Something of the torment of loneliness seething within him had communicated itself to Maeve. She had folded her arms about him, racked and tortured herself by the spasms of soundless sobbing which shook him. “There … there … there,” she crooned. “You’re thinking of your mother. Sure her dying wish was that you come to us. Father Kerrigan promised her you would have a real name and a new life—and you shall, Kevin, you shall.”
In the premature twilight of the tent, Kevin, once a number instead of a name, relived the happy, crowded hours he had spent that day with Maeve and Tavish. Confidence seeped back into his slight form as moisture returns to a footprint in wet sand. He wondered why Maeve had told him not to stray from the tent until she returned. He heard her voice outside, explaining something as she came nearer. The deeper voice of a man with her was raised in exasperation.
“Did it have to be the king of mules you gave the priest? Wouldn’t a lesser animal than Big Ed do? Sure you’ve given away my right eye.”
“There was so much happiness in me,” Maeve said soothingly. “I wanted to make a fine offering; and Father Kerrigan had special need of a good mule. ’Tis for the salvation of our souls.”
“Big Ed is a bit of a price to pay for an altar candle,” Jamie grumbled. “Sure there hasn’t been that much sinning in the entire camp in a whole year.”
The boy didn’t hear Maeve’s whispered answer. The flap of the tent was thrust aside and Jamie entered, his arm about Maeve’s waist. He looked at the strange child in amazement, his arm dropping to his side. “God a’ mercy, and what lad is this?”
“His name is Kevin. Father Kerrigan gave us the lend of him for a while,” Maeve explained hastily.
Jamie was puzzled but not displeased. “Since when do they lend boys like they were cups of salt? Where’s your home, little maneen?”
“I’m trying to tell you,” Maeve said, lowering her voice. “Kevin is a sort of orphan. His mother just died and I promised Father Kerrigan we’d look after him for a bit of a while.”
“Might this have something to do with my prize mule disappearing down the road in a cloud of red dust?” Jamie demanded suspiciously. He glared fiercely, first at Maeve, then at the trembling child. “I can see by your two faces it has.”
Kevin shrank back into the big chair, while great tears rose in his eyes and clung there unshed. Maeve charged at her husband like a small mother bear. “Stop your eagle screaming this instant. Can’t you see you’re frightening the child? He’s been through enough today without your roaring at him like a bull.”
“Like a bull, is it?” Jamie protested. “Am I to stand idly by while my wife and a priest of the Church make off with my prize mule, leaving in his place this mouse of a boy?”
“You’re away from the camp so much—it would be company to have a child about,” Maeve said pleadingly.
“Aye, now we’ve come to the dirt at the bottom of the bucket. Father Kerrigan has gone about the soft side of you to find a home for some parish orphan. Well, I’ll have no part of such a devil’s package. Back he goes this night, and that’s my final word.”
Maeve’s face was pale but she held her tongue. “Run find your Uncle Tavish, child,” she said to Kevin. When he had slipped from the tent like a frightened shadow, she turned to face Jamie, her eyes hard with anger.
“You’ve had your final word, now let me have mine,” she said, with forced quietness. “Father Kerrigan did not come to me—I went to him. There was no time to consult you. You were away and we didn’t know when you’d be back. When the opportunity came to get Kevin I said we’d take him. Father Kerrigan has my promise!—I’ll not go back on my word.”
In the face of Maeve’s determination, Jamie retreated. “But Maeve darling—why?” he pleaded. “Don’t you see … a foreign child in a tent where there are no children makes me a shamed man. The camp will say: ‘Take a look at the McRuin. Not able to get a child of his own, he had to borrow one from the outside.’”
“Is this my husband who used to cry: ‘May the Devil fly away with the roof of a house where there’s no welcome?’” Maeve answered scornfully, “afraid of what a few will say?”
With that the fight went out of Jamie, but Maeve’s victory was a Pyrrhic one at best. She had hoped desperately that Jamie would accept the child, if not enthusiastically, at least with forbearance. With a wrench of conscience, she realized that her husband would never entirely give up hope of having a son of his own. The acceptance of an adopted child would only be an admission within his inner heart that the one promised him was part of a web of hillside fancy; a fairy gift as insubstantial as the morning dew.
