Spindrift (Exit Unicorns Series)

by Cindy Brandner

  “No, it might have been the catalyst, but it’s been in my mind for a time now, only I didn’t really know it.”

  “What about women, Terry, won’t ye miss them?”

  “Aye, I will, though maybe it’s not the sort of sacrifice it would be for yerself. That’s part of the beauty of it, that there is something to be sacrificed, somethin’ to be laid upon the altar an’ given to God. I’m not naïve about the sacrifice I will be makin’, Brendan, I know it won’t be easy, there’s times though, I feel God inside me like a fire that never ceases to burn. Sometimes it’s just that still, small voice out of the wilderness, but He is always there for me an’ I have to go where that presence leads.”

  “I can understand that, I suppose, only I will miss ye, Terry. The church takes a man away more surely than a woman ever could.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Wherever I am, wherever I go, I am always your friend.”

  They said no more of it after that, because they both knew, Terry thought, that the long road out of boyhood which they had traveled so long together, had now come to a fork and they were going to part, in some ways, forever. And in the way of men when things come to such forks, rather than discussing it, Brendan changed the subject.

  “Did ye see anyone as ye came up the mountain?”

  “No,” Terry said, “I would have told ye if I had, man.”

  “Aye, I know that, it’s only…”

  “Only what?” Terry asked sharply, he had never seen the man look so odd.

  “Only that I could swear I’ve felt someone watchin’ me these last few days. I go about my daily business—fetchin’ water, chopping kindlin’ an’ firewood, makin’ the repairs on the hut an’ tools an’ all is fine. Come twilight though when the dark is seepin’ up out of the ground, I can sense someone standin’ at the edge of the trees, just watchin’ me. I’ve called out an’ even run to the edge of the forest. I can sense a person, but I’ve yet to catch sight of him.”

  “Couldn’t it be an animal, maybe one that comes to feed near the wood’s edge each night?”

  “No,” Brendan said, “there’s a difference when an animal is watchin’ ye, animals rarely put up the wee hairs on my nape, but this, whatever or whoever it is, does.”

  “How long have ye felt it—this presence?”

  “The last week. That’s why I came upon ye in the woods as I did. I wasn’t certain it was you at first, or someone with ill intent. Though I admit, it didn’t feel the same as this twilight visitor.”

  Terry suddenly felt as though malevolent eyes were peering out from around every dark tree and rock on this mountainside. He shivered a bit and looked back over his shoulder. Brendan caught the look and stood up.

  “Let’s get back to the hut, aye?”

  Terry followed him gratefully back to the warmth of the hut. The fire had died to a low bed of coals, but they threw a steady heat and Brendan put several sticks of wood on top that caught instantly. With the door bolted and pieces of canvas drawn across the windows, the tense chill that had gripped Terry out by the stone began to ease.

  A few minutes later, with a few swallows of whiskey in his belly and the fire easing his muscles, it was far easier to speak of dark men who roamed the hills on cold autumn nights.

  “There’s long been the tale of the dark man of the mountains. Remember my da tellin’ us about him? That he was a rebel that took sanctuary in the mountains and even survived the great winter storm of 1839. His woman died givin’ birth to his son, an’ then the son died as well an’ so he killed himself in a fit of despair, an’ has roamed these mountain passes ever since.”

  “Aye, I’m not like to forget, am I? Bein’ that I didn’t sleep a wink after he told the tale, so spine-chillin’ was he in the tellin’. The man could make ye feel the snow an’ the cold an’ the madness, couldn’t he?”

  “That he could, my mam used to get furious with him for tellin’ us ghost stories, because she wasn’t able to get us to sleep early for many nights after one of his tales. He’d promise only to tell us light fairy tales after that, but he never could stick to it.”

  “Yer not generally one given to superstitions and ghosts, Brendan, what ails ye?”

  “Only sometimes I think it’s Cass hangin’ about because he can’t forgive me.”

  “Ye know that’s nonsense, Brendan,” he said gruffly, feeling angry at the turn the conversation was taking.

