Jenny Rose

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “Can I come with you to the gate?” he asked me.

  “Okay,” I said, sweat pouring from me, turning the bike and keeping it between us. “Sure. We’ll go find Jenny Rose.”

  “She told me stay right here.” He sat down on the ground. “I’m not to leave the promises,” he said, confused.

  “The premises?”

  “Oh.”

  I hopped on the bike. I was safe. I could get away, now. I turned to make sure he wasn’t about to grab hold of the back of my head and pull me off. He put his pudgy hand up and waved bye-bye.

  “Oh, Seamus!” I melted. “It wasn’t you who hurt Bob the cat, was it?”

  Something had changed, even in the air between us. He sensed it, too. He shook his head to the left and right. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt old Bob, here. No, indeed.”

  “But, who did then, Seamus?” I stayed where I was, but the fear had left me.

  He put his face up and gave me a sly look. “You’ll be knowing that. Sure, you were there!”

  “Molly and I were both there, Seamus. We both believed it was you who hurt poor Bob. But Molly was just trying to put him out of his misery. Who was it who hurt the cat?” I went over to him and took his heavy chin in my fingertips and turned his rubbery face toward me. “Who else was there that day? Tell me, Seamus.”

  Then, with a chill I can feel until now, his wobbly face turned hard and shrewd, he sucked a tooth and he gleamed at me with someone else’s silver eyes and he said, in a voice not his, “Just cry out loud when it hurts too much.”

  Fear went down me like butter seeping over something hot. It was the voice of Molly herself.

  Seamus was wild with fear. “If I left now, maybe the same thing would happen what did then, when Brenden Murphy died.”

  “Seamus, what do you mean? Who is Brenden Murphy?”

  “Willy’s dad.”

  “The one who died? Drove over the cliff in his father-in-law’s Bentley?”

  “Aye. But it wasn’t what they said. It weren’t Willy’s fault. It was Molly stood before him on the road and made him swerve away. And over the cliff he went. In the car. And she laughin’.”

  Molly? But that couldn’t be. I forced myself to reach back in time … I’d been leaving Molly’s, she’d already said goodbye to me, I remembered. She’d thought I was gone and had been surprised to see me. How fast she’d thought, to come up with that, that Seamus had done it … had hurt old Bob the cat. I realized I’d protected Molly by not telling when I’d thought Seamus was guilty … and again when I thought she’d rescued Jenny Rose’s paintings. It was just like Zinnie’d said. Look out for the one you’re protecting.

  And Jenny Rose was with Molly.

  Seamus pressed me up against the bicycle. He was opening his shirt. “But I didn’t like to play those games with the birdy head,” he was saying. “It was foul.” He pulled his shirt up over his face. I edged away. Then I saw what he was trying to show me. Up and down his side were little nips of scars, some closed, some just scabbing up.

  “Where did they go, Seamus?” I looked around me jerkily. “Are they still here?”

  “And then she made the animals play.” He was hyperventilating, working himself into a state. “But the animals wouldn’t know what to cry. They’re innocent! They wouldn’t know what to do!”

  “Seamus—”

  “She did it to the pig.” He clutched his throat. “My pig! A pig’s the smartest animal in the world. And a pig can too swim. Well, he can, but just for a short distance he can. Then he’ll bleed to death. He can swim just a couple hundred yards and then his wee little hooves in the front will keep swimmin’ and swimmin’ and they cut the pig’s throat, they’re so sharp.” Seamus gasped, remembering. “And the water turn red with the blood.” He held the frightened cat out in his arms. “And Molly will be standin’ there, happy with the sight of it, throwin’ salt at him so he wouldn’t climb up! Salt in his eyes! Salt in his hooves! Oh, it was horrible, horrible—” He buried his face in the cat.

  I recalled the first day I’d gone up to Molly’s. My photographer’s eye put off by the carton of salt on the back step. The oozy green corpse of the slug. She’d blamed it on Seamus, even then. How easily she’d tricked me. “Seamus”—I kept my voice even—“come now, we’ve got to find Jenny Rose!”

  “Jenny Rose said I should stay here put.” He smacked the earth, letting go, and Bob streaked off.

  “Oh, no!” he cried out. “Now he’s gotten away.”

