The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  He should have known when Alice came to the barn that he was seeing the whip hand of the ghosts being raised. He had gotten too comfortable. He had begun to feel—what? Contentment, was it? Happiness, even? He knew that was asking too much—not after all he’d done in the years before Alice—but sometimes he wanted to believe that he deserved a little peace of mind. That he might even have earned it. There he was in the barn looking at the new calf, born just last month to one of the Holsteins. He had the boy with him, like his own little calf. Henry was five and wanted to know everything and God help the lad but he thought Cronin had all the answers. Tom, how does the calf know where to find the milk? Tom, can I ride the calf like a pony? Tom, who’s the calf’s daddy? The boy had first known him as Tom and that had stuck, but a part of Cronin hoped that once the baby started talking—once she started calling him Daddy—maybe Henry would pick up the habit, too.

  At the sight of Alice in her heavy boots scuffing through the hay that lay loose on the concrete floor, the boy brightened and said, “Mommy, come and see the calf!”

  Cronin gave Alice a look because it was hours until lunch and hadn’t she just told him to stay out of the house and keep the boy with him—this for tracking in mud not an hour before?

  She held up her hand, half a wave, and arched an eyebrow. “There’s a man here to see you.” She was trying to be calm for the boy’s sake but Cronin could tell she was unsettled.

  “Who is he?” Cronin said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “He won’t say. Says he needs to speak with Tommy Cronin.”

  A ghost name. No one had called him Tommy in years, not in his waking life.

  Alice told him the man was dressed like a banker or a mayor. It wasn’t often that they had visitors to the farm, and Alice was a champion for sending mischief-makers packing. For her to haul on her boots and hurry down—right in the middle of scrubbing the kitchen floor, a task she attacked with the fury of a holy martyr—meant that she was spooked. Cronin was going to make a joke about winning the lottery or inheriting a castle from a rich uncle back in Ireland, but he saw in her eyes that she was deadly serious. He wiped his hands on his trousers and said, “Let’s go see what he wants.” He nodded in the direction of the boy. Henry was Cronin’s shadow but the shadow needed to stay put.

  While Alice asked Henry to show her the calf, Cronin left the barn, turning over in his head who it might be that had come to see him.

  THE MAN IN the driveway stood with his back to the barn. With one hand he shaded his eyes, as if surveying the wooded hills that ringed the property. Mountains, some people called them, but they were too beaten down to be mountains. The man wore a dark suit and a large gray hat with a black band, and he was old: his hair was white, and he stooped over a cane. A little ways up the driveway a car idled, sleek and black. Cronin’s feet crunched the gravel and before the old man turned Cronin knew it was Gavigan.

  “What are you doing here?” Cronin had to keep himself from shouting. “How did you—”

  “I came to see you about a job, Tommy. Everyone’s looking for a little extra work these days, aren’t they?”

  Cronin could only glare at the man.

  “I need you to find someone for me.”

  “Get one of your boys to do it.”

  “Come on, Tommy. There’s none better than you. And he’s a danger. Already killed three of our own outside Cork. Blew them to pieces and stole a pile of money—money that was meant to support the cause.”

  “Don’t talk to me about the cause.” The words were acid in his mouth.

  “Don’t you want to know his name?”

  “What difference does—”

  “Francis Dempsey.”

  Cronin flinched.

  “I thought that might get your attention.”

  “It can’t be the same—”

  “It is and it isn’t. It’s his son. And if he’s anything like his father… well, you can see why I need my best man on it.”

  “I’m not your man.”

  “Think of it as unfinished business, Tommy.”

  “I’m done with all of that.”

  “Well now, I’m sure there’s plenty who don’t see it that way—Francis Dempsey among them. And plenty more who’d pay dearly to find out where Tommy Cronin lives.” With the tip of his cane, Gavigan worked a large white stone loose from the driveway. “Wouldn’t they be surprised to find that he has such a nice, happy family by his side.”

