He had exploded on the day of his wound. She, dressing it, could not keep his hand from trembling. He couldn't tell her how he had received the wound— but one of the other marines had been there.
The padre, he said, was half carrying one of the men who had fallen, and he was holding an arm out wide to balance himself. This took place a few feet away from the witness, who said he heard a single crack and saw the padre wince and pull his hand in, as though stung badly.
The wounded marine whom Captain Shannon had been carrying was taken away to the field hospital. She looked at the chaplain. Why was he standing there with his mouth gaping open like a witless man? He was holding up a bleeding hand like a dog with an injured paw. And he bled as though he had been reefed with a sharp knife.
Nurse Kennedy grabbed him and sat him down; he stood up again, bolt upright, very hard and fast.
“Sit down, Captain!”
He didn't hear, didn't sit.
“Captain, let me see.”
She had to grapple for his hand. When she cleaned it she believed she knew what had happened: An enemy sniper's bullet had cut a deep furrow across the knuckles of the captain's hand, outstretched for balance; in fact his other thumb had been hit as well. How the bullet had not entered his body was something she couldn't understand. She understood it even less when she gouged some lead fragments from the damaged thumb of the other hand.
Next morning, she saw him in the medical tent. He still had the dressing on one hand, the heavy bandage on the other. But he was standing rigid as a statue and looking off toward the distant battlefield, wincing at the bursts of gunfire. Systematically, in robot steps, he set out toward the firing, then— still within the tent— he turned in a circle and began to spin and shake.
Nurse Kennedy knew instantly that the chaplain's war was over. She called an orderly who rushed to help. Captain Shannon kept twisting and turning on his feet until the orderly all but tripped him up; he fell awkwardly like a big child, into the orderly's arms.
Then began the trembling. He shook from head to foot. They heard his teeth rattle. He ripped a thin red slash along his chin with a fingernail as he clawed at his mouth. And he began to weep and moan and rant.
By now the medical corps had seen many men like this, but the chaplain's manifestation astonished them. More powerfully, it caused an easement in their attitude toward other shell-shock victims. If it could happen to such a man, should it not be looked at differently? One marine even had a death sentence commuted. He had been due to be shot at noon for deserting the battlefield. When the officers saw that Captain Robert Shannon, of all people, had now begun to suffer the same ailment, they rescinded their mistaken judgments.
“Even when shattered,” Nurse Kennedy remarked to the colonel, “Captain Shannon is saving lives.”
They hauled him across the tent like a sack of grain and dumped him onto a field hospital bed; it was all they could manage. He had completely lost his senses. When the senior officers came to see him, the chaplain's derangement shocked them. He rolled his eyes without seeing. He clenched his fists so fiercely that he drew blood from his palms. He made noises with his mouth, sounds that could not be called language.
Two men and Nurse Kennedy held him down to control his thrashing body and limbs. In no way did this resemble the sane, quick, and stylish man known to them all. It was after that inspection that the officers took their decision to review all such erratic manifestations.
Casualties from Belleau Wood— and there were hundreds— left the American lines in trains of transports every day. Some went to Paris; a few officers and extreme cases went to Dieppe. The colonel ordered Nurse Kennedy to prepare Captain Shannon, and he wrote the necessary papers. From that moment she lost all contact with the chaplain.
Before she resigned from the army and returned to Ireland, Nurse Kennedy put an inquiry through military channels as to the chaplain's progress. She never received a reply. Nor did she ever stow him away in an attic of her mind; he remained in the front room of her thoughts.
Of late, her life more settled, her griefs under control, she had been contemplating a visit back to the United States one day. Among other renewals of acquaintance she hoped to find “Captain Shannon,” as she still thought of him.
On his voyage to Ireland, nothing in the world came by to help Archbishop Sevovicz. Nothing sweetened his temper, nothing gentled his mood, not even the ocean's famed ability to promote better, deeper sleep. He remained twitchy and strained. Anxiety made him angry and worry made him rude; he snapped at waiters, pursers, and fellow passengers alike.
The voyage was slowed by two days owing to some exceptional iceberg activity. Captains in the North Atlantic had become as nervous as cats since the Titanic disaster a decade before. On the last night Sevovicz, by now prey to mounting horrors, drank a bingeful of Scotch in his cabin.
He disembarked at the southernmost Irish port of Queenstown, now being called Cobh—”Pronounce it cove,” they told him— and proceeded to the city of Cork. He took a suite at the Imperial Hotel.
A long way from his frail protégé, in a land of which he knew nothing, Sevovicz saw the irony. I'm more adrift now than I was on that wretched boat.
Why had he not thought to board a ship that would have taken him close to the Shannon River? He could have gone into Limerick itself.
Nor had he given any thought at all as to how he would travel about the countryside trying to find Robert Shannon. Obviously he would seek to contact a useful priest or bishop, but this brought another problem: He foresaw interfering chatter; Cardinal O'Connell had many friends in the Irish Church.