  “Which road did they take?”

  “Now she’ll find him again! She want his other foot, next time! She has the birdy head!” A big tear rolled from his pale blue eye. “She loves that wicked thing, she does.”

  I pulled up beside him. “And were you not supposed to tell?”

  “I took that birdy head and hid it on me belt hook here, but she’s a sly one, she is, she found it and made me give it back.”

  “Did she force you not to tell?”

  “Molly said she’d hurt me mam, if I ever told a living soul.” He put a finger over his lips. Horror filled his face. “If I tell, she’ll find me mam, no matter where I carry her away and hide her, and she’ll take the birdy head to her. She will.” Then, despairing, he threw his hands up in the air. “But now it doesn’t matter none, does it? Jenny Rose knows everything now! Jenny Rose said it doesn’t matter none and I’m not to worry.” He sniffled. “Jenny Rose says whatever happens, I’m to know I’m a good boy. It was none of it my fault. It wasn’t me who told that was Molly poured the gasoline. I swear I didn’t tell. ’Twas Jenny Rose. She figured it out herself, she did.”

  “Come on.” I urged him along by his wrist. “Jenny Rose is in trouble.”

  He shook his head and stayed where he was. “It’s Morocco is in trouble. Molly took all the salt.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  He wouldn’t answer me. Then he said, “Sometimes where Molly’s mother lives. She keeps her messy things at her mother’s house.”

  “Her mother?” It had never occurred to me Molly had a mother nearby. I’d never really absorbed her as anything more than my innkeeper. There for me. I looked down. Seamus was playing with his shoelaces.

  “You wouldn’t want to go to the stepfather’s house, all spic and span. You’d never want to go there.”

  “Where does Molly’s mother live?”

  “He did all sorts of things to Molly, things what married people do, and her mother watchin’ all the while. They thought I was too young to know, but I remember. I was on the mud porch once and her mother says to Molly, ‘Cry out loud if it hurts too much, Molly.’”

  “Where does she live, the mother?”

  “In Bantry,” he answered.

  Bantry? Who was it who’d mentioned Bantry? “Why, that’s where Miss Ferry goes to confession.”

  “That’s Fiona. That be Molly’s older sister, Fiona.”

  “Fiona Ferry is Molly’s older sister?”

  “That’s it. The bird she sings the sweetest least survives the storm. That’s what Liam always says about her.”

  “Seamus, what’s Molly’s mother’s name?”

  He sucked his finger for a bit. “Mrs. Ferry,” he said. “She comes from Bantry, miss. All the Ferrys do. Far as I know.”

  All I could see was the twisted broken foot of poor Fiona Ferry, and hear her lovely voice on the bus that day, “’twas my sister pushed me down the cellar stairs…”

  I got on that bike and I pedaled hard, going east. It occurred to me the only reason Audrey’d thought Jenny Rose had neglected her donkey was because Molly’d told her she had. What a fool I’d been! Molly herself had called the vet, she’d probably told Jenny Rose she would watch out for the donkey … No wonder Audrey thought Jenny Rose no good, Molly had prepared her to believe it. I was pedaling along so madly, if I hadn’t looked up, I would have missed it. But I always looked at the fairy ring. Always. And the ground was strangely tufted and flattened.

 
; I got off the bike and wheeled it over to the cliff. Something made me go quietly. Maybe because I knew it was a place for lovers, and I didn’t want to surprise anyone, you know how it is. I could hear a baby crying. Well, I thought, then, it’s a family and I turned to go. I pedaled off. But there was something in the plaintive cry of that baby. Not normal … I turned the bike around. They’d better be careful, I thought. What if they were tourists and they didn’t know the tide would forge in suddenly? It could sweep the baby away!… So I started to look again, wanting to see and not wanting to, in case they were naked, your head thinks all these things, when I realized who I was watching. I drew my head back with a lurch.