  “Aye, I suppose it is,” Brendan agreed, but the look on his face was bleak, as though he truly did believe a ghost was stalking him at nights.

  Brendan stood and walked to the door, opening it to the dark. The man was always restless, and found it hard to stay in a confined space for more than twenty minutes or so, unless he was asleep.

  He stood, arms braced against the door frame, his shoulders filling it from side to side. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “How is she, Terry?”

  “Who?” he asked, startled after the long silence.

  “Peg.”

  “Why would ye think I’d know how the woman is farin’?”

  “Because I know she writes ye letters, Terry an’ I know ye write her back.”

  Terry felt guilt flood him as though Peg still belonged to this big dark man, but then he supposed she did, and always would. Regardless of who either of them married there would be, for the both of them, a third party present, invisible, but felt nevertheless.

  “She is about as well as she will ever be, without you in her life.”

  “Brutal honesty as always, Terry. It’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated most about ye.”

  “Ye did ask.”

  Brendan laughed, a short, sharp sound. “Aye, I did.”

  He ran a hand over his face, a gesture of profound weariness. “This news about ye wanting to take up the priesthood has addled my wits, I think.”

  “I thought maybe it was the news about Mick,” Terry said quietly.

  Brendan nodded and turned back from the door. “Aye, a bit, but it’s not a shock. I don’t think any of us believed Mick would make old bones, least of all Mick himself. He’s been readying himself for it for a long time now.”

  “Aye, an’ ye know what part of that readying was, Brendan.”

  It didn’t need to be spoken, for he was well aware that Michael Collins had seen Brendan as his natural successor should the fight take him before his time.

  “I’ll never be a politician or a bureaucrat, Terry, I’m not built for it.”

  “Nor was Mick.”

  “Aye, an’ look how that has ended,” Brendan said and then abruptly sat down by the fire, the exhaustion in his face hollowing out his eyes, so that they appeared like two deep wells in his face. “I have a wife an’ children that need me, I can’t sacrifice all to this country. I’ve sacrificed enough as it is, Terry.”

  He wondered if part of that sacrifice of which Brendan spoke was Peg, and knew he could never ask the man.

  “It’s a dream, Terry—the thirty-two counties all under one flag and one government, free an’ Gaelic, is just a dream. It’s not goin’ to happen, maybe not ever, but certainly not in our lifetimes.”

  “Then why are we fightin’, if ye don’t believe it’s possible?”

  Brendan looked up and his eyes were dark, fathomless, and sorely grieved. “Because we must, because it is better to be a glorious failure than to take the sensible option and make the best of our circumstances. We Irish understand glorious failure, sensible options aren’t on the list.”

  “Be careful, man. There’s a few of us that can’t do without ye.”

  “Ah, Terry, I don’t know that I’ll make old bones either, it’s a chancy country we live in, after all, but I should like to try.”

  “He was right, of course, sometimes I thought the man had a bit of the Sight an’ that he saw down the road of his own life to the end, an’ knew it wasn’t as far away as he hoped.”

  “He did know,” Brian said quietly, “he made sure everythi
ng was settled in the weeks before he was shot. Mam said as much afterward, for he’d been doing all the repairs about the house an’ land that she’d asked him to do an’ made certain she knew where everything was an’ that all of it was in her name, so that there would be no legal problems. She was fair angry with him durin’ that time because I think she understood what all the preparation was about. I don’t think he had any idea they would kill my brothers too, but I think he knew they were comin’ for him.”

  “Aye, Brendan was like that an’ even if he knew he wouldn’t run to avoid his own fate. The man was a stubborn bastard, if ever there was one.” Terry sighed. “I’m feelin’ dreadful nostalgic now. I miss yer da every day of my life. Things were never the same between him an’ me, after I went into the priesthood. Truth be told, maybe the change dated back to the night we met Peg.”

  “Ye loved her?” Brian asked gently.

  “Aye, I did, whatever that might mean comin’ from a man who chose a life of celibacy. I loved yer da too, he was the brother I never had, as they say.”

