The Crow of Connemara (10 page)

He sat there in the dimness, listening to the chatter from downstairs echoing up the staircase. His guitar was there, leaning against a wall—his mother had insisted that he bring it along. He unzipped the gig bag and held it, closing his eyes and strumming a few aimless chords.

“A wee bit overwhelming, is it?” It nearly sounded like the dream-woman's voice, in her lilting Irish accent, but then he realized with a start that the voice had come from the doorway of his room. He opened his eyes to see Aunt Patty standing there. In one hand, she was holding a small, leather-bound book, like the moleskin notebooks he'd seen in stationery stores and bookstores, except that this one appeared to be old and battered; her other hand was closed around something, though all he saw was the long loop of a silver chain hanging from between her fingers.

“Yeah,” he told her, putting the guitar aside. “A wee bit. I thought I'd escape up here for a few minutes.”

“Your room looks nice.”

“It looks like Mom's vision of what she wanted my room to look like back when I was a teenager. Which it never, of course, actually looked like.”

She gave him an understanding nod, then came into the room and sat on the bed alongside him. “I brought a couple things for you,” she said. “First, hold out your hand . . .”

Colin did so, and Aunt Patty turned her closed one over his, opening her fingers. Something fairly heavy dropped into his palm; in his hand was a green, crystalline stone about the size of his top thumb joint. The stone hadn't been cut into facets, but was polished and transparent enough that one could see into its crannied depths. It was set in filigreed silver, with the fine chain put through a loop at the top. The gem seemed to hold aquamarine ribbons of color within it, and the stone was warm in his hand—most likely from Patty's hand, he thought. “What's this?” he asked.

“Your grandfather—Daiddeó Rory—brought that stone from Ireland when he came. He always had a habit, whenever he went somewhere new and memorable, or if something unusual happened, to pick up a rock and bring it back with him. He always said it helped him remember where he was and what he was thinking then.” Aunt Patty laughed. “I picked up the same habit. Whenever I'm traveling somewhere, I'll find a rock—any old rock, actually, though I do try to find an interesting one—and bring it back with me.”

“That explains all the rocks I remember on your bookshelves. So Daiddeó Rory brought this one to the States when he came here?”

Aunt Patty nodded, then sat on the bed alongside him. Her fingers caressed the stone in Colin's hand. “Strange,” she said. “I only found that pendant a few days ago, but I've never had it out of my hand or off my neck since then. It was like I was supposed to have it.”

“Then keep it,” Colin said. He held it out to her. “I don't need it.”

Aunt Patty shook her head. Reaching out, she closed her fingers around the pendant. “This is going to sound strange, but as soon as I walked in here and saw you, I
knew
you were supposed to have it. Not me.”

“And how did you know that?”

Aunt Patty shrugged. She didn't answer directly. “I also brought this for you,” she said, handing him the notebook. He took it from her, turning it over in his hands. The cover was well worn, the leather nearly worn away and frayed at the edges, and the paper had the yellow of age and the griminess of much handling. Colin opened it and glanced at the first page where, in faded sepia ink and an ornate handwritten cursive, he saw a title and subtitle.
The Light of Other Days: The Story of My Wanderings.
“That's your Daiddeó Rory's journal,” Aunt Patty told. “He started it back when he was growing up in Ireland; it ends a year after he came to the States, when he met your Maimeó Bridgett. I only found it a few days ago, shoved in back of some other books on the bookshelves. Strange, all the years it had been sitting there. I must have missed it a dozen times in the past. The chain of the pendant was wrapped around the book.” Aunt Patty had inherited the O'Callaghan house after Colin's grandparents died, and she and Rebecca lived there. The house was still much the same as Colin remembered it from his childhood, with large rooms and many bookcases stuffed with books. He could well imagine that a notebook like the one he now held could have been lost among the other volumes.

“I thought I'd pass it on to you to read,” Aunt Patty continued. “You're the most like Daiddeó Rory of all of us. I think you'll find it interesting. All of it's interesting, but I think I'd start reading it around the September 4th of 1947 entry first, if I were you. It explains, or at least I think it does, that emerald or whatever it is I just gave you. I think you're supposed to have both of these—when I read the journal, I kept hearing your voice in my head. Somehow I think Daiddeó Rory intended you to be the one to read this.”

“Thanks, Aunt Patty,” he told her. He put the stone in the pocket of his suit coat and patted the cover of the notebook. “I'll take a look at it.”

Another nod. Aunt Patty put her hand on his, on top of the journal. “I saw you and Tommy talking. I assume he's told you about . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Yep. He did.”

Her fingers pressed his. “And did he ask you to stay, to work on his campaign?”

“That, too.”

