“Vinnie. Vinnie? I think they’re coming.”
Vinnie awoke terrified. “The babies? What do I do? All right. I’m here. You’ll be all right. Jesus, save us.”
“Vinnie. Listen to me. The babies are too soon. We need to find the doctor.”
The Catholic doctor, a hurried little man with a Sligo accent, had examined her very briefly when they first arrived, declaring all was well.
“Right!” Vinnie hurried out of the shed.
* * *
Through increasingly strong contractions, Johannah’s hands gripped the edge of the pallet with all her might. They were coming faster now, and stronger, and she cried out and attempted to push the children closer to freedom. Where was Vinnie, where was the doctor? And why was her man not here?
Finally, the sheet was pulled back from outside their enclosure and Vinnie’s face appeared. Behind him was a tall grey-haired man with a trim beard carrying a medical bag. Vinnie looked worried as he spoke.
“Johannah? This is Dr. Davis. I’m sorry, Johannah. I couldn’t find the Catholic doctor.”
“Doctor. It’s too soon. I’m not due yet.”
“Babies usually know what they’re doing, ma’am. You look healthy and strong. You’ll be fine. I’m sorry I’m not of your faith but I’ve asked Sister Patricia to assist me.”
He placed a towel as a pillow under her head and gave her a reassuring smile. Johannah cried out as another contraction hit. Inside the sheeted enclosure, Dr. Davis spread out a towel and unpacked his bag. The nun came to assist him, bringing hot water, towels and a warmed blanket. Vinnie waited outside.
After the doctor had examined Johannah, he spoke to her calmly, firmly. “Johannah, you are fully open and ready to give birth. I know it’s early but it’ll be all right. We need you to push now.”
And she did so with all her might. The first little head crowned and then came out fully and stopped there. The child would come no farther. Dr. Davis ran his fingers around the head and down the neck.
“Stop pushing now, Johannah,” he told her and with great effort she tried to hold back. “Johannah? Listen to me. The cord is around the baby’s neck. I can free it if you release the pressure. You have to stop pushing. Understand? I know it’s hard. Let the baby move back.”
Johannah found the only thing harder than pushing was not pushing, but she held back against all her instincts, breathing in and out until she saw stars. The doctor worked his two fingers down the back of the head of the child and was able to take hold of the umbilical cord between them and pull up enough of the loop to slide it over the child’s head. The cord went back inside and the child was now freed from his constraint to continue his earthbound journey. Johannah was free to push and the birth proceeded quickly. A moment later a strong little wavering voice announced its owner’s arrival.
“The first one is a boy,” Dr. Davis informed her as he tied off and severed the cord with a scalpel. Johannah saw him lift the tiny infant, not much bigger than one of the doctor’s strong hands, and pass him gently to Sister Patricia, who wrapped him up like a silkworm in a warm sheet. The nun handed the baby to Vinnie outside the curtain.
“Good, Johannah. The second is coming well. Push. That’s it.”
As if it came from another person, Johannah heard her final groan and the gasp of birth.
“Well done, Johannah. It’s a girl.”
She was delighted to hear this confirmed and she listened for Lucy’s first cry.
“Already a good head of red hair,” Dr. Davis told her.
Another moment went by and another. Johannah turned her head to see Dr. Davis working on the little grey wet child, carefully holding her upside down, patting her bottom, then turning her over, massaging her tiny chest, blowing into her face.
“Come on, little one. Breathe in for me. Breathe.”
Dr. Davis blew into the miniature mouth and nose, the opening no larger than his baby finger. But only silence continued. He turned the child away from Johannah and kept working.
“Where…? What is it…?” she asked breathlessly.
After a few more moments, her mind and body went numb as she heard the sombre voice of the nun reciting a prayer.
“Lord God of all creation, receive this life you created in love and comfort your faithful people in their time of loss…”
“Damn it, sister, wait.” And Dr. Davis worked on. “Come on, little beauty. Live.”
But the baby did not cry, and a minute later the nun continued.
“In the pain of sorrow there is consolation, in the face of despair there is hope, in the midst of death there is life...” This time Dr. Davis did not interrupt.
