Irish McEwan was my first love, and my only. I would believe his innocence all my life. I was sixteen, that day at the farm.
Nedra. What did I see that day, I don’t know! It was the start of my nervousness. My bad eyes. Even now I hate a surprise. If I’m back from school and it’s winter and dark and nobody’s home I’m half scared to go inside. After that day at the McEwan farm, I couldn’t sleep a night through for years. And if Red, our border collie, began barking it’s like I might jump out of my skin! People joke about things like that but what’s funny? I’d go upstairs in our house and if it was dark, somebody’d have to come with me. For a long time. Almost, I couldn’t use the bathroom during the night. Couldn’t sleep, thinking of what I’d seen. No, not thinking: these flashes coming at me, like a rollercoaster ride. And Kathlee across the room sleeping. Or pretending to sleep. Kathlee didn’t see, she has sworn that on the Holy Bible. Her testimony at the courthouse. Her affidavit.
These are words not a one of us knew before. Now we say them easy as TV people.
Kathlee. What did I see that day, I saw nothing. Swore to the police and then to the court ALL I KNEW EXACTLY AS I RECALLED IT. Placed my hand on the Holy Bible so help me God. I had prayed for help and guidance in remembering but when I tried there was a buzzing in my head, a fiery light like camera flashes.
Kathlee, no you don’t want to see. C’mon!
Even now, it’s years later. I will get sick if I try.
No, Holly will not be told. If I learn of anyone telling her, I will be madder than hell! That’s a warning.
Nedra. What did I see, O God: I looked right into the room. I ran to the doorway, couldn’t have been stopped even if Irish had grabbed me, which he did not, hadn’t seen me I guess where I’d been sort of hiding behind the refrigerator. Half-scared but giggling, like this was a game? Hide-and-seek.
I’m like that. I mean, I was. A tomboy. Pushy.
At school I always had to be first in line. Or raising my hand to answer the teacher. I was quick, and smart. It wasn’t meant to be selfish—well, maybe it was, but not only that—but like I was restless, jumpy. Mexican jumping bean, Grandma called me. Like a watch wound so tight it’s got to tick faster than any other watch or it will burst.
How long we were driving the back country roads, I don’t know. Started out in Sanborn, around 2 P.M., I mean Irish and Kathlee picked me up then. We drove to Olcott Beach, then the Lake Isle Inn where Irish was drinking beer and Kathlee and me Cokes and we played the pinball machines and Irish played euchre with some older men and it happened he won fifty-seven dollars. The look in his face! Kathlee and I counted it out in mostly ones and fives. Irish kept saying he wasn’t any card player, must’ve been luck like being struck by lightning.
Kathlee said then we’d better go home, Nedra and her. And Irish right away agreed. We’d been with him all that afternoon. And I was worried that Grandma might’ve called home to tell Momma—or what if Daddy answered the phone!—how we’d gone off with somebody in a pickup truck she hadn’t caught a clear glimpse of (from the front window where she was looking out) but believed it was an older boy, not Kathlee’s age. And that swath of dark-red hair, maybe one of the McEwans? (The McEwans were well-known in the area. Mostly, the men had bad reputations. Not Irish McEwan, everybody liked Irish who’d played football at Strykersville High, but the others especially the old man Malachi.)
So Irish treats everybody at the Lake Isle Inn to drinks, roast beef sandwiches and french fries. Spent more than half of his winnings like he needed to be rid of it.
