Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  His eyes were closed, his breathing rapid but shallow. He tried to make a word, but failed again. For all the liquid lost to him, he managed to weep a pair of tears, one from each of his eyes.

  Quick as an animal strikes, he grasped my forearm. With one hand, then with both. Clutching me madly, as if I might anchor him in our sea of life. Smearing my sleeve and my bandage.

  “Bury me . . . with her.”

  I tried to pry his fingers from my arm. But twas literally a death grip he had upon me. I pinched up the flesh of his thigh with my free hand, for that is how you judge the progress of the case. The skin remained puckered in a ridge and did not resettle itself. There was too much water out of him.

  By morning, he would be dead and blue of skin. And black of rot by evening.

  “Bury me with her!” he cried. Those bright, scorched eyes found mine.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Yes. Certainly. Yes.” Although I had little idea what I was saying. Nor did I mean to promise anything. The truth is that I wanted him to let go of me. He had slopped his vomit all over my uniform. And my bandage was wretched with filth. I envisioned contagion crawling into my wound.

  One of his hands released me. The priest fell back, shivering. His other paw slipped down to my bandaged hand, taking it as a child will, although my fingers could not respond to his grip.

  Another pulse of spasms ravaged his body. He let go of me at once and I had to throw myself backward, away from him, to avoid being sprayed all over with puke and blood.

  I only wanted to be clean. I am not made of the stuff of saints or martyrs. I felt less for that man than a Christian should have done.

  He settled again, groaning. Applying his hands to his belly to soothe it, he instantly tore them away, as if he had just lowered them into flames.

  I knelt, at a distance, watching him. I did not even think to pray myself. I barely thought at all.

  “God forgive me,” he begged the ceiling. “God forgive me . . .”

  My sense of purpose, even my sense of time, seemed to have quit me.

  “Go on with ye now,” a soft voice said. Twas Jimmy. “Go on, Abel. Do what ye have to do. I’ll stay here with that one.”

  “Jimmy . . .”

  “Go on. I’ll keep the watch on him.”

  “You . . . should not have come in . . . the infection . . .”

  And then he sounded more like the Jimmy I knew. “Oh, if the cholera wouldn’t take me when I was deep in the Delhi jail, or when I was carting the bodies for me liberty, I’m not going to let it spoil me joys in America. Go on with ye now, I’ll see to him.”

  “It is no laughing matter. You should not have come in here.”

  “I can’t leave a priest to die alone,” Jimmy said, voice gone serious now. “No matter what he’s done. It an’t within me.”

  “You . . . were never religious.”

  “Oh, I never was a grand one for their snoring in the pews. But there’s some things won’t let go of a man, once he’s taught them.”

  Yes. There were some things that would not let go of a man.

  “You’ll be all right with that Kehoe,” Jimmy added. “He’s got two proper fists on him, and more than a little sense. Jaysus, it stinks like Molly Grogan’s drawers in here. Did I ever tell ye me own mother hoped to see me take holy orders?”

  When I left Jimmy, he was rooting about for rags. To cleanse the dying priest and give him comfort.

  I STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE WOOD, stripped to the waist and still wet. The night air bit. There is one good use for whisky, according to Mick Tyrone. I unstoppered the bottle, clumsily, and poured the spirit over my wounded hand and wrist. The bandage was long gone, stripped away and burned along with my tunic. Doubtless, the pile still smoldered behind the priest’s house.

  I held out my hand.

  “Go ahead,” I told Kehoe.

  He doubted my wisdom, but struck a match and brought it close to my paw. A blue flame shot over my flesh. I will admit it was uncomfortable.

  I did not act the child, though. I clenched my teeth and shook off the last of the flame, which had burned away near instantly. My paw would be doubly a bother now, and for a goodly time. But discomfort was better than cholera.

  “If you please, Mr. Kehoe,” I said. “Wrap it up now. Gently does it, thank you.”

  For such a rough-made fellow, he had a gentle touch. I wondered if he had a wife, a family. But that night was hardly a time for intimate queries.

