The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  —I did him in. I did our uncle Rodger in, Seamus told his brother.

  Rat poison. Nora had made enough beef stew to last for the week. Roger was turning hay and said he was way too busy to come in and eat. Seamus offered to take the stew out to Roger, and each lunchtime Seamus left the house with the bowl of stew and the bread and went to the lean-to at the back of the shed and stirred the rat poison into the bowl. Then he added salt. Roger loved the stew. And Roger loved salt. He’d clean the bowl in no time. Sop the gravy up with bread. Didn’t even bother getting down from the tractor. Seamus handed the bowl and the bread up to him then stood and waited. But on the fourth day Roger told Seamus to tell his mother to go handy on the salt. Still Roger wiped the bowl clean and shoved the bread into his mouth and handed the bowl down to Seamus. Hours later, Roger drove the tractor into the ditch. A local teenager found him. Roger was paying the teenager to help him out with the hay.

  —He told me this in about five minutes, Jimmy. And then he hung up on me.

  Kevin called the number again. No answer. He called the other number and talked to the Donegal woman. She said Seamus walked out the door a few minutes ago. When she saw him again she’d let him know his brother rang. A day later, Tommy rang Kevin to say that Seamus was dead.

  —So that’s what the bold Seamus says he did, Jimmy.

  He drained the can and went back to the grill. I followed him. He picked up the fork and lifted the lid. He poked the chicken pieces. His shoulders were hunched, like those of an old man, and I watched that hollow place between a man’s shoulder blades.

  All the time in the world, Miss Una. All the time in the world.

  He shut the lid then took another can from the cooler. He opened it and turned to me.

  —But, Jimmy, the drugs made him mad.

  —That’s what it was, Kevin.

  —Drugs and vodka. We know what they do to the head, Jimmy.

  —We do, Kevin, that’s what happened.

  —So you agree with me, Jimmy.

  —Of course, Kevin.

  —Take Deirdre to the stream. I need to find out what Walter is up to. Mind her, won’t you.

  —I promise you I will, I said.

  I headed toward the stairs. He said my name. I turned back to him.

  —Sorry about the clock, he said.

  —I thought it might bring some comfort—

  —You keep it, Jimmy. It’s your father’s. That one’s yours.

  —Fine, Kevin.

  —You’re the one I could tell it to, Jimmy. We ended up here.

  —We did, Kevin, was all I said.

  He opened the sliding door. Anton was singing a Neil Young song and running the water. Washing lettuce and tomatoes. Slicing cucumbers. He slid the door shut and stared at me through the glass. I stared back. Faces that revealed nothing. And then a glare of sunlight on the glass caused him to vanish. But I knew he was still there and looking and I kept looking. And my mind went to him crying in his car. Tess was telling him to go away. Go away for good. If you took away all that other stuff, pity was all you had left. Pity that made us equal. Pity that made him braver than I ever let myself admit. Pity because of the weight of them. Shame in myself.

  5.

  I rolled my pants legs up. We each sat on one of the big rocks. We were facing the bridge. The sunlight was low in the trees whose shadows trembled in the rolling water. On the count of three we dropped our feet in. Deirdre laughed and screamed then pulled her feet back out. She hugged her knees. Water splashed onto the stones. I kept my feet in. The hem of the sunflower dress was soaking wet.

  —On summer evenings, Deirdre, when I was your age I went to the river with my younger brother and two sisters.

  —Was Daddy ever there?

  —Sometimes your daddy was.

  —Was it like this, Jimmy?

  —The water was not fast, Deirdre. There were a few rocks on the bank. The river divided a hay meadow. It drained the water. The cows drank from the river when the grass grew back. This was after the hay was cut. And there were no big trees. Just a few bushes.

  A cracking noise came from inside the trees near the bridge.

  —Jimmy, that might be the goat.

  —Should we go and have a look?

  —Let’s stay here for now, Jimmy.

  —Here is fine, Deirdre.

