Chasing the Sunset

by Barbara Mack

  Last night, after Ned had left them standing there, the look on Nick’s face had killed her tender heart. He was tormented by guilt and she could see the shame in his eyes. He had turned and left then, too, without speaking a word. Maggie had watched him go with all the frustrated love in her heart. She had spent the next four hours weeping into her pillow, only dropping off to sleep when exhaustion claimed her body.

  Now, she called softly for Ned. She peeped into the tack room, and squeaked in alarm when she ran right into her uncle’s chest. He put two hands out to steady her, and frowned. Maggie felt a scalding blush rise up her face. She lowered her eyes, unable to meet the knowledge in his.

  “Here now, what is this?” he said gruffly. “Something wrong, Maggie girl?”

  Maggie felt the tears well up from some place deep inside her, some hidden crevasse inside her wounded soul. She tried to keep them at bay, but they came on anyway, an unstoppable flood. Ned pulled her forward against his chest, and cradled the back of her head with his hand.

  “There, there, poppet. Do not cry, sweetheart,” he soothed. He patted her back as if she were a small child in need of comfort, and that made Maggie cry all the harder. She remembered when she was small and Ned would come to visit, how he had always brought her a gift, how he held her on his lap and kissed away her hurts. She felt like a child again as he tried to console her.

  Ned led her to a bale of hay in a nearby empty stall and sat her down, gave her a handkerchief from his pocket, and waited out the storm of tears. When the flood had abated to a trickle, and she sniffled and blew her nose, he spoke.

  “Has this something to do with the scene that I walked in on last night?”

  Maggie nodded miserably, wiping her eyes.

  “I . . . I do not want you to think badly of me,” she whispered. “I cannot bear it, Uncle Ned.”

  His wrinkled old face gentled and he sank down beside her, patting her knee.

  “I do not think badly of you, Maggie girl. I was just surprised, that is all. You are a grown woman, and the good Lord knows you are entitled to some pleasure in your life, and Nick is, too. I will not stick my shanty Irish nose in where it does not belong, if that is what is worryin’ you.” His arm crept around her shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “Just you be careful, Maggie. Do not get a babe if you do not want one.” His face reddened and he cleared his throat nervously. He twitched a little on the bale of hay, and his eyes had a hard time looking at her. “There is ways to prevent ‘em, you know. I will probably set the barn on fire with my face bein’ so hot, but I will tell you if you need to know.”

  Maggie stared at him, and he squirmed a little at her direct gaze. “Uncle Ned,” she said in a faint voice, shocked all the way down to her toes. “You never behave as I think you will. Just when I have made up my mind about what you might do or say, you utter something outrageous. I think you do it just to confuse me.”

  He smiled, showing slightly crooked teeth. “You must grab your joys where you can in this life, Maggie, m’dear. There is tears a plenty, that is for sure, so you needs grab happiness with both hands and wring every last drop out of it.” He picked up her hand and studied it, perusing the delicate bone structure, the trimmed nails and work-worn texture of the skin there as if some secret resided in the slender digits.

  “Did your father e’er tell you about immigrating to this country, lass?" When Maggie shook her head, he smiled. "Ah, your father was ever one to ignore terrible events. He liked to discard the bad parts and keep only the good in his life. Well, never mind that. Let me tell you about it." He squeezed her hand affectionately and began again.