  Cronin stared hard at the smaller man.

  “I’ve protected you all these years. I’ve known where you are and I haven’t told a soul.”

  Cronin’s hands were gathered into fists. Had Alice and the boy stayed in the barn? Could they see him with this man? And the baby, was she still asleep in the house?

  Gavigan let out a low, light chuckle. “Don’t get any ideas. You could take me, sure, but Jamie behind the wheel is a deadeye shot, and even if he missed you… well, he’d be sure to hit something around here.” He reached into his breast pocket and produced an envelope. “For expenses. I even put in a little something extra—think of it as a gift for the missus.”

  Cronin held his ground. He looked at the envelope. At Gavigan’s wet rheumy eyes, his palsied sneer. At the man in the car—Jamie, was it?—sizing him up from a distance.

  “Of course, if you’d prefer to think of it as volunteer work…”

  Cronin snatched the envelope from his hand, crushed it in his fist. “You’re the devil,” he said.

  “You didn’t always think so, Tommy.” Gavigan reached into his trouser pocket and withdrew a gold watch. His lips worked through a silent counting, like a child learning to read. “There’s a train in two hours. And when you get to the city, the boys on West Fortieth’ll fix you up with a car. Nothing fancy, but”—he scanned the property—“that should suit you fine.”

  “How do you know he’s in New York?”

  “I’m playing a hunch,” Gavigan said. “Word is the oldest Dempsey boy lives in the city. What’s his name, now?”

  “Martin.” The name jumped, unbidden. The boy’s face from all those years ago flared in Cronin’s mind like an apparition.

  “Yes, Martin. A musician of some sort. Like his mother.”

  His mother. Bernadette. Just the thought of her name tightened the barbed wire that wrapped Cronin’s heart. Of all the things he had done for the cause—Cronin cleared his throat. “When I find him,” he said, and paused. “What am I to do with him?”

  “You bring him to me. Simple as that.”

  “And then I’m done.” It wasn’t a question.

  Gavigan nodded impatiently. “Isn’t that what I told you?”

  THE SMELL OF hay and manure had always been a comfort to Alice—these were home smells, childhood smells, the smell of her father when he came in from the first milking—but even this early in the day, the heat in the barn was almost more than she could take. She and Henry let the calf into the yard so he could nip at the grass and find his mother for another taste of her milk. Inside the house Alice poured a glass of milk for Henry from the metal pail they kept in the icebox, and while he drank she cut a slice of bread and slowly buttered it for him. She didn’t even ask if he was hungry. Feeding him was a way to keep herself busy.

  She gave the boy his plate and lingered by the table. She could just see through the dining-room window and into the driveway, where Tom loomed over the old man. She had never before heard anyone call him Tommy. It didn’t suit him; it was a little boy’s name. He had always been Tom, a name as stout as the man who wore it.

  Farther up the driveway lurked a car, a black thing buffed to a high polish beneath its patina of road dirt. The old man turned and hobbled toward it. He appeared to be in no hurry. He placed his cane carefully amid the stones and soaked dirt and puddles as he went, and inched his way farther and farther from the house. Tom was already stalking down the driveway. His jaw bulged and his eyes were shut.
One hand was wrapped into a fist, the other clutched something made of paper. Had he borrowed money and not told her? Had some debt suddenly come due, right here at the beginning of the summer season? He looked ready to tear the door off the hinges and she prepared herself for the sound of it, but when Tom came into the house he was calm, shuffling out of his boots and lining them up by the door. She was about to send Henry out into the yard so Tom could give her the details of their mystery guest, but he marched up the stairs without a word to her. From their bedroom came the squeal of drawers being opened, the sound of Tom’s feet in the closet. She understood that men needed their privacy but if a bill collector was making house calls, then it was no longer a private matter; it was family business.

