Galway Bay (64 page)

In the year and a half the Brigade and Legion had been in the field, they’d been spared from the worst of the fighting. Not at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Shiloh, or Gettysburg. Even Barney McGurk, who’d expected high casualties, was shaken by Gettysburg—fifty thousand killed and wounded or missing in only three days of fighting. During those same bloody days at the start of July 1863, Jamesy and Daniel fought under General Grant to break the long siege of Vicksburg. “One of the greatest artillery attacks on a city in history,” Barney said. “Grant had five hundred cannons blasting at them day and night.” The surrender came on the fourth of July. Huge bonfires in Bridgeport that night.

But the letter we received from Jamesy and Daniel two weeks later said nothing about the actual battles. They were only glad that the Union controlled the Mississippi River, because now the mail would get through. They’d finally get their pay.

Many mothers in Bridgeport were trying to feed their families on soldiers’ wages that never arrived. Food prices rose every day. Thank God for Máire’s salary and the money Alderman Comiskey paid me.

Not as much to do at the office with Colonel Mulligan gone, but I still went in every day, eager for news of the Irish Brigade. They were part of the defense of Washington, D.C., and had fought in a good few battles, though you wouldn’t know it from Paddy’s letters or the short postscripts Thomas scribbled on them. The boys wrote about the camp, the food, and the fellows they were meeting from other places.

Wives and mothers of the men serving in the Irish Brigade and in other units, too, came to the office every day. “We’ll be a city of widows and orphans when this is over,” I heard Alderman Comiskey say to Mr. Onahan, as casualties climbed.

Sometimes the women came to me at home. They knew I worked for Alderman Comiskey. Would I write them a letter to take to him? Go with them? They got tongue-tied, they said, when it came to asking for charity. “Not charity,” I’d tell them. “What you deserve.”

Last week, Mrs. O’Brien, whose husband was in the Brigade, had asked if Alderman Comiskey could help her twelve-year-old son, Mickey, get a job. She appreciated the bit of money she’d received already, but she had five younger children, and even when her husband’s army pay arrived, it wasn’t enough. And she believed that working might stop her Mickey from talking on and on about joining the army.

Stephen had been doing his homework in the parlor during Mrs. O’Brien’s visit. At sixteen, he stood nearly six feet tall, hair as red as ever. He’d asked me how Alderman Comiskey got people jobs. I’d explained the clout—that word again—a man like John Comiskey had as an alderman, city councilman, and a member of every Irish organization in Chicago. Favors, given and gotten, I’d said. Votes come into it—at election time, people remembered who’d helped them.

Stephen had said he’d like a job helping people, and maybe he’d try for politics. But then he’d said he couldn’t do that. He’d be letting down the men at the firehouse. They’d promised him that in two years when he was eighteen he could become a full-fledged fireman. So. I needn’t worry about him joining the army. Uncle Patrick had told him it was his duty to stay in Chicago in case the prisoners at Camp Douglas escaped and set the city on fire—a fireman’s special mission. The men at the firehouse had said Patrick was spot on, Stephen said to me.

I told Stephen that perhaps he could be a fireman for a while and then run for alderman. Bridgeport had finally been incorporated in Chicago. Who knows, he might be elected mayor. “A mayor from Bridgeport,” Stephen said. “Now that would be something.” But then he shook his head. He wanted to be a policeman, too, and own a tavern. No time for all the things he wanted to do. “My son,” Stephen had said then.

“Your son? What son?” Surely Stephen would never . . .

He’d laughed. “The look on your face, Mam!” he’d said. “I’m talking about the son Nelly Lang and I will have after we’re married.”

I knew he and the professor’s daughter were great friends. Bridget told me Stephen went to dances at Nelly’s parish, St. Michael’s, and brought her to parties at St. Bridget’s. But now Stephen told me that they intended to marry in eight years, when he was twenty-four. They would have lots of children. His oldest son could become mayor of Chicago. Why not? “Done and dusted,” I said. Very American, our Stephen. A Chicago man.

Will the other boys live to marry, have children? Pray. Nothing to do but pray, I thought as I came into the kitchen and started to cook.

