A Place to Call Home

by Deborah Smith

  “How big was it?” Matthew asked Roan.

  “Not big enough,” he said, without taking his eyes off the pit below us.

  It took the backhoe and the bulldozer working together to wrestle that sunken hulk from the ground. Charred, collapsed, the skull-eyes of its broken windows looking at us, it rolled out of the pit and shuddered upright, like a cardboard box stomped by a giant. It lay there in the flickering lantern light, its closed, battered door dripping grotesque streams of muddy-red water.

  And then, through some obscene quirk of physics or fate, the door slowly swung open.

  There was a collective gasp as everyone except Roan and me backed away. We stared into that black rectangle jumbled with muddy, rotten, charred furniture. Fetid water trickled over the threshold. I was ten years old again and Roan was fifteen, and the old nightmare came at us.

  Suddenly Roan’s arms were around me and mine around him, and he hid my face in the crook of his neck, and I pulled his head close to mine and shielded his eyes with my hand.

  I heard the door slam shut. Josh and Matthew stood there together, holding it closed.

  The rotting trailer was hauled away. The old truck, gone. The garbage, gone. The pit filled in.

  We lingered in the darkness, in the lantern light, dozens of us, at a loss for something, I didn’t know what, that would sum it all up and send us to our homes with a feeling that it all made sense.

  Aunt Dockey, the Reverend Maloney, who had arrived after her Sunday sermon at the tiny Unitarian church in town, stepped forward. “I have something to say.” She looked at Roan and me. “If y’all feel the need to hear it.”

  Roan looked dazed, so I answered, “We feel the need.”

  We sat down, all of us sat, old, young, in-betweens, black and white, a patchwork quilt of people sharing a network of strong seams. We sat on the muddy ground and Aunt Dockey stood before us, and there was something powerful and dignified about the stocky, graying woman wearing grimy tennis shoes, a mud-flecked blue golf shirt, and a denim skirt with a small crucifix sewn in rhinestones on one hip pocket. She could rant confidently against the darkness and the wilderness.

  She spoke in casual commentary, an ad-libbed sermon woven around sound bites from the Big Scriptwriter, and my dazed, exhausted thoughts wandered and came back, faded, then focused.

  “ ‘The seed sown by the wayside withers in poor soil. The seed sown on good earth grows, and bears fruit.’ ”

  I held Roan’s hand, I wound my arm inside his; he squeezed my fingers in a rhythm of gentle contemplation.

  “ ‘… and David gave thanks because his soul had been brought up from the grave, he was alive, he would not sink down into the pit.’ ”

  Not ever again.

  “ ‘… brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my path.’ ”

  Aunt Dockey was heavily into pit analogies, and she picked through the Bible as if it were a cross-referenced book of quotations. But we needed that; we weren’t sorting out theology, we were hunting for comfort.

  “ ‘Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips that speak grievous things proudly and with contempt against the righteous, let them be silent.’ ”

  There would always be idle gossip about Roan, Matthew, the Sullivan history in general, and me, my part in it, and how I came home and why. But idle gossip is no match for Maloney stubbornness or Sullivan pride.

  “ ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became grown, I put away childish things.’ ”

  No more nightmares, in the daylight or the darkness.

  “ ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’ ”

  Faith looks at faith and understands.

  Aunt Dockey paused. Around us, people sat with bowed heads or closed eyes, touching here and there, fingertips to their cheeks. Roan exhaled and put an arm around me. We looked at each other. He smiled wearily, and I saw more peace in him than I think I’ve ever seen before. I brushed a kiss across his mouth.

  And then we realized Aunt Dockey was speaking again, and we faced her. “ ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ ”

  We had walked. We had feared. But we had come out safely on the other side.

  And so, that day, that night, Sullivan’s Hollow was unearthed, exhumed, autopsied, prayed over, and pronounced dead of the most natural causes.

  Faith, hope, charity.

  And forgiveness.

