Grace

by Paul Lynch

  The gray crow says, lies, lies.

  Of a sudden Mary Warren stops gabbing and reaches a hand towards Grace. Her mouth shapes a warning word but does not say it, their eyes now watching as Father and Mary Eeshal come upon them without smile, Mary Eeshal with her arms folded, Mary Eeshal, who clicks her tongue as she walks past Grace as if to announce the sins that remain unconfessed.

  It is difficult to tell the hour as she goes to his room, his door smoothing open into an enclosed dark and his waiting shape another type of darkness.

  She thinks, what is the point in you returning, you know what this is.

  She thinks, all the sins within you, how can you live without confession?

  She kneels before him and squeezes her eyes against the already-dark as if closing your eyes can squeeze shut your hearing, for if you hear him now you must follow his will or choose not to follow his will and then you will be out on the road, a rat in a ditch, no better than before.

  He says, you have made me wait. Then he says, take off your clothes, daughter. His breath dogging slowly towards her, the sound of his movement following upon the dog’s breath, and she thinks she can feel within such movement a violence coiled and ready to be made physical, a fist or a kick to the head. She tenses for the blow and dares not open her eyes but what happens is silence and then yellow-soft illumines her eyelids and she opens her eyes to see he has lit the lamp, spread a gloss of light about his body like last light over old and weary hills.

  He looks at her a long time. He says, I fear you brought the devil in with you last night. I fear he is here among us, spreading lies, mistruths, suspicion. It is the devil who has gotten your tongue. It is the devil who will walk with you when I send you out on the road. You should think about that. Your soul in hell.

  Her eyes say, how is it a man can have power over your soul but you have control over your own body, a woman should be able to pray to God all day long without having to be His wife.

  She thinks, what if you have gotten it wrong about God and Father, all the things you have done, that Father is holy after all and all the people around him, it is you who will be damned.

  She searches Father’s face for the trace of an answer, watches his hairy ears, the beaten face, the eyes that drink in her skin, the hands that could beat her.

  It is then he shouts. Get out.

  The next day brings an ugly half-dark like winter. She passes the day on the rock hiding in plain sight. She does not care now who sees her smoking. Never has she felt further from God, further from the life she wants to live. She studies the sky’s broken light and sees a gap of great distance between earth and heaven. Toking her pipe, exhaling blue smoke that shapes the sky with her guilt. She thinks, only one pinch of tobacco left but Henry Good will live up to his handle.

  Father today is stepping about the mission with irritant blood, how his sleepless eyes roamed covetous upon her that morning. How he brought the hum of prayer to a stop and stared at her. How he said, we have someone among us who refuses confession. How he turned then upon her before the others. You will seek full confession. This is the last time I will ask you.

  Mary Bunny, who has winnowed to a stick, is refusing to eat. Mary Bunny each day with her little significations, the way she sips just a thimbleful of soup, eats only a crust of bread as if God’s wintering these past few years were not enough hurt for her, that you must choose to starve yourself as well in the absence of another’s confession. Mary Trellick telling anyone who will listen about her visions of an end brought by rolling fire.

  She thinks, how can you say no to him, all that he has done for you, your life here at the mission, the food you have been given, and aren’t the women here holy in all that they do? Why is it they have no trouble doing what is asked of them? Wasn’t it you who was corrupted until now by the devil?

  Henry Good finds her in the field and she makes the signal for tobacco and he obliges. He says, we had a headback birth this morning. The third lamb lost this year, we’re cursed with bad luck.

  She thinks about this. Would like to know what happens to a soul denied of its birth and why does it happen? What kind of God changes His mind like that, allowing the soul to grow into a body and then at the last moment to deny it? Does it roam hurting for the loss of some unspeakable part like a twin who loses a brother?

  Henry Good tells her that Father is in trouble because money he said would come has not come, that he has heard Robert Boyce complain of this, that there are things to pay for and land does not come for nothing and this is why Father is in foul humor.

