Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  “May I help you?”

  Clearly the girl, taking a hasty inventory of the visitor and failing to place him in any neat category, was unsure how to deal with him. His suit was well-made, but long out of fashion. He wore a cowboy hat, which he removed in her presence, like a gentleman. Then she noticed he only had one arm. “Aye, that you may, miss,” he said. His voice had an Irish lilt to it, exactly like her grandfather’s. His eyes, a curious mixture of green and gold, seemed somehow familiar. “My name’s Thomas Conllan,” he said. “Some years ago . . . long before your time . . . ”

  “Who is it, Dawn Marie?” It was a woman’s voice calling from the cool, mahogany darkness.

  “I’m just about to find out, ma’am” said the girl. She prodded him with her eyebrows.

  Thomas decided to cut to the quick. “I was wonderin’ if there’s anyone of the name of Kathryn in the household.”

  The woman within had overheard the name and rolled to the door in a wheelchair. “May I help you? Kathryn, you say?”

  She was an old woman, perhaps five or ten years Thomas’ senior, but he recognized her at once. Her handsome features bore unmistakable signs of the beauty she had been. “Miss Eleanor?”

  She cocked her head. “Do I know you?”

  The maid stood aside as Eleanor rolled closer to the sunlight.

  “No, but you may know my sister. Her name is Katy . . . Kathryn.”

  Eleanor was stunned. She stared at him until the silence could no longer support the tension. “You can’t mean it . . . after all this time . . . ”

  This was the moment Thomas had dreaded. Which way would the wind blow?

  The woman quickly got command of herself. “Dawn Marie, don’t stand there cluttering the doorway. Let the gentleman in! Let him in! If I’m not mistaken, we have the honor of meeting Miss Kathryn’s long-lost brother! Go next door and get her at once, then, no . . . wait! Tell cook to serve coffee in the front parlor. Yes. Yes!” She turned the wheelchair expertly and rolled down the hall, expecting Thomas and Dawn Marie to fall in behind, which they did. “Have cook serve coffee in the front parlor. No . . . no, in the kitchen. Yes. In the kitchen. Then go get Miss Kate and tell her I want to talk to her, but don’t tell her about him. Do you understand?”

  Dawn-Marie understood and set the machinery in motion. As Eleanor and Thomas made themselves comfortable, Thomas tried to fill the silence.

  “I’m sure you want an explanation.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Eleanor. “But there’s something I want to tell you, Thomas. It is Thomas?”

  “Aye. Thomas Conlan.”

  There hadn’t really been any doubt. “Something I swore I would tell you if ever I got the chance.”

  Here it comes, thought Thomas. He braced himself.

  “Your selfless act on behalf of your sister, all those years ago, saved my life.”

  Of all the scenarios Thomas had imagined, this was not among them. “Pardon?”

  The woman sighed deeply, collecting her thoughts. Though she, too, had imagined this moment many times, she had never actually put words to it. “Stephen, my husband, and I, had lost a child . . . a little girl named Emily . . . the summer before . . . before Kate came so unexpectedly into our lives.” Her gaze fell to her hands as her fingers absent-mindedly knit the air with that long-ago loss. “The heart had been taken out of the household, out of our marriage, our dreams . . . ” She looked at him. “Kate . . . precious Katy . . . brought it back.

  “We adopted her immediately – after we got your note – and she has been a joy and an inspiration ever since.” She leaned forward, put a hand on Thomas’s knee and stared deeply into his eyes. “I owe you a debt of gratitude I can never repay. I know, Thomas, what it must have cost you to leave her behind.” She squeezed his knee and, with a pat, let it go.

  “Speaking of which. . . ” she said, standing and crossing to a desk in the corner, where she opened a drawer from which she withdrew a little book and a slip of paper. She handed him the book. “I believe this is yours.”

  It didn’t look familiar. “Mine?”

  “Open it.”

  Thomas did so. It was a bank book listing monthly deposits going back to 1880. “What’s this?”

  “It’s yours.”

  “Mine? My what?”

  “Your money.”

  “My money?”

