Anna was suddenly enraged that she couldn’t stand up. Even the smash to the jaw was not this bad. She rallied with a surge of righteous anger. Adrenaline fueled her, running mostly to the large muscles of her thighs. Her legs, that’s what would save her. What good was all the triathlon training, the running, bike riding, and the swimming if she couldn’t use it for something that truly mattered, like saving her life? She willed her abdominal muscles to engage. Her legs pulled under her and she stood, racing to keep up with the man who held her hair.
She knew he would expect her to pull away, but instead she charged straight at him, reaching for his eyes with one hand and his throat with the other. It meant letting go of her precious teeth. She caught sight of them for a moment, as they arced behind the soldier, catching light from the streetlamp.
He was still drunk, and that was both her advantage and the unpredictable danger. If she could force him to let go of her hair, she could escape him by running. She knew she could outrun him.
The street outside the pub had one circle of light. The two of them thrashed beyond it as they skidded along the wet cobblestones. From the corner of her eye, she noted a small crowd of people. She heard a man’s voice say, “Get off her, man. She’s not for you.”
The soldier turned his head and yelled, “Piss off with you! Or the lot of you’ll be arrested.”
She was on her own. Her fingers searched for his eyes, but he turned his head. With his other hand he grabbed one of her arms and pulled her close to his body. They scuffled into an alley that reeked of urine. Anna tallied up her remaining options. He meant to beat her, rape her, kill her, or a horrible mixture of all three. She had to use anything; her remaining arsenal was her voice, her teeth, and her legs. She lunged into his neck and bit hard. At the same time, she brought up her right knee and slammed it into his balls, hitting off center, not giving the full gut-blasting pain that she’d hoped for. Still, he grunted and let go of her hair.
The release was so gratifying. It was the one thing that she had wanted. Anna pulled away, but to her amazement, the man still held her arm despite his pain. As she pulled away, the force of her movement toppled them to the ground, with the soldier on top of her. His face, contorted in a grimace, was close to hers. She breathed in his heated scent of thwarted propriety.
“You’re nothing but trouble, not worth the bloody effort,” he said.
She felt his arm moving along his side. He was a slender man, wrapped with sinewy muscles. The glint of a knife caught her eye. He moved one hand up to her throat and pushed her chin to the side. Anna understood with excruciating clarity that he meant to slit her throat. For a slice of a second she realized that an observer would think they were wrestling and that the soldier was close to a takedown; one of her shoulder blades was on the dirt and the other hovered inches above it. This is just what Joseph would do, transfer the energy to his legs, disrupt his opponent’s balance and establish his. Anna pumped her legs hard, hoping at least to ruin his aim, to do anything that would keep her from dying in a stinking alley.
The response was better than she imagined possible. His head lurched backward and his body shuddered, falling forward. Anna jerked her body quickly to the left, missing the impact of the man. She scissored her legs out from under him and rolled.
Her success had nothing to do with her improvised kick. The soldier had a knife in his back, dead center. Blood flowed out. She stumbled to a standing position and saw two men.
“For Christ’s sake, get a wagon and take him out to the bay. Wrap him and weigh him down with stones. Quick, before every dog in town smells his blood.”
Anna could not quiet her breath. The soldier had been killed, and the toxic coating of death spread out like a stain, running up her legs. She didn’t know which man had killed him. One of the men took her arm and gently pulled her into the street again.
“Here, take my arm like you’re my sweetheart. Donal has been delayed and we must take you away from this mire of misfortune. Are you hurt? Can you tell yet?”
He was the barkeep; she recognized him, or, more truly, she recognized the way he had his shirtsleeves rolled up. Anna trusted him as soon as he said Donal’s name.
“My jaw. I don’t think it’s broken, but two of my teeth are gone,” she said.
Once they were beyond sight of the Passage West, he set a faster pace.
“Can you keep up, lassie? Donal tells me you’re bloody strong.”
“Yes. What’s your name?”