  He had shown only the briefest alarm when I told him of the cholera in the priest’s house. At first, he thought I was joking with him, given the lies that had been told about the fate of Danny Boland. When I warned him more sharply not to come close until I had stripped off my clothing and washed myself, Kehoe stiffened, but thereafter he was ready enough to do all that was necessary. He went down to the patch, at my request, to fetch a bottle of spirits and substitute clothing.

  In Kehoe’s absence, I had gone back to the pump behind the priest’s house. I stripped me down and splashed myself until I could stand it no longer. I felt as if I might freeze upon the spot.

  Kehoe met me again down by the boneyard and did not laugh at my queer state of undress. I must have looked a madcap in the moonlight, outfitted with undergarments and boots, my cane and a Colt revolver. I stripped off the rest of my rags, set them alight, and pulled on enough bits of Irish frieze to lift me out of shame. Then I had Kehoe burn the taint from my hand before I continued dressing. He had tried to fetch items small in size, but haste had ruled his decisions. I had to turn back the sleeves and roll up the cuffs, which proved a trial for my tormented hand. I fear my friend Mr. Barnaby would have remarked that I did not “cut a dash.”

  I did have some concern about the garments Kehoe furnished me, for I am not fond of lice, and lice are fond of the Irish. But it was no time for a man to pick and choose.

  “We’ll need to get along now. There’s a ways to walk ahead of us,” Kehoe said. Odd it was. Now he seemed the more anxious of us to finish the business and bring in Mary Boland. “Are ye suitable? With that mitt of yours?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kehoe. I am ‘suitable.’ Let us go, then.”

  He was a stalwart fellow, with strength in his legs and feet bred in a rough country. But he was not a talkative sort. His scent was of secrets.

  We clambered over the litter of rocks that decorates the southerly slopes in our coal fields. I walked behind, while Kehoe followed the moonlight. He set such a pace that I had to push along with my cane to keep up with his longer legs. By the time we reached the top of the ridge we both were wheezing and warmed. I was even asweat, which is cleansing and good for the health.

  “The strutting don’t pain ye?” Kehoe asked. He sounded as if his lungs wished a longer pause. “With that gimp of a leg you’re dragging?”

  “My leg is little bother,” I assured him. “When you are ready . . .”

  We set out again, walking the bends and saddles of the ridge. In Schuylkill County, the mountains rise in endless lines, as if nature has set out her ranks for a grand parade. The hint of a path wound up and down, with changes of elevation just great enough to annoy a man. Kehoe stopped short at the head of a ravine, where a man might have fallen to his injury. The path turned sharply—unnaturally—to skirt a derelict scene of shanties and the skeleton of an old colliery. Twas a small affair, on the scale of a past generation, with its mine played out and abandoned.

  We had to go along carefully thereafter, for the waste banks will take a man into them, whenever they feel the mood. There are types of silt that will swallow a fellow like quicksand, and more fool the mother who lets her child play on such. Where the earth has been stripped and piled, the coal lands are like a desert, with great black dunes and many a hidden danger. In an old works of that sort, we did not have to worry much about mineshafts dropping straight, for the old miners quarried the face of the rock, then drove tunnels at a slant. Twas the airholes, concealed by the night or overgrown with vines, that wo
uld swallow a man and break his neck to keep him. Or leave him alone and dying at the bottom of the drop, not to be found until some later happenstance. The earth had her ways of taking her revenge, wherever men robbed her coal.

  I followed John Kehoe precisely. For I still could not know how much I finally might trust him. And I had no wish to end my life in a coal hole.

  The moon had begun to decline. Its pale light struck at a slant now, casting giant shadows in the scrub, silvering the trunks of the birches and tipping their leafless limbs with buds of fire. The world smelled of autumn rot and iron cold.

  Kehoe paused by a cart that had been stripped of its wheels and left unexplained in the woods. As if it had been abducted, robbed and murdered. The big fellow was puffing. I will admit I was vain enough to take pride in his shortness of breath, for I was fit as a fiddle, if a bit worn. All those years of marching had their benefits, see.

  It is a curious thing. No matter how fierce the circumstance, men take delight in finding themselves superior in any way to their fellows. It is a sort of animal game we play.

