Trinity Read online

  Now, wouldn't you know. The nag no more than finished plowing Bertie's fields when it up and died of the heart. From then on the complications became monumental.

  The two of them reeled about the byre, more jarred by the poteen than by each other's blows, with O'Kanes and MacDevitts squaring off all over the place and the O'Neills leaning toward the O'Kanes and the O'Dohertys favoring the MacDevitts. It was shaping up into an epic when the peacemaker arrived in the person of Tomas Larkin. He seemed as big as the two of them together, wrapping his right arm about Bertie's waist and lifting him off the ground and at the same time holding Dinny off at arm's length.

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," Tomas warned.

  The two combatants continued to swing at the air, careful not to make contact with Tomas while hurling appropriate observations at each other.

  "I'll be after banging your heads together if you don't stop," Tomas said, but brush fires had erupted all over the byre.

  "Very well. I'm turning the matter over to Father Lynch."

  Hostilities screeched to a halt. Tomas and his gladiators sat down in the hay, gasping for breath and mopping up their cuts.

  "I'll settle on Tomas' word if you will," Dinny panted.

  "Only in the name of peace and for the memory of the departed do I agree," Bertie said, "for you're a loathsome…"

  "Now, now, now," Tomas interrupted.

  "Well?" Dinny said.

  "Well. . . all right. . ."

  Tomas shook his head.

  "Aye, it's bending my mind. Tis a problem for Solomon. Is there a wee drop about so I can illuminate my thoughts?" A stupendous slug disappeared down his throat and he wiped his mouth with an "ah." "In my eyes a partnership should share disasters as well as rewards."

  "What did I tell you," Dinny said, poking a fist under Bertie's nose.

  "Shut up till I'm finished," Tomas explained. "I will lend you my horse, Dinny, to plow your fields on the condition that Bertie brings in your crops."

  "But we've no horse to sell later, Tomas!"

  "Aye, and that is because you both went to the fair with larceny in your hearts to cheat the tinker. . ."

  "But. . ."

  "But. . ."

  "That is my decision, gentlemen. And if you follow my advice, I'll see to it that everyone in the village contributes a share of crops so you'll make the winter . . . on the condition you buy no more horses together because the two of you couldn't tell if you were looking at a horse's arse if it shit on your boots."

  After performing his saint-like miracle, Tomas got to his feet, pulled Dinny and Bertie to theirs and suggested it would be wise if they shook hands in front of him . . .

  "They're starting the rosary."

  Energy had run low in the outpour of communal grief and, laced with ether, liquor and exuberance, it was high time for everyone to get on their knees and pray. Finola crawled once more to Kilty's corpse and, as she did, I felt nausea overtaking me. I always got sick when they got to reciting "Mary's Crown."

  If I am barred from heaven it will be because of the rosary, for even though I tried not to think unkind thoughts about it God knows everything, including my true feelings, and He knows the most torturous hours of my life were spent in its recitation and it is an established fact that no one will ever be made to say it over my dead body.

  I brushed the hay off me as I got to my knees, blowing off sighs of anguish as I did.

  "Aw, you don't have to say it, Seamus," Conor said.

  I was too scared not to.

  "We can pretend to be asleep or even go back to your house."

  "Nae," I groaned, "God will know, anyhow."

  "Don't go getting sick," Conor warned.

  I crossed myself . . . "I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ His only son our Lord born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified and was buried on the third day He arose again from the dead . . ."

  I finished this part ahead of everyone so I could round up some wind. The candles below fought for a last gasp of life, bounding crazy shadows off the worn shiny face of Kilty Larkin, and outside the wind crept up from the lough and as it drifted through the loft I knew that weather would not be far behind. As they droned on my stomach got queasier so I closed my eyes and gritted and prayed through clamped teeth . . . one sign of the cross, four Lord's prayers, six Glory be to the Fathers, five sorrowful mysteries and fifty three Hail Marys' worth . . .

  "The first sorrowful mystery," Finola moaned, "the agony in the garden."

