Three Wishes for Jamie Page 5

  Jamie put his arm about the shoulders of the broken Speaker and led him back to the byre. His thoughts were a surging mixture of exultation and sadness. An avenue of escape had suddenly burst wide open for him, but at such a bruising cost to the old man beside him.

  “There is a time for everything, Owen Roe Tavish,” he said gently, “and the time has come for us to disappear.”

  “But Jamie, where is an old man like me to go? We have no relations outside Ireland … only our cousin, Power O’Malley, in far-off Georgia.”

  “Then to far-off Georgia and Cousin Power O’Malley we’ll go,” said Jamie. “’Tis where Dennis was going. We’ll take his place.”

  “Are you daft, man? And where’s the money to come from?”

  “How much will it cost?” Jamie demanded.

  “Pounds and pounds, boy; lashans, more than dead men can lay their hands on.”

  “I wonder,” said Jamie with meaning. “Come on.”

  The exhilaration that had swept through Jamie drove the weariness and the aches and the chill from his body. He led the way back to the window. Inside at the wake, offering time had come. Though it was hardly a proper wake without bodies or proof of death, and no priest present, the conscience-stricken Shanahans insisted upon coming forward and placing generous contributions upon the empty coffins.

  “Give deeply, man,” Old Timothy Shanahan said to Randal. “The size of the offering shows your regard for the departed.”

  There was sly irony in the old man’s words. Timothy knew that Randal and his brothers might give freely with words but would bitterly resist parting with money. He took his stand beside the coffins to shame them into generosity. Such an example set by the closefisted Shanahans spurred the others, now mellowed by an excess of whiskey. They trooped to the coffins and emptied the contents of their pockets upon the lids, voicing their bereavement at the untimely passing of the deceased.

  Outside the window Jamie and the Speaker watched the tangible tribute to their virtues mounting sizably upon the lids of their separate coffins. Tavish, who loved the sight of money, even upon a coffin, clucked appreciatively. “You’re right, Jamie, we could never go back now. To see all that lovely offering go back to the Shanahans would break my heart.”

  “Do you think there’s enough for the passage to Georgia?” Jamie whispered.

  Tavish was horrified. “You mean pilfer the burial offering from our own coffins? ’Tis a ghoulish thought. Besides, Father Finley wouldn’t like it at all, at all.”

  Jamie explained that they would only be borrowing the money. “We will repay Father Finley … and with interest that will make his poor box jingle.”

  The Speaker continued emphatic in his disapproval, but a gleam of acquisitiveness had come into his eyes. “I wouldn’t consider doing such a low, knavish trick. Besides, how would we get the money off the coffins without being seen?”

  “Leave that to me. We will bide our time and the whiskey will do the rest,” said Jamie.

  An hour went by, during which more and more of the watchers departed, or dropped off into fitful slumber. The Speaker’s teeth were hammering so that Jamie feared the noise would attract someone’s attention.

  “Your teeth are clicking like bones in a box, man,” he said. “Are your clothes that damp?”

  “Me clothes are dry but their wetness has settled in my bones, Jamie,” Tavish answered miserably. “I need the fire of liquor to drive it out.”

  The sky had a cold grayness before Jamie dared to venture inside the cottage. Most of the neighboring women had slipped away home and Tirsa and Kate had gone into the bedroom to sleep. The men were sprawled on the floor or on chairs, drugged by a mixture of weariness and alcohol. They muttered occasionally or stirred in their sleep, but Jamie could not wait any longer. He took off his shoes and crept through the open door of the cottage, stepping across the bodies of sleeping men. From the rear window Tavish watched, prayerfully. Swiftly Jamie gathered the offering from the coffins. The paper notes rustled softly and the silver coins clinked. The noise seemed shattering in the still room. The money gathered, Jamie turned to go, when Tavish “whished” to him from the window. The Speaker was making violent motions toward a partly filled bottle of whiskey left on the table. Jamie tiptoed to the bottle, gathered it in his hand, and started again for the door. Suddenly he found himself directly before his father’s chair.

