Three Wishes for Jamie

by Charles O'Neal

  A wistful, far-off look clouded Maeve’s eyes. “Aye … Cousin Tavish,” she said simply.

  “At home they tell the tale of a childless couple in the olden time who took in a little foundling left on their doorstep one dark Halloween. They cared for it and loved it as if it were their very own. The wee one, of course, turned out’ to be the little Jesus, come to test them; and after He had revealed Himself and gone His way, sure the man and his wife had seven wonderful sons … one right after the other.…”

  Tavish spoke with such assured exuberance that Maeve laughed. “I doubt if anyone will be leaving a foundling on our doorstep—Halloween or any other evening. Few people even know we exist,” she reminded him.

  Tavish tipped her face up toward his own. “I’m thinking Father Kerrigan could find one, should you but whisper a word in his ear,” he said pointedly.

  Maeve was startled. “Adopt a child … and from the outside?” she exclaimed.

  “Is the idea so frightening?” Tavish persisted. “Sure you’re not forgetting that all little ones are arrows shot straight from Heaven?”

  Maeve’s deep-hazel eyes grew thoughtful. She shook her head slowly. “No … only I’d never considered anything like that.”

  “Then do,” said Tavish flatly, “and now … while the mood of your husband is soft.”

  Jamie’s team of matched sorrels trotted briskly along the Savannah Road toward Atlanta. He had been away from the camp one week, winding up odds and ends of business in towns to the south and east of the capital. His big body lounged comfortably on the seat, lulled by the song of the bright, new wheels singing their light, shrill Chinese tune to the rhythmic accompaniment of hoofbeats on the dust-muffled surface of the road. Soothed by the sound and swaying movement of the buggy, Jamie’s thoughts had turned toward Maeve and an affectionate reprise of his reconciliation with her. With penitential zeal he berated himself.

  The love of one in ten million she gave me, yet I let her wear her gentle heart to a thread because there was no child—as if the blame were in any way hers. She who took me in—and me without rus or raub—against the clamor of her kinsmen; and by the love in the heart of her, made a man of me—with horses and houses and money in the bank.

  Money in the bank reminded Jamie that he was carrying nearly four thousand dollars in cash. I’ll stop at the bank first thing, he assured himself, then to the stonecutter’s and order some lovely monument for Little Tom. For ’twas the death of the little Sherwood that brought me to my senses.

  Still held by the mood of happy penitence, Jamie resolved to buy Maeve a reconciliation present. Something for her lovely self so beautiful it will take the eyes right out of her head, he resolved.

  Contrary to Traveler custom, Jamie managed the family money. Among the horse traders, the women always exercised that prerogative, just as they supervised arrangements for all basic functions such as births, deaths, marriages, and christenings. They issued whatever cash was needed for purchasing and trading to the men, but held the balance in matriarchal reserve.

  Knowing her husband’s love for fine clothes and grand gestures, Maeve had breached the tradition. Jamie went about carrying large sums in cash until the sudden war prosperity made it imperative that he open a bank account. With difficulty he and Tavish had persuaded Harrigan and the others to deposit their savings also. The men of the camp followed suit with reluctance and suspicion. Exchanging good money for small bankbooks and a sheaf of checks seemed rather foolish, and it fell upon Tavish to teach them the intricacies of signing the slips of paper which could be translated into cash.

  “You’re writing too big, man,” he would say to those like Tom Sherwood, whose great fist needed a twelve-inch space to sprawl his name. “Squeeze it down. They don’t make checks wide enough to fit the likes of your grand scribbling. Think of a fat woman squeezing into a tight corset. ’Tis confining but stops the spread and improves the appearance. Now confine yourself to that little space right there.”

  Some managed to master the finger-cramping labor, but others gave up in disgust, pretending to have suffered elaborate injuries to their hands when called upon to affix their signature to a check. Bank officials were aware of these childish fictions, but respected the deep pride which prompted them. Many of the traders carried accounts the size of which insured them courteous treatment anywhere.

