A Man in a Distant Field

by Theresa Kishkan

  The morning of departure was misty and grey. Declan rose early and went outside with his mug of tea, wanting a final imprint of the place. The roses had long finished and their seed pods had formed, turning scarlet as the nights cooled. He could smell clover, reminding him of the scent of it on the breath of the family cow, and how rich the milk was when she’d been feeding on new clover. He could smell the sea, too, and knew he would miss its familiar sound and iodine sting as he lowered his body into it on August mornings. A scattering of ducks swam by the perimeter of the bay, feeding in the wash of the creek. Rose had told him it was a favourite feeding place for mergansers when the salmon were spawning; they waited for the stray eggs to float out on the freshets, gorging themselves on the rich morsels. It would be insects now the ducks were eating, he supposed, and was stung for a moment by the thought that he would not see the salmon runs he had spent the last months hearing about. The bay boiled with them, MacIsaac had said, and the Indian men told him that the creek by World’s End was known far and wide for its yah’no-kwuh, or chum salmon, which they smoke-dried in great numbers. There had been no tide low enough during waking hours for Declan to search for a rock with the calling fish, no chance to look for a bowl on the shore nearby still carrying traces of its pigments, red ochre and soot.

  Argos whined for her breakfast, and Declan cleared out his cuddy of a few pieces of cold rock cod, a lump of cheese, and an inch or two of milk in the jug. Putting the remains in the dog’s dish, he crumbled a wedge of soda bread over it and set the bowl by the door for her. He had taken such delight in her over the months as she chased her tail and bumblebees in sunlight, swam like a seal, went deeply into sleep seconds after throwing herself down at his feet, trusting as any lover. He would miss her company.

  He hummed a little, and then realized it was Carolan’s “Farewell to Music” that he had in his mind and would not leave him alone. How many times had he heard Grainne struggle to get the harmonies right, her fingernails plucking the metal strings, a bell-like note ringing out and stopping as she paused to think it through again, listening to something only she could hear. For himself, it held the beauty and sadness of a life—the beginning, slow footfalls of the harper’s horse as he headed for one house or another, the lonely wind, silvery water from creeks coming down from the high hills as he rode from Roscommon to Athenry, the startled cry of a moorcock as it rose from the side of the wild boreen, a bit of revelry and quick dance, a last mournful plea for remembrance. A farewell, written in old age and illness by a quiet window in a room near Ballaghadereen, before the harpist died in the home of his patron, before the wake which lasted four days and which would certainly have provided a drop of whiskey to the mourners, and perhaps a few renditions of the planxties performed by travelling harpers in honour of his passing.

  Time to set out, time to look once more at the worn door whose hinges he had rubbed with lard, the stove he had coaxed to bake bread, the windows that let in mosquitoes, tree frogs which would cling to the glass with their tiny hands, peering out in surprise, stray birds, moths, but also the scent of wildflowers and sea-spray and which looked due east and due west, both to the rising and setting of this Pacific sun. He had said his goodbye to Mrs. Neil, though Rose had hidden away and could not be found. He made a small packet of the books as well as a letter for her, his Irish address printed out with the hope she would write to him.

  Time to gather Argos’s bowl and her burlap bed—the MacIsaacs might have other plans for her but these would comfort her once the skiff had rounded the point, gone from her forever. He would not look back, once Argos had been left off with the Scottish couple and the obligatory measure of whiskey had been downed with a Slainte, sonas agus beartas and a quick firm handshake. He had the lines in his mind, lines he had only just translated, before the trouble with Rose and the wrath of her father.

  Were they tears in his eyes or mist off the water as he rowed to the settlement? Whatever, he brushed the moisture away with his hand.

