The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (40 page)

In the midst of elaborate preparations, Kitty had been on the lookout all afternoon. As Myles did when his sisters came home from nursing school, he watched for Ned Delaney's Vauxhall—the only taxi in Enniskerry—to appear on the Carrigoona Road, which he could see for miles from his perch on the Rathdargan ridge.

Kitty wore a bright yellow dress with a brown belt—an outfit Myles had never seen before—and her dark, curly hair blew in the breeze. He'd never seen her look so beautiful, or so happy, smiling and laughing at things that weren't even funny. He guessed she was practicing her new routine.

Five-eight in her bare feet and a strong, athletic figure, Kitty knew how to make the most of her elegant good looks. This day she wore nylons and high heels that invited disaster on the farmyard cobblestones. The four surviving girls were away at nursing school, so the welcoming party was down to Myles and his mother.

Hour after hour he watched the Dundrum Road. Most of the cars just kept going, not making that right-hand turn at the crossroads for Rathdargan. Finally, after hours of lookout duty, he spotted Delaney's Vauxhall. It turned right. Knowing it had to be Jack, he sounded the alarm: “Here he comes! They just turned at Doyle's Cross.”

With the alert, Kitty went charging toward the lilac canopy, running the full 200 yards of winding sycamore laneway, uphill in her high heels. In that moment of euphoria, of hope against hope, all was forgiven: the abandonment; the drunken abuse; the deceptions and neglect. Once again Jack Hogan was being given a hero's welcome; Kitty's faithful heart greeted him as any loving husband coming home from a normal, essential breadwinning trip.

Myles couldn't stand it; he refused to join the parade. He expected to be coaxed, as usual, but Kitty hadn't even noticed his absence. He sat on the front steps, brooding, while Kitty and the border collies rushed to greet the prodigal father. By the time they emerged jubilantly through the gateway next to the farmhouse, 30 yards away, Myles had arrived at a plan of action.

His parents strode forward as in a wedding parade. Kitty had both of her arms locked around Jack's trim waist. Myles saw his matter-of-fact mother clinging to this stranger with a distant, dreamy look he'd never seen before. It was as if Jack had never left, as if the cover story had been true all along, and this loyal provider had just gone to the forge to have the mare shod.

Jack's white cotton shirt billowed in the wind and he carried a battered tan suitcase. He was tall and handsome, just as people had been telling Myles all his life. What if he'd been wrong? What if the stories were all true? Jack was laughing, full of life and basking in the glow of Kitty's adoration. They looked like a couple right out of
Failte
magazine, out for a stroll in the lush Wicklow countryside.

Kitty was cheerfully explaining why Myles hadn't been with the welcoming party at the road gate. Apparently he was shy. Finally, with a sharp change of tone, she turned toward Myles and issued one of her sharp commands: “Myles, come meet your father, right now!”

Myles stood up and walked slowly toward the stranger, working hard not to betray the terror he felt at what he was about to do. He felt his big, bold plan dissolve with each step, like a slow leak in his bike tire. They met about halfway to the farmhouse, just above the open spring well. The trickling of the running spout in the yard suddenly grew noisy. Myles had to stifle an urge to turn and run.

Their eyes met for the first time, father and son, searching, like boxers in an opening round. No trust; animal suspicion. Myles noticed his father had the same deep blue eyes and dimpled cheeks as himself. Now those older eyes twinkled with mischief, as if Jack were about to tell a hilarious joke.

He smiled at Myles conspiratorially, then reached in his pocket with crowd-pleasing deliberation, saying to no one in particular, “So this is my great big son. I brought you something I think you're gonna like . . .” With great flourish, he pulled out a gorgeous silver watch, a fashionable Timex. It had a chain about a foot long, with a silver T-buckle on the end. He held it high for all to admire, then lowered it to Myles's outstretched palm.

Without a word, Myles took the watch, gazed at it for a long few seconds, then threw it with all the force he could muster straight at his father's head, yelling, “I don't want yer watch! I don't want anythin' from ya! I wish ya'd just stay away from us . . .”