  Jamie’s thoughts had gone daydreaming back to the time when he first spied Maeve moving gracefully among the green willows. Without her I’m but half a man. Together we’re something complete. In my heart’s heart I want no more than that. Had we had children, sure they would have spoiled the sweetness. ’Tis selfish but true, he rationalized.

  With that rationalization, his inner discontent at being childless was somehow purged. From this instant his preference was postulated and fixed. The perfection of his newfound relationship with Maeve was not to be marred by any outside person or thing. It was God’s will and his; and he was content.

  At the edge of town Jamie chose a street which would take him past Power O’Malley’s stone-cutting shop. When he arrived at the weird assortment of monuments which turned the front yard into a miniature cemetery, he drew the sorrels to a halt. Jamie had never bothered to visit his eccentric cousin, though Tavish had recounted in hilarious detail how Power O’Malley had believed him dead and mistook the Speaker for his own ghost.

  As Jamie tied his team before the shop, a strange sight caught and held his gaze in complete fascination. O’Malley was standing on a low scaffolding in the yard, working on a group of stone figures which depicted the collapse of a hanging bridge similar to the one over Dunriggan Gap in Ireland. Two stone bodies were shown tumbling precipitately toward the serriform waves below, while from the banks above, stone soldiers stood with rifles leveled.

  In awe and unbelief, Jamie entered the yard and drew closer. Power O’Malley was absorbed in his work, but finally became aware of Jamie’s presence. He spoke without turning his head: “Just look around until you find something you like; then come tell me. I’m too busy to go showing you about.”

  “What in the name of the seven whiskies of Ireland is that?” Jamie demanded, ignoring the old man’s lack of courtesy.

  O’Malley turned and surveyed Jamie with hostility through his great shaggy brows. “What is it?” he echoed in a voice weighted with sarcasm. “’Tis only a small project that has occupied my talents for the past four years—my masterpiece … no less.”

  “That it is a masterpiece is plain,” Jamie agreed unruffled, “but what it is is not so plain.”

  The old man climbed down from the scaffolding and viewed his work lovingly. Evidently his kin in the old country had neglected to tell him that Tavish and Jamie were alive and well.

  “In the west of Ireland is a place called the gap of Dunriggan. There two of my kinsmen met heroic death resisting the British constabulary. You speak like a man of the Gael—have you not heard the story?”

  “Not the way you be telling it,” Jamie admitted wryly.

  “’Tis fast becoming one of the great legends of the west of Ireland,” O’Malley boasted. Like a man delivering an illustrated lecture, he expounded a version of how Tavish and Jamie had met their deaths that compared romantically with a novel of the eighteenth century. According to O’Malley, Jamie was sort of an Irish Robin Hood and Tavish another Friar Tuck. Tirsa was Maid Marian, and Jamie, accompanied by Tavish, was on his way to marry her when trapped on the bridge by the murderous constabulary.

  “Rather than surrender, the two darlings of the Western world sought escape from the British by leaping from the bridge—may God and the Virgin give them rest,” the old man concluded.

  Torn between incredulity and laughter, Jamie was on the verge of protesting that there was not one bubble of truth in the entire ocean of distortion, when the entrance of a young woman into the yard distracted him. It required a second look before he recognized Bernice Proddy.

  A sensation of acute embarrassment shot th
rough Jamie. It was relieved an instant later when it became plain the girl did not recognize him. She seemed paler than when last he saw her, and her eyes reflected some deep inner suffering.

  Power O’Malley greeted her with his usual gruffness, but when the girl whispered that her mother had passed away, his manner softened perceptible. “For your mother, you say?” he repeated kindly. “How much do you want to pay for the stone?”

  “Does it have to be cash—all at once? I was hoping to pay a little at a time,” Bernice said wistfully.

  “Terms are cash … but maybe we can work out something,” the old man assured her. “Look around until you see a stone you like.”

  The girl turned away and began dejectedly to inspect the smaller monuments displayed about the yard. Jamie drew the stonecutter to one side. “Power O’Malley,” he said, “I know you’re a man to be trusted. I want you to give that girl the finest gravestone that money can buy.”

