Three Wishes for Jamie

by Charles O'Neal

  “Why did you do it, lad? Why did you do it? Have you lost your wits entirely? Or are you so torn inside that only the father and mother of a beating will cure you?” The old man lifted the body tenderly to his feet. “Come along. I’ll walk you to the stream and wash your face.”

  The ring of watchers dissolved as swiftly as it had formed, but there was no further call for music and dancing. Bunn sought Maeve but she had disappeared. Nor did Shiel Harrigan or Aunt Bid know where she had gone. Still angry but with a growing uncertainty, Bunn moved through the camp seeking her. Some of the men drew aside when he approached.

  There was little approval of his conduct among those who had watched. Bunn found himself explaining over and over again that Jamie had begged for it.

  “There was nothing to do but give it him,” he argued.

  Jamie lay in a semistupor beside the stream. As through a mist he heard the water bubbling in the brook and felt someone bathing his hands and face and squeezing drops of water between his swollen lips. There was an exquisite pleasure in lying perfectly still, though every inch of him ached like a broken tooth.

  “You’re very good to your wayward cousin, Owen Roe Tavish,” he whispered.

  “Shush,” a voice said soothingly. It was a softer, gentler voice than Tavish’s. Jamie strove to open first one eye then the other, but they were both swollen fast.

  “Maeve?” he whispered.

  “You mustn’t talk,” she answered firmly.

  He lay a long moment without speaking. Finally he said: “Sure now I know I do be dreaming … dreaming.”

  Maeve had brought bandages and salves from her tent and treated his wounds. Her fingers were deft and gentle but every spot she touched brought a wince of pain from Jamie.

  “Does it hurt so terribly?” she asked.

  “Only where I’m flesh and blood,” said Jamie. “Would you not lift one small corner of an eyelid so I can see your dear face? Sure there’s more healing in the sight of you than in the blessed hands of Brigid, herself.”

  Maeve rested her finger tips on his swollen eyes. “Why did you let him beat you? Why didn’t you fight back?’”

  “Lay hands on the man you’re going to marry?” Jamie protested. “Sure I’d sooner kill a robin … and a robin is that sacred, to kill one raises a lump in a man’s hand and he can never work again.”

  “There’s more behind all this than robins and lumps in the hand,” Maeve scolded sagely. “Anyway, he’s raised lumps on every other part of you.”

  Jamie’s lips struggled with a smile. “Sure I’d like to keep them always since your two hands have blessed them.”

  “Never mind,” Maeve consoled. “’Tis your fate to be always getting newer and better ones.”

  “Aye,” said Jamie, “but will you be there to soothe them always?”

  “Aye,” she said simply. “That is my fate … to be there … always.”

  It was thus that Travis Bunn found them. Jamie was asleep, his head in Maeve’s lap. The anger and ferocity had gone from Bunn. In its place had come a great uncertainty. Loving Maeve desperately, and sensing the girl’s superiority, he had waited out the long year of their engagement with mounting eagerness. Now he stood before her silent and humble.

  “Go away,” said Maeve, without looking at him.

  “They were worried about you at the camp. You’ll be coming back soon?”

  “When I am ready.”

  “Is that what I’m to say to your father?”

  “Say to him that you’ve no longer the right to speak for me,” Maeve flashed, “and that Shiel Harrigan did not raise a daughter to marry the likes of one who beats another who will not defend himself.”

  Jamie awoke as Bunn went humbly away to lay his case before Shiel Harrigan and Maeve’s relatives.

  “Did you send him away?” he asked.

  “Yes. Are you surprised?”

  “No. It was fated.”

  Maeve laughed the light, delicious laugh that Jamie loved. “And getting yourself beaten into blood and oblivion had nothing to do with it?” she challenged derisively.

  The memory of the beating made Jamie wince. “A man must give fate a ‘leg-up’ ever now and again,” he conceded ruefully. “But that you were meant to be mine I knew from the beginning, though how I was to go about getting you, I didn’t know. ‘Travel and the love of the woman of my choice,’ I was promised.…”

  “Promised?” said Maeve, “and who promised you?”