  "We came here in the year of An Gorta Mor all together, Maggie, me and your father and all of our family. That was the year of The Great Hunger. It was the year of the potato blight. It started just as a little white spot on our tatties, and we thought nothing of it until we went to pick them and realized that it was fungus, and it had rotted through every potato in our field. And not just our fields, lass, it was through every field in Ireland. And people were starving to death before our eyes. We were lucky. Our Ma’s grandfather had been a wealthy man, and he still had jewelry that had been in his family for generations, and he left it to her when he died. Our Ma had hidden it, thinking that one day we might need it. And she was right, Maggie, for without the money she got for the jewels we would have all died. Our Ma brought our entire family here, my Da, me and your father, my aunt and uncle and their two little ones. She bullied them into comin’, and they all did as she said, e’en the ones who disliked the idea of moving so far away from our home. She forced us all to leave, in the early days of the famine, and thank the good Lord for that, for the famine lasted five long years. She got us out of Ireland, and gave us all a chance at a decent life, because there was no such chance in Ireland. For in Ireland, you see, the beauteous Irish countryside with its green pastures and wonderful farmland had long ago been taken away from the Irish and given to the English. They took it from its true owners and made the land into English plantations. Land-owning Irishmen, one of whom was my great-grandfather, who had worked for themselves for centuries, became English tenants overnight. The only money that changed hands for the transfer of the lands, of course, was the rent that was now paid to the new landlords. And that was not all, Maggie. All of Ireland had to contend with laws that were designed to break the backs of the Irishmen and make us ignorant. We were forbidden the exercise of our religion, or to receive an education, and to enter a profession. We could not hold public office, or engage in trade or commerce. We were forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds, to vote, or even to purchase land. Laws like that were a disaster-in-the-making for the Irishman, and so you see, the potato crop was all that we had. We had to pay the rent with the proceeds of the potato crop, or we would be kicked off of the very land that we had owned for hundreds of years. And my Ma knew, deep in her bones, that bad times were there to stay, and so she made us all leave Ireland. We settled in St. Louis, a grand, wild place." Uncle Ned smiled, and squeezed her hand. "I wish you could have known my Ma, and my aunt and uncle and all of their children, but they died in a cholera epidemic when you were only a wee little girl."

  "Mother did a portrait of them once," Maggie said softly. "From memory. It hung in our house for a long time, but I do not know what happened to it after my parents died. They all looked so happy together."

  “Did I ever tell you about my wife, Maggie love?”

  Maggie shook her head and stared wide-eyed at his words. She had not known that Uncle Ned had ever been married.

  "She was as rough a woman as you e’er want to meet.” He smiled, staring off into the depths of the stable, his eyes seeming to see some distant picture that pleased him. “I met her when I was but a lad of sixteen, and she was three years my senior, and they were a hard three years, too, darlin’. Her mother was a dockside whore, as pitiful a slattern as you would ever want to meet, and her father was a useless, lying drunk who had just as soon cut your throat for a penny as look at you. She was a maid in a fine house, and she near worked hersel’ to death six days out of the week, trying to feed hersel’ and all the little ones in her family.”

  He looked at Maggie, and she was astounded to see the sheen of tears in his rheumy eyes. He wiped them away unashamedly with his sleeve and gave Maggie a crooked little smile.

  “Her name was Siobhan. She was short and stocky; the top of her head barely reached to my shoulder and you know that I am not a large man. She was bowlegged, to boot. Her hair was a tangle of wild red curls and she had a mouth on her that would put the roughest sailor to shame and cause him to blush. I was down on the east side of St. Louis, visiting with my aunt and uncle who lived down there, and I had decided to walk along the pier, not knowing how dangerous it was down to the docks. All of a sudden a man comes howling out of one of the shacks that were all along there, and this screaming virago follows him out, yelling curses I had never heard the like of. It was Siobhan, down
visitin’ her younger brothers and sisters on her half day off. I stood and gaped, and when she turned around, and our eyes met, I gaped for another reason.” His voice dropped to a low murmur, and he closed his eyes momentarily, the better to see his memories... “Och, she was lovely to me, Maggie. Maybe she would not have been to anyone else, but to me she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I to her. I looked down deep inside her from the moment of our meeting, down past the worn clothes and terrible upbringing, past the anger, past all the terrible, terrible things she’d had to do just to survive, past all the surface of her . . . and I looked inside her heart. We knew each other, Siobhan and I, from that moment and nothing else mattered.”