  The rock and the field and the sky meet in dusk and she stares at her colding feet, lifts her head to the sound of a scream and shouting at the mission but does not move, wills that something awful has struck then quickly unwills the thought. She thinks, it is probably about you. She watches the trees and thinks about those who say they can see something but cannot and why this might be. Thinks about how the wind never reveals itself. How it comes upon the rookeries like a thief, rattles them and makes trouble for the birds, who shout their warnings at this nothing-to-see.

  She returns to the mission before prayer, meets Mary Child alone in the field, the woman’s face wet with tears, some of the other women huddled by their cabin. Mary Child grabs at Grace’s wrist. She says, you missed all the trouble. Mary Eeshal has been storming about the place all day, took the sleeping mats off all the sisters and threw them out. She tried to take the lamb off Mary Warren, told her she had no business keeping pets at the mission. But Mary Warren refused to give it, went purple in the face, something strange coming over her. Then Mary Eeshal pulled the lamb out of her hands and Mary Warren turned upon her and beat her with her fists. Robert Boyce came running and struck Mary Warren and now she has run off. Nobody can find the lamb.

  She thinks, these are the things that happen when Father will not hear their confession and he will not hear their confession because you have denied him yours. It is just like you to ruin everything, you silly wee bitch.

  Mary Eeshal comes to evening prayer with a knife in her hand and her hair shorn, sits down with a bruised face and bloodied scalp, stares at Grace, her eyes holy with hate, her eyes saying, it is you who is destroying Father.

  Father has not left his cabin, is refusing to answer their knocks. They say he is fasting. Mary Eeshal leading their prayers, though Grace will not look at her. She stares at the plum shadows where Mary Warren used to kneel, thinks of their little glances, wonders what will happen to her, the woman walking the roads on her own, a simple woman; how the hunger might come back and what then and the same thing will happen to you.

  After supper, Mary Eeshal begins to pour water from a pitcher and then stops, begins to cry into her wrist.

  She watches a bridal moon haze the clouds and tells herself, whatsoever things are, they are also not. As she walks she thinks, perhaps this purpling midnight color is the truest, for it gives enough light to see your feet in the dark but little else, everything else hidden, whatsoever things are, they are also not. She rises and steps through the dark watching her feet faint like mice pairing towards his door. She closes his door and the mice pair together. She watches him quench the lamp, his eyes upon her now and how he says the same words and how this time she slides out of her gown, covers her hands over her breasts, stares at the mice, their noses pointing at one another. Whatsoever things are, they are also not. Of a sudden Father moves and he is naked and he is clothed in the second skin of shadow and he is traveling towards her and her eyes adjust to the mass of his body filling her sight and she sees how his eyes are lit, his buttermilk breath reaching like hands to take her as woman and her body begins to will something different, a feeling that says no, not this, whatsoever things are, they are also not, but her hands speak and push him away. He utters a snort that is derision or anger or helplessness and he hunkers silently a moment and then begins towards her again, slowly, the wolf of God slowly for the lamb, his body dark purple, his mouth a sack, whatsoever
things are, they are also not, and her hands become will again and begin to push against his resisting body, the pure will of his body a dream of creeping sin, and she pushes back and he moves away again. Now he is kneeling, coming towards her on his hands and knees and she can see his face and his eyes begging and then his mouth opens and he says aloud, I have heard you and felt you like none of the others, have felt the way you watch me, the way you reach into me, see into my sin. The others are nothing. Only through flesh can we absolve the sins of each other. His body moving towards her again and she pushes him away again and his laugh is sudden and strange, the laughter of a madman, she thinks. He bows his head and when he speaks his voice is wretched, a piteous child’s voice. Do I make myself odious to you? Is that it? That I am too much the knower of sin for your grace? Tell me what it is you want and I will do whatever you ask. His body coming towards her again and she repels him with two hands, watches as he begins to crawl about the room growling like a dog and then he shouts, yes I have sinned, yes I am a sinner, I sin and I sin and I sin. Why is it you are the only one here who sees into my soul? Who refuses me? What dream did you come from? Do you talk with Him? That’s what it is. You talk with Him and He hears your words. Father lowers his head to her feet and says, I will wash your feet, Mother, and she begins to feel the lick of his thistle tongue, pushes him away with a foot. He becomes a black shape hurling himself through the room with a ferocious dog’s bark and she knows now the others will come, how the others will kneel by the door and listen to him as he barks out the loss of his mind, how he hisses and spits. Yes, I am dog, he shouts. I admit the dog. He comes to me and takes my spirit and I take his shape wanting the flesh of woman. And the dog knows that he who joins with the harlot is one in body with her. The two shall be made the one flesh. Father’s barking becomes louder and she can hear noise behind the door and the sound of sobbing and she is trying to find her gown but cannot find it, Father barking loud enough now to wake them at the farmhouse, to wake them in Gort, and it is then she finds her dress on the floor and heaves her body naked from the room.