No, this could not be, Johannah thought. Where was her Lucy? Her breasts were full. Lucy would be hungry. Johannah called out for her and she saw Vinnie bow his head. After that, Johannah was quiet and all became a blur of anguish.
The next hours or days, she lost track, were as if Johannah existed in a guilty nightmare from which she could not awaken, one that included the ghosts of her father and mother along with this new little soul she had failed. Somehow she understood that the stillborn child would be buried immediately and Vinnie was sent to find a priest. Dr. Davis said she did not have to be present but of course she did have to and so, though she was weak, Dr. Davis made arrangements to have her carried in a chair by two men to the site. In years to follow, Johannah’s memory of the quarantine cemetery was vague and she was told later that Vinnie held the other, the boy, in his arms during the burial of his sister. Dr. Davis had provided a bottle of goat’s milk and the infant had taken to it easily. The priest, who had first baptized the dead child, then spoke the words: “O heavenly Father, whose face the angels of the little ones do always behold in heaven, grant us to believe that this child hath been taken into the safe keeping of Thy eternal love…”
Johannah stared down into the small open pit as if under a spell. Vinnie asked her if she was all right, but she could not answer. She looked out over the few rows of thin white crosses, then looked up to see out across the field where there were hundreds more, even a thousand. A thousand and more thin white crosses. A thousand and more graves. So many had made it this far only to fall here on this cruel little island. Now including her own daughter, who they put into the cold ground that day and if there had been any way that she could have crawled down in beside her to hold her, she would have done so.
Johannah lay on her mat bed for days after that, her eyes glazed and staring. Vinnie held her other baby, who was fussing and hungry in his arms. Dr. Davis had monitored the vital signs of the tiny child and, though he had come far too early, his heart was strong, lungs clear. Johannah too was medically fit. There had been little bleeding, the births went well and the single placenta was delivered intact. Johannah came physically through it all just fine. But it was the second child, the girl, who refused to breathe. Vinnie told her what she had seen: how Davis had massaged the tiny chest, blown on the little face, spoken to her. But then he told her what she had not seen: the child’s eyes did open for a second, and that was all, as Davis worked on and on to try to save her. Lucy had seen the world for that moment, that flicker of life and consciousness, and then it passed her by. A whole life in an instant. The image of anxious faces—was Johannah’s among them?—a blurry memory of earth to take with her to heaven for all eternity.
Johannah lay there with her long stare, with no interest in the surviving child, and a deep lethargy far beyond the exhaustion of childbirth. Dr. Davis took the baby from Vinnie, held him toward her and spoke gently.
“Johannah, you’ll have other daughters. Daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters. Will you try with him? He’s a fine wee tyke. Got a little crooked foot but otherwise strong as a goat. He needs you, Johannah.”
She turned her back on them. Vinnie whispered to her.
“Jim’ll be back s
oon. He’s been sending the food. Was only since the babes came early he wasn’t here. He’ll be back for sure! This one’s so hungry.”
But Johannah wasn’t really listening. She was thinking of that moment of life when Lucy’s eyes opened and then closed forever.
Before he left, Dr. Davis gave Vinnie a warmed bottle of cow’s milk with a rubber nipple and, in the absence of Johannah’s willingness to nurse him, the boy fed the tiny surviving twin himself.
The Wager
Jim sat with his back against the wall of the tavern at a small table, nursing a ten-cent glass of bad whiskey and counting again the small pile of currency he had accumulated in the two and a half months he had been working. After bed and board, and sending the food packages to Johannah, he had six pounds, five shillings and four pence saved. He spent a moment admiring his calloused hands, the pads thick and the lifelines deep. He could drive a spike firmly into a tie with only three blows of his sledge, and he was now a valuable man on the line. He found satisfaction in the miles of track he had helped to lay. What a long way he was from his poor dandy boy days in Borrisokane when his hands were soft and his pockets empty. Raised on the estate, he was never shy of hard work and felt he had recaptured a certain righteousness in it again. He thought of Mick and how good it would be if he had lived to come with them, and what he would have thought of this new world.
