Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  Thomas was on unfamiliar ground. He’d never conversed with Flanagan and found being on more or less equal footing with him uncomfortable. “I’ll take that back now,” he said, holding out his hand.

  Flanagan said nothing for a moment. He just stared at the picture. At last he held it out and Thomas took it quickly from his hand, as if afraid he’d snatch it back.

  “Take it and to the devil with ya,” said Flanagan, drunkard’s tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “His lordship says you’re to be out by Monday.”

  “Out! Out where? This is our home!”

  Flanagan took a long pull at the bottle. “No more it is, young Conlan.”

  “Have you not heard of the Land League then?” Thomas protested boldly, none too sure himself what the national initiative for the three ‘f’s, fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale of land – meant, exactly, but knowing it was an incantation his father had set great store by.

  Flanagan laughed. “Killarny’s a month’s trek past the end of nowhere, boy. The Land League will come just after Christmas in July. Besides, you’re to be off t’America.”

  “America!” said Thomas, “yer talkin’ foolish. Come back when yer sober.”

  “If I was sober,” said Flanagan, “it’d been me you found in that bed t’other day.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about? You’re wasted drunk and don’t know what yer sayin’.”

  “That I may be, an’ t’ank the Lord,” replied Flanagan, whose pretensions at an English accent degenerated rapidly under the influence of alcohol. “Because wit’out it I wouldn’t have the strength to do me job.” So saying, he removed a small packet of papers from his leather shoulder bag. He handed them to Thomas who, laying aside his mother’s portrait, opened them and read. It took some time, as he hadn’t taken to reading as readily as Tiffin had, but eventually he unearthed the meaning.

  “This is passage to America.”

  “I said the same, did I not?” said Flanagan, taking another swallow of the piss-colored liquid that was making him senseless. “Fer the t’ree on ya. You an’ your brother, and . . . and wee Katy.”

  “The landlord be givin’ us these?”

  “Aye.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, me pestilential laddy,” said Flanagan, placing his heavy hand behind Thomas’ neck, “it’ll get you off the tax rolls.”

  Thomas understood. In 1846, Parliament had enacted the Poor Law to provide for the destitute, those too old, or infirm, or unlucky to be able to work their plots or mind their flocks. But, perverse as only Parliament could be, they further decreed that this welfare should be paid for by the landowners, many of whom were themselves facing ruin . . . crushed by new taxes levied on vast family estates, some of them hundreds of years in the making. Thus, in a hopeless cycle, the landlord could neither afford to keep such tenants, nor to let them go. Someone, however, thought of a practical expedient: ship them to America. Get them off the land, and off the tax roles. The perfect solution.

  Entrepreneurs quickly arose who were willing to buy cheap ships at the tether-end of their seaworthy lives, and crew likewise, and to stuff as many Irish in their holds as space would allow.

  “They call ‘em coffin ships,” said Flanagan. “You know why? Because passengers are as likely to die on ‘em as make it to Boston with breath left in ‘em, that’s why. That’s what you’ll be sailin’ on. Landlord’s doing you no favor. He’s just wantin’ you off the land and out of his hair.”

  Thomas didn’t care. He’d heard all about America from his uncle Theo who spoke of it with the fervor of a Protestant evangelist unfolding the wonders of the Promised Land to the upturned faces of the faithful. The image that resulted in Thomas’ unschooled mind was a mingled phantasmagoria beyond the capacity of the tongue to convey. A land of boundless spaces and copious plenty, where fruit fell from the trees into your mouth, game as well as leapt on your plate and handed you a knife and fork, and the whole geology swelled with gold and silver already embossed with the likeness of ones’ dreams.

  “There’s places,” Theo had said in one of Thomas’ most oft-visited recollections, “where you can see halfway ‘round the world. Like standin’ atop Glengary Craig and lookin’ out to sea. Only ‘tisn’t ocean you’ll be lookin’ at. It’s land! Enough of it to swallow Ireland whole a t’ousand times over, and never stop to fart. Mountains, and deserts, and mesas, and lakes, rivers, and plains stretchin’ clear to tomorrow and back. Me hand to the Blessed Mother!”

