The Crow of Connemara

by Stephen Leigh

  “I did love you as much as I could,” she whispered now: to the fire, to the night, to the memory. “I did. And maybe . . .”

  She remembered the face she’d seen in the smoke, and the momentary feel of his body against hers.

  “Maybe . . .” she whispered again, then shook her head. “No, I can’t,” she scolded herself. Her voice sounded loud against the silence in the cottage. “You know what your duty is, and to do it, you can’t let yourself feel that. You can’t.”

  She clenched her fingers in her lap. She inhaled the scent of the peat, and remembered a cave near Rathcroghan, and the man she knew there.

  10

  At Midnight Hour

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS were a whirlwind for Colin: a visitation at the funeral home where he shook hands and exchanged empty condolences with what seemed to be a few thousand relatives, friends of the family, colleagues, and political cronies: a passing collage of faces and names that he forgot as soon as he heard them. Colin wore one of Tommy’s suits, borrowed for the occasion, the tie a social noose around his neck. Of that long day, he remembered mostly the overpowering floral scent of the room, and his father’s visage in the burnished metal casket, looking more like an eerie sculpture than a once-living man.

  The funeral followed the next morning, attended mostly by family with a few friends and relatives. The day didn’t match anyone’s mood: sunny and too hot. Colin sweated under the suit coat as Father Frank performed the ceremony at the graveside. Colin stared at the now-closed coffin, sitting on straps over the cloth-covered hole. His mother cried during much of the ceremony, with Tommy and Jen on either side of her. Colin sat next to Jen, with Aunt Patty alongside him holding his hand.

  There were crows in the trees near the plot. Colin could hear them calling to each other and see them moving in the branches as Father Frank gave his final blessing and sprinkled holy water over the coffin. He scowled past the priest toward the birds. “This concludes the graveside ceremony,” the funeral director said. “If everyone would return to their cars, please . . .”

  There would be another gathering at the Doyle house, Colin knew—an interminable afternoon with sandwiches and drinks, with everyone paying too much attention to his mother and to Tommy as the Heir Apparent, while Jen and he hovered in the background. There’d be videos and pictures of his father on the flatscreen TV in the back room; his ghost would haunt the proceedings. Aunt Patty would probably ask him to play something—and some idiot in the group would call out for “Danny Boy”—or, as most of the Irish musicians Colin knew called it, “that feckin’ song.”

  Colin already anticipated drinking too much.

  Everyone was gathering up the bouquets brought to the graveside to take them back to the cars. He went to help, but Tommy grabbed his arm. “Hey, little brother, you got a sec?” Tommy led Colin away from the crowd, into the shade of the tree where he’d seen the crows.

  “Are you thinking of heading back to Seattle soon?” Tommy asked him. “I know you have that dissertation to write . . .”

  Colin lifted his hand, stopping Tommy in mid-sentence. “Jen hasn’t said anything to you?”

  Tommy looked puzzled, shaking his head. “No. Why?”

  Colin took a breath, then launched into what he’d told Jen: leaving school, how he wanted to return to his musical career, how he planned to go to Ireland. Talking to Tommy, who looked so much like their father, was like talking to a younger version of his father, one who, to his credit, listened patiently rather than angrily.

  “Okay,” Tommy said when Colin finished. “That’s absolutely not what I expected to hear. You really want to go to Ireland?”

  “Yeah. As soon as I can. I need to get a visa first, so I can stay there for a few years. But as soon as that happens . . .”

  Tommy nodded. “I won’t try to talk you out of it, Colin. I know you and Dad . . . well, I know what Dad thought, but I also know that sometimes you have to follow your own heart, no matter what others think. I want to make you an offer, though. An alternative, if you like.”

  That sounded more like their father. Colin frowned. “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Stay here in Chicago—for the rest of the year, anyway. Help me. Be part of my campaign staff. I’m going to need all the support I can get.”

