Thomas and Maurteen had taken the pledge and did not drink; Colie, on the other hand, was on the tear again. He walked into the parish earlier in the day to Darby’s Pub and was making up for lost time without them. It had been dark for hours now and he had yet to return.
Finnoula and I shared the small settle in the corner of the room. She snored softly as I watched Father amidst the shifting shapes the fire threw across the walls. His left hand worked into a fist and worried the knees of his black trousers; the bottle of poitin never left his right hand. Hours passed and the room grew cold and the shadows lengthened and became still, yet he did not move. The old sheepdog curled itself up at his feet. Candles flickered and waned in the deep windows. Wind howled down the flue.
The others were asleep in the loft when Colie finally clomped up the cobblestone and stumbled in. The door banged behind him. He stamped his Wellingtons loudly, and looking toward the room, where Rory had lain in state, his coffin open until yesterday, Colie blessed himself. Father looked at him and, without a word or gesture, leant forward to throw some kindling on the smoldering embers. The wood was dry and caught quickly, flaring about Father’s face, illuminating his anger. Colie raised an eyebrow drunkenly and, ignoring Father, made for Rory’s chair. Father stiffened. The drink had hardened the fine angles of his face, stretched skin across bone. The kindling burnt down and the peat smoldered wetly.
Finnoula’s eyes fluttered awake in the candlelit dark. Her eyelashes were long and black like Father’s, like Rory’s had been. The blond tips caught the candlelight and curled to touch the hollow below her eye. The others were still asleep in the loft; I could hear Maeve snoring in harmony with Maurteen. I peered through my hands at Colie’s bull neck, his wide-backed shoulders. He raised the accordion and its bellows sighed sadly.
You’ll not be sittin there, a mhac, Father said.
Colie waved him away and, drawing the accordion in and out, began to play. He was much bigger than Father.
The tendons in Father’s forearms flexed. His large hands clenched. Next to Colie he resembled angular sheet metal shaped by a press. Colie had spent the last two decades in England; I doubted he remembered what Father could do to men when he was on the whiskey, had done to men much bigger than himself.
Father pulled his back straight so that his sway was barely noticeable.
You’ll not be sittin in Rory’s chair, Colie, he said, his voice rising. Put his melodeon down.
Ah, give it a bleedin rest, would you. The house is asleep, keep your voice down, man. Colie continued to squeeze the bellows of the box.
Finnoula’s eyelashes flickered. Her eyes shone wetly in the dark. She reached for my hand and held it tightly. Her breath was warm and pungent with milk and tea. Father shouted for Colie to move again.
Ahhh, hush, Padraig, hush. I’m not bleedin deaf. Sure can’t I hear the grass growin in the field beyond. Rory wouldn’t mind his own brother sitting in his chair playing one of the old airs.
Get out! Get out! Get out of his chair! And put down his blasted accordion!
The divil, Padraig, I’m too tired to argue. You’re drunk, go to bed.
And with that Father was across the room, half stumbling but still faster than I expected. In two broken strides, he was upon Colie, swinging his sledgelike fists and knocking him from the chair to the hard floor.
Finnoula screamed and pulled me close. It only took a moment for Maurteen and Thomas to wake and stumble from their beds. They clattered down the ladder from the loft, their faces cratered and washed pale like the moon. They hauled Father off Colie as if he were a great Basking they’d caught struggling in their nets. Father gave one great heave and seemed as if he was about to push them off of him, but then, just as suddenly, he collapsed into their hands, all his anger spent.
That’s Rory’s, Father sobbed, that’s Rory’s. He reached for the accordion with bloodied hands, and when that failed, he sank slowly to his knees but still Maurteen and Thomas held him back.
Breathing heavily, Colie rose slowly and stared at his brother, wide-eyed. His large arms hung limply from his sides, his fists clenched, but if there were ever fight in him it was gone now as he looked at Father. Colie’s lips were split and his teeth were blood streaked. The flesh was already swelling on his cheek and around the bone of his eye. He spat blood.