“Out eating the altar rails, Honora?” Máire said as she passed the pratties to Bridget. We took our evening meals together, only six of us around the table now. Bridget spooned some potatoes onto her plate. Eighteen now, she’ll graduate in June, become a teacher or Mrs. James Nugent or both. So lovely, she’s like Máire, blond curls, a woman’s figure. Gracie, taking the bowl from her, was a Keeley, no question, with her height and straight chestnut hair. At sixteen, she’s as tall as I am. Strange things, resemblances. Stephen’s the image of my brother Hughie, the uncle he’ll never see, and young Michael has his father’s eyes and hair. Doing blacksmith work, too, after school, to keep Paddy’s place at Slattery’s. I’m grateful for his wages. Please God we can afford to keep him in school. Paddy would want him to finish. Paddy . . . Where is he right now? I wonder.

“All right to have more potatoes?” Stephen asked.

“Go ahead,” I said.

Potatoes had become our mainstay again, the cheapest food.

“Which one tonight?” Máire was asking me. “Holy Family?”

“I don’t go there on Saturday. Too crowded. Confession.” All I needed was to run into that canon-law-spouting Jesuit coming out of the confessional. “I made the Stations at Saint Bridget’s after the Holy Hour,” I said.

Father Kelly had installed the Way of the Cross last year. The fourteen pictures, set along the side walls of the church, brought to mind moments in Jesus’s journey to crucifixion in “Stations.” I liked to move from one to the next, stopping to pray where Jesus fell the first time, or met his mother, or had his face wiped by Veronica. Father Kelly said we should unite our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ, but it was the Mother of Jesus I pleaded with: You walked this path of sorrow. Protect our sons. Strengthen their mothers.

I made the Stations in seven different churches each week, which bewildered Máire.

“Why not make the Stations at Saint Bridget’s every day instead of running from church to church?” she asked me.

All the young ones stopped eating and waited for my answer.

“I suppose I feel more like I’m on a pilgrimage, going to Lough Derg or somewhere. Harder this way. And I’ve a reason for each church. Sundays I go to Holy Name Cathedral. It’s Colonel Mulligan’s parish, and so a good place to pray for the Brigade. The Stations of the Cross there are carved from white stone. Lovely. Monday I visit Saint Patrick’s because it’s connected with the Irish Legion. Father Dunne displays their flag at the same side altar where Patrick Kelly sets up Saint Grellan’s staff at Christmas. The Stations are only framed pictures, but the statues of Saint Patrick, Saint Columcille, and Saint Bridget are beautiful—which helps.”

“Helps what, Mam?” Bridget asked.

“Prayer,” I said.

“So where do you go on Tuesday, Aunt Honey?” Gracie asked.

“Saint Mary’s,” I said. “It’s near the office, and I couldn’t leave Chicago’s oldest church out. Then Wednesday I do Holy Family.”

“‘Do’ it?” Stephen asked. “What do you mean?”

“Make the Stations, light candles.”

“And Thursday?” This from Michael.

“Saint James—have to, with all the fellows named James I’m praying for, and it’s close. And then Immaculate Conception on Friday. Not too far away, and the pastor there was in the field with the Irish Brigade.”

“And how do the decorations there compare to, say, Holy Name?” Máire said.

“Hard to say. Immaculate Conception’s new, but it does have a stained-glass window and . . .”

Máire started laughing.

“What? What’s funny?” I asked.

“You are,” Máire said.

Bridget and Gracie were giggling. Stephen and Michael screwed up their faces, but the laughter burst out.

“If you could hear yourself,” Máire said. “A mad woman.”

“Think of it, Mam,” Bridget said. “You also go to Mass every day and the Holy Hour.”

“You must spend a fortune lighting candles,” Máire said.

“To tell you the truth, I put in three pennies for the nine of them.”

“Nine?” asked Michael.

“Paddy, Jamesy, Thomas, Daniel, James Nugent, James Mulloy, Colonel Mulligan, and Patrick Kelly. And”—I looked at Máire—“I light one for Johnny Og, that he may rest in peace.”

No one said anything for a time.

“That’s good, Honora,” Máire said.

“Thanks for including James Mulloy,” Gracie said. She’d announced that their wedding would take place as soon as the war ended.

“Still, that’s a lot of miles to cover,” Máire said.

“Helps me sleep,” I said.

The others nodded. We could contain our fear for the men during the day, but not through the long, wakeful nights. Often I’d hear Michael or Stephen or Bridget in the kitchen after midnight and come out to have a cup of tea with them. “Bad dreams” is all they’d say, not wanting to give shape to the dread.

