Galway Bay (71 page)
He said a lot of rude things to us, but in the end he agreed to have the consul intervene for Patrick.
A week later, we got the wire: “Have been released—Patrick Kelly.”
P
ATRICK DIDN’T
come at Christmas, nor was he at Jamesy’s wedding to Maggie Nolan on St. Stephen’s Day. He missed a very happy day. Bridget and Edward Cuneen told me they planned an Easter wedding. Stephen and Nelly Lang announced they’d marry next Christmas; my sons, starting their lives. Thank you, Lord.
Hard on Máire to be away from her sons and Gracie, especially with Gracie and James Mulloy expecting their first child. But Máire would go to Nashville for the birth.
“The joy of being a grandmother will astound you,” I’d told Máire.
“That’s good,” Máire’d said, “and I’ll enjoy the trip on the riverboat, too.”
She’d received Christmas letters from Thomas and Daniel, full of the wonders of the West, and she talked about visiting them, too, someday.
“Doesn’t seem like Christmas without Uncle Patrick,” Michael had said.
“Probably in Ireland,” Jamesy had said. “Some of the brothers are being smuggled across. Fighting on.”
I’ll never see Patrick Kelly again if that’s true.
I remember Granny’s story of “Queen Maeve and the Cattle Raid.” Maeve needed a bull for her herd so she could remain equal to her husband, Ailil, the one who paid the bride price. She tried to buy the Brown Bull of Cooley and offered her own friendly thighs to the owner as part of the bargain. He’d refused her. “I’d rather go to war,” the fellow told Maeve.
“Men,” Granny’d said. Fighting on.
January 6, 1867, the Feast of the Epiphany—Nollaig na mBan—Christmas of the Women. On this day in the before times, Mam and Granny Keeley and the women of Bearna gathered to smoke their clay pipes and sip some poitín. “Our own quiet celebration after the work of Christmas,” Mam had explained.
“I’m sure the Blessed Mother took a bit of a rest after the shepherds left,” Granny Keeley’d said. “Herself and Saint Bridget taking time to sit down for a chat.”
I lay awake remembering that circle of women and our hearth. Bridget slept on beside me. I heard Máire’s newest clock strike three times. A long time until dawn. Don’t want to wake Bridget with my tossing and turning. Christmas recess at St. Xavier’s, so she can sleep in. I’ll get up and have a cup of tea.
No sound came from Máire’s room. Michael and Stephen snored away in theirs as I walked into the kitchen.
I lit the kerosene lamp and stirred the fire in the brand-new iron stove, a Christmas gift from the boys. I filled a pot with water from the barrel and placed it on the stovetop, then drew a chair close to the open grate and sat down, glad for the warmth of the fire.
And then it descended upon me. The great sadness I always held so carefully away came over me in waves. Tears began falling. The weeping was for Michael, Mam and Da, and Granny Keeley, for my brothers and infant Grellan in the cillín. I was crying for white snowdrops and yellow whin bushes, for the sun on the green fields of Knocnacuradh and the warm sand of the Silver Strand under my feet, for the smell of turf fires and for stories told on winter nights, for songs and reels and making the Stations at St. Enda’s well, for the back-and-forth of selling fish under the Spanish Arch, and for the wind filling the red sails of Da’s púcán as he joined the great Claddagh fleet on their way to the sea. For Galway Bay.
Gone, gone, gone. A whole world lost to me and to millions more, the living as well as the dead. I’m here in Bridgeport, but I’m there, too. I’m Nana, but I’m that same young girl going off to wash her hair in the Tobar Geal stream. Irish and American, here and there. But I would never see Ireland again. Nor would my children or their children, either. I thought of our new neighbors, the Bigus family from Vilnius, the Prussian Oldakhs, of M’am Jacques and the millions stolen from Africa. All of us gone from our home places, never to return.
My shoulders dropped forward. My head fell into my hands. The sobs twisted through me, shaking my body.
After what seemed a very long time, the sobs eased and I took in some hiccuping breaths. I went to the water barrel to splash my face. I won’t be surprised into grief like that again anytime soon.
The water for my tea was boiling over. I wrapped a corner of my dressing gown around the handle of the pot and lifted it up. I poured the steaming water into the teapot—another gift from my boys. Bridget had given me this wool dressing gown.
In a few hours, the sun will rise. I’ll sip my tea and wait.
It was Bridget came into the kitchen and woke me. Still dark. “Mam, someone’s been pounding on the downstairs door.”
