Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  GLAD I WAS that I wore good boots, not shoes. For the mud had such a great suck to it that I think it would have liked to steal my legs. I recall hoping that my other uniform had come properly clean, because the one I wore would look a sight. The mud leapt onto my rubber cape and crept beneath its folds. As if the muck were a living thing that hoped to drag me down. The weight of the wet and the slop fair bent me over, and I will admit my leg gave me discomfort.

  Twas not yet late enough to call it night, but dark rain hid the world. I curled my hands beneath my cape, for the cold had a sting impatient for the snows. Glum I was, but determined. I would have answers before I next left Heckschersville. Nor would I subscribe to Irish threats or succumb to the pranks of drunkards. I could defend myself as well as any man. And better than most, that I will tell you plain.

  Not that I intended violence, mind you. But I wished to have my questions answered proper.

  The rain pressed down the evergreen boughs and bent the birches where miners had ripped the earth. The sky grumbled. A wind made every drop of wet a lash. My going was slow and miserable, and when the gale blew through the gashes the miners had left on the hillside, it seemed to draw a howl of pain from the stone. Twas a broken, bitter place, all ruination, each dig abandoned once the coal was gone. It is a queer thing, but I find a certain eeriness where the earth has been torn apart, as if some desecration has been done. It is only good business, I know, and I myself had my small profit from it when I worked in a colliery countinghouse. But I wondered if, one day, our lovely county would look like that entirely, bare and wounded.

  The hard rain did not help my failing mood. Determined I was, but dreary and losing spunk. As if my act of resolve to return to Heckschersville had drained all of the manly vigor from me. I did not even find the strength to sing myself a hymn as I went along.

  I slogged.

  I would have jumped at the woman’s voice, but the mud would not allow it. It seemed to hold me fast the moment she spoke.

  “Bist Du der Freund? Der lange verborgene Freund? Bist Du endlich gekommen, um meiner zu hilfen?”

  She was but a moving lump at first, a grayness in the gray, all bent and crouched and wrapped in a hundred rags. Her voice was decrepit and pained, yet she sounded queerly hopeful as she approached.

  Now, my Dutch is not sufficient to make out mumbles. But I thought I heard the German word for “friend,” followed by a question about help.

  “Nix verstehe,” I told the emerging form. “Kenne Sie nix, gute Frau.” Thus Germans say they do not understand or know a person.

  She worked her way through the clinging mud toward me. I thought she must fall, but she only laughed at her troubles. If the scraping that left her throat might be called a laugh.

  The oddest thing was that I began to smell her. Despite the rain, with her ten feet away.

  “Ja, ja. Der lange verborgene Freund ist zu uns gekommen! Endlich is er gekommen!”

  I began to suspect the woman was deranged, for clear enough it seemed she had mistaken me. Perhaps she was thinking of someone loved and lost, as elders will.

  Her stench was awful. The beating rain could not wash it away. As she neared, it enfolded me like a blanket.

  Now, I have been a soldier and do not imagine the world perfumed with lavender water. But the reek of her caught in my throat as she leaned toward me. I do not think I have ever smelled a living thing so rancid, or so foul. She smelled as if she had been dead a week.

  “Madam,” I tried, “I am not this friend of yours. Nix Freund, verstehe? Do you speak English? Are you in need of help?”

  I do not know why, but my voice began to fail me.

  A hand stretched out from her rags as she staggered closer. Near to a claw it looked. “Ja, ja. Englisch, Deutsch. Alles egal. Die alte Sprache ist die gute Sprache.” And then she began to chant in words that were utterly foreign to my ear, despite my travels and all my years in India. Twas strange as anything ever heard by man, and might have been the very speech of madness.

  Her hand nearly touched me, then faltered. I thought she had slipped. I steeled myself and reached out to keep her from falling. For she was old and troubled, such was clear.

  Of a sudden, lightning flashed and the crone recoiled. The shawl or hood that had clung to her head fell away.

  Oh, light enough there was to see that face. I never shall forget it. Beneath a wild thatch of hair, the woman was leprous. Either with that horrid disease itself, or with some mold that chews upon the skin. Rotten as a corpse she looked, as if she were dying from the outside in. I may have gagged, I cannot say for certain. Yet, I could not move or look away.

