By late afternoon he was exhausted. When the last of the horse traders had finally climbed into their wagons for the return to camp, he breathed a sigh of relief and settled comfortably into his favorite easy chair. There Mrs. Fluker brought him a glass of cold lemonade. The housekeeper was a tall, thin widow, dry and crisp as an autumn leaf.
“Wearing yourself out over them nomads,” she scolded. “Why don’t they settle down and come to church on Sundays like regular Christians, instead of trying to crowd all their religion into just two or three days of the year?”
Father Kerrigan reminded her mildly that if the rest of the parish showed half as much devotion to the Church as the horse traders, his job would be comparatively simple. Mrs. Fluker sniffed her disagreement and rustled away to answer the front doorbell.
She was back a second later. “It’s another one of them gypsies,” she announced haughtily. “He asked me would I mind ‘alarming’ the priest. ‘Alarm’ the priest, indeed. Shall I send him away?”
The priest shook his head. “Show him in,” he said wearily, adding pointedly, “they prefer to be called ‘Travelers,’ Mrs. Fluker.”
She disappeared and returned again, followed this time by Jamie. During the exchange of greetings she waited disapprovingly by the study door.
“That will be all, Mrs. Fluker,” Father Kerrigan said.
“Supper will be ready in a few minutes,” she reminded him.
“Good. Jamie McRuin, here, can stay and have supper with me.”
“Och, no, Father, I couldn’t,” the boy protested.
“And why not? Set another place, Mrs. Fluker.”
The housekeeper whisked resentfully away. “Now, what’s on your mind, Jamie? It must be something important to keep you away from confession this afternoon, yet bring you here tonight after the others have gone?”
“Sure, Father, I’m in trouble now up to my neck,” Jamie said solemnly. “I think I’ve committed a mortal sin.”
Father Kerrigan stared at him in amazement. The boy’s handsome face was set and troubled. He was wearing a stiff, new blue serge suit, the creased confines of which made him appear awkward and uncomfortable. The suit was a gift from Maeve’s father, the priest surmised.
“Do you want to talk about it now, or shall we have our bit and sup first?” he asked kindly.
“I couldn’t eat with this on my soul, Father. Not a mouthful. It isn’t ‘dirt in a well’ or any small mischief. ’Twill probably require a special dispensation from the Pope.”
The priest repressed a smile. He had dealt with imaginative boys like Jamie before. When they were convinced then problem was unique and solvable only by the Holy See, it generally proved to be something any parish priest could settle with a wise word.
“All right … out with it … before it burns a hole in your conscience,” he said.
Jamie blurted out the story of how he and Tavish had left Ireland. “It seemed a shame to spoil such a lovely wake, so Tavish and I set our sails for America without speaking a word to anybody.”
The priest rose and walked to the window. There he took out his handkerchief, blew a blast on his nose and wiped his eyes.
“Are you laughing or crying, Father?” Jamie asked, sensing vaguely that he was appearing slightly ridiculous.
Father Kerrigan returned to his seat, keeping his eyes removed from Jamie’s troubled face. “I think this matter can be settled without going to His Holiness,” he said evasively. “We will write a letter to your family explaining that you are alive and in America.…”
“Could we wait until I have some money to send? Sure the news would be more acceptable with a little money. An empty letter was always a great disappointment at home,” Jamie said eagerly. “We could say that Tavish and I were swept out to sea. There we were picked up by Queen Una in her magic boat—the one that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet will hold all the people in the world, and six hundred more besides.…”
“I wouldn’t add any more tales to those you’ve already told,” the priest hinted mildly.
Jamie was disappointed. “They do love a good story at home, Father,” he said.
“And you’re to repay the money you took at the wake,” Father Kerrigan continued.