  “I assume it was you who sent money every month ‘for Katy’s upbringing?’”

  Thomas hung his head, suddenly aware how laughably insignificant those few dollars must have seemed to the Saltonstalls. “It was all I could manage, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Thomas. You dear, dear man,” said Eleanor, then unexpectedly, she threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. He could feel her weeping on his shoulder. When her emotion had expended itself, she sat up, dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief she drew from her sleeve, and tapped the bank book. “Stephen invested the money you sent. He thought maybe someday Katy might have need of it. But now, it’s yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, I’m sure you don’t. To put it simply, Katy will never have need of that money. She’s a very, very wealthy woman – she married Stephen’s nephew, Everett Saltonstall and he’s . . . well, they don’t need that money. So, it’s yours to do with as you wish. It’s a respectable amount.”

  Thomas smiled a little weakly. It would take more than the few thousand dollars he’d sent over the years to set things right back home. Still, every little bit would help. “If you’re sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  “I can’t say it won’t come in handy just now, what with the Depression and all. Things ‘ave been a bit thin.” His eyes had been on the floor. He looked at her now. “Would you mind doin’ me a bit of a favor, then?”

  “Of course, anything.”

  He handed her the bankbook. “Would you . . . cash it in or whatever it is you have to do with it, and send it to me son, back in New Mexico?”

  She took the booklet. “I’ll be happy to do that.”

  “It’s only, we’ve had a run of rum luck lately, and this little bit . . . well, like I said . . . it’ll come in handy.”

  “You know, it’s not such a little bit.”

  “How’d’ye mean?”

  Eleanor smiled. “Are you familiar with the concept of compound interest, Thomas?”

  “Aye, well, enough. It’s what the bank charges when you borrow a hundred dollars, and have to pay back yer firstborn.” The smile that accompanied the comment was forced from grim experience.

  “That’s certainly true,” said Eleanor. “But, it also works the other way.”

  Given the fact that lengthy conversations about banks and money and compound interest had always cost him something, Thomas didn’t have a lot of patience for discussions of finance.

  Eleanor decided to cut to the quick. “The money you’ve sent over the years has earned interest,” she said. She flipped open the book and looked at the figures. “It comes to thirty-eight thousand, six-hundred, forty-seven dollars and fifty-three cents.”

  Thomas tried to grab hold of the edges of his world as it turned upside down. “You mean . . . I owe all that money!”

  “No, Thomas! No! That’s what the bank owes you!”

  The concept that a bank owed him money was almost beyond Thomas’ comprehension – certainly beyond his experience. It was the better part of five minutes before Eleanor was able to assure him first, that he wasn’t dreaming, and second, that he hadn’t misunderstood.”

  “That’ll rebuild the whole house!” he said, once the astronomical figure had made itself at home in his brain. “And a new barn! And another thousand acres! And five-hundred head of sheep!”

  When awareness finally conquered doubt, Thomas was ready to celebrate. He would have something more than just a the family name to bequeath his wife and family after all. “Miss Eleanor,” he said, standing in front of her wheelchair.

  “Eleanor,
Thomas. Please,” she said, looking up at him.

  “Eleanor, dear Eleanor,” he said, bowing deeply. “You hold on to them armrests real tight, ‘cause you’re about to dance like you never danced before!”

  And, with this warning, Thomas began to dance, spinning the wheelchair in circles with his good arm and singing at the top of his raggedy, old-man voice, while Eleanor laughed at the top of hers and, if the excitement had laid them both out cold and dead at that moment, neither would have minded.

  When the dust settled and Eleanor could at last catch her breath, with mirthful tears cascading from the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, she unfolded the piece of paper she had held back, and handed it to him. “Remember this?”

  Thomas was coughing and struggling to catch his breath. He took the letter and read. ‘Dear Mrs. Take good kar of Katy. She’s a good gurl an I wisht I could take her but I got nothing to give. Our Mum and Dads dead in Irelan. Im hopin this mony will help and will send mor when I can.’

  Yours truly Katys bruther Thomas.’