  Ned squeezed Maggie’s hand between both of his own. “We stood and stared at one another for minutes, without moving, and then I walked over to her and took her hand, just like I am holding yours now. ‘Now,’ I says to her, ‘Tell me where I can be findin’ a minister, because I am thinkin’ I am to be married today.’ And we were.” Ned chuckled. “If you do not think there was an uproar at m’ Uncle’s house that afternoon . . . and again when I took my Siobhan home to my Ma. But we weathered it all together, because we loved one another and we stood together, and that is the way it was for the whole of the five years I had with her. She took sick, Siobhan did, when she was pregnant with our child, and she died of it, and our child along with her.” Ned pressed his lips together.

  “Her last words to me were that she loved me and that she was grateful for having the chance to be with me. Grateful! As if she was not the savin’ of me. As if she was not the best thing that ever happened to me. The best moment in m’ whole life was the day I met her.”

  Ned patted Maggie’s knee, and smiled enigmatically into her red-rimmed eyes. “But she knew, Maggie dear, that it is only one in a hundred who can look below the surface to the person

  beneath. She knew that most people are too scared to see that deeply and feel that deeply, and much too frightened to love another that fully.”

  He wiped his eyes again, and laughed a shaky laugh. “I am the one who is grateful, Maggie girl, grateful that I got my five years with my Siobhan, grateful that I did not stop with the surface of her but saw straight through to her gallant heart, and even though it like to killed me when she died, I do not regret one single minute of loving that rough, foul-mouthed, lovely girl.”

  “I have got to get back to my work, Maggie.” He rose to his feet and Ned started out, then stopped in the doorway of the stall, his back still to her.

  “You should think about something, though, something that Siobhan taught me. Love is never wasted, never without a reason, and you should clutch it to you with both hands whenever you find it. To throw love away is the only unforgivable sin, Maggie. Do not be afraid of it; do not spend the rest of your life wondering what if. Live now, and worry about the consequences later.”

  And for the second time in as many days, he walked away and left Maggie speechless behind him.

  Ned’s words resounded in her head for the rest of the day. Kathleen, too, seemed preoccupied, and they worked side by side most of the morning in silence. Maggie figured if Kathleen wanted to talk about what was bothering her, she would do it, and so she did not wheedle for information, did not ask her what put that worried look in her eyes. She, as well as anyone, knew that some secrets are not meant to be shared. Even the men at lunchtime could see that Kathleen was not up to their usual teasing, and left her alone. After the noon meal, Kathleen had volunteered to polish all the silver, a job that she ordinarily detested, and Maggie figured it was so that she could be alone in the small room off the kitchen where they usually sat together to do that nasty job. Maggie let her go without comment.

  Nick had refused to meet her eyes all day; he was back to avoiding her and Maggie would have pulled all his hair out in a screaming tantrum if she thought that it would help. Unfortunately, she did not think that it would. He had made up his mind again and he planned on denying the feelings he had for her, but she was not going to let him get away with it, not this time. She contemplated her situation as she pounded bread dough a little more violently than necessary, and her mouth firmed. If this was the only chance she had, her only shot at happiness, she was going to take it. How much would Ned have missed if he had not had the strength to marry his Siobhan?

  Tommy came into the kitchen to beg some leftover cherry pie, and Maggie laughed when he cut himself a slice as big as three ordinary ones.

  “Why didn’t you just eat it out of the tin?” she teased. “There is hardly anything left now.”

  He grinned up at her, and Maggie noticed that one of his eyeteeth overlapped just a tiny bit and that small imperfection in his otherwise perfect smile endeared him to her all the more. She sat down beside him; she could leave those dishes for later. They would still be there when she decided to go back to them, but Tommy might not.

  “I figured you would yell at me,” he said. “You eat it. You have got time to sit and talk with me with me now, and that is good pie.”

  Maggie figured that was good advice, and she did eat it out of the tin, much to Tommy’s amusement, but she did not see the point in dirtying another dish. She listened to Tommy chatter on about the stables, and Ned, and Nick, and any subject that came to mind, and she smiled internally. The boy must save up all his conversation all morning, waiting until he came to the

  house to spill it all. He unconsciously inched his chair closer and closer to hers while they talked, so that eventually his leg was resting right up against hers. Maggie had noticed this habit of Tommy’s before, they had all remarked on it at one time or another, and his involuntary search for human touch pierced her tender heart with a sharp pain. She leaned forward a little and put her hand on his arm, and Tommy glowed at her, his animated gestures and conversation never slowing for a minute. Finally he sighed, and looked down at his empty plate.