He didn't wait to see where the watch landed—just tore down the laneway toward his refuge, the garden, vaguely registering over his shoulder the flurry of apologies from his mother. “He's not like this at all. I don't know what got into him. Oh, Jack, please don't be upset. I'll talk with him . . . He'll apologize . . . I'm so sorry . . . I had no idea . . .”

Myles had learned from watching Kitty over the years that the best balm for upset is hard work. Now he threw himself into weeding the lettuce ridges, head down, back to the house, where he could hear the subdued voices of his parents. Then he heard footsteps on the garden path. Kitty was coming to reprimand him, to order him to apologize. He didn't turn around, just kept working, bracing for the verbal assault.

It never came. To his surprise, it was his father's voice that broke the silence: “This is a beautiful garden you've grown here, son. So clean. I used to plant lettuce and onions in this very same spot when I was your age. It's the sunniest place in the whole orchard. Did you know we used to call this ‘the orchard'? The field over the house used to be filled with apple trees—people would come from all over to pick them. The trees would be in full bloom right about now, all shades of pink and white. We had such great yield, we just gave them away for free. The cattle and pigs ate the rest.”

He kept up the monologue, squatting down in the row beside Myles in his polished shoes and white shirt, moving with him up the row. This went on for at least a half-hour, during which time Myles kept working but never looked at his father or said a word. The speaker might as well have been invisible. Finally Jack stood up, dusted off his pants, and mumbled something about needing to wash up for dinner before vanishing behind the orchard wall.

Myles waited till he heard the wooden gate close behind him, then broke into tears of confused rage that watered the fledgling lettuce plants, lasting till he finished the row, exhausted and afraid of facing his mother.

At last Kitty emerged, under the guise of picking scallions and lettuce for supper. To his surprised relief, she assured him that she was not upset, that she understood it would take time for him to get used “to having a man around the house.”

It was the last thing he needed to hear. His anger returned, surprising both of them: “I'm never gonna get used to it. We were doin' fine without 'im. And I'm not goin' to call 'im Da either, an' there's no use trying ta make me.”

“All right, a Cushla, I know this is hard for you. But I still expect you to show your manners and to be polite. There's no excuse for rudeness. Promise me that you won't let us down. Do this for me, please!”

Myles dug at his tear-stained face with two muddy fists, promised her without conviction, and went in to wash up for dinner. He was used to being without a father, but now it was beginning to look like he was about to lose his mother, too—at least the one he'd known up to now. Fine, maybe he'd just run away to England; that would show her about a “man in the house.” He could find work on the buildings; four of his cousins had already gone to Sheffield and they were only three years older.

Jack Hogan proved hard to resist; he had a magic about him that Myles felt drawn to. Even mundane tasks like shearing sheep or clipping the pony became occasions of performance and celebration. Everyone—men, women, and children, even the animals—seemed to vie for his attention. He was charming, entertaining, and loved to make people laugh.

Myles knew his father had won several singing competitions, both in Ireland and in England, but he had no idea what that meant. Then, on his second night home, Myles came to understand why Jack Hogan was known as “The Voice.”

With plenty of Guinness being passed around, conversations buzzing in the kitchen, the usual suspects had arrived to perform their party pieces. No one was paying much attention—everyone talking at once—until someone shouted, “Hush up! Jack is goin' ta sing.”

As if someone had hit a master switch, the house instantly falls silent. Jack stands up, steps confidently to the middle of the room, takes a deep breath, and launches.

His selection is Thomas Moore's classic, “She Is Far from the Land,” a song familiar to all.