The tavern in the village near the railhead was a cramped rough log affair with a boisterous crowd taking up the extra space of men used to spending most of their days outside. A massive bald bartender with a stained apron and enormous hands kept order among the jostling drunks. In a tiny open area across the bar where the tables had been pushed back, there was a semi-organized boxing contest under way. A serious man with steel-rimmed specs was taking bets at a battered table. The elbows and knees of the fighters struck as many blows to the audience in the close press of bodies as to the opponent, but there was no room to give.
“You will wear it out, mon ami.”
Jim looked up at the bartender’s remark.
“The money,” the burly Frenchman clarified, pointing to his meagre treasure. He put down another glass of whiskey. Jim carefully slid him a shilling but the man didn’t take it.
“C’est la tournée du patron.”
Jim slid the shilling back into his little pile.
“Thanks. Yeah, not much for two and a half months’ work,” he concluded. “What do you think land would go for around here an acre? Good farm land now.”
“Here, three or four pounds maybe.” Jim covered his shock. “But I heard there’s land to the west, in old Upper Canada you can buy there for ten shillings an acre, maybe.”
“Ten shillings. That’s good, but at this rate it’ll still take me five years to buy a decent-sized farm.”
Jim watched the punching match across the bar for a moment. One of the fighters seemed familiar and he realized it was Kavanaugh, the bully from Limerick. Jim could tell he was toying with his opponent, threatening with his right. Then suddenly with a powerful left hook, Kavanaugh laid the other man out cold on the plank floor. The ten count by the bartender went quickly. There were cheers and groans and people collected money from their wagers. Jim looked around at the betting action. Mick would have enjoyed this and found some opportunities here. Kavanaugh was strutting about in triumph, pounding his chest with his bloody cloth-wrapped fists, jeering at his opponent as two men slapped the man into consciousness, got him groggily to his feet and half carried him outside.
“Go home to your mammy, you pansy harp. Who’s next? I just begun.”
Jim saw that Kavanaugh was looking at him, his fists up, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“You there. It’s the Borrisokane boy. You don’t have Quinn to hide behind. Come for a little slap and tickle. I’ll be easy on you.”
Again Jim’s blood was stirred by the offer, but he had promised Johannah not to fight. He could not afford a feud or to jeopardize his job with broken bones.
“I don’t fight.”
“Ahhhhh. He doesn’t fight. Are you a priest or a molly?”
Kavanaugh came up to Jim’s table and suddenly gave him a stinging slap across the face. The bar fell silent. It took everything Jim had not to go for the man’s throat but he had made his promise to Johannah and it stopped him short.
“I told you, I don’t fight.”
“Everyone’ll fight for something. What’ll you fight for?”
Kavanaugh slapped him again hard across the face and this time there were cheers and shouts of encouragement to Jim. What would Mick do? No question there.
Jim stood up and stepped out from his table, his face burning. Kavanaugh was a head taller and fifty pounds heavier. Jim thought of his promise and began to negotiate a bit with himself. It’s true he had promised not to fight, to keep the peace and not raise a hand, but wasn’t this merely sport? It didn’t really count, did it? This was not serious fighting, not real fighting. There would be no later recriminations, no revenge. Jim looked down at his paltry pile and thought of Johannah. He scooped up the money and took it to the bookmaker nearby, who was holding a fistful of bills, his steel glasses askew from the jostling of the onlookers.
“What are my odds?”
The bookmaker looked him up and down, then glanced at the substantially larger Kavanaugh.
“Ten to one.”
Jim frowned a moment at this insult, but the odds were good for him. “Done.”
Jim gave him all his money. Other men were actively betting on the side. Jim took off his jacket, giving it to the bookmaker, and began talking quietly to Kavanaugh.
“So you’ll be gentle with me then and not…?”
As he turned toward Kavanaugh a huge fist slammed into his face, knocking him back against a table and spilling the beer of several patrons. The supporters of Kavanaugh cheered while those taking a long shot bet on Jim groaned. Jim felt his jaw and spit out a broken tooth and some blood from the sucker punch.