  The worst part of the creature was her eyes, not the ravaged flesh. One eye was a lump of pus, overgrown to sicken the strongest stomach, while the other glowed and bulged in mortal terror.

  She was afraid. Of me. She reeled back through the slop, snarling out her dread through broken teeth. Waving her hands to fend me off, as if I meant to attack her.

  God knows why the woman took fright of me. Twas not a thing a fellow might explain. The scar upon my cheek is not so terrible. And though I am no handsome man, I think that I will do for common intercourse.

  “Falsch, falsch, falsch!” she screamed. “Ist ’ne Luege, ’ne Luege. Er ist nicht der Freund . . .”

  She stumbled backward through the mud, drawing her cowl to conceal her hair and face again. Her attention turned to spirits concealed from my view. She no longer seemed to see me at all, but waved at some apparition imposed between us.

  “Er ist der Tod, und nicht der gute Freund! Lass mich in Ruhe, du braune Heidenshure! Lass . . . mich . . . in . . . Ruhe!”

  I understood the repeated word “false,” the words for “lies” and “death,” and that I was not the friend she had expected. Oddly enough, she spoke of a “brown whore” of some description. Then she howled in her nonsense language fit to raise the devil.

  She tripped, but did not fall, as she retreated. She seemed afraid to turn her back upon me, although I meant her no harm of any kind. With hands outstretched, she sought to hold off demons. Lost in a maze of delusions, she was. Howling at Heaven and Hell.

  Of a sudden, she crouched down, swinging her claws at the rain itself and lunging at the air. As if invisible birds had come to plague her.

  I stood fixed to the spot. Or transfixed, I should say. For though she fled as swiftly as she could, the image of that face remained before me.

  When she judged the distance between us sufficient for safety, she twisted about and scuttled into the trees, disappearing into the early darkness.

  Now, I do not have a superstitious bone in my body. It is simply that some things are reluctant of explanation. You leave such matters alone, and that is that. As I continued down that hill, shuddering with the cold, I recited Bible verses to myself. For Scripture spoken aloud is a soothing thing. And I will admit to looking around behind myself, but only now and then, at peculiar sounds.

  Soon enough, I heard the pump-house engines, throbbing like native drums. The other colliery noises, the hangings and scrapes, were down for the close of the working day, and buildings deserted until the morrow loomed out of the downpour. I passed the yards and the rain was so thick I could not spy the high wheel of the colliery, though I saw a black-windowed office. Mr. Oliver and his clerks would have taken themselves home before night fell, and wise they were. Then I smelled mules, but could not see their barn. Slick to break a leg, sets of rails traced over the earth, the narrower pairs for the pit cars and the broad-gauge for the locomotives come up from the depot to take off the coal. A wooden bridge over the creek led toward the patch, dividing the worlds of labor and of rest. Up a gentle grade lay a scatter of dwellings, little more than outlines in the gloom. The patch was not laid out in rows, as were most company settlements, but had grown up haphazard on a hillside. As if those shanties themselves refused all discipline.

  Lamps shone in the windows, though few and turned down low. Kerosene costs
money at the company store, as do candles, and collieries watch their inventories closely to insure that no supplies are taken home. Yet, I looked upon those weak lights with longing, wondering why I had been such a fool to come back in the rain. By now, I might have been nearly home, where the stove would be warm and glowing in the parlor. I could have spent my night with those I loved.

  I am a headstrong man, and sometimes foolish. Although I like to think that I mean well.

  After it lulled me with a moment’s slackening, the rain struck back with little nails of ice. Twas full dark come. The night had dropped a blanket over the mining patch, hiding all its secrets from the world, and the only sounds were of pumps and pounding rain.

  Wet through, despite my cape, I wandered about in the deluge until I heard a piano and the unsteady hum of men gathered in the warm. That one place was well lit, with a poorly painted board nailed to the porch, declaring I had arrived at the T. RYAN HOTEL, which offered ROOMS, MEALS, LIBATIONS.