  Dr. John Allender permits her into his study, offers a horsehair chair by the fire. His voice grim and quiet and she points to her mouth and shakes her head and tries to say with her eyes, for now I can’t speak, but soon I will, I hope, it took me a whole day to find you. He nods and calls for tea brought a moment later by some oldster who might be his father, the younger man become older man with no time in between. She stares at the doctor’s gilt library of books, at the broad and implacable heat of the fire, the watercolors on the wall of some softened unmoving Ireland. She motions with her hand for something to write on. Later he leans an elbow upon the mantelpiece and reads what she has written.

  I saw you on the Street that Time. You struck me Doctor as a Truthful Man. I could not leave them. I did not know how. His Words had the Power over me. I could not think for myself. I fear they might come after me. Will you help?

  She is aware when he speaks how he has a way of looking at her without looking at her. He says, their sort would blame God for anything. They would blame God for the very weather that hammers this land, the rain and wind and the worst of winter light that darkens the country all year. For what is light but the natural agent of God so therefore God is found wanting in Ireland.

  She is not sure if the mockery in his smile is aimed at her. He leaves the room and calls to the old man, and she thinks, run away out the door. The man returns with a dark cape and a pair of women’s boots. She tries to refuse them but he shakes his head and says, they are old and unused and will not be missed. It is not the tropics out there.

  It is only when she is upon the brightening road does she notice the doctor has put coin in her pocket.

  VIII

  Blackmountain

  These lonely roads where the movement of walking counts its own beat. Three-four-five-six, hands-shoulders-arms-feet. A pageant sky calls her northwards and remakes the day by the hour. She is glad for the cape. Now the raggy sky is peace but what gathers against the sun will soon war with rain.

  So many people are gone, she thinks. The barefooters who walked the country roads in their droves have vanished. It is as if the earth has swallowed them. The silence broken only by a car or coach that scuttles the quiet with its commotion of horses. The low roads leading her through townlands where peat smoke may signal an occupier or two, a misty face witnessed through glass, or some oldster who hobbles out to see who she is, eyes that say I am too old to die and too tired to leave. And then there are the townlands you must hurry through, where the mud huts and cottages huddle together in unvoiced grief. The babel of chat and children and animals gone utterly as if some wind had carried them off.

  She steps through each town with folded arms and a busy look, just in case anyone would bother you. The signs says Athenry, Moylough, Carrick-on-Shannon. She meets no trouble but for some wanty child pulling at her sleeve or an idle sitter pulling at her with a look. In one town after another now there are people selling buttermilk and lumpers, their baskets abundant with winter greens, their children wheelbarrowing each other in mud. She looks to the lanes and doorways and asks not to remember what gathered there, how every corner was hung with brittle looks that implored you for a penny or a cup of meal. Now the wind blows through such empty places.

