Galway Bay (56 page)

“Well, maybe Irish people came from Canada,” I’d said. “They could have. . . .”

But Patrick had told me that the place was ancient. Migizi said the structures had been there since the beginning of Ojibwa history. Besides, what Irishman stumbling off a coffin ship in Canada and walking down into what must have been New Hampshire would decide to spend a year or two carving stones?

“But who, then?” I’d asked.

“I don’t know! I’ve heard that Saint Brendan sailed west to Tír na nOg.”

“And Columbus came to Galway to look at navigation charts in the old monastic manuscripts. So you think Irishmen were here before Columbus?”

“I did, standing there looking at the dolmen. I did. How’s that for a revelation? The Irish discovered America!”

And if that wasn’t strange enough, they’d found a family of runaway slaves hiding in the cave, waiting to cross over into Canada. That night, Patrick had stood under the dolmen, lifted up the crozier, and pledged himself to Ireland. No ordinary happiness for him. Patrick Kelly said that he now knew with certainty that he had a special destiny.

Ah well, eight months before I’d see him again. A long time. I do look forward to seeing Patrick. What harm?

Better get moving—almost noon by Máire’s clock. Must shop at Piper’s store. The food this crowd goes through. I wish we’d rented a patch of land west in Brighton, put in cabbages the way the Healys and Malones do. I’ll stop to ask Molly how she’s fixed—near sixty and she’d hardly changed. Lizzie McKenna, too, younger since her sons came home, back from their wanderings and helping James with the tavern. Then I’ll report to Father Kelly at St. Bridget’s. “Call me Father Tom,” he’d told us. Imagine Father Gilley saying that. Different, the priests in Chicago.

I’d do a few hours’ work at the parish office, entering this week’s weddings and baptisms in the record book. Thank you, Miss Lynch, for my neat handwriting. Twenty-five cents from Father, another quarter from this fellow when he picks up the letter. And I’d two more men coming tonight wanting me to write home for them, and Mrs. Gilligan asked for help with her naturalization papers. Máire says don’t I get bored not leaving Bridgeport, but she doesn’t know the half of what goes on. If I didn’t move rightly, I could spend my whole day chatting to the neighbors. I don’t envy her downtown Chicago, I thought as I left 2703 and set out along Hickory Street.

Not that it wasn’t nice to go to McVicker’s Theatre with Jamesy once in a while for the plays and music. Wouldn’t have missed little Mary McVicker in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. She’s all grown up now. The McVickers were very friendly with Edwin Booth, who appeared at the theater often. Edwin Booth, “The finest actor in America,” Jamesy says. And we’d all gone downtown to watch the men lift up the Tremont House. The city had put in underground sewers that raised the streets above the buildings. Nothing to do but raise the buildings. The entrance to the Tremont was four feet below street level. Two hundred Irishmen used logs and chains and their strong backs to wrench that huge building off its foundation and bring it up inch by inch to meet the street. Impressive. But that was Chicago for you, running to catch up with itself. Frenzied. Thank God they hadn’t figured a way to build on top of Lake Michigan. Though the railroad tracks went out over the water now, I still had my swath of strand to stand upon and the wide blue waters to watch.

“Gone to Galway Bay,” Máire would tell the boys if they came home on a Saturday afternoon and couldn’t find me. I’d taken Stephen and Michael to play on the sand as little fellows and used to get the whole bunch to go there on a summer Sunday for a good stretch of the legs after Mass.

No longer. Busy. All of them too busy.

Mrs. Cooley, Father Kelly’s housekeeper, let me into the rectory. Very grand we were getting at St. Bridget’s. When our new brick church is finished, we’ll be the equal of any parish in the city. Some are going too far—the money spent on Holy Family Church—but then that’s a Jesuit parish. We’d built our pastor a comfortable but modest priest’s house with a separate room for the parish office, where I worked.

“Thank you, Mrs. Cooley,” I said to her, a Kerry woman, a widow, and a friend of Lizzie McKenna’s, but stern Mrs. Cooley would never waltz with a Potawatomi brave as Lizzie had done. Though I’d say Father Kelly might have enjoyed saying Mass on the bar in McKenna’s Tavern.

“Didn’t see your sister at the mission last week,” Mrs. Cooley said to me as she let me into the office.

“She works downtown, you know,” I said.

“At night?”