  “The Queen of the Fairies! Three times she appeared to me in a dream. Travel I’ve had already—halfway around the world! And the woman of my choice I met cooling my feet in a mountain stream. There I saw her golden hair outshining the sun.”

  Maeve bent and kissed his swollen, battered lips. “I think I knew it, too,” she said, “though there was no Fairy Queen to tell me. Maybe a woman knows without being told.”

  “Shall I speak to your father?”

  “Father will do the speaking … to us,” she answered wryly. “But when all the words have been said … and a bucket of tears shed … and me banished—and brought back—and banished again … then I’ll marry with Jamie McRuin.”

  “If you’re that sure,” Jamie said with a sigh, “then I’m that comforted.”

  “I’m that sure,” Maeve teased him: “And I didn’t need any nodding from the Fairy Queen to help in the making up of my mind.”

  IX

  Maeve’s quiet announcement that she would marry Jamie McRuin, an outsider; a stranger and a penniless wanderer; a boy with no fortune who fought for his love with his hands in his pockets, shocked and scandalized the entire camp. All the Harrigan relations, including children who were old enough to understand the issue at stake, were called into solemn conference. Hour after hour and spokesman after spokesman hammered at Maeve for the breaking of her troth. It could not be done, they said. Her father’s word had been given. The bond had been sealed by a handshake. There could be no going back on such an agreement. Maeve must go through with her marriage.

  “Travis Bunn is a devil,” Maeve said simply, “and I’ll not marry with a devil.”

  “Better marry with a devil you know than a devil you don’t,” Auntie Bid warned.

  “I’ll marry with Jamie McRuin or no one,” Maeve insisted.

  “Then you’ll marry no one,” Shiel Harrigan declared.

  “Is this the respect a good girl shows her father’s wishes?” a cousin from another camp demanded.

  “You know that outsiders are not accepted into our families,” said another.

  “He would be accepted if Father said the word,” Maeve answered.

  “That I’ll never do,” said Harrigan.

  Maeve showed no sign of wavering, and Me-Dennis was dispatched in haste for Father Kerrigan. “Tell him it’s a matter of life and death,” Bid roared, loud enough for the entire camp to hear.

  Travis Bunn kept to his tent and Jamie and Tavish also stayed apart. The usual festivities were suspended and a pall of inactivity hung over the camp. Tavish had asked permission to speak for Jamie but his offer had been sharply declined.

  “She can never hold out against them,” he said to Jamie, as the rumble of male voices resounded from the Harrigan tent.

  But every masculine roar was matched over and over again by the tempered steel of Maeve’s reply. She gave as good as she got.

  “Think of it, now,” said Tavish, after hours had passed, “a slip of a girl in the full presence of her youth, standing against the entire clan. They named Maeve well … after the great warrior Queen of the West.”

  “She’ll never give in,” said Jamie confidently.

  “They may wear her down.”

  “There’s a great rock in a salmon leap near Kiltartan,” said Jamie. “When the salmon are making their run they have to jump this rock. Some of them make it, but others slide back across the rock on their soft, white bellies. There is a legend that when the bellies of the salmon have worn that rock away to no bigger t
han a hazelnut, then the cry of the Old Kings will be heard and Ireland will be united. Maeve is that rock, and the words of her relatives are like the soft, white bellies of the salmon.”

  Jamie’s words were brave enough, but when he saw Me-Dennis drive up with Father Kerrigan, a fearful ache rose inside his chest. The priest went directly to Shiel Harrigan’s tent and for a while his voice could be heard speaking firmly to Maeve. At first she answered steadfastly enough, but after a time she fell silent, and the listeners outside could hear only the priest’s voice raised in steady remonstration.

  “They’ve beaten her,” Tavish groaned.

  Jamie said nothing, but the hope and exultation went out of him. After a while Shiel Harrigan and the relatives came out of the tent, leaving Maeve and Father Kerrigan alone. Jamie waited until he could bear no more, then impulsively he crossed to the tent and let himself in.

  Maeve was sitting humbly before the priest, her face streaked with tears. Father Kerrigan turned toward the intruder with surprise. “Who are you?”

  “It’s Jamie McRuin, Father,” Maeve said.