“A boy at school said the odds are against us,” Michael told me one of these nights in the kitchen. “Mathematics—eight fighting, two will die.” The fellow had figured out that with twenty-five to thirty percent casualties in the battles, and more lost to disease, six men alive was the best we could hope for. That was only the average, Michael explained to me—more of the eight might live.

Or die, we’d both thought but didn’t say.

“One has died already—Johnny Og,” I said.

“One isn’t enough,” Michael said, and started crying.

I’d held him close. We survived starvation. We escaped to America, I told him, defying all odds and numbers. Our faith saved us. I didn’t usually speak of those awful days to the children, but that night I told Michael something of what we had endured. I told him, too, the story of his own beginnings in Knocnacuradh—life defeating death.

Now, dinner was over. “We’re going out, Mam,” Stephen said, standing up from the table, and Michael with him.

“Don’t be too late,” I said. “We need to be at Mass early, so crowded on Sunday.”

“But we only have to go to the one, Mam, right?” Michael said.

Laughter all around.

The girls went down to Máire’s—schoolwork, they said, but really to share their letters. James Nugent’s came regularly. When James Mulloy was exchanged in September, he rejoined the Rebel Sons of Erin, which made it difficult for him to write to Gracie directly. His parents in Nashville forwarded his letters to us. Owen wrote so formally, as if we didn’t know each other. Careful. Someone in the post office could open and read the letter as possible enemy communication. I’d thought Owen was only dramatizing himself, but then soldiers had shut down the
Chicago Times
because Mr. Storey disagreed with President Lincoln in his editorials, though the president let the paper reopen. It was impossible to think of Owen and Katie Mulloy as the enemy, yet that was this war all over. Mrs. Lincoln herself had four brothers and three brothers-in-law in the Confederate army. Family feuds are always the most bitter. No quarter given on either side now.

Máire and I settled ourselves by the fire. She poured herself a tot of whiskey and offered one to me, knowing I’d refuse. I’d promised not to drink until the boys were home.

“Suit yourself,” she said. She held up her glass and toasted me. “Here’s to being spiritual, each of us in her own way.” She took a long sip. “I’ll give you a dollar for candles. Wouldn’t want you to get caught cheating God.”

“He wouldn’t care.”

“But some old one kneeling in the pew watching might.” She took another sip. “Prayer is all well and good, but don’t be going demented on me.”

“I wish I’d known some of these devotions and practices at the start of the war, before Johnny Og . . .” I stopped. Had to be careful with Máire. Sometimes she wanted to talk about Johnny Og. Sometimes she didn’t. I’d even hesitated to tell her I lit a candle for him every day.

“Honora, do you really think if you’d visited enough churches, the secessionist soldier wouldn’t have shot Johnny Og?” Máire said. Not angry, only asking, leaning toward me.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Certainly isn’t,” she said.

“I only know I have to pray, hard and often.”

How could I explain the doubts I felt? Never during the worst of the Great Starvation or even that awful time after Michael died had I lost a sense of God’s presence, questioned His love. Now . . . Thoughts of Patrick Kelly crept into my mind. God forgive me. Michael, forgive me.

What a relief it would be to pour all this out to Máire. She’ll say what a part of me does: Catch yourself on, Honora.

I was about to tell her when we heard someone at the downstairs door, knocking, calling out, “Mrs. Kelly, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Late for a visitor,” she said.

“Better go see,” I said. We went down the stairs. “What is it?” I called out through the front door.

“I’m Captain Peter Casey,” the man said. “From the Irish Legion.”

I pulled the door open. A man in uniform—tall, fine-featured, but very thin, stricken-looking. Oh no.

“I recruited your boys,” he said. “James the Piper and Danny O, we call them.”

“Please,” I said. “What’s happened?”

“A terrible battle with the Legion in the thick of it this Wednesday, the twenty-fifth of November. Your sons . . .” He stopped.

“Not dead? No, please! Not dead?” I said.

“They’re missing.”

“Missing?” Máire said. “What does ‘missing’ mean?”

“Anything,” Peter Casey said. “They could be dead or in a field hospital somewhere or taken prisoner. Or . . . they could have deserted. They weren’t accounted for after the battle of Mission Ridge.”

“You were there?” I said.

“No, I’ve been home on medical leave. My sergeant was in the battle. Mike Clark’s his name. He just left my house. He’s the one told me. He cleared the battlefield afterwards. He knows your fellows well. Didn’t find their bodies. They’re not among our wounded and didn’t come back to camp.”