  They were the weary down there, the craggy-faced, knobby, leather-handed toilers rehearsing their own demise, yielding in pitiful weakness to the scythe of mystery kept poised a lifetime at their jugulars . . . too simple and too tired to protest . . . too frightened to seek the truth . . . succumbed in silence, for without it . . . what was there left to believe?

  Five minutes . . . ten minutes . . . fifteen minutes . . . beat the heart, nod the head . . . drone, drone, drone. Who knew what they were saying any longer? Who ever really knew except the priest and you don't question him.

  I was determined to be good this night for the soul of Kilty Larkin and I concentrated till my head hurt, thinking about the agony of sweet Jesus, and I made myself feel his pain because that was what I was supposed to do, and the reason for that was because Jesus was so good and I was a sinner. I was going to taste the salty sweat and buckle under the cross and the blood was going to drip from my crown and squirt out of my wrists like it never did before.

  Oh shit, my stomach was starting to go and Conor would be mad.

  Outside the sky was blackening like it did the day they crucified our blessed Lord Jesus and now God Himself was looking down on the Larkin cottage and God was looking at me because He knew I hated the rosary. I was getting scared of feelings I couldn't hide even though God was looking right at me, so I tried more and more to feel the pain of Jesus.

  "Our Father, who art in heaven. . .

  "Hail, Mary, full of grace."

  How many does that make? I think thirty-four but I shouldn't count because that is a sin because you're supposed to love the rosary . . .

  "Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."

  Twenty minutes . . . twenty hours . . . twenty-three minutes . . . nod the head . . . beat the heart . . . sometimes it all blurs together and it isn't so bad.

  At least once a week I threw up during the rosary. The harder I tried to think of Jesus and his suffering the more I threw up. I just didn't know what to do.

  Thirty minutes . . . forty minutes . . . forty years in the wilderness . . .

  "Jesus, you're pale, Seamus. You going to vomit?"

  "I . . . I’ll try not . . ."

  "Stop praying."

  "I have to finish, Conor. We're at the act of contrition and if I say a good one maybe God won't punish me."

  "Why would God want to punish you?"

  "For hating the rosary . . ."

  "Aw, you got nothing to fear. My daddy said God never made up the bloody rosary in the first place, and in the second, He isn't even listening."

  Conor scared me when he spoke like that. "Don't say no more. If you do I'll have to confess for hearing you."

  "Aw, my daddy says God's got more important things to do than listen to a little pisser reciting Mary's Crown."

  I clamped both hands over my ears so I wouldn't hear any more . . . "Oh, my Savior, I am truly sorry for having offended you because you are infinitely good and sin displeases you. I detest all the sins of my life . . ."

  Conor grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away from my ears. “What sins! You're only eleven years old!"

  I jerked away from him and dove into the hay and held my breath, closing my ears very, very hard . . . "I detest all the sins of my life," I prayed with crazy fervor, "and I desire to atone for them through the merits of your precious blood; wash from my soul all stain of sin so that, cleansed in body and soul, I may worthily approach
the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar . . ."

  When Conor pulled me up I was sobbing and shaking and he held me like I was himself on his own daddy's lap. “Take it easy, runt . . . I'll take care of you."

  In the best room the gathered throng came to their feet in infinite weariness and most of them took leave, trudging stooped to their own cottages with only the family and dearest friends left to continue waking with the corpse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was still quaking from my latest calamity with the rosary when that familiar brigade of rain charged up the hill from the lough and assaulted the cottage.

  The Larkins had fled to Donegal at the beginning of the century and after eighty-five years still kept the County Armagh manner of thatching their roofs by scalloping, whereas we had the simpler method of roping the thatchings with sally rods. Despite the fierceness of the weather, never a drop found its way through the Larkin roof. We were content as field mice in the harvest bin, dozing off at a rapid pace, when a flurry of excitement in the best room sent us crawling once more to the trap door.

  No less a personage than Daddo Friel, the first storyteller of all Inishowen, had arrived. Conor and I knew very little of the world beyond, only hearing of it second-hand at the fairs or from wandering tinkers, or when our kin returned from working "over the water" in England. The only thing we had to read was a tattered volume of catechisms.

