I nodded.
Good. It will be under better conditions than these—I promise.
He stared at me. You believe me, don’t you?
Yes, I said. I wanted to believe him very badly.
I smiled and Father grinned. He pulled me close and squeezed me against the side of him, and then, taking my hands in his, he surprised me by beginning to spin me in a tight circle, something he hadn’t done since I was a small child. Trust me, he said, and I wrapped my arms about him and held on, my legs swinging out wider and wider until I was completely airborne and in risk of being spun out over the fields, tethered only to the earth by my hold upon Father, and by his hold upon me. And then, at the edge of my sight, as if it had been there all along, a flaming red bush of Jericho rose burning in bright bloom from the dark mottled sedge.
Someone had strung a large banner over the mantel that read SLáN AGUS BEANNACHT and I wondered whether they were saying farewell to Uncle Rory or to my father, for Father was merely returning to the country of his emigration. And because I didn’t want to believe that America was Father’s home and that he would never be returning, I thought this farewell must be for Rory.
There was food and drink for everyone. Men brought salmon and trout, and poitin, which they passed back and forth commenting upon its various qualities, laughing and teasing as they judged one man’s ability at the still over another’s. Women brought barmbrack and poultry, fresh eggs, vegetables from their gardens, and soda bread so that everyone could make sandwiches. The two old men who’d come to visit Father sat by the fire and told stories with the older people, although truly, there were no young people there. Whenever I passed, they reached out to touch me and look at me and I knew that when they did, they were thinking of Rory. The one with the face like ash-bearded coal muttered something in Irish and his speech was slurred, his eyes glistening. He stared at me and when I didn’t respond he repeated in English, We’ll be sorry when you leave, and it sounded so sad that I didn’t know what to say. I smiled and shook his hand and moved away.
I kept the fire going well through the night and was glad for the attention and the distraction, the simple noise of people, of whiskey-warm breaths filling the room, and then as it got later I made a big pot of tea for those who had stayed. The guests were slightly drunk but pleasant and every once in a while I’d see a woman go out into the courtyard, and, leaving the door swinging wide behind her, she’d squat at the very edge of light cast from the door. Half in light and darkness, pale knees and thighs shining brightly, a splatter of urine upon stone, and then up with her stockings and quickly back in the house again amongst the music and the laughter.
A few of the men who brought their accordions were playing loudly and they kept cheering for Father to pick up Rory’s accordion, teasing him to show them all how it was done. Father smiled and his cheeks glowed. He seemed happy and eager to please them, as if a weight was lifting off of him now that he was returning to America. Chairs were pulled back, women lifted the hems of their skirts, and people began to dance in the center of the room.
The men who were sitting began to sing and stamp their feet. I watched as a couple spun in the center of the room, round and around, gyring faster and faster, the man leading, the woman clinging to him and looking as if the wind had been knocked from her. Her hips were wide and her face was deeply lined and flushed; she seemed old and young at the same time. She had her head thrown back and was laughing. Her slender pale neck caught the candle glow and as she spun her rich black hair spread out behind her into a thick ropy fan. And I was cheering and clapping and then someone had taken Rory’s accordion down from its ledge and placed it in Father’s lap and Father took up the accordion and everything seemed to move slowly after. The smile faded from my face, a tightness squeezed my stomach, and I felt I would be sick.
I closed my eyes as he lifted the melodeon, and I waited for him to see the damage that I’d done. But when Father’s fingers worked the buttons and keys and he opened the bellows, all this beautiful sound was rushing, spilling out, so beautiful that it seemed it could not possibly have come from Father nor belong to this room.
This is what I wished to happen. But in the silence I heard only Father crying. I turned to him and his hands were curled into claws poised above the ivory buttons; he depressed the keys but nothing would come. He raked at the silver, unable to open up the accordion to its beautiful rich sound as both he and Rory had once done. All the dancing, the foot stomping and hand clapping had stopped. Everyone in the room was looking at him, and his mouth parted as if in pain.
