Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  He’d leave that to O’Shields.

  “I mean about yourselves. You and . . . “ he mouthed the word, “the children?”

  Thomas turned from his morbid contemplation and looked at his brother, who looked back with unflinching eyes, evidently eager to hear the reply to the question that hadn’t passed his ken.

  None was forthcoming. Thomas shrugged. “We got bread and herring for a day or two,” he said. “Some oats for porridge. We’ll be all right.”

  Bless the short-sighted eyes of youth, thought Murphy. “Aye. Well, that’s good. I expect some of the women in town will help see you right, as well,” he said. “After the funeral.” It was more a prayer than a statement of fact.

  “Aye,” said Thomas. That’s the way it was in the village. People helped each other. Grieved with each other. Celebrated with each other – on those occasions, all too rare of late, that warranted celebration. Though what help the village women would be, faced with the starvation that haunted their own homes, was left unsaid.

  All at once Thomas looked sharply at the doctor. “He didn’t kill himself, you know.” His dark eyes, full of tears dammed by defiance, dared Murphy to claim otherwise. But there was no doubt: a single bullet to the heart. The gun was still in his hand when he got there. Amazing he’d hung on to it in the time it had taken him to die. That kind of tenacity wasn’t typical of suicides.

  “There’ll be an inquest,” Murphy said. “Has to be.”

  “What’s that?” Thomas asked.

  “A legal proceedin’, to determine the cause of death.”

  “English judge?”

  Likely so, Murphy allowed. Or one of the Irish gentry who, Thomas knew, maintained their position at the sufferance of the English and were, therefore, not much better.

  Thomas made a noise of contempt. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, as if aware of the outcome of such an affair. “He didn’t kill himself.”

  Murphy would like to believe it. The boy had been alone with his father for fifteen or twenty minutes before he’d arrived. Had Josh been conscious during that time? “Did he tell you that?”

  Thomas choked down the urge to bolster his argument with a lie. “No,” he said flatly, after some hesitation. “But he never killed himself with that gun.”

  “It was in his hand, Thomas. And there’s a bullet hole . . . he died of gunshot.”

  “Maybe so,” said Thomas. “But not from that gun, he didn’t.”

  “What makes you say so?”

  “That’s a Colt 44.04, brought back from Mexico by my great uncle Theo.”

  “I know,” said Murphy. “It’s pretty famous hereabouts.” And so it was. Back in the ‘40s Theo, then Sergeant Theophelus Conlan of the 18th Irish battalion, had taken up arms – together with some 800 of his countrymen – to join Mexican fellow-Catholics in their war against the American aggressor. Fewer than ten percent of the Irish had escaped death on the battlefield, or hanging at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry. Fewer than ten percent of the remainder ever saw Ireland again.

  Theo had been one of those fortunate sons. The gun, “taken from the still-warm hand of a genuine United States Cavalry Major, I swear at the feet of the Holy Mother,” had been his trophy. He’d often brought it to the pub, waving it about in deadly punctuation of his assertion – which dependably grew grander and more colorful as the night wore on – that the Irish “very nearly had them Yankees licked, we did. Aye, it was a close thing.” And would have ended in victory rather than defeat if not for the timidity of an ally who, faced with a foe too well-armed, beat a hasty retreat back to Mexico City.

  ‘“Drinks all ‘round!” someone would inevitably yell, “and double for Sergeant Conlan!”

  Sergeant Conlan eventually succumbed to a wound he’d received in that battle. The gun had been his bequest to his brother, together with the new leather boots he’d accepted in partial compensation for the service that had cost him his life. The remainder, equaling some 150 pounds sterling, he’d either used to get home, or drank when he got there.

  “There’s no bullets,” said Thomas, calling Murphy abruptly back to the present.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A 44.04 takes special bullets,” the boy replied. “Uncle Theo got the gun from that soldier, like he said, but the chambers were empty. The cavalry man had used them all.” He absent-mindedly banked the coals in the fireplace. “And he never got the ammunition belt.” He leveled a significant glare at Murphy. “No one’s fired that gun since the day Uncle Theo took it off that soldier’s body.” He tossed a nod toward his father. “Includin’ tonight.”