From the first line, all Myles's resentments and plots for escape dissolve. His father's voice is unlike anything he's ever heard—sweet, enchanting, and almost like a musical instrument in its perfection. Like the rest of the audience, Myles finds himself swept up in the emotion of the moment, crushed by the grief, still embracing it with both ecstasy and anguish that he has never experienced with other singers. By the end of the first verse, several people, women and men, are openly weeping. Some are actually sobbing, shoulders heaving. Handkerchiefs are out, arms clasping shoulders in comfort, and Myles finds himself crying openly with the others, without self-consciousness.

The words, poetry sung from the heart, etched themselves in Myles's memory, words he would recite and sing in faraway places decades later:

 

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her, sighing:
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying!

 

In full performance persona, Jack swings toward the kitchen audience he'd had his back to for the first verse. His hands form a moving circle in front of him as he sings, making deliberate and lingering eye contact with each person as he delivers the next lines:

 

She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking;
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking

 

He had lived for his love, for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwined him,
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.

 

For the finale, he comes full circle, pauses for several seconds, then turns toward the finish. The silence is perfect as he hits the pièce de resistance.

 

Oh! Make her a grave, where the sunbeams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,
From her own loved Island of sorrow!

 

As Jack finishes on a caressing inflection of
sorrow,
his audience sits stock-still, mesmerized. Then come the tears, mingled with self-conscious giggles. The applause is long and loud, everyone on their feet, even Mick Murphy, who never rises unless to relieve himself or to go home. They are uniformly awestricken. Shouts of “No trouble taya, Jack! More! More! Give us ‘The Foggy Dew'” can be heard in the adjoining townsland.

Jack obliges, without coaxing, leading off with “The Foggy Dew,” then “Dawning of the Day,” “If I Were a Blackbird,” closing with a nationalist favorite, “The Croppy Boy.” He delivers his medley of ballads with the same fluid energy, the beautiful voice, the engaging presence. Long before the final song, Myles has been captured by his father's magnetic field, holding on to his jacket, proud to claim him as his very own da.

The ramblers notice the gesture and applaud that, too, long and loud. In the background Myles can see Kitty, beaming her approval as she busies herself with the tea.

The spring and summer flew by in a blur of manly activity. Myles spent hours with his da, just the two of them, working on blocked drains, collapsed fences, and overgrown hedges. Sometimes they just wandered around the farm, like two pals, taking stock of the dilapidation, while Jack displayed the same comedic skills as their aging neighbor, Andy Murphy—mimicry, jokes, foibles, legends—all in a day's work.

Jack seemed to have lots of money, spent it freely, and was in no hurry to find work outside the farm or new ways to provide for the family. No one questioned the source of his largesse. Irishmen often came home from England feeling flush and spending lavishly, even if they couldn't afford it. After all, Jack had been gone for over a decade and might have changed his ways. Rumor had it that he'd won the lottery in Birmingham. Another had it that he had a recording contract with Decca Records and had been given a big advance. Sure, wasn't he “a finer tenor than John McCormick”?

More remarkable still, he never touched a drop of drink all summer. Given the man's reputation, that was nothing short of a miracle. Jack brushed it off with a simple comment that drink “doesn't agree with me anymore” when pressed with “Sure one bottle of stout won't kill ya.”

Some days, instead of farm projects, they went hunting down in the lower meadows. At last Myles had his chance to do what he'd been dreaming about for years: show off Nell's skills and his own knowledge of game and fox habitat to his da. In turn, Jack taught him how to shoot the ancient single-barreled shotgun that had hung unused in the upstairs rafters. Kitty had warned Myles against the dire consequences of even touching the gun, though he sometimes sneaked in and played war games, pretending he was an IRA marksman, killing scores of British soldiers as they came swarming across Sugarloaf Mountain.

That was before Jack came home. Now he was allowed to take target practice openly in the orchard, using a thick wedge of oak nailed to an apple tree as a bull's-eye. Once he got used to the violent kick of the butt against his jaw—which knocked him flat the first time he pulled the trigger—he showed a lightning speed and accuracy that drew praise from all quarters. Soon Myles was bagging pheasant and rabbits weekly, beating his father to the mark when the dogs flushed the game from the furze.