When we left it was a little after 5 P.M. Though I could be wrong. It’s summer, and bright and glaring-hot as noon. A kind of shimmery light over the lake, and a warm briny-smelling wind, and that smell of dead fish, clams. Irish is driving us home and there’s a good happy feeling from him winning at euchre, he’s saying maybe his luck has changed, and it’s strange to me, to hear a boy like Irish McEwan say such a thing, like his life is not perfect though he is himself perfect (in the eyes of a thirteen-year-old, I mean). In the front seat Kathlee is next to Irish squeezed between him and me and her hair that’s the color of ripe wheat is blowing wild. And her skirt lifting over her knees so she’s trying to hold it down. And she’s sneaking looks at Irish. And him at her. They’d danced a little at the tavern, dropping coins in the jukebox. And on the beach, I’d seen him kissing her. And I’m NOT JEALOUS, I’m only just thirteen and would be scared to death I KNOW if any boy let alone Irish McEwan asked to dance with me, or even talked to me in any special way. I’m this jumpy homely girl, immature my mother would say, for my age. Maybe I like Irish McEwan too, more than I should, but I know he’d never glance twice at me, and it’s a surprise even he seems interested in Kathlee who’s never had a boyfriend, she’s so sweet and nervous and shy and blushes when boys talk to her, or tease her, though she can talk O.K. with girls, and adults, and gets B’s in school. Simple! some of the kids say of my sister and that is absolutely untrue. Now Irish McEwan is asking politely where do we live, exactly?—he thinks he knows, but better be sure. And Kathlee tells him. And we’re on the Strykersville Road, a two-lane blacktop highway leading away from Lake Ontario where the tavern is. It would be said of Irish McEwan that he’d had a dozen beers that afternoon, the alcohol count in his blood was high, but Irish never drove recklessly all the hours we were with him and has been polite not just to Kathlee and me, but to everybody we met. He’s a muscle-shouldered boy you might compare to a steer on its hind legs. He’s strong, and can be a little clumsy. He’s got pale skin, for a boy who works outdoors, with scatterings of freckles, and thick dark-red hair straggling over his ears and down his neck, he would’ve been good-looking except for his habit of frowning, grimacing with his mouth, as bad as my father who’s hard of hearing and screws up his face trying to figure out what people are saying. Irish McEwan is twenty-three years old and already his forehead’s lined like a man’s twice that age.
Then on the Strykersville Road, Irish says suddenly he has a feeling he’d better drop by his own house first. Because his father has been sort of expecting him and he hasn’t gone. Because of meeting up with Kathlee, and then with me. And his father was expecting him around noon but he’d been with Kathlee then, and lost track of time. And Kathlee says O.K., sure. So that’s what we do. Where the McEwans live, or used to live, it’s on the Strykersville Road about two miles closer to the lake than our house, and we live on a side road, so it makes sense to drop by Irish’s house before he takes us home. The McEwan house (that would be shown in newspapers and on TV always looking better, more dignified than it is) is back from the highway about a quarter-mile. One of these bumpy rutted dirt lanes. Except the house is on a little rise, and evergreens in the front yard are mostly dead, you couldn’t have seen it from the road. One of those old faded-red-brick houses along Lake Ontario that look larger from the outside than they actually are, and sort of distinguished, like a house in town, except the shutters and trim are rotting, and the roof leaks, and the chimney, and there’s no insulation, and the plumbing (as my father who’s a carpenter would say) is probably shot to hell. And the outbuildings in worse shape, needing repair. The McEwans are farmers, or were, but hadn’t much interest in farm work, at least not Malachi and Johnny who worked odd jobs in town, but never kept them long. These McEwans were men with quick tempers who didn’t like to be bossed around, especially when they’d been drinking. So we’re driving up the rutted lane and on one side is a scrubby cornfield and on the other is a rock-strewn pasture, and some grazing guernseys that raise their heads to look at us as Irish bounces past raising clouds of dust. My pa is gonna be madder than hell Irish says with this nervous laugh he wanted me here by noon. Parking then in the cinder driveway. And there’s an old Chevy sedan, and another pickup in the drive. And nobody around. Except scruffy chickens pecking in the dirt unperturbed, and a dog barking. This dog is a black mongrel-Labrador cringing by the rear door of the house, and when Irish climbs out of the pickup the
dog shies away, barking and whining, as if it doesn’t recognize him. Irish calls to the dog Mick, what’s wrong? Don’t you know me? But the dog cringes and whimpers and runs away around the corner of the house.
And that’s the first strange thing.
This gaunt ugly old faded-red-brick house. Plastic strips still flapping over the windows, from last winter. Missing shingles, crooked shutters. The back porch practically rotted through. Streaks down the side of the house below the second floor windows from, it would be said in disgust, men and boys urinating out the windows. A house with no woman living in it you can tell. (Because Irish’s mother had died a few years ago, and the family split up. In the papers and on TV it would seem so confusing, who lived in this house, and who did not. Suspicious-sounding like the way they’d identify Irish as Ciaran McEwan which was a name nobody knew, and always giving his age as twenty-three. Strange and twisted such facts can seem.)
