Bold Sons of Erin (21 page)

I took the chair pressed up against the bed.

He grasped my wrist. Quick as a cobra strikes. And he held me fast with the strength of a strapping young miner. I saw him wince at the pain of his doings and wondered at the effort it must cost him, but he would not let me go. As if he feared I might run from the room.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Evans?” I asked him. Twas a foolish question, I know. But our words do not come near the grandeur of death.

“Listen to me,” he insisted.

I leaned closer. I could smell death already upon him. His whiskers lay flaccid and his flesh had lost all suppleness. Yet, his grip was almost monstrous in its power.

“Listen to me,” he repeated. “To my confession. I must confess. To you.”

“Now, now, surely you have nothing—”

“Quiet, you,” he snapped. Imperiously. As if death itself were speaking, all dark majesty. “Listen. I must tell you . . . I must tell . . .”

His good eye closed and I thought he might be leaving us. But his grip did not slacken and his breath wheezed on.

The eye popped open again and sought mine own.

“Your wife . . . Mary . . . our Mary . . . is no niece to me . . .”

“But—”

“She is my daughter.”

As soon as he forced out the words, the poor fellow sighed. His grasp of my arm relaxed, though not by much. He still wished me his prisoner. As if to take me with him on his journey. Or perhaps to hold himself yet among the living.

How much seemed clear to me then! Although he had been a loving father to Mary, I always judged the Reverend Mr. Griffiths harshly. For he had not been loving to me. Now I saw the goodness of the man, and of his wife, taking in the child of the wife’s wastrel brother and saving the little girl from the shame of bastardy. Loving my Mary as their own, as good Christians.

“Good it was, then, of your sister and her husband to take the child in. You may be grateful that—”

Something in the terrible look of him stopped me. He turned his head from side to side on the pillow, with liquid escaping the corners of his mouth. Twas a grim denial.

“She was my sister’s daughter.”

I did not see at first what the old man meant.

“She is my daughter. My daughter with my sister.” He began to growl like an animal in torment. Weeping as if the Day of Judgement were upon us. And perhaps it was. “God forgive me, I have sinned a terrible sin. The judgement was set upon the child, in all God’s cruelty. The crooked back, the pain sent to the girl . . .”

Her back is not crooked. That is a lie. There is only the faintest of curves to my darling’s spine, a nothing. No one notices. I swear to Heaven and earth that she is beautiful.

“God forgive me,” Mr. Evans said. “God will never forgive me.”

I said nothing. For I could not know God’s mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said, slackening his grip. “I’m so sorry.”

Still weeping he was, but I wished to take my fists to him. To pound him until he was dead, then to beat him more. Not
because of the great sin he had committed. But because he had told me of it.

“It’s a blessing,” he said. “A blessing that your son was born without her deformities. The boy’s healthy. Strong. My grandson . . .”

I sat there raging. It took all of my power not to bellow at him, not to scream out the rage that had blown up in me. I wished to shut his mouth, no matter what deed the shutting would require.

He did not need to share his secret with anyone. And not with me. Oh, not with me. For the love of Jesus Christ. He should have taken his evil to the grave.

And yet, dear God, had he not done what he did . . . my Mary Myfanwy might not have graced this world. I saw that, too.

My heart was swollen, vivid with crimson hatred. And I wanted to weep like a child handled unjustly.

Right he was to hold my wrist. For I wanted to run from him. And from myself.

“You couldn’t understand,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “No one could understand. No one but me . . . and her. My sister understood . . . my darling . . . she was so lovely, so lovely . . .”

He gasped for air, for life, as he remembered. Digging his fingernails into my flesh. Like the fangs of five cruel vipers.

I would not flinch. I would not be the weaker of us.

He turned his head away from me, away from the lamp, peering idly into the room’s dark corners. He released my forearm, as absently as a child turning from a toy.

“She must never know,” he told me. “But you must care for her.”

There was no tone of command left in his voice. Only a plaint. I felt the strength drain out of him, the life going.

“She will not know,” I told him. “She will never know.” My voice must have sounded as wintry as all the snows. For the anger was all inside me and would not come out.

He nodded. Perhaps to me, perhaps to a ghost just glimpsed and newly welcome.