I can’t, he sobbed. For fucksake—I can’t.
He began to rock himself slowly back and forth, and I saw Rory with the face of my father sitting huddled by the dying embers of the fire, praying or singing as he died quietly, eyes fluttering like beautiful dark moths, black lung-blood bursting from his mouth, and nothing to see beyond this little kitchen, no lights no sounds no music but the wind the wind the wind—and the red accordion spilling, tumbling down from his hands.
the road to emain
September 1979
My aunt was peeling the spuds, her large body shaking with the effort of it. The kitchen walls were perspiring with steam, and the smell of carrots, turnip, cabbage and fish; hot, freshly baked bread; and salted, freshly churned butter seemed to drip from that steam so that I could almost taste it. The lids of pots were clacking—tap tap tapping as they boiled on the cooker. Mother checked the fish and then turned to me. I hadn’t seen her as active in so long, and she smiled as if she enjoyed the work. Her face had regained some weight to it; it was no longer gaunt and sad looking. She wore a plastic bonnet on her head, tightly bound at the front and back. Chrissy Malone from up the road was down that morning doing her hair. Fixing it in a style, my mother said, mimicking Chrissy, who was a Corkwoman, more fashionable, and she curled her mouth to draw out the words that rose high at the end, for the city than the hospital.
A light seemed to burn from her insides. She slapped my aunt on the backside and my aunt jumped. Jaysus, Moira! she hollered and the knife she had been using to peel the spuds clattered into the basin.
Ah, go on, sure you’ve got meat enough on you for that, and besides, when was the last time a man had a go at you—by God, that’s what you need now, Una, a fierce go with a man, you quare old cow, you.
Mother laughed and slapped her playfully again. I laughed and spit the milk from my mouth. My aunt shook her head. Jaysus, Moira, Jaysus. Don’t be saying things like that in front of the boy. You’re an awful woman, altogether, sure, you are, awful!
When Mother grinned I could see how long her teeth had grown, or rather, how her gums had pulled away with the illness—the new fullness to her face couldn’t hide this; I suppose that it was a mark of her condition, little scars that were left as a reminder. But she was better now and that was all that mattered.
She looked out the window toward the fields and was still; a rain shower moved quick and dark over the land, the sun spilling down through it in shades of broken light, and then it was past and the fields shimmered bright and wet again. She shook her head incredulously with the wonder of it all.
There were fields that stretched for miles across wide, low valleys, fringed by smaller glens and woodlands, and stone ruins. My uncles were beyond the far rise of the valley where the Nore and Suir Rivers ran, in the field we rented from Flaherty. Beyond that were the Flats, a marshland where the rivers merged below the high rocky scree. A mile or two beyond was the town on the banks of the Barrow, and farther still, there was the sea.
How many haycocks did you say they’d baled, Michael? she asked, still staring across the valley. I can’t believe your man has us doing this this late in the year.
Flaherty was supposed to have had the field topped and baled for us that summer; and though the field had been cut, the hay had been left to rot there. I looked at my hands, at the red, weepy blisters there, and tried to remember how we had arranged the hay in t
he field. I counted on my fingers.
I think it was five?
Those men, bloody loafers, so, she said, but even this seemed to entertain and amuse her.
She left the kitchen and my aunt’s eyes followed her; together we listened to her quick short footsteps on the lino, the squeal of the rear door, and then her feet crunching the gravel and her voice as she called the cats to her.
Michael, she called, go get Oweny and Brendan out of those fields. The work will still be there tomorrow.
She called to me again: Fetch some water while you’re there, and tell Brendan to clean his mouth out before he comes in the house. The saints give me strength, where did I get a family like this at all?
