Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed

by Terence M. Green

  On the third day, I sit in the same place, hoping, then finally knowing, that he will return, and he does not disappoint me.

  “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning,” I say.

  “I’ve enjoyed our conversations,” he says. “Will you see your son before you head back home?”

  My eyes waver, then focus on a rose arbor, arched and bowed, climbing with red and green. “No,” I say. Jack opens the door of his Dodge roadster, climbs in, checks the rearview mirror.

  He hears more than I say, tilts his head. “I had a son,” he says.

  I watch a pollen-heavy bee lean forward into a daisy.

  “Both he and his mother were killed in the war, during the firebombing of London. I never married her. I never saw him.”

  I am quiet for a moment. “You didn’t have to tell me.”

  He is calm. The air is still. “We only seek,” he says, “to avoid unnecessary speech here.” He turns, looks at me. “Has your trip been worthwhile?”

  I look up. A lone hawk is circling high in the blue August Kentucky sky. “It’s been good.” Then: “It’s been inevitable. It’s like I’ve been drawn here.”

  “I know.” He looks at me. “This is the center of America.”

  I watch his eyes. They focus on a point I cannot see.

  “This monastery is holding the country together. This is its heart. I have a hermitage less than a mile from here. I write by candlelight at sunset, view the valley, the woods from my window. One has to be in the same place every day to realize how rich the uniformity is. The solitary life is awesome. It can shock you, and it can give you grace. We discover our eternal dimensions in the midst of our failures.”

  He reaches down, picks up a stone at our feet, rubs it clean, hands it to me. “Here.”

  I hold it in my palm.

  “This stone is life.”

  I say nothing.

  “It exists before and after death.”

  I close my hand over it.

  “It is all that we have, all that we are, all that we will be.”

  I squeeze its hard, unyielding surface.

  He offers his hand. “We are all monks,” he says. His hand waits.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Good-bye, Martin.”

  “Thomas.”

  “Pray for me,” he says.

  Before I board the bus to Bardstown, I walk once more among the array of small white crosses on the hilltop, feel the earth giving gently beneath my feet, among silent men who lead silent lives, among my brothers. My fingers touch the small stone in my pocket. And from a corner of my eye, cowled in white, retreating into an arched doorway, I see Jack, my son, fading into the stone walls.

  5

  March 1949, at age thirty-nine, Margaret has another baby, a son, Dennis. Anne, Ron, Judy, Leo, and now Dennis.

  On my way back from the hospital, ahead of me on the streetcar, with my eyes still open, in blacks and whites and grays I see Jack brushing a daughter’s hair, straightening up the collar of her coat against the cold, then pull the cord above his head. They leave by the side door.

  On Saturday, September 17, 1949, the Great Lakes excursion ship Noronic catches fire at its pier in Toronto harbor. The single exit blocked, the ship’s fire hydrants dry, one hundred and eighteen people die.

  I dream that in the smoke, Jack is trapped, looking for me.

  A warm, beautiful Saturday, weather in the seventies, just before her twenty-second birthday, October 14, 1950, Joan marries A1 McLeod. During the reception at the Old Mill, my sister, Mary Rossiter, four years widowed, in her eighties, drinks too much wine, but no one cares.

  Margaret and Tommy are here. Jock is here. Things are good.

  And then everyone is waiting. I must dance with her. One dance. It is expected.

  There is a spotlight, the circle widens and we are alone. As I move about the floor, my daughter in my arms, I realize that it is the same: I am touching Joan at last, lifting her, like Gramma in the cold room onto her bed so many years ago.

  “Thank you,” she says, and squeezes my hand. The words, with her face radiant, are a gift, all that I want. Joan is my second chance and I have not failed. There will be no further losses.

  I smile back, for me a rare smile, dance foolishly to the music, sway, and when it is over I surprise myself when I kiss her on the forehead, my heart thudding, and see that she is still, gloriously, smiling back at me.

