by Jim Tully
Greater mistake was never made.
These twelve, with the wounded pride, sat silent, and stared down the snowy road.
The horses started. The bob-sled glided over the road. All were gone.
My mother talked no more that day.
Early the following spring my mother was bearing another child. She had a cow to milk, the housework to do, a husband, a father and six children to look after.
She found time to make a bed of pansies and surround them with violets. She watched them tenderly.
A late frost came and shriveled their many colored heads even with the stems.
She cried over them as though they were dead children.
CHAPTER IV
A MAN WITHOUT TEARS
A WIFE, six children, two cows, one hog, a blind mare and a sense of sad humor, were my father’s possessions.
We lived in a log house, in and out the windows of which the crows of trouble flew.
My father was a gorilla-built man. His arms were long and crooked. The ends of a carrot-shaped mustache touched his shoulder blades. It gave his mouth an appearance of ferocity not in the heart. Squat, agile, and muscular, he weighed nearly one hundred and ninety pounds. His shoulders were early stooped, as from carrying the inherited burdens of a thousand dead Irish peasants.
A man of some imagination, he loved the tingle of warm liquor in his blood. He was for fifty years a ditch digger.
The house, built by himself, contained four rooms. In it six children and their parents lived.
Relatives visited us for days at a time. I early learned to sleep like a contortionist.
We reached our home by a muddy or dusty lane according to the Ohio season. It was in the center of a dense wood a half mile from the main road.
A deep ditch ran in front of the house. It had been dug by my father.
The section in which we lived was known as the Black Swamp. It was flat for many miles.
The artificial St. Marys Reservoir, ten miles long and seven wide, was not far away. It drained the muddy water of many counties and spawned a pestilence of mosquitoes.
A soggy muddy basin, it was an ideal section for a ditch digger. My father had all the poverty, children and work he could manage.
My father came from Ireland with his mother when a lad of ten. My grandfather had preceded them three years before. After seven weeks on the ocean, he was five days reaching Ohio from New York, a distance of eight hundred miles.
At heart my father was an agnostic without knowing it. His wife relied much on God. He did not interfere.
Aware of the trap in which life had caught him, he bowed to his peasant futility like a gentleman.
He treated his children like unavoidable evils, and deserted them early.
Violating all rules of health, he was never ill.
He would read by the hour. Whether it helped him mentally, I know not. With but one exception, he was a man who never made comment.
He was nearsighted. When reading, he never moved his eyes. A country newspaper, a frayed volume of Shakespeare, or a medical almanac, it moved backward and forward within two inches of his left eye.
He would give his last dollar away—and take another man’s last dollar without compunction. He gave his money to the person nearest him at the time.
He was always in debt.
He was a man whom calamity followed.
Once, while ditching in a nearby field, he saw his house ablaze. The family was away.
He ran across the meadow and rushed up the stairs.
He saved a corn husk mattress. He jumped with it out of the window.
My mother arrived with neighbors soon after. She hastily took a small gilt clock from the mantel. It was all she had of beauty.
A farmer threw a large crock of eggs into the yard in order to save them.
Two cows and Blind Nell were in a small enclosure adjoining the house. The cattle broke through the rails and escaped. Blind Nell remained.
She was the delight and wonder of our childhood. A five-acre woods was her summer home.
Totally blind, she could walk through it without touching shrub or tree.
She would enter the forest by the same route and come out at the same place each time.
With tail ablaze, she now stood whimpering, still.
My father seized a revolver. I followed him. He crashed a bullet through her skull.
She went to her front knees, as if in prayer for the dying. Her hide was bare as a glove. She twitched once—and was still.
A most amazing Irishman was my father—one devoid of sentimentality. A man without tears, he often seemed one without pity.
He patted the forehead of the dead mare, while his house burned to the ground.
Much was said against him. He was called a child deserter, a whore-monger, and a drunkard.
A product of people too much given to the vice of slander, he never made an unkind comment on others.
After the fire we lived in an old schoolhouse for two weeks.
My father borrowed five dollars. A few neighbors helped us.
Farmers and relatives gathered later to help build our new home. They brought cast-off pieces of furniture for our use.
They felled trees and hewed them. Oxen dragged them from the woods.
Straight trees of smaller size were cut and fitted as rafters. The home was completed by night.
Then mother brought her flock home, and life went on as wretchedly as before.
Father had the oxen drag Blind Nell to a spot in the woods.
She was never buried.
Black buzzards circled the sky above her.
I pointed toward them.
My father could not see that far.
I told my mother about the buzzards.
She planted a seed in my childish mind that day. While baking cookies she kindled my imagination with a strange tale. It has grown with the years.
The buzzards had once been beautiful eagles. Their homes were on the high mountains. Once a year they accompanied a fairy train to the moon.
In the long ago when returning from the moon they had seen a slender man with a sad face. He carried a heavy cross on his shoulders. His eyes had the look of one who gazed down a road in eternity.