  Part Two

  Delphi, County Mayo, Ireland, Fall 1922 to Spring 1923

  Chapter Ten

  He had managed a ride as far as Leenane with a man driving home to Crossmolina from a job in Galway Town. A pleasant chap who had driven quietly, commenting now and then on current events and the dreadful state of the road, murmuring at one point that the barracks they passed had been a target of one of the flying squads. A small photograph of Michael Collins hung on a hook above the windshield. The man asked no questions, not even why a fellow would want to be let off in Leenane, not why a man carried a paddle painted with the image of a bird, fantastic as St. John’s eagle from the Book of Kells. A dog in the back of the automobile sniffed Declan’s arm briefly, then curled up in a neat ball on a piece of old rug.

  “Can I give ye a pint for yer trouble?” Declan asked as the man stopped on the main street.

  “Sure it was no trouble to give a traveller a lift. Thanks all the same but I am expected home,” the man answered. “Good luck to ye then.”

  Declan stopped in the shop to buy a loaf, some matches, and a few other provisions. He didn’t recognize the woman at the counter. She commented on the weather and asked did he have far to go. He replied he was not certain how far and left before she could pursue it. It was a day of soft weather, fine mist that dampened the hair and skin but did not soak the clothing. Not so different from days at Oyster Bay, thought Declan, as he followed the road north of Leenane to where the main route followed under the shadow of Croagh Patrick to Westport and the sub-road left to meander along the northern finger of Killary Harbour where the Erriff River drained into it. He could hear the Aasleagh Falls pouring down, sounding for all the world like the waterfalls he’d heard while travelling in the Indian canoes, overhung with bushes—rhododendron and sloes and the mountain rowans—as dense as the salal and devil’s club, hard-hack and vine maple of the Pacific. Yet this land smelled different, in part from the turf smoke held close to the earth by cloud as it left the chimneys of the isolated houses. He felt he could follow his nose right up into the Dhulough Valley, nestled between the Mweel Rea Mountains and the Sheefry Hills, the green fields watered by rain and the clean rivers running down into Glencullin Lough, Dhulough, and Fin Lough, which his own small holding overlooked.

  A farmer walking beside a horse and cart loaded with turf passed him on the road, and the man lifted his cap. It was Eamon O’Toole, but he walked by without recognition. Am I so changed, thought Declan, an Odysseus riding the stream back to Ocean, paddling as fierce as ever he could until the wind helped him out? And it’s true: I am not the man who left, carrying his grief like a broken bowl, fearful that the last few drops might spill out onto the road. All the same, I ought to have taken a moment to speak to Eamon. It’s his children I’m after teaching, and him helping to cut the pig.

  It did not occur to him that he may have been disguised, as was Odysseus for the long walk home, Athene saying to him,

  ... not a soul will know you,

  the clear skin of your arms and legs shrivelled,

  the chestnut hair all gone, your body dressed

  in sacking ...

  His sacking, a coat bought on Hastings Street in Vancouver, made of oilcloth, his burden a rucksack and a cedar paddle. The mists of Ithaka, the mists of the rising track into Delphi.

  The track took its familiar climb up from Tully and Lettereeragh, past a couple of isolated farms where the dogs barked but no one came to see the stranger passing by. A curtain might have twitched, a figure in a garden might have straightened, but it was though the man was smoke on the holy trail, and the days so unsettled with civil unrest that breathing inside might stop until the smoke disappeared up the track, a puff from a rifle or a torch made of rushes. The school on his left at Bundorragha, windows closed against the rain and a wisp undulating from the chimney with a chorus of the times tables carried to heaven from the mouths of young scholars. The beautiful creeks flowed down from Ben Gorm, and Declan paused to d
rink the water, blessing himself by instinct without thinking until the words Holy Spirit faded from his lips. And then it was Tullaglas, where his old life had ended.

  First he stood by the track and simply looked. Two walls of the house had collapsed or been tumbled, two remained but were scorched black, a window blown open like an egg. A tendril of burned curtain hung on one side. The chimney stood like one of the cairns you could find in isolated areas, erected in the deep past by the ancient tribes of Ireland. Someone had tidied the ruin, raked out the rubble, and stacked the useful rocks in a heap.