  “I know ye did. He loved ye too. He said ye were the stubbornest mule of a man he’d ever known, but also one of the finest.”

  “Aye, he was right about that—the stubborn part leastwise.”

  “I’m for bed,” Brian said, “I’m all done in. Thank ye, Father Terry, for sharin’ yer history an’ my da’s—I needed it, some small part of it.”

  “Yer welcome, Brian,” he said softly. “I think I’ll go outside for a wee bit, I’m not tired yet.”

  The night had turned cold while he had been snugged up by the fire, telling tales. There was just a hint of frost in it, so that come morning there would be chill dew upon the grass and leaves. He wandered down the slope away from the hut, the stone looming up against a sky shot full with stars.

  Speaking of his past, of Brendan’s past—the two things being inseparable up to the day he had entered the priesthood, had made his heart heavy in his chest. Memory was an odd thing; these days he couldn’t always remember what he’d had for breakfast, but events from years past were clear as though held in a drop of water, magnified by time and emotion. Something so small and simple—a whiff of smoke on the air, three notes of an old melody, the curve of a woman’s smile—and the past swept him back into its embrace. The Celts had believed time to be cyclical, as curved and round as the world itself. He felt it; it made more sense to him than the idea that the past was gone and could not be retrieved, when the past lived pulsing in the air around him, brought so close at times that he felt the pull of it, like an iron filing to a magnet. People he had known and loved in his youth, often felt more real than those he encountered in his daily parish business. Perhaps that was because he held them in his heart, and the heart’s memory, he had found, was much stronger than the head’s. Being a priest had only deepened this sense of time being an endless cycle, of the past existing there in the fabric of every day.

  There were things about that past he had not told Brian, simply because it wasn’t right to do so. A man’s son didn’t need to know every particular of his father’s life, after all. He hadn’t told him about the last time he had spoken to Brendan, and he never would tell anyone of that night. That terrible night.

  Marie had come to him when the boys had been killed and asked him to preside over the funeral. He hadn’t wanted to, didn’t see how he could bear the grief of it, but didn’t see how he could deny their mother, not when she had lost three of her sons in a few dreadful moments.

  They had taken the boys home to Connemara, to be buried with the rest of their fallen ancestors, a graveyard filled with them. He had met with Marie and Brian the night before to go over details. The grief in the faces of both mother and son had been almost beyond bearing. Beneath the grief in Brian though, there had been a humming fury, an anger that Terry prayed would not lead him into dark places. This country offered far too many dark places to young men with anger in their hearts.

  “Brendan’s gone,” Marie said to the unspoken question that hung in the air, “gone up into the hills, he’s mad with the grief.”

  Terry had gone back to the small village church after midnight, he couldn’t sleep and there were a few things he wanted to run through in preparation for the morrow. He halted in the entryway though, for he heard a voice, only one, but that one filled with such unbearable grief that he almost turned back toward the night. But he couldn’t, in the end, because it was Brendan, and he had never turned from the man when he had need of him.

  He was near the altar rail, on his knees, his great shoulders bowed and his head in his hands. His pain filled the space around him, beating like the wings of a raptor that was intent on taking its share of blood and heart. His voice was barely more than a whisper, hoarse with grief and rage at a God who would take his sons, and spare him.

  “Brendan,” he said into the dark of the chapel, “Brendan man, it’s Terry.” He went to him and sat down on the floor beside him. He did not touch him, for he knew the man likely couldn’t bear anyone’s touch right now. He merely sat, and waited.

  “When is it enough, Terry?” Brendan said, so low that he had to lean closer to hear him. “I am a strong man, born to bear the burdens of others but I can’t bear this, I can’t do it any longer. A man should only be able to survive a certain amount of pain before it destroys him an’ he simply dies from it. If God loved us the way ye say He does Terry, he’d have let me die years ago. Why, if He loves us so does He give us such an infinite capacity for pain an’ no way to turn it off?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry said, knowing it was a pitiful answer, but that it was also true.

  “It’s my fault they’re dead, Terry, my fault. I can’t even tell Marie, it would kill her but I can tell you, it’s yer duty to hear a man’s last confession.”

