by Jan Karon
The dishwashers beeped--cycles ended.
'And, Pete . . .'
'Yeah?'
'While you're at it, please pray for your wife--she needs wisdom and courage, too. You're a team--think like a team.'
'You're askin' a lot, Tim.'
'I won't kid you--it's going to take a lot.'
'If you would say a, you know, prayer.'
'Consider it done, call me anytime. And regards to Roscoe.'
He drew out his handkerchief, wiped his face. He'd just been through the scrub cycle. 'A desperate man,' he said to Liam.
Liam was amused. 'While at it, he asked my opinion.'
'What was your opinion?'
'A couple weeks in Ibiza.'
'That, too,' he said.
'Great plug for fish an' chips, Rev'rend.'
In the library, the laurel wreath had fallen to Seamus.
'Th' man of th' hour,' said William, poking up the fire. 'Says 't was like makin' hay on a soft day.'
'Aye, but tomorrow, Willie, you'll be makin' hay of your own.' Seamus held up his comb--'Th' oul' flea rake,' he said--gave his mustache a drubbing. 'Well, gentlemen, I vowed I'd unload th' dishwashers before goin' up th' hill.'
'I'll come along and have a visit with Liam,' said Feeney. 'I'll give you a lift.'
'Ever th' comin' an' goin',' said William.
He would stir his bones and run along the lake tomorrow; he'd go farther this time, and definitely to the Mass rock. He sat in a favorite wing chair, checked his watch, wondered at Bella's long stay.
William lowered himself into an adjoining chair, the usual light gone from him.
'Could I have your ear, Rev'rend?'
'With pleasure.'
'Ye heard tonight what's come to th' lass from Collooney--ould an' ruined by th' drink. She needed me in a desperate way with somethin' that happened to her mother an' sisters, but I let her down. I was on th' pig's back in those days, I wanted th' whole world for myself. Do ye understand?'
'I do.'
'I was th' young buck beatin' men to bloody pulp and livin' to boast of it. As you might imagine, I found th' girls numerous as fairies in Mayo. I thought any woman would wait for William Donavan 'til he got his name in lights.'
William bowed his head, examined his palms as if seeing some truth there.
'And so I married Roisin, Anna's mum, while I still had feelin's for Evelyn McGuiness. Roisin was pretty as a speckled pup; worked like a man at th' turf field, yet gentle as a lamb in her ways. A lovely woman--an' could play th' oul' tunes on th' fiddle.'
'Bella gets it from both sides, then.'
'A double dose, as ye heard th' other evenin'. When Koife plays, Roisin comes back to me, but I don't deserve her company.' William looked up, his blue eyes gray. 'In th' end, I was faithless to two women.
''t was a hard thing to reckon what my selfish pleasures laid waste. Th' regret is like a cancer still growin', an' no way to cure it.'
The fire smoldered; Pud snored at his feet.
'I hope this is not considered a confession, Rev'rend, for I can't take pardon from a Protestant. '
'I'm just hearing you,' he said.
'I thank ye for that.' William sat back in the chair, stared at the fire. 'I made a right hames of it all. An' now I'm an oul' man with all my fortunes spent an' gone, an' nothin' left of th' fled days but regret.' William withdrew his handkerchief and did what he had to do, which seemed to cheer him in a small way.
'Regret an' gratitude, I have to say. Gratitude for my Anna an' her lovin' ways; Anna, who's made us a comfortable livin' out of this place. Gratitude for Koife, who herself has felt th' blade twisted deep. Aye, an' for Liam, who's put th' stamp of success on deer farmin' an' sheep raisin' like you never saw. They're eatin' our lamb an' venison all th' way to Belfast an' callin' for more.
'We always got on famous, Liam an' me, but th' last couple of years ...' William shrugged. 'In th' end, I regret th' bit about me livin' here 'til I'm carried out in a box. It's made Liam th' bosun in what was to be his own ship.'
He wanted to ask what happened when William returned to Lough Arrow those years ago--he wanted Liam and Anna to know the truth. But how could even William know it?
