by Tony Nalley
“McAnully …was recorded in several spellings. This was a famous Irish surname. It was a development of two original Gaelic surnames. The first was ‘Mac con’ and the second was Ulaidh’ composed of the elements ‘Mac’ meaning son of, ‘con’, a hunting dog (or hound), and ‘uladh’, the province of Ulster.”
“What was the meaning…?” I wondered. “…behind callin’ someone 'the son of a hound of Ulster’?”
I didn’t know for sure. But I did know that the hound was a ‘highly regarded’ animal in earlier times; back in the days of Kings and Knights and Castles. So I looked up the ‘Hound of Ulster’, and read of a mythological figure from Irish folklore. His name was ‘Cú Chulainn’.
I didn’t have a clue how to pronounce the name, nor could I figure it out by the pronunciation key beside it in the book. So I just called him ‘Koo Choo Lane’.
“It sure was a dumb sounding name.” I thought. It looked like it would sound like ‘Choo Choo Train’ so that’s how I remembered it. His ‘nickname’ was the ‘Hound of Ulster.’
“As a child ‘Cú Chulainn’ killed a fierce guard dog of the King’s in self defense and offered to take its place until a replacement could be reared. Then at the age of seventeen he defended the city of Ulster single-handedly against the armies of a brutal Queen. He was further known for his terrifying battle frenzy in which he became an unrecognizable Monster who knew neither friend nor foe!”
By this definition I reasoned that my last name meant that I was a descendant in the line of ‘a fierce warrior’, a warrior who was honorable and a warrior who also had respect for authority!
A warrior who took responsibility for his own actions and defended his great people and city!
I liked this! I liked this alot!
“…in which he became an unrecognizable Monster.” I whispered to myself. “…an unrecognizable Monster?”
I read those words again over and over.
“…he became an unrecognizable Monster who knew neither friend nor foe!”
“…a ‘werewolf’ is a Monster!” I thought to myself as I felt the blood completely drain from my face.
“He became a ‘werewolf’!” I concluded.
I knew right then and there, that there were some things in this world that I didn’t wanna know!
I closed that book hard! I couldn’t read it any further!
Too many events were tying themselves together now, tying themselves together in ways that I would’ve never imagined!
“By translation, my name means the ‘son of a werewolf’! The blood of the ‘werewolf’ runs through my veins!” I concluded.
“Excuse me Son.” the Lady Librarian said to me as she tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
I jumped about a foot high cause she scared me!
“I’m sorry.” she said as she looked at me sadly. “I didn’t mean to startle you. But I’ve found the translation for you.” she said in a way so that I would remember. “The one you asked me about earlier?” She continued and smiled. “I wrote it down for you, just there at the bottom of your paper.”
“Thank you Ma’am.” I said as I tried to regain my composure. “I sure do appreciate your help!”
I didn’t have the ability to read it then. I just didn’t have the stomach for it! So I folded up the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket. I returned my books to their shelves, and I made Colby stop playin’ around! And I told him straight up to get off of that elevator!
“So you’re ready to go now?” Colby asked me.
“Yes, I’m ready.” I answered. “I’m ready to go home.”
“Finally!” Colby said as though he had been waitin’ forever for me to be ready to go. “This has been so BORING! I thought I was gonna die in here I was so bored! All of these books just started to hurt my head! Plus…” he continued. “…I’m ready to get back to my boat!”
I would’ve liked to have walked over to the Old Jail House before we’d headed back to his house. And I’d have liked to have had a look around the old pioneer cemetery that sits behind it too.
I didn’t know when I might get the chance to come up there again and I sure would have liked to have seen for myself if that black cat was actually guarding that witch’s grave.
But by the way things were goin’ for me right then; I’d have found my name written on one of those tombstones! So I just called it a day.
I’d have to visit the graveyard another time. Perhaps I’d visit it at nightfall …when the moon was full …just before the lonesome wolf howls. Yeah right! Like I was really gonna do that!
Fifteen
Seemingly Overnight and Unnoticed
To say that I was a little upset after what I’d found out at the Library would’ve been a complete and total understatement. I was alot upset! And Colby wasn’t any help neither …what with his boat and all! We had barely gotten back to his house and called my mom to come and get me when he’d done high tailed it back out there in the woods after his boat! He just left me there sittin’ on his front porch waitin’ for my mom …all by my ‘danged’ self!
The only good thing about sittin’ there I guessed was that it was good and shady, so it felt nice and cool on the concrete porch. It also gave me some time to think about some other things too.
Colby wasn’t takin’ any of this too seriously, even though he had been in the cave with me and I guessed maybe it was cause he was keepin’ himself pretty occupied with other stuff to think about. Stuff like his boat. But to me, this was a very serious matter!