That day, August 11, 1969, only just the old man Malachi and the oldest brother Johnny were actually living in the house. But other McEwans, including Malachi’s thirty-six-year-old biker son from his first marriage, might drop by at any time or even stay the night. And there might be a woman Malachi’d bring back from a tavern to stay a few days. At one time there’d been six children in the family, four brothers and two sisters, but all except Johnny had moved away. Irish moved away immediately after his mother died to live alone, aged seventeen, in Strykersville, in a room above the barber shop, and to work at the lumberyard where my dad knew him, and liked him. Most Saturdays in August, Irish had off. And so he happened to turn up in Sanborn, a small town six miles away, near the lake, where it just happened that Kathlee was working in our aunt Gloria’s hair salon like she does some Saturdays, but not every Saturday, and I was at the library for a while, and then at our grandma’s. These things just happened, like dice being shaken and thrown, or like a pinball game, no more intention than that. I can swear!
Irish enters his father’s house by the rear door saying he’ll be right back. The black Lab (that Irish would say he’d known since it was a pup) is hiding beneath the porch. Kathlee says, Oh Nedra, d’you think Irish likes me? She’s excited, can’t hardly sit still, licking her lips peeping at herself in the dusty rear view mirror, and out of meanness I say guys like any girl who’ll make out with them. Though I know it isn’t true, an older guy like Irish would be used to kissing girls, and girls kissing him back, and plenty more beside that Kathlee, who’s shocked by just words some of the boys at school yell, would never consent to. Kathlee says, Nedra you’re not nice. And I say, nudging her, in the waist where there’s a pinch of baby fat Kathlee hates being teased over, I guess you think you are? Kiss-kiss I’m puckering my lips making the ugliest face I can.
Kathlee says, Sometimes I hate you.
So Kathlee’s fired up and huffy, and climbs out of the pickup, and goes to the screen door that’s rusted and has a broken spring, swinging open from where Irish has gone inside. She’s wearing that blue-striped halter top sundress with the elastic waist and short skirt that makes her look like a doll, and her fluffy-wavy hair to her shoulders, and her cheeks sort of flushed and slapped-looking from the excitement. Because Kathlee Hogan isn’t the kind of nice girl you’d expect to be seen with a boy like Irish McEwan. She’s calling, Irish? Irish? in a breathy little voice nothing like you’d hear from her if it was just me, her sister, close by. And after a minute or so, she goes to look inside the screen door, saying, Irish? Can I come in? and I’m surprised, Kathlee opens the door and turns back to me and sticks out her tongue, and disappears inside like this is a house she’s been inside before, and I know for sure it is not. And I jump down out of the pickup, too. And (not knowing how stupid this behavior is, as I’d realize later) I’m squatting by the porch trying to see the black dog that’s hiding beneath it, that I can hear panting and growling, and I’m cooing Mick! Good dog! Don’t be afraid, it’s just Nedra.
Like I’m God’s gift to animals. If Irish McEwan is going to be Kathlee’s boyfriend, I’m not jealous for I can talk to animals, some animals at least. As I don’t wish to talk to humans.