Evelyn Conor was the only one truly intimate with such a truth.
'Ye need to know I dearly loved Anna's mum, but in a different way. We can't love every woman as I loved Evelyn McGuiness, or 't would kill a man, burst open 'is heart, so. Thank Jesus there's never but one like that in a man's life.
'Pray for Evelyn McGuiness, if ye'd be so kind. I've seen those as try to give up th' drink, an' 't would make ye weep to witness such persecution. '
He heard voices--Feeney, Seamus, Liam--coming quickly along the hall. Nothing so bad it couldn't be worse, he thought, seeing the look on Liam's face. Feeney and Seamus were nearly running for the door.
'Paddy called--it's Mother. Will you go, Rev'rend?'
'Cynthia,' he said.
'I'll send Anna up, please God.'
At the entrance hall, he turned and looked at William, whose face expressed a plea for them to fix things if they could.
'The stepstool, of course,' said Feeney as they crunched across the gravel to the car. "Had to happen. Bloody inevitable.' Feeney tossed his house call bag onto the backseat. 'Paddy said she wasn't drinking; she swears that's why she fell.'
'God love 'er,' said Seamus.
'They'll be wanting you home nights, Seamus. But you've been expecting that.'
'Aye.'
'What do you need me to do?' he asked Feeney.
'Be there. Just be there.'
Twenty-six
He waited in the entrance hall, eyes closed, praying.
Voices at the end of the hall.
'Did you get her off the floor?'
'Aye.'
'Who is that person?'
'The Rev'rend Tim Kav'na,' said Seamus.
'What's he doing here?'
'Dr. Feeney asked him up.'
'Why in God's name would Feeney ask up a Protestant ...?'
'Th' gravity of the matter at hand, I believe, and 't was all we had. Dr. Feeney wants him riding with your mother in th' backseat, no need to get the ambulance out, he says. I'm just after ice to keep th' swellin' down.'
'Have you packed her things?'
'I'm comin' to that.'
A door slamming.
He was willing enough to be all they had, to be here, waiting.
He looked at the broad staircase rising to two floors of ruined and vacant rooms and thought how Fintan O'Donnell's own rooms abovestairs had stood vacant. He wondered whether the O'Donnells had kept a fire on the hearth in this great hall, how they found comfort in the pestering drafts of winter. He thought of the kitchen smells coming out to greet the senses of those who waited here generations ago.
Someone had said a house is a history book, his own former homeplace near Holly Springs being an example from 1853. He had often felt the temper of past occupants in the house and fields, and had, on rare occasion, smelled the cook fires of the slaves who had lived and labored there long before his arrival. Once he had heard laughter--not the ordinary sort of laughter heard from the living, but laughter from a time long vanished. It had seemed as known and familiar as the cooking smells, a palpable link to those gone before.
Feeney came up the hall, charging the air with haste.
'I need you to ride with her in the rear seat, we're taking my car. It's both wrists, and some injury to her left leg, I'm not sure what. It needs the three of us to get this done.'
He followed Feeney along the dark hall to her room. A single lamp burning; a muted television in the corner; the old Lab on a cushion next to a bed with many pillows, and Evelyn Conor sitting in a chair in a nightgown, shocked by pain.
'What's to bundle her in, Seamus?' Feeney had bound her wrists with what appeared to be kitchen towels.
Seamus brought a shawl from a chair, placed it around her shoulders; took an afghan from the foot of
the bed and handed it to Feeney, who swaddled her in it, carefully tucking her arms close. She moaned, cried out.
'God above,' Seamus whispered.
'I've given her morphine for the pain. Because of the leg, we'll have to carry her. Slippers? We need slippers.'
Seamus went down on both knees, searched along the side of the bed, brought up slippers, gently placed them on her feet. 'My God!' she said, agonized.
'Tim, go ahead of us to the car, get the rear doors open, clear the seat of my jumble; we'll bring her down. And ask Paddy to come and speak to his mother, for God's sake.'