  The old man was slumped down, his head tilted back, and mouth slightly ajar. Abruptly his bright blue eyes opened and stared straight into Jamie’s. No other part of him moved. Even his mouth remained partly open.

  Jamie froze in his tracks, scarcely daring to breathe. “Is that the ghost of my son, Jamie?” the old man asked simply.

  “Aye, Father,” Jamie answered softly, trying to sound as he thought a ghost should.

  “Dear Jamie,” his father continued, “drownded and battered by the stones … his clothes torn and wet. How’s your mother, son?”

  “I haven’t seen her yet,” Jamie whispered. He tried to think of some way to escape from Old Dan, who seemed set to carry on a long ghost-talk with his missing son. “I’ve got to go now, Father, Tavish is waiting.”

  “Where?” asked Old Dan, with childish curiosity.

  “With three angels, just beyond the Knockmealldown Mountains,” Jamie said urgently. “Their names are Generosity, Gratitude, and Promptness, and Promptness doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “God rest your soul, Jamie, and the blessings of Brigid be upon it. Kiss the little hands of Mary for me. Tell your mother I’ll be with her soon.”

  Jamie’s eyes flooded with tears. His father’s words had been spoken like a prayer, which indeed they were. The old man’s eyes closed and a half-smile tipped the corners of his lips. A ray of light from the promised sunrise transfixed his face for an instant.… Impulsively Jamie stooped and kissed the old man’s forehead.

  Telling about his dream afterward, Dan McRuin proudly said that even the kiss of a dead McRuin was warmer than that of most living

  PART TWO

  A damsel fair with curling hair and such beauty as went out of Ireland when the foreigners came in.…

  V

  The road that wound southward through the greening Georgia hills was the dull red color of a robin’s breast. Surface dust rose in a soft, pink cloud about the feet of two foot travelers and remained hanging in the warm spring air minutes after the men had passed. They trudged steadily ahead, their eyes upon the uneven surface of the road and their feet scuffing out a kind of grating rhythm. The afternoon sun beat down and the weight of their heavy homespun garments brought a steady trickle of perspiration on the faces of the younger man and his older companion.

  Jamie spoke without slowing his stride. “There’s a bridge ahead, Owen Roe Tavish. Maybe now there’ll be a river.”

  “Sure the sound of running water will be the sweetest music heard this side of Heaven,” the old man grunted, “though after swallowing half of Dunriggan Gap, I never thought to say it.”

  With Jamie leading, the two men left the road before it reached the bridge and descended to the bank of a wide, shallow stream. The followed it a hundred yards or more to where a thicket of willows and alders shielded them from the road; there they drank thirstily and removed their dusty shoes and drew the legs of their trousers above their knees. While Jamie washed his face and arms, Tavish thrust his feet into the stream, letting the water purl about his ankles.

  “Don’t stand too close, Jamie lad,” he said. “The cold water striking my hot feet may bring a rush of steam that will scald you. Like the great Cuchulainn of olden times, who would come from a battle in such a heat of rage that the servants had to dip him in three vats of cold water before his temperature returned to normal … there was always danger of someone being scalded to death.”

  “I could boil water for tea just by dipping in my big toe,” said Jamie. He thrust his feet knee-deep into the stream and lay back on the gravel with a sigh of comfort.
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  “How far would you say we’d come, Cousin Tavish?” he asked.

  “As a man who calls anything over and above ten miles ‘a long way’ and lets it go at that … I’d say we’d come a long way.”

  “And how much farther do we have to go?”

  “As a man who believes that only one journey ever really ends—and that one to the graveyard—I’d say a long, long way.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I can speak only for my feet. They’re in Heaven.”

  “Now why is it that an Irishman can never give a straight answer to straight question?” Jamie mused.

  The Speaker was indignant. He raised himself upon an elbow to state that Irishmen, being of poetical natures, naturally preferred saying things in an obscure manner.

  “It makes their meaning so much clearer than if they had put it in plain language in the first place,” he concluded.

  “Then tell me how many days since we sailed from Galway?” Jamie persisted.

  “Days? ’tis years you mean,” Tavish retorted. “That trip … och, that trip … with the ocean maneuvering to drown us each day, and me too sick to make a fight of it.”