  Theo had chosen the losing side in the Mexican-American War, and it had broken his heart to come back to Ireland. “This close I was,” he’d often said, holding his thumb and forefinger a whisper’s-width apart, “to a patent on thirty thousand acres of the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant. That’s what the Mexicans promised us. Thirty thousand acres of prime grazin’ land . . . and forest as far as the eye can see! That close . . .” he would conclude, his voice dropping, his empty eyes enlarged by the glass as he raised it to swallow what remained of his fortune.

  Even Thomas’ fertile imagination strained to encompass the America Uncle Theo described. But there was something unspoken, too, a resource that didn’t exist in Ireland: hope for the future. It was his understanding that, in America, you didn’t have to be what you were born to. You could go as far as wit and determination would take you. If you failed, you got up and made another go.

  He shuffled through the papers again; Passage for three aboard a ship called the Crimea, set to sail from the port of Queenstown on the sixteenth instant.’ Golden tickets to the Promised Land.

  “That’s only five days from now!”

  “Aye. So ye’d best be off then, hadn’t ya? It’s a long walk.”

  “Where is this place?” He shook the paper.

  “It’s Cobh. The British renamed it.”

  Thomas was unenlightened. “Cobh?”

  “They call it Queenstown today. Near Cork . . . walk south and east through Killarney. And it’ll take every bit o’ five days with the little one in tow.”

  Thomas looked out the window which framed his brother and sister. “They’ll never make it, not without food.”

  “There’s food in me saddle bag,” said Flanagan. “Oaten bread and cheese. A skin of milk and some tea. Take ‘em. They’ll see you on a fair way, if ye stretch ‘em a bit.”

  Thomas was confused by Flanagan’s kindness and, therefore, suspicious of it. “Why are you doin’ this?”

  “Me job,” said Flanagan, looking out the door at nothing in particular. “Now, get on with ya.”

  “I’ve got to pack some things.”

  Flanagan shook his head. “Ye’ll leave everyt’ing but your clothes, landlord says. He’ll sell the rest to make up the rent.”

  Thomas’ mind flashed at once to his father’s precious boots, the same that his brother had brought back from Mexico and had been worn only to weddings and funerals since. Religiously polished and coddled, they were the closest thing to new-made he’d ever known. They and the gun and the clothes he was buried in were all that Josh Conlan could claim as his own at his life’s end, and Thomas meant to have them.

  “My father’s boots …”

  “They’re stayin’,” said Flanagan. “Get clothes together fer the t’ree of ya, tie ‘em in a travelin’ bag, and be grateful. I’ve known his Lordship to turn folk out with less…” He tilted his head back and drained the bottle, concluding the ceremony with a grimace and a belch. At that moment, he seemed to slip away into some haunted precinct of his mind and become unaware of Thomas’ presence or actions.

  Thomas quickly opened the trunk and extracted the few items of clothing that would serve them on the journey. By the time he’d tied these in a burlap sack, Flanagan was snoring loudly. Counting it grace, Thomas stole silently into his parents’ bedroom. The prized boots stood in careful array beneath the table where the water pitcher rested. The drawer in the table had always been a place of mystery, the only thing in the house no on
e was allowed to touch. It was, therefore, with a sense of reverence that he pulled the porcelain knob. The drawer slid silently open on its beeswaxed runners. Inside was his mother’s wedding ring, and a lock of hair tied with thread to a tiny square of paperboard on which was written the word ‘Alice’ in pencil. Flashing a glance toward the door, Thomas removed the contents of the drawer and stuffed them in one of the boots.

  Just as he was about to sweep them up, his eyes fell on Theo’s pistol beside the pitcher. He grabbed it and stuffed it in the other boot, wrapped the bundle in a blanket, and ducked back out into the main room before Flanagan should wake.

  “That’s the lot,” he said.

  “Huh? What?” Flanagan sputtered, emerging hazily from his stupor. “Oh. Well then, off with ya.”

  Thomas didn’t want to loiter and run the risk of the theft being discovered; neither did he want to arouse suspicion by seeming too eager to depart. He took a careful survey of the room and, as he did, his thoughts were drawn to the laughter and music of happier times within those walls.