  The nights are wound so tightly with dark, she thinks. This silence that utters strangeness. But at least, she thinks, you can take your pick of an empty house. She likes to sleep in the smaller houses where there is a door still hung and the wind cannot send in its malicious thoughts. And still, what dreams. One night she dreams a sickly smell like mildewed corn, wakes and something tells her it is the smell of the graves. She rises and begins pushing the road through the dawn, will not look at the shrouds of dark that lie over the fields.

  Off and on she is met by people who walk with her. A young man making a three-day walk in two days to get to Drumshanbo to meet his newborn son, an hour or two I’ll get to spend, he says, and then I must be off. An old woman who has been walking the roads for well nigh a year in search of her son. They share their food with her, a potato with silken butter, a taste of buttermilk. They speak of simple things, an ache in the heels or a pair of boots that need mending, but they do not question her silence, for a woman in black must be a pilgrim of some kind or she must be in mourning and who isn’t these days, she thinks, the whole country to grief and even the crows that gather plentiful in the fields must remember their absent brethren. How they cloak the trees like angry priests, cawing at her just like Father.

  She sleeps under a winding sycamore and wakes to see women tramping linen by a lakeside, can feel herself among them as if she were at the mission, the comfort of talk, the comfort of women. Sometimes she sees the spit-mouth of Father rising without words from the road. The weather soon to turn winter cold and yet lightness now in every northwards step. The far-off hills gathering as they always do, rooted and restful old men wrinkled with light. My legs are as strong as tongs, she thinks. My feet a pair of muck-raking mules. Two-three-four-five, how strange it is to be alive.

  In woodland farther north she meets a gang of vagrant children. They stand savage and soiled with wild hair but it is their eyes she notices, eyes that meet you like the sorry look of a dog. Not an elder to be seen among them. They live in rough huts assembled from cuttings of fir and she shares with them her bread and sleeps with them a night, watches the stumble of a young child never taught to walk properly. A boy keeps asking her questions. Do you think Fionn MacCumhaill is hiding in the mountains? Do you think he is waiting to return and rescue Ireland? The question-putter keeps pulling her by the arm as she goes to leave. He says, I had a home once but nobody awoke from their sleeping.

  A great hand of rain is flung from the east. She counts the days behind her, guesses the days ahead, tries to see each bead as it falls as if you could watch so many lives.

  Riddle me this, what goes up as the rain falls down?

&nbs
p; She finds good luck on the road, a horseshoe lying in mud by a ditch. Is surprised nobody has found it. She bends and of a sudden sees into the ditch as if some horror were lying there though it is nothing but the ghost of thought, she thinks, a trick of the light, grabs the horseshoe and walks onwards. But still, she thinks. She watches the ditches with suspicion, that was then and this is now, the dead have lifted themselves out of the ditches and have gone to wherever they go.

  A jarvey jangles the road behind her and comes to a stop just ahead of her. She is glad for the offer of a lift. A man with wrinkles folded into his forehead and tobacco teeth and a way of leaning without falling.

  He says, will I lift you up?

  He studies her in quick leftwards looks when she does not answer his questions. He says, you some sort of prayer woman? He recites an old poem in Irish and then he tells her the title is his favorite of all titles, that in English it means an isle made of glass. Then he tells her his three favorite places in the world, a bridge in the townland of Rath, where he grew up and used to sneak out a trout, the sight of the seaboard he saw one time on the coast of Sligo, a particular way the light was upon it as if I had painted it with my own mind, and the face of his wife dead now two years, and how glad I am for sleep because that is the only place I can find her.

  The man takes another road and she can still hear his voice. How it rings with hope for the days ahead. The feeling then she will not remember him as he was, the make-merry of his voice, that the road he has taken onwards will become nothing in her mind but mist. She touches the horseshoe and repeats the names of her brothers like prayer. Closes her eyes and sends thought like flight. To ride the sky now a returning starling.