  She left Henry at the kitchen table and went upstairs. On their bed lay Tom’s battered leather valise, the only piece of luggage he’d carried when he had shown up years ago on her doorstep. Neatly piled next to it were two shirts, a necktie, two pairs of trousers, some boxer shorts. He was removing his church clothes—his one good suit—from the hanger when she came in.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To town,” he said. “But just for a few days.”

  “Town? What town?”

  “I won’t be gone long,” he said. He hadn’t looked at her, not once, since he’d come in the house.

  “What did that man want?” Alice said. She crossed the narrow room in a few short steps and took hold of his arm. “Do you owe money?”

  He gave a grim laugh. “I wish it were money. Money I could pay off and be done with.” Cronin kept his eyes on the stack of clothes, which he began loading into the bag.

  “Tom Cronin! Didn’t we promise—”

  He looked her full in the face, and something in his eyes—heat, anger, sorrow—stopped her from speaking. This man was putting the squeeze on Tom and now she was squeezing him from the other side. Alice could see he was suffering, but they had promised from the start: no secrets. It was an easy promise to keep on any given day when they sat together at dinner as a family, more than she’d ever imagined she could have, with nothing more to talk about than cows and weather and Henry starting school in the fall. But right now was when it mattered most, when you thought that telling the truth would ruin what you had built. Hadn’t she told him everything about herself, and about the husband who had left her and Henry? Hadn’t she made plain her love for Tom even though she feared she might scare him off for good? Hadn’t Tom figured it out? That secrets could destroy what they had faster than any truth could.

  “Tom,” she said again. “Tell me what he said.”

  “Unfinished business,” Tom said. “There’s a piece of unfinished business and it’s on me to finish it.”

  “Tell him to go to hell,” Alice said. “Tell him you’re done with all that.”

  “It’s not that simple. There’s a job I have to do, and then I’m coming home. And once I get back, I’ll never leave your side again.”

  “But Tom—”

  “You’ll get sick of me, you will.” He forced a laugh but there was no spirit in it.

  Alice folded her arms and watched him pack the rest of his clothes. He left the room and when he returned she was there, arms still folded, staring at the open mouth of his valise. He set down a small canvas bag—razor, toothbrush, soap, aftershave—and went to the wardrobe against the far wall. Standing on his tiptoes, he reached one hand to the top and pawed around behind the carved parapet that rose to a peak over the doors. He pulled a stiff ladder-back chair from the corner of the room to use as a step stool, and the moment his gaze reached the top of the wardrobe, he froze. He looked first at the ceiling, then at Alice.

  “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” she said.

  “The box. There was a small metal box up here—a toolbox.”

  “Only it didn’t have any tools in it, did it?”

  He stepped down from the chair, his momentum carrying him to within inches of her. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Where’s the box, Alice?”

  “You’re better than that. You know you are.”

  “Alice.” His voice grew louder and more heated with each word. “The box.”

  She stared at him, right into those black eyes of his. This wasn’t him. He didn’t give orders—not to her. As much as she told him over and over again that the house and the farm and the family were theirs—that all of it belonged to him as much as to her—he still seemed more likely to ask permission than to give a command. As if it was hers to own, and he was only renting. This old man had a claim on Tom that she did not, or he was able to summon up some part of Tom that was off-limits to her. Whatever the old man had ordered him to do, Tom was spooked by it. If he wanted the box that badly, she would get it. But the box meant nothing; it was what was inside the box that mattered.

  Alice edged toward the closet. Inside, she pulled the chain and in the burst of light she got her fingers around a hatbox and pulled it out from under a stack of cardboard cartons: hats and shoes she had not worn in years. Two of the boxes tumbled to the floor with a hollow thud. She handed the hatbox to Tom and he peeled open the round cover. Buttressed on all sides by wadded tissue paper was a small metal box secured with a latch. It could have held tools or tackle, but when Tom opened it the only contents were a holstered revolver wrapped in an oilcloth and a box of cartridges. Without looking up at Alice, he unwrapped the gun and felt its weight in his hand. Tom spun the cylinder and released a catch: the barrel hinged open, revealing six empty chambers. He drew back the hammer and pulled the trigger. Alice flinched at the sharp sound it made. With one hand, he worked six bullets out of the box and filled the cylinder, then snapped it back into place. The whole operation had taken less than half a minute.