“He meant that. He could use the help, and he could use the support. Did you give him an answer?”

“Said I'd think about it.”

“Ah.” The exhalation held sentences. There was almost a satisfaction in it.

“I was serious about that,” he said, almost defensively. “I'm considering it. Maybe it's time I did something for the family.”

“There's family you're born with, and there's family that you choose and make yourself.”

“What are you saying, Aunt Patty?”

She squeezed his fingers again. “I'm saying that it's good you're thinking about things, that's all.”

“Jen been talking?” he asked.

“No. I can tell just by looking at you. You're a lot like my dad—he was one of those restless souls, too. And he kept secrets just like you.” She glanced at the guitar on the bed. “That's what you always wanted to do, more than anything else.”

“So what do you think I should do now?”

She shrugged. “I think it's up to you, honey,” she said. “One thing I can remember your Daiddeó Rory telling me when I was about your age is to never let anyone else make decisions for you, because you'd never be happy with them. I take it you've discovered that for yourself.”

Colin chuckled at that. “Yeah, I kinda have. And Grandpa always had a saying for every occasion.”

“That he did. He'd tell you to always listen to your heart: ‘That may not make you rich, but it'll make you happy,' he used to say. I always thought it a silly saying, except for the times I didn't follow the advice. And I think, with you, that your heart will speak loudly enough that you'll be able to hear it plainly.”

Colin looked at the stained leather cover of the journal on his lap. “Following your heart . . . I always wondered why Daiddeó Rory never went back to Ireland to visit, since he always talked so much about it.”

“He always told me he'd found enough Ireland here to keep him content, and that there was too much of the rest of the world to explore,” Patty told him. “But then I found the journal, and now I wonder myself.”

Colin cocked his head toward his aunt, waiting, but she only smiled at him as she released his hand and stood. “Read the journal when you get a chance and you'll see what I mean. In the meantime, I'm going downstairs to brave the crowd and see how your mom, Jen, and Tommy are holding up. You coming?”

“I'll be down in a minute.”

“Take your time. But not too long. Your mother was looking around for you. She wanted you to sing something, I think.” She smiled. “‘Danny Boy,' probably.”

He sighed. “I'll be down.” Aunt Patty nodded again and left him. He heard her padding down the stairs toward the roar of the wake. He picked up the guitar by the neck and swung it around in front of him again. He put his fingers in position, but played nothing. After a few moments, he gave up. He picked up his grandfather's notebook, jammed it into the pocket of his suit coat with the green jewel, put the Gibson back in the gig bag, and followed Aunt Patty downstairs.

“You sounded good, Colin,” Aaron said as he drove back to Jen's after the reception. He glanced into the rearview mirror toward Colin, in the back seat of the car with his guitar. “Jen told me you had a decent voice, but I had no idea just how good it was. You had everyone's attention, and for good reason.”

“Actually,” Jen interjected as Aaron made the turn onto I-90, “I think you've improved a lot since I last heard you. Everyone shut up when you started to sing, even in the other rooms. That's quite a gift.”

“I'm loud,” Colin answered. “Lots of playing in noisy clubs, and you learn how to sing over conversations.”

Jen gave a snort of amusement, but shook her head. “It was more than that, little brother. Like Aaron just said, you're good.”

“Even if one of the songs was ‘Danny Boy,'” Aaron added, grinning back toward Colin in the mirror. “I suspect that for you that's like playing ‘Hava Nagila' at Jewish functions—it's expected, even required, but the musicians hate it.”

Colin nodded. “Pretty much. The words were written by an Englishman, anyway, even if the tune's Irish. But Dad liked it.” He would have said more, but with the words, the feeling of loss rose up again and choked him. He leaned back against the seat, and his hand brushed against the journal in his suit jacket's pocket. He reached his hand in, closing his fingers around the pendant as Aaron slid into the late traffic.

It was just after midnight. Colin had expected his mother to ask him to stay with her at the house and he'd already decided that he had no option but to stay: leaving his mother alone in the house for the first time wasn't something he wanted on his conscience. Aunt Patty—perhaps sensing that conflict—had spoken up as people were starting to leave, saying she was tired and a little hung over, and was going to stay there in Colin's old room, and that Colin should go home with Jen again. Colin had shot her a grateful look; she had smiled back at him.

Now he sat back and listened to Jen and Aaron talk softly to each other. He enjoyed watching them, looking like an old established couple that already had their own shorthand. Aaron's hand was on Jen's neck; he saw her lean her head down to her shoulder to capture his fingers. “Thanks for being with me tonight,” he heard Jen say. “I really needed you there.”

“Where else would I be?” Aaron answered.