  Late that night, at the farm, the immediate family—Mama, Daddy, Grandma Dottie, my four brothers, three sisters-in-law, the twelve grandchildren including Matthew—Tweet, Roan, and I sat on the veranda eating cold fried chicken and drinking tea. I listened to the warm, thick honey of their voices, looked at the mixture of old and young, sleek and stout, big hair and no hair—a family it would be a mistake to peg as simple or shortsighted, because they were both wide and deep in a short arc, as most families are.

  Roan and I went to the barn but just stood in the lower level, holding each other in the dark. A llama stuck its head through a gate and nibbled on our shirtsleeves. “How about that. There are llamas all over the place,” Roan said, as if he’d just started looking.

  After the others had left or gone to bed, I met Roan in the hallway between his old bedroom and the guest room Mama had assigned him, meaningfully, nearby. We were clean from separate showers.

  We looked at each other for the first time with the freedom of contentment. Nothing left to guard against, or protect, or redeem, or restore. Fully, openly satisfied, we examined each other with a kind of brazen wonder. “There are llamas all over this place,” I said. “Hello again, boy.”

  “Hello, peep.”

  He picked me up and carried me into his old room. We shared the small bed together. Outside the window the moon winked above Dunshinnog. The stars were fading. “I’m so sore I can barely move,” I said.

  “I won’t ask you to move.” Roan pulled the covers over us. “I’ll be careful not to take all the covers. I’ll never leave you alone in the dark. I’ll never turn my back on you. I’ll try not to crowd you. You’ve got my word on it.”

  “That promise sounds like it covers a lot more than just this bed.” I curved a hand around his face, feathering my fingers over his mouth, caressing him. “It could sum up a lot of answers. It could go a long way.”

  He bent his head to mine. I felt tears on his cheeks. “Just say ‘Welcome home.’ ”

  I did.

  Hop said to Roan, “Evan and I’ll take Matthew hunting this fall.” Evan said maybe Matthew didn’t hunt; it wouldn’t suit his profession.

  “Well, we’ll take him fishing then,” Hop countered. “He’s not a fish doctor.”

  They funneled every social matter through a simple system—go into the woods, commune with nature via fishing rods and hunting rifles, and camaraderie would follow without discussion.

  And Brady said, in his smooth, efficient way, boiling his alliance down to dollar signs, “You’ll need a stake here, Roan. Partnerships. Some plans. I have two words to say to you. Just two. You think about the possibilities. Outlet mall.”

  “Oh, I’ll think about it,” Roan promised solemnly.

  We were giddy and carefree, so immersed in the pleasure of being together that we spent days together at Ten Jumps without seeing another soul.

  Roan and Matthew began planning to build a barn near the lake. The dogs and birds were shipped from Alaska, and one of Tweet’s parrots immediately bit Renfrew.

  And so the parrots came to live with Roan and me, temporarily.

  All around us July began, the sun grew hotter, barbecue grills were scrubbed, watermelons were iced down, colorful banners went up around the square, the Jaycees set up a stage for the Uncle Sam speeches, and small children began to feel the pr
ickly promise of public humiliation.

  The Fourth of July in Dunderry is red, white, blue, and Irish green.

  The leprechauns were marching.

  Our Little People looked like unhappy munchkins in an Irish version of The Wizard of Oz. About half of them were kin of mine.

  “Why do we have to do this?” Amanda whispered miserably to me, distracted by a loose green feather on the little green leprechaun beret that went with her fluffy green leprechaun dress. “Aunt Claire, I hate this shit.”

  “Good girl,” I whispered back. We stood in the spare shade of an awning around the corner from Main Street, the parade staging area, swamped in a mingled mass of participants: high school band musicians sweating in their uniforms; lawyers from Uncle Ralph’s motorcycle club, sweating in their studded, black leather jackets—I kept coaxing Uncle Ralph to have BORN TO LITIGATE put on the back of his, but he wouldn’t do it; and about every other strange group imaginable, including four of Daddy’s llamas draped with red-white-and-blue banners, which would be tugged up Main Street by four banner-draped Maloney grandchildren.