  The arrival of a shanachie, a storyteller, was a powerful event for us, for it was he who kindled the flames of boyhood dreams. Daddo Friel was a most honored member of that special breed, able to speak with clarity of events that had taken place hundreds of years before.

  He was lame and nearly sightless in his right eye and his left was just as bad. Tomas led him to Kilty. He felt over the corpse with knowing and tender hands. "Aye, there was a lad . . . there was a lad," he said, and two salty tears made their way through the crevices of his face.

  "Tomas, get him out of those wet clothes. He's soaked clear through," Finola said.

  In a few moments the turf fire was renewed and old Daddo was made comfortable and warmed by a measure of poteen and another and one more, also. Hearing of his presence, the gathering increased, waiting for his dialogue, which came in a clear voice that belied his age.

  Daddo always began his personal recollections in 1803, the year he was born. The date was immortalized by the hanging of Robert Emmet for an attempted insurrection. Emmet stood right up to the British, delivering an immortal and inspired speech from the dock. You'd think by the way Daddo was reciting it he had been in the courtroom at the time instead of weaning at his ma's tits.

  From Emmet he brought up the great and magic name of Daniel O'Connell, recounting the times Kilty and himself walked so much as a hundred miles to hear "the liberator" speak at monster rallies before more than a million people. Because he was a shanachie of stature, nobody bothered to check his mileage or the real size of the crowds.

  Next came the Fenian Rising of '67 and the year and four months he and Kilty spent in the Derry bridewell being tortured from sunup to sundown and what affronts Daddo didn't have for the British he had for mother church which excommunicated the pair of them.

  When Daddo Friel got going on the Catholic Church and all the bishops, he made everyone nervous, including myself, who had heard enough heresy for one day. But Daddo had seen both sides of eighty years, coming and going, and when a man is that old you just listen respectfully.

  Although he was in full glory and would be captivating his listeners for several more hours, I couldn't hold off sleep any longer. His voice and the voice of the rain began to run together and my eyes grew awfully heavy.

  When I woke it was morning. Conor had fallen asleep at the trap door trying to inhale every last word. I crept to the window. It was a real Ulster bleezer outside, with the wind blowing so stiff it caused the rain to fall almost horizontal. In the best room a mess of bodies were strewn about, some curled up near the fire and others stretched on the table and chairs or propped up against the wall. Likewise, the byre was filled with guests packed in the empty stalls.

  Tomas Larkin himself sat motionless close to Kilty, his eyes so shot they looked like they belonged to a salt mackerel.

  My heart bolted suddenly on realizing that all three ladders to the loft had been removed and we were prisoners. I woke Conor and whispered our predicament We waited, hoping Tomas would take leave, giving us a chance to get down unnoticed. Finola plodded behind him so that her big belly pressed against his back. She stroked his hair. I liked this so much about the Larkins, the fondness they had for touching each other.

  "Dirty weather," Tomas said without looking up.

  "Are you feeling sorely toward me about Kilty taking absolution?"

  He shook his head. "Maybe not. Nothing less than I should have expected. It's done . . . it's done."

  "Don't get your anger up against Father Lynch. It will do no good . . . and besides, Tomas, the father isn't all that hard."

  "Hard? The softest thing about that man is his teeth."

  "Tomas," she pleaded, "you'll not be making a scene at the mass."

  He looked up, smiled and patted her hand . . . "Don’t worry," he said.

  Finola sighed with relief, then grabbed her stomach. "The baby's been kicking up a riot. I think it wants to come early. Ah, now look at you. I've seen better-looking specimens laid out at a wake. Get yourself to the sweat house and have a steam. I'll start a fire for you . . ."

  "Nae, I'll "not let you go out in that rain." Looking up to the loft, he stabbed us with his eyes. "All right. Down with the both of you."

  Caught red-handed, we hung from the trap door and dropped into the best room with a thud, coming to rigid attention before him.

  "If I recollect," Tomas said, "you were sent next door to sleep. Well?"

  "Aye, Daddy," Conor gulped.

  "Well!"

  "We just couldn't sleep."