  “Aye,” he said, turning the paper over and read the other side aloud. “‘Cowboys, Indians, outlaws! Is there a Kit Carson in you? Gold, boom towns, more land than your eyes can hold. Work in the country of dreams in the world where the sun sets! Adventurers Wanted. Railroads pay top dollar for dependable men to cut ties for track. Take part in taming the Wild West.’”

  Eleanor searched his face. The lines at the corners of his eyes were upward-turning, always – in her experience – a sign of good humor. But his face bore the signs of a long, hard road, as well. “It’s been an interesting life, has it?”

  He laughed aloud, his eyes brightening. “Oh, aye! That it has, miss.”

  A door creaked open and closed somewhere in the neighborhood. “You can tell us all about it later,” said Eleanor, straightening herself, “all at once so you don’t have to repeat yourself. This is going to be delicious! There’s your coffee. Thank you, Dawes. You may go now.”

  “Go? Where should I go? This is still my kitchen, isn’t it?” said the cook, “‘sides, I ain’t missin’ this show.”

  “Eleanor?” said Kathryn as she entered the kitchen through the rear door. “I just came across the back yard . . . Dawn Marie said it was urgent.” She stopped suddenly in the midst of draping her coat over a nearby chair. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.” She’d be what, now, Thomas thought. Fifty-eight or so. She was elegant, her back straight, her demeanor confident. She was very much what their mother would have looked like had she lived in similar circumstances. It was immediately clear she had never been a parlor maid. Sadie would be disappointed.

  “I don’t,” said Eleanor with an inscrutable smile. “You do.”

  “I? What’s gotten into you, Elly? Why are you looking at me like that?” Kathryn turned to Thomas. “Do you have some business with me, sir?”

  “Pinch?”

  That was all he said, and in the sound of his voice and the way he said her name, the years fell away, and everything became clear.

  “Thomas? Oh, my God! Thomas!” She threw a look of inexpressible shock at Eleanor, whose eyes danced in return, then dropped to her knees and grabbed her brother about the legs, nearly toppling him. “Thomas! Where have you been?” She looked up at him. “Where are Tiff and Sadie? Where . . . where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for years!”

  Had she forgotten Tiffin had died aboard the Crimea? He helped her to her feet, then to a chair at the table opposite Eleanor, who seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.

  “It all started . . . or ended . . . when we lost you in the crowd.”

  The conversation went back and forth through three rooms and luncheon, tea, and dinner. By the time dessert was cleared away, they had laid their lives before one another.

  For Eleanor, the reunion had been everything she’d hoped and more, and for Thomas she had been the perfect audience, reacting to each of his wild west adventures like a child at a Saturday matinee. Katy, too, would clasp her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide in amazement and, for a moment, forget to breathe. “Billy the Kid! Oh, Thomas! Oh my!”

  When at last the conversation flagged, Thomas turned to Eleanor. “Miss Saltonstall.”

  “Please, Thomas, call me Eleanor. After all this, I feel as if we’re old friends. Practically family.”

  “Eleanor,” he said with a nod. “I want to thank you . . . ”

  “Oh, tish-push!” said Eleanor. “As I said, I’m the one who should be thanking you. You let an angel come into our lives that day. She saved us.” She put her hand on Katy’s knee, and Katy gripped it tight. “I can’t imagine what life would have been without her.”

  “Still,” said Thomas, having let the woman have her say, “knowing how much you’ve loved ‘er all these years, and the care you’ve taken of ‘er, well, as Solly’d say, you’ve settled all the shadows in my life.”

  “She seems a remarkable woman, Thomas,” said Katy. “I’d love to meet her one day.”

  “Aye, well, you’ll have to come to Chama, ‘cause you couldn’t drag ‘er from the valley with a mule team.”

  “Perhaps I shall. You never know.”

  “It’s been a grand life, Katy. But I don’t know that it’d’ve suited you. This,” he gestured at the room around them and its grand furnishings, “this is what you were cut out for. Fits you to the ground, it does. Your husband sounds a grand fellow. I wish . . . to think him and my Josh both dyin’ in France like that. I don’t suppose it’s likely, your husband bein’ an officer an’ Josh just a sergeant, that they’d’ve known each other without ever knowin’ what they were to each other, but you can’t ‘elp wonder, can you?