‘Ghosts’ and ‘werewolves’ and ‘witches’ used to not be so real to me, they were just stories. I mean I believed my grandpa when he told his stories. But I guess that I never actually thought about em’ as if they could really happen in real life. At least not in my real life! Except for that one time maybe, that time when my grandpa told me about that old gray tom cat. Cause I was a part of that one! I experienced that one just like everybody else did!
That was back when my grandpa and grandma lived over on Jodi Burba road. They lived in that old farm house about a half a mile down the road on the left, right across from that big old black barn. My Aunt Opal and Uncle Corey Lee lived over the field a ways from em’ and used to stop by and visit em’ every once in a while. I think my grandma was somehow related to em’. But any ways, it was a big old white house, kind of like a smoke pipe house, tall in the front and then long and short in the back half where the kitchen was. And it had big old trees growin’ right up in the front yard.
There weren’t any hallways throughout the house. All the rooms just circled around and connected up with one another. Grandpa always kept the house really dark inside. And to tell ya the truth, with the rooms so dark, I didn’t like bein’ in any of em’ by myself!
There wasn’t much goin’ on that summer as I remember. And we usually went over to see Grandma and Grandpa at least every other weekend. It just so happened to be a real pretty day that Saturday afternoon. The skies were a deep blue and the clouds just lay around in the sky like a bunch of fluffy white cotton balls. I sat out in the swing on their front porch and enjoyed the day while everyone else went inside and visited.
“Toby, come on inside here and take a look at somethin’ for me.” My grandpa said as he stood in the doorway holdin’ the screen door open and motionin’ for me to follow him inside.
I wondered what was up, cause my Grandpa usually didn’t come outside to get me. So I got up off of the swing …leavin’ it rockin’ back and forth on its chains, and I followed him inside.
I followed him through the livin’ room and through one of the bedrooms along the way, and right up and until we got to the kitchen, that’s when Grandpa turned and pointed to the chimney.
“You see that?” he said all excited like and motionin’ in the direction of the chimney.
I looked at it. But I didn’t see anything. The chimney was built about a hundred years ago I guessed, probably about the same time as the house; but I didn’t see noth
in’ peculiar about it.
It was just an old chimney made out of heavy rock and mortar as far as I could see.
Grandpa walked over and pointed out to me what he was talkin’ about. Cause I’d have to admit that I hadn’t paid no whole lot of attention to the chimney before or nothin’, I mean, so as to be able to tell him if there was anything of difference about it!
“You see that?” he said again pointin’ to the crack in the chimney. “What do you think about that?”
Well, now that he had pointed it out, I could see that there was a crack in the chimney! I had been wonderin’ why all of the grownups were lookin’ at some dumb old chimney, and why they were all just staring at me and wonderin’ why I wasn’t as excited about it as they were!
The old rock chimney probably weighed every bit of four thousand pounds; built out of solid stone with a hole set in the middle of it for a stove pipe to let the smoke out of the house. The height of it went all the way up the backside of the house at least thirty feet or more. At first the crack that my grandpa showed me, didn’t seem to be that all fired important or any different than any other crack that I had ever seen. But upon further investigation of it I saw that the crack was four or five inches wide and that it ran horizontally along the entire length of the chimney!
It was not a crack!
The chimney had split itself into two pieces! And the top half of it had lifted itself straight up from its base!
There wasn’t anything holdin’ the top part of the chimney up!
It had broken into two pieces and had lifted itself straight up!
“Stick your hand in there.” My grandpa said shakin’ his head. “It won’t fall on you.”
So, with only a moment’s hesitation and a quick nod from my mom, I did.
I placed my hand onto the rock of the chimney, and into the darkened recesses of the stone.
“Well, ya’ll come over here now and have a seat at the kitchen table and I’ll tell ya about that there chimney and about how that crack had come to happen.” Grandpa said.
So we all sat down at the table and we listened as Grandpa began to tell us his story.
“It was about three weeks ago on a Sunday as I believe it was, and a great big old gray tom cat came up and sat up there on that windowsill yonder.” he said as he pointed to the picture frame windowsill in the kitchen.
“Now he was a big old cat, about the size of a bobcat or somethin’ …biggest goddamned cat I ever saw!” he said. “And I reckon that he was just as gray as that soot over there in that bucket of ashes.”
“Well he’d jump up there and sit and look in that window there you know and he’d just ‘Meow like that …real whiney like.” Grandpa said. “Meow.” He related again.
“Now we didn’t think anythin’ of it nor paid much attention to it.” He continued. “I mean it was just a damned old cat you know? But we got to noticin’ how the skies got all dark out all of a sudden like and kinda stormy whenever that cat would do that. Cause whenever the sky would do that, there that damned cat would be. Ya know?” Grandpa stated.
“I mean he’d just be sittin’ there lookin in that window and scratchin’ at the glass.” he said.
