Perhaps it was from the cider we’d stolen from her older brother Martin, or from the champagne we’d been stealing from the serving tray, but I felt giddy and sick. Cait was all angles of white skin and at first I didn’t know where to look. I had a sense of her body through her dress, a light blue dress with thin straps that kept falling off her bare shoulders and which she had to set right again, first one strap and then the other. She’d bought it in Waterford especially for the gala, especially for our dance together, she said, and we laughed with the thought of her buying a dress for our dance. I waved to my mother across the room and we took more champagne from the tray and no one stopped us and Cait spilt hers down the front of the dress in her hurry to drink it before we were caught, and we laughed because the dress looked as if it might be ruined, and then we danced some more, pressed tightly together so no one could see the stain.
When Mr. Longley made his appearance, it was to shouts and hollers of appreciation. Lugh began to sing “James Connelly” and someone told him to shut up, that he’d ruin the mood, and so he quieted, but Mr. Longley raised his glass and shouted, Up the rebels! and everyone cheered, surprised but strangely pleased.
Mr. Longley’s face was flushed and a small group of men standing at the front, none of whom I recognized from the town, began clapping him on the back. They looked like strange businessmen, with their unkempt hair and dark turtlenecks beneath polyester suits, but he shook their hands with enthusiasm.
Broken strains of “James Connelly” came to us at the back and the men looked in that direction, and someone told Lugh to shut up again but everyone was laughing and we began to sing “Auld Lang Syne” even though it was the middle of August and the crowd lifted their champagne glasses and toasted Mr. Longley. After giving his own thanks and a short but modest speech, he left with his business companions, and everyone continued to dance and drink. I held Cait’s body close to mine and we spun laughing across the floor through a glitter of light that stretched the distance of the ceiling and made everything resemble the hard stars of a dark night in the country.
No one had lived in the old Greelish cottage for as long as I could remember. It lay down an overgrown boreen that ended at a rusted gate before wild fields and marshland. Beyond the house stretched woods, dark and shadowy and, once dusk came on, full with the song of nightjars. And beyond that, only the river. I often set snares in the surrounding fields, walked through the dilapidated and rusting sheds, surprising the odd sheep or crow, but now, this was my first time coming with Cait, and it was as if I were seeing the place through new eyes; the house with its red stained corrugate, its blasted whitewash, its crumbling walls, and the land it occupied: hedges and dikes and black-limbed woods, all once owned and worked by hand.
There had been a murder here once, a killing, when my mother was still just a girl. It was during the worst snowstorm the country had ever seen. Late one winter evening, a man came trudging down the boreen through the thickening drifts of snow. Michael Greelish and his family were just sitting down to dinner. There was a knock and Greelish rose to welcome the visitor in out of the cold. When he opened the door, he was shot dead. I imagined the door swinging back and the gunshot resounding in the small space, Mrs. Greelish with her child huddled over Mr. Greelish, and the gunman’s figure, a black shape falling with the white light down the lane.
Do you know the story? Cait asked.
I nodded. Sure everyone knows the story. We kicked our way through the scioc to the door.
Ay, but you don’t hear anyone talk of it. What was it all about?
They said he was an informer.
What happened to his family?
I don’t know. It was a long time ago.
It’s awful, she said, and we peered through the slats of the boarded windows. The house was dark, the glass panes long shattered by schoolboys of another generation, the frames rotted and pushed in by the wind and rain.
Your grandfather had a part in it, she said. That’s what they say. And your Brendan, too.
I laughed, shrugged. Brendan’s harmless. Sure to hear people talk everyone has a part in it.
Cait shook her head and grinned. Not like your bleeding family, they don’t.
Have you ever stood outside Walsh’s at closing time? You’ve never seen more patriots for the Cause in your life. They’re all dying for Ireland, and falling in the river after—feckin drunks.
Cait banged the boards and the wood rattled. Something inside the house shifted amongst the rubble and scurried away.
Your Brendan is no innocent. Sure everyone is scared of fishing the same river as him.
