I tried to evoke the image of Mother, of a recent memory, but nothing would come. When I thought of her I saw her far away in the dark: a flitting, shadowy silhouette at some candlelit window staring out at the black, unfamiliar Carlow night looking for us. I imagined something had spirited her away from us and that it must be in this house, in the coal shed, and in the fields beyond. We had not been watchful enough, and now this thing had our mother and she was dying. I could not see it but it was there.
And so I looked over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs, when I went out into the dark to the outhouse or to the coal shed; I searched the fields anxiously; I paused on the landing, holding my breath, waiting for a movement, a shimmer of light, a presence to betray itself, and, waiting to exhale, I searched my features in the mirror to see if anything moved across my face. I tried to fool my shadow as I walked and shake loose any clinging specter; I knew it was clever—although my sister seemed oblivious to its presence.
What’s the matter with you? What are you listening for? What do you hear? she persisted, panicked, as if there were something there, beyond the silence, at the edge of darkness, that she could not hear—a chord, a tremor of music; a haunting, hypnotic chorus calling from a world away. Perhaps she was worried that I would go the way of our mother.
Ghosts, I whispered. And Molly rolled her eyes and said, Jaysus, will you stop that! and belted me so violently I held my arm.
I didn’t mean to hit you that hard, she said after, and I nodded and looked away, for it was not me who was crying.
August 1978
Start a song, Michael. My uncle Oweny coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I sat on the high stool next to him at the bar. We were in the Three Bullet Gate and outside it was falling to dusk; he handed me a packet of crisps and a bottle of Cidona. He took a gulp from his pint of stout, and when he put the glass back on the bar it was half empty. He coughed again, and this time, after he wiped the phlegm from his mouth, his eyes hesitated for the briefest of moments upon his hand. We were just off the Wexford road in the pub he always stopped at, and, outside in the old Morris Minor, the three plaice were still wriggling about in the back even though they’d begun to stink. Flat-headed and slick, and still alive though they should be dead, they scared the hell out of me. When I told him, he laughed and hugged me. I didn’t understand but it was comforting to feel his arms about me, smelling of muck and fish and tobacco and alcohol. Aye, he said, ugly divils. He pushed his leather pouch of Old Magwyer’s Brown across the bar to me and let me roll him a sloppy cigarette.
All along the Wexford road he had encouraged me to sing and had smiled but for once didn’t join in. He just nodded and stared at the road ahead. The sound I made did not seem like enough without him, so I stopped, but he encouraged me to continue with a sad smile on his face. I knew something was wrong but I went on, singing as hard and long and clear as I could until my throat felt raw, and he reached over and tousled my hair. Grand job, Michael, grand job. His eyes glistened, and I fell silent; I felt as if I’d swallowed something large and it had lodged in my chest.
He said, Your grandfather is in my dreams every night now, so he is. I remember him as if I was a child again, and there’s Sheamie Murphy, and JJ Burke, and Mick Culleton. Remember him, Declan? He sometimes called me Declan when he’d been drinking, it was the name of the son he had lost in a trawler off the coast—someone he rarely talked about. He was a right bastard with the young lads, he was quare mean, but he wasn’t a bad sort sure he wasn’t.
I munched at my crisps quietly.
He was in some state when they found him, he continued. His body had been down for over two weeks. Y’know, sometimes they do get caught on stuff and stay down longer. Well, all manner of things had been at him. You would hardly have recognized him at all. Oweny frowned and I had the sense that he could still see that body rising from the black Atlantic and it wasn’t Mick Culleton he saw, but his own son Declan.
He shook his head and looked at his left hand. Years before, he’d been working on a fishing trawler and a line had caught him by the hand and pulled him overboard. He’d lost two fingers, sheared from the bone, in the struggle; the mark of the line burnt like a brand around his wrist. He had fought the sea and it had spared him and taken his son instead.
Driving home, the fading sun glancing blindingly off the high green hedgerows, I looked at my uncle’s left hand. He had been lucky, the line had pulled him down but he had come back up. Some said he had cut his fingers off to free himself but no one ever asked him.
He leant his arm out the window and pressed his nubs into the wind, keeping his right hand on the wheel. Poor Mick Culleton, he said. He was a right dry shite, I don’t think he ever had a good shag his whole miserable life.
We jumped the low stone walls, fell through brambles and gorse, and began running again. Cait was fast but Martin was faster. He was the first one through the bracken and into the other field. Jaffa took an angle on the left and Molly was heading for the stile. I was beside Cait, our breaths thumping in unison like a press. We glanced quickly at each other and pushed harder. I passed her shoulder and rushed toward an opening in the hedge. From beyond the hedgerow Martin was shouting, and I hollered as well. I dove into the brambles, leapt high into sunlight, and Martin stood there, madly waving his arms, the wide green field at his back, and before him, a silver bale of raggedy barbed wire curled open in the ditch. He was shouting but his mouth was a silent o. His elbow poked pink and raw through a hole in his jumper. A wisp of sheep scut curled delicately on a barb and floated off into the air. I closed my eyes and held my breath, felt the bale shuddering against my calf and then I was tumbling forward across the earth, and Cait was falling, shrieking at my shoulder.