  Music!

  “Me father’s squeeze box! It can’t be worth more’n tuppence to his lordship…”

  Flanagan shook his head. “Nothin’ but yer clothes. That’s me orders.” He looked up at the china cabinet and took down a teapot that had seen much use over the years. “But give this . . . this is for Katy, to remember her mother by. And ye’d best take a tin cup for each of ye.”

  Thomas took the teapot and cups and tucked them in the blanket that held the boots, briefly revealing the highly polished leather of one heel. He looked quickly at Flanagan, whom he seemed to catch in the act of looking away.

  “Drunk men see very little,” said Flanagan. “And recollect even less. You’d best be off before I take inventory.”

  For a moment, Thomas stood rooted to the spot, his mind in chaos at the events of the past few minutes. At last, standing as straight as possible under the weight of his possessions, he held out his hand. “Thank you, Flanagan.”

  At first, Flanagan didn’t acknowledge the gesture, then turning his rheumy eyes to the boy, he seized his hand, pumped it once firmly, and let it go. “Quick now,” he said. “And take the saddle bag as well. You’ll need it.”

  “But…”

  “I’ve another, I’ve another. Now, off wi’ ye!”

  With a final backward glance, Thomas left the house. His shadow had not departed from the threshold when Flanagan withdrew something from the folds of his coat: the picture of Alice. He held it to his lips and kissed it and, looking out the door at Katy who was assuming her share of the family burdens, the teapot, and her straw doll, allowed tears to well up from the past and flow silently down his face. “An’ may the road rise to meet ye, my little one,” he said, though whether to the photograph or its living reflection it was impossible to say.

  As the trio took the road down the mountain, past the foreman’s house – now empty – Thomas explained, as best he could, what had happened. Bad news and good news. By the time they drew abreast of the church, he had answered a stream of questions from both his siblings, many of which, like ‘What are we going to do when we get to America? What do they eat there? Where will we live? Will we go to school? Will we have shoes?’ he made up answers to – mentally tasking God to make it so and thus redeem the lies.

  At the back of his mind, the nagging suspicion that when Flanagan woke from his stupor and discovered the theft of the gun, he would repent of his kindliness and set out in sharp pursuit, hastened Thomas’ footsteps until Katy was hard-pressed to keep up. Drawing close to the church, though – a glance back toward the huddle of rough stone buildings of Farran revealing an empty road – he hesitated.

  “Hold here a minute,” he said, dropping his bag and the bundled blanket by the entrance to the church yard. The children demanded no explanation. They followed his footsteps, threading their way along the worn path among the tombstones, to the familiar cross marking the grave where their mother lay. Tiffin and Katy conducted their memorials in silence. Thomas spoke for them.

  “One day, ma,” he said, manfully battling the tears that sprang to his eyes, “we’ll see pa here beside you where he belongs. I swear.”

  “I swear,” Tiffin echoed, crossing his heart.

  “I swear,” said Katy, genuflecting, with no clue of the promise she’d bound herself to.

  As they neared the bog where their father lay, it began to drizzle. The grave was marked by a mound of black, freshly-turned mixture of earth and peat – the gravedigger had at least finished his job.

  “We’ll never be able to find it again,” said Tiffin, “once the weeds grow, and the rains come.”

  A quick survey of the immediate vicinity testified that this was so. Of the fifteen or twenty graves that were reported to lie in the vicinity, none could be seen, nor was there any marking as to who the occupants were, or why or how they had died. Thomas passed his bundles to Tiffin and studied the area.

  To the northeast, a dry-stone granite wall, covered with moss and three-fourths hidden by brambles, separated the church yard from the bogland. Situating himself at the seaward-end of the wall, he counted the paces to the earthen mound. “Eighteen steps,” he said aloud to himself, as his siblings gazed at him wonderingly. He looked around for another permanent landmark, but there was nothing man-made. On the slope rising from the western edge of the bog, however, was a natural spire, forever pointing at some unknown star in the heavens. From there, he numbered the paces to the center of the grave. “Thirty-six. Write that in your book, Tiffin.” Removing the precious bundle of papers from the sack over his shoulder, Tiffin licked the nib of his pencil and carefully inscribed the figures.