I thought of Brendan, of his easy smile, his quick banter, the shaggy-headed, grinning poacher. He owned the river above and below New Rowan and no one but he could lay claim to it; all the local poachers knew it and they went far afield to avoid him.
That’s the river. It’s different.
Well—Cait shrugged—he’s your uncle so, I suppose you would know.
We stared at each other and Cait grinned. Shall we take a look? she said.
Inside, the air had movement and was surprisingly cool. Sunlight spilt through cracks in the plaster and in the roof, yet everything seemed dry. There were old chairs, a red-and-white dresser that had once held fine china. A crumbling settle in which jumpers and shirts smelling of mildew still remained. Upon the plaster a St. Brigid’s cross hung, now black and dry with age. A mattress lay upright against the far wall and, together, we dragged it outside and beat it with boards, coughing in the dust that came off it. Then Cait doused it with water from the well and we lay it in the sunshine.
Cait found an old paraffin lamp and after she had cleaned the glass she lit it. She raised the wick, and amber light pushed back all the shadows. I swept an old stiff broom across the cambered cement floor, through bird shit, straw, and muck. I swept until I could raise no more dust from the floor and my arms were tired. I swept until there was the sense that we might have been the first people to ever have been there. I thought of the Greelishes and felt as if I’d stepped on their grave.
I told this to Cait and she rolled her eyes. You’re bleedin daft, you are.
Do you not believe in ghosts?
I do not.
I cleared the hearth of debris and brushed an inch of black coal soot from the walls; I built a small fire and the chimney’s draw was still good. We dragged the mattress back inside and lay it before the fire; the room grew warm and the bedding was quickly dry. As the light grayed above us, we lay down together.
Twilight settled a purple tinge on the world outside. I could hear a lone car way out on the Rowan road and, far away, Flaherty’s cows lowing because Lugh was on the bottle again or off down at the river and hadn’t brought them in from the low pasture to be milked. I thought of Father’s fishing tackles, husks of torn line and rotted eel creels, his oversize Wellingtons that Mother left still turned aslant of the fire, his foot so impressed into the sole that they were forever shaped to him no matter how much I wore them and returned them to that same spot every night; of his shiny, rosin rosary beads hanging untied and open in preparation of prayer; and of his large oiled shotgun gleaming dully and dutifully, sacrosanct above the mantel.
A stillness fell over the cottage and I blinked, realizing I’d fallen asleep. Cait lay warm against me. I could hear a soft rain on the roof and wind moaning in the rotting eaves, a crow cawing from the fields; I imagined pigs and cows chuffing and snorting from the shed backed up against the wall and the Greelish family sitting down to their supper. The roof joists groaned and I felt that I could hear worm grub sloughing through the old wood. Snow clomping from the roof edge and wetly thumping the cobble. And a man slowly making his way up the path from the boreen.
It was Thursday and I went with my mother into Rowan for the dole. We heard Uncle Brendan before we saw him, a black shape dancing at the edge of a roof high above the quay with the low sun at his back. He was acting the goat, as my mother would say, jeering at t
he passersby, throwing broken slates down onto the road, taunting the Gardaí, and exposing himself to the women.
Is that our Brendan? My mother raised her hand before her eyes, craned her neck back.
Katty Kinsella left down her shopping and stood in the road to look up. Shattered tiles lay strewn across the pavement. People passed to the other side of the street, fearing something might come down on their heads. Traffic coming over the bridge slowed as drivers leant out their windows to watch.
Katty! Ye fine big thing ye! Uncle Brendan shouted down. He laughed and wriggled his crotch. Katty! Do you remember that day at the back of the jacks when you taught me how to kiss? He raced across along the roof edge, jumping roofing bales. Katty! Do you hear me? Are you listening? Sure I’ve always fancied you, woman!
It’s your Brendan all right, Katty said and grinned.
He’s drunk, my mother said, sounding surprised and offended.
