The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  It is the end of March when he sees Fergus McBride, his uncle, crossing Franklin Square. He is grayer and more stooped, but it is him without a doubt. Doyle is seated on one of the benches by the fountain smoking his pipe. The day is cloudy and cool. There are pigeons pecking in the dirt at his feet, and he can hear the rattle of carriage wheels on cobblestones and the steady splash of water. He has not thought about Fergus McBride for a long time and is surprised to see him now, looking so solid and real. He is about to call out a greeting but changes his mind and instead waits for him to go past, then stands up and follows after. Fergus walks south on Fifth Street, then turns onto an adjoining avenue. After twenty yards, he pauses in front of a narrow three-story brick house, looks up at the front door, then climbs the steps to the vestibule and knocks. Doyle carries on walking to the end, then turns around and comes back again more slowly. He pauses outside the house that Fergus has just entered. There’s a brass plate by the door with a man’s name and underneath the title ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. A problem with the farm, Doyle thinks, or some dispute about money. That’s the only reason his uncle would ever need to see a lawyer. He looks at the door again and checks his watch. He decides that he will wait, and when Fergus comes out, he will make himself known. There is no reason to avoid such a meeting; he has nothing to hide. He will tell him that he fought honorably in the war, then went to Ireland to fight again there. He will ask about Anna and Lazlo and the farm, but he won’t bring up the manner of his leaving. He tells himself he is no longer angry or ashamed, that too many years have passed for it to matter anymore, and he has seen and done too many other things. If there is some part of him that still yearns for redress, he thinks, then it is only a minor part and one that is easily brought to heel.

  After an hour, the door reopens and Fergus comes out. When he first sees Doyle, he nods and looks away as if he is just another passing stranger, but then, after a moment, he stops and turns and looks at him again.

  “Stephen?” he says.

  “I saw you going in there,” Doyle says. “I recognized you straightaway.”

  Fergus frowns. He looks puzzled and unsure of himself for a moment, but then he holds out his hand and the two of them shake.

  “Are you living here in the city now?” he asks.

  “I’m visiting. I don’t live anywhere. I was in the war, then I went back over to Ireland for a while. I was helping some friends with a piece of business there, but it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.”

  Fergus nods as if the news is unsurprising.

  “There’s nothing in Ireland for a young fellow now,” he says. “You’ll be better off here.”

  “How is the farm?”

  “Very well. We grow a lot of rye for the whiskey these days. They opened up a big distillery just down the road past Harper Tavern. They take about as much as we can grow and pay us nicely for it.”

  “Are Anna and Lazlo still with you?”

  “Lazlo is gone. We have another hired man, a Negro fellow named George Nichols.”

  Doyle points up to the brass plate by the door.

  “Are you having some kind of trouble? Is that why you’re here?”

  Fergus shakes his head.

  “Peter Phelps died. Do you remember him? The fellow who owned the farm across the valley. I bought a quarter of his land at auction, but now they say there’s a complication with the will. Some distant cousin staking a claim. I can’t make any sense of it, but the lawyer fellow in there promises me he can untangle it quickly enough, so long as I pay him, of course.”

  “It’s a long way to come from Harrisburg.”

  Fergus shrugs.

  “I gave a good price for that land,” he says. “I’d hate to lose it through some mischance.”

  “You look just the same, not altered at all.”

  “I’m not so young as I was, but my health is still good. I’m out working in the fields every day just the same as before.”

  “And is that top land cleared now? Is the timber all gone from it.”

  “It’s long gone.”

  Doyle shakes his head at the memory.

  “That was about the hardest work I ever did. After I left you, I worked as a navvy on the canals and the railroads, but I was never so weary afterward as I was after a day up in those woods.”

  “It was too much for a young boy, I see that now. You didn’t have the strength for it. That was my mistake.”

  Doyle looks at him again. His uncle is an inch or so shorter than he was, and the skin around his eyes and mouth is scored and grainy now, but the face still reminds him of his mother’s face—the shallow curve of the brow and the angle of the nose. He is like a piece of the past brought back to life, like a dream or memory made half-real again.

  “We can all make a mistake,” Doyle says. “There’s no man is perfect.”

  Fergus takes off his hat, wipes the nap of it against his sleeve, then puts it back on.

  “It’s strange to see you here, Stephen,” he says, “I must confess. I’ve thought more than once about what happened between us at the end. And I’ve wished it could have been different somehow.”

  “A long time has passed since then,” Doyle says. “I don’t think of it any longer.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear you say so. It doesn’t do to hoard up bad memories, better just to forget such things.”

  Doyle nods his agreement.

  “There’s something else I should tell you,” Fergus says after a pause. “Anna and I are married. We have a child, a boy named Patrick.”

  Doyle doesn’t speak for a moment. He wonders why he is surprised by this news, why this possibility, which, in hindsight, looms so large and obvious, has not occurred to him before.

  “So I have a cousin,” he says. “How old is the boy now?”