'Where will I find him?'
'First door on th' left as we pass up th' hall,' said Seamus.
Seamus and Feeney lifted her; it was a clean maneuver. She did not cry out, but was wrenched and silent, tears shone on her face.
He passed quickly along the hall and through the open front doors and down to the Rover as the Labs came racing up the driveway from Broughadoon. He did as Feeney asked, tossed the jumble behind the rear seats, left the doors open, and headed back to the house at a pace, passing them on the steps.
'Water,' said Feeney, 'bring a bottle of water. And my bag from her bedroom, and her things in the duffel.'
He knocked; there was no answer. An angry blood beat in him and he opened the door. Paddy Conor--standing in the middle of a paneled room lined with empty bookshelves-- grim, glass in hand. It was the man in the portrait, in the flesh.
He said what Feeney had said. 'Come and speak to your mother, for God's sake.'
He went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. No bottled water. In the corner, an open case of it. He put a bottle in each jacket pocket, one for the injured, one for the resident diabetic, then crossed the hall to her bedroom, to the open leather bag with its antiseptic breath of injury and healing, snapped it shut, and collected it with the duffel.
Paddy waited in the hall, affronted. 'There's Seamus and Feeney and yourself. You've no need for me.'
'Come,' he said, meaning it.
He crawled into the backseat. Seamus stowed the bags, closed the door, signed the cross. The dogs sat watching. On the other side of the Rover, Paddy peered through the closed window. 'Mother,' he said. She didn't hear or see him.
Feeney took it easy along the rain-pocked lane, but held nothing back on the highway to Sligo.
In his years as a priest, he'd driven or accompanied more than a few sick and suffering to the hospital. Each ride had been desperate in its own way, but this seemed something more--or perhaps something other.
'Reverend,' she whispered.
He knew this was not an appeal, not a conversation opener, but some way of connecting with the man who rode beside her, their bodies nearly touching, the heat of their flesh intermingled.
Twenty-seven
He rang his cousin on Tuesday morning. He had dreaded this.
'You'll never guess,' he said.
Walter guessed. 'How did it happen?'
'Slipped in the shower, disrupted the healing. So now we wait for the swelling to go down, then on with the moon boot. I think the best thing to do is meet you at the airport, as planned.'
'How long for the swelling to go down?'
'Maybe three days. She must keep the ankle elevated. Then he wants to make sure the moon boot is doing its job, that's a couple of days, and who knows what from there out.'
'A bloody marathon for her,' said Walter. 'Doomed from the beginning, this trip.'
'We hate it for you and Katherine. I know it's been a bust.'
Somewhere near the kitchen, fiddle music; at the other end of the lodge, the faint tap of Liam's hammer.
'No bust for us. We haven't had this much fun since we were young and rich in Venice. All that to say--old and poor in Ireland isn't so bad, either. How is she?'
'Angry with herself. Depressed.' His wife was hard to put down, this had done it.
Trying to buck up to the thing, she had turned to him in the night and said, 'I must keep my wits.'
And how would he keep his? Their room had seemed strange, as if they had departed it physically and were mere vapors left behind. More than anything, he wanted her to have a good cry. Not once had she broken--not from the cupboard business, not from the pain, not from the endless aggravation. She was a dam holding back a great force. He would do the weeping for her, if he could.
With Pud, he ran along the path beside the lake, his thoughts scattered like wash blown from a line. Rooms had been canceled and penalties paid; he'd emailed Lord's Chapel, asking the prayer group to fall to. He remembered Rutherford's take on adversity: When I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine.
He made a mental list of wines to see them through:
He would bite the bullet and memorize a poem to amuse her.
He would read O'Donnell's journal aloud--they wanted to finish it before going home.
He would somehow get her up to Catharmore. Given Monday's trek to Sligo and the general rigor of the medical exam and X-rays, she had missed her visit up the hill.
Last but not least, he would remind her that Feeney called the whole thing fortunate. 'Worse could have happened,' Feeney said, alluding to surgery. 'Count it a blessing.'