  —Daddy and you were never best friends.

  I looked into the water. The shadow of a hawk appeared. I looked up. The hawk sailed high above the trees.

  —Did your daddy tell you that?

  —I just know. I have friends.

  Anton laughed loudly. Then her father laughed.

  —Your daddy and Anton are having great fun up on the deck. Is your dress dry?

  —It’s almost dry, Jimmy.

  —Your daddy and I were never friends.

  —I’m right, Jimmy.

  —Indeed, Deirdre.

  A noise again from inside the trees. It was closer this time. Deirdre gripped my shirtsleeve.

  —Someone’s there, Jimmy.

  —A deer, Deirdre. Maybe the goat.

  She let my sleeve go.

  —Your daddy is going through a very hard time right now.

  —That’s what Mommy says.

  She grabbed the shirtsleeve again and pointed into the trees across from her.

  —Did you hear it, Jimmy?

  I shaded my eyes and stared. Things buzzed. Birds were singing. Insects skated above the water. I asked Deirdre to change places with me. I said it was my turn to sit next to the trees. And so we did, and I told her to put her feet into the stream one more time. She laughed and shivered. Finally, she said the water was awesome. I asked if her dress was dry. She said it almost was. And then we heard it.

  —The whippoorwill, wow, Jimmy.

  —It’s early this evening, Deirdre.

  It sounded again. Up near the bridge. We looked there. And I pointed to the hawk and told Deirdre to look up. The hawk moved in wide circles and we watched it until it vanished over the treetops on the far side of the bridge.

  —Daddy said he dated your sister.

  —He told you that.

  —In the car this afternoon. Do you miss her, Jimmy?

  —More than anyone else.

  And a noise in the trees again, like rotten branches being stepped on.

  —There’s someone in there, I’m sure of it, Jimmy.

  —The deer or the goat, Deirdre. No need to worry.

  I watched up and down. I listened.

  —We should go back to the deck, Deirdre. The midges are getting bad.

  —Let’s stay a few minutes more.

  —Whatever you like, Deirdre.

  —I want to visit where Daddy grew up.

  —You will someday.

  —Will you be there?

  —Probably not.

  —But you must write me.

  —Promise you I will.

  Then a loud crash inside the trees.

  —The deer. That’s all, Deirdre. They come down here in the evening for water.

  —It’s not deer, Jimmy. I know it.

  —Only a deer, Deirdre, but your dad is expecting us.

  —Let’s go, then, Jimmy.

  —I’m very hungry, Deirdre.

  —Me, too, Jimmy.

  —Don’t tell your daddy about the noises in the trees.

  —I won’t. I was just scared. I know it was only a deer.

  —That’s all. Or the goat. But we don’t want to worry your daddy.

  —I understand, Jimmy.

  —I know you do, Deirdre.

  —I don’t want to go back in the morning, Jimmy, but I told Mom I would.

  —Then you must go back, Deirdre.

  —You�
��re right, Jimmy. I must.

  I said we should walk through the yard. I threw our shoes over the unfinished wall and stepped over it. Deirdre stepped onto it and held out her hand. I held it and she jumped down. I picked up our shoes. Sunlight bloomed red on the long porch window. We walked in the dappled light. Walked in the shadows of the treetops. And we laughed in the pillar of midges. The grass was warm and soft. Smoke from the grill poured out over the deck. Like smoke on a battlefield when the battle is over. The chicken smelled delicious. He appeared at the corner of the deck. He called his daughter’s name, and when we walked into his shadow he waved and Deirdre skipped ahead. She called, Daddy! Daddy! He laughed and called her name again. And he called mine. I waved and called his then looked down at the grass. Zoë was going through the airport gate. Tess was walking her dog along the riverbank in a midland town. Una’s shadow darkened her single bed in that flat on Drumcondra Road. I would have seen her shadow on that bed many times. But the first is the one that stayed. And my mother was watering her yellow flowers with a plastic green can that my father bought in the Market Yard in Tipperary town the same day he and Michael bought the clocks. I used to fill that can at the yard spigot and bring it to her in her garden. And then I looked up because he was telling us to hurry on. The chicken was well ready. Anton had made a smashing salad. And when he waved again he looked like someone on the deck of a ship that was slipping out of the harbor, and his daughter and I were in that crowd on the shore. Weeping and waving back.