  The haggard walls still stood, though plants grew in untended proliferation—gooseberry canes, a mallow, some leeks gone unpulled and sprouting seed heads as big as a fist. Declan forced himself to look towards the small hill where the graves were. The grass was long, ungrazed by geese or the cow, and Michaelmas daisies rose on leggy stems beyond. He walked over. Someone had kept the area tidy; a jam jar held the remnants of a fall bouquet: a branch of red haws, some daisies, roses that Declan recognized as those Eilis had trained around the front door, slips of which had been rooted and given to anyone who asked. The plant had not survived the fire, he could see that, but someone had brought a cluster of roses for the graves of his women. Aodhagán O Rathaille’s poem came to him then: They were ears of corn! / They were apples! / They were three harp-strings! He felt tears come to his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away. Despite the charred stone and the rubble of the walls, it was peaceful here.

  What was left? He looked around. The byre stood, supported by the gable end; the pig shed too. The shed where they’d stored turf was untouched by fire. He looked down the slope of hill to where Fin Lough slept under the rain like a seal. Smoke rose from the two chimneys he could see, Mannions and O’Learys. Farms he had known all his life, families he had known, too, and generations before that had helped his ancestors as his helped theirs. Their cabins were tucked into the hills to protect them from weather, as his house had been, hedges of fuchsia planted for windbreak and beauty, and blackthorn for strength. One of the women from the cabins had probably tidied the graves, kept a few blooms there to grace the final ground of his wife and daughters. He would visit soon to thank them. He remembered the women in the Neil kitchen, how they took over the work of the place without a second thought, folding the family’s laundry, peeling their potatoes, their kindness a halo of light.

  He would sleep in the turf shed, he decided, knowing it would at least be dry, and the smell of bog earth would be preferable to generations of cows and pigs. He took his rucksack and walked to the door, a few slats of wood he had nailed together with a bridge of broken chair rung, hung to the frame with hinges of thick leather. The turf bucket stood outside, full of rainwater. He opened the door, then clasped his hands in shock. In the darkness of the shed he could see the outline of a harp. Grainne’s harp, in front of a pile of crumbling turf.

  Pushing the door open as wide as he could, Declan stood his rucksack against it to keep it from closing. Light entered the shed. He could smell burned wood, and his heart turned in the cage of his chest. The frame of the harp was dusty, and when he brushed it, soot came away on his fingers. He brushed a little more and saw that it was really just the surface that was charred. The soundboard seemed intact and undamaged by heat, but most of the strings were broken, a few of them melted to lumps of dull brass. Carefully he lifted it outside where he could look at it in full light. A little rain couldn’t hurt a harp that had come through a fire.

  Grainne had loved this harp. Made of bog oak, it was heavy and dark, not like some of the harps she had seen made of walnut or lighter woods. This oak had depth and burnish, which had something to do with the change wrought by the action of the bog. The wood had long been used for furniture, torches, even fuel; a few famous harps had been made of it—and Grainne’s, not famous but certainly beloved. A harp might emerge from the earth as one did, in Limerick, still carrying its strings. Once, while cutting turf, Declan had seen an ancient oak stump unearthed by a group of men, and they’d managed to pull it up to the uncut area of the bog with the help of two donkeys. The lines of it were beautiful, and if you squinted and looked, you could see the lyrical shape of a harp there. The men were cross that the neat and straight face of their bank was ruined by the stump—“A feckin’ disaster my working has become,” one man muttered as he surveyed the gaping hole, a man who’d taken pride in his clean cuts—but someone was pleased to take it home for fuel. It puzzled Declan that Grainne’s harp had escaped relatively unscathed and everything else had been immolated almost beyond recognition. He had only identified his daughters by their shoes. Yet a harp was wood, this harp crafted from a wood given all the qualities of fine fuel from its long residency in the earth, as plants and roots and whatever growth that had been taken over by the bog had turned to such a usable heat source.