  “Aye,” said O’Malley, “but whose money?”

  “Mine.” Jamie counted out a thousand dollars. “’Tis all right,” he said in answer to the old man’s suspicious gaze. “All her life the girsha there wanted to do something fine for her mother. This will help her do it.”

  “You know her?” O’Malley queried.

  “Yes and no,” Jamie said. “Once she did me a great favor. She talked to me until I came to my senses. Is there any more you would like to be knowing, you nosy old sheehogue?”

  “Aye,” said Power O’Malley, displaying a rare, wry grin, “what’s to be done with the money that’s left over?”

  “Give it to the girl,” Jamie said airily. “Tell her ’tis little enough, but less than that bought one of the Three Marys the brightest star in the Heavens. And tell her, if she really wants to do something for her mother … find herself another job. I’ll come again another time to purchase a stone for the boyeen we lost a while back.”

  With a feeling of having given the strings of fate an irreverent pluck, Jamie sauntered to his buggy and drove away. After a time, when the feeling of playing God had worn away, he tried to analyze why he had paid out a thousand dollars for a girl he scarcely knew. “If anyone learned of this, sure they’d say I’d turned half-fool, and no mistake,” he muttered.

  But as he drove on toward the Five Points a feeling grew in him that the money had been well spent. The gift seemed to erase the one small stain that had marred his otherwise perfect relationship with Maeve. Now he felt that a phase in his life had passed—that he had survived some subtle test, the meaning of which was veiled in deep mystery and might never be revealed until the Day of the Mountain, when all things would be made clear to all men.

  It was suppertime when Jamie reached the camp. The men were eating early, ahead of the women and children as was the custom. Tonight there was little of the genial raillery usual at mealtime. The drowning of Little Tom had left a pall that was not easily shaken off. In the hearts of these simple people, few of whom could read or write, children ruled as sovereigns by the divine right of birth. The death of one was a loss felt by all.

  As Jamie seated himself at the table beside Shiel Harrigan, he caught a glimpse of Maeve busy among the women and children. She looked younger and more beautiful to him than she had since that first supper four years before. Then neither food nor drink had had taste or flavor for him.

  “Sure someone should invent a potion to make men fall in love with their wives over again … every four years,” he announced without preface.

  “Huh … what was that?” Harrigan asked, startled.

  “’Twill take the place of all the excitement we had at mule auctions when we be back on the road,” Jamie continued blandly.

  Maeve’s father studied his son-in-law out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve more wisdom than I gave you credit for, Jamie,” he said quietly.

  Owen Roe Tavish joined them at the plain pine table, his face still damp from the hasty wetting he had given it. “Too bad you weren’t here for the christening,” he said, looking at Jamie slyly.

  “And who was named this day?” said Jamie, helping himself to the food Maeve set before him, “colt or Christian?”

  “A fine broth of a boy,” said Tavish, “though they’re usually more colt than Christian. One can never be quite sure until he has counted the legs. And how were things to the south?”

  The Speaker was unusually gay and talkative, it seemed to Jamie. Since Doreen’s hysterical blaming of him for Little Tom’s drowning, the old man had been sick at heart, given to long, brooding silences. Now he chattered on as merrily as before.

  “Since when are boys named at this time of year … and in the camp instead of the church?” Jamie inquired.

  “’Twas all right and proper,” Tavish hastened to say. “Father Kerrigan was here with three drops of the water of Sunday and made church beneath the trees.”

  “I still don’t recall any bairn of the camp that was in need of christening,” Jamie insisted.

  Shiel Harrigan interrupted the cat-and-mouse conversation. “No bairn—a new boy the Father brought.”

  Jamie half sensed something behind the Speaker’s evasiveness, but dismissed the matter without further questioning. When he finished eating he rose from the table. “I’ll drop down for a quick look at the animals,” he said.

  “Sure now maybe I’ll just go along with you,” Tavish offered.

  “Finish your supper, man; I’ll be but a minute,” Jamie assured him.

  Tavish sat down again nervously. “On second thought I will finish my bit and sup,” he said uneasily.