  “Nine years old next month. He’d be pleased to meet you, I’m sure. He often complains that our family is too small. All his schoolfriends are surrounded by relations—brothers and sisters, cousins and grandparents—but he only has us two. Everyone else is dead or too far away to matter.”

  “What have you told him about me?”

  “Not much, of course, since we never thought he would get a chance to meet you, but if you ever did make the journey, then the surprise would be a part of the pleasure. I can just imagine the look on his face.”

  “I’m too much occupied here,” Doyle says. “I have my plans in place. You understand.”

  “I understand, of course. The work must come first. But if you change your mind, then we’d all be pleased to welcome you. I’ll tell Anna I saw you anyway. She’ll ask me everything you said and what you look like now.” He taps his head with his forefinger. “I’ll have to be sure to remember it right.”

  “I get my mail at the post office here,” he says. “If she ever wants to write me.”

  “I’ll tell her that.”

  They shake hands again, and Fergus tips his hat and walks away.

  He is pleased to see the back of me, Doyle thinks, however much he likes to pretend otherwise. He is settled now, content and secure, with a wife and a child, and my sudden, unexpected appearance troubles him. I am the past he would prefer to forget. He imagines Fergus back at the farm, sitting down at the kitchen table telling the story of his trip to Philadelphia. He is shaking his head at the strangeness of it; the boy is listening and asking questions. Anna is with them; she is standing by the stove. He tries to imagine what she must look like now, her face and her body changed, but how? He knows that the years must have altered her, that no one stays the same, but he cannot picture it. All he can bring back to mind when he tries is the crude image, burned like a brand into the haunch of his memory, of her pale sleeping body, damp in the midnight’s heat, the bone-white thighs splayed open and the riven darkness unconcealed.

  A week afterward, he goes to
the post office on Chestnut Street and finds two letters waiting there for him. One is from William Roberts warning him that the British government has posted a reward for information leading to his capture, and advising him that if he is still in Philadelphia, it would be wise to leave the city immediately and go somewhere more remote where there is less chance of him being recognized and reported. The second is from Anna:

  Dear Stephen I am happy to know from Fergus that you are alive and well stil. It is a great blesing that you survived that dredful war when so many others yor age were killed or maimed in it. Fergus told you I think that we are marryed now and have a son Patrick. I am happy and Patrick is a joy. I have thoght of you often and wondered where you were and how you were faring. I know your time is ful and you have importent busnus to conduct but if you are ever able to visit us on the farm even for a single day it would be a plesure to see you again. Your good frend always Anna

  He returns directly to the lodging house and packs his bag. He will not stay on the farm for long, he thinks, a week or two. Just time enough to get to know the boy a little and to reacquaint himself with Anna. Then he will move away, farther to the west or south. He doesn’t know yet where he will go to or what he will do when he gets there, but it is good to be leaving the city now, he thinks, before its luxuries so soften his bones and water down his blood that he forgets who he is and what he lives for.

  CHAPTER 29

  The poacher appears from around a bend on the plank road wearing mud-caked boots and tattered surcoat. He is singing loudly in mangled German. His voice is bold and clear, with a frail vibrato added to the higher notes as a sign, or so O’Connor assumes, of his general facetiousness and good humor. When the poacher sees O’Connor, he looks surprised, then smiles and doffs his crumpled hat in antique greeting.

  “I always remember a face,” the poacher says, “I do, but I don’t remember yourn. So I’d say you’re a stranger in these parts.”

  “I’m a traveler.”

  “And where would you be traveling to?”

  “Over to the west,” O’Connor says, “to Harrisburg.”

  “Harrisburg?” The poacher rolls his eyes. “That’s too far for any Christian to tramp it. You’ll wear out them nice-looking boots before you get much past Allentown.”

  “I’ll get there one way or another. I have to.”

  “There’s a stagecoach runs along here on Tuesdays.”

  “I don’t have the money for any stagecoach.”

  “How long have you been walking now?”

  “Three days, and it’ll be three more before I get there.”

  “I’d say it will. Three days, if you’re lucky.”

  The poacher rubs his chin and gives O’Connor an appraising look.

  “My guess is you’re an honest man who’s fell on hard times,” he says.

  “You could say that.”

  “I know a sponger when I see one, but you don’t look like no sponger to me.”

  “I’m not one.”

  The man nods and smiles again.

  “How long since you et?”

  “I had something yesterday in the afternoon.”

  “You can stop at any farm about here and ask for a drink of water. No one will begrudge you a drink of water, and if you’re lucky, they’ll give you something else besides. Cup of coffee, slice of cornbread, maybe more if they like the looks of you. It’s not begging. It’s sharing. There’s plenty of folk have more than they need for their own selves.”

  “I can work. I don’t ask for any charity.”

  “Too proud,” the poacher says. “I understand.”

  “What’s your line?” O’Connor asks him.

  “Me? I do whatever’s needed at the time. Ditching, walling, chopping wood. I worked down the mines for a year, but that didn’t suit me so much. I done cockling, trawling, trolling. Sold murder ballads at the county fair one year. Bought them for a cent and sold them for a nickel.”

  “Jack-of-all-trades, then?”