  Upon his arrival at the scene, Murphy had immediately pried the gun from Conlan’s grip and placed it on the bedside table. Now, he went into the bedroom, picked it up, and held the barrel to his nose. It was hard to tell – the house was so full of peat smoke – which had a pungency all its own that could easily overwhelm that of gunpowder. “I can’t tell.”

  “Somebody killed him,” said Thomas, almost without expression.

  Murphy was taken aback. “Killed him? Murder, you mean?”

  “Aye.”

  “But . . . who would do such a thing?” Murphy sputtered. “Why?” He looked around the rude little crofter’s cottage. From the dirt floor to the soot covered roof, there was nothing worth stealing apart from the gun itself. “Anything missing?”

  Thomas knelt to retrieve a coal that had tumbled from the fire. He picked it up with his bare fingers and tossed it back amongst the embers. “He didn’t kill himself.”

  Murphy shot a quick glance at Tiffin, who was staring at him. Whatever was true, these were hard words for a kid to hear. “How do you know?”

  “I knew my father.”

  “Who would want to kill him?”

  Thomas shot the doctor a quick, deadly glance, but said nothing.

  The presiding judge at the inquest hadn’t known Josh Conlan. He simply assembled witnesses, including Doc Murphy, listened to the evidence, and judged; “Suicide.” Not “death by misadventure,” which would at least have earned the deceased a place by his wife in the churchyard. Suicide – plain, simple, and unforgivable.

  “What about the gun!?” Thomas had cried from the back of the room. “What about the bullets?”

  “Quiet that boy!” snapped the Judge, who had listened impatiently to Thomas’ assertion and discarded it out of hand. “Stuff and nonsense. The man shot himself, so there had to be a bullet. One is all it took. Grief’s got the better of your reason, lad.” He lobbed an accusatory glance over his spectacles at Doc Murphy, who, while not vociferous in support of the boy’s theory, had not spoken against it. “Bailiff, you put the boy out if he makes any more noise, you hear?” Addressing the court, he reiterated his conclusion. “Suicide. That’s it.” He banged the gavel as if he was passing a sentence. “God rest his soul.”

  To say there was sorrow so great it couldn’t be born, with faith, was to repudiate the church’s teaching that God would not allow his children to suffer more than they could bear. Ergo, anyone who stumbled and fell under the burden of life, succumbing ultimately, to the temptation to end it, must not be a child of God and, therefore, must be interred in other than holy ground. This was the rationale of the church, and it sealed the fate of Joshua Conlan.

  The funeral was even more dismal than Murphy had thought it would be. Only the children, Father O’Shields, the grave digger and young Riley Coxon were in attendance. Riley was a strange, death-besotted lad whose chief recreation was attending funerals. Bog, fen, or churchyard, he drew no distinction. All were equally fascinating. Unbidden, the old proverb came to mind: “Don’t count the mourners at a funeral.” Murphy himself stood at a distance lest the children might consider him – the bearer of the news – somehow responsible for their father’s death.

  The trio of remaining Conlans, dressed in little more than rags, stood hand-in-hand staring down into the hole that held their father as the low, cold Irish sky, heavy with sorrow, anoin
ted the humble proceedings with tears.

  In the best of times, Father O’Shields was a genial, out-going man – not overly fastidious in his cultivation of temperate habits – with a song from his vast repertoire (and not all hymns) ever-present on his lips. The best of times, however, were a distant memory. For months now, deaths and funerals following one another in numbing procession, had made time-worn words of comfort burn like live coals in his throat, shaken the foundations of his faith, stolen his joy, and torn the music from his tongue. He had the growing conviction that a piece of his heart was lowered into the grave with each casket, each life that he, as confessor, had shared so intimately. All the frailties that human flesh is heir to, hidden ‘til the Judgment by a few shovelfuls of dirt.

  For his part, he had nothing but sympathy for Joshua Conlan, suicide or no, and would have seen his remains placed beside those of his wife without a twitch of conscience – the God of his heart surely would make no objection – but he was bowed by the weight of hundreds of years of church tradition, a burden that would crush Christ Himself.