Jamie had slumped down in the chair vacated by Kevin. “All through these past days the cold inside of me was kept warm by the thought you and I were together again. Now I come home to bitter words and the old wounds that were so long in healing are open again.”
Maeve was at his side without knowing she moved, and her arms were about his head. “O my heart,” she whispered, “please forgive me. ’Twas of myself alone I was thinking when I told the priest we wanted the little boy. Tomorrow I’ll drive with him back to Father Kerrigan.”
Halfheartedly Jamie protested that she had given her word, but Maeve had reversed her plan of attack. She seemed now as determined that the child should go as she had been that he was to stay. “What’s the thread of a promise against my own husband’s happiness?” she insisted, and Jamie was comforted.
That night, alone in the velvet darkness of the tent, they lay whispering. “It’s not that I want to be hard about the boy,” said Jamie, conscience-troubled, “but ’twould never work. We know nothing about the lad.…”
“His mother was a Callahan,” Maeve supplied innocently.
“Was she now?” Jamie was impressed. “Truth is,” he whispered, “I’d be jealous of the malrach, running to you with his tales and his bruises—taking your time and attention.”
Maeve laughed her pleasant laugh. “There’d be small cause,” she said. “Somewhere along the way the child has lost the power of talking.”
Jamie digested Maeve’s calm announcement in mounting horror. “A dummy,” he said, shocked, “one of God’s Fair Innocents, we say at home. Wirra … wirra … the pity of it.”
“Yes,” said Maeve, “that’s what I thought … the pity of it. To be alone and with no way of sharing the loneliness; to feel pain and fear, without the release of crying out; to know love, without the power of putting it into words; we may well say ‘wirra … wirra!’”
“Sure there be but one thing to do,” Jamie announced firmly, “the lad must stay. There can be no shame at taking in a Fair Innocent.”
Maeve kissed him lightly. “Whatever you say, my husband.”
“And no one would make the mistake of thinking him truly my child,” Jamie continued. “Jamie McRuin, known in two lands for his lip-liveliness, the father of one without the power of speaking … it wouldn’t make sense at all.”
“No, my husband.”
“What is the lad’s name?” Jamie asked, oblivious of the note of merriment lurking behind Maeve’s placid agreement.
“Father Kerrigan said he’d never been christened. His father wanted all his sons to have names beginning with T, but he had run out of such names by the time this last one had come along. He called him ‘Number Seven,’ and that was his name until this afternoon.”
Jamie remembered Owen Roe Tavish’s odd conduct at the supper table. “Och, then he is the lad who was christened here in the camp. What was he named?”
Maeve smothered a little laugh against Jamie’s shoulder. “Tavish was godfather and insisted upon naming him ‘Kevin.’…”
“’Tis a good saint’s name,” said Jamie.
“Next we called him ‘Roe,’ for Owen Roe Tavish.…”
“Fine … fine,” said Jamie. “What else?”
“Then ‘Callahan,’ for his mother.…”
“None better in the whole of Ireland,” said Jamie. “Now w
hat’s the boyo’s last name?”
“McRuin.”
“What?” Jamie shouted, ready to be angry all over again.
“Please, darling,” Maeve cried, clinging to him; “if you knew how the heart of me has longed for a child named McRuin. Life is so empty for a woman without a bairn. Every baby wailing in the camp—every laugh from a playing boy-cries failure to me because there’s no child of my own. Grant me this and I’ll never ask anything of you again.”
It was the humblest speech Jamie had ever heard his spirited wife make. She was almost in tears when she finished. “Och, my treasure, you shame me to myself,” he whispered. “If it means that much to you, sure the boy is yours. I don’t even mind the lend of my name; though,” he added reprovingly, “the way you built a nest in my ear to get round me was a sly bit of sleuthering.”
“I’ll never do it again,” Maeve whispered, “and I make that promise before Mary and all the saints.”
