In the Province of Saints Read online

  Flaherty called after us. You’re lucky, Padraig. You’re lucky I’m a forgiving man else you would have been in jail a long time ago and not just mucking up pig shit. After everything else, think of the boy, Padraig, and what else he’d have to be proud of.

  The rain came down faster and harder and my father pulled up his collar and bundled me against his side. He lifted me with a tremendous strength I remembered from when I was a child; I was much too big for it now, yet he did it anyway. He staggered, half ran up the lane until Flaherty’s voice fell away behind us. Father’s heart thumped loudly as I banged against his chest and ribs, and his feet hammered the lane. He held me tighter, so tight the rain could not touch me, so tight I could hear nothing at all, and still in that impenetrable space, I could smell Father’s fear.

  Weeks passed and, no longer indebted to Flaherty, Father’s mood improved. The killing of Flaherty’s sheep seemed a thing of the past. He even began to take Blackie rabbit hunting in the evenings as Molly and I did our homework at the kitchen table, and when Blackie didn’t take to it, Father seemed strangely disappointed that there was nothing to bond him to the dog.

  It was dark and a frost had descended upon the fields when they came in from their last hunt. I’d just turned the telly off and the clock ticked quietly over the mantel. Mother had been crying again and had gone to bed early; Molly stayed up with me watching The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne, and then after heating water for a hot water bottle, she, too, had gone to bed, dipping her hand in the font in the hall and blessing herself before climbing the stairs.

  Do you still pray, Molly? I asked. The thought had come to me as I watched her.

  Sometimes, y’know?

  I nodded.

  Yourself?

  She stood on the first step, holding the banister. It was dark at the end of the hall, and darker still above the stairs, and in that dark space her nightdress shimmered. There was a draft coming in the back door and I imagined she must be cold, and yet still she waited. I couldn’t make out her face, and turned back to the telly. Sometimes, I said. Sometimes I do as well.

  Father looked cold, and I helped him with his damp Wellingtons. He took off his wool hat, and his normally bushy hair lay flat against his head. The thin legs of rabbits stuck from his gunnysack.

  He handed me the gun as he rolled off his socks. What are you doing up? he asked.

  It’s Saturday, I said.

  Oh aye, so it is. He seemed surprised. It’s quare strange, all my days seem to be running together.

  How was Blackie? I asked.

  Father shook his head but smiled. Feckin useless, he said.

  He put away the gun, hung three gutted carcasses in the scullery by the back door, and propped a metal drip bucket beneath them. From his pack he took a flask of tea laced with whiskey. Normally he would have cleaned the gun first. The dog followed him into the living room where a fire blazed in the grate, dropped himself before it, and closed his eyes. Father sat on the sofa and, as he sipped from his flask, stared at the dog.

  Perhaps you’ll do better with the pheasants, he suggested aloud, and Blackie lifted his ears with the sound. Father stretched his back, then twisted the cup onto the flask.

  Ah, sure, you’re a good dog, aren’t you? he said. A good dog. He reached forward and stroked Blackie gently along his back, and Blackie stretched beneath the touch. I turned the telly back on, and Father put his feet up and lay back. Some time passed, and both dog and Father fell asleep. As the hours turned, I threw more coal on the fire, switched the telly off, and listened to the both of them snoring softly and pleasantly in the dark. Then, beneath that, came the sound of Mother moving endlessly across the floors above.

  I traced her footsteps back and forth across the ceiling, back and forth in wider and then smaller circles and then there was silence as if she had finally become tired, as if she might have cried herself asleep. But as sleep overcame me her footsteps began again, faster and madder than ever.

  October 1977

  It was the end of the potato picking and farmers were looking for help bringing the turnips in. Yet when Molly and I saw Flaherty’s Rover parked outside our gate, I knew it was not a good sign. Molly exhaled. Jay, he can’t want any more from Daddy, can he? What’s it about this time?