  “You don’t need that.” Alice’s voice was more whisper than words.

  “It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s for you.”

  “Me?”

  “I made my promise to you, that I’m coming back soon and that I’ll never leave again. Now you’ve got to make a promise to me. If anyone you don’t know comes to the door—anyone—you’ll be ready to use this.”

  “Tom, you’re scaring me. What’s this all about?”

  “I told you, it’s unfinished business. And I’m sorry that you’re caught up in this—I never wanted any of what I did and who I was to touch you, but there’s people who won’t let it be that way.”

  “That man,” she said. “That’s the man you worked for in New York.”

  “It is. And if there was some way that I could leave here and know that you and Henry and Gracie were safe as long as I stayed away for good, I’d do it, believe—”

  Alice slapped him hard across the face. She felt the sting in her hand, throbbing, electric with pain and shock. “Don’t you for one minute say that. You’re not getting away from me, now or ever.” She grabbed the revolver by the barrel, as if it were a hammer, and pulled it out of his hand. It was heavier than she had expected; Tom had handled it so easily. “You do what you have to do and then you get back here,” she said. “But if you run away from me—from us—then I’m coming after you with this.”

  ALICE AND THE children rode in the truck with Cronin but he would not let them wait with him at the station—not that Alice wanted to. At first, Henry thought that they were off for a grand family adventure, but when he was told that only Tom would be getting on the train he started up with the tears, a signal to the baby to start crying. Soon both of them were in full clamor. Henry didn’t want Tom to leave and it was no fair that he had to stay behind. Why couldn’t he go with Tom, and Gracie would stay with Mommy? This wasn’t the good-bye that Cronin wanted; my God, he didn’t want any sort of good-bye, and certainly not this. Alice gave up trying to quiet the children and when Cronin looked at her amid the wailing he saw her own eyes shining with tears about to fall.

  It was twenty minutes to the Rhinecliff station and when they arrived Cronin idled the truck and grabbed his valise from
the back. He pulled the envelope that Gavigan had given him out of his pocket and fished out a few bills, which he stuffed into his wallet. The rest he gave to Alice.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “Buy them some ice cream,” he said.

  “But where did this—”

  “Take it,” he said, and she did. He looked straight at her and when he leaned into her she gave him a quick, fierce hug. He said nothing more, and he only once looked over his shoulder as Alice drove off, the baby in a basket at her side and Henry in the rear window calling, Tom! Tom!

  JUST TELL ME the truth. That was one of the first things Alice had ever said to him, when he showed up at the farm with nothing but the bag in his hand. Gavigan had sent him upstate chasing a bad debt, but as the train lurched along the Hudson River, he had resolved that he would not go back. That he was done. It was early in the morning, the light was on the opposite bank, and the mist was so thick and the water so close to the mountains that the scene conjured for him the landscape outside Glengarriff, his boyhood home. He thought of the days before he had left for Cork and started heaping sin on top of sin. In Ireland during the war, it had been about making sure the Irish were in charge, and then it became about making sure the right Irish were in charge, but it was also about blood, and how much you could spill, and how the stain never left you. It might have been for a good cause, but he couldn’t tell himself that any longer, not once he went to work for Gavigan.

  That day, when he stepped off the train at this very platform, he wasn’t thinking about starting fresh. He was thinking only of stopping. He shuffled as if in a daze into the station, where a hand-lettered note on a bulletin board read HELP WANTED. He might not have given it another look but the second line promised HONEST LABOR and Cronin thought maybe that could be a remedy for his years in the city. He wasn’t seeking wages. He was a country boy who needed dirt on his hands and the sun on his face.