She let go of his arm and they broke into a run. Somewhere a dead British soldier was being wrapped in a canvas tarp, weighted with stones, taken into a boat, and slipped into the black waters.
“It’s best if you can’t say my name. You’ll think poorly of me manners, but under bludgeoning distress, you’ll never be able to tell the militia my name. D’ya see?” he said, beginning to huff.
“Yes. Thank you for saving me. I just wanted to know your name, but I understand why you can’t tell me. I’ve never been saved so many times since coming to Ireland. You are my hero,” she said. Anna knew this sounded stilted and silly, but she meant it. She didn’t know who had put the knife into the soldier, and she would not ask.
“Aye. We are all heroes and most of us are doomed. A frightful conflagration of circumstances.”
They continued running, Anna with her skirts gathered up in each hand, turning corners, following a trail that was purposefully complicated.
“Here now, slow down and give me your arm again. Lean into me a wee bit, like I’m sodden drunk and you’re the good woman taking me home.”
As they walked, streetlights appeared again, the houses were suddenly grand, and there were cobblestones again and not just mud. They had emerged into the section of Cork that cloistered the well-to-do. Anna immediately understood where they were—the Protestant neighborhood, more English than Irish.
“We’ve loyal friends here. Nothing is ever so black and white as it seems. And even if we didn’t have one friend among the English, the best concealment is to be in the center of the invaders. Given our history, that puts us in the center of a good many places.”
They came to a whitewashed cottage surrounded by a waist-high stone fence in front. A tiny glow of yellow light came from an upstairs window. The barkeep rapped the knocker on the thick front door. Anna noticed that the iron knocker was a dog with a long snout, racing with the legs extended, as if the animal had been a rocket. A man appeared in his nightgown; his hair was ruffled, and he had sleep creases along one side of his face.
“Good evening to you, John. This is a friend of Donal’s,” said her companion instantly. “And she’s been hurt. Donal will come for her.”
A flicker of fear crossed the man’s face, an involuntary contraction, the basic desire to run from danger. He recovered and said, “Please, bring her in. Welcome, miss.”
“You’re English?” said Anna, forgetting any caution as she stepped into the house.
“Quite so. Don’t look so shocked. There are more than a few of us who disagree with our government. We are loyal to the death to our people, but in grand disagreement with our government.”
They took her to a bedchamber upstairs. A young maid brought water for the washbasin and helped Anna out of her torn clothing. The young woman put her hand on Anna’s jaw and concluded that it was not broken. While Anna washed, the maid put a warming stone between the covers. She tucked Anna in bed like a baby, murmuring, “There, there. No, not a word from you until morning.”
The last thing Anna heard was the low rumble of men’s voices recounting the night. She heard only “…bastard…vermin…good riddance…take courage,” then she sank into a dreamless sleep.
She woke, with the sun sending a sharp rectangle of light on the wall across the room. And snoring, soft snoring that was rich and rumbling. Anna opened her eyes and saw Donal, legs stretched out in the chair, a blanket thrown over his chest and his head tipped at an angle sure to make his neck muscles angry.
“Anna. I am so sorry. This is the fault of mine. If I’d come back sooner…”
They clung to each other, arms wrapped around necks and ribs, faces pushed into hair and tender ears. They rocked and swayed, matching heartbeats, finding the harmonious refrain of lovers. They crooned to each other, Donal singing soft songs in Irish and French.
“Don’t let’s talk yet, my love. We’ve all the time in the world for that. I’ll tell you all about my journey and you’ll tell me yours. But not yet. I only want you in my arms,” he said.
They did not budge from the room, only answering a shy knock on the door when the maid brought them hot bread and soup, then sleeping again as if they had never slept.
Chapter 31
Anna woke to a red-hot bolt of pain in her mouth, the center of which pulsed like a drum. She placed her hand on her cheek and met a hard and swollen knot. They had slept through the afternoon and early evening.