Aye, Katty said, him and half the town now that they’ve got their dole. She smiled and, with the faintest touch of melancholy, said, I always did like your Brendan. He was one of the good ones, y’know?
Mother looked at her as if she were mad. What the hell are you grinning at? she snapped. You’re as soft as the rest of them.
Uncle Brendan was laughing, his curly hair raking the sun as he leant over the edge, his face lost in the blackness of shadow. He swung and climbed and leapt between the stacks of tiles held suspended against the side of the roof, and then, as he reached for a joist, his feet slipped, his grin faltered, and he was sailing off the rooftop and out into the blue sky high over the road.
He struck the ground like a wedge of wood split by a maul. There was a loud splintering sound and he toppled to his side. I held my breath—we all did. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen; over and over again Brendan was a silhouette against the sky, spinning, tumbling down, wide eyes, stretched limbs, open hands, and curly hair whipping about his ears.
Mother of God, Mother said, but none of us moved. All traffic stopped on the quay. There was silence and then after only a moment, or perhaps it was minutes later, we heard him groan. A shudder ran the length of his body, and he held back his head and stretched his mouth open like a wounded animal. Everything was still, and then, in the way a tremulous ripple spreads across placid water and grows and grows, we heard the startling sound of his sob-broken laughter howling and breaking across the docks.
The lights in the pub, just off the Wexford road, were dim. My uncle Oweny’s face was a blur, as if I were looking at him through my Coke glass.
You killed Blackie? I asked him.
He nodded.
You told me you gave him away.
I know, but sure no one would take him. Ah, he was a lovely dog, he was, but you couldn’t train him and you can’t have an animal like that in the country, sure you can’t. He was after Flaherty’s bleeding sheep every minute of the day, and your poor mother was run ragged looking after him while you were at school. You’d have to have eyes in the back of your head with that devil. Eyes in the back of your head.
You told me you gave him away.
Oweny finished his pint and a coughing fit took him. He held the back of his hand to his mouth while the other squeezed the bar. When he was done he leant back, breathing heavily; his forehead shone with sweat. After a moment he moistened his lips and lit the cigarette.
I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you, but now —. Forgive me, Michael.
He stared into his glass. He was a lovely dog—his voice trembled—a lovely dog, but there was no other way, no other way—I’m sorry.
Lights twinkled dully off stained wood and on the mirrors behind the bar. He gestured to the barman and tilted his empty pint to his lips. Men were hollering in the back room. There was a soft thunk of darts striking the corkboard, the clatter of a pool cue driving a billiard ball into a rack of balls, the tinkle of glass against glass, the hum of the jukebox. I imagined how Blackie must have bobbed to the surface of the river all those years before, weeks after he’d been drowned. Maggots curling over one another in the rotted meat of him. His tongue lolling gray. And the hollow sockets where his eyes had once been glaring black.
Oweny wiped the sleeve of his heavy work jacket across his eyes and held it there. His rolled cigarette smoldered to a nub in the ashtray, its end moist from his lips. He reached for it, pinched it between yellowed fingers, and inhaled. The tip blossomed red.
He pushed his tobacco pouch across the bar to me, and I stared at it. I went to roll a cigarette for him, but he shook his head. He pulled me close, his jacket smelling of porter and the sea. His heavy hand rested on my hair.
Hush, Michael, hush, don’t cry. Please, say you’ll forgive me. He held out his cauterized hand and I stared at the three trembling fingers and at the empty space where thumb and forefinger had been.
On Sundays Oweny started driving by the Dolan grave site on the way to Wexford. The car crawling the hills, the blue-gray stretch of shadowed Sliabh Coillte looming before us, him praying and cursing the car on: For the love of God, come on now, girl, come on now, ye hoor, and then the car roaring down the other side into Christchurch, the bald tires smoking and screeching to a stop at the shop, where he’d always pick up a bag of Bullseyes for me.
He pointed to where my mother’s parents, Sheila and Martin Dolan, were buried. I’d never known them and knew nothing of them; they died of consumption, Oweny said, one after the other as if Grandfather couldn’t help but follow Grandmother into the grave.