Bridget carried the lantern down the stairs, with me behind her.
“What is it?” I spoke through the door.
“It’s Patrick, Honora. Open up.”
I did. Him, really him.
“Uncle Patrick!” Bridget grabbed his hand and pulled him inside.
“I’ve two friends with me.”
“Bring them in,” I said.
How weary Patrick looks, I thought as Bridget urged the two young men behind Patrick to come into the hallway. Patrick wore a heavy sheepskin jacket over leather fringed pants—the North Woods trapper clothes. What happened to his fine green uniform?
“I saw the light in the kitchen window and I knew you were up,” Patrick said to me.
One young man spoke to the other in French.
“
Parlez-vous anglais?
” Bridget asked him.
“We speak English,” said the taller of the two with a bit of a Galway accent. Had Patrick taught him?
“Up the stairs now,” I said. “Be quiet as we pass this door. Don’t want to wake the baby.”
We settled the three at the kitchen table. I poured them tea and Bridget brought out the whiskey jug, adding a bit to each man’s cup.
“I’ll get the boys. They’ll want to see Uncle Patrick,” Bridget said.
I sat next to Patrick. “I’m only sorry it didn’t work out for you, Patrick.”
He sipped his tea, looking at me over the rim of the heavy china cup. “I appreciate your sympathy. And thank you for the letter from the British consul. My lawyer said it helped.”
“Good.”
“I’ve not given up, Honora. Only moving the battlefield.”
I looked at the young French fellows. Do they understand? Probably only had the few words Patrick taught them. Something about them. I looked more closely at their faces, visible now in the light from the stove and lantern. Familiar-looking.
“Patrick, these fellows . . . ,” I said. “I know them, but it’s not possible. They’d be old.”
“See, boys? I told you she’d recognize you.” He smiled at me. “Honora, meet Joseph’s son, Etienne, and Hughie’s son, Jean. Boys, this is your auntie Honora.”
Bridget, Stephen, and Michael came into the kitchen just then, and what a grand clamor of laughing and crying we had as my children met their Keeley cousins and welcomed Uncle Patrick.
“And my brothers?” I asked Patrick when the ruckus receded a bit.
“Alive, Honora,” he said, “but being sensible men, they left a fifteen-hundred-mile winter journey to the young and foolish and those who don’t know any better.”
“And where’s our aunt Máire, the Snowy-Breasted Pearl?” asked Jean.
“Here.” Máire stood in the doorway. The boys rose. She looked at them for a long minute. “The Keeleys always were fine big men,” she said, and moved to embrace each of them.
“Patrick, thank you. Thank you,” I said.
Michael ran down for Paddy and Bridey and baby Mike. Stephen wanted to go over to get Jamesy and Maggie and the Langs.
“Later,” I said. “Etienne and Jean aren’t going anywhere. Neither is Patrick. Let them eat.”
Patrick told the story as we sat at the table after breakfast. He didn’t speak about the invasion or prison or nearly hanging, but he told us how he’d found the Keeleys. “A French fellow was in prison with me. He said some Irishmen lived on the Saint Lawrence River—two brothers, married to French girls—with a whole load of boys—and the fellow said they were called Kelly or Keeley. After I was released, I thought I’d go see if there really were Keeleys living there on the Saint Lawrence. The town was across from Grosse Île, and I thought, It could be. It could be.”
“Now I will tell,” said Etienne. “So into Berthier comes this buckskinned fellow.”
“Berthier? Is that your townland?” I asked.
“Our village, Berthier-sur-Mer, though our
mer
is the Saint Lawrence River.”
“Is there a strand?” I asked.
“There is. We’re fishermen in our village.”
“You would be. And your fathers?”
“The best,
les meilleurs
.”
“They would be,” Máire said.
“Well, this buckskinned one came to our church, Notre Dame-de-l’Assomption, and spoke to the
curé,
Abbé Bonnenfaant.”
“
Tried
to speak,” Patrick said. “My French, his English?” He shrugged.
“The
curé
knew
les irelandais
had married Cecilé Peltier and Eloise Gaumand, and even knew they were raising the children of a brother who died at Grosse Île.”
“Grosse Ile,” repeated Jean, and blessed himself.
“What’s Grosse Île, Mam?” Michael asked.
“A very sad place. Go on,” I said.
“So,” Etienne said, “he brought this fellow to our family.”
“I knew your brothers at once,” Patrick said to me. “Hughie’s the image of your da. Joseph looks more like your mother.”