“I'm going to miss him so much . . .” Her voice trailed off in a sob she quickly cut off, and Aaron pulled her to him, his arm around her shoulder.

They were mostly silent after that, each caught up in their own thoughts and grief.

It wasn't until they were back at Jen's, that Colin had a chance to open the notebook again. He flipped through the pages until he found the September 4th entry, and started to read what his grandfather had written.

He got very little sleep that night.

11

E
X
CERPTS
FROM
the Journal of Rory O'Callaghan

September 4, 1947:

I met the strangest, yet most interesting woman today.

I've decided to stay a few days in Roscommon before moving on. Today I was out roaming, just wandering the paths around the tumbledown ruins of the medieval Roscommon Castle just outside the township. I thought I was alone, for I saw no one else about as I approached the ruins. Today was a gorgeous one, with a sky the color of a deep lake overhead, and clouds like fine lace floating through it. I'll admit I was staring upward past the ruins to the clouds, imagining that they were ships and aerial ramparts, and I nearly bumped into a fine bit of stuff who was sitting on a hillock near the lake, overlooking the south turret of the old castle. She laughed at my gawking and my awkwardness, and I, shamefaced, spread my hands in apology.

She was no one I knew from the town, though I certainly haven't been so long in Roscommon to have seen enough of the townsfolk to really be certain. I did notice immediately that she had the most lovely eyes: grass-green pupils flecked with darker emerald, set under strands of long midnight hair. I judged her age to be close to mine, and the smile she gave me could make the very sun jealous.

I'll admit that I found myself wanting to know her better, as if her presence somehow filled an emptiness I didn't even know I had inside me. Sure, I'd had girlfriends aplenty before I'd started wandering, but none of them had struck me like this—as if I were supposed to have met her, as if I'd somehow already known her, though writing these words now, that already sounds like overblown, poetic blathering. But it's true, nonetheless. It's nothing I would have said to her, but I can say it here, where no one else but me will ever read it.

“'Tis a lovely day,” she said to me, still laughing, “one where watching the clouds is certainly better than watching the feet, but more dangerous, 'twould seem.” That started our conversation. She gestured to the ground next to her and I sat, and we must have conversed for an hour or more. I learned that her name was Máire, and that she was here with several of her family, who'd come to County Roscommon from the east up near Tara, she told me, and with each minute I felt that odd connection growing inside me.

I could hardly bear it when she said that she must leave.

I offered to walk Máire back into town, but she said her people weren't staying there. I offered to escort her to wherever it was she was staying, but she refused me, though with laughter and more smiles. “If yeh happen to come here tomorrow at noon,” she told me, “then yeh might find me again, if yeh want.” And with that invitation, she left me, walking away through the grass to the north, away from the town. I watched her go until she passed through a hedge and was gone from sight.

For the rest of the day, I've been able to think of little but that promised tomorrow. For now, my intention to leave Roscommon and continue on my walk to the west is forgotten. I think I'll see what else the lass might have to say to me.

September 5, 1947:

Máire was waiting for me at the castle ruins today at noon, as she'd promised. I'd brought along a picnic lunch from the grocers in the square, hoping that I'd find her, and we spread out the cheeses, bread, cut meats, and beer on a small blanket. A brace of ducks flew noisily overhead to land on the lake, and Máire laughed, mockingly covering her head as they passed us, so close we could have nearly touched them. The day was another like the one before, the world displaying an exceptional warmth and beauty. Everything was emerald and jade around us: the grass on which we sat, the mossy blanket on the stones of the old castle, the hedges lining the path, the trees just beyond.

We talked of everything and nothing. Máire wanted to know why I was here in Roscommon, and I told her how my feet had become impatient with being in one place, and how on my sixteenth birthday, I'd left Wicklow where I'd been born and raised, left my parents and my siblings and started my long trek, first south into Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Clare to see the sights there, then following the River Shannon north until I reached the very heart of our country in Roscommon. I even showed her this journal, where I've been writing down my little adventures, though I wouldn't let her read it.

I told her that I intend to continue walking north into Donegal, then wander down through Sligo and Mayo until I reach Galway, and from there, having put as much of Éire as I could hold into my heart and memories, I plan to take ship to America to see what might await me there.

I asked Máire about her own past, but she was strangely coy and shy about that. Instead, we talked mostly about Éire and the old ways and how things had changed slowly over the centuries. It was then that I felt a deeper sadness inside Máire, and she seemed far older than she was. “So many have left the country,” she said. “The west, especially, is desolate, with empty villages everywhere, the houses all roofless and ruined, just like the old beliefs that the people there once held. And now yeh talk of leaving, just like the rest of 'em. 'Tis sad that makes me.”