  Immediately around me was a sea of small, flushed faces atop green dresses or green jackets with green knee-pants and green shoes. Mothers scurried everywhere. Violet rubbed an ice cube on her daughter’s glistening frown. Tula fluffed the ruffled green collars beneath the stoic brown faces of her two youngest daughters.

  “Aunt Claire, why do we have to do this?” Amanda repeated.

  “Because y’all need some embarrassing pictures to show your own kids someday. Snapshots and videos.” She groaned. I felt a certain gleeful satisfaction. I’d been lucky enough to do my leprechaun duty before everybody in the family owned camcorders.

  Josh walked up. He swept Amanda into his arms and beamed at her. “Papa,” she said seriously, “I look like turnip greens with red hair.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he corrected. “I’ve never seen a prettier sight. I want you to keep wearing the whole outfit until Lin Su gets here tonight. I want to get a picture of you and her together. And I want some pictures of you with Matthew. Okay?”

  “Sure. But Matthew has to wear something green, too.”

  “Whatever you say, Princess Leprechaun.”

  Amanda laughed. Josh and I traded satisfied looks. He’d brought Lin Su to meet the family recently. She was smart and charming, she obviously cared about Josh, and she had a good knack with Amanda. Mama was hoping for a marriage eventually. Amanda waved at Roan, who had walked up the street from the Maloney staked-out curbside viewing spot. He laughed as he stood there, large and handsome, and I grinned at him and rolled my eyes at the chaos.

  I patted several small Maloney heads and tweaked Amanda’s hair. “All right, little people, luck o’ the Irish to y’all. Have fun. Believe me, it’d be worse if you had to tap-dance.”

  Several thousand people lined the town square. Tourists wandered among craft tents on the lawn of the old courthouse and among food stands. A Sousa march blared from speakers atop the fire department’s hook-and-ladder rig, which idled a couple of blocks away, waiting to lead the parade from the corner of Main and Delaney Streets.

  There were dozens of Delaneys and Maloneys on either side of Roan, me, Matthew, and Tweet. Mama smiled at us over her sunglasses, Daddy fiddled with his camcorder, and a flock of camera-toting aunts, uncles, and cousins parted to let us have choice territory.

  This was not how Maloneys and Delaneys ordinarily act when they’re all vying for a shady spot under the same public elm tree.

  Matthew balanced Hop and Ginger’s toddler, nicknamed Erp, on his hip. Erp gnawed a melting fruit pop. Matthew pointed to a gooey splotch on the front of his own shirt. He smelled faintly of Erp-launched peach drool. Tweet sidled in next to me. “Good spot,” she announced cheerfully. “Now Erp can hurl at the fire trucks.” The hook-and-ladder rig began to creep forward. Roan put his arms around me from behind and latched his hands in mine. The fire department trucks inched by. Hop and Evan are volunteer station captains, so they were among the men sitting on top of the rigs. They yelled and laughed like boys and made a point of pelting the family with green mint candies.

  Erp spit a blob of frozen peach pop into Tweet’s palm, and Tweet tossed it. Brady stood nearby, and it hit him between the eyes. Evan and Hop laughed so hard, they nearly rolled off the truck.

  Dozens of Maloney cameras clicked and whirred.

  The high school band marched past, playing “I’m Proud to Be an American.” Fronting the leprechauns, a group of my more musical uncles, led by Uncle Dwayne, wandered along playing a high-pitched Irish jig on fiddles and uilleann pipes and tin whistles and a bodhran drum.

  I felt enriched with security, confidence, love. Despite the coy new businesses and the touristy atmosphere and the strangers packed everywhere along our shady streets, we were still, at heart, familiar to one another and united in whimsy, like a favorite family story told and retold and much loved.

  I thought of us that day at the carnival, of Roanie Sullivan standing below the stage, both of us isolated by our particular brands of humiliation and yet linked by that, too. And I thought about the Christmas parade, that year Big Roan ruined it, and the shame that made Roan nearly disappear into himself. Today we were together, no petty humiliations, no shame, and it was so rich, like a sweet grape bursting on my tongue, that I could taste the happiness.

  And then, suddenly, the parade skewed toward me.