He knelt, with head down, under the weight of the cross. Rising, he stumbled once, and fell. He looked upward imploringly at the green and blue eagles.
Three little sparrows came out of the sky and looked in pity at the sad man with the cross. They called aloud to the far-off eagles to come and help him.
Immediately the sparrows were turned to golden-throated nightingales. Their voices filled the world with music. The eagles flew higher and higher, laughing at a man who carried a cross on a rough road to a little hill which overlooked a never-to-be-forgotten valley.
Out of a jagged hole in the sky came a giant’s head. His eyes were bigger than the sun. Worlds could be seen burning in them.
He lifted an ocean in his hollow palm, and pressed it to his forehead to cool the heat from his eyes.
“I must speak without malice,” he thundered, “and punish without vengeance.”
The eagles hung in the air, like iron birds attached to invisible wires.
The giant scooped all the snow from the mountains of the world and held it over his heart.
“My heart must be cool—for my punishment is severe.”
The eagles trembled before him, their wings outspread.
“I am the King of the Thunder,” the giant said in a low whisper which shook the sky, “and I saw you refuse help to a child of the stars in the land of human Buzzards—who eat the hearts and souls of the loveliest and the purest birds we are forced to send among them. And so for this offense—you will become as one of them—forever and forever and forever.”
As the giant said the three forevers the earth opened.
He smiled at a fleece of cloud that trailed across his right eye.
“The man you refused to help has come bac
k to us—with what earthly buzzards call a thief on each side of Him. They were crucified for taking that which they owned as much as the rest of their fellow buzzards.”
The giant sighed and wiped a tear from his left eye. The ocean with which he had mopped his forehead rolled downward.
“Too bad,” he smiled, “that may cause a deluge in the land of buzzards. Oh, well, if a million or two are drowned we can always hatch others out of the eggs of rattlesnakes.”
The eagles laughed.
“Silence!” thundered the King of Thunder. “Why do fools laugh at the misery of men they do not understand?”
He wiped his other eye … Another ocean fell to the earth.
“Too bad—too bad,” he sighed again—“Every time the earth cracks down there a great man dies—It has cracked twice now in ten million years. One was a carpenter—and the other an unknown fool.”
He looked sternly at the myriads of eagles before him.
“Get ye down to the earth—and as buzzards remain—flying always in circles like the minds of all the other buzzards down there.”
The Eagles’ feathers went black. They flew earthward, their eyes on the alert for carrion.
The sky closed.
The Giant was gone.
CHAPTER V
CHILDHOOD
I EARLY learned, with my brothers, the tricks of the woods. We knew how to go with the wind when tracking rabbits. We used the moss on the trees as a compass, claiming that it was always on the north side of the tree.
We once robbed a quail’s nest and placed the eggs under a setting hen. Two of the eggs hatched in a few days.
The hen, feeling that her task was done, rose from the nest.
No larger than hickory nuts, the two quail followed the hen about the place.
They were a constant grief to mother. Several times she gave us ten cents each to lose them in the woods. We were careful to see that they found their way back to the barnyard. In a few days, mother would give us ten cents again. The large red hen would cluck at her two nervous children in utter dismay.
At last they went to the woods, and returned no more.
When my clothes were fit to wear I went to mass on Sunday with my ragamuffin brothers and sisters. The church was situated in Glyn-wood, an Irish village, five miles from St. Marys. Across the road was a cemetery where rustic wanderers, far from Ireland, were buried. Children, early exhibiting an Irish contempt for death, played tag upon the graves.
Three saloons were close to the church. My father often dallied too long at the bar. He often reached his seat in church without reverence in his heart.
Shoes were scarce in my childhood. From early spring until late fall I wore them only on Sunday, when I called at the house of God.
Barefooted, I ran in the early morning frost to bring the cows from their straw shed in the woods. I would warm my feet where they had lain all night.
The roads in our section were merely wagon tracks through woods and fields. Often, when father drove his oxen to town, I would go along. My bare feet would hang from the wagon and trail in the muddy water.
My father seldom talked to me. There was a restful kindness in his silence. His personality, save on a few dramatic occasions, was negative. My mother’s was positive. They lived together peacefully for sixteen years.
The county paid a bounty of one cent each for dead sparrows. I was too young to kill, but my older brothers each owned a sling shot and rifle. I accompanied them to the county commissioner, who lived eight miles from our home.
Down the road we went with our hundred dead strung across the neck of the Blind Nell.
As though in mourning for the occasion, the horse walked slowly. As she could not be made to move faster, my brothers jumped off her back and ran ahead.
When we reached the commissioner’s house, I rode into the lane like a freckled king delivering a dead feather-ruffled army.
The commissioner counted the birds as a miser would pennies. He loomed large to me.
His beard was heavy. There were two red spots on his face which it did not cover.
A great many pigeons hopped about his barnyard.
He gave us a silver dollar and scolded us for killing the birds.