  He was at the kitchen table with Father again. Blackie lay quietly on the floor before them. I saw that Flaherty was drinking tea and that Father had the digestive biscuits out. Flaherty was wearing his Wellingtons; once more, there was mud tracked all the way to the kitchen. Flaherty eyed me as Molly and I hung our satchels in the scullery.

  Howya Michael, Howya Molly, Flaherty said.

  Hello, Mr. Flaherty, Molly said. Blackie’s tail thumped the floor and I knelt beside him so that he would not rise and cause a commotion.

  How’s the dog? he asked, and I saw Father’s face tighten.

  He’s brilliant, I said.

  Fine dog. Did you train it yourself? He smiled but I saw no humor to it; he was enjoying himself. I was just telling your daddy the difference between dogs and men, so I was. Of course he hears me telling it to him all the time while he’s working with me pigs, but sometimes I have to remind him. Do you know what it is, Michael? The difference between dogs and men? Father cleared his throat loudly and Flaherty looked back at him.

  Well, then, Flaherty said. He put back his tea and rubbed his hands together. I’d best be on my way.

  No rest for the wicked, Father said.

  No rest, Flaherty agreed. We could always use another hand over at the yards if you’re interested.

  Father nodded, and I could tell he was thinking, But will you pay me, you bastard?

  I’ll think about it, he said.

  Do that.

  Flaherty rose from the table and gestured with his head as I patted Blackie.

  Your daddy suggested that dog might have coursin blood in him, wha? He grinned. I’m always lookin for a dog that can go the mile.

  He’s no coursin dog, I said, and my father looked at me sharply.

  You never know, you never know, but sure, you might consider it. Flaherty paused as if he were about to say something further, then nodded to himself and went out the door.

  When he was gone I turned to Father. What was that about? I asked.

  Father shook his head. Ah, it was nothing, Michael. Just the end of it, that’s all. The bloody end of it.

  A week later when Molly and I rode our bikes up from school, we saw Uncle Oweny’s Morris Minor pulled into the ditch beyond our gate. It lay concealed beneath the overhanging hedgerows, its engine ticking over as it cooled. White petals from the cherry blossom trees had fallen across the hood and scattered the gun-gray metal, giving it a certain sense of sanctity.

  We leant our bikes against the wall and I made for the gate. As we came down the gravel, Father and Oweny were leaving the house with Blackie. There was a sudden tightness in my chest and I ran to them. Not my dog! I shouted. Not my dog. I’ll pay for what he did, I will, I swear—please.

  I lunged toward the leash but Oweny held it tight.

  Now, now, Michael. He squeezed my shoulder with his left hand; his arm was locked at the elbow and he would let me no closer to Blackie. It’s for the best, he said. Your father is right about this.

  I glared at Father and he looked at me for a moment before speaking to Molly. Go into the house and tell your mother to put the supper on the table.

  But, Da —.

  We’ll be right in, so. Go on.

  Molly slung her satchel angrily over her shoulder and stomped down the gravel. At the door she looked back to make sure I was okay and then entered the house.

  I knelt and wrapped my arms about Blackie’s chest and hugged him tight. He licked at my face and then squirmed and I let him go. Oweny gave the leash a tug, and although Blackie was not used to a leash, had never been on one, he obediently followed Uncle Oweny up the gravel, to the car.

  The sun was setting above the hedgerows and the soft light o
f twilight forming; Blackie seemed eager to go off across the fields, as he had with my father all the last fortnight. If Oweny had his gun, it would have been the perfect time for the two of them to go rabbit hunting, before the light faded altogether. The road before them shimmered slick and shiny from an early rain.

  Oweny opened the driver’s door, and then looked back before he climbed in. Michael, he called, it’s better this way. Blackie’s going to a better place. Trust me, your father is right. This is the only way the dog can live, otherwise he’d have to be shot. Oweny settled into the car and then they drove away, off down the country road, the old Morris bottoming out in the potholed macadam and shuddering as Oweny shifted gears.

  I leant against the gate stone. Father stared after the car. I expected a look of satisfaction upon his face but there was none. Instead, he seemed very tired.

  Blackie was my dog, I said. You had no right. You didn’t even tell me.

