The last customer’s hair I rinsed for my aunt Gloria was about ten o’clock, a walk-in. Then I did sweeping and cleanup and taking out trash etcetera into the alley. An hour of this, maybe. That’s when I saw Irish McEwan driving past. On Niagara Street. Around eleven o’clock. A little later, I saw him parked by the bridge. Gloria said it was all right if I quit a little earlier, that time of summer is slow in the beauty salon. So I left around quarter to twelve, I’m sure. If Aunt Gloria remembers later, around one, oh she is mistaken but I never wanted to argue face-to-face. Always I was polite to older relatives, always to adults. You weren’t rude, not in my family. I ran down the street to say hello to Irish McEwan whom my father knew. Yes, that was the first time. Like that. Yes, but I knew him. From Strykersville. No, I never knew his father or brother. His father they called old man McEwan. (Not that Malachi McEwan was truly old: in the paper, his age was given as fifty-seven.)
Yes, Irish knew my name. He said it—Kathlee. It was my baby sister’s name for me from when she couldn’t pronounce Kathleen. So everybody called me Kathlee, that was my special name and I liked it.
We were talking and kidding around and Irish asked if I’d like to ride a little and I said yes, so we did, then he asked how’d I like to drive to Olcott Beach, which is nine miles away, and I said yes I would except we have to take my little sister Nedra, she’s at our grandma’s. So we went to pick up Nedra, where she was slouched on the glider on Grandma’s porch reading. What time was this, maybe twelve-thirty. That Nedra! She was a fanatic about books. Every Saturday she’d return books to the library and take out more books and she had cards for two public libraries, and still that was hardly enough for her. She would go to college and be a librarian or a teacher everybody predicted. The first in the Hogan family to go away to school. I would have been the first to graduate from high school, except marrying Irish McEwan like I did in my junior year, I had to drop out. You couldn’t be married at that time and remain in school. It just wasn’t done. You’d be expelled. Nobody questioned this just as nobody questioned the Vietnam War. (Remember that war?) These days a girl can be pregnant and unmarried and she’ll be welcome to stay in school, nobody protests. At least, not officially. It’s an enlightened time today in this new century, or a fallen time. It’s a more merciful time, as a Christian might see it, or it’s a time of no shame. But then in the early 1970’s where we lived in Eden County in upstate New York we were the people we were, and when Irish McEwan and I married I dropped out of school, and was happy to be a wife to him, and soon a mother. Good riddance was how I felt, leaving Strykersville, people talking about us like they were. Even so-called nice people. Even my friends. Because they were jealous. Because I was so happy, and had my baby thirteen months after we were married (I know, everybody was counting months), and nobody was going to cheat me of what I deserved. I swore on the Holy Bible that Irish McEwan had been in Sanborn by eleven o’clock that morning and he’d been in my company for hours and when we drove to his father’s farm he was never out of my sight for more than a few seconds, and never until then saw what was inside the house. It was a pure shock to him. But his first thought was for me. Kathlee he said no you don’t want to see. He was white-faced and trembling but his first thought was of me. He pulled me from the doorway, and I didn’t see. He said they’d been struck down by shotgun blasts, that was what it seemed to him. He was not excited or hysterical but calm-speaking, yet he was mistaken about this. Also, Irish said he knew who’d done it, but afterward he wouldn’t repeat these words, he’d never repeat them again even to me, even after we were married. And moved away from Strykersville. And the farm (which was mostly mortgaged) was sold.
No. Nedra never went into that house. She was in Irish’s pickup in the driveway. She was afraid to get out because of the dog barking. She says she followed me inside, and she saw the dead men, but that’s just Nedra making things up. She was always nervous, and saw things in the dark.