  “I never thought you’d live through,” Jamie agreed.

  “I didn’t. I died and rose up again.”

  Jamie laughed. The weeks of hand-to-mouth travel spent with the spirited old man had bred a new respect and affection for Tavish. “Right now there be a kind of sweet weariness in my bones … but a kind of excitement, too,” he said. “The days we’ve been on the road seem like hours spent under an enchantment. Each morning as we started out the wind would whisper: ‘Step livelier, Jamie McRuin, you’re walking to meet the Spring. Around some bend in the road ahead she’s waiting … with the odor of early violets on her breath.’”

  “Och,” Tavish sighed, “the stories I’ll be telling at home of the wonders of the Western world. Sure I’ll walk the lanes with an eight-foot stick, and my pockets clinking with gold and silver.”

  “Shall we put on our shoes—point their toes Atlantaward—and follow where they lead, Cousin Tavish?” Jamie invited.

  “Leave me close my eyes another minute,” Tavish pleaded. “It reminds me of a weir at home where I fished as a boy.” The old man was silent a moment, then he said seriously, “You must promise me something, Jamie!”

  “Anything, Cousin Tavish.”

  “No, I’m that serious. If I should die … I wouldn’t want to lie buried in any but Irish soil. Promise me you’ll take me home when that time comes?”

  “I will, Cousin Tavish,” Jamie said softly. “I swear by the gods my people swear by! Owen Roe Tavish shall lie in sweet Irish earth when his time comes.”

  The promise soothed the old man. He lay back and closed his eyes again. “Just two minutes more, Jamie. I’ll fall asleep to the music of the water … then I’ll wake and be ready to go,” he said.

  Jamie stretched himself upon the bank and gently scratched his back against the gravel beneath him. The days since leaving Ireland had piled one upon the other until they had lost their separate identity. A sense of wonder and excitement had fused time and space and the elements into a sort of magic backdrop before which he and Tavish marched, yet remained apart from. Their money had run out in Virginia and they had traveled shanks’ mare the rest of the way, except for an occasional short lift. But to Jamie, in retrospect, the miles had not seemed to weary him, nor the rain to wet him. Cold had not chilled, nor hunger weakened him. Sure, the Fairy Queen has woven a spell around me, he mused. I’m insensible to the wear and tear of everyday life … a kind of superbeing. ’Tis a very satisfying thought.

  He turned his attention downstream to where a great splashing was taking place in the brook. A hundred yards below a man was watering a string of twenty or thirty mules. The animals were tethered into groups of five or six to simplify handling, and as fast as one bunch was watered another was herded into the stream. The man in charge was a skilled hand with animals. He prodded the stubborn mules into the water, let them drink their fill, then urged them scrambling up the bank with sharp cries and the stinging slap of a rope.

  As Jamie watched admiringly, a young girl approached the watering place carrying two heavy wooden buckets. The man tending the mules motioned her to go farther upstream. “The mules have riled the water,” Jamie heard him call out.

  The girl turned and came toward Jamie and Tavish’s resting place, making her way slowly through the tangle of shrubs and willows. She disappeared momentarily and Jamie watched for her reappearance with a mild glow of interest. He was hungry for the sight of a pretty girl. She was bareheaded and occasionally her yellow hair glinted in the sun as she moved gracefully through the green willows. Her figure was slim and straight and poised as a young colt’s, while the heavy bucket in each hand balanced her movements.

  Jamie appraised the topography of the ground opposite and decided there was only one place the girl could get down to the stream. That was where he and Tavish were cooling their feet. He began to follow her progress with mounting expectancy, watching for the red-and-white checked dress as it bobbed in and out among the willows like a red-and-white float in a smooth green sea.

  “How would you like to see a bonnie girl, with hair the color of gold and beauty of the sort that went out of Ireland when the foreigners came in?” he whispered to Tavish.

  The Speaker’s eyes snapped open and he sat eagerly upright. “Where?”

  The girl’s bright gingham dress was obscured momentarily, and Tavish peered about vainly. “’Tis not like you to be teasing an old man,” he reproached Jamie.