Jamie sighed. “There be those who say three kinds of men never understand their wives: The young … the middle-aged … and the old.”
Maeve laughed. “Isn’t it better that way? When the time comes that men understand us, sure there’ll be an end to the wonder of life.”
Jamie remembered the present he had brought from town. “Och, I’ve forgotten the surprise I brought you. It’s in the buggy.”
He would have dressed and fetched it but Maeve checked him. “It will keep,” she said. “Tell me what it is and I’ll have the double pleasure in the morning.”
“Only a lovely something for hanging in the tent.”
“Another picture?”
He shook his head. “A wind harp.”
Maeve was pleased but puzzled. “I’ve never seen one.”
“’Tis a rare musical instrument. It hangs in the tent and the wind plucks wonderful music from the strings. I bought it of a purpose,” said Jamie. “Long ago in Ireland there lived a man and wife who had no children. And the wife had fallen out of love with her husband, so much so that she had lost the power of sleeping entirely. Finally she became maddened by the sleepless nights and the days filled with hate for the man she had married; and she fled away from her husband, wandering alone until she came to the sea. There on the shore was the skeleton of a huge whale, every white and gleaming bone in place. The poor, exhausted woman creature rested against the great carcass, and the wind rose, and the sound of wonderful music was heard. So soothing was the melody that she was lulled to sleep; and there her husband found her, beside the great ribs of the whale. ’Twas the wind blowing through the great, bleached bones that had created the Wonderful music which had brought sleep at last to the unhappy woman.”
“What happened then?” Maeve asked like a sleepy child.
“Sure the husband carried her back and built the first wind harp, so she might find happiness and true sleep at home. And so grateful was the woman that she fell in love with her husband all over again. And that’s how the wind harp came to be invented … and it’s a story that’s all truth.”
Jamie turned his head to look at the face beside him. Maeve was asleep. Silently, he crept from the bed and made his way barefooted to the buggy parked near the tent. In the warm stillness of the camp, he unpacked the wind harp and carried it inside. When Maeve awoke in the morning, the instrument hung near the entrance, singing softly. Beside her, Jamie slept, the shadow of a smile tipping the corners of his mouth as if traced there by some pleasant dream. The smile-shadows deepened when Maeve brushed his lips with a butterfly kiss.
XIX
Mrs. Fluker brought the morning mail to Father Kerrigan’s study. He could count the housekeeper’s slow, measured steps: Front door to the stairs; up the stairs to the landing; from the landing to the door of the study. “Some Christian soldiers march with a heavy tread,” he mused.
The housekeeper knocked and entered. “The morning mail just came, Father,” she said.
“Anything exciting?” The priest eyed the usual clatter of religious pamphlets, magazines, bills, and begging letters.
“I didn’t look, Father,” Mrs. Fluker said stiffly.
“Of course not. You’re the only woman in the parish completely without curiosity.”
The housekeeper accepted the priest’s comment as a compliment. “Thank you, Father,” she sniffed. “I try to do my Christian duty.”
She retreated toward the door as if paced by fife and drum. “Sure it would be nice if Mrs. Fluker got a little fun out of doing her Christian duty,” the priest sighed.
He sorted through the letters until a florid, unfamiliar handwriting caught his eye. The envelope was postmarked from a town in Mississippi, and began:
Dear Father Kerrigan:
I take my pen in hand to acquaint you that once more the caravan is heading toward Atlanta. As we move eastward the trees along the road are tinted with the pale and urgent young green of spring. Here and there an early blooming dogwood raises its white branches like a flag of surrender to the vernal equinox.