  "But surely the rosary put us to sleep," I added quickly.

  "Fire up the sweat house," he commanded, "and it better be hot or I know two lads who are going to get the skinning of their lives."

  We rushed oft, relieved by our reprieve. The sweat house was a small round corbeled stone affair shaped like a beehive, owned commonly by a number of families, and used to manufacture intense heat to ease the pain of rheumatism, the constant ailment of the damp weather.

  We stacked a heap of straw in the fire pit and set a dozen bricks of turf on it, then laid on an iron grate and covered that with a bed of river rocks. The straw soon fired the turf, turning the place into an oven. Tomas Larkin entered naked, hunched over sitting on a creepie and groaned the miseries out of him as we fanned the fire furiously until the turf held an angry glow. When it was hot enough to boil the Devil we lifted a bucket of water together, coughing and sweating for Tomas' benefit to show him how earnest we were. We poured it over the rocks, sending up a sizzling vapor and a heat so intense it nearly melted our fingernails. Tomas gushed poteen and sweat like a spring thaw, then crawled out of the low opening and flung himself into the icy pond that fronted the sweat house, beating on his chest

  "Ah, that's grand! Grand!" he bellowed.

  Having seen the smoke rise, neighbors in as bad or worse condition staggered in for a communal roasting.

  Thus the second day of the wake commenced with callers arriving from distant towns. By afternoon the winds had swept the weather toward Scotland, leaving a fast-moving line of broken clouds that allowed teasing glimpses of sunshine.

  The placidness was punctured by the arrival at the crossroads of a sidecar being driven by a splendid oversized Connemara pony. It was convoyed down the village road by a bevy of prancing children while a dozen others piled into the cart. It halted before the Larkin cottage, creating uncommon commotion. Kevin O'Garvey was helped down from his carriage by a half dozen pairs of solicitous hands. The guardian and protector of the tenant farmers himself had come all the way from Derry to pay final respects to Kilty
Larkin.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Often as not, my ma would end a dissertation with the words, "Seamus my darling, when you're old enough to grow a beard, may you be half the man of Kevin O'Garvey."

  Looking him over, you'd never have a clue to his importance. He was short as my daddy, who was the shortest man in the village, and appeared even shorter because of a potbelly. There was no hair at all in the middle of his head, being fringed on top by a horseshoe thatching of gray stubble which popped straight up when he removed his high bowler. His eyes were poorly, encased in thick spectacles. A morning coat of fine tweed set him apart from us in manner of dress, but close inspection betrayed a fraying of the velvet collar and a general encroachment of shabbiness of his whole attire.

  Kevin O'Garvey was our champion, head of the Land League for Counties Donegal and Derry, which had lifted the onus of serfdom from the tenant farmers. As the League began winning too many rights for us it was naturally declared illegal and when Charles Stewart Parnell, himself, was jailed in Kilmainham in Dublin, Kevin O'Garvey was interned in the Derry bridewell. It was a familiar place for him, having been guest of the Crown twice previously for membership in the Fenians, the secret republican brotherhood.

  Kevin O'Garvey getting to be Kevin O'Garvey wasn't all that easy, starting life as he did as a foundling, a kiss of death for many children. He survived to be raised in the most fearsome orphanage in Ulster. By seven, he was hired out, as orphans were, to a poor farm operated by Lord Rubble's estate for slave wages, and by the time he was nine he was doing time in the borstal for stealing, boozing and cursing the Crown.

  Back and forth from workhouse to borstal, he was well on the way to becoming an incorrigible when fate took a hand. O'Garvey was sent on trial to a Protestant solicitor in Ballymoney, a town no bigger than a wide spot in the road, which had gained a measure of prosperity as a railhead for the iron mines. Working as a stable boy he began an inspirational story, teaching himself to read and write by candlelight, an ordeal that led to the ruination of his eyes. So bright a penny he was, the solicitor took him into his office and in no time at all he was deviling legal briefs of the highest quality. Kevin went on to become one of the rare Catholic lawyers in Ulster, returning to Derry and giving his life to the betterment of croppy and slum dweller alike.