“That I will, Father. Already I’m on the way to being a rich man. Did you know that Maeve brings a fine fortune with her? I’m to be a partner in her father’s business. ’Tis a tradition or something for the son-in-law to join the wife’s caravan. And Shiel Harrigan just this day presented us with a splendid team of horses and a new tent and wagon. Aunt Bid furnished a bed and table and chairs from a place in town where everything can be bought, from a pair of boots to a coffin; and all so new and wonderful they haven’t been unwrapped yet.”
Mrs. Fluker came to announce that supper was on the table. All through the simple meal Jamie babbled of the wonderful thing that had happened to him. “Is it a sin, Father, to believe in dreams coming true?”
“Not sinful … foolish, maybe.”
“What would you say if I told you I had dreamed all this in a dream … and everything promised me in that dream has come true?”
The priest studied the boy’s vivid, handsome face. “There’s an old country word my father used to use: Rameis. It meant ‘talking through one’s hat,’” he said, smiling.
“It’s God’s own truth, Father. How else could a poor, ignorant boy like myself marry the loveliest girl that was upon the ridge of the world. There’s a finger of magic in it somewhere—and no mistake.”
“There are some things I should tell you about the group of people you are marrying into, Jamie,” the priest said quietly. “In the first place, they’re the descendants of a group of Irish tinkers that came to this country about the time of the great famine.”
“Sure, Father, I knew they were tinkers from their green tents. At home we spit on them. For Maeve, I’ll be one myself, and proud,” said Jamie magnanimously.
“There will be no gay life for you on the road. The Travelers work hard. Many of those they do business with are prejudiced against them. You’ll be called a gypsy and a thief. They’ll say you steal babies and sell them—or worse. You can’t go into the towns alone, but always in a group, because there are gangs of toughs lying in wait, eager to pick a fight with you.”
“In the old country they’d have had small trouble. I was famous there for using my fists. But that’s all behind me, Father. I’m a changed man. The girl I wanted most in the world I won by not fighting. With Maeve beside me they can’t touch me. Sure I’ll smile and put their hard words to music.”
“Finally, Jamie McRuin,” the priest continued, “you may see things in the camp which will shock your Catholic soul. There are ancient rites and customs among these people which can be traced back to pagan times. Some of the young people still go through the tinker ceremony of Jumping the Budget; that is, they leap through fire and wade through water to demonstrate the indissolubility of their marriage.”
Jamie was aghast. “Sure they wouldn’t be asking a Christian boy like myself to do that, would they, Father?”
Father Kerrigan laughed. “I haven’t seen any signs of such pagan shenanigans among this group. But I’m warning you, it’s a lonely life.”
“I’m that full of happiness there’ll be small room for any loneliness to crowd in,” Jamie said simply. “And sure I’ll not be forgetting that it’s to you I owe everything. Give me your blessing, Father, and I’ll say good night.”
He knelt and the priest made the sign of the cross over him. “Are you walking back to the camp?”
“The long walk will be a comfort, Father. There’ll be no sleep for me this night. I’m afraid I might wake and find it’s all another dream. Good night. While you’re sleeping, I’ll be walking the fairy paths and listening to the music of things that happen.”
The priest smiled. “Don’t let anything change you, lad. You’ve something very precious that America—and the whole world—needs. Y
ou’ll find a fever here for getting and spending. Don’t be consumed by it. Now God be on the road with you.”
He watched the boy’s tall, buoyant figure swing down the walk and through the wrought-iron gate into the street. “The music of things that happen,” he repeated softly to himself. For the first time in his twenty years’ service as a priest of the Church, Father Kerrigan felt lonely.
XI
The climax of the Irish Travelers’ rituals always fell on April 28th in Atlanta. On the final day funerals were held and marriages performed. In the morning the bodies of those who had died during the year and their caskets sealed and held in vaults until the time for interment, were committed to the ground in one great group funeral.
Father Kerrigan, in the years in which he had served as priest for the nomadic horse traders, had never been able to discover why they fixed upon this particular day for their mass obsequies. He had come to the private conclusion that the date was linked with the tinkers’ ancient and possibly pagan history, but whatever that relationship was, the present-day Travelers had apparently forgotten it entirely.