  Jenny Rose and Molly were there. Molly was doing something. I fell to the ground. Jenny Rose was lying down in the water in a big dark coat. Her lips and cheeks were very red against her white skin, even from this height. I don’t know why I hid myself. I was mystified. I lay down on the ground and pulled myself up to the edge. Molly stood up and held both hands in front of her with the tips up and her palms toward Jenny Rose, as though she’d stepped back from a roast she’d just put in the oven, as if she were delighted. A wave came through the seaweedy rocks and Jenny Rose didn’t jump up, away from that cold water and I knew, now, for certain that something was very wrong. Jenny Rose wasn’t wearing a coat. She was tied to Morocco. She was buckled to the donkey. Molly had tied her with movers’ pulleys and a rope was trailing from Morocco’s head. Oh. Oh my God, what were they doing?

  I wanted to stand up and call out to them but something knowing, something innately clandestine in me kept me low to the earth and still silent.

  The donkey cried out from the cold of the water, from between the pulley ropes wound tight around his muzzle. That was no baby crying then. I don’t know how long I stayed there, watching. It couldn’t have been more than moments, but it was as if time stood still. My thoughts darted. Should I go back and fetch someone? But it would take so long. I didn’t know what they were saying. I was so high up and the cliff so steep. They were so far down there. The tide would stop after each wave would crash and the water would pull away. Then, the direction of the wind must have changed and I could hear them. It was Molly, talking. She stood there in a blowing skirt and her hand-knit Irish sweater. “If it’s too painful, dear,” she told Jenny Rose, “just cry out loud.”

  Jenny Rose said nothing. She didn’t cry out. She was in shock. Her arms were bound to her sides. And she knew she was going to die.

  Inside me, a silent scream rang out.

  The donkey floundered underneath her. Jenny Rose had maneuvered herself by nudging her way above the donkey so it was underwater first.

  The water pulled away and sucked to sea. The donkey screamed and gurgled and I put my hand across my mouth. Molly cried out in some kind of righteous bliss.

  There was a moment where madness reigned. Everything became upside down. The water stormed the rocks and Jenny Rose’s dazed white face went under.

  That was when I must have stood. But before I knew what was happening, someone was behind me, raised up the bicycle, over my head, and threw it.

  Morocco screamed one last time. It was such a piercing scream, like an infant, insistent. It was horrible. Horrible.

  I opened my eyes. The bicycle had struck Molly. She was down.

  For a moment I thought, It’s a trick, and she’ll get up. But it had twisted her. She lay still.

  I clattered down the side of the cliff, half tumbling, half plunging, and reached Jenny Rose as she craned her neck upwards, just out of the water away from Morocco. I pulled the donkey’s head up. I tried to drag the two of them but they were so heavy with water they wouldn’t budge. But then Seamus was there with us and he pulled us all in one burst when the tide moved in our favor. We all rolled together. Morocco was sodden, drowned. My hands were shaking so, I could hardly manage. I had to free Jenny Rose or she’d drown with the weight of the donkey. The bicycle, shattered, had a sharp end on one of the bumpers. It wouldn’t come loose. It was wedged into Molly. I pushed her leg away from me and it snapped free. The rusty side cut the rotting pulley but it wasn’t sharp enough to cut entirely through. For a moment I thought I’d lose her. At last her shoulder slipped out. She struggled with me, believing now she would live. She would live.

  With no hope but a ridiculous inkling of faith, I blew into the still shackled animal’s foamy mouth with a mad burst of air. I didn’t care. I just did it.

  Nothing happened. I did it again. In a frenzied spasm, three legs began to churn. “Eeyyyyyyorrrr.” You could hear the cry echo like out from purgatory into the whirling lagoon.

  Molly’s tawny parasol, freed, moved serenely out the emerald sea.

  It seemed to take us forever to get up the cliff. It must have been cold but I don’t remember that. I suppose we were in shock. We had to walk and it was slow going because Morocco’s poor hide was all ripped from the jetty. Jenny Rose hung on his neck and he wheezed, like he was crying, a flopping shackle still attached to the one hind leg. He put one hoof in front of the other and kept on going.

  When we got to the top we all stood there and looked down. Molly’s twisted body was still in the cove, half floating, half stuck on the lavalike reach. They looked at me. I think they thought I would say we must go back down there and see if she lived. My face contorted and I reached my head out over the cliff and I spit down the shaft of wind raging in our ears.

  * * *

  We’d hobbled along for some time when a dot on the horizon turned into Willy Murphy. “Sure what in God’s name are you up to?” he called out to us.