  “You could say that, aye.”

  The poacher looks roundabout and then primps his ragged clothing to pass some more time. Beside them, beyond a stand of leafless trees, cattle graze on the sloping pasture, and there are patches of snow still bright on the high brakes.

  “Where will you sleep tonight?” he says. “I’ll show you a good place nearby, if you’d like. A fine, warm place, and I’ll show you something else besides.”

  “What else?”

  “Something you might profit by.”

  “I have to be getting on now,” O’Connor says.

  “There’s nothing else down that way, not even a wall or a hedge to rest your head under, just bare fields and forest. Looks like rain to me and it’ll be getting dark before you know it. You’d be better off staying here with me.”

  “Is this place of yours close by?”

  “It’s close enough,” he says. “You just follow me.”

  The poacher leads him off through the woods. The ground is black and sodden underfoot, and there is frost in the places the light can’t reach. Overhead, the bare branches chatter in the wind like teeth.

  The poacher turns around and looks at him.

  “Do you have any whiskey in your pockets? I could do with a dram.”

  O’Connor shakes his head.

  “Rum?”

  “I’ve got nothing like that,” he says.

  Soon, the wood gives way to sheep-bitten grass and a tangle of black haw and chokeberry. There is a line of broken wall, then a log cabin, its sod roof half-collapsed, but the chimney and walls still intact. The two men push open the front door and step inside. There’s a cold smell of wet ash, mildew, and fox scat. Thick, gray cobwebs sag like monstrous jowls from the roof beams. Rabbit bones and broken glass brocade the dirt floor.

  “Get a fire in the hearth and it warms up quick enough,” the poacher says.

  “I’ve seen worse,” O’Connor says.

  “I’ll bet you have.”

  “Do you sleep here yourself?”

  “Sometimes I do. When needs must.”

  There’s a rusty bedstead and two grimy wooden chairs pushed into one corner of the room. O’Connor knocks the dust off one of the chairs and sits down. He picks a bone off the floor, rubs it clean, and looks at it for a long time. He has not taken a drink since the morning four months ago when Fazackerley came to the house on George Street. He still feels the tug of it sometimes, just as strong and deep as ever, but the memory of what happened in Manchester is enough to keep him to the narrow path. While his nephew was being murdered, he was lying in bed a mile away in Diggle’s Court drinking gin with Mary Chandler. Of all the lies and cowardice that led to Michael Sullivan’s death, that is the part that shames him the worst. He will stay sober long enough to find Stephen Doyle and to kill him if he can. That is the promise he has made to himself. And after that, if he is still alive, he will take his comforts wherever he can find them.

  “I use a snare to get the rabbits,” the poacher explains. “Length of brass wire, good strong peg rubbed with soil so it can’t be seen. If I had a gun I’d use that instead, but I lost my gun in a wager last year.”

  “Who buys them from you?” O’Connor asks.

  “The rabbits? No one around here. Rabbits is just for the pot. It’s the fish I can sell. Will you look at this?”

  He reaches into a crevice between the roof and the wall and takes out a wooden pole with a large iron hook lashed to one end with thick twine.

  “Ever seen one of these before?” he says.

  O’Connor shakes his head.

  “It’s the best thing about. Some men like a net, but a gaff is quicker and easier by far. It takes two good men, though. One to shine a lamp to get their attention and the other to hook ’em when they come a-calling.”

  He lo
oks at O’Connor and smiles.

  “We could do a spell of fishing tonight. It’s early in the year, but with a slice of luck we’ll get enough to feed ourselves and then some.”

  “I never used a gaff,” O’Connor says. “Nor ever seen one used.”

  “Then you can hold the lantern. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  O’Connor tosses the rabbit bone aside. Since he left New York he has been living on stream water and wizened turnips filched from the fields. He is tired from walking, and the fish will give him strength.

  “I need to eat something,” he says.

  “I figured that.”

  “How far’s the river?”

  “Mile or two away. It’s an easy walk. We’ll wait here till it gets dark enough, then go along.”

  O’Connor stretches out on the rusted bedstead while they wait. Harrisburg is only a guess, he knows that, but why would Doyle ever claim he was from Harrisburg if he had no connections to the place? Why that one town out of ten thousand others? He will try the drapers first, he thinks, then the bars and barbershops, and then, if he has no luck at all, he will go back to New York and ask his questions there instead. Doyle will show himself eventually. He must. A man like him is too proud and too bold to stay hidden away forever. It is a matter of waiting as much as searching, he believes, a matter of patience and firm resolve.

  The poacher passes the time singing ribald songs and breaking sticks for the hearth. When it’s become too dark to see, he gets a lantern from the hiding place and lights it with a match. He holds it up to his cragged face and gurns like a mummer.

  “I’m a poacher, me,” he says, “and I ain’t ashamed of it neither. This earth and its creatures is a gift from the Lord, and it can’t be broke apart and owned, no matter what the rich folk says about it.”

  “It’s the men with the money who make the rules,” O’Connor answers him. “It’s always been so and always will be.”