  I light a cigar, pull my hat low over my brow, and watch as Joan and Al leave for Niagara Falls, unable to believe my eyes. Then, in the instant between joy and regret, between loss and possibility, I turn and fancy that Jack lights a cigarette beside me, his eyes sparkling.

  On Christmas Day, 1950, I board the streetcar, heading to see Margaret, to see what is left of my family.

  And then it happens. The blue candle goes out and it is my turn to die.

  CODA

  The wind owns the fields where I walk and I own nothing and am owned by nothing and I shall never even be forgotten because no one will ever discover me. This is to me a source of immense confidence.

  —Thomas Merton

  The Sign of Jonas

  In 1984, in the hospital room, jack, as unreal as I am, hands Margaret a rose, which seems real, which she clutches in her bent hand. Their bond is stronger than I have ever understood, born of shared experience of which I have not been a part. I have nothing to give her, nothing that can match this, but Margaret does not mind. Her hand would still hold out the nickel, give me everything. She has always asked for so little, and now is no different.

  My Margaret. Dying alone, as so many others. I think of my brother, my sisters, of all our children, and wonder how someone with so much family ends up so alone.

  Oh Maggie. Margaret is ours. Where are you£

  And then suddenly, Jack and Margaret are gone, the hospital is gone, the instant has vanished, and I am once again spiraling upward on black wings, turning, the sky above endlessly blue and white. My destiny as a father is over. My family, I understand, is scattered on the winds.

  Higher.

  The voice in my head is my mother’s, teaching me, pointing to objects, naming them, saying the words. Time happens to the world around me, but not inside, not to memory, because memory is beyond time, traveling forward with me, forging lives out of life, shaping the earth, the sky, the heart.

  I am higher than I have ever been before, clearheaded, lungs bursting, can smell the sea, other lands, can see farther, almost to Ireland, a loy digging in green hills so far away, and Elora the bridge over the Grand the Tooth of Time the blacksmith’s shop Sarah Patrick Loretta, now the Nipissing the hayloft at Boyd’s farm the Queen’s Hotel Brookfield Street Constance Street Pacific Avenue a Killarney razor and a shaving mug with a brush made of badger hair a silver thermos Da on the side of the road covered with canvas a Homburg hat a dancing bear a bottle of Lourdes water a smoking stand and a hassock, the Scott Hotel Fire Proof Moderate Price Tub and Shower Baths the rose arbor at Gethsemani

  the hawk falls on me from above finally yes talons shredding my feathers piercing my heart where all things are won and lost and I feel Maggie’s fingers touch my face Gert’s breath in my mouth and then I look into the hawk’s eyes fiery blue and see that it is Jack and understand as I hear him sing at last it is so perfect yes understand what I have been waiting for how it was to happen why it was to happen and am grateful

  am carried higher into the white clouds small heart pumping ecstasy as I join my family my sisters my brothers on the four winds vision dimming and look one last time at the hawk’s beak spreading my breast crimson one last time to see that it too has changed oh changed yes and am filled with joy as I see Gramma open her mouth about to speak to me yes oh yes for the first the very first time.

  St. Patrick’s Bed

  For Daniel Casci Green,

  the completion of my fabulous Trilogy

  Acknowledgments

  If you’re lucky, people surround you when
you’re writing a book, even when they don’t know they’re surrounding you. Their goodwill, suggestions, patience, advice, anticipation, and outright help all nourish, in ways sometimes too mysterious to articulate. So I have been lucky.

  This novel was written with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council. For their faith and approval and welcome assistance, I am indeed grateful.

  My cousins, Jacqueline McCarthy, Jo-Anne and Bob Reid of Madoc, Ontario, did more than their share with warmth and enthusiasm. Rick Conley of Ashland, Kentucky, generously provided me with valuable local information. Gayla Collins of Sheridan, Wyoming, helped me appreciate anew the mysteries of Ashland. In Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Bill Erwin and his wife, Patty, offered a hospitality and largesse second to none, making their city and environs come alive for me. To them I owe a special debt of gratitude.