Mrs. Cooley went on about how we all had a duty to attend the annual three-day series of sermons and services presided over by one special band of Order priests that moved from parish to parish, shocking sinners into repentance with terrifying descriptions of hell and the Last Judgment. “Woe to” priests, Máire called them—“Woe to you who . . .” they’d roar, and then list all possible transgressions. “Examine your conscience!” Father Allen had commanded last week, looking straight at a row of women. “Ask yourself, ‘Have I sinned in my thoughts? In my words? Am I condemning myself to hell?’ You pray for your husbands and your sons and neglect your own souls! If
you
are not in the state of grace, God will not hear your prayers!” Unsettling, that. Bridgeport mothers hadn’t bothered too much about mortal sins—who had time to commit any? But thoughts? Words? There were long lines at the confession booths after that sermon. On Sunday, Father Tom had joked about all the halos in the congregation and said such a lot of saints would surely be generous. The second collection would be for the building fund.

“Here you are, Mrs. Kelly.” Father Tom handed me a pile of marriage applications. Would I go through them and schedule dates for the weddings? Father Tom was about thirty, I’d say, born in Ireland but educated and ordained in America. “A lot of these, Mrs. Kelly. I suppose it’s the threat of war makes couples want to act quickly.”

“Surely some way will be found to avoid war,” I said.

“I pray for peace, Mrs. Kelly, but if the worst comes, America will find Irishmen ready and able for the battle. Our actions will silence those who question our patriotism and insult our religion.

“Now . . .” Father Kelly shuffled through the letters—most of which I’d helped the couples write—and set a few on the side. “Problems here,” he said. “Impediments.”

“Pardon me? I don’t understand.”

“This man”—he pointed to the letter—“wants to marry his dead wife’s sister.”

“And that’s forbidden?”

“Affinity. Too closely related, against canon law.”

“Oh.” Canon law?

“They could get a dispensation from the bishop, but Bishop Duggan’s not the easiest man to deal with.”

I had to ask: “Could a man marry his brother’s widow?”

“Not without a dispensation from the impediment,” he said. “Forbidden.”

“Forbidden?” My voice sounded strange and there was a ringing in my ears.

Father turned to me, concerned. “Are you feeling well, Mrs. Kelly?”

“I’m fine, Father. A bit dizzy.”

“Shall I call Mrs. Cooley?”

“No! I mean, I’m fine, really. Warm in here, I think. I’d best get on with these.”

He left the office. In that instant I realized how important Patrick Kelly had become to me. My body was saying what my mind wouldn’t admit. Too closely related, and what I felt for Patrick was not sisterly. Look at the way I’d spent all morning thinking of him. What have I done?

I entered the names in Father’s book with possible dates and hurried away.

Impediment.
The word came back as I walked along Hickory Street. Impediment. Left foot, right foot.

Bridget had Gracie, Stephen, and Michael bent over their homework and the dinner ready when I came in. She could run the whole household. She’ll graduate with high honors unless she lets some lad distract her. I was her age, sixteen, when Michael came to me from the sea.

Michael . . . In my mind all the time, I believed he somehow read my thoughts. He knew I’d always been faithful to our love, but now, to have these feelings about Patrick, his own brother, when the Church itself forbade any such relationship. Of course, I’ve never done anything, but be honest, Honora, all those thoughts. Sins every one. Drive those thoughts away. Keep busy. Keep your mind occupied. Remember, the mission priest said, thoughts can send you to hell.

I concentrated on the children and on dinner. Máire wasn’t home, nor were the boys. “We’ll wait,” I said to Bridget.

Eight o’clock and they still hadn’t appeared. We ate. Nine o’clock came and went. Where were they?

At half-past nine Paddy marched into the kitchen, the other boys behind him. “It’s war, Mam. We’re all enlisting.”

They stood together, the five of them. Men. God help me. My sons.

Paddy looked at me with his father’s eyes—sky blue, rimmed in violet. He folded his arms. They were thick with muscles from striking the mighty blow at Slattery’s forge. Twenty-one years old in June. At eighteen, Jamesy was as tall as Paddy, but leaner, with only a trace left of his round baby face. He was still able to use his “puppy dog face” to convince me of anything. Very serious now, his brother’s second in command.

Daniel O’Connell Leahy seemed so young at seventeen. His curls and good humor drew the girls. Solemn tonight. Johnny Og was at Paddy’s side—the oldest, twenty-one already, and the shortest, but the steadiest of the lot, the most sensible. And Silken Thomas, nineteen, a gentleman in his fawn trousers and a broadcloth coat, his beak of a nose in the air, but one with them now.