  Terry felt ice run up his spine at the word last. He did not want to hear what Brendan was about to say.

  “Yer talkin’ nonsense, Brendan, ye’d best let me get ye home man, Marie needs ye.” He stood and put out his hand to Brendan, meaning only to give comfort and to silence the man before he said words which, once spoken, could never be taken away. But Brendan took his hand in his own, his grip painful.

  “Yer such a damn fool sometimes, Terence McGinty, I said I wished to confess an’ I meant it. ‘Twas my fault they died, I should have been home an’ I wasn’t. Do ye know where I was, Terry?”

  He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to know less, didn’t want the burden of this knowledge, for he knew it would drag about his neck like a millstone for the rest of his days.

  “I was with her, Terry, with Peg, whisperin’ soft, smutty things in her ear, listenin’ to the sounds she makes when she loses control, watchin’ all that flamin’ red hair of hers spill over fine linen pillows. I was in bed with her while those bastards shot my sons. I should have died with them, but instead I was in bed with a woman who is not my wife. Well yer God, Terry, has seen fit to make me pay dearly for that sin.”

  “Brendan don’t,” he said quietly, “don’t say anymore. Just go home to Marie an’ I’ll see ye tomorrow.”

  “I want absolution, priest,” Brendan said. Terry tried to take his hand from Brendan’s, to back away from the man. Brendan merely tightened his grip, though, and brought Terry down to his knees so that they were eye-to-eye in the cold chapel.

  “I’m not asking yer high an’ mighty God fer absolution, Terry, I want yers. I want the absolution ye gave to Cass so freely. I’m askin’ in the name of everything we have ever been to one another.”

  He wanted to give it to him; he wanted to give Brendan the forgiveness he sought. He searched his heart for it, while between them an irreparable silence grew and grew. He couldn’t even say the words, his tongue felt as though it had turned to stone. It wasn’t the death of his sons that he couldn’t forgive him for either, it was where he had been when they died. He couldn’t forgive Brendan, but nor would he ever forgive himself for the hardness of his own heart.
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  He looked up finally, and met Brendan’s eyes and saw what the dark had previously hid, for there were tears pouring down the man’s face unceasingly.

  “I’ve never been more than a murderin’ bastard to ye since that day, have I, Terry? Ye couldn’t look me in the eyes then an’ I haven’t been able to look myself in the face since. D’ye think I wanted to kill him?” Brendan’s voice rose to the hoarse pitch of a madman, who has fallen finally into the black abyss he has stood on the edge of for most of his life. “D’ye think I didn’t hate what I was, that I haven’t hated it every day for all my life? It’s the goddamn weight of this name. When my sons were born I wept, not fer the joy of them, but because I’d prayed they would be girls an’ not have to bear the ugly burden of this name.”

  “Yer name does not excuse ye from murder,” Terry replied coldly, knowing that he would wish for the rest of his life that he could reach out and comfort this man who had, despite his sins, suffered the sort of loss no man should ever have to suffer.

  “Has yer God lifted ye up above the things of this world, Terry, has he made ye forget what it is to love a woman so fiercely ye’d sacrifice almost anything to have an hour with her? There was a time ye’d have murdered me for that little. Have ye forgotten so soon?”

  “No,” he replied from what seemed a great distance, “I have not forgotten that. An’ I cannot absolve ye of yer sins, Brendan, it’s between yerself an’ God. Even an angel would be a fool to tread there.”

  He walked away then, hearing with every step the hoarse and heartrending sound of a man who had lost his own soul and could not bring himself to talk to his God anymore.

  He presided with dignity and grace over the funeral of Brendan’s three young sons the next day, and somehow performed the minor miracle of never once meeting their father’s eyes. He never saw Brendan again. For the next day, Marie and Brendan returned to Belfast and within hours Brendan was himself shot, four times through the heart.

  And now, he stood alone on a dark mountainside and regretted the intransigence of the human heart, of his own heart. He knew there would never be a day that he would not miss the man who had been the brother of his soul, if not his blood.