“No, hah?”
Kavanaugh came at him again in the cramped ring with fists flying. Jim recognized the left hook that had taken out the last man and was just able to dodge it and two more mighty punches. All three were left hooks—his opponent had little imagination and could be anticipated. Jim held up his hands, stepping back from the big man.
“Wait, wait, wait, now,” Jim appealed to all present. “Let’s be clear. Are we playing Tipperary rules?”
Kavanaugh stood straight up and lowered his fists, perplexed.
“Tipperary rules? What the hell are Tipperary rules?”
Jim looked at the bookmaker, backing closer to Kavanaugh.
“Well…first, you can’t do this.”
Jim suddenly turned and with great momentum rammed his forehead into Kavanaugh’s nose, breaking it with a satisfying crunch. Kavanaugh stumbled back groaning, hands to his beak. Blood started to flow down his chest.
“And you shouldn’t ever do this.”
Jim gave the distracted man a kick in the crotch so powerful that it lifted him up off the floor. Kavanaugh bent over holding his privates, moaning, totally vulnerable to Jim’s further ministrations. Jim began to enjoy himself.
“But…you can do this.”
Jim swung his fist, hardened by many weeks of driving spikes, with all his might up into Kavanaugh’s fleshy face and, as onlookers scrambled out of the way, knocked him over onto his back on the filthy barroom floor. Half the tavern cheered.
“One…two…three…four…”
Some losers began to argue with the bookmaker over Jim’s technique but the original sucker punch Kavanaugh gave Jim had established protocol. Kavanaugh lay semi-conscious on the floor as the bartender continued the count.
“Five…six…seven…eight…nine…you’re out!”
Nursing a raw, bloody fist, feeling for any broken
bones, Jim retrieved his jacket and his winnings from the disgruntled bookmaker. He gave the bills a rough assessment (now was not the time to dally) and it was well over fifty pounds! Jim gave the rowdy house a bloody gap-toothed smile, extended his arm in a victory wave and took his leave before any man seriously disputed his victory.
Jim stepped out into the cold night air and thought of Johannah and the broken promise. But it was only a temporary lapse and she needn’t know, and now they had money for land. It was well worth it for the greater good.
* * *
Johannah lay on the mat in the quarantine shed, her face to the wall. Though her breasts ached with milk, when anyone presented the surviving child to her, she just couldn’t bring herself to do what she should be doing. How could she hold and feed her son when her daughter was dead? She had failed to give Lucy life and each day was dark with guilt and remorse and she just could not find her way out.
Vinnie would come to her, sweet Vinnie, and tell her about how strong the boy was growing on the goat milk and how spring was almost with them, and the quarantine period was almost over, and that Jim would be back any day to take them off the island and to the new land and a new life. Vinnie would tell her every promise and dream he could think of and still, Johannah would hear the voice of her mother or see her father, his body contorted on the stable floor, or imagine the face of her stillborn child, and she could not find her way out of the darkness.
Some nights were so still and quiet that she thought this was what eternity could be like and it was not so bad. On one such night, she held in her hand the small, sharp knife that Jim had sent with the first sack of food. She had had it with her for three days. She set the blade against her wrist and thought the plan was quite tenable to cut herself deep, for Vinnie was sound asleep on the other side of the pile of belongings and they would not find out what she had done until morning, when it was too late. There was a bright moon shining through the cracks in the shed wall and Johannah had bolstered her courage to the point of doing it. She hoisted herself up on one elbow to brace herself and apply the knife when a little weight shifted in her pocket and it was the river stone she felt. She took it out and looked at the red and green flecks and held it tight in her hand. She put the knife aside and fell into a light sleep. She was awakened a couple of hours later when she heard something: a few faint whistled notes of a tune, lost in the still air, perhaps only imagination. But the tune…wasn’t it…? It was “Oyster Nan.” She sat up, her heart beating faster. Was it another dream? But then she heard it again and she saw his silhouette come through the door and then Jim was there beside her.
Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys Page 13