Anything physical, that wasn’t in a book, Nedra could not handle. For all her pushy behavior and sarcasm. Yes, she was smart, she got high grades, but there were things she didn’t comprehend. She’d never have an actual boyfriend. The boys who might’ve liked her, she scared off with her smart-aleck remarks, and the other boys, they’d never give a plain skinny girl like Nedra a second glance. She was scornful of them too, or pretended to be. Saying to me, after Irish and I were married and living in Yewville, and Holly was about a year old, in this earnest quivering voice Kathlee, how can you let it be done to you? What a man does? Doesn’t it hurt? Or do you get used to it? And having a baby, doesn’t it hurt awful? I was so surprised at my sister saying such things, I laughed, but I was angry, too. I said Nedra! Watch your mouth. This baby could pick pick up such talk, and remember years later.
Nedra. And somebody comes up behind me to touch my shoulder. Where I’m just standing there. And it’s Irish, and he’s gentle with me like he’d been with Kathlee, saying my name, Nedra, which was strange on his lips, saying I’d better come outside with him, and not look any more.
Like there’s danger he must rescue me from. There is danger, and he will rescue me from it.
Not holding me as he’d held Kathlee. But he took my hand, that was numb as ice, like I’m a little girl to be led away, he brings me dazed and blinking and stumbling back outside where Kathlee is crying and whimpering, saying Oh! oh! oh! but I’m not crying, and I won’t cry, it wasn’t real to me yet. Or, I was thinking Who are they, nobody I know. Why should I cry. But a hot acid mash comes boiling up out of me, my stomach, and I’m vomiting, spattering the ground at my feet and onto my yellow rubber-thong sandals from Woolworth’s I would throw away forever, after that day.
I would not be a witness. I would not give a statement. I was thirteen years old and the county argued I was not a child, I was old enough to provide a statement they argued, but my parents told them yes I was too young, I was an immature girl for my age, and what I believed I might have seen wasn’t necessarily to be believed. For Kathlee swore she’d seen nothing inside the house, and Kathlee insisted I had not even gone inside. Because she was jealous. Irish McEwan leading me out of the house, holding my hand. That red-haired boy with the dark eyes, treating her sister tenderly.
My eyes were never the same since. In the fall, I would be diagnosed as myopic in both eyes, and would have to wear glasses, and nobody can believe my eyes were perfect before what I was made to see, and my life changed. In a few years, I would “see” without glasses just vague blurry things, and partly this was my habit of reading, reading, reading all the time including late at night, with just a single lamp burning, but mostly it was because of what I saw at the McEwan farm that day, that my sister Kathlee would deny I ever saw! Nedra you know you’re imagining it. You never went anywhere near that house. Irish says he doesn’t remember you inside. There was so much happening, and none of it had to do with you.
I would wish to God I’d never gone to Sanborn that day. Or I would wish I’d stayed at Grandma’s. I had my library books, and I was helping Grandma cut out a dress pattern in tissue paper, sticking in the straight pins, and holding it up against me. (A wool plaid jumper for me. That ever afterward, when I wore it, I would have a sickish feeling.) When Irish and Kathlee came by to get me, I would not know what time it was. It was after lunch, but how long, I don’t know. They would inquire of Grandma, too, and she was confused and obstinate, and finally they gave up in disgust because if Grandma said one thing, next morning she would wish to change it, and finally they gave up on me. Because I could not contradict my sister who was so certain what she knew. I could not contradict my sister who swore what she believed to be true while in my state of nerves I could not swear what was true, nor even what I believed might be true. Was it past two o’clock they came for me, in the steel-colored Ford pickup with rusted grillwork, pulling up at the curb outside Grandma’s house, or was it before noon, I could not swear. I would not say either time. For what a surprise to see my sister
Kathlee with any boy, happy and waving at me, let alone that red-haired Irish McEwan everybody knew. When you’re thirteen, being driven around in a twenty-three-year-old’s pickup, and at Olcott Beach on the boardwalk and running along the beach laughing and squealing like girls you’ve seen all your life, with guys, but never dreamt it could be you, you are not able to retain a clear picture of what did, or did not, happen. Especially if it is hurtful of those close to you.
Nedra, you know. Just tell the truth.
It was before noon Irish came for me. It was only just a few minutes later, we came for you at Grandma’s. You know!