  Jamie sauntered away toward the corrals but Tavish ate nothing more. Instead he kept his sharp eyes on Jamie’s broad back. When it had disappeared into the pines, he rose from the table and beckoned to Maeve.

  “Where have you hidden the lad?” he whispered.

  “Will you stop acting as if we’d committed a crime, Cousin Tavish,” Maeve said. “Kevin is waiting in the tent.”

  “Your husband has gone to the corral to count his mules,” Tavish said meaningly.

  “I know,” Maeve said, distressed. “I was hoping he would meet the boy first—then I could have explained about the mule. Maybe he won’t be missing the animal,” she added hopefully.

  Tavish snorted. “Your husband can count mules blindfolded, and he would be missing Big Ed if it was the middle of the night and he was counting with his eyes shut.”

  “Well, if there’s no way to break it to him gently, then he must learn the hard way,” said Maeve firmly.

  Tavish pointed in warning toward the corrals. “Sure now let’s brace ourselves, for here he comes with enough speed to overtake the wind that’s before him, and a look of the Day of Judgment on his face.”

  Inside Maeve and Jamie’s tent, the youngest of Jesse Proddy’s seven children sat in a big upholstered chair, afraid to move. The last rays of the afternoon sun filtered through the green canvas, tinting the rich objects about him with a greenish gold luster. At one side stood a tall grandfather’s clock announcing the seconds in solemn baritone. Near the foot of the great master bed was an elaborate dresser with high, oval mirror in which the boy could see himself by craning his neck to one side. He was almost afraid to look. The reflection that stared back from the glass was almost unrecognizable. A bath, haircut, and new shoes and stockings, plus a new suit so blue and stiffly creased that his back and shoulders ached from its rigid confinement, had worked a complete transformation.

  As if to reassure himself, the boy tested his identity on the image in the glass with quick, furtive gestures. It was he all right, and not a dream. The mirror mimicked every move. The small lady with the bright, shining hair, and the eyes that seemed to laugh and cry at the same time, had really embraced him. He remembered her words and her light, clear way of talking.

  “You’re going to live here with me for a while,” she had said, when Father Kerrigan brought him to the small tent city. “There’ll be wonderful things for a boy to do: Horses t
o ride … children to play with … plenty of good things to eat.…”

  “And most important of all,” the priest had told him, “you’ll have someone to love and care for you. If you’re a good boy … and everyone likes you … maybe this will be your new home.”

  After that a little man with fierce eyebrows and twinkling blue eyes had ruffled his thatch of blond hair and said: “First off this boy needs a bath and a haircut.” But the beautiful lady embraced him again and said: “First off he’s going to have a name. Can’t he be christened right here, Father?”

  They had given him a name. Number Seven hadn’t been able to figure why it seemed so important to everyone, but the priest had set up a tiny altar inside the tent and touched his head three times with water, all the while pronouncing strange and wonderful words. Then they had told him his new name—Kevin Roe Callahan McRuin—and the lovely lady with hair like sunshine had kissed him and wept. The men of the camp had come forward and shook his hand, calling him “Kevin,” and the little old man with the eyebrows had boasted that as godfather, he had personally selected the name.

  “Take any little mongrel dog, without home and spirit, and give him a fine Irish name, and immediately he becomes different from other dogs … a sort of supercanine,” he had said.

  After a bath, Tavish and Maeve had driven him into the city for new clothes and a haircut—the first he had ever had in a real barbershop. On the road, they passed the Proddy farm. Father Kerrigan was just turning into the lane leading to the house, and tied to his buggy was a huge black-and-tan-colored mule. The priest had waved to them but didn’t stop.

  The sight of the gray, unpainted shack where he was born had sent a throb of homesickness through the boy. He longed to cry out to be taken back. Better the familiar misery he had known there than the dark uncertainty of strange people and stranger places. The memory-anchors of his life were sunk in those bleak acres. There Old Luke had died and his mother—crying wildly of Callahans and kings, until the priest had come and smoothed her passage into eternity.