  “Not the half of an hour now,” he assured me. Resting himself against the frame of the cart, he lifted his hat and wiped the back of a hand across his forehead.

  “Hidden away it is,” I said.

  “Decent people won’t let that old hag near them.”

  Playing tender with my hand, which was in high complaint, I said, “I hear they go to her for spells and potions.”

  “And fools they are for it.”

  “Then you are not a superstitious man, Mr. Kehoe?”

  He spit. “Tis superstition keeps the Irish down. A man would think the Church would hold devils enough for them. The Irish need proper work and proper wages. Not make-believe witches. Or priests who tell them to bend to the yoke and wait for Heaven’s reward.”

  I did not pursue that matter. For well enough I know that a man may criticize his own faith boisterously, but will fight another man to the death for slighting it.

  It struck me that the earth had gone utterly silent. We had reached those hours of morning when sentries fall asleep and earn their death warrants. Around us, the trees that had grown from the gutted earth displayed branches that looked like claws, as if they had not sprouted naturally, but had scratched themselves free of a grave.

  “Perhaps we should go on?” I said. For the moon threatened to set. And I did not want to enter that old woman’s realm without its light.

  “You’re a tough little bird,” Kehoe mused. “A man wouldn’t think it.”

  Off we set again, with our shoes tapping over the hardened earth where the winds had swept off the leaves. Then, in the hollows, we made a helpless racket, crisping through the piles gathered in the lees. Twas a nasty thought, but those leaves seemed to me like scabs upon the earth. Except for our breathing and footfalls, there was no other sound. As if the earth had paused to listen and watch.

  Kehoe brought us to another halt. When he spoke, he whispered.

  “I’ve had your promise of ye,” he said. “No harm’s to come to Mary. I’m to speak with her. Should the lass go troublesome, I’ll be the one to put manners on her.”

  “You have my promise, Mr. Kehoe. But come with us she must.”

  “Just keep a close watch on the old one,” he warned me. “I know what Mary Boland’s about, but I can’t say how the hag will take on at the sight of us.”

  Twas not a pleasant night. Running from cholera to a leprous crone who mistook herself for a witch.

  As I too often do when ill at ease, I touched my Colt. Twas belted outside of my threadbare coat and ready.

  “Mr. Kehoe,” I said in a hushed voice. “Do you have a way to defend yourself?”

  “I’ll pick up a stick as we’re going.”

  “Look you. I have but one working hand. Take my cane. There is a blade inside. You undo this latch and—”

  “I’ll take up a stick,” he said firmly. “And I’ll see no swords or guns tried on Mary Boland.”

  To underscore his point, he chose a stick on the spot, discarded it as unsuitable, then settled on another.

  We pressed on.

  “Tis but a meager stretch now,” he whispered. “So quiet with ye.”

  It seemed to me the air had grown much colder. Likely that was pure imagination. But little fits of shivering overtook me. We entered a mountaintop glen and found ourselves within a puzzle of crags. The trees about us were few and crippled and spare. Some were bent over as if to make a fist. The last of the moonlight polished the stones to a whiteness. I felt cast into a wasteland as barren as the soul of Judas Iscariot.

  Kehoe slowed his pace. Superstitious he may not have been, but neither was he a fool. Caution was in order. Just at the mouth of a hidden ravine, he stretched a hand back toward me.

  Turning his bearded face for the quickest of moments, he whispered, “Her shanty’s behind the rocks. So take your warning.”

  He was taut as the wires on a new piano. I could sense it without touching him.

  We went along at little more than a creep. Until the path turned and revealed a patch of light.

  “There,” Kehoe said.

  I sensed more than saw the outlines of the shack. Twas not a pistol-shot distant.

  I come up close to my guide. And smelled fear. Perhaps I smelled as much of fear myself. Twas a Godforsaken place, on a cheerless night.

  “I will go first now,” I whispered. Wondering all the while if his stick might not come down as a club upon my own head. I had no choice but to trust him, see.

  “Go along, if ye will. But no harm to Mary Boland.”

  “I have no wish to do the woman harm.”