He couldn’t have been at the farm. When it happened. He was with me at the time they said it happened. Every minute, Irish was with me. Nedra, you know!
But I wish I didn’t. Even now a long time later. Mr. McEwan and his son Johnny had been seen alive by a neighbor around noon of that day. The coroner ruled they’d been killed between that time and approximately 2 P.M. But Kathlee had seen Irish in Sanborn as early as 11:30 A.M. She would swear. So Irish could not have been the murderer, that was a fact. Nedra, you saw him, too. Say you did. Say you did! Just say what’s TRUE.
But I could not. I became dizzy, and stammered; and shook so bad, it was speculated I might be “epileptic.” That was when my eyes began to worsen. For I could not swear what I had seen, because Kathlee insisted I had not seen it, how then could I swear what I had not seen?
The look in my sister’s eyes! Like mica glinting in the sun.
The change that came over my sister, and would never go away. She is in love. She isn’t Kathlee now. So fierce, I believed she might have clawed out my eyes like a cat. But even earlier, at Olcott. A wildness in her. For no boy had ever kissed her before that day as Irish McEwan kissed her (I’m sure of it!) where they drifted off away from me. Where I stood barefoot in the smelly surf tossing broken clam shells out into the lake. Calling after them jeering Kiss-kiss! You’re disgusting! I hate you both!
But the wind blew my words away.
Wished I hadn’t gone to Olcott with them that day. And on that ride to the McEwan farm! Irish had been drinking but was not drunk I’m sure. He was excitable, and jumpy, but you could say that was only natural because he feared the old man who was known for his bad temper and his cruelty to his wife and children. For sure, Irish’s father had beaten them all. It would come out in the papers. And you could say that the dog Mick who’d known Irish all its life was frightened of him that day and ran under the porch to hide had been terrified by the murders, the screaming and shouting, and by the awful smell of death that all animals can identify.
The flies! I feel them brushing my lips sometimes. My eyelashes. Wake up screaming.
The ax, no I did not see any ax. (Never would the murder weapon be found. People said he’d buried it or dropped it in the Yew River.) I saw no ax in the front room, but I would later learn the murder weapon was a double-edged ax, investigators concluded; and the McEwans’ ax was missing from the farm, never to be found. In the first shock of seeing the bodies Irish would think his father and brother had been killed by shotgun blasts. And Irish would say to us, he knew who the murderer was. He knew! Saying in a dull slow voice There’s somebody wanted Pa dead for a long time, now it’s happened. But when the police came, Irish would not tell them this. He would tell no one these words, ever again.
I never lied, because I never gave testimony. And if I had sworn, I would not have lied because I could not remember except what was confused and rushing as a bad dream. I was a plain girl with a silly streak and I would grow into a plain woman with a melancholy heart. Except when I look at my niece Holly, then my heart swells with something like happiness. For I love this child like my own. For I have never had any daughter, and never will. It’s true that I have a certain weakness for my students (I teach seventh-grade English at Strykersville Junior High) and in their eyes I am Miss Hogan, one of the no-nonsense, funny, enjoyable teachers, for I hide my melancholy from them, but my affection isn’t very real or lasting and as soon as school ends in June, I cease to think of the children and will scarcely remember them in the future. Maybe I am not a happy woman but I believe that happiness is a region in which we can dwell, if only for brief periods of time. And when I am with Kathlee and Holly my niece, I dwell in such happiness. For they are my family, mostly; and when I am with them I behave like a happy woman, and so it might be so.
Kathlee. The fact is, Irish McEwan had not been at his father’s house that morning, he first saw the bodies past 5 P.M. of that day, stopping at the farm with Nedra and me. But many were doubtful of him, at first. For a long time it was hard. How people want to believe the worst, oh I came to know how people are, even Christians: in your hearts mean and malicious and hurtful. And yet—meeting Irish as people did, looking into his eyes that were a warm rich brown, a burning-brown, almost black, those beautiful eyes, you would see the goodness in him, and come to believe him, too.