  He lay back and closed his eyes again. “There be few things that the sight of a pretty girsha wouldn’t cure,” he sighed.

  The corners of Jamie’s mouth twitched and he kept his eyes on an opening in the willows opposite. A few seconds later the girl appeared. She set one bucket down and was preparing to fill the other when she saw the two men. There was no fear in her start of surprise, but immediately she turned to go.

  Jamie stood up. “Please stay,” he called.

  Tavish sat up, blinking at the apparition on the other side of the stream. “Is she real … or are we under a spell?” he muttered in Irish.

  The girl on the opposite bank stopped and faced the two men. Jamie saw that she had large, hazel eyes that tipped upward at the outer corners. Her features were small and regular, from the perfect forehead down to a tiny, determined chin.

  Jamie didn’t want to speak again for fear any words he might say would drive the girl away. He waited for Tavish to say something, but the old man was still entangled in his dreams and half believed himself under an enchantment.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Jamie said to the girl.

  Her lips curled upward into a smile and she tossed her corn-yellow hair. “Afraid … of two Irishmen having a foot bath?”

  Tavish hastily withdrew his feet from the stream and covered them with his hat, tittering foolishly.

  “Do you live hereabout?” said Jamie, emboldened.

  “We are horse traders and our camp is just below in the piney woods,” the girl answered.

  Tavish regained his tongue. “Irish horse traders,” he exclaimed. “Sure now, my cousin, Power O’Malley, him that we’re on our way to visit in Atlanta, wrote us about you in the old country. What is your father’s name, lass?”

  “Shiel Harrigan.”

  “I knew some Harrigans in Kerry.”

  “My father’s family came from Cork.”

  “You haven’t told us your name,” said Jamie.

  “Hold your questioning tongue,” Tavish scolded. “’Tis not right and proper to ask a young girl’s name alone in the willows.”

  The girl turned her wide, wise hazel eyes full on Jamie. “My name is Maeve,” she said.

  Jamie had never heard silver bells but the voice of the girl on the opposite bank taught him how they should sound. “I must go back to the camp,” she said, “they’re waiting for the wa
ter.”

  Tavish and Jamie splashed quickly across and dipped the two buckets into the stream. “I’ll be carrying these for you, Maeve,” Jamie said boldly.

  The girl hesitated. “Our people don’t welcome strangers. One of you may come,” she conceded.

  She looked from Jamie to Owen Roe Tavish. “The old one.”

  Tavish purred a sound of satisfaction as Jamie dejectedly set the buckets down. “I’ll be ambassador for the both of us, Jamie; never fear, lad.”

  He hefted the buckets preparatorily, spat on his hands, then seized them and set off after Maeve. She led the way through the willows but flashed a warming smile at the disgruntled Jamie. A moment later Tavish was back.

  “I forgot my boots,” he explained.

  When they were gone out of sight, Jamie laid his head disconsolately on the sand. As a person who lived by and for his emotions, he had never sought to analyze them. There was never time. Feelings light and dark, gay and sad, stormed through him in such a violent flood there was little time for analysis until the flood had subsided. Then it was too late. Now he lay on the sand with such an aching love for a girl, whom he had first seen but a few brief minutes before, that his muscles twitched spasmodically and tears smarted in his eyes. He knew with the certainty of youth and first love that the girl with the golden hair and the eyes that were merry and wise at the same time was the one the Fairy Queen had promised him. Her portrait fitted the empty frame that had hung on the wall of his secret heart.

  In the hour that Tavish was gone, Jamie felt nothing but the soft, poignant ache of ecstasy. His stomach was empty but there was no sensation of hunger. He did not hear the brook babbling over the stones, nor the doves in the wood, nor the crows complaining in the green, young corn. In that one hour he courted and won Maeve in a waking dream, bore her to the priest in a carriage spilling with flowers, and heard her bound to him by spoken vows unsaid since the time of the Druids: “By the sun and the moon and the whole earth, is Maeve wed to Jamie. May the air bless them, and the water and the wind; the sea, and all the hours of the sun and moon. And fruitful their union be!”