“Donal, wake up,” she said, suddenly finding her tongue too large and too dry. “Something is wrong with my mouth.”
Donal sat up and placed his hand on her distorted cheek. “I feared this. You’ve got to have the stubs taken out of your mouth. You can’t let the poison kill you, I’ll not let that happen.”
She ran her tongue over the stubs of what had been her left incisor and the next tooth, which she thought was called a canine. She decided to call them number two and three from the center. As her fever rose, she was grateful that the soldier had not slammed out her two middle teeth at least.
It was just after midnight; a set of church bells, impervious to the sleeping masses, rang out the hour. In spite of the time, Donal arranged for the procedure to happen quickly, before Anna could rise to a stubborn protest. She suspected that not only had two of her teeth been broken off but something else had gone wrong as well; a nerve had been severed or damaged. This was her worst fear, that she would succumb to a malady of 1844 and perish long before her time.
Anna sat her feet on a stool and held a wet cloth on her face. Ice, yes, ice would be just the thing for a hot, swollen jaw. But there was no ice, no dentist, and no antibiotics.
“The blacksmith must have been held up,” said John, who glanced anxiously at Anna. “It’s a pity you must suffer so.”
No sooner had he said this than the door fairly blew open to frame a man, hat pulled over one eye, a leather satchel in his hand. Two other young men followed him. This had to be the blacksmith. He nodded to John, then Donal, and glanced at Anna.
“This be our patient?” he asked with such warm humor that Anna forgot for one nanosecond what was about to happen.
“Have you a few glasses of whiskey? Or better yet, to get the job done, poteen?” he asked.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” said Anna.
This was not entirely true. She had tried both poteen and whiskey, and neither one of them had tasted anything but hot and revolting.
“That may well be the case, but some moments call for drink, the way the night calls for morning. Tell me, lass. How has it gone for you when you’ve had teeth pulled before?”
“I’ve never had a tooth pulled,” said Anna.
In fact, Anna’s teeth were nearly pristine, a product of fluoride, orthodontics, dental visits twice a year, and obsessive brushing and flossing.
The blacksmith set his foot on a chair.
“I see. So this shall be your first. Well then, all the more reason to drink up.”
Anna looked at Donal and he nodded. Drinks were poured, and the men all sat down as if it hadn’t really been past midnight, as if they’d had all the time in the world.
“Should you be drinking?” Anna asked the blacksmith after choking down several sips of the burning poteen.
“Oh, don’t worry about me. And don’t try to keep up with me and the drink. It steadies my hand,” he said.
Anna worried that her new dental practitioner was drinking the local white lightning, something her own dentist had never done in the gleaming world of stainless steel, soothing music, and pastel walls. She also worried how very much this operation was going to hurt without anesthesia of any sort. She tipped her glass and opened her throat as she had learned to do at freshman drinking parties. She downed the entire glass.
“There, that’s the way,” said Donal, pouring more into her glass.
Anna watched the glow of the fire shimmer in a more welcoming dance. She opened a few buttons of her blouse until her collarbone felt the air and the first blush of heat rose from her torso and raced to her head. She managed to open her mouth and poke her finger along stubs where two lovely teeth should have been. The poteen began to taste better, with hints of hot pepper, cinnamon, and cheap vodka.
“You drink up, dearie, I’ll step out for a bit with my lads and gather a few things together. A little of this and that,” said the blacksmith.
“Wait,” said Anna, feeling more festive. “I want to make a toast to you.”
She stood up and held her third glass of poteen.
“To the best damned blacksmith in all of Ireland.”
“Let’s wait until the night is over before you toast me with accolades,” he said.
Anna drank another half glass, and her knees felt squishy.
“Donal, my knees feel squishy,” she announced.
“That often happens,” he said, moving closer to her side. “I should tell you that this will go better if you are dead drunk, much better.”
“Okey-dokey,” said Anna, tipping her glass up and pouring the lava liquid down her throat. “Wait just one minute. Will this make me go blind?” She held her glass out to Donal for a refill.