But the dog won’t come to me, and I’m fed up and restless, and I follow Kathlee into the McEwan house, like this is a kind of thing I’m accustomed to doing. And stepping inside I feel shivery right away, and my heart starts kicking in my chest. That kitchen! A real old refrigerator, and a filthy gas stove, and a plastic-topped table covered with dirtied plates, and more dirtied plates in the sink, and grease-stained walls and a high ceiling that’s all cobwebs and cracks. A sickish smell of old burnt food. And a darker smell like fermenting apples. And worse. And I’m wiping at my eyes, and almost can’t see. You’d think I would be calling Kathlee? Kathlee? Irish? but it’s like my tongue has gone numb. I’m wearing just a tank top and denim cut-offs and rubber-thong sandals from the discount bin at Woolworth’s. Wet from Olcott Beach where we’d been running in the surf. And my straggly hair that’s dishwater blond, not a soft pretty color like Kathlee’s, sticking in my face. And there’s Kathlee in the doorway, her back to me. She’s looking into the front room (that would be called in the news stories the “parlor,” not the living room) and it seems to me I can see her spine shivering, though she isn’t moving just standing there, and what I’m seeing also that’s unexpected is a grandfather clock in the hall, not ticking, pendulum still, a tall handsome wood-carved clock with roman numerals and afterward I will learn that the clock belonged to Irish’s mother, she’d brought it with her when she married Malachi McEwan. Of course it’s broken. Like everything in this house. And there comes Irish up behind Kathlee. From a room off the hall. The bathroom, I’m thinking because Irish is wiping his hands on his thighs like he’s just washed them. Or maybe his hands are sweaty, he’s sweated through his T-shirt. And there’s this look on his face, hungry and scared, but when he touches my sister he’s gentle, takes hold of her wrist between two of his big fingers, and Kathlee turns right away to look up at him, blank and trusting as a baby, or maybe she’s stunned, in a state of shock, and and Irish slips his arm around her waist, and says words I can’t hear, and Kathlee presses against him and hides her face and when Irish turns to walk her away, back through the kitchen and out of the house, I hide from them in a corner of the kitchen, and they don’t see me. And I’m excited, I know there’s something in the front room I have to see. I can smell it, I’m so scared I’m shaking, or maybe it’s just excitement, like our cats excited and yellow-eyed and their tails switching when they smell their prey invisible and indiscernible to us, and irresistible. I’m Nedra, the pushy one. I’m Nedra, all elbows. Lucky your sister came first, folks teased, ’cause your mother might not’ve wanted a second one of you. I’m Nedra, I would’ve pushed past Kathlee in the hall if Irish hadn’t stepped out of that room. So I run to the doorway in a house strange to me, pushy and nosy. And I see. I’m panting like that dog under the porch, and I see. I don’t know what I am seeing, what the name or names for it might be, this sight is no more real to me than flicking through TV like I do when I’m restless and nobody’s there to scold me. Maybe I’m smiling. I’m a girl who smiles when she’s nervous or scared, for instance if boys look at me in a certain way and I’m alone, and nobody close by to define me, to know not who I am (because I would not expect that) but whose daughter. My nostrils are pinching with the strong smell, and I’m beginning to gag. There’s something sickish-rotten like guts, and human shit, a shameful smell you recognize without putting a name to it. And I hear the flies. And see them. Where they’re a buzzing cloud like metal filings on the broken heads of two men. Men I don’t know. Adult men, one of them with thick white bloodstained hair. Blood and brains on the filthy carpet of this room that would be called the parlor. Like a child had smeared crimson Crayola marks across a picture. Splashed onto a worn-out old sofa and chairs. The bodies looked like they’d crawled to where they were. Blood-soaked workclothes, and blood in the ridges and crevices of what had been faces. Yet they wer
e lying easy as sleep. The weirdness was to me, seeing adult men lying on the floor, and me standing over them almost! Thinking Except for those horseflies they’d be at peace now.
Kathlee. No, Irish McEwan was not my fiancé that day. Nor my boyfriend. All that, I explained.
I explained we’d been together every minute. Since late that morning around eleven, or eleven-thirty. To whenever time it was when the sheriff’s men came, with their siren blasting, to the house. Irish was the one to telephone for help. He’d gone back inside the house, to use the phone. Yes: all those hours I was in his company. At first it was just Irish and me, then we went to pick up Nedra at Grandma’s. Oh, all the places we drove, I don’t know…We were talking and laughing. Listening to Tommy Lee Ryan, “Just Kiss Good-bye,” and the Meadowlarks, “Sweet Lovin Time.” And the Top Ten.
A dozen times I would be questioned, and always I would swear. I began to get sick, fainting-sick, in just entering one of their buildings. My parents would take me of course. But you never get used to it. People looking at you like you’re not telling the truth. Like you’re a criminal or murderer yourself! Don’t be afraid of them, honey Irish would console me. They can’t do anything to you. They can’t do anything to me either, I promise. And I knew this was so, but I was filled with worry.
I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories Page 14