In the scuffle they’d dashed the accordion to the wall. Finnoula picked it up tenderly, cradled it against her. Her nightgown hung loose on her thin frame. The bottom of the bellows collapsed and air groaned out. Finnoula poked at the divots razed upon the accordion’s rich inlaid surface. She collapsed the bellows with a hiss of air and secured its latches tightly.
I stood in my pajamas, shivering. Colie hurried out into the star-spun night, slamming the door behind him. It swung on its old rusted hinges and then remained open. Colie’s retreating shape hulked over the dark windswept fields. The water of the bay glittered with the moon. Blue-white naphtha light sparked out on the bogs.
The brothers and sisters circled Father as he sobbed. He still hadn’t risen to his feet and I was no longer sure he could.
Father looked up, his face streaked with tears. He reached out his hand and I took it. Maeve closed the door and the family climbed the creaking ladder to the loft. The candles were extinguished, and with the soft whisper of prayers Father and I were in darkness. The fire died down to embers; Father pulled me close, the stubble of his face grazing my cheek, and the sweet, sour exhale of drink, shame, and fear parted his lips in penance. I love you, he said, I love you, and I couldn’t tell whether he meant Rory or me, but holding me close, he squeezed the life from me, and we shivered together in the dark.
I woke in the morning, once more in the bed I shared with Finnoula—as if I had dreamed it all. But I descended the ladder and saw the dark spot where the cement had been washed of Colie’s blood. Bernadette was at the fire boiling the tea and burning rashers on a spit. Maeve was running some clothing up and down a washboard and spitting on the clothes for good luck. Maurteen carried an armful of wet turf in from the road, his boots tracking thick muck onto the floor that Orla had just swept. She watched him, eyes flickering angrily from his footprints to his face, her arms tensing on the broom in her hand; he threw a wet log of turf on the fire and dumped the rest onto the cement before tracking back out again, unmindful of Orla. Smoke billowed out of the hearth and Orla’s curses followed him out of the room. I imagined how crowded this small space must have been with ten children, screaming, shouting, fighting, laughing—how full of life, and how empty this space must have been when they were gone.
In the light of day and a roaring fire of turf, the brothers’ and sisters’ pinched faces seemed desperate and furtive; they were looking for an escape. Even in the daylight it seemed the fields were pressing in on them with memories they would rather have left forgotten.
After breakfast Finnoula opened the door to let in sunlight; the sound of Radio Éireann on the wireless sputtered out the soft cadences of Irish in a way that mimicked the rise and fall of the fire’s flames, and the soft murmurings of the family circled in genuflection on the hard floor in prayer once more, unwilling to release their hold on one another. Father’s eyes were bloodshot and he swayed noticeably on his knees. He had not washed the blood from his hands. Teresa pulled me close and, sobbing, crushed me against her breasts. Her rosary beads pinched my skin. After prayers Father remained kneeling with his eyes closed. I sidled up next to him and took his hand.
My aunts and uncles could not make Father leave; he would stay on and board up the house and leave, he said, when he was effin well ready to leave. I knew that he wanted to spend some time in the space that Rory had occupied all these years by himself, and I thought Father was also looking for penance for having failed him, and wanting to be punished for what he felt he had done or failed to do.
The brothers and sisters packed quickly and quietly, and then, once again, were gone, and the two of us were alone.
Fa
ther prepared to bring Rory’s stone to the grave with the old donkey and trap. He had a hard time putting the bit in the animal’s mouth and I saw his legs shaking with the effort to move the stubborn thing, but when I came forward to help him, he shouted at me, Stay back, she’s quare contrary and she’d sooner kick you and disembowel you as have you do this to her. The two of them struggled together, stumbling back and forth like old fighters, each vying for weight and balance. The donkey tried to bite Father and Father belted it one powerful blow square in the mouth that resounded off the bone with a crack like hurleys striking. The animal’s feet slipped, and Father, holding tight, finally got the bit in. The donkey snorted, rolled its eyes to the white, drew back its thick black lips into a sneer, and worked its jaws to remove the mouthpiece. You would have thought my Father was killing it.