My aunt smiled. Praise be to God, the geis has been lifted from her, she said. Her words filled my head with a silence so great that only slowly did I return from it to the sound of water rushing from the tap. My aunt, a big burly country woman, unused to displays of tender emotion, stared toward the space Mother had occupied moments before, with such a strange look that it took me a while to understand it was a look of love that could not be expressed in any other way.
After the soft rain, the fields were full of amber light; the unharvested grain threw the sun back in sheets. A wind swept down from the hills and bent the stalks back and forth; rain-blackened scioc shuddered stiffly amongst the yellow gorse. Children’s voices at play somewhere, perhaps miles off, were intermingled with the noise of men and the churning of threshers. A herd of Jerseys, mottled black and white, lowered their heads to drink at the falls below Delacey’s. Flax dripped through the air, heavy, dry on my eyes and the back of my throat.
In the glen, the trees rose high, higher than in the surrounding fields, and the sound of the falls ebbed, murmuring softly through the underbrush. I descended through trees, the air was cool and moist, and things scattered in the gorse. All sounds fell to a muted hush, with something like reverence.
When I was younger, this was a favorite place I would come to of a twilight. Beyond, everything moved as it would, but here, time was stilled. I’d watch the light fade deep in the woods and the mist of dusk rolling silent and thick through the trees. And once, when I was ten, I even saw the spirit of Peadar O’Suilbháin’s widow, the witch that haunted the glen.
My uncle Oweny often talked of the O’Suilbháins’ little house, a hovel really, with the pig and cow quarters backed up to the side of the house the way they used to be. It was still there, down the small overgrown boreen deep in the bottom of the glen, and within it lived the widow Ní Suilbháin, whom everyone called a witch. It was said that she had killed her husband and children. Her love had been so great, so possessive of them, it had poisoned and consumed them, and they died with the fever of it. Now she wandered the glen and could never know love again.
I was in awe of the story, not really frightened by it. It seemed sad and odd that the local folk could think that the widow’s love, being so great, had not sheltered and comforted, as one expected love to do, but rather destroyed everything close to her. If it had truly happened as they said, how sad that must be—to lose everything just because you loved so very much.
It was autumn then, too, and near the end of the day, and I’d just come from running across the hills. A wind moved across the treetops, and it was the sound of waves breaking softly upon a shore. I closed my eyes and let the sensation of the place rush over me: soft moss beneath my feet, sunlight flickering down through the treetops, glinting shafts flickering and trembling in reds and oranges across the insides of my closed eyelids.
And then, I heard the dry snap of twigs, so unexpected and loud in the hush, I stopped and my breath caught. I opened my eyes. Distance in that place was hard to judge, but there, before me, it seemed not more than twenty feet away, stood a woman, with a basket of small shrubs and berries cradled against her bosom as if she were protecting them. A red shawl was tied about her head, and she wore a stiff black dress, the type the old people wore at funerals.
At first I thought her old, and wizened, her back bent by the years, but I realized she was merely stooping to pick wildflowers and had paused in midstride, as if somehow she could avoid detection if she remained as still as a wild doe. When her face rose I saw that, though it was thin, it shone with the color of youth. Her eyes, though I don’t know how I could possibly see them, being as far away as I was, were a bright blue. A damp wisp of red hair slipped from her shawl and curled on her brow.
I stood still: it was the witch Ní Suilbháin. I held my breath and waited. Eventually, she began moving through the trees once more. And I sensed that I could hear her singing then, like the wind singing through the high treetops. It became darker and from the deeper woods came the cry of nightjars, which always gave me the shivers. Only then did I wake and begin to move, wondering if I had seen her at all or if it had just been my imagination. I had no idea how long I had been standing there, but I kicked up the dry combs and leaves dampening the mossy floor and sprinted from the glen.
And after, even though Molly and I often dared each other to take the path at dusk, I never would again.