  “Oh,” said the priest sternly, “you may as well come in. I’ve some things to say to you, too.”

  He rose and paced back and forth. Finally he paused in front of Jamie and looked at him severely. “Well, young man, you’ve stirred up a pretty kettle of fish.”

  Jamie’s throat knotted so that he could not speak. The pain inside his chest ached like a wound that would not heal. This, then, was the finish of his second wish; for no one—not even Maeve—could stand against the combined pressure of parent and priesthood.

  Dropping to his knees, Jamie bowed his head to hide the great, hot tears that clung smarting to his eyelids. “I know it, Father,” he said, striving to hold his voice steady. “Forgive me. The fault is mine—not Maeve’s. I’ll do what I can to make it right … anything you say! I’ll go away … disappear … now … at once! Only promise me one thing … make them leave Maeve alone. They’ve been at her for hours … like dogs after a doe! Harrigans—thicker than pine needles on the ground—hammering at her … never letting her be. Make them stop it, Father.…” The words stuck in his constricted throat and he could say no more.

  The priest drew Maeve toward the entrance of the tent. “Go sit with your Aunt Bid,” he said quietly. “You’ve been forward, disobedient, and sharp-answering. Try being silent, modest, and humble. Sympathy has melted more stony hearts than tongues like hammers.”

  With Maeve gone, he turned back to Jamie. “So you’ll go away? And just where will you go, lad?”

  “Anywhere … everywhere. Just so there be water enough to drown a man … wood enough to hang him … and earth enough to bury him,” Jamie said.

  “Here now, don’t be giving me any of your flossy speeches. What I want to know is, do you really love that girl … and just how certain are you?”

  Jamie extended his right arm. “This I’d have cut away at the shoulder, Father, and lopsided go through life, would it spare her a moment’s pain,” he said simply.

  “Are you that sure? ’Tis common enough for a young man on a spring day, with his feet in a cool stream and his head in the clouds, to fall in love with a pretty girl,” the priest warned.

  “Father,” Jamie said earnestly, “’tis common as the sun. I only know that there was a locked door inside me, and the sight of Maeve has opened it. If you say she’s not to come in, then I’ll go away and live an empty man all the rest of my days.”

  The priest studied the boy’s face. “I’ll see what can be done,” he said at last. “Go and wait in the woods.”

  Jamie rose from his knees. “I’m a nobody, Father, but they do wonderful things in this country … as wonderful as the fairies do at home. I’ll be somebody. You wait and see. I’ll …” Jamie’s voice stumbled and broke under the weight of his feelings and he could not go on.

  “It’s a fine girl that’s found it in her heart to love you,” Father Kerrigan said. “Should you ever lose that love … there’ll be small hope for your immortal soul in this world or the next, I’m thinking.”

  With Father Kerrigan on the side of Maeve and Jamie, events moved rapidly. The priest wielded great influence with the devout horse traders, but even he could not arbitrarily set aside a marriage contract. Shiel Harrigan was a stubborn man, jealous of his reputation for integrity, so Father Kerrigan shrewdly by-passed him, appealing to Aunt Bid. She had raised Maeve and loved her as if she were her own child.

  When he told her that Maeve had sworn to become a nun if she could not marry Jamie, the old spinster’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, this is a terrible calamity that’s been inflicted upon us,” she said. “Saving your pardon, Father, I’m not speaking of her becoming a nun, but of the disgrace. What are we to do?”

  “I’ve talked with the boy … and I find much good in him. Since there’re hearts to be broken no matter which way we turn, maybe Shiel Harrigan could be made to see that it’s more economical to break one than two.”

  “You mean cast Travis Bunn aside and let Maeve have her way?” said Bid aghast. “Sure Harrigan would never do that. He’s sworn an oath that she would marry Bunn or no one … and he’s not one to be breaking an oath.”

  “Does he prefer breaking his daughter’s heart to breaking an oath made in anger?” demanded the priest.

  “Sure I never cared much for that Travis Bunn anyway,” Bid said slyly, when she saw that the priest was on the side of the lovers. “He had a hand for every man and a heart for nobody.”