Martin raced toward the hedge we’d just cleared, calling, Oh God, oh God.
Cait kept her arms across her face, away from the barbs, but she was caught in the wire. When she pulled her arms down, blood flowed freely from her neck.
Molly came running from the stile and we looked at each other.
Don’t move, Cait, for fucksake, don’t move, Martin said.
Oh Jaysus. Jaysus. We’d best get Milo.
I’ll stay, I said, and the lads took off running across the field. I looked in the direction of Milo’s house. Smoke from its chimney rose above the tree line, and it seemed very far away. Cait reached through the coils and I took her hand. She looked at the blood and moaned; her legs kicked at the barbed wire.
Look at me, I said. Just look at me.
Her eyes were large, her lips pressed firmly together. Sweat streaked her forehead. I began to talk. I talked about my rabbit snares, and fishing on the river and of eels. I talked about Uncle Oweny. For the first time I talked of my father and of his leaving for America; I talked of my mother’s illness; I talked of Father O’Brien and of Lugh and Molly and of the master at school and my favorite classes and the books I had read over the summer and the best bands on Top of the Pops. A wind came up that sent the hawthorn waving, scattering its petals around us.
Bees moved sluggishly about a nest humming invisibly in the hedgerow. Now that the weather was turning cool, they searched out places of heat; they brushed against the wire, and I swept my hand at them. I looked across the fields for some sign of Milo. It wasn’t yet dusk and I could see for miles: hills and straths of pastureland, cows and sheep and horses, farmhouses, all of it stretching down to the river. Sounds moved about us and I had an odd sense of them, of bees droning softly, a tractor grumbling up the road, lads at play crossing the field, a dog barking, cows being brought up from pasture, a herd of clattering hooves on the road. I felt as if I were floating away, as if I might be gone entirely if not for the feel of Cait’s hand pressed into my own, the brittle glare off the wire, and her blood on my fingers.
I’ve ruined my blouse, she said. Daddy will have a fit.
I shook my head. Your daddy won’t mind, so.
Finally, Milo came hulking across the fiel
d and the lads followed. He looked at Cait, then at the blood. We’ll have you out of there in no time, he said.
He’d brought a large bolt cutter and had given gloves to Jaffa and Martin, told them to hold the bales as he cut it, and to be careful because it would spring back with the coiled tension. He worked the head of the cutter over the wire, grunting as he squeezed the handles closed. The wire snapped and sprung back and the bale shook around Cait.
Milo inhaled sharply. Lads, he said, just mind the wire. Hold it steady, it’s going to spring back some. You need to hold it.
He looked at Martin and Jaffa. Are you right? They nodded and he began again, swearing that whoever left barbed wire in such a way would get a sound thrashing from him. Milo spoke through clenched teeth as he worked the bolt cutter. If only I get my hands on the fucker that left this here, he said, I’ll kick ten colors of shite out of him. Cait had become even paler; she stared at me and I squeezed her hand. Milo split the bale in two and Cait hollered as the barbs tore free. Her shout was a gun blast across the field, sending startled blackbirds up from a stretch of trees, their wings and throats all a clatter. Blood wrapped her neck like a scarf, there was so much of it. She held my hand tightly as they pulled the gleaming wire further and further apart, and I thought of her mother, not of her dying quietly in her sleep but of her waking, and struggling in the dark with the blood welling in her throat and of her husband and her children sleeping through that silent struggle—how alone and utterly afraid she must have been, her husband just an arm’s reach away, her children on the other side of the wall, as she tried to speak to scream to shout their names and yet nothing but the fading sound of snow thumping softly on the slate, a wind moaning uneasily in the eaves, and the darkness pressing in upon her. Through clenched teeth Cait stared at me, her eyes narrowed in pain—I squeezed her hand tighter—and she did not look away and she did not move, and even after, she never cried.
October 1978
It wasn’t yet dawn and it was raining; a strong wind blew wet ragged gusts against the door and window jambs when our uncle Oweny woke us. C’mon, he said, your mammy will be waiting.
It was cold since it was October and we hadn’t had time to light a fire. The thick cement floors were like slabs of ice through my shoes and my chilblains ached. Molly still looked half asleep and had barely touched her cold cereal. Our uncle drew her coat tightly around her at the door, stroked my head, and ushered us—half asleep, faces flushed and tingling from cold water in the pantry washbasin, hair quickly and roughly combed—to his old Morris Minor, already idling in the courtyard, white smoke drifting from its exhaust and smelling richly of oil.
In the backseat we wrapped blankets around ourselves. The old heater thumped out just enough dusty heat to defrost the windscreen. Molly fell asleep almost immediately; I stared out the window wondering how my uncle could see the road when I could see nothing at all.
Oweny wiped his sleeve against the glass and cursed. Behind and before us, there seemed to be nothing but fog. Oweny turned on the wireless. All across the width of the radio band there was static and silence. Finally, there came a commentator announcing more violence erupting in the North: a shooting in the Shankhill, a bomb exploding on the Belfast-to-Dublin train; then the fall in livestock prices, the banner year for wool out of the North, how badly the punt fared against the pound sterling, and an advert recommending farmers use Drexel fertilizer. The only other station was Radio Éireann. It gave the football scores in Irish. Oweny cursed and switched the radio off. Jaysus, he said, I don’t know which is worse.