  And so he found himself this dismal morning, in this dismal bog, performing his dismal chore, making spiritual noises so weak and watered down and Christless in power that he burned with inner rage. He concluded the service by rote, crossed himself by habit, and the children did the same in imitation.

  Tiffin picked up a rock and scratched a careful cross on the rude lid of the makeshift coffin.

  What now? There would be no wake for Joshua Conlan. No festivities of any kind in celebration of the life he’d lived – that of a good husband, caring father, and conscientious worker – all because, in losing his wife, he’d apparently lost his will to live.

  Father O’Shields hunched down on his knees and the children formed a semi-circle ‘round about. With a thumb, he brushed a tear from Katy’s purple-rimmed eye. ‘The purest thing on earth,’ thought the poet within. ‘More precious than gold.’

  If so, it was a treasure Katy had in abundance, and could easily spare. But it came without weeping. Indeed, none of the children wept outright.

  “Do you have food?” he asked.

  “Aye,” said Thomas, too quickly. “Enough.” He and his brother and sister had finished the last of the porridge and herring two days ago. No one had come with food. Apart from some boiled nettles, stampy, and a bit of old cattle feed left in the bottom of an unused bin, they hadn’t eaten since.

  The priest looked up at the boy, whose sunken cheeks betrayed the lie. “It’s not just yourself, Thomas. You’re the man of the house, now. You’ve got the children to think of.”

  “Aye. You think I don’t know’t?” said Thomas, his languid eyes flashing briefly.

  Shields stood up. “I’m sure you do. Now, you’ll come to the house. I happen t’know Miss Meredith has a bit of stew on the stove.”

  Neither of the younger Conlans said anything, but they beseeched their protector with hungry eyes.

  Thomas was torn. The meal to which they’d been invited could mean life and death to them . . . especially Katy . . . yet their host was to be the man who personified the institution that had just consigned their father to an unmarked grave in unhallowed ground.

  “Pride is tough to chew,” O’Shields suggested with a smile. “And harder to swallow.”

  The battle played across Thomas’ face, but eventually his pride crumbled before the supplication in the eyes of the little ones.

  He nodded.

  Doc Murphy watched from the protective cover of a clump of trees as the priest gathered Katy in his arms and led the boys to his house. He watched them go out of sight to the unmistakable cadence of dirt on wood as the gravedigger filled in the hole, desultory about his job since he wouldn’t receive the customary bottle of whiskey for his trouble, only a shilling from the church. The priest and the Conlan children – last of their line in Cork – disappeared around a hedgerow. Murphy would never see them again, but that last image of them would haunt him forever.

  Riley Coxon stood beside the grave and counted the shovels-full of dirt it took to fill the hole.

  An hour or so later, having persuaded Thomas to take a bag with such tidbits in it as Miss Meredith could scrounge, it was O’Shield’s turn to watch the children leave. He stood beneath the stone arch of the rectory door and waved at their backs as they walked down the hill toward the squalid little cup of crumpled earth and rocks that held their home. Only Katy, her hands held by a brother on either side, craned her neck for a farewell glance. She smiled, her flashing blue eyes and crackling red hair, for an instant, retrieving her mother’s memory for the aging cleric.

  They hadn’t spoken during the meal, which they’d eaten with the appetite of starving children. It hadn’t been anything special; Miss Meredith’s stew was passable at best, and her biscuits never the talk of the village, but the food hadn’t lingered on the tongue long enough to be tasted anyway.

  “Ah, Lord,” he sighed, resting his weight against the doorpost. “Knowin’ everyt’ing, as You do, it’ll come as no surprise my faith ain’t what it once was. But, I’ll tell You this, if you was to do something wondrous for them children, it’d go a long way toward callin’ this derelict old prodigal home. In Christ’s name. Amen.”