  Uncle Dwayne’s group halted. They stopped playing. Amanda waved her green troops forward. A flock of little people gathered around the musicians, all of them staring and giggling at me, or at Roan and me—I wasn’t sure which.

  I drew back against Roan. His arms slid closer around me. I didn’t sense any surprise in him. I was totally bewildered. “Either they think we’re the secret parade judges,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “or they think we’re hiding their pot of gold.”

  “Sssh, just wait,” Roan whispered.

  I turned my head and gaped up at him. Conspiracy gleamed in his eyes. I looked at Mama, at Daddy, and then swept the faces around them. Conspiracy. I looked at Amanda’s street-centered grin. Conspiracy. I’d been had.

  Uncle Dwayne began to play his fiddle, some old Irish ballad, lilting and sweet. Little people scurried, bumped into each other, rearranged themselves into a line facing Roan and me. Small hands dived inside the collars of green dresses and green shirts. Broad white cards flashed out, an uneven line of them, each one printed with a blocky green letter of the alphabet.

  And there it was, printed out for the whole family, the whole town, the whole universe to see.

  CLAIRE, WILL YOU MARRY ME?

  I twisted inside Roan’s arms and looked up at him tearfully. His eyes glistened, too. There was such joy in him, such beauty. “Surprise,” he murmured. “You’ve read all my other letters, so I thought we ought to share this one with everybody else.” Bold talk from a man who had spent his life avoiding public spectacles.

  I unwound his arms, then limped into the street. I tapped shoulders, rearranged little people, turned some flashcards to the blank side.

  When I finished, I faced Roan, dimly aware of a cocoon of laughter and applause around us, but riveted to the wonderful expression on his face as he read the rearranged cards.

  I WILL MARRY YOU

  He stepped out of the crowd and walked toward me. I met him halfway and he took my hands. We were part of the parade now. Part of it all.

  I heard Mama’s ecstatic voice. “And the bridesmaids’ dresses will be gold and mauve and …”

  Uncle Dwayne struck up “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” on his fiddle.

  Matthew and Tweet grinned.

  From the crowd, Mr. Cicero gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Good editing,” he mouthed.

  The leprechauns giggled.

  Roan and I gazed at each other without a shred of dignity.

  Erp spit frozen peach mush at us.

  Everything was absolutely p
erfect.

  Autumn.

  The old mountain, it whispered to itself, it drew us up to its brow with the murmur of its seasons, the patient circle of life that it anchors.

  We climbed up the old hiking path to the top of Dunshinnog that fall, the day after we deeded Ten Jumps to Matthew and Tweet. They were clearly in love with the lake, the cabin, its birds and animals and its room to grow.

  My leg was strong, but the hike up Dunshinnog was a test I hadn’t taken yet and I had some doubts I could make it. Couldn’t let Roan down though, or myself. I had signed a contract with Mr. Cicero to buy the Shamrock. I was a little nervous about the responsibility but excited.

  “Come on, you can do it,” Roan urged gently as I panted and climbed the last, steepest knob on Dunshinnog. He moved ahead, held out a hand. I took it, and he helped me up on the granite overhang above the valley. I punched his shoulder, then burst out laughing with victory. And he smiled broadly, at ease and pleased for us both.

  We examined the small green rosettes of new foxgloves growing among their fading, majestic elders. “Best crop yet,” I claimed. “It’ll be a good year for foxgloves next spring.” We walked along the mountain’s crown, found the spot we’d discussed, then Roan pulled a canvas knapsack off one shoulder, taking from it the old plank with our names carved on it. I held the plank high up on the side of an oak while he nailed it in place.

  “The heart of the house. Right here,” he said. “We’ll sit here and look out at the sky. With the family. Friends. See the whole valley. See for miles.”

  I took something from a pocket of my jeans and held it out on my palm. “This is for you. Grandpa would want you to have it. You remember when we came up here with him the first time and he played ‘Amazing Grace’?”

  Roan took the old tin whistle between his fingertips. “I’ll have to learn to play it, too,” he said softly.

  “You will. I’m sure. He always knew who to trust with the traditions.”