“Go now,” he said. “Tell Mary not to come to me again. I could not bear it. Tell her I’m in too much pain.” He groaned, but not to convince me. Twas a lesser misery, dying. The agony of his life must have been boundless.

“Yes,” I said

“Send Dolly up,” he begged, a different soul now. “I want to see her last.”

YES. THAT IS WHO the devil wished to see before death took him. Mrs. Walker, the keeper of a whorehouse.

Forgive me. But I had come up short of charity and forbearance. And yet, my rage deserted me before I reached the bottom of the staircase. I saw my Mary standing there, face desolate. I almost wept at the sight of her.

I took my darling in my arms and held her so tightly I fear I caused her pain. She misunderstand the violence of my emotion and asked, “Is he gone?”

“No, dearest,” I spoke into her hair, into the wondrous, familiar scent of her. “Still with us he is.”

“Does he want me to go up to him?”

“No, my darling. Not now.” I did not want to release her. Yet, I softened my embrace a degree, for I did not wish to do my love an injury. Or to harm the child taking form within her.

Would that child, too, be healthy? And of sound mind? Like John? And as for John, were there weaknesses yet hidden in the boy, the fruit of elder seed too closely mingled? A thousand fears pierced me. Had Mr. Evans hated me, he could have done me no worse a turn than making that confession.

Might it all be untrue? Could his confession have been no more than the madness of a mind in terror of death? Had his body’s distress confused his thoughts to a horror?

I longed to think it so.

I saw that other woman then, past the sheen of my beloved’s hair. Standing in the archway to the parlor, veiled in black, she told her expectations by her posture.

“Mrs. Walker,” I spoke across the hall, “he wishes you to go up to him.”

Let him die with a whore beside him, I said to myself. Yet, that savagery passed in an instant, as soon as I saw her running toward the stairs. There was a truth about her grief that would not be denied. Not even by me.

Perhaps she even loved the wicked man. For love is a land without maps, akin to death.

I saw the doctor, too, back in the parlor, with a question unspoken, waiting on his lips. Perhaps he was impatient with Mr. Evans and wished to be home at his dinner. We none of us can know another’s heart. And perhaps it is good so.

“You knew,” I said to my wife, although my tone was soft and not accusatory. “You knew about your uncle and Mrs. Walker.”

“Not now, Abel. Please.”

I refreshed our embrace to assure her I meant no ill. But I could not refrain from whispering, “You knew,” a last time.

She did not lift her face to me, but spoke with her cheek to my shoulder.

“Oh, my dearest, I would not have secrets from you. But hard it is to tell you of such matters.” She clung to me, enfolded by my arms. “So hard you make it, for you are set in having the world the way you wish it to be. But the world goes where it will.”

Yes. The world. Forgive my speech, but on my blackest days I fear that I find God a disappointment.

I dreaded what else my wife might say. Her words rang true, until I wished she had lied and comforted me.

She sighed. “Times there are when I feel I must protect you.” Tears watered her voice. “I would have no secrets, but I do not like to see you disappointed. I know how good you want the world to be.”

I am a fool. That much I understand. I have a terror of things out of place and fear the beast within me. I long to believe there is justice at the end of things. And goodness in the heart of every man. I know it is folly. But that is how I am made.
Or to speak truly, it is the way I have made myself. I cannot bear the world as I have known it. I wish a better one.

Was I the weaker of the two, between me and my darling? Did Mary bear the pains of the heart as stalwartly as the aches that touched her back? Was I a coward who bullied his wife to persuade himself the world was in good order?

Did she . . . pity me?

Pride comes before a fall, and I was fallen.

I did not love my wife the less for any of it. Not for that dying sinner’s revelation, and not for my darling’s keeping of secrets. No, in that hour I loved her all the more. Nor did I pity her. I only loved her, see, and feared I was too slight to be deserving.

Twas not long thereafter that Mrs. Walker appeared at the head of the stairs. Her veil and hat were gone. Tears streaked her face.

She looked down at my Mary and nodded.