“Well you know I aint gonna have no damned cat scratchin’ my stuff or breakin’ my glass so I’d go out there and run him off!” he said. “But by and by he’d come back again. And I noticed he’d jump up there in the window and ‘Meow’ and then he’d jump down and go to the door and spin around. You know how cats do and things?”
“And then after a little while he’d repeat that and then he’d run off ya know? And all the while we began to notice this chimney.” Grandpa gestured toward the chimney once again and we all looked at it ominously. “The more that cat would show up and holler and things, the more that there chimney crack …well the chimney crack got bigger!”
Grandpa’s words and the vision of that chimney stayed with me. And though we left that day without ever seein’ the cat, it still remained a vivid image in my mind.
A few weeks later when we stopped by again for a visit, I ran back into that old kitchen just about as fast as my two legs could carry me! Right back to take a look at that old chimney! But this time when I went in there …the crack in the chimney was gone!
I asked my grandpa what had happened. Cause that crack was completely sealed up! And I asked him if he had fixed it or somethin’. I mean, you couldn’t even tell that there had been a crack in the chimney or even that it had broken and lifted up at all!
Grandpa sat down in his chair at the kitchen table and he commenced to tellin’ me what had happened.
Grandpa said, “About a week or so ago, and you know that damned old tom cat kept repeating his pattern over and over, jumpin’ up there in the window and things.” Grandpa continued. “Well by god I just kept runnin’ him off! And by god that cat just kept coming back!” he said. “And then one day, just about as quickly as it had all begun, that damned tom cat just stopped showin’ up! Now I was relieved and things that he was gone!” Grandpa related “I guess we all were.”
“But one thing had happened seemingly overnight and unnoticed.” He continued. “Without even a sound that there chimney’s crack that had lifted up those four thousand pounds of stone …a good four inches straight up off of its base…!”
“You seen it there and put your hand in the crack remember Toby?” He asked me as I nodded.
“Well without a sound or nothin’ whatsoever, that crack sealed itself up without so much as you can even tell it was ever there!” he said matter of fact like.
It was true. The chimney had returned to its former state and was once again completely restin’ upon its foundation. You couldn’t even tell that there had been a crack in it at all! I touched it with my own hands. Not even a chip was missin’ in the sediment.
Grandpa leaned in to me and then he whispered. “That cat was either trying to get into that chimney or he was callin’ somethin’ out of it!” he said as my grandma poured hot coffee into his cup. “That’s good Berthy, thank ye.”
“Toby I don’t reckon as we’ll ever know quite what that was, but you all seen that chimney with your own eyes! You know it to be true.” Grandpa said as he looked around at everybody in the room. “That cat would look at you full in the eye like he knew somethin’ that you didn’t. And I know for damned sure I didn’t!”
Grandpa sat back in his chair then, and poured the hot coffee from out of his cup onto his saucer to cool it.
“It was a doorway of some kind. You know a portal? That’s what I believe it was!” Grandpa said. “And that cat by god knew it too! Or he was sent here by somebody else to go in it or to call somethin’ outta it!”
“And by god that’s the garsh-damned truth!” Grandpa said as he set up and sipped coffee from his saucer. “And nobody or nothin’ can change my mind otherwise about it. No sir!” he said.
I never did find out nothin’ more about what happened to that old tom cat. I guess maybe he just didn’t come around much after that. I guess too that maybe he’d had a job to do and once it was done, then he just never had any reason to come back.
Of course it could also have been that Grandma and Grandpa moved from that house a little while after all of this had happened and we weren’t over there any more to see if the cat ever did come back.
I really don’t know what happened after that. But I reckon it doesn’t really matter. We’d been there and I’d stuck my hand in the crack and felt the grit of the stone myself. So for me …it made Grandpa’s other stories more credible, not that I’d ever had any doubt in em’.
As I sat there on that cold stone porch at Colby’s house I watched as my mama’s car came around the curve in the road.
I was awfully glad she’d finally come.
That concrete porch had grown harder while I had been sittin’ on it and my hind quarters …well …they’d just about frozen off!
Sixteen
How We Survived
From the
passenger side window of our white Chevy Malibu I watched as the scenery of my life and my town slipped rapidly by me; images of history blended together with park benches, street lights, family, buildings and people hurriedly walkin’ by. Mama popped an eight track tape into the car stereo as I rolled down my window and listened. And I looked out through the window as those warm summer winds whipped through my hair and pushed up against my face!
What was it then that held me there in that trance-like state …were it not for the longing of a peaceful recompense or restitution the past so urgently sought, whilst my youthful mind sought only the ability to comprehend it?
As we pulled into our driveway I saw that our next door neighbors Mitch and Sara had come down from their house upon the hill to visit. They were always fun to be around. Mitch and Dad always hung around together and tinkered on stuff in my Dad’s garage. And Mom and Sara talked a bit too, but Sara was a bit more of a peculiar sort. She was what my mama called a ‘bird nut’! Cause she raised birds and stuff like that.