You effin bitch, Father swore as he leant his shoulder into its thin skeleton and brought it out the gate. The donkey’s foal rushed up but I closed the gate before it. Both mother and child seemed to panic. Father struggled in the muck as he drew the blind over the donkey and led it down the path. I reached through the gate and stroked the rough back of the foal, around the hard bone of its brown eyes, in the tufts of thick hair around its ears. It stood, blinking its long dark lashes; I reached forward with hay but it moved away, sniffing the air as if there was something burnt or dead upon it.
In the courtyard, the tire tracks of the stonecutter’s lorry had left deep sinkholes, now filled with black bog water. It seeped into everything. Father splashed through the holes to the wooden pallet upon which Uncle Rory’s headstone was strapped. It was greenish-gray marble, cracked with veins of silver-white mica and quartz. He stroked the beveled edges, searching for any defect, ran his hand across the smooth polished surface, along the straps where they pinioned its sides. He asked me to read the words, and nodded when I was done. I had forgotten that Rory was the same age as Father, and I knew that thirty-six was a young age to die.
Watch your face now, he said as he raised the tamping bar and drove its blunt edge down. Wood splintered and the taut straps snapped and uncoiled like black whips. The donkey groaned and stamped its hooves. A shiver ran along its ridged back and I imagined its eyes rolling white beneath the blind.
On the road, a sleek new silver Audi sped past without slowing. It caught the narrow edge that dropped to the bogs and it slid momentarily out of control, its spinning tires throwing up muck, its young driver blowing his horn. The donkey trap lurched with the weight of the headstone.
You cunt you, Father said, serve you right ending up in the bog. He held the animal’s shoulder absently, almost protectively. It shook itself, and its tarnished harness jangled with the sound of old metal. We continued on, and Father seemed lost in the simple rhythm of the trap’s wheels, the clicking swivel of its axle, the old creaking bearings, the sagging lean of the springs trussed like two great arches beneath the small bed, and the beating of the donkey’s hooves upon the road, striking the ground at angles as if it were made of iron. They moved together, ineffably sad, straight-backed, stubborn, and belligerent, incessant as the clouds straggling above.
At the grave—a field of chest-high rushes that Father laid down angrily with the scythe—I looked for but could not find the drowned graves of Grandfather and Grandmother. Father said they’d used tall rowan branches to mark their resting places, but those, too, had sunk. He unraveled long iron bars from a tarp in the back of the trap and cursed that they, the brothers and sisters, never returned from America to place headstones on their parents’ graves. Now where they were was anyone’s guess. I wondered if Grandmother and Grandfather moved about below cursing as well, unable to find their resting places, or each other.
Father tipped the trap and, using rope and harness, slowly and softly dropped the pallet and its stone from its narrow, precarious rest. I pulled at an edge of the stone, tried to lift it upright, eager to show Father that I could. No, he said, you’ll break your back that way. Use the bar as a lever. Father pried the bar beneath the headstone and the pallet, and I did the same. Slowly we raised it together and moved it forward an inch at a time, side to side, to the left and then to the right. I pretended that it was easy, although each time the weight was on my side I feared I would let it fall. Father watched me. Sweat beaded my upper lip. My arms were trembling. You’re doing a grand job, he said. We’re almost there. His forearms were limbed and hard as thick branches; his legs were strong, somehow noble, rooted in the bog.
Da, I groaned, Da—to warn him that I was about to let it fall, that I could hold it no longer, but he was driving relentlessly forward and I was stumbling and I heard a clang of metal and a pained sound whistling through his teeth and his feet continued to move and then the stone was sliding and slipping seamlessly into the narrow trench he had dug for it, black bog muck sucking hungrily at its edges. I dropped the bar and sat heavily on the pallet.
I didn’t think it could be so heavy, I said and rubbed my arms.
Father winced and shook the fingers of his right hand. It was a while before he opened his eyes. Aye, he said, it’s a heavy old bastard all right. He exhaled long and hard. But I won’t begrudge Rory that, not after Mammy and Daddy. He grunted as he settled the stone, fingers reaching, scrabbling for a grip. Blood washed the marble, dropped thick to the fresh turned earth.
Your hand, Da.