The weddings came last. Early in the afternoon the eight brides, including Maeve, arrived at the church escorted by their parents. Among the Travelers, anything as solemn as a wedding or a funeral was always left to the management of the women. Aunt Bid, her eyes red from weeping but hawkike for any details that might go wrong, hovered over Maeve, readjusting the lace flounces of her satin gown, or disengaging the veil when it caught over the end of a pew. Shiel Harrigan stood ineffectually with the other fathers outside the church, waiting for the Mass to begin, shaken and a little bewildered by the endless details with which women garnished the events most important to them.
Between activities Aunt Bid whispered final bits of advice. “Don’t stay for the wedding games. When the Mass is over and you’ve had your three tastes of oatmeal and salt, take your man and whisht away. ‘Breaking the Bride’s Cake’ and ‘The Race for the Bottle’ are better left for the olders who can hold their liquor. A drunken husband on a wedding night is no better than a beast … so I’ve been told.”
The grooms arrived next, accompanied by their families. In tight, nervous little groups they assembled at the rear of the chapel. Few words were exchanged, and those in whispers. Jamie entered the church by a side door. His eyes were slightly red rimmed from lack of sleep, but he was freshly shaved and his shoes greased and buffed. He ran his eyes eagerly over the cluster of girls in white assembled at the opposite side of the church. Tavish, hurrying to overtake him, tugged at his arm.
“What ails you, man? You don’t go thundering into the House of God like a runaway horse. Don’t forget there be others getting married besides yourself. And don’t let your eyes be taken out of your head looking for Maeve. It’s considered bad form for the bridegroom to look at the bride until after the wedding. Among the upper classes the groom always acts as if he wishes he was someplace else.”
Across the church, Aunt Bid buzzed an alternating current of warnings and advice into Maeve’s ear. “There’s your Jamie now. Don’t be looking at him with a light in your eyes he could light his pipe on. Where’s your modesty? If you’re a wise girl, you’ll let him know right off how lucky he is. Tell him as how you had suitors standing one in the shadow of another, as indeed you had.”
The older woman’s eyes brimmed with sudden tears and she covered her face with her already moist handkerchief. Maeve embraced her, pressing her check against her aunt’s. “Darling Bid,” she whispered, “my own mother couldn’t have done for me all the things you’ve done. I’ve been rude and thankless, but never for a moment have I not loved you as if you were she.”
Aunt Bid was gratified and kissed her with trembling lips. “One last thing … when you’re kneeling before the priest, be sure to be the first to rise after the final blessing. The bride who rises ahead of her husband will die before him. And take it from one who knows, child, living after the man you love is gone is worse than not living at all.”
Maeve had been on the verge of tears all morning. Now her eyes flooded. She had heard camp talk since childhood of how Bid had loved a handsome young Traveler who had been kicked to death by a mule scarcely a week before their wedding. Bid had never looked at another man.
Lifting her aunt’s rough hand she kissed it tenderly.
“It isn’t fair for me to be so happy and not be able to share some of it with you,” she said emotionally.
Bid withdrew her hand and fussed about, straightening and restraightening Maeve’s veil. “Sure you can’t keep happiness to yourself, no more than you can sunshine. It spills all over the world, warming the ones you love. There’s the music. Now go to your kneeing … and God love and keep you, my treasure.”
The organ music swelled and the line of brides formed and began to move down the aisle to meet the grooms before the altar.
XII
The road out of Atlanta led southeastward toward Savannah. The surroundings were both new and strange to Jamie, but Maeve had driven the way many times. She sat beside him slim and erect, her eyes fixed upon the shiny brass knobs glinting on the collar of Big Red, the off horse.
Jamie’s eyes, too, were on the road ahead. The excitement of the wedding festival and the games had deserted them. They were alone for the first time and painfully conscious of each other. The shyness which had grown between them seemed to increase instead of diminish as the miles rolled beneath the crisp, new wheels of the wagon.