He was awful little when his daddy died, but he remembers the snow and the animals bawling on the other side of the wall and Daddy choking to death in the room down the hall. And how Moira—Your mammy, he said and looked at me—brought him up after, how Moira schooled and fed them all.
Then there was his own son Declan, whom the river took, and he pointed to my mother’s future resting place and then his own. He pointed to where his own family would lie if they wished. He stood before his son’s grave for a long time and I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or to him. When he didn’t look up I walked to a corner in the sun and sat down, looking back on his dark shape.
A large oak overshadowed the site; it seemed like the only part of the graveyard shielded from the sun. It was cold, and the tree limbs swayed and groaned. And you have your place here, too, Michael, he said, if you want it. When he looked at me, I already knew that I didn’t. I wanted nothing to do with this place, nothing to do with its hold over him and my mother and the desperation they felt because of it. I would not have a place here, but I couldn’t tell him that.
The week before school began, I was helping Lugh bathe the sheep over at Milo Meaney’s farm. It was late in the season and cool; in the metal dipping pen I splashed in the slough and shivered. Wearing a waterproof rubber mac, overalls, gloves, and Wellingtons that reached up to my thighs, I still felt as wet as a fish and I thanked God that the day was almost over. I saw Toby Deane out of the corner of my eye leaning over the railing above the ramp leading from the pens. He’d ridden up silently on his new bike, a sparkling red Raleigh Racer, with black tape wrapped around the curled handlebars. When he saw that I had caught sight of him, he grinned. The bollocks was always grinning.
I hear you’re going with Cait Delacey! he shouted over the bawls of the sheep, consonants and vowels rounded like marbles in his English mouth. Lugh was in the pen and didn’t seem to take any notice of Deane. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth; his forearms tensed and his shoulders shook as he wrestled with the sheep. Lugh suffered from the sheep-dipping chemicals and this was as close as he’d come to the dip; even still, tonight he’d be shaking uncontrollably and scratching his skin and moaning with the pain in his head and body, and he’d go on the drink to alleviate it all. We referred to it as dipping flu, as if it was harmless and would pass, but mostly nobody ever spoke of it because we all knew it was much worse than that.
When he had led the sheep down
the metal ramp and into the trough, he drew on his cigarette and spat, looking at Deane as he exhaled.
I struggled with a big black-faced ewe, its eyes wide in fear.
She’s not half-bad-looking, mate, Deane continued, and I hear she’s a fierce ride, too. Just like her ole mum. I hear your old bloke and her got caught together and that’s why he ran out on you.
I put my weight into the sheep and it began to thrash violently. Its legs were buckling under me and clattering against the pen and still I strained and pushed against it. I smelled piss and shit and the chemical on me. I looked up and Deane was grinning; his short-bristled hair gleamed in the silver half-light. I’d plow that proper, mate, he said, show you how it’s done. He grabbed his crotch and wiggled.
Go fuck yourself, Deane. I released my hold on the animal and kicked it up the ramp, its legs bowing and then steadying. My own legs were weak. There was a rusted tamping bar against the shed’s wall, and as I clambered from the pit I reached for it. Breathing hard, I looked up but Deane was gone; I heard his laughter, the whir of his bike’s chain.
Lugh herded another sheep down the ramp, its black hooves skittering and clacking, shit dropping from its behind, splattering the ground. I dropped the bar into the sluice, where it rattled hollowly.
Was that your man Deane from the Albatross?
I nodded, leading the sheep from him.
A right little maggot, so.
I grasped the shackles of her neck so that she calmed, and eased her slowly into the green-brown foam. Evening shadows encroached on the shed and the pens; gray mist settled on the tin roofs.
The water grew darker and muddied with slough and clumps of wool. The sun had gone from the day; my lips were blue, my feet numb, my scrotum tight against my body. I was hoping that Lugh would call it a day or Milo Meaney would come down on the tractor from the farmhouse and tell us to pack it in. I felt tired and weak.
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