It having been almost seven months since the little lad, Kevin, came to us, you’ll be wanting to know how he is, and of the progress he is making. Father, the dear child is one of the rare, and flahooly ones; wedded to the hills and to the sea, they are, and in dreams so rich they are the envy of the earth. There is a budding project in my mind concerning the boy. Upon it I would ask your Reverence’s blessing. Would his handicap of silence make it impossible for him to enter the priesthood? If ever a youth has felt the call, Father, ’tis he. I told him the story of when the young and beautiful St. Kevin was praying alone in the woods (the lad and I occupy the same tent and the nights are spent as the ancients used to say: A third in storytelling; a third with Fenian tales; and a third in the mild enjoyment of slumber and true sleep). He was standing, as was his custom, in the shape of the Irish cross, with his arms outstretched and his feet together, when a mother blackbird built her nest in the palm of his hand and laid her eggs there before the good saint was aware of it. “Sure then, the man of God,” I told the boy, “rather than disturb the nesting mother bird, held his arm outstretched until the eggs were hatched and the birdlings flown away.”
Father—and this is the truth; my right hand is raised toward Heaven as I write it—the very next day I found little Kevin standing alone in the woods, his wee arms spread wide with the palms up, trying to persuade another mother bird to build her nest in the palm of his hand. Now wouldn’t you say that that was proof the lad had been called, Father?
I know your intent in bringing the boy to us was twofold: A home for the child and a child to mend the breach between Maeve and Jamie. But Cousin Jamie has never accepted little Kevin. Maeve loves him dearly and the lad loves her, but from the first she has been torn between the boy she married and the one she adopted. Upon my oath, Father, I love Jamie as if he were my own son, but in some ways he is more of a child than Kevin. As a result, the lad has turned to me as to a father. Now there is a secret plan brewing between us. I want to take the boy to Ireland, provide him with the finest education possible; then, if it is his desire and he is qualified, let him enter the priesthood. There is a deep personal reason for this, Father. I will explain it to you in Atlanta at ritual time. I am a reasonably wealthy man, thanks to Jamie, who has set aside a fourth of his earnings as mine, so there will be ample money, do you but give the project your blessing.
Be not too harsh in your judgment of Jamie, Father. He has a wonderful heart, though he can find no room in it for a child that is not his own. ’Tis the soul of him that’s still undersized. It will grow, Father, in God’s good time. I think he tried to love the boy for Maeve’s sake, but Kevin is frightened of him. Jamie is not a happy man, Father, and if Maeve thought Kevin’s leaving would ease the brooding in the dark heart of him, she would give her consent for the good of all.
Another month will find us near your parish, which is the only home we know. The blessings of the Virgin and of the man in the East and the man in the West be upon you
, Father.
The letter was inscribed: “Your most obedient servant,” and bore Owen Roe Tavish’s looping signature. The priest folded the pages neatly and returned them to the envelope. His thoughts had gone many times to the tents of the wandering traders. Rumors were spreading that some of the counties and the state legislature were contemplating excessive license fees to drive the horse traders out. The presence of this unique group of devout Catholics in a dominantly Protestant community—their insular attitude and refusal to become assimilated—created an ever-active point of friction.
Father Kerrigan’s thoughts shifted to Kevin. He had sensed something unusual in the child the first time he had visited Hester Proddy. I wonder what the boy is like after almost a year with Tavish and the Travelers? At least there will be something in his stomach, and he’ll have had his basic religious training, he concluded. As for the priesthood—there was Maeve to consider. He had not forgotten the look on her face when she first opened her arms to the nameless boy.
Unless I be greatly mistaken, she’ll not be giving him up for Tavish, or Jamie, or even holy orders. Anyway, time will be the storyteller, he concluded to himself.
XX
A few days after he had written to Father Kerrigan, Tavish had a premonition of returning to Ireland. He dreamed that Kevin came to him and said a strange man was waiting for him beyond a bend in the road ahead. It seemed entirely natural in the dream that the boy was able to speak. Furthermore, he spoke in purest Gaelic.
“Describe the man, Kevin lad,” Tavish had said in his dream.
“That were easy to do,” the boy replied. Fluently and in great detail, he drew a word picture of the strange man waiting in the road for Owen Roe Tavish.
“Not a small man, nor yet overtall,” he said, “with a face round and ruddy red, brimful of humor.”
“I know no such man,” said Tavish. “How spoke he?”
“In a voice most fair, with music and laughter behind each word. His eyes were deepest blue, as when lightning flashes catch the rain clouds unaware.”
Three Wishes for Jamie Page 18