He prayed for Evelyn Conor's return home this afternoon, and smooth going for the full-time home care required by her helplessness--one wrist fractured and in a cast, one wrist sprained and in a splint--both arms immobilized, one leg severely bruised but no bones broken. ''t is a time of bones,' Feeney said of his two patients at one location. 'A regular field day.'
Bella's confession to Cynthia had been no surprise--during Slade's three weeks at Broughadoon, she had twice gone to meet him secretly, one of those times being the morning he'd seen her on the bicycle--the morning of the uproar in the kitchen. Slade had promised to take her to Dublin to see her father, then to New York. Bella had agreed to meet Slade in the outer lane, carrying her few things in the bicycle basket. He had not come at midnight, as promised--she had waited 'til dawn. Cynthia asked if it had been Slade in the cupboard, and she said it had been--he was looking for cash, credit cards, jewelry to finance their way to New York. Bella had resisted this plan, but gave in, letting Slade know when guests would be out of their rooms. Cynthia asked about the painting, but Bella had already said too much, and begged Cynthia not to betray her to Anna and Liam.
'She's sick about the way things have gone, and terrified of the consequences if she's found out. She apologized for what happened to my ankle that night. There's more, of course, and she's dying to tell it, but I haven't gained her trust for more--not yet.'
He ran 'til sweat poured like vinegar into his eyes--he'd forgotten the bandanna.
No swans. All at Coole, he supposed.
Back at the lodge, the fiddle music again, definitely near the kitchen.
He realized he'd forgotten to see the Mass rock. His own wits had departed, and nothing left but fog in a jar.
He shucked out of his running clothes, got into a hot shower, and let it go 'til he was boiled as a squab. He decided to begin their wine flight with something definitely new vintage, which was the best he could do at the moment.
He toweled off, took it from the hook on the bathroom door, and put it on. If this wasn't worth a laugh, nothing would ever be. He rolled the sleeves down, belted the thing, made his entrance. Blast. She was sleeping.
He took Fintan's journal off the bed and sat with it in his accustomed chair, and checked her bookmark. She had left him in the dust.
He adjusted his glasses. If he couldn't entertain her, he would entertain himself.
1 October
All have said their goodbyes--A has kissed the lad & wept & Fiona has set up a squawk as if at a wake. As the rest go out to the coach I am standing with him on the front portico.
Would ye want to come again? I say.
He cannot look at me, but gazes away. He is dressed in the black suit of his mother's making, the sleeves & trouser legs far
short of their original mark.
So ye would come again, Lad?
Yis, sir. I like it here very fine, I would come & stay.
But who would nick the stitches out?
Me Da could do it, he says, sober as a cleric.
I am pleased to see how he thinks ahead.
Might you come at Christmas if we fetched you?
He looks up, his face alight as I haven't seen before.
Yis, he says.
What has been your favorite amusement at Cathair Mohr? I say.
Aoife. An' then goin' on th' call an' takin' off th' bandage an' seein' th' scab come away.
You like the sight of such a nasty thing?
I like seein' a nasty thing can be fixed back to a good thing, he says.
The bedraggled coach is waiting. I take my watch from its pocket & look at the time & feel my heart sorely weighted. I might have bidden him come on other calls, or asked Keegan to show him our rosy pig at McFee's.
Well, then, I say, & he reaches up & shakes my hand very gravely.
I watch them pass down the lane, the coach creaking beneath the additional weight of food & plunder given them by C.
I lift my hand, should the lad be looking back.
Before leaving for the airport on his previous trip to Ireland, he and Dooley had said their goodbyes at Meadowgate Creek. Dooley had avoided eye contact, was busy dropping a line with an earthworm attached. The boy didn't want to be left and he, Timothy, didn't want to leave, not at all. But the trip was doctor's orders, and the parish had raised money for the airfare. On his way along the path to the house, he had turned and lifted his hand, hoping Dooley would look up. But no, Dooley was fishing as if his life depended on it.