  6.

  Kevin had dropped Deirdre off, and was back at the house with over an hour. Pizzas were delivered from Cold Spring. Kevin paid. We ate them at the picnic table. Anton ate with us, and when he went back to the wall Kevin picked up the seashell necklace Deirdre had forgotten.

  —How careless of her, how selfish.

  He spoke those words in a glum way, but then he put the necklace down and said he was so excited about the two-hour hike we were about to take. He’d taken it a few times on his own. The morning after he’d heard about Seamus, he got up at seven and did it. Uphill and downhill on a winding path through the trees. Then a shady, boggy laurel grove. After the grove, a broad dry riverbed that led to hilly meadows where a herd of Friesians grazed.

  —Sounds like home, I said.

  —Strawberry Fields, I call them, Jimmy.

  —And nothing to get hung about, I said.

  He reached across the picnic table and patted me on the shoulder then said we’d head out when Walter rang, though he wasn’t waiting all day to hear from him, but he was terribly pissed at him for not ringing back last evening. Kevin had rung his foreman that morning. He did before he and Deirdre got into the car. The foreman said Walter hadn’t shown up for work. Kevin rang the foreman again when he arrived back, right before he ordered the pizzas. Still no Walter. The foreman also said Walter hadn’t done the job he was supposed to do, but then Kevin stopped talking about Walter and began to laugh about something Deirdre had said in the car. I forget what that thing was. And I forget one other thing about that afternoon, but in the seven years that have passed since then I’ve asked Deirdre on the phone many times, So you don’t remember the thing you told your father in the car that made him laugh? But Deirdre doesn’t, and she also forgets what she and her father talked about on the two-hour drive back, but she knows they had a great time, they stopped in Danbury and ate burgers and fries and drank Cokes under an umbrella, but Deirdre says she wishes she remembered the last thing her father said to her at the rest stop outside Hartford, when she got out of the car—her mother’s car was pulling in a few spaces up—but Deirdre never forgets the noises in the trees when we sat on the rocks in the stream, and she says those noises came and went in her head when we were eating supper on the deck, and everyone was in high spirits, we were waiting to hear the whippoorwill, her father and I even took bets as to what time we might hear it—when he went inside and came back out with the whiskey bottle, we did—except that none of us heard the whippoorwill again, and Deirdre never forgets taking off the necklace and leaving it on the picnic table. But I had the necklace. I mailed it to her. Six days after that afternoon, I did, after she and I had talked on the phone for a long time, but her father’s laughter drowned out Walter’s feet on the gravel path and the deck stairs, though Walter was always so quiet. And it was me who saw him first. I did the moment he stepped off the top step. I happened to be facing that way. My face changed. Kevin was looking at me, still laughing then, still talking then. He saw the change and turned to look where I was looking.

  —Well, speak of the devil, Kevin said.

  The tattered backpack was strapped high on Walter’s back. He wore the good shoes he’d worn on our drive with Zoë, and one of the shirts that Una gave me. Which shirt it was is the second thing I forget. Kevin stood up from the picnic table. Then I did. Kevin took a few steps toward Walter, stopped a few feet from him, and asked Walter if he’d like a slice of pizza, he’d heat one up in the microwave for him. Walter said he was grateful, but he wasn’t hungry, and then he pushed up the bill of the Indians cap. He pushed it up high so that his forehead was exposed.

  —So you didn’t bother going to work today, Kevin said.

  —I’m at work, man, Walter said.