“And you told them Mam and Da had died?”
“They knew,” Patrick said. “A Connemara fellow came through about ten years ago.”
If only Mam could have known her sons were alive with wives and children. I blinked my eyes against the tears.
Máire shook her head and sighed. “God rest them,” she said.
“So, a reunion,” Etienne said. “Our fathers cried, our mothers cried, our sisters cried, and we said we wanted to come to Chicago with Patrick.”
“So, you were coming to Chicago?” I asked Patrick.
“I was,” he said.
The sun was full up now. Etienne yawned and Jean’s eyes were closed.
“These boys are exhausted,” I said. “Stephen, put them in your room. Can Patrick go down with you, Paddy? Bridey?”
“He’s welcome,” Bridey said. She stood, the baby in her arms. Patrick started to say something, but Mike woke up and let out a yell.
“Great lungs on that fellow,” said Patrick. “That’s Michael’s grandson all right—how he looked at that age.”
“Really? He’s like my da?” Paddy said.
“He is,” said Patrick.
“Do you hear that, Mam?” Paddy said to me.
“Your uncle Patrick would know,” I said.
“I would,” he said.
“Now,” I said, “time to sleep, because, boys, you have twenty years to tell us about.”
“But I’m only seventeen,” said Jean.
“Even more reason for you to rest up.”
“We have letters for you,” Etienne said.
“Good. We’ll read them while you’re asleep. When you wake up, you’ll have boiled bacon and cabbage and pratties. You do eat Irish food, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Etienne. “Our fathers taught our mothers. They tried to add spices, but our fathers preferred the plain.”
“They would,” Máire said.
Patrick went down with Paddy, Bridey, and the baby. Etienne and Jean went into Stephen and Michael’s room, while Stephen left to get Jamesy and Maggie.
Máire and I sat in the kitchen, marveling together. No words needed. Sitting over our tea, smiling.
After a while, she said, “Patrick Kelly, Honora. I think he’s come home. If you want him to stay, he will.”
“Too late, Máire. He’s hardly said a word to me. He brought our nephews to us as a kind of farewell. Patrick will be heading off soon. You’ll see. He’ll never settle. He can’t.”
“Michael Kelly was on his way somewhere, too. He stopped for you, Honora.”
“But we were young.”
“Be young again.”
“I tried.”
“Try again.”
So. We had a feast true to the spirit of William Boy O’Kelly himself, an abundance of food, laughter, stories, and dancing to the reels Jamesy played on the pipes. All of my children here, so happy to welcome Hughie’s and Joseph’s sons. Their cousins knew a few good steps themselves.
Máire and I jigged together. Then Máire stopped. She went very quiet. She’s missing her sons and Gracie, thinking of Johnny Og. I squeezed her hand. She smiled and shook her head. “Ah well, I’ll be with Gracie soon.”
Patrick sat in his chair, the still point in the flow of family, not saying much and barely looking at me. Patrick had said he wouldn’t be able to go back to being the bachelor uncle visiting at Christmas if we put words on our feelings. He was right. And now he will leave.
Bridey came in from the bedroom carrying the baby. Paddy went over and took Mike from her. “I’ll go with you, Bridey.”
She touched his face. “Stay for a while. You’re enjoying yourself.”
He is. Years since I’d seen Paddy chatting and laughing, singing even. Is the war finally letting go of him?
“I’ll carry Mike down and come back,” Paddy said, laying the baby against his shoulder, bringing him over to me.
Mike opened his eyes—the same blue as his father and grandfather—and regarded this noisy family of his. He straightened in Paddy’s arms, big, nearly a year old now—a sturdy lad.
“Sleep well, Mike,” I said, and kissed his forehead.
“Say good night,” Bridey said.
Mike waved at us as Paddy carried him over to Patrick, who stretched out his finger to the baby. Mike grabbed it.
“His grandfather’s grip,” Patrick said.
Mike reached down and took a handful of the fringe on Patrick’s leather tunic. Mike let out a string of grunts and gasps at Patrick, struggling to tell him something.
“Speaking in code,” Patrick said. “A Fenian already.” A rush of laughter. Patrick had been so dour all night. Now he stood up. “I’ll be going, too,” he said.
“Where are you going?” Máire asked.
“I’m stopping at McKenna’s. James will want to refight the battle of Ridgeway and the invasion of Canada, and tell me the state of the Brotherhood.”
“I can tell you in one word,” Jamesy said. “Discouraged.”