  “It’s not your wishes I’m worrying over,” he said. “You’re twitching like a cat.”

  “Well, then,” I told him, “you will have to be steady for the two of us.” But the truth is he had more of the jumps than me.

  Healthy souls belonged elsewhere.

  Slipping past him, I placed my feet as silently as I could. I was as alert as if going into battle. Watching all the while. In case the women had sensed us. For there are things that will not be explained.

  As I closed on the shanty, I first smelled human droppings. The old crone had not bothered to dig herself a convenience and simply availed herself of her surroundings. And I saw that the shack was a haphazard thing built into the hillside and framed by mighty rocks. It seemed an attempt to extend a cave above ground.

  Light filtered from an entrance of sorts, where draperies or skins did for a door. There was a glow from a window, as well, muted by oiled cloth or greased-over burlap.

  I smelled cooking. Stewing. And rancidness.

  Gripping my cane as tightly as ever I gripped a musket, I worked my way close to the dwelling. Wary of traps or alarms set upon the ground. Wary of everything.

  I heard laughter. And dreadful voices. Women’s voices. But hardly of this earth.

  The last blade of moonlight cut across the hut, as if to sever the thatch of the roof from the planks and mud of the walls.

  I crouched down low for a moment, focusing on the jagged light escaping the interior. I did not want to rush inside and find myself blinded in the crucial moment, so I tried to prepare my eyes. I would have liked to advise Kehoe to do the same, but I feared revealing our presence with even a whisper.

  And I prayed a bit.

  Standing up, with a firm grip on my cane, I marched for the door. And in I plunged, through a curtain of ill-cured pelts.

  I hope that I shall never again see such a sight as that. The shanty was a warren of filth and carcasses. Mary Boland and the old witch were cooking. A black pot hung in the hearth. The fire thrilled its light through the room. To show what the women had done.

  They had carved the joints and much of the flesh from their most recent quarry, which hung down from the ceiling, drained of blood. Hardly more than the torso and head remained.

  It was the body of a little girl.

  “Dear
Jesus,” Kehoe said behind me. His voice was vivid with fear. The women watched us calmly, almost gaily. Mary Boland smiled and the old one grinned. As if we had been expected and were welcome. “Have ye come up for your supper?” Mary Boland asked us, as impudent as ever. There were stains down her chin and neck, as if from blood. And still she managed, God forgive me the saying of it, to look a fiercesome beauty.

  “No,” I said, mustering all my reserves, “we have come for you, Mrs. Boland. We have to take you with us, see. You are under arrest.”

  Of course, the old woman wanted arresting, too, for her morbid desecrations, but I saw that we must do things step by step. If we were to do them at all.

  Mary Boland cocked her head like a lass bantering over the laundry.

  “I warned ye that I’d say the old words over ye.”

  “Mary . . .” Kehoe began, voice choked and shocked and struggling, “ye must come down with us now. For your Danny’s sake. It’s Danny wants ye to come down. Come on, lass. We’ll go on together.”

  Mary Boland’s brow compressed in doubt.

  “I don’t believe ye. They’ve taken Danny off. Him there. The dirty Taffy. Him and the rest of them.”

  Yet, I sensed that she had begun to quarrel with herself.

  “He’s back, your Danny,” Kehoe said. His tones were gaining strength. “I swear to ye, he’s come back. But he’s weary and sick, and he could not come himself to ye. He’s calling ye, Mary. He wants ye to come down to him.”

  “Let him come hither to me,” she snapped.

  “He’s ill, Mary. He’s sick and in danger, your Danny. Come on, girl . . .”

  Her expression was that of an animal unsure of the voice that lures it.

  An impulse made me glance at the old woman. But I was too late. “Dubekommst mein Liebchen nit,” she shrieked. You will not get my darling.

  She reached into the hearth with her bare hand. With a dazzling sweep, she culled a torch from the fire and thrust it into Mary Boland’s hair. Just where her tresses met the wool of her shawl.

  Mary Boland lit up as if doused in pitch. For a freeze of seconds, she stood there, bound to the spot. Motionless, but for the flames exploding from her hair and racing over her shoulders.