  “Finished, Thomas,” he said, reading for approval, “Eighteen steps from the northeast edge of the wall, thirty-six steps from the senotaf – I don’t think I spelt that right …”

  “It’ll do, Tiff’. We’ll know what it means.” Thomas stood by their father’s grave, thinking of all the rituals they’d failed to perform on his behalf, not least of all the great wake that should be every Irishman’s legacy and farewell. From somewhere in the unreasoning regions of his brain from which troubles arise leapt the notion to dig up the grave and, under cover of darkness, transfer his father’s remains to a proper grave in the churchyard. Upon its heals, from regions equally unknown, came a wiser voice inquiring whether his father’s mortal soul would rest easy slithering into Holy Ground to be buried under another’s name? There was no back door to heaven, Thomas was sure.

  Once again, as the clouds lowered and night began to gather in the east, he distributed the ragged belongings among them and, hand-in-hand, without a backward glance, they trudged the rutted road leading down the valley and up the forbidding heights of Conlan Pass.

  As night embraced the peninsula – starless and threatening rain – Thomas and the children nestled in a damp crag near the waterfall at Ballyrishteen, the ancient farm that clung to the hillside, its stones seeming to have grown from the earth. The light of a candle burned in one of the windows, and the wind tore ghostly veils of smoke from the squat chimney. Thomas debated whether to make themselves known to the cottier, but fearful they might be followed, chose the dark and cold of the hillside over discovery.

  Wrapped together with their worldly goods in the single woolen blanket, the fleshless bundle of orphans huddled together and, exhausted, slept deeply ‘til dawn.

  A rarity at that time of year, the sun broke over the mountain like a hoard of seraphim, piercing the shadows with golden fingers of warmth.

  While Thomas got water for tea, Katy made three portions of biscuit and soft cheese for breakfast, carefully folding the remainder in the saddle bag. Having spread the blanket in the sun to dry, Tiffin, ever curious, drew pictures of a plant he’d never seen before. With his tinder box, Thomas nursed a smudge of fire from a clump of peat and boiled water in Katy’s teapot. The sky spread high, blue, and cloudless in all directions and, between the warm Sep
tember sunshine and the full bellies, it began to seem as if they just might survive after all.

  Departing from the road, Thomas led them up the sheep path over the hills in the direction of Anuscaul, the village at the edge of his known world. Beyond that, for all he knew, there be dragons.

  By mid-morning, the world had changed. A black sky swept in from the northwest and angrily battled back the hollow promise of warmth and fair weather. Before noon, the atmosphere was more water than air, and they were soaked to the skin. Only the contents of the saddle bag – the papers of passage, their food, Tiffin’s notebook, and the blanket – were dry. Heads down, they slipped and slid down the muddy trail, threading their way around steaming piles of sheep dung, arriving at the edge of Anuscaul by two o’clock.

  Katy had begun to cough at intervals. At first, Thomas thought she was crying and tried to ignore her. He was cold and wet and miserable, too, and he had no remedy for sorrow. But she didn’t complain. She soldiered on, her tiny figure consumed by her cloak and hood.

  The cough persisted, and a sneeze now and then.

  “Katy needs to get dry and warm,” Tiffin said, as they skirted the village.

  “Tonight,” said Thomas. “We’ll find someplace dry to sleep.” Where? The next town of any consequence was Tinnahally, and he had no idea what they’d find there. “But we’ve got to keep going if we’re to catch the ship to America.”

  Thomas stole a quick glance at his brother and sister. Their clothes hung off their spare bodies in sodden masses. The shoes on their feet were hand-me-downs of castaways, Katy’s too small, Tiffin’s too big, both leaving blisters on their ankles. He was overwhelmed by helplessness. “We just have to keep puttin’ one foot in front’ve the other ‘til we get to Queenstown. Then we can rest on the ship . . . nothin’ to do for three whole weeks but eat and rest!”

  Doubt pressed on Tiffin’s brows. “Three weeks? Is that how long it takes?”