  “I guess I better go before Ned comes huntin’ me, Miss Maggie.” He peeped over at her shyly from under his lashes. "Miss Maggie? Can I tell you something?"

  "Of course, Tommy," she said warmly.

  "I am glad you ain’t scared of us no more like you was when you first got here. I knowed you was scared ‘cause I used to be that way, and I remember what it feels like. This is a good place, and I’m glad you come here. I kinda feel like, you know, since I don’t have one . . . I pretend sometimes . . . like you are my . . . my family."

  Maggie’s eyes filled with tears. She stared at him for long moments without words, until he began to squirm uneasily, afraid that he had made a horrible mistake and that Maggie did not feel the same way about him that he felt about her. Then she grabbed him in a hard hug for so long that his face turned a bright red, and when he spoke again, his voice came out in a squeak.

  "I love you, Maggie," he whispered, and she whispered the sentiment right back, then pretended not to see when he wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve. He gave her a wobbly smile that held all the joys of a day in the sunshine, then scurried out the back door quickly, before he could be forced to participate in any more mushy talk.

  Maggie called a goodbye after him, and watched the gangly boy lope out to the stables. He was all arms and legs and showed promise of becoming a big man. At fourteen, he was already inches taller than her, and was still growing like a weed. He ate enough for two or even three field hands; Maggie had watched in astonishment one day as he ate the equivalent of a whole chicken, plus a huge pile of mashed potatoes, three slices of bread, and massive amounts of vegetables. The men were always taking bets on how much he could eat that day; Tommy took their teasing in stride, accepting it for the affection that it was.

  Kathleen left for the day, the silver all done. She gave Maggie a half-hearted smile and headed out the door. Maggie frowned after her and sighed. Whatever was bothering Kathleen was her problem, and she would not meddle. Lord knows she had as many problems as she could deal with already, but she sure wished Kathleen would talk about it. Wha
tever it was, it was not like Kathleen to be so quiet about anything, and Maggie could tell that whatever was wrong was something big.

  Dinner was a silent affair; Nick still was not talking, and Maggie toyed with her food. Ned ate quickly and left and even Tommy picked up on the atmosphere, his puzzled gaze going from person to person in silence.

  Maggie went to watch the fox kittens, but Duncan did not show up, and she did not stay long. She stared morosely into the river for a little while. Its dark depths seemed to hold secrets tonight; the swish of the wind through the trees, the chattering of birds and squirrels, the tinkling of the water did not soothe her as it usually did. Maggie went home, resigned to an early bedtime.

  She had a hard time falling to sleep that night; tossing and turning and trying to find a spot on the bed that was comfortable. The mattress that was usually so much to her liking seemed to have developed lumps and bumps overnight, and every time she turned over, Maggie found another one. Her soft feather pillow was suffocating, and she threw it on the floor in exasperation, putting her head on a coverlet instead. Her dreams, when she finally drifted off, were peopled with monsters hiding behind smiling faces in hazy, smoke-filled rooms. When she came awake with a start, having no idea why, her heart was pounding so hard she was certain that she could see it through her nightdress.

  A heavy hand covered her mouth and kept in the scream rising in her throat. All Maggie could see was a shadow looming over her, and the dark, phantom figure reminded her so very much of her recent dreams that she fought wildly. Maggie twisted and flailed, trying to escape. The harsh, hoarse whisper finally penetrated her terror and she stopped struggling.

  “Miss Maggie! Miss Maggie! Don’t be scared. It’s me, Tommy.”

  He lifted his hand cautiously away from her lips, and Maggie sat up.

  “Tommy? What the devil . . . “

  ”Ssshh. Do not wake Mr. Nick.” His eyes were frantic, and he was covered in sweat, too much sweat for so chilly a night. He was dressed not for bed, but in dark blue trousers and a navy shirt that Maggie had helped sew for him not too long ago.