We were almost to Carlow when Molly woke; she blinked and stared ahead as if she were somewhere else. We passed the ruins of a castle along the edge of a riverbank and I knew that Oweny would normally have commented on it, known its history, and perhaps the songs that had come from its battles, its victories, or its defeat. Perhaps a young Irish queen had found asylum there from a cruel English king, and the people who sheltered her had died rather than give her up to him. I imagined the great walls bombarded by cannon shell, while the queen hid in some deep chamber of the castle. She would have taken her life rather than let the foreigner take her. Or perhaps she made her way through a secret passage and escaped into the West.
Uncle Oweny, I called, and he looked briefly in his rearview mirror. Did you see that castle?
I did.
Well? What happened there?
What happened?
Did they get the queen? Or did she escape?
Oweny shook his head. If I remember right, it was a stronghold of the Burkes. I don’t know what happened there.
So, there could have been a queen and she could have escaped? Like the children of Lir, at the end?
Oweny was quiet for a moment, and just when I thought he would not speak again, he did. I suppose. He sighed. I suppose.
I nudged Molly. How about that, then.
Molly blinked and nodded and stared out at the passing fields. She squinted at the land as if she were trying to make out its geography, something that could tell her how close we were to reaching Mother. I knew the passing landscape meant nothing to her. I was the one who always paid attention on trips, who tried to remember as much as I could so that I could predict things before we saw them. I used to bet with her about what was coming around the next bend, what we would see before the next mile was up. She was always amazed, and then upset, because we had taken the same trips together and she remembered none of it. I reminded her that it was because she often slept the entire trip or read a book and that, in either case, she was smarter than me. How well she did at school proved it.
I poked her gently, and when she turned, her eyes were wide. She seemed stricken and ready to cry.
It’s soon, I said. Only twenty minutes or so.
She nodded, and although she didn’t smile, I knew she was trying to.
Our mother came out of the arched doorway of the hospital wearing a blue shawl. She paused beneath the archway’s roof, sheltered from the rain and silhouetted by the blaze of a bright light set into a low girdle on the wall. The rain glinted through the electric light and for a moment she seemed horribly disfigured. When she saw the car she waved and we rushed toward her, clambering out of the doors breathlessly, our feet kicking up gravel. Oweny did not protest but merely watched. Her body seemed to crumple in upon itself as she took us in her arms and hugged us close to her, holding us tight as if she might lose her grip on us, as if we were already pulling away. I could feel the weakness of her arms and it alarmed me immensely so that I grew sullen and quiet.
After a moment she straightened, grasped both our shoulders, and at turns looked closely at Molly and me, stared into our eyes, which I knew must betray something. The shawl was pulled so tightly about her head it pinched the skin at the edges of her eyes. I was close to tears and I reached for her hand. A smile creased her face and she laughed. What? Go on out of that, she said, and playfully slapped my hand away. Your old mammy is fine, sure, you two big eejits, puckawns you! She gently pushed us ahead of her. I felt dazed and numb and unable to speak.
How are you, Moira? Oweny grinned as he hiked up his stained work overalls and gave her an awkward hug. Rain beaded atop his mass of curly hair.
I’m well, Owen, now that I have me children with me. She ruffled our heads. Thanks for taking care of them.
Not at all, Moira, not at all, my uncle muttered softly and ran a gnarled hand through his hair while he searched for words to say.
Fierce day, so it is.
I’ll take any old day, Owen, as long as I’m out of there.
By God, Moira, I bet you would.
I won’t be coming back.
Sure of course not, now why would you be coming back.
Oweny took her bag and led her to the car, where all the strength seemed to ebb out of her. She did not look rested at all—in fact, she looked exhausted, more fatigued than I had ever seen her, but still, somehow agitated, as if there were something beyond the rain that she
was looking for. She turned in her seat and when she saw us she smiled, surprised. She reached out, touched us lightly with fluttering fingertips that barely made an impression upon our skin, and I shivered.
I had never seen my uncle so quiet; and my mother seemed to appreciate his stillness, and his silence. He could have been a tree offering shelter from the rain. And I tried to feel that calmness, distill it slowly from his close presence. He buckled her into the front seat, muttering, Not now, children, not now, your mammy needs to sleep, and she seemed to finally relax, and fell into a dreamy fitful doze.
In the distance, clouds were breaking; but no matter how far we traveled, we were never able to reach that point; it remained fixed on the horizon teasingly and we could get no closer to it.
Mother spoke suddenly, startling us. Owen, she said, and stared out the glass for a moment before speaking so that I thought she was asleep again, they put me in a cage, Owen, with the rest of them. They thought I was mad. Before they knew what it was . . . they thought I was mad.
Oweny reached over and squeezed her shoulder. It’s all right, Moira, sure it’s all right. And mother closed her eyes and fell back asleep.
In the Province of Saints Page 6