  “Willy!” I sobbed.

  He put his salt and pepper sweater over Jenny Rose. Jenny Rose, shivering, clung to him.

  “Thank God you came along,” I said. “She’s frozen. She almost died.”

  “She killed our Peg!” Jenny Rose sobbed. “Molly wanted to kill me! She wanted to watch! She said her mother watched while her stepfather— Oh, God. I went down the cove to save Morocco and she hit me on the head with a stone, Willy! She tied me to him!”

  “It’s all right now.” Willy clapped her head to his chest. “I’ll never leave you again.”

  “What about your t-t-train?” Jenny Rose’s teeth chattered.

  “I decided not to take it,” he said. He shrugged and didn’t stutter. “I told my mother. Everything I could want I have here.”

  * * *

  Long lines twirled in the air and landed in the fast oozy green of the river. No one at the river’s edge turned to look when we got there.

  “Ah, it’s all over, now,” Liam called from the edge of the lingering crowd, never dreaming what we’d been through. “It’s eleven-thirty now,” he said, “and it’s last weigh in at noon. You know who’s won. Himself.” He nudged the top of his head to Temple. “Who else?”

  We stood, exhausted, and I thought the donkey would fall down. But he never did. That donkey, he stood there and took it.

  Then, Mrs. Whitetree-Murphy saw the blood and she came, tippy-toe, across the grass. Then she started to run. Here and there the wives were packing up. Dayday saw us and came over, too.

  “Call Dr. Carpenter,” Mrs. Driver instructed one of the boys. “He’s down just past the crick in the river. Go on, scuttle!”

  “You better call the ambulance as well,” I said.

  “I’m all right, now.” Jenny Rose wept.

  “Call just the same,” Dayday said.

  Over in the river, some men were shouting on the sidelines. It was Johnny in his rubber glove suit. His rod turned alive. He’d got hold of something. Everyone was leaning up against the bank of the river.

  Uncle Ned was talking him in. “Keep the floater away from them rocks,” Uncle Ned called to Johnny. Everyone stood still and watched. It had become like a living thing and the reel screamed as the salmon raced down the stream. Then Uncle Ned called again in a panic, “Keep him well off of those rocks!”

  “Hold up,” you could hear the men rally.
“Someone’s snagged a humdinger!”

  The salmon took off in a different direction. Back and forth he went until Johnny must have thought he’d never stop. I sank to the ground. We all did. Only Morocco stood.

  “Now don’t expect any results the first time,” Liam was preparing Johnny. “If ye lose him, ye lose him. There’s no shame in it. Yer first time out. Sometimes it takes years.”

  Johnny glanced over his shoulder to where we were huddled. “I’m not gonna lose him,” he called.

  “You just do what I tell you,” Uncle Ned said.

  “It’s all over, anyway, you fool,” another fellow shouted at them. “You’ll never get him out in time.”

  “No, not that way,” Uncle Ned would say, and then, “Oh, he’s lost him, now. That’s it, there’s no hope, now.”

  “Och, let him have just the fun of it,” Liam called, sort of hysterical.

  “What’s the matter”—one of the boys on the other side of the river cupped his mouth at him—“couldn’t fit your Yankee arse into yer waders?” and everyone laughed.

  Indeed, Johnny winced with every move.

  It did appear the fish was tiring, but no such luck. Almost twenty minutes passed. Willy kept his arms around the trembling Jenny Rose. Dayday got her sweet hot tea and Willy made her sip it. She plucked the grass. Christ, I thought, she’s lost it. Then I saw it, right there on the ground in front of me. A four-leaf clover.

  The weather changed, the skies blew foreboding wind, and rain came. No one moved. The rain left. I sat there still.

  Dr. Carpenter pulled up in his Range Rover and strode across the mucky grass. Brownie was the only one who went to greet him. All eyes were on the river now and Johnny.

  Johnny looked exhausted. “Draw him close,” Uncle Ned told him. Now he could tell the fish was really tiring and Uncle Ned moved in with the net and reel. Johnny raised it out of the water and Ned scooped it up, staggering under it. A gasp gave out from both shores. Part of the tail was all mottled and blue. It was Tantalos, all right.

  The more conservative estimations were about fifteen pounds.