  Sure, it’s done now, the damage is done. The dog had to go, I wasn’t going to argue with you about it. Flaherty wouldn’t have it any other way, Michael. I’m sorry, but I’m bleedin sick of the whole affair. It’s over, it’s done, Flaherty has got his blood.

  I hate you, I said but there wasn’t much feeling to it.

  Sure, doesn’t everyone.

  The car reached the bend of the road, turned, and was gone, but Father continued to stare nonetheless. I could hear it still, whining down the Rowan road.

  Father sighed and ran a hand through his thick hair. Your mother will have the tea on, he said. You’d best go and wash up. He looked at me for a response, but I continued to lean my head on the stone. I sensed him near me, and then a hand was on my shoulder. I wanted to strike his hand away, but instead I turned from the wall, and he pulled me against him. He bent and rested his head atop mine as I shook.

  It’s done now, Michael, he said. He patted me and stepped back. His own eyes were red. I know you hate me, he said, and I looked at him. His eyes were open and waiting and expectant.

  When are you leaving for America? I asked.

  He inhaled deeply, turned his head as if he had just been slapped. Without another word, he headed to the house.

  I stared at the fields, full and thick and in need of threshing. I tried to trace the distant roads Oweny would take home, the hills the car would sputter on, the glens where it would become cooler, the tractors and cows that would block his way as he turned the sharp bends and spirals. Once he crossed the Rowan bridge, the river would be on their right, and then, when they reached Oweny’s, it would curl before them. Blackie would smell the river as it rose and fell and, perhaps, because he’d be so near to it, he’d even smell the sea.

  A wind lifted at the undersides of the hedgerows. The sky was darkening. The sound of the Angelus came from the house, and all across the country everything seemed stilled by it. Lugh would soon be coming up the road on his old push-bike, and Flaherty’s fool dogs would begin their baying. I headed in for the supper.

  The foundry closed at the end of November and Father was made redundant. His boots remained muck encrusted in the scullery. Not even rabbit hunting interested him anymore. His gun rested on its hooks over the mantel and his clean work shirts remained in the hot press. He sat before the fire watching the flames, and in the evenings he’d put the telly on once RTÉ broadcasting had begun.

  My mother’s words sounded around the house with the cadence of a hammer striking: I won’t go back to it, Padraig, I won’t. You promised that you wouldn’t let it happen, you promised me. I won’t have this town laughing at us any more than they already have. You won’t put us on the dole again. Only once did Father say something back to her—he told her to trust him, even though she’d never trusted him, to just feckin trust him now!—and then he said no more, and he stopped listening. Instead, he simply left.

  He wandered off before dawn each morning and returned long after midnight, when I know he thought we were all sleeping. Some mornings there would be money on the kitchen table, rolled-up five-pound notes, and I knew he’d been working as farmer’s laborer, and I wondered how far he’d traveled from Rowan. Other mornings there would be nothing, perhaps a soiled work shirt hung over the back of a chair, and then I knew he was drinking again.

  It was Thursday and Mother always went into Rowan on Thursdays to get her medicine, but she wasn’t able to get out of bed and Father seemed not to notice that she was ill, that there was no food in the house, and that there hadn’t been for days. I waited until evening so that the dole queue that normally stretched up Mary Street was gone and the town seemed empty and still.

  In the chemist, Prendergast smiled kindly at me when he handed me Mother’s prescription; I was thankful for that, for the kindness he always showed. In the butcher’s, Mrs. Walsh and Mrs. Kent were holding their shopping bags and talking about the weather or some such. I knew Mrs. Walsh’s son, Liam, and I didn’t like him much. They looked at me when I came in as if I were a bad cut of meat and then went back to their conversation. I handed Mother’s list to Bolger, the butcher, and waited.

  The women’s voices reminded me of the way people prayed at Mass—there was something conspiratorial as well as reverent in their voices, as if what they were doing should be done in the dark. Every so often they glanced in my direction and their mouths made silent contortions, their tongues seemed to cut the air. I focused on the sound of the meat cutter, the blade spinning as Bolger drew it back and forth. I smelled the fresh-killed meat, the hanging carcasses, the polished and washed tiles, sawdust on the floor.