  I did not even get through the door before the music broke off and the world fell silent.

  A PLOT OF RAGS had been laid just past the threshold and I stood there letting the worst of the water run off me. Covered with muck I was, and wet as a river. I fear that my appearance was undignified.

  Two dozen men crowded in that place, and their eyes were fixed upon me. I sensed a mood well short of Christian charity.

  The air was thick with the smells of wet wool, sweat and beer, of ashes acrid in a tub and coal burning in the stove. Above their half-drained glasses, the younger men held pipes of modern fashion, but their elders smoked the long clay pipes of Ireland. The walls were bare, except for a bit of green bunting, faded now, and some fraternal order’s paraphernalia. There was no motion but dawdling smoke and the publican’s rag as it swept along the bar.

  I saw him, sitting back-to-the-wall. John Kehoe. The black-bearded fellow who wielded such authority.

  “A good evening to you, gentlemen,” I said to all the room. Giving my feet a last swipe on the cloths, I hooked my rubber cape on the rack by the door. I kept my cap in hand, though, for the brass upon it costs a pretty penny.

  No one replied to my greeting, so I took me up to the fellow behind the bar. The tip of my cane skittered over the grit ground into the floor by the boots of countless miners. Twas not a place to please the high and mighty.

  I gave a glance toward Kehoe as I went. Of all the faces in that room—some hard and set, while others smiled wickedly—only his seemed empty of expression.

  Except for his eyes. They burned hotter than the coal behind the grate.

  The barkeep was twice broader at the hips than at the shoulders. If ever he had gone down the mines, it had been years before. Red ghosts of hair clung to a freckled scalp, and his pug nose was as Irish as the shamrock.

  At my approach, he dropped his rag and crossed his arms over his apron.

  “Good evening, sir,” I said. “I would like to take a room for the night, if you please.”

  “No rooms,” he said. “We’re full up, bucky-boy.”

  “Well, then, I would gladly share a room with another.”

  “They’re all shared up already. Every one.”

  “I believe there is another hotel in town, then?”

  “Mrs. Egan’s full up, too. Go ask her.”

  “Then I will have my dinner and take my leave.”

  “You can take your leave, but you’ll leave without your dinner. For the cupboard’s bare and the pot’s as empty as promises.”

  That was a lie. I smelled a proper stew. And kitchen noises chinked and chimed through a curtain.

  “Then I will have a glass of water, thank you.”

  “The well’s dried up. And the tap’s run out on the beer.” He glanced at the litter of bottles lined up behind him. “And all of those are only for decoration.”

  I heard the first titter of laughter behind my back. But I would not be vanquished quite so easily.

  “Glad I am,” I told him, “to find you have such a prospering business, sir. I have a bit of business in mind myself. Then I will bid you farewell.”

  I did not give him time to reply, but turned and marched me over to John Kehoe. He sat between two younger men, at a table cut as rough as the local manners. Nor did I wait for a proper invitation, but drew up a chair and sat me down to the three of them.

  “Good evening, Mr. Kehoe,” I said. “I am Major Abel Jones. Pleased I am to find you here tonight.”

  His eyes were as black as his beard. Black fires, if you will credit such a phenomenon. He did not reach to take the hand I offered.

  The two young men attending him stood up and left the table. The silence gained another layer of quiet.

  “My,” I continued, “it is a terrible night. There is good, to come in out of the rain. I do not remember such a cold October.” And I will tell you: That much was true. For my boots and stockings were wet and cold as Lord Franklin’s. The stove sat well across the room, where the old men gathered round it, but that tavern’s warmth seemed a lovely thing to me. Although I have taken the Pledge myself and could not approve of the establishment’s purpose or patrons.

  I watched Kehoe, and he watched me, and I kept a firm grip on my cane. I was prepared to fight my way out of that room, if need be. Although I must admit the odds was bad.

  I wondered if they could trace the outline of my Colt beneath my frock coat. It is a heavy thing and hard to conceal. The truth is that I was sorry to have it by, for I suspected it would do more to provoke them than to protect me.