It’s nothing, the bar caught it is all. I’m fine.
He stared me down. It’s nothing. I’m fine.
He continued rocking the stone from left to right, his face pale and wan, blood seeping from his fingers, and I stared at the blood as the stone sank deeper, and wondered how long it would take for the ground to swallow the stone whole—perhaps only as long as it took for me to return with his headstone here. And I imagined Rory turning beneath us, his bones shifting with the bog in the years to come, as he waited, restlessly, for my father.
From across the channel: a great gray wave of rain moving upon the water, and, driving before it, wild-wheeling cormorants and shearwaters. Father looked out at them, and I knew that he was judging the movement of the birds and the drift of the rain.
Rory almost died with the red fever when he was eight, Father said suddenly. They didn’t think he would live at all, they gave up on him. I remember, at the time, just waiting for him to get up out of the bed, and Mammy and Daddy and all the lads telling me it wasn’t going to happen. But I knew it was, I just knew. Honest to God, I knew. Eight days, eight bleeding days with the priest and Mammy moaning over him like fools, but I knew. Jaysus, sure they even gave him the last rites, so.
He stared at his hand and fingered the wound absently. When he spoke again his face was pained. Rory never did go back to school with the rest of us. Something had happened in his head, and he couldn’t take to the learning no more. He began to go out with Daddy on the boat to the islands, and I don’t suppose Daddy had much choice in the matter.
Father laughed, and even he seemed surprised by it. He shook his head. The wee puckawn would hide beneath the tarps until Daddy was out to sea and there was nothing Daddy could do. I’d rarely seen Daddy so mad. When they got back that night, he wanted to give Rory a thrashing, but after Rory’s sickness, Daddy didn’t like to beat him. And it was no good anyway, so. The next time Daddy went out, Rory did it again until Daddy had to give in. Daddy used to say there was something special about Rory out on the open water, like he’d never been sick at all—like he’d never been sick a day in his life. He used to say Rory had the work in him of two men, and I believe it.
Father smiled and stared back toward the channel. Come on, a mhac, Father said and gestured with his head toward the road. Let’s get home.
I reached for his hand but he was already bending for the iron bars. He threw them into the trap and the sound was loud in the stillness, almost deafening, and I felt as if I was waking from a deep sleep as we moved again. I could still feel the weight of Rory’s stone in my shoulders and the long walk to the grave in my le
gs, and I wished Father would just rest for a while.
The donkey was lathered with sweat thick as brine; it streaked its matted coat as if it had been cut by the whip. We paused at the rusted village pump at the outskirts of Ivneen. Father drew the water slowly, his hand moving the handle up and down so that water rushed in the sluice and spilt to the drain, where he urged the donkey to drink. He removed the mouthpiece and bit. The trap rocked weightlessly as the donkey leant forward. It lapped at the clear water with its long gray tongue and Father removed his old wool jumper and wiped down its body with it. His hands moved with a tender force as if he were lost in thought. The reins rattled in his hand. The donkey trembled with his touch but did not move away. Only when the animal was done did Father lean forward and, with closed eyes, wash the wound of his hand. Shards of white bone poked from the pink flesh. The shock of such damage frightened me, but I did not say a word. I watched as he scraped at the loose bits of matter, and the water was still running with blood when he wrapped his hand with a tear of his jumper.
My grandparents’ cattle had been sold off, or had fallen and been lost in the bogs, and, with them, the sheep, the goats, the few hens and bantams. I expected that if the bogs were turned upside down and the world put on its ear, all my grandparents’ lost livestock would emerge and, perhaps, my grandparents, and Uncle Rory with them. The land had been rented out as grazing pasture now, although the fields were barely more than bog and marbled rock. Situated above a bare rise that looked down upon Grandfather’s boat moored in the shallows, it was a place where the wind never stopped.
Movement on the dark skerries caught my eye. Gray seals were gathering and calling to one another in the fading evening light the way a family might when coming across the fields at the end of the day. So human was the sound, so lonely and disconsolate and full of longing, that I couldn’t help but think they were calling to us and waiting for some type of response.
In the Province of Saints Page 9