And over and above all these thoughts stood the problem of Robert Shannon's safety. From time to time, day and night, Sevovicz became almost frantic with anxiety, but he quelled it and told himself, I have a more serious task than I thought. Not only do I have to save his soul, I have to save his body— if he's still alive!
Sevovicz knew dangerous men when he saw them. Killers thrive on sentimentality and high notions. The Lizards showed a disturbing blend of sanctimoniousness coupled with ruthlessness; he had seen that combination often in the Vatican. These men transacted business with His Eminence; they didn't want that arrangement disrupted, no matter how pitiable the disrupter. Such thoughts filled Sevovicz's body with knives. His stomach took the stabbing blows; he had spent much of the time in his bathroom aboard ship.
Next morning in Cork, Sevovicz reverted to type and did what any country boy would do— he acquired local knowledge. In civilian clothes he walked around the city— or tried to; he was stopped at barricades everywhere, and that sent his heart racing again.
Inquiries confirmed his rising fear; he had indeed sent Robert into a hot and awful civil war. Did O'Connell know about this strife when the trip was proposed? Was the haste with which His Eminence wanted Robert to go connected in any way to knowledge that O'Connell was getting from Ireland? God Almighty! He may not know of the assassination plot— but isn't this as bad?
Sevovicz bought a map, then had an early drink in a pub and found willing talkers. He told them he was a fisherman. They tried to send him to the Blackwater River, thirty miles north of the city, “famous for the salmon.” He insisted on the Shannon. They outlined his problems: transport and soldiers. About the soldiers he could do nothing, but he could get hold of a motor bicycle.
The shipping agency's representative in Cork arranged all the banking. Sevovicz's letter of credit purchased his transport, and he paid for three riding and basic mechanical lessons. Then, leaving his luggage in the hotel, having repacked for pillion and panniers, he set off. With his frog's-eye goggles and his cap turned backward, his tweed coat, and his leather gauntlets, he looked like a creature from the old days of the moon.
Ellie Kennedy lived in the central part of Ireland's flat midlands. She had a good life there. Well known and well liked locally, she had inherited the respect given to her parents. Her father's profession had assured him and his family of com
fortable acceptance among all creeds and classes. And her mother had been a loving and involved wife.
Growing up in that house, Ellie had lived in peace and ease. Since childhood she had wanted to take over her father's medical practice. Already cherished by her parents, she was given as good an education as she could get up to the age of eighteen. Thereafter, when she discovered that as a woman she couldn't gain admission to a medical school, she had opted for her mother's old profession, nursing.
Politics didn't touch her, nor religious prejudice, nor economic difficulty. When her parents died, the house— always beloved— became her compensation. She had the good fortune to own a large farm with it, one of the few local pockets of fertile ground, and she rented out most of the land, keeping only such garden as she needed. The farm income added to the parental inheritance and the salary from her nursing. By any standards she could call herself well off.
Three bereavements in four years had rocked her, shaken her to the core: dashing bridegroom, reliable mother, beloved father. She hurled herself into her practical life, remaking the house as she wanted it, setting up her hospital responsibilities as she knew they needed to be.
Thus, by the time Robert came to her door, her life had once again been running a measured and level course. She lived in the comfort to which she had always been accustomed. She came home each night to a strong— if silent— home, filled with the family possessions she had always known. She cared with efficiency and taste for rooms that were rich, ordered, and quiet. Nothing disturbed the air, and she tried, with uneven success, to put the word lonely from her mind. She had her work, her car, her home, and her dog.
On that first night, when she had sent Robert to bed and seen him installed in his room, she gave him time to settle down. Then she knocked on the door and went cautiously in. He had drawn the bedding to his chin. She could see that he had, as she'd suggested, availed himself of her father's pajamas. Her candle cast its shadow across the ceiling; she had the presence of mind to keep it from making monsters.
Ever the nurse, she didn't sit on the edge of the bed. She placed the candlestick on the nightstand and drew forward a chair. The last time she had done this, four years earlier and half a world away in a blood-soaked field hospital tent, he, wild in his mind, had had no clue as to her identity. Now he looked at her with grateful and sleepy eyes and waited for her to say something.
She said, “In the morning— maybe we'll talk?”
“Yes. In the morning.”
“Good night, Captain Shannon. Robert.”
By then he was asleep.
She checked everything downstairs. She locked doors, secured all windows. She wanted no sudden winds off the river rattling the house and startling her guest. A moon shone into the hallway as she climbed the stairs in the dark. In her own room, she lit her bedside lamp— not a candle; she intended to stay awake.
Since childhood she had slept in the room with the alcove and its deep window seat. It too overlooked the river, and now she could see the moon's beam down along the water.
I wish I could see the path into the future.
Her shoulders hurt; a headache began; the soles of her feet felt hot; her face stung; unease and stress cascaded down her body.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ. Is that a prayer or not?
The river flowed in great calm with not a ripple; it looked like a narrow lake. She sat on the window seat but rose again, then sat again.
What is this all for? There's a reason for this unease. No, there isn't. I'm excited. No, I'm not! Don't be stupid, Ellie. Stupid. Well, why did you think about him so much for so long? This is stupid.