“On every other occasion when you have been offered this drink, you’ve turned your nose up. You’re in no danger of going blind from this one night of indulgence,” he said.
“That’s good. When I get back home again, I can have these teeth replaced with perfect white teeth. You’ll never know the difference, never, never, ever.”
Anna felt a powerful euphoria building up like a geyser. She spun around and wrapped her arms around Donal’s neck.
“I have a secret, a teeny secret. Do you know where I really come from? Donal, I’m from the future. Far, far away.” Anna convulsed into laughter. “Have you ever heard of anything so hilarious? We mustn’t tell the others. Sshhh.”
From a distance, she heard the men return. She felt herself lifted up, felt her feet leave the ground, and suddenly she was on the long table. She tried to move and saw that one of the young men held her legs and another held her head. Donal climbed up on the table and straddled her, placing a knee on each arm.
“She’s very particular about her teeth. And I do believe she’s had as much drink as she can stand,” said Donal, looking at the blacksmith.
Anna looked up at the ceiling, and it wiggled like cottage cheese. The room itself began to bob around, as if it had been floating on the ocean.
The blacksmith put his face close to hers. “This can go quickly. I’m famously fast. I want you to let me do my job here, lass, and you’ll be all the happier for it.”
Every instinct told Anna to clamp her jaws shut. She wanted to be far more inebriated; Anna prayed for unconsciousness.
“I’m not drunk enough. I can feel everything. I’ll just wait until I get home and go to my dentist. He’s a nice man who doesn’t drink on the job, and he’ll give me a beautiful bridge.”
The picture of a bridge in her mouth, a stone bridge, a hanging bridge, a suspension bridge was irresistibly funny. And when Anna laughed, she opened her mouth wide and squeezed her eyes shut.
The blacksmith seized the moment. Anna couldn’t see the implement as it went in; the man had kept it strategically out of sight. She felt an enormous tug, as if he’d been extracting her entire jawbone from her head. She imagined her skull shat
tering from the force. And then a jolt of fire, a blast of lightning that flashed neon from the tail of her spine to her head. Her eyes flushed with tears. She smelled something dreadfully foul, a combination of raw sewage and rotting flesh. The blacksmith quickly turned her head to one side and wiped her mouth with a liquor-soaked rag.
“We’ll have you smelling like a rose in no time. The pus is the worst part; you can’t believe that something so vile can build up in us. I’ve got the first tooth. It came out whole, which is how we want it to come out. No need to go fishing for bits. Now the other one,” he said.
Anna couldn’t see Donal clearly because her eyes were thick with salty tears, but she could feel him straddling her chest and she could make out his outline. An epithet was rising up out of her, a guttural threat to life and limb. But before she could spit out the words, the blacksmith was back in her mouth again, the tug again, the spine-splitting shock. The burst of pus and smell was repeated on the second extraction. She heard the man at her feet cough into his sleeve.
“There, the stubs of your teeth are out. You’ve got a big gash. We’ll make a little stitch and then turn you loose,” said the blacksmith.
“No stitches!” shrieked Anna. Donal hadn’t told her this part.
“Shouldn’t we let the gap bleed freely? We want the infection to drain out.” Donal was sounding less confident.
Anna began to buck and writhe.
“Get the fuck off me!” she bellowed.
A moment of silence followed.
“Great glory. Do you suppose all the women in America talk like that? I’ll never be sending me daughters there,” said a fellow from the safe distance of the kitchen doorway.
“I don’t like leaving her this torn open. But if you both want no stitches here, then that’s the way it will be. Make sure she keeps this poultice on it for as long as she can stand. A good famous healer sent this along. Biddy Early. I’ve heard of her, but this is the first time I’ve ever laid eyes on her. She made a point of it, she did. Not just everyone is sent a gift from Biddy Early. There now. A little swish with the liquor.”
Now & Then Page 26