  “And you never thought about marryin’ again?”

  Katy shook her head slightly. “I suppose I’m overly romantic, but I could never imagine . . . being with anyone else. Everett was my best friend, and the love of my life.” She sat up and sniffed back a memory. “Besides, I had the children to look after. They’re still in Maine, now, with their families. Eleanor and I got back only last week. Oh, Thomas, I wish you could come to the island and meet them.”

  He reminded her that he had a boat to catch in two days. “Do you want me to go with you, Thomas? I will.”

  Thomas knew this was a trip he had to take alone. Doc Dunham’s voice still echoed in his ears. ‘A month, Thomas. Maybe two. You’ll have headaches now and then. Nothing these pills can’t help you with. This aneurysm in your head, when it goes . . . ’ he’d snapped his fingers. ‘You won’t suffer.’

  “I appreciate it, Kate. But, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take this trip alone.”

  Katy thought she understood. Her memories of Ireland, even their flight across the Atlantic, were vague, bolstered by his recent retelling. But it was still as though she were seeing his past through his eyes, not her own; as if it had happened to someone else. “But tomorrow,” said Katy, “you’re mine?”

  He smiled. “All yours.”

  “Then will you show me where Tiffin is . . . where he’s buried?”

  “Aye. That I will.”

  “To think, all these years I’ve passed that old graveyard a thousand times, and there he was. So close.”

  For a few seconds the clock on the wall took over the conversation. While he waited for his sister to collect herself, his eyes drifted about the room, eventually falling upon a porcelain teapot set amidst a collection of curios on a marble mantle. He stood, as if drawn by an irresistible force, and went to it. The women watched as he picked up the fragile china in his rough, working-man’s hands.

  “That belonged to our mother?” said Katy.

  “Aye.” For a while, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the old ship’s clock over the fireplace. The tea pot had awakened memories long dormant in Thomas, and for a few moments Katy and Eleanor let him loose in the fields of his youth.

  The Village of Farran

  County Kerry, Ireland

  Septe
mber 28th, 1933

  In the end, Murphy had been unable to leave Thomas amidst the ruins alone. The old man was snoring contentedly when he returned from the rectory with his blankets and pillow, and as quietly as possible, cleared a patch of earth in the brambles and made up a bed on the soft, sun-starved grass. As his heart quietened, he lay on his back looking up at the stars and realizing, for the first time, that these wonders had hung above his head every night of his life, and he’d never taken the time to really look at them.

  Simultaneously, all the splendid adventures Thomas had imparted to him played and replayed in his brain. At last, fatigued by the mental effort of living someone else’s life, he closed his eyes and slept.

  When he awoke, Thomas was gone.

  Murphy hastily grabbed his pillow and blanket and ran down the hill. Thomas’ footsteps were clear in the dew and soggy dirt of the road, and they stopped, turning in at the long-abandoned two-story house just around the corner and over the rise. He heard footsteps inside.

  “Thomas?” he said from the doorway. Much of the floor of the hallway had fallen in, leaving a gaping hole to the cellars. “Mr. Conllan?”

  Thomas appeared at the top of the stairs. “This was Flanagan’s house.”

  “I see.”

  The priest waited until Thomas returned from whatever mental journey he was on and slowly descended the stairs.

  “Take care down here,” said the priest, holding out his hand. “There’s not much floor left.”

  Thomas looked at Murphy’s hand and smiled. “Thanks, padre. I’ll manage.”

  Murphy sheepishly lowered his hand. “Of course you will. Sorry.”

  “So?” said Thomas as they stepped back onto the road. “The bog?”

  “The bog.”

  Tiffin’s notes had been perfect. The two volunteers Murphy had commandeered for grave-digging duty struck the coffin lid no more than three feet down. They leaned back so Thomas could have a clear look. “That it?” said one of them.