Shannon (29 page)

Robert hovered. He tried to peer in at the bow windows but could see nothing because the rooms were dark and the light from the sky had not yet entered. He pressed gently on the yellow door; it seemed firmly shut. The great brass knob had been polished so brightly it seemed like a lamp in the dawn.

He turned the knob. The door moved as lightly as a feather, and he stalled in fright at his own audacity. Outside the door, on his right, shone another brass artifact: a bellpull. He tugged and heard a distant ringing.

Nobody answered. He entered a dim hallway. In the distance he saw a frill of light around the edges of a closed door. He walked toward this light along a dim long passage hung with pictures. This passageway led into a round lobby from which other corridors radiated. Straight ahead of him now was the door with the escaping light. He knocked and received no answer, but the door, unlatched, yielded to his knock, so he pushed it open— and looked into the glowing welcome of a large kitchen. A fire of wide logs danced in a wide hearth.

Is this a dream?
Robert looked all around. Everything he saw spoke the words
comfort, peace,
and
safety.
He had never seen a floor of red brick before,
red brick laid in a herringbone pattern, red bricks swept clean as a table. High, neat stacks of logs were piled on either side of the fireplace.

The wide hearth also contained two wooden settles of a kind he had only seen in New England. Those who sat on these wide high-backed benches every night would look at each other across the hearth. They must have done so for centuries, because the wood was as polished as gold.

Large food cupboards, painted cream with green trim, stood around the walls. One had chicken wire in the lower half; it had chicken wire because it contained chickens, tiny cheeping creatures, fluffing themselves and stumbling about in their warm little cage.

In the middle of the room stood a long table made of ordinary planks. He had never seen a wood so spotless; this was a timber called white deal, common all over the Irish countryside and capable of being scrubbed clinically clean, as this was. At one end of it stood a husband's large chair, standing slightly back, slightly aside, as if a man had recently eaten and gone out to work. Benches, wooden forms, ran down either side of the table; they gave no sign of recent occupation.

Along a high dresser that ran almost the length of one wall, row after row of gleaming cream-colored plates caught the red-and-orange light of the fire. On the shelf below them rested a long flat basket of eggs, to some of which wisps of straw adhered.

Best of all— and Robert had only read of this, never seen it— magical things hung from the raftered ceiling of the room: two dusty hams, half a dozen slabs of salt bacon, several hanks of voluptuous white onions, and other unidentifiable bundles that might have been herbs.

He stood there transfixed. The warmth of the fire lit his tired face— and then he suddenly realized that he had invaded somebody's home. Embarrassed and not a little fearful, he turned and left the kitchen, drawing the door closed behind him.

As he strode silently down the dark corridor, his eye caught something. He half stopped; he had no time to take it in fully, but it reached into him and laid a finger on his heart. He hurried on, hauled back the heavy front door, and stepped out into the dawn, and when he heard the gentle
click!
of the door behind him, he almost ran down the short curving avenue, across the little road, and back to the riverside path.

T
he later teenage years of Vincent Patrick Ryan passed in peace and quiet. He received abundant care and tenderness. A couple in Worcester, Massachusetts, whose own son had died of tuberculosis, took in Vincent and then legally adopted him.

On the first evening at dinner they said, “Every household has rules. But we hope that you'll absorb ours just from observing us.”

Within days they reflected upon their luck. This tall quiet boy responded to every kindness they could offer. He might not say much, but he found ways of showing his appreciation. His help in the house had an eloquence all its own. He kept an immaculate bedroom, took excellent care of his person, and rushed to assist with every domestic task.

“A paragon,” they said. “Such good behavior,” they said. “A model boy.”

Only one cloud passed over— his sisters came to visit. Vincent went into such a decline afterward that the adoptive parents wrote and told them— in careful, tactful terms— never to call again. “For reasons you already know, which we do not— at this moment— need to reconsider, Vincent is trying hard to build a new life.” The threat implicit in the
words
at this moment
sufficed, and he never again heard from a member of his family.

His new life contained massive promise. Vincent excelled at school, in almost every subject. He came out top of the class again and again; he read voraciously, and although he kept to himself he delighted in helping classmates.

At home, he studied into the night, always in consideration of the household's activities. He became as fully a child of his adoptive parents as though they had conceived and borne him. Their life became his life, and within weeks the need for any steering, any corrective touch on the rudder, fell away.

They had always had a good social life: bridge, library volunteers, country club. Vincent fitted in seamlessly. He met their friends, who found him charming if quiet and said to his parents how much they looked forward to his maturity, when those boyish good looks became fixed. And when not at Sunday lunch with his new parents, listening keenly, saying little, they knew he was at home, studying or completing some chores.

Two lacunae materialized: no sport and no social life. For each of these gaps he had an answer, delivered in his quiet way in excellent English.

“My knowledge of my own physical ability is too uncertain. I am happy for the moment to concentrate on studies. When I feel that I can also excel at sport, I shall choose something.” Football? they wondered, given his physique. “Perhaps,” he said.

The priest who had been assigned to look him over now and then believed his avoidance of sport “might have something to do with, you know, the physical abuse, doesn't want his body hurt anymore.”

Vincent's adoptive parents, eager and gracious people, nodded understandingly

As to the second lacuna, Vincent had a reply that charmed them.

“I understand your concern. But I do have a social life; I have my life with you. This is where I want to be in the evenings and at weekends.”