  Colin was shaking his head as soon as he heard “campaign staff.”

  “What are you talking about? You don’t need my help, and that’s not the kind of job that I’m suited for anyway. Besides, Harris says you’re a shoo-in.”

  Tommy shook his head. “That’s what Carl wants everyone to believe, and it’s what he wants to believe himself. But even he’s worried about a candidate who’s single and in his mid-30s.”

  “Okay, so you’re not married. So what?”

  “Things have changed a lot over the years, and are continuing to change, but how many politicians do you know who are openly gay?”

  Colin blinked, processing what Tommy had just said. “Gay? You mean...?”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I mean. I guess we both had things we weren’t saying to each other. Come on, Colin; you mean you never suspected that? Haven’t you ever wondered why I was never dating anyone, why I never brought anyone home for Sunday dinners?”

  “In high school and college, you did. I distinctly remember a couple girls.”

  “Yeah. I did back then. First because I was in denial, then because I was using a few friends as beards so no one else, especially Mom and Dad, would suspect. But since then . . . well, if I haven’t been open about it, I also haven’t exactly been keeping it a secret.”

  “Wow.” Colin didn’t know what to say. All the air had gone from his lungs. As Tommy watched him, he took a breath, starting to speak, then shaking his head. “Mom and Dad? Jen? Do they . . .”

  Tommy shrugged. “With Mom and Dad, it’s always been ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ They both stopped interrogating me about whether I was seeing anyone four or five years ago—that way they didn’t have to be confronted with the truth, and I didn’t have to lie. I think we were all happier that way. Jen knows; I think she suspected it even before I did, or before I was willing to admit it. Aunt Patty and Rebecca, too, of course—I told them a while ago. I’d’ve told you, but you had your own issues with Mom and Dad and were heading off to Seattle, and afterward it didn’t seem like something to say in a phone call. And since you’ve come back . . .” He shrugged. “There really hasn’t been a good moment for the two of us to sit down and really talk. I know this isn’t one, either, telling you while we’re burying Dad, but I was afraid that you might sneak back to the left coast if I waited any longer, and I really wanted . . .” Tommy stopped. “I really needed you to know,” he finished.

  Colin ignored that. “What about Harris?”

  Tommy seemed to smile. “Oh, he knows better than anyone,” he said, and something in his tone and the glance he cast back toward where Harris was leaning against Tommy’s car made Colin suddenly suspicious.

  “No.”

  “Yep. ’Fraid so.”

  “Harris is your . . . partner?”

  “How do you think he got himself introduced to Dad?”

  “Really? Harris?”

  “Carl’s a lot nicer when he doesn’t have his campaign manager hat on. Honestly.”

  “I guess I’ll have to take your word for that. I haven’t been very pleasant with him, though. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s used to it—that’s part of the job. He doesn’t take it personally. Look, I haven’t come out publicly, but Carl says that the subject will come up once we’re in the general election, so I need to do it soon before someone springs it as a surprise in the middle of the election. And honestly, I don’t intend to lie if someone asks me the question directly . . .” His shoulder lifted again. “It’s anyone’s guess how things will go when the news gets out. When that happens,
I’ll need people around me I can trust, people I care about. That’s why I’m asking. So . . . have I weirded you out sufficiently?”

  Colin managed a wry grin. “You’ve managed to shock me a bit, yeah. It’ll take me a while to wrap my head around this, but in the end, it doesn’t change anything. You’re still Tommy, you’re still my brother, and I don’t have a problem with anyone’s sexual orientation. Don’t worry.”

  “Thanks. You don’t know how much that means, little brother.” The two of them hugged, Tommy taking a long, slow inhalation that told Colin how unsure his brother had actually been. When they broke apart, Tommy looked back at the gravesite, where the workers were already preparing to fill in the grave. “I wish I’d told Dad the truth, even though I’m sure he’d already figured it out.”