She walked into the depth of the room, stood beside the armchair, and began to undress. Her training as a nurse and the wild rigors of army and wartime life had removed from her the inhibitions with which she had left Ireland. Few if any Irishwomen of that generation ever stripped totally naked. They undressed under the nightdress they were about to wear; in boarding schools they wore bathing suits in the showers and bathtubs. Since she had come home for good, she had undressed totally every night, and since she lived alone she had often walked around the house wearing nothing.
Tonight, however, she undressed like a virgin again. If she thought of asking herself why, she might have fumbled— and found no answer.
By one of those small rills of good fortune, she had the next three days off from work. Tonight she meant to stay awake because she hadn't forgotten the screaming, whimpering, seemingly insane man whom she had handed over to the stretcher detail at Lucy-le-Bocage.
Outside, the night grew perfect. The breezes of the evening departed to blow over other counties, other rivers, taking the clouds with them for company, so that the moon had the sky almost to herself. Beside the moon squatted little glinting Mercury.
A small animal yelped somewhere on the riverbank, and again Ellie rose and went to the window. If the River Shannon itself had given her advice that night, this most independent minded of women would have acted upon it. By the time she heard three chimes on the breakfast-room clock downstairs, she was fumbling toward a plan.
He can stay as long as he likes. Maybe I'll find a doctor who'll check him and be discreet. Maybe not. I must get him some new clothes. He looks like he needs nourishment, nurturing. He can come to work with me, and I can sit him down in that little room that hasn't yet been converted for patients, and he can come home with me again. No, maybe he needs to be completely private. I must check again whether that new face powder is in. God above, I haven't bought decent underwear in three years. Should I consult the parish priest or will that only cause meddling?
Who can tell us about the name Shannon? How much does he know about the process of his own cure? How are they treating shell shock these days? Where can I find somebody who would know?
Does he want me to tell his parents? Why don't I wire them tomorrow that he's safe and well and here with me, and we can wire them again when those plans change— if they change. Maybe not. Maybe give him time. If those plans change. What do you mean, if they change? Of course they'll change! Now what does he eat? What doesn't he eat? Those army rations— ech! Oh, he told me once that he loved steak. Well, that's good. And duck— who'd have duck? Where can I get some?
What's the word? What is it? Isolation, that's it! Isolation. That's how they're treating shell shock now. God, I'm restless. Keep the place very calm; keep him busy with small tasks. And a lot of rest— no distress. We can walk by the river; yes, we can walk by the river. I wonder, does he write yet? These men can't write anymore. Has he written home?
The army, the war, had taught her how to cope with sleepless nights. Three hours later, at six in the morning, she rose, washed, dressed, and went down to the kitchen, where she began a round of chores with energy that she turned on deliberately. She let out the dog; she baked; she prepared breakfast; she found her parents’ famous cuttings ledger, which contained half a century of interesting local facts or amusing snippets that had caught their eyes. Every guest who had ever come to the house had browsed this book with amusement and delight.
She checked her face in the mirror more than seven or eight times, and she rearranged and rearranged again the simple table laid for breakfast. Then, making up her mind at last, she wrote to the hospital saying that when the three days were up, she would not be back to work for some time. She was taking all the leave due to her.
When the concerned laymen of Boston had held their lethal meeting, and the deep agreement had been reached that something must be done, the Accountant had undertaken the task: “This is a burden I'm willing to carry.”
For the deed, he said, “I have the right man. I've known him for years. He's a man who wants to do me a favor, a great favor. He feels that he owes me.”
The other members of the conspiracy asked concerned questions. How reliable is he? These fellows— they're often stupid, aren't they? Isn't that why they get caught? Does he know of our existence? How discreet is he? If he is caught,
will he sing? They did not want to know the killer's name.
Yet they welcomed— were even thrilled by— some of the details. This man could easily pass in Ireland; he had an Irish name and birth certificate. As a boy had been brought to the United States by his parents. He had spent some time in seminary but had been asked to leave after a savage and completely unexpected attack on two fellow students; he maimed one for life. By all accounts he had had some kind of crack-up.
But he still carried that seminary air of distinction. Some days he even looked like a priest; he wore dark clothes and a high white collar without a necktie and from time to time was mistakenly addressed as Father by shopkeepers and railway porters.
After seminary the Accountant told them, this fellow had tried to become a police cadet but had been forced to quit after three or four incidents in which he had failed to keep his violence under control. His family having been asked to remove him, sought medical help. Before the doctor's appointment, however, he battered a passerby and the police took him.
Pulled strings kept him out of court. He was sent to work on a farm down near Great Barrington, where the paterfamilias and the grown sons had two-fisted reputations. They tamed and controlled him— up to a point. Eventually they tired of him too. The farmer consulted a brother-in-law in Boston. “That was me,” said the Accountant.
After some weeks of trying to manage him, trying to predict him—”I mean to say, it was like living with an unexploded bomb”—all who knew him agreed that the only place for this young man, by now as fit as a machine, had to be the army. And there was a major war in Europe.