The police questioned so many men, why’d anybody wish to focus upon Irish? Yet there are people who wish to believe the worst: that a son would murder his father (and his older brother!) in such a terrible way. But what about Melvin Hooker who lived next door, it was known there was an old feud between him and the McEwans, Malachi had shot one of Hooker’s dogs claiming it had killed some of his chickens. And there were men Malachi owed money to, scattered about. And his son Petey he was always fighting with. And the Medinas, the family of Malachi’s deceased wife Anne, who bitterly hated Malachi for his treatment of her. It was said that Malachi had ceased to love and respect his wife during her first pregnancy, and she would have six children! By the time she was wasting away with breast cancer, and bald from chemotherapy, Malachi made no secret of his revulsion for her, even to their children. And made no secret of his affairs with women.
Like the wind in the dried cornfields the whisper came to me. If ever a man deserved death. And a hard death. If ever a man deserved God’s vengeance.
But Irish was not one to speak ill of the dead. In all things, Irish was respectful. We were married in the Methodist Church and our baby baptized in that faith. In time, my mother came to accept my husband and even, I believe, to love him. My father, being ill with diabetes, and set in his mind against us, never came to truly know Irish nor even, to that old man’s shame, his beautiful granddaughter.
Irish said, He’s a good man, Kathlee. But troubled in his heart.
Irish said, He’s an old man. It isn’t for us to judge him.
It was a fact, Irish McEwan and I were deeply in love when we got married. But it was not to be an easy marriage, with such a shadow over us, like great bruised-looking clouds over Lake Ontario you look up and see, surprised, where a few minutes before the sky had been clear. For people persisted in saying mean things behind our backs. For it was not easy for Irish to keep a job, which was why we moved so often. And there was Irish’s weakness for drinking, like all the McEwan men, his only true reliable happiness he spoke of it, shamefacedly, wishing he might change, yet finding it so very hard to change, as I could sympathize, for I had such a bad habit of smoking, like a leech was sucking at me with its ugly lips, for years. Yet it was a fact: Irish was a good husband, and a good father, as far as he could be. I understood he was troubled in his mind, that the true murderer of his father and brother was never arrested. He seemed to know and to accept who it was. That first hour, at the farm, when he’d discovered the bodies, and shielded me from seeing, where I had come up behind him like a silly little fool, he’d known who it was, most likely, the murderer, but never would he say. Never, questioned by police, would he accuse another, even to defend himself.
Tell them what you know, honey. I begged him.
What do I know? Irish asked, lifting his hands and smiling. You tell me, baby.
Of course, all the McEwan sons were questioned by police. The thirty-six-year-old biker who lived in Niagara Falls, and had a criminal record, Irish’s half-brother, was a strong suspect. But nothing was
ever proven against him. Like Irish, Petey McEwan could account for where he was at the time of the murders. And it was miles away. There was a woman who claimed he was with her, and maybe this was so.
The family farm was only twelve acres. Mostly mortgaged from a Yewville bank. In time, the property would go to Malachi McEwan’s surviving sons and daughters, but it would be near-worthless after taxes and other assessments, and not a one of the heirs would wish to live there, nor even to visit it, as I said to Irish we might do, one day, a crazy idea I guess it was, but an idea that came into my head, and I spoke without thinking, Honey, why don’t we drive out to the farm before it’s sold, and show Holly?
Holly was just two years old then. We were living in Yewville.
Irish said, Show Holly what?
The farm. Where you grew up. The land, the barn…
The house? You’d want to show her the house?
It’s been cleaned, hasn’t it?
Has it?
Well, I mean, and here I began to stammer, feeling such a fool, and Irish staring at me with this tight little smile of his meaning he’s pissed, but trying not to let on—hasn’t it? Been cleaned?
I had not looked into the front room. As Nedra claimed she had. I saw only just a blur, a dizziness before my eyes. There were vivid crimson blotches and a frenzied glinting (I would learn later these were horseflies! ugly nasty horseflies) but I saw nothing, and I did not know. And now Irish was waiting for me to answer—what? I could not even think what we’d been speaking of! My thoughts were so confused.
I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories Page 15