  Colin was also staring toward the casket. “Yeah. There’s a lot I wish I had talked to him about, too. I hadn’t left things in a very good place with him, and now . . .” The emotions threatened to overwhelm Colin again, and he let the rest trail away unsaid, not able to trust his voice.

  “Yeah, I know.” Tommy’s voice was rough and husky, and his hand touched Colin’s shoulder and fell away again. “I know. I also know that he loved you and he was hoping to patch things up between the two of you when you came back next.”

  “Why are you going to run for office, Tommy? Yeah, it’s Dad’s legacy and all that, but this is going to put a huge spotlight on your life, with all that entails, and there are people who are going to be upset and angry and furious with you. You could let someone else step in and save yourself all the grief. You could just keep your position at Dad’s firm and not have to deal with any potential nastiness.”

  “I know. But . . . this just feels right, like something I’m supposed to do. You understand that, don’t you? It’s like you with your music. Jen’s the same way; teaching is exactly what she wants to do and what she enjoys doing. Dad . . . he wasn’t any different, really. We Doyles have this sense of destiny, or a calling, of something that we’re supposed to do, and we’re most unhappy when we’re not allowed to pursue it. That’s when we get into trouble. Know what I mean?”

  For a moment, the scene around them shivered, and Colin thought he could smell the sea and burning peat. Then it was gone. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

  “So . . . you’ll stay? Or go to Seattle and take care of whatever you need to take care of there, then come back here. I really could use you. I’d be able to pay you a consultant’s salary—a good one—and if I’m elected, well, I could use someone I know I can trust on my staff, if that interests you.”

  Above them, in the branches, a crow stirred, cawed, and flew away.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it,” he told Tommy. “That’s all I can say right now.” He clapped his brother on the back. “Thanks for trusting me, Tommy. That means a lot . . . even if I have to apologize to Har . . . I mean, Carl.”

  Tommy laughed. “Well, c’mon and get it over with, then.”

  The reception at the house was worse than Colin had imagined it would be.

  The house had been filled with bouquets from the funeral home, their sickly sweetness competing with the smell of coffee and the various hors d’oeuvres Beth had prepared. The struggle between the clashing odors threaded through the haze of a dozen conversations and dutiful, apocryphal remembrances of Colin’s father. Colin wandered the house, smiling and shaking hands, and enduring the pats on the back and the hugs from people he barely knew, the mindless niceties and clichéd condolences. He fled to his old room on the second floor after an hour or so, sitting on the bed his mother had prepared for him and staring at the walls—freshly-painted, with all his old posters and paintings carefully removed. It was a stranger’s room. The only thing of his in it was a large plastic model of the Millennium Falcon he’d put together when he was twelve or thirteen, carefully dusted and sitting on an otherwise unadorned dresser top.

  He sat there in the dimness, listening to the chatter from downstairs echoing up the staircase. His guitar was there, leaning against a wall—his mother had insisted that he bring it along. He unzipped the gig bag and held it, closing his eyes and strumming a few aimless chords.

  “A wee bit overwhelming, is it?” It nearly sounded like the dream-woman’s voice, in her lilting Irish accent, but then he realized with a start that the voice had come from the doorway of his room. He opened his eyes to see Aunt Patty standing there. In one hand, she was holding a small, leather-bound book, like the moleskin notebooks he’d seen in stationery stores and bookstores, except that this one appeared to be old and battered; her other hand was closed around something, though all he saw was the long loop of a silver chain hanging from between her fingers.

  “Yeah,” he told her, putting the guitar aside. “A wee bit. I thought I’d escape up here for a few minutes.”

  “Your room looks nice.”

  “It looks like Mom’s vision of what she wanted my room to look like back when I was a teenager. Which it never, of course, actually looked like.”

  She gave him an understanding nod, then came into the room and sat on the bed alongside him. “I brought a couple things for you,” she said. “First, hold out your hand . . .”