  Using a sally branch, he swept out the turf shed so he could put down his blanket from the rucksack, a rolled gansey for his head. Then he hunted around the site until he found a rag. Dipping it in the turf bucket, he carefully washed the harp. The soot came away easily, flakes blowing off when rubbed a little with the damp cloth. He thought about unstringing the harp but had neither the tools nor the expertise to remove ruined strings, some of which might still be made usable. He ran his thumb across the few intact strings and winced at the sound. There were no words. Nothing like the tale sung by Demodokus with his gut-strung lyre, a tale of Troy and the departure of the twelve ships, the battle with the Cyclops and the prison of love on the island of Aeaea. This harp guttered of fire and sorrow, ugly sounds, a last string shuddering as he took his hand away. He wondered who had put it under shelter after he’d fled, not knowing anything had survived. Perhaps the same person who tended the small garden of graves, kept flowers in the jar. He cried a little for the kindness of these acts.

  Declan ate his bread and cheese on a stone by the garden which had always been used as a bench. Sitting there, he could see for miles. In the morning, he would talk to neighbours, find out about turf. If he were to stay, he would need fuel. Just before the fire, he had spent a week on the bog with his daughters, cutting their turf for the next winter’s fires. They’d cut and footed but never had the chance to bring the bricks home to stack against the wall, with a good lot filling the turf shed as well. Maire especially loved being on the bog. She’d carry the sleáns, and Grainne the sack with their meal and a jar of cold tea. Depending on the climb of the year—sometimes they began to cut soon after St. Patrick’s Day, some years they had to wait until the spring winds had dried the bog out and that wouldn’t be until May—there were wildflowers and interesting plants to be seen and collected to bring back for Eilis: butterwort, the spotted orchids, sweet gale, gilly flowers, marsh marigolds. There was a purple moor grass that looked splendid rippling over the surface of the unstripped bog, and when the marsh marigolds were in bloom, the sight of them, brilliant yellow against the dark earth, was a picture to gladden the most winter-weary heart.

  That was a happy memory, and Declan was startled at how it arose without the accompanying stab of pain. It made him want to remember more. Maire running down from the bit of pasture beyond with the cow at her heels, or calling owls at twilight and having them call back, so convincing were her imitations. Grainne conjugating Latin verbs as she wrung the milk from the cow’s teats, Eilis beating the hearth mat with a stick in a brisk spring wind, the dog herding a wayward chick back to the haggard as seriously as it would herd a flock of sheep.

  He made a small fire just outside the door of the turf shed, using dried stalks from the garden to ignite the broken sods. How good it was to smell the smoke! He held his face very near, breathing it in like medicine. The evening was cold, and he put his hands very near to the smoldering sods. He sat there for a long time before curling up on his blanket in all his clothes, that familiar smoke the last thing he knew before sleep.

  Waking, it took Declan a minute to orient himself. No sound of water lapping a
t the shingle just there, no muttering of ducks at the mouth of the creek over there, no soughing of wind in the wild roses that tangled themselves by the window. No excited whimper by the door as Argos heard him rise, wanting her pan of food. He rubbed his eyes, massaged the crick in his neck from the lumpy pillow the gansey made, and climbed to his feet. Imagine, he thought. I am in my turf shed where I’ve no doubt I’ll be spending the winter, God willing. The turf smoke had woven itself into his clothing, soft against the sharper smell of cedar kindling, which he carried from Oyster Bay like incense.

  Someone was walking up the boreen, carrying a basket. As she came closer, Declan could tell it was Bride Mannion. He went out to meet her. She put her basket down and took him in her arms, crying, both of them were crying. She murmured a welcome, a blessing, then held him at arm’s length.

  “It’s too thin ye are, Declan, but never mind, we saw the fire last evening and I told Fergus I’d take ye a bite in the morning. We’ve been expecting ye somehow. Fergus drove off the gentlemen who came to ask about rates, saying he’d a mind to put his foot to their backsides, did they not have an ounce of sympathy in them at all. I said I knew ye’d come, ye’d never leave them alone on that little green hill forever, and yer potatoes still in the earth.”

  They seated themselves on available stones and she passed him barmbrack, thick with currants, and spread with the butter she made from the family’s cow. Cold salted potatoes, a slab of bacon, and a jar of tea, still warm.