If they speculated as to what he thought about things, they put it away, grateful for the smooth and good presence he supplied. If they wondered why he stared at the wall— when not reading— for such long
hours, they put it down to teenage daydreams. If they felt anxious at the length of his solitary walks, they got over it when he returned with a small gift: an unusual stone or branch, a country fruit, flowers, or perhaps a description of something that he had seen.

When he was eighteen, his academic results startled all who knew him. In science he received the top marks in the state of Massachusetts; in mathematics he was in the top 5 percent. Nor could his other scores be faulted; not one was below 90 percent. Which raised the question: What next?

Then came the only major discomfort his new parents experienced in the years they had been raising him. “Vincent Patrick,” as his adoptive mother insisted on calling him, would not—could not—enter into discussions of his future. Not for a moment would he think of what he might do; not for a second would he contemplate a career, a life. They applied no pressure— but they did invite a friend, one of the school principals, to dinner.

It yielded no result; Vincent Patrick would not—could not—focus and the conversation faded. When he had gone to his room after dinner— with, as ever, perfect courtesy to the adults— they discussed his reluctance. The teacher advised that they go back to basics and talk to clergy who knew the original family.

She said, “The word the other students use about him in school is
solitary.
He mixes little.”

“We know,” said the anxious parents.

“And when other children make that observation about a peer, it usually means that the condition is greater than they're saying.”

“We understand,” said the concerned parents.

“And his reluctance to talk about his future may mean— and I'm only guessing here— that he's fearful of engaging. In the world outside school he'll have to show people who he is.”

“Ah,” said his parents— and wrote next day to the clergy who had kindly stayed in touch all these years.

With good timing, two priests arrived, one of them the man who had overseen the transfer from the Ryan home to this house. Vincent Patrick, regular as a clock, had gone on his long Saturday morning walk. In his absence they listened and they talked and they decided: Perhaps Vincent
Patrick should be offered a place in the seminary? The devout parents agreed.

He began his studies for the priesthood that fall, and with it he combined the next level of education. In college, too, he excelled. The “social problem” did not, however, evaporate; he mixed infrequently, and he said little and took no part in sport. There was no fault with his courtesy, though, or his punctuality, or his personal standards, or his seeming devoutness.

For two years he— once again— conducted his life along ideal lines. Even his weekly confessions, obligatory for all students and typically filled with lurid half-baked thoughts, contained nothing but Vincent's mild notions of his own transgressions: carelessness in attention at a lecture, lack of ardor in trying to work harder, forgetting to write home.

His self-effacement intensified. At the age of twenty-one he could be found in the seminary only if searched for; this big, impeccably turned-out young man kept himself to himself so much he often could not be seen.

Also at the age of twenty-one his life altered. As he walked down a corridor one day, a couple of the students teased him about a scarf he was wearing. Vincent Patrick Ryan especially liked this muffler. It had been a birthday gift from his adoptive mother and he had specifically requested it: Black and gray stripes almost merged, separated only by a fine line of pink. He didn't know that it reminded these students of a local school with a poor reputation.

“Hey, Vin, are those your school colors?”

“I didn't know you went there.”

“They're gorillas.”

“That'd figure.”

So ran the banter.

Afterward the Dean of Studies asked Vincent Patrick Ryan to describe what had happened and he could not remember. They sent him to his room. By morning he was running a high fever so they took him to the infirmary. The seminary doctor was called and he said that the young man had all the signs of a stroke— but it might be a false symptom, a reaction to a hysterical outburst. They took Vincent Patrick Ryan to the hospital, where he stayed a week with no lasting effects. When he was discharged, his parents took him home.

The Dean of Studies visited and Vincent Patrick Ryan never returned to the seminary. To create an outlet for his strength and energy his adoptive father enrolled him in a nearby gymnasium, where Vincent Patrick Ryan applied himself with the same zeal to his physical health as he had to his studies. One of the two students who had teased him lay in a coma for six weeks; the other had to have his lower jawbone reset.

With the house of the yellow door behind him and his visit there undetected, Robert breathed again. By now, the shy advance of dawn had fully spread its light. The path rambled between the river and a small country road, toward which Robert cast an eye every hundred yards or so. He walked on, wary but not anxious. All around him the vegetation provided deep cover, should he need to avoid a repeat of last night's fright.

Less troubled by hunger than he had expected, he kept up a good pace for almost two hours. Rising ahead, he could see a new and deeper forest. As he entered its arch of trees, a noise rang out, a metallic
ching!
at the core of a
thud!
Walking forward, peering into the trees, Robert caught the flash of a blade.

He knew he had to get through the wood to continue his journey.
Should I call out? As
he slowed down and began to ease his way through the trees, he at last saw the ax and the man swinging it.
Should I press ahead and ignore the woodcutter?
The man had by now made a deep white-yellow wedge low down in the bole of a tree.

The forester saw Robert, lowered the ax, and waved a hand. Then he leaned back, wiping his brow with a shirtsleeve; on closer view Robert guessed the man to be about his own age, certainly no more than mid-thirties.

As Robert approached, the forester said conversationally, “ ‘Tis like a fight. The youngest ones is the hardest to knock down.”

Robert said, “Why take it down if it's young?”

“Ah, the beetle. You've to get it fast. There's this four here, but I think I have ‘em all.”

By now Robert's translation skills had grown, and he knew the forester meant that he had so far identified four infested trees in this section of the wood.