbands saw to it that poteen was in good store to loosen the men’s tongues in the evening for the praising of the dear departed.

  They started coming in the late afternoon. Nora had put on the worn, high-necked mourning dress from her days after Paddy’s death. It felt loose. In six years she’d grown thinner than that girl of eighteen. Not like Rose, who gained a little permanent plumpness with each new daughter. Nora would never have that. No chance of any more children as came so easily to Rose and her Patrick.

  No more of Tade Larkin’s babies.

  Nora shook her aching head. How foolish to the point of madness to envy Rose and Patrick with him blind as a chunk of coal and them barely getting by as it was. Still, she would have liked to have borne Tade a son. A big high-spirited boy with blue eyes and tangled black hair. The tears came again. After wiping her eyes, Nora stepped into the living area. The sideboard stood laden with food. Extra wooden chairs, borrowed from neighbors, filled kitchen and sitting room, what wasn’t taken up by the coffin.

  A tiny, bent old woman clutching a corncob pipe came in and spoke a few words in Gaelic to Bridget. Bridget walked to Nora and whispered, “It’s Guennola the Keener. She never misses a wake. We’ll give her a little poteen to get her started, and she’ll render us her fine keen in the old language. You’ll swear we were in Ireland.”

  Nora nodded. She could hear the volume of men’s voices rising in the kitchen, talking of Tade with tongues loosened by poteen. Tade’s strength, how much rock he could take out of the mines in a day, how he had won matches of the Gaelic Football for his boys at the Neversweat. How smooth he ran, like a racehorse, big as he was. With pride, Nora heard the sorrowful respect in their voices.

  Women came to embrace and sit with her as tears flowed. Old Guennola wailed in a wild voice, an unearthly lamentation protesting all the unbearable Celtic losses suffered since before the shaping of words to mourn them. At times more than one woman joined in the keening. Nora herself, minding the old words, began to rock, first moving her lips, then joining in, communal sorrow enfolding her. She remembered her mother’s wake back in Connemara. Behind closed eyes, she pictured the emerald green of the mist-enshrouded shores of Connemara just as she’d sometimes seen it while lost in Tade’s arms.

  The wake went on for three days and three nights. Helen cried at first, then slept sprawled in restless dreaming or whining wakefulness on her mother’s lap until Bridget insisted on carrying the child with her to the Centennial. The community of miners made the rounds of all the victims’ homes, never leaving one without representatives of their supporting presence at any time. Even Rose took time to come from Patrick’s bedside. On the afternoon of the third day, the horse-drawn undertaker’s wagon arrived again and the burly sons, looking tired and overheated, had drinks in the kitchen before carrying Tade’s coffin out of his little home forever.

  Nora had no tears left, but the removal of Tade’s body felt almost as hard as those first shattering moments at the Never-sweat. She hid her desperation and fear, saying and doing everything expected of her. Still, enraged rebellion drummed in her pulse. How could God take a good man like Tade, leaving Helen fatherless and Nora without her beloved husband?

  On the appointed day, Dublin Gulch swelled with mourners who walked behind five wagons, each with a similar burden draped in black crepe. At St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, Father O’Toole said five funeral Masses. Dan Harrington, a sweet-voiced tenor, sang “The Minstrel Boy.” The song resonated in Nora’s forlorn heart. She’d never listen to it again. After the funeral, the five wagons followed by mourners on foot went to St. Patrick
’s Cemetery.

  Nora clutched Helen’s hand until the little girl started to pull down and drag her feet. She stooped to pick up her daughter without once taking her eyes from Tade’s coffin. At the graveyard more words were said and Tade Larkin’s remains, along with all the dreams his Nora could imagine, were lowered into the ground and buried, deep and forever in the rocky soil of Butte, America.

  Nora carried Helen home, the child asleep on her shoulder by the time she pushed open the door to silent rooms. For just that night, Nora lowered Helen into the bed she’d shared with her husband, then curled around her daughter’s dreaming form. Sleep’s reprieve came near dawn.

  In the morning she found she could eat, her body asserting its needs even against grief. Bridget came by, and they spoke of Rose and Patrick over oatmeal and coffee. Nora began to consider her friends’ predicament. What would they do? And Rose expecting. Bridget offered to watch Helen while Nora visited Rose.

  “I don’t know what I would have done without you these last days, Bridget. You’ll be a wonderful mother one day. You’ve been that good with Helen.” Nora slipped out, leaving Bridget and Helen engrossed in a make-believe tea party.

  Rose opened the door. In only days since the disaster she’d aged by years. The two embraced.

  “Nora, you’ve been much in my heart. Come in, come in.”

  “How is Patrick?” Nora took in the unwashed dishes, the unswept floor.

  “In fearful pain. They give him morphine so he can sleep. Poor man. Poor man. I know I’ve not so much to cry over since my husband is alive. But Nora, if you could see how helpless he is.” She sobbed a weary, dry gulp.

  “I’ll walk you to the hospital if you can get away. Tade would want me to visit Patrick. I know your husband will miss mine like he would his own brother.”

  “The girls are all right for a bit. If I ask, Megan next door will check in on them,” Rose replied. “Let’s be going. I might as well be living at the hospital. It’s about all I have in my muddled head.”