Years later I heard that he had been in love with my mother.
She did not want to marry “out of the church.”
We would often wander through the woods and tap the sugar maple trees.
Our mother had a reason for the sweetness of the water:
It was a very hot day in August. Three fairies wandering from Ireland sought rest under the shade of many trees. All would draw in their leaves at the approach of the fairies.
Worn in body and foot sore, they came at last to a small tree. It had been beaten sideways by the wind. Its leaves became larger than elephants’ ears when it saw them approach. They rested under its shade a long, long time. When all was ready for the journey back to Ireland, a heavy wind roared over the meadows and through the woods. It bent the little tree until its branches touched the ground.
The fairies could hear the tree’s heart aching. One branch said to the other, “If we break now we will never be able to give shade to such sweet tired little people again.”
The other branch said … “Oh, we cannot break—not for ourselves, for that doesn’t matter—but suppose we were all wrinkled and dead and some one needed shade on a hot day like this—these little people are so woebegone that we must fight to keep alive for their sake—and the sake of others.”
The fairies heard the words. For, according to my mother, it is the gift of no other fairies in the world but Irish fairies—to hear pine trees whisper to birds in the mountains—to hear eagles talk to tigers in the sky. The head fairy said to the others: “I want to be alone for just a little moment.”
He waved at a passing cloud. Out of it stepped a beautiful young lady dressed in blue. Her blue eyes danced like the sun on Easter morning. Her skin was whiter even than mother’s. Red roses were in her cheeks. Her dark hair was studded with golden stars. She wore a large cloak with vivid red lining. She stepped down and talked to the head fairy.
He motioned to the bent little tree. The other fairies heard the beautiful lady say, “How lovely—such a good deed should never die—and just think—those branches thought not of themselves at all—at all.” The three fairies and the beautiful lady looked long and admiringly at the little tree. The beautiful lady threw a kiss to each branch.
Suddenly the tree grew many feet. It became the most shapely tree in Auglaize County. Birds came from all the directions of heaven and sang within its branches. There were orioles green and gold, and eagles—red, purple and blue. The eagles sang like canaries, until many scarlet birds came and took up the song. Then the beautiful lady whispered:
“Give the tree and all its sisters eternal life, and make their blood sweet and warm, and their roots to go deep down into the earth so that no wind only out of the hand of Almighty God can ever make it bow.”
A mighty roar was heard in the woods. It was all the other trees complaining.
“We intended to give shade,” they said.
And the beautiful lady called back to them, her voice softer than dew under the feet of the child Jesus:
“I shall not judge you … but these little travelers could not find rest under the shade of your intentions. It was a happy chance that I happened to be coming by this way. I have so many worlds in which to see that the flowers grow properly that I have not been over this section in a million years.”
She paused, the roses glowing in her cheeks.
“But I shall carry your good intentions to our Heavenly Father—and he will judge you kindly.”
She turned to the little fairies:
“Would you like to ride to Ireland with me?” she asked.
“Yes, indeed, most beautiful lady,” they replied.
A cloud swooped out of the sky. It was more graceful than an eagle on a windy morning.
“
We shall be in Ireland in thirty-two minutes,” said the beautiful Lady.
They waved at the friendly and now beautiful sugar maple tree, and were lost to sight in a second.
We took our dog Monk everywhere with us. Always the vanguard of adventure, plumed tail ever wagging in joy, his eyes were ever sad.
The priest gave him to my mother when he was a puppy six weeks old. I learned to walk by holding to his side.
A thoroughbred collie, he carried himself among Irish peasants as if they were his equals. He associated with no other dogs.
One day Monk ventured too near a rattlesnake. It struck him on the shoulder with enough force to knock him backward. He ran yelping away. Forgetting the snake in our anxiety for the dog, we followed him to the bank of a large ditch which ran in front of the house and circled back through the woods.
Monk hurriedly buried himself in the mud until only his head was exposed.
All our coaxing would not make him move. My father told us that it was a dog’s way of curing itself of poison. It would require four or five days.
Patiently we waited. Each night before going to sleep I would think of Monk, alone, out in the mud.
We carried meat and water to him every day. He would touch nothing, and growl his disapproval if we came too near.
He finally came home with a starved appearance and a limp in his shoulder.
The Prodigal Son was not treated with greater kindness.
A culvert six miles away was often our destination. Its roof was a “cattle guard” made out of steel spikes to keep cattle from wandering on the railroad tracks.
We could tell time by the position of the sun. We knew just when the train passed the crossing. We were literally tattered sun dials.
We awaited the approaching train in the culvert with Monk. It vibrated over the ground a half mile away and bore down upon us with a terrible roar.
One day we decided to tease Monk. We crawled into the culvert without him. Monk tried to follow. We would not let him in.
The train roaded toward the culvert.
Monk, baffled, ran barking up and down the tracks. We yelled … “Get away! Monk! Get away! Get away!”