I asked her if she ever thought of leaving Ireland herself and she shook her head, her hair swirling around her like a storm cloud. “I will stay here forever in Éire,” she answered me, “and one day I'll fall asleep and never wake up.”

“Like the fairy folk under their mounds,” I ventured, and she smiled.

“Aye, very like them,” she responded.

We spent the afternoon like that until she said that she had to go. I once more offered to escort her back to her family, but again she refused. But when we packed up our lunch and were ready to part, she pressed herself against me and kissed me so deeply that I could hardly breathe for the sweetness of her lips. That, let me say here, was grand. “So tell me, Rory O'Callaghan,” she asked when the kiss ended, still smiling. “In all yer travels, how many young lasses have done the same for yeh, or perhaps even have lain with yeh among the soft grass and flowers?”

I could feel meself blush at that. “There were a few,” I admitted—which was the case, as I've noted before in this journal. There were some who found romantic my story of traveling, and I'll confess that I didn't stop their advances, even if I also continued on without the lass the next day. I was thinking that perhaps this time it might be different. “But the vision of any of 'em is gone from me now. Yeh stole it from me entire, and now I can't even recall what they looked like.”

She gave me that laugh of silver and gold again. “Ah, and yeh've the gift of the devil's tongue, too, Rory O'Callaghan. I want to know—when will yeh be leaving here?”

“I've no plans a'tall,” I told her, which was only the truth, especially now.

“Yeh said yeh wanted to go north,” she said. “Yeh've heard of Rathcroghan, near the village of Tulsk?” I nodded that I did. “In three days, yeh'll find me there close to the mound. Will yeh be there?”

I nodded again, and she gave me another kiss. “Then I'll be waiting for yeh there, me Rory, and there I might lay with yeh like those other lasses,” she said.

I think it's to Rathcroghan, then, that I'll be going next.

September 8, 1947:

Rathcroghan looms large in Irish history, despite being rather neglected out in County Roscommon as it is, and hardly as well-known or well-visited as Tara or Newgrange in the east. Rathcroghan is said to be where the king and queen of the Connachta, Ailill and Medb from the Ulster Cycle, ruled—at least that's what the locals all say. If so, the splendor of their ancient home has been much diminished by the centuries.

Even before I'd met Máire, I'd thought of passing by Rathcroghan just to see it. Truthfully, this morning I was regretting that impulse and the promise I'd made Máire.

When I first saw it, the great mound of Rathcroghan was standing forlorn in a gray rain under a low gray sky. It was hardly impressive, a dull green bulge in the midst of an equally dull pasture bordered by the ubiquitous stone fences. Whatever glorious structures had once stood there back in ancient times, they've all vanished now, erased by time and the relentless Irish rain until only the elevation itself was left.

I swear that the rain was trying to erase me as well. All the morning, I'd biked along the road in foul dirty weather that managed to trickle through every crevice and cranny in the oilcloth I wore, and there'd even once been a flash of distant lightning accompanied by a grumble of thunder—a true rarity in Ireland, I must say. My pants were soaked from the knees down, the socks in my boots were sodden, and my woolen cap was as wet as the hair underneath it. I was beginning to despair at ever having agreed to this meeting as I leaned my bike against the fence and began walking through the muck toward the mound, my head down against the windblown pellets of water that were as hard as handfuls of thrown pebbles. I was sneezing already, the cold settling into my chest.

No lass could possibly be worth this, I'll admit I muttered to myself. I was thinking I should have found a lodging in town, spent the night, and been on my way in the morning, traveling still farther north. I should have left her like I left all the others.

I was certain that Máire wouldn't be here, not in this damnable weather. For all I knew, she'd sent me on a fool's chase and was chuckling at the thought of me looking for her out in this bucketing.

I vowed that I'd go to the mound so that I could say I fulfilled my promise, and that unless Máire appeared there within a few minutes, I'd return to the bike and find myself a place for the night, preferably with a pub close by where a few drams of whiskey would burn away the chill.

I trudged over the field, where sheep regarded me as if I were some mad creature which, no doubt, I certainly appeared to be. They lurched away startled and glared at me with reproachful eyes as I came near. My feet seemed to weigh several stone more by the time I reached the foot of the mound, my boots caked with grassy mud, though at least I couldn't get significantly wetter than I was already. I stopped there, sniffing, and wondering if I should climb the grassy slope so I could survey the area for Máire (undoubtedly involving slipping and having to go to hands and knees to finish the climb), when I saw movement to my left. She was there, her feet somehow unencumbered by the clumps of mud I'd dredged from the field, and her cloak and clothing mostly dry under a large umbrella. “And how are yeh this fine day, Rory O'Callaghan?” she called out to me.