  Shiel Harrigan presented a tougher problem. As a parent he was interested in Jamie’s ability to earn a living. “I want a son I can someday turn over my business to,” he argued. “The lad has sweetness, but he’s not a practical man, Father.”

  “Blather,” said Father Kerrigan. “Practical men have never accomplished anything worthy of note in this world.”

  “They have the running of it,” Harrigan insisted.

  “Aye … and take a look at it,” retorted the priest.

  When Bid went against him, Harrigan weakened and finally gave in. “Who’s to tell Travis Bunn?” he asked glumly.

  Father Kerrigan stroked his chin thoughtfully. “It’s the kind of news he’ll take from no one but yourself, Shiel Harrigan, but I’ll go with you.”

  Travis Bunn was standing before his tent chewing nervously on a straw. He seemed to read the answer in the faces of the two men before either of them spoke. “Is it your given bond and word that you’ve come to break, Shiel Harrigan?” he demanded.

  “My daughter will not wed with you, Travis Bunn,” Maeve’s father replied flatly. “I’ll make good in kind if it’s settlement you want.”

  “Make good in kind?” Bunn said bitterly. “Have you another daughter as fair to give in her place?”

  “No … but of what I have you may take your pick. Either mules or horses or my chestnut mare in foal.”

  “I hold you to your promise. I’ll have Maeve or nothing.”

  “Then you’ll have nothing. She’ll not marry with you.”

  Travis Bunn turned to the priest. “Will you stand by and see him break his word, Father?”

  “The breaking of hearts comes before the breaking of words, my son,” Father Kerrigan said kindly.

  “Is the breaking of my heart nothing then?”

  “She’ll not marry with you, Travis Bunn. Give her up and find another to love,” the priest urged.

  “You’ve all turned against me,” Bunn said slowly, setting his face like stone. “Maeve, Bid, Shiel Harrigan … yes, and you, too, Father.” His eyes grew wild and his mouth worked convulsively. “God’s curse on the lot of you, then. You’ll see no more of my face, in or out of church. No, nor in the camps of the Travelers, either. God’s curse on Maeve Harrigan for making of my life one long despair … and on Jamie McRuin for taking her from me.…”

  “Travis Bunn, for shame … hear me,” Father Kerrigan cried, holding out his arms and advancing to
ward the maddened man. Bunn backed away, mouthing a confused mixture of ancient, half-remembered curses.

  “Shortness of life and Hell to them that break their oath. May the hungry grass grow wherever they make their camp. No butter be on their milk.… No down on their ducks.… No children be born to them.… And greater and broader be the flames that consume their souls in Hell than the mountains of Connemara, and they all burning.…”

  His voice had risen to a hoarse shout. He turned his face to where Maeve and Jamie had come from the tent and stood apart, numb with pity. The curses caught in Bunn’s throat and became a strangled sob. With a moan, he threw his arm across his eyes as if to blot out the sight; then he turned and ran toward the woods.

  “Sure now the man’s that crazed,” Harrigan said, troubled, “calling curses on a priest of the Church.”

  Father Kerrigan shook his head sadly. “He loved your daughter. Maybe the quiet of the woods will ease the pain and bring him to his senses.”

  Darkness fell, but there was no sign of Travis Bunn. In the deep middle of the night, when the camp was fast asleep, he crept back and silently hitched up his wagon. Loading the tent and all his belongings, he drove quietly away.

  In the morning, bolts of linens and fine laces and silks for dresses were found strewn about the site where his tent had been. These were the wedding gifts Travis Bunn had brought for his bride. Of all his possessions, and he was counted a wealthy man among the Irish Travelers, nothing else was left behind.

  X

  Mrs. Fluker, Father Kerrigan’s housekeeper, viewed the swarms of Irish horse traders that descended upon the priest and the parish each spring with resentment. Since early morning their long caravans of surreys and wagons had rolled up to the doors of the church, discharging cargoes of well-combed men, women in hats and gowns treasured from year to year for the occasion, and the swarms of thoroughly clipped and scrubbed children. All day Father Kerrigan heard their confessions, christened their babies, and blessed the old ones who cried out emotionally whenever he came near them: “Raise your hand over me, Father.”