  Smoke churned from the roofs of small terraced cottages. The lads of the Bosheen who usually sent me home by throwing stones at my back or trying to knock me from my bike were all in at their suppers. Not even a dog barking.

  The hedgerows rose up; water gurgled in the fosse. I climbed the hill with my bike past empty, crumbling row houses and the church where the road began narrowing into the country, and that is when I saw Father in the graveyard off to my right.

  I leant my bike against the stone wall and watched from the stile. He moved amongst the stones, pausing as he read the words here and there or touching another gently and then moving on. I thought of approaching him although I didn’t know what I might say. Finally, he stopped and blessed himself. He began to trace the words on a stone, then knelt and lay his head against it and I realized he must be drunk.

  He would come staggering into the house tonight, and in the morning he’d be off before dawn again. I thought of Mother sick and at home in the bed and in need of her medication. Quickly, I pulled my bike from the wall and pushed off on the pedals. At the top of the hill I glanced back: smoke rising over the Housing Estate, the graveyard stretching green and uncut down to the black Barrow, white mist boiling over the fields, and Father looking small and fragile and scared, bowed at Mag Delacey’s grave.

  We did not see Father to the airport; we did not even say good-bye. He left in the dark and we woke in the dark, sensing he was gone and already missing him. The fire had been lit but the house was cold and full of shadows. Buttered toast lay in the center of the kitchen table and a pot of tea was steaming on the grill. The smell of him remained as if he were still in the house somewhere and we had only to search him out. I brought in one of his old, torn donkey jackets from the shed and placed it over me as we sat in the kitchen; as it grew warm the smell of him rose off it. Molly and I cried as we chewed on the toast.

  I pulled the shoebox of family pictures from behind the linen closet and Molly and I spread them out on the table and looked at them silently. The tea went cold and the toast turned hard. I put more coal on the fire and brewed another pot. Our chairs scraped the cold cement as we pulled closer to look at the pictures, as if it were important that we shared the same glimpses of him, and of him with us.

  Mother padded silently into the kitchen. She clawed at her hair and smiled. Ahhh, the old pictures, she said, and nodded. She came behind the chairs and wrapped her arms about us, then laid h
er head upon our shoulders and stared at the photographs. After a moment she squeezed us hard. Did I ever tell you two I knew you were puckawns from the first minute I set eyes on ye? she said. Did I not ever tell you that? My wee puckawns.

  The clock ticked above the mantel and I opened the curtains; gray light was coming over the fields from the east. Malone’s dairy lorry was parked up the far hill at the Three Mile Cross, its headlights the only thing on the narrow black bend of the road. Blackbirds lifted from the trees as Malone moved farther down the valley, his lights flickering through gates in the high hedgerow. Soon Father would be at Shannon and then he would be on the plane for America and thoughts of us would be gone from him.

  Why do you think he left, Mammy? Molly asked. She was looking at a picture of him cradling the both of us, Molly and I wrapped in matching red blankets, one in each arm, on the day she’d been released from the hospital in Wexford. Molly had been in an incubator for two weeks. Mother had said that we were both so small he was scared to hold us in case he dropped us. I thought of how soft our bones must have been, like the lambs that froze in the springtime, and how he did not look scared at all.

  He didn’t leave, I said. He went to find work and when he makes the money he’ll send for us, so he will.

  What if he can’t find work, so? Molly’s face was pinched and pale, her eyes wide and dark.

  Don’t be daft, Mother said and wiped at her eyes. It’s America.

  I opened the donkey jacket and pulled my left arm out of the large sleeve and held it open. Molly squeezed in next to me and placed her arm in. Mother pulled the jacket tight about the both of us so that it covered us with the shape and the smell of him and then she poured the tea. I imagined his plane climbing through the rain over the Atlantic and the light falling away in the darkness, and I knew that if he just leant back to catch a last glimpse of the land and of everything he was leaving behind then he would return to us, sure he would have to.