  “You’re either a madman,” Kehoe said of a sudden, in a voice that did not lack some education, “or the greatest fool ever to crawl his way out of Wales.”

  At that he got up, but not to start a fight. He was a hard man to sense, yet I could tell that much. He left me there and strode across the room. I sat and pondered the ghosts in his voice, the plaint of the Irish tongue and worlds abandoned.

  The other faces in the room turned from him to me, then back again. I wondered if they were disappointed that he had not yet seen fit to turn me out. Ready enough for a fuss, the lot of them were.

  Kehoe marched up to a fellow who might have stepped from a Punch cartoon of an Irishman. Not of the lowly bogtrotter sort, but the old man of the cottage, white-haired, pink-faced, and nimble with his wits. The old man was one of the smilers in that room, as if the world amused him in countless ways. The pipe he smoked was long as a grenadier’s forearm.

  Kehoe bent down over him, with undisguised respect, and I saw I had been wrong on the matter of authority. “Black Jack” Kehoe might have been the leader up in the boneyard, where all was tactics and doings fit for the young. But the man to whom he spoke was the man without whom nothing could be done in Heckschersville.

  The old fellow looked at me with a glint in his eyes that passed for Irish charm. He nodded to Kehoe, lips shaping quiet words. He met my stare and smiled, friendly as a neighbor on good terms. Then Kehoe straightened his shoulders—broad they were—and come back toward me.

  The old man’s companions got up, but for one, leaving their cards laid out upon the table.

  “Do you play a fair hand, man?” Kehoe asked me. His voice sought to be jovial, but it did not come easily to him. “Mr. Donnelly’s asking the joy of your company.”

  I ignored the bit about playing cards, an endeavor we Methodists shun, but got me up to follow my new go-between. With my trousers dripping and clinging like Pandy’s puttees.

  The men in the room had wanted a fight and their disappointment was thick as the smell of dinner. But surly as they were, they minded their business. They lifted their beers again and re-lit their tobacco.

  Mr. Donnelly, the fine pink fellow, stood up. Tall he was not, though of a higher stature than myself. He stuck out his hand as if we were ancient friends. I leaned my cane on the back of a chair, then shut my palm against his own. At once, I sensed I had taken a very deep plunge.

  His grip was not that of an o
ld man. We made a proper contest of our strength. With neither gaining the advantage, I give him that.

  “Ah, Major Jones,” he began, with our hands clasped over the table, “here I am wishing and hoping to make your acquaintance, for all that I’ve heard tell of your great curiosities, and what happens, by the Grace of Our Lady? In you come, prompt as the landlord after his rents!” He made a face of theatrical consternation. “But you’re drowned and dreary, man, and in want of a friendly bit of hospitality!”

  He let go of my hand at last, and I resumed my grip on my cane, which hides a blade within. For I was not yet certain what to expect.

  Mr. Donnelly raised his voice, calling to the barkeep. Again, he seemed an actor on a stage. I believe the word for such a voice is “stentorian. “ And I will tell you: All his audience heard him.

  “Michael, me boy, I don’t believe the cousin’s coming, after all. Sure, and a rain like this would keep the devil away. So I’ll give you back the room you’ve been holding this while, and you can bestow a berth upon the dear major. Who’s been serving our fine, new country in his lovely blue coat. And see if that old woman of yours can’t borrow up a bit of the warm for his dinner. No man nor beast should go hungry on such a night.”

  He did not pause to hear a reply, but cast his authority wider. “What’s the matter with the great lot of you, then?” he asked the sullen assembly. “You’d think it was the first hour of a wake, with all the gloom come upon you.” He turned his smiling face toward the piano, which was as battered as the fellow who played it. “Casey, give us some noise, lad. I can’t hear meself think for the quiet.”

  The piano started up, though out-of-tune. It struggled against the drumbeat of the rain.

  “Sit down, Major Jones, sit down. If you don’t object to gracing the humble likes of us with your company. But I haven’t yet introduced meself all proper. Thomas Donnelly, yard boss of the colliery, they give me that distinction. And master of the scales, under Mr. Oliver. Lucky I am to have such pleasant work.”