  Colin did so, and Aunt Patty turned her closed one over his, opening her fingers. Something fairly heavy dropped into his palm; in his hand was a green, crystalline stone about the size of his top thumb joint. The stone hadn’t been cut into facets, but was polished and transparent enough that one could see into its crannied depths. It was set in filigreed silver, with the fine chain put through a loop at the top. The gem seemed to hold aquamarine ribbons of color within it, and the stone was warm in his hand—most likely from Patty’s hand, he thought. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Your grandfather—Daiddeó Rory—brought that stone from Ireland when he came. He always had a habit, whenever he went somewhere new and memorable, or if something unusual happened, to pick up a rock and bring it back with him. He always said it helped him remember where he was and what he was thinking then.” Aunt Patty laughed. “I picked up the same habit. Whenever I’m traveling somewhere, I’ll find a rock—any old rock, actually, though I do try to find an interesting one—and bring it back with me.”

  “That explains all the rocks I remember on your bookshelves. So Daiddeó Rory brought this one to the States when he came here?”

  Aunt Patty nodded, then sat on the bed alongside him. Her fingers caressed the stone in Colin’s hand. “Strange,” she said. “I only found that pendant a few days ago, but I’ve never had it out of my hand or off my neck since then. It was like I was supposed to have it.”

  “Then keep it,” Colin said. He held it out to her. “I don’t need it.”

  Aunt Patty shook her head. Reaching out, she closed her fingers around the pendant. “This is going to sound strange, but as soon as I walked in here and saw you, I knew you were supposed to have it. Not me.”

  “And how did you know that?”

  Aunt Patty shrugged. She didn’t answer directly. “I also brought this for you,” she said, handing him the notebook. He took it from her, turning it over in his hands. The cover was well worn, the leather nearly worn away and frayed at the edges, and the paper had the yellow of age and the griminess of much handling. Colin opened it and glanced at the first page where, in faded sepia ink and an ornate handwritten cursive, he saw a title and subtitle. The Light of Other Days: The Story of My Wanderings. “That’s your Daiddeó Rory’s journal,” Aunt Patty told. “He started it back when he was growing up in Ireland; it ends a year after he came to the States, when he met your Maimeó Bridgett. I only found it a few days ago, shoved in back of some other books on the bookshelves. Strange, all the years it had been sitting there. I must have missed it a dozen times in the past. The chain of the pendant was wrapped around the book.” Aunt Patty had inherited the O’Callaghan house after Colin’s grandparents die
d, and she and Rebecca lived there. The house was still much the same as Colin remembered it from his childhood, with large rooms and many bookcases stuffed with books. He could well imagine that a notebook like the one he now held could have been lost among the other volumes.

  “I thought I’d pass it on to you to read,” Aunt Patty continued. “You’re the most like Daiddeó Rory of all of us. I think you’ll find it interesting. All of it’s interesting, but I think I’d start reading it around the September 4th of 1947 entry first, if I were you. It explains, or at least I think it does, that emerald or whatever it is I just gave you. I think you’re supposed to have both of these—when I read the journal, I kept hearing your voice in my head. Somehow I think Daiddeó Rory intended you to be the one to read this.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Patty,” he told her. He put the stone in the pocket of his suit coat and patted the cover of the notebook. “I’ll take a look at it.”

  Another nod. Aunt Patty put her hand on his, on top of the journal. “I saw you and Tommy talking. I assume he’s told you about . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yep. He did.”

  Her fingers pressed his. “And did he ask you to stay, to work on his campaign?”

  “That, too.”

  “He meant that. He could use the help, and he could use the support. Did you give him an answer?”

  “Said I’d think about it.”

  “Ah.” The exhalation held sentences. There was almost a satisfaction in it.

  “I was serious about that,” he said, almost defensively. “I’m considering it. Maybe it’s time I did something for the family.”

  “There’s family you’re born with, and there’s family that you choose and make yourself.”