  He took off the backpack and laid it on the deck floor. He unzipped it a few inches, reached in, and took out a wrinkled brown paper bag. The sort you put your lunch in. He left the bag there at his feet, straightened up, and put the backpack back on.

  —Killed your bird, man, he said.

  —You killed what? Kevin said.

  —You asked me to deal with the bird.

  —I didn’t say to kill it.

  —What other way do you think there is, man?

  —Well, there must be more than one of them.

  —Get them others for you some other time.

  —So what’s the story about that other job?

  —What about it?

  —I talked to my foreman. That’s your what about it.

  —Won’t do it, man.

  —You get paid to do it. So you have to do it. Don’t get on your high horse with me.

  —Two kids. A woman. Didn’t understand her, man. Don’t know Spanish. Woman was crying, man. A kid in the crib. Kid was crying. She said the kid was sick. Couldn’t work ’cause of the kid. Could say the word sick—

  —We’ve a work order next week to install a new kitchen and bathroom in that apartment. Not a penny rent paid in three months. I looked after you. Didn’t I? Don’t I? And who do you think you are that you don’t have to do your job? What fucking country do you think you’re living in?

  —Ain’t doing it, man.

  —There ain’t no ain’t about it. And I ain’t asking you, I’m telling you.

  —Ain’t. And you’re the devil, too.

  —A figure of speech, Walter. A joke. Not an insult.

  Kevin lowered his head. He shoved his hands into the khaki pockets and began to pace back and forth between Walter and me. He paced like a caged dog. Walter’s eyes followed his. Then Kevin stopped directly in front of Walter, so that I couldn’t see his face, and Kevin raised his head, turned sideways, and with his left hand pushed his hair back from his forehead, the way his father pushed his John Garfield fringe, pushed it back, but he didn’t have his father’s fringe. Didn’t really have a fringe at all, his hair being short, but pushed it madly a few times, then shoved that hand back into his pocket, shrugged, and, in a cheerful way, he asked Walter if they might finish this conversation inside the house.

  —Okay with me, man.

  Kevin turned to me.

  —Why don’t you go for a walk, Jimmy. None of this business is yours. It won’t take me long. I’ll give you a shout when it’s over. We’ll go on that hike.

  —I can bury the whippoorwill, I said.

  He said nothing, having already turned. He was
opening the sliding door. He stepped inside. Walter walked in front of me and stepped inside. Neither a look nor a word. Like I was not there on that deck. His sunburned face, the high forehead, and the noble nose I’ve never mentioned. Kevin slid the door to, without looking out. I heard him tell Walter to sit on the couch. And I heard him ask Walter if he’d like some coffee. He was making some for himself. I never heard Walter’s reply, but the truth is that I wanted to get off that deck. And I was trying terribly hard not to think about the wrong and the right. And you still don’t talk about the wrong and the right. You don’t to Tess, Deirdre, Stephen, or Hannah, but what you did when you headed toward the deck stairs was tell yourself it wasn’t about wrong and right. It was really and only about what people wanted, and people believed they deserved whatever the fuck it was they wanted. Americans did. Americans like me and Kevin Lyons—but you told Zoë. You did because Zoe didn’t know any of them. And Zoë would understand. And so you and Zoë sat on her deck on weekend evenings that subsequent fall, and the maple leaves dropped slowly around you and turned red and yellow on the deck floor and you both smoked pot and drank whiskey. And one night after too much of those you confessed to Zoë that you didn’t know anymore which part of it was the hardest for you to bear. The part when Walter took a gun out of his backpack in that front room and killed Kevin with one bullet to the head and then killed himself with one to his own. Or the part that you will never tell the others. Their row on the deck. What Walter the lunatic refused to do. And Zoë leaned over you and put her arms tightly around you and kissed your head and said, James, Walter was crazy. He’d lost everything, James. Crazy and violent, James. You were never really a part of it, my dear, you just so happened to be standing on that deck. And I admit I’m just happy you weren’t in the room, my dear.