THE BURYING TOOK PLACE in an autumn drizzle. A great crowd assembled. In addition to his fellow colliery owners and the sound men of his church, our chapel’s congregation turned out in full, along with every one of Pottsville’s notables. Even Mr. Gowen stood in the wet with us, and Mr. Bannon suspended his scribbling for the somber length of the doings. But most impressive to me were the ranks of miners at the graveside. For the funeral fell on a working day, and those men were paid by the ton. Attendance meant lost wages. Yet, there they stood, caps off, in their Sunday clothing, while the cold rain soaked them. I sensed fear in them, along with their respect, for they did not know what would become of Mr. Evans’s lands and leases, of his mines and collieries. A miner’s winter is long when the works go still.

I, too, had concerns, and I will speak of them honestly, as my penance. With such a death, there comes a question of legacies. I was the man who put order into the books at Mr. Evans’s counting house and I knew the worth of his coal properties to be handsomely above one hundred thousand dollars. There
was the house and, perhaps, there would be private accounts. I did not wish to dwell upon such matters, but I wondered what might pass down to my Mary Myfanwy. We should not think such thoughts when relatives leave us. But we do.

At times, my pride swelled up and I decided we would have no penny of inheritance from him, that we had no need of that vicious old man’s money. We would refuse it, no matter the amount. And then I would think again, staring at my wife until she wondered at me, and I would decide that no legacy could be great enough to atone for what he had done to her. She deserved all he had, and more. And then there was our son, and the child to come. Money is the only true security for a family, even in our dear America.

Pride and greed, greed and pride. Such was the stuff of my thoughts. And when I caught myself thinking so, it shamed me and I turned to read the Gospels. But it never was long before those thoughts returned. Loaves and fishes could not content me. My thoughts strayed to dollars and shares.

I wondered what he might leave to Mrs. Walker. I was jealous of it, no matter the amount. Although I told myself his wealth was his to bestow. Even on a harlot.

These matters were new to me, see. You will think me a fool, but I had never pondered an inheritance. Mr. Evans had been but fifty-nine. That is a proper age for any man, and many leave us sooner, but he always seemed a fellow of health and vigor. I had not thought of his death. Nor of his sins.

I read the Bible aloud with my wife, while Fanny listened and kept our John becalmed. Fanny took the Book’s admonitions seriously, as if the Lord had written them just for her, and she loved the stories. Together, we prayed for Mr. Evans’s soul. That is a Christian’s duty, and I did it. It did not rankle. I only got my hackles up when my Mary said she had always felt a special closeness to her uncle. I cannot say why, but it made me wish to berate her.

I minded my tongue, and tried to order my thoughts.

I needed to turn to my duty, for time fled. Between Mr. Evans’s death and his interment, I made a round of calls about the town, seeking information that might help me. But clear it was that no one wished me success. All parties, no matter their political persuasion, wished no more trouble on Pottsville. The general was dead, and that was that. No one gave a fig about that girl. They hardly seemed to believe me, although I had felt the pulp of her corpse in my hands. Had Sergeant Dietrich not backed my tale, I fear they might have made me out a liar.

I even returned, quietly and to my wife’s dismay, to watch a night in the woods below the priest’s house. But Mrs. Boland failed to appear, and all I got for my trouble was the sneezes.

I decided to return to Washington, to press Mr. Nicolay for more details about General Stone, to try to make some sense of the blasted matter, and to ask why a Russian might have come to Pottsville. I recalled, too well and too late, what that odd gentleman had said as he left Mr. Gowen’s office: “ . . . the method is not important . . . only that the thing has been done . . .” Might he have referred to the murder of the general? In speaking to Mr. Heckscher? Why on earth would a Russian have an interest in such a deed? Were these matters related, or was I seeing spooks?

I would not bother my Washington superiors with tales of fairies and changelings, that was certain. I would not want them to think me superstitious. But they would hear my report about the Irish, for what it was worth.

The fact is, I was stymied.

The rain fell on the graveyard, steady and cold, and the parson read the verses Mr. Evans had specified, each of which had forgiveness as its theme. He had planned his own burying, see. Dr. Carr must have warned him of the deficiencies of his heart, for Mr. Evans left instructions for his funeral, addressed to his church, the undertaker and me. Everything arranged itself, with hardly a decision required from any one of us.