When I jumped the stile into the field, Uncle Brendan was standing atop the sixth haycock, tamping down the layers, laying them like thatch, so that the rain would run off and the hay would stay dry. He shifted his weight easily and gracefully atop the high mound. Short, stocky Oweny practically raised a bale of hay to him with each heft, his wide legs planted on the flatbed like small oaken tree trunks. Before I was halfway across the field, I could hear the swears out of Brendan’s mouth. Oweny smiled, and nodded, and continued to heave the hay up to him, reserving his strength for the work. A cigarette dangled from the edge of Brendan’s mouth. This is quare daft business altogether, sure you couldn’t give this hay away. It’s good for nothing. It’ll start to ferment as soon as we have it indoors. We’ll have feckin Farmer’s Lung. I can feel it in me throat already.
Oweny grunted. That’s your smoking, Brendan, not the hay. This is rotted already—it will do fine as bedding. Someone will take it off Moira’s hands, so.
Brendan’s eyes squinted through the smoke as I approached. Ah, for fecksake, Michael, where’s our tay?
Mammy has it on, I said. She wants you to come in for it. She and Auntie Una have cooked up a huge meal.
Is that right? Did you hear that, Owen? Sure, Moira’s in rare ole form these days. By God, I knew it, too, I knew she’d have the old sickness bet, sure what do the fuckin doctors know about it at all, the fuckin thievin hoors.
Oweny nodded.
And when was the last time Moira McDonagh let her brother into the house, now, tell me that?
The last time you were in the house you picked up the cat and swung her by her tail around the room, Oweny said. You broke all of Moira’s good china. And, he continued, the time before that, you were drunk and argued with Padraig before he left for America.
Brendan grunted.
Before that, the Guards were chasin you, and —.
Well, never mind now, sure that’s all in the past. Moira understands all that, so. Isn’t that right, Michael?
Mammy says to clean your mouth out before you come in for the tay.
Oweny laughed.
And by God, Brendan said, isn’t she a fierce woman altogether, a great Christian altogether, worried about the sounds that come out of a man’s mouth now.
Oh ho, Brendan Dolan, Oweny said, you’d be singin a different tune if she were here.
Brendan grinned and pulled on his cigarette. His long fingers were yellowed by the tobacco, and even though his hands were callused, I could see the bloody damage the threshing had done to them. Swallows swam over his head, calling to one another excitedly, sweeping low over the threshing and the windrows. Never mind Saint Patrick, he said, still grinning, it was that woman drove the bloody snakes from Ireland. He jumped easily to the ground, landing like a thin wiry cat, and threw the pitchfork powerfully into the base of the haycock where it quivered, rooted to the
ground.
I raced my uncles back to the house, trampling the long rushes underfoot, hurdling the stone walls. Out of breath, I stumbled into the house, preparing to take off my Wellingtons, but as soon as I stepped through into the scullery, I sensed something was wrong; I did not hear Mother’s voice. There was an unnatural stillness in the air—that absence of life that I could read with my nerves, it had become so familiar.
Radio 2 was playing old band tunes; the sound drifted ghostlike down the hallway as if coming from far away. Where’s Mammy? I called, and to my ears, my voice crashed against the ceiling, clattered against the walls. The lino dripped with condensation.
Aunt Una turned from the sink, her face flushed from the heat. Is she not with you? I thought she was gone to bring you lads in. She waved her knife in the direction of the fields and then went back to her peeling.
I ran from the house toward the pastures. The fields were burning with the setting sun. I saw my mother as she had been when her illness was in full sway and before we knew how sick she was. When she walked the fields or the glen or made her way down to the river at dusk and wandered the countryside in silent pain as Molly and I prayed for her. A time when she’d leave the house each twilight and we feared she would never return.
I sprinted toward the glen, stumbled over a sty, and ended up in a nest of thorns and brambles. Berry juice and blood streaked my arms. Brendan and Oweny would be taking the high path through the fields. I had not passed her coming home; she could only be in the glen. I ran as hard as I could, my ribs pressing sharply against my lungs. I splashed through the water at the Falls; startled cattle broke into a run.
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