  I want to thank Jim (J. Madison) Davis and his wife, Melissa, Phyllis Gotlieb, Andrew Weiner, Rob Sawyer, Ken and Judy Luginbühl, Ian Lancashire, Tom Potter, Chester Kamski, and Bill and Judy Kaschuk; the good people at

  H. B. Fenn: Harold Fenn and his wife, Sylvia, Rob Howard, Melissa Cameron, Heidi Winter, and Kari Atwell; and the terrific folks at Forge Books: Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, Jennifer Marcus, Jim Minz, and Moshe Feder.

  Once again, sincere thanks to my agent, Shawna McCarthy, and double thanks to my insightful editor, David Hartwell.

  As always, my sons, Conor and Owen, and my wife, Merle, all surround me with love and support in ways both wonderful and mysterious, letting the writing integrate smoothly into the rich fabric of family.

  And then there’s Daniel, our new arrival, the ultimate blessing for the new millennium. You don’t know how long we’ve been waiting for you. You helped too. More than you can know.

  Talk about luck.

  PART ONE

  Dayton, Ohio

  It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown.… A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole.

  —CARL JUNG

  Memories, Dreams, Reflections

  ONE

  I

  People keep dying. You’d think I’d be a pessimist, or depressed, or something, but I’m not. I love life. I love being alive. It keeps getting better all the time.

  Even though people keep dying.

  My father died on April 15, 1995. He was ninety years old. It was his second bout with pneumonia in six months, and this one did him in.

  Up until October of ’94 he’d done okay. Almost ninety and never had surgery. Two strokes though. The first was back in 1969, just before his sixty-fifth birthday—just shy of retirement. My mother had said that he worried and fretted about money and retirement so much that he’d given himself a stroke, but he recovered pretty nicely. The second was in 1992, age eighty-seven, which took a lot of the remaining wind out of his sails.

  Someone dies at age ninety, after a pretty good life, you don’t know whether to cry or say Thank God. I did both.

  He was in Toronto General. The hospital phoned me about eleven o’clock at night, then I phoned my brother and sisters, but because I live closest, I was the first one there.

  “Don’t take anything out of the room,” the nurse said. “Everything has to be accounted for.”

  I looked at her. “He hasn’t got anything.”

  She put her hands in her pockets, glanced down, left.

  But I did slip the red garnet off his finger and put it on my own right hand. It’s ten-karat gold, soft and beaten, not worth anything. The stone is squashed down in the setting, lopsided at one end. Later, when he got there, I told my brother, Dennis, what I’d done, wanting his permission, and he understood.

  When the nurse came back into the room, she opened the drawer in the bedside table. Inside were his glasses, dentures, and electric razor. That goddamned razor. He loved it. Those last years when he lived with us, he seemed to spend half the time with it spread out in pieces on his night table, screwdriver in hand, glasses pushed up on his forehead, servicing its idiosyncrasies. Then he’d run it around his face and neck long after there was any chance of a whisker hanging on, caressing himself.

  His mouth was open, eyes shut. “I’d like the dentures put back in,” I said.

  She nodded.

  And there he was. There it was. The end. Just like that. I couldn’t believe it. The rocks and sands of my life had shifted beneath my feet.

  I looked down at him. Where are you? I thought. I don’t understand. What happened?

  I put his glasses and razor in my pocket. I never knew what to do with them, so I still have them.

  We put nearly all his clothes in green garbage bags and gave them to Goodwill. Kept his neckties, though. They were kind of interesting. He had a penchant for wine-colored and navy-blue, with white polka dots. One said “Pure Silk, Foulard, Imported by Forsyth” on the label. They were a little wider than the ones that I wore. But you never know. I might wear them. I might.