Jamie drove, pretending absorption in the operation of the new wagon. Though he never turned his head to look at Maeve, she sat clear and perfect in every detail in his mind’s eye. When he reached for the foot brake to ease the strain on the horses as the wagon lurched downgrade, he could glimpse the thin, red rim of dust around the edge of her wedding slippers. He had an impulse to halt the wagon and flick away the offending earth, so that nothing might mar the picture perfection of the girl beside him.
The sun was setting and the road ahead glowed the color of deep burnt orange. When the wagon lurched through a gutted place in the road, Maeve was thrown against Jamie’s shoulder. She did not draw away and the muscles of his left side tensed and vibrated as if plucked by an unseen harpist.
“I’m sorry,” she said shyly.
“I like it.” The words sounded both false and futile, even as they left Jamie’s mouth.
Maeve said nothing more and they were strangers again for a few hundred yards. “There’s a small camp ahead … about a mile. We’ve stopped there before.” She tried to make her words sound matter-of-fact.
“Stop now?” Jamie protested. “And us barely on the road? Sure the horses haven’t even a sweat. ’Tis a lovely night for driving,” he added lamely.
The thought of stopping and making camp, of going to bed with Maeve, of becoming her husband, overwhelmed Jamie with a mixture of terror and tenderness. In all the years of his adult life he had never been intimate with a girl. The blending of poverty, parental vigilance, plus the romantic aura which surrounded relationships between the sexes in Ireland, had made experimentation difficult … if not impossible.
His headlong courtship of Maeve had so absorbed Jamie there had been little or no time for him to get really acquainted with her. They had fallen in love, but did not know each other; were married, but had never exchanged the simplest kiss.
Through the jumble of his contradictory emotions, Jamie found himself wishing for Tavish. Tavish could help him. The old man would have a bachelor’s objectivity. He would have precedents, too. They might date back to the ancient Irish, but just now a thousand-year-old precedent was better than none.
“Are you tired?” he asked awkwardly.
“I don’t mind.”
“It’s been a big day.”
“A day to remember,” she agreed.
The road dipped downhill and sliced through a stand of tall pines and red oaks. The sun had disappeared and the twilight deepened into darkness. With the coming of night,
Maeve’s manner underwent a subtle change. Some instinct made her sense the emotional turmoil seething within Jamie. She slipped her hand beneath his arm and drew herself closer to him.
“You haven’t once looked at me since breaking the Bride’s Cake,” she said reproachfully.
Jamie stole a glance at her and flashed a smile that shone white in the darkness. “Sure now it’s true,” he admitted, “But the reason’s not far to seek. There’s about you a light … like the one that shone from heroes in ancient times. It hurts my eyes.”
“Could it be the love light?” Maeve teased. “And could you never have seen it before?”
“It could … and I could not … and there’s my oath on it,” Jamie said emphatically.
Maeve made a small sighing noise. “I think that’s why I chose you over Travis Bunn.”
Jamie didn’t answer, so she persisted. “Don’t you think it’s the reason I chose you over Travis Bunn?”
“I’m that modest, sure I wouldn’t dare speculate. Though I’ll admit there’s small comparison between us for manly beauty. My hair is curlier and my flesh pinker.”
“It wasn’t your curly hair, nor your pink flesh,” Maeve said, suppressing a laugh.
“Faith, it must have been for my fine brain. At home no man in the county was more respected for his wisdom,” said Jamie, joining in the spirit of banter.
Maeve shrieked with laughter. “Of that I’m sure.”
“It’s God own truth. ’Twas said of me, I had only to look at the smoke from a cottage chimney to tell the number of people around the hearth inside … and if any of them was ailing … and what the sickness was … and the sort of physic the patient should take.…”
Maeve had collapsed and was rocking back and forth holding her sides before Jamie finished. “Musha … don’t … I have pains,” she gasped.
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