“The secessionists fired on Fort Sumter, Mam. President Lincoln’s declared war and we’re joining the Irish Brigade,” Paddy said. “It’s Da’s dream come true, Mam.”

“The Shields Guards, the Emmet Guards, and the Montgomery Guards are combining,” Johnny Og said. “They volunteered every man.”

I knew about these groups he mentioned. They were Irish military clubs that paraded through Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day and on the Fourth of July. The men wore green jackets with brass buttons, carried rifles, and waved flags embroidered in gold with harps and shamrocks and “Erin Go Bragh”—“Ireland Forever”—and we all cheered them. A great proud moment. March like that in Ireland and the Sassenach would arrest the whole lot. But it was one thing to act fierce on Michigan Avenue and quite another to fight an actual war.

“You’re not enlisting,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” said Paddy. “We must rally for the honor of the old land, for the defense of the new. That’s what Colonel Mulligan told us at McKenna’s. He’s leading the brigade.”

“He is?” I said.

Though only thirty, James Mulligan was one of the most prominent lawyers in the city and a true Catholic gentleman. He was the first graduate of the University of St. Mary of the Lake and editor of the
Western Tablet,
our Catholic newspaper. A leader of the temperance movement, he’d recently married Marion Nugent, a St. Xavier’s girl from a good family. It was James Mulligan I held up to the boys as an example of what they could become.

“Surely you want us to listen to Colonel Mulligan,” Jamesy said.

“Not if he’s calling you to war,” I said.

As I was speaking Máire arrived. She pushed her way through the boys and said, “I don’t care if Saint Patrick himself rides down Hickory Street on a white horse. You’re not going.” She turned to me. “The clerks at the Shop are the same, ready to become an army. Impossible to get through the streets—bands of fellows roaming around shouting how they’ll teach those secessionists a lesson.”

“We will, Mam,” Johnny Og said. “Johnny Reb will learn how Irishmen can fight. Chicago’s not the only place brigades are forming. There’s Irish units in New York and Michigan and Boston and—”

“No,” I said. “No. No.”

“The war’s only meant to last three months, Mam,” Jamesy said. “That’s the length of our enlistment, and as soon as we settle the secessionists, we’ll sail to Ireland. Free the slaves and the Irish, too.”

I kept shaking my head.

“Have you forgotten Lorenzo and Christophe and M’am Jacques?” Paddy asked me. “America’s our country. It needs us.”

“And we’ll have fine uniforms, Mam,” Thomas said to Máire.

“A musket apiece,” Daniel said, “and a long knife.”

“Stop it!” Máire said. “Jesus Christ on his cross, none of you has the slightest idea about soldiering. Didn’t I listen often enough to your own father, Thomas and Daniel, telling the old Major how he’d thrown troops against the enemy? Thrown. Cannon fodder, they called the men. Dressed them up in lovely uniforms all right, but cloth won’t stop bullets.”

“Ah now, Mam.” Johnny Og patted her shoulder. “Our officers won’t be like the Pykes. Colonel Mulligan and—”

“So you’ve the whole thing done and dusted,” I said. “Well, think again. If your uncle Patrick were here, he’d talk some sense into you.”

“But Uncle Patrick is coming, Mam. Colonel Mulligan said so in his speech.”

“He did, Mam,” Jamesy said. “He told us that Patrick Kelly will bring the golden staff to the meeting so we can swear a true oath on the relic of our ancestors. He’s an officer in the Irish Brigade.”

“Well, that puts the tin hat on it,” Máire said.

Patrick will stop them, I told myself as I stood looking at the Lake the next afternoon. He’ll tell them they’re too young, tell them something. He’ll act for Michael. He’s their uncle. A member of the family.

I turned away from the dazzle of sunlight on the Lake and headed back to Bridgeport.

A figure came across the strand. “Honora.” Patrick Kelly. “Bridget told me I’d find you here,” he said when he reached me.

“Patrick. You must talk to the boys. We can’t let them get into this war. Paddy, Jamesy, Johnny Og, Thomas, and Daniel are going to Kane’s Brewery tonight to enlist.”

“It’s the Fontenoy Barracks now, Honora.”

“Call it what you will. Máire and I won’t let our boys . . .”

He stepped close to me. “You can’t stop them, Honora,” he said. “They’re not boys, they’re grown men. Irishmen. Warriors, ready to fight for a just cause. When the call comes, only a coward turns away.”