  I still have his tackle box too. I don’t know what to do with it either. It’s steel gray, covered with rust spots. There’s a yellow sticker on the front, just above the latch, that says “Truline—Seamless—Eaton’s of Canada.” When you lift the lid it unfolds into three trays, and an odor steals out that takes me back to childhood in a wooden rowboat, then disappears.

  Inside is my father.

  The hula popper, with the rubber grass skirt rotted away. Then the rest of the names crystallize: flatfish, crazy crawler, jitterbug, Mepps spinners. There’s a trailer chain for keeping fish in the water after a catch, boxes of hooks, razor blades, a hundred yards of eight-pound test line, leaders, sinkers, a pair of pliers, a Langley Fisherman’s De-Liar scale. And then there’s the wooden, handmade hand-painted lure, about four inches long, that we never saw him use. We’d ask him about it, my brother and I. He’d only smile and tell us that it was for muskie. He never fished for muskie.

  This is my legacy.

  II

  Life keeps surprising me.

  I didn’t see it coming. I hardly see anything coming. That night of my father’s funeral, when Adam asked about his own father, I was floored. A bolt out of the blue. He’d never asked before. Never mentioned him. Nothing.

  In hindsight, I don’t know why I was so surprised. Now that I think of it, if he was ever going to ask about his father, that would have been the logical time. But I didn’t think of it then.

  Hindsight. Like they say. Twenty-twenty.

  He asked it simply. “Is my father alive?”

  Jeanne and I both stopped chewing.

  Adam waited. He’s twenty-one now, majoring in English at the University of Toronto, going into third year. He is my stepson. He was ten years old when I met him that summer in Ashland, Kentucky, twelve when we settled here in Toronto, fourteen when Jeanne and I finally married, and I’d always thought that I was the only father in his head.

  Like I said, it blindsided me.

  And Jeanne. His mother was so taken aback she was speechless for a good thirty seconds.

  I watched her, then Adam, waited.

  Finally, she nodded. “I think he is. I don’t know for sure, but I think he is.” Her eyes darted to me, then settled on Adam. They stared at each other in silence.

  Then Adam began eating again, patient, calm. We followed his lead. After a minute or so, though, he asked his next question: “Where is he?”

  I looked again at Jeanne, then Adam. When she caught my eye I said, “Why don’t I get us all some coffee?”

  Adam is a big, good-looking kid. I still thought of him as a kid, even though I was staring at his dark five o’clock shadow and his hands on the table in front of him were bigger than mine. But twenty-one. When you’re fifty-one like I am, twe
nty-one is hardly on the map.

  Looking at him, though, digesting his question, unsettled by my own new loss, a collage of myself at his age drifted back: the 1960 Chev Impala with 111,000 miles on it, my job as a truck driver’s helper, delivering office furniture around the city, the summer of ’64, the Beatles. Girls. Drinking. Living in my parents’ basement. Girls.

  Adam was a quiet kid. You start being quiet around your parents at puberty. Too much stuff going on inside. But sliding free from my flash of nostalgia, watching his patience after dropping his bombshell, I realized that he was definitely on the map, and had been for a long time.

  Adam never called me Dad. It was always Leo. When he was twelve, shortly after we’d moved here, he asked me why there were cracks in the wall and ceiling of his room.

  “I haven’t painted them yet,” I said.

  “I don’t mean that. I mean how do the cracks get there in the first place. If a house is built properly, shouldn’t there be no cracks at all?”

  I shrugged. “The house is old.”

  He was quiet, considering it.

  “Must be sixty years old,” I continued. “Houses settle. Cold and heat, expansion, contraction. It just happens.”

  He was sitting in his bed. I remember that it was winter, that it was cool, that his room needed better storm windows.

  He waited for more. But I didn’t tell him anything more. I didn’t tell him that everything settled, everything cracked, that the rocks and sands shifted beneath your feet. I knew that he would find out for himself soon enough.