  Chapter Two

  The farmhouse huddled with its back to the wind in a little declivity at the end of a rutted lane on the farthest edge of down. Life for the Conlans was lived to the rhythm of the sea but had nothing to do with it, apart from the salt smell, the biting, briny wind, and the distant thunder of the surf that forever embroidered the subconscious. The aerie they inhabited was far above the crashing waves. So far that on those rare occasions they thought of it at all, a kind of dread was aroused at the nearness of such an immensity of menace. It was a brooding beast upon the threshold, mysterious and forlorn in its vastness, its living-ness, capricious in its moods, relentlessly clawing at the land as if to consume it and them together.

  Thomas and the children stumbled down the cleft on their return from the funeral and were met by the last thing in the world Thomas wanted to see – the white mare of Ledger Flanagan. “Damn,” spat Thomas under his breath.

  The door stood open. Their mother would never have allowed it, for it let the chickens in, and they fouled the rough stone floor she took such pride in keeping clean. But she was long gone. So were the chickens.

  “You two wait here.” Thomas went to the door and looked in. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out the form of the landlord’s foreman, slumped in a chair by the dead fire. He had a bottle in one hand, more than half empty, and a picture of Thomas’ mother in the other.

  “What’re you doin’ here?”

  Startled, Flanagan raised his head, which bobbed on his neck as if he was having difficulty keeping it balanced. He slowly drew Thomas into focus against the background of the bright, gray sky. “Ah, it’s you, is it?” The words were thick on his tongue.

  Thomas had been struck by Flanagan once some years ago, for some imagined offense. Josh had made him pay dearly, pulling him off his horse on market day and thrashing him soundly in front of half the town, for which Flanagan hated him with an undisguised fervor.

  For some time thereafter, Flanagan had done everything within the limited scope of his power as son of the landlord’s foreman to make Josh Conlan’s life a misery. Then something had happened that made him change. Thomas never knew what, but he stopped arriving early for the rent. He stopped pestering Conlan about the look of the pigs or the cows. Best of all, once he became foreman on his own upon his father’s retirement, he all but ignored them.

  “I said…” Thomas skirted the room out of Flanagan’s reach, “…what’re you doin’ here?”

  Flanagan could no longer support the weight of his head. He let his chin drop to his chest. A silver thread of drool escaped his lips. He murmured something unintelligible. The photograph – apart from a revered china tea set in the cupboard which was the only memento of more pr
osperous times in the Conlan household – went limp in his fingers, and Thomas quickly grabbed at it to keep it from falling to the floor.

  The action revived Flanagan somewhat. “Huh? What?” He looked at the picture in Thomas’ hands. “Ah!” He smiled. “Alice.” He reached out for the picture. Thomas held it back.

  “Give it over. Give it over,” Flanagan blubbered. “I’ll not break the precious thing. Don’t worry. I’m not so drunk as that.”

  Reluctantly, Thomas gave the picture back. Flanagan put the bottle down and taking the picture gently in both hands, stared at it. “Alice . . . Alice. You could’ve had it all.” With effort, he lifted his head and surveyed the humble farmhouse. The main room, which they now occupied, had a large open fire place against the wall at one end. Over this, a wooden flu directed the smoke up the chimney, on days when the wind blew right. The underside of the thatched roof was time-blackened with soot and tar. The hearth, which extended the width of the house, was flanked by cast iron cooking utensils: a large kettle, a fry pan, a water kettle and the hooks by which to hang them from the crane that stood in the middle. A plain-board table, its surface worn to a warm sheen with constant use, and cleaning stood on unsure legs beneath the room’s only window. Under it was a rude bench where the Conlan children would sit to take their meals. A ladder-backed chair with its seat of woven hemp, one of three in the room, occupied the end of the table where the head of the family sat. A picture of the Holy Mother adorned the wall opposite, and beneath that was a large wooden chest in which were all the family’s Sunday clothes, linen, and blankets.

  “And this is what she got.”

  “What’s it to you?” Thomas demanded.

  “What’s it to me!” yelled Flanagan, rising, or trying to rise, but the whiskey knocked the legs out from under him and he slumped back into the chair. “More nor you’ll ever know,” he slurred. “More nor you’ll ever know.”