"As God is my judge," Father Cluny muttered, flushing and backing off, "as God is my judge. Curse me as you will, my duty is clear when a man begs absolution, and it was no more than his immortal soul I was seeking to save."
"Ohhhh," Tomas groaned, "it's all too foul . . . pin-pricking him with innuendoes of hell, deftly prodding your holy blather until you stripped him of the one dignity he had left."
"It wasn't like that at all, Daddy," Conor interjected strongly. "There were times, right up to the last day, that Grandfar would see things clearly. I told him you would go off into a fury but he insisted on absolution. "Conor," he said to me, 'in the unlikely event there is going to be a life after death, I don't want it to be like the life I've had before death." Grandfar said he just didn't want to take the chance of having to suffer again like he did on earth."
"Why didn't you tell me! Creeping behind my back in a bloody conspiracy!"
"Because, Daddy, we knew you'd try to stop it."
"And surely I would have! Taking advantage of a sick, daft old man."
"Daft or no, Grandfar was entitled to his last wish."
"And you stood against your daddy!"
"Nae, Daddy. I stood for Kilty."
It grew terrifyingly quiet. I tell you now that Tomas Larkin appeared twice as big as normal. I'll never forget the look of him as he glared at us each in turn. His face spoke of neither anger nor hatred, but utter contempt. Contempt that a very strong man can dispense to the weak. He left us heading up the hill with Conor racing after him.
"Daddy!"
"Get home with you, Conor," he said softly.
"Daddy!" Conor pleaded.
"Just go home, lad. I need to be alone."
CHAPTER TWO
Kilty Larkin looked ever so grand laid out in the best room. There was none the equal of my mother, Mairead, in County Donegal when it came to scrubbing up and shaving and tidying a corpse for the waking. Moreover, she was the midwife of the Upper Village, having attended the birth of all the Larkin kids. It seemed she spent half her nights bringing new wanes into the world. Until the Protestant doctor came to the Township, she was often called down into Protestant homes to attend difficult births.
When we arrived at the cottage, Kilty's bed was burning in the yard as a further measure to ward off the fairies and inside he was stretched out on a wooden slab, held up by four chairs and covered saint like with a fine white linen sheet. . . except for his face and his hands and his two big toes, which were tied together to keep him from returning as a ghost. Candles flickered about his head and a new pair of boots were at his feet to help his walk through purgatory. His eyes had been closed restful-like with a new carved stone crucifix on his chest and rosary beads entwined in folded hands. Never having seen old Kilty at prayer when he was alive, he surely looked like St. Columba himself, all stretched out and lovely.
The women of the village and the older folk who no longer worked in the fields were the first to arrive and Finola greeted them at the door.
"I'm sorry for your troubles."
"Tis a powerful loss."
"May he be dead for a year before the Devil hears of it."
"How are you keeping, old dear?"
"Bravely . . . bravely," Finola managed.
Moving on to the deceased, they "oh'd" and "ah'd" over the grand job my ma and Finola had done. "I've never seen him looking so much like himself."
They knelt, intoned a quick prayer and drifted to the fringes of the room. Brigid had filled dozens of small clay pipes with tobacco which had supernatural qualities at times like this, and offered them about with a plate of snuff to hasten Kilty's journey and resurrection.
Three lambs had been slaughtered and an immense stew boiled in the great pot and a dozen loaves of fadge, a potato bread, browned on the baking boards and likewise our own kitchen throbbed into action, for the gathering would be large.
There were many foods we avoided because it reminded the elders of our poverty during the great famine and cheese was foremost among them, but cheese was always present at a wake, heaped unsparingly into wooden bowls. Finola flitted from greeting the mourners to the fire to the guests, prodding them to eat. Plunging into the cheese, they intoned, "We will sup this meal with a spoon of sorrow."
All the hill farmers lived in various stages of poverty, but the Larkins through defiance and stronger men always had more than the rest. Wealth, by our standards, was measured by the amount of butter one put on one's bread. There was a tiny patch of bog just beyond the first row of stone fences where a number of souterrains had been built to store and keep butter from becoming rancid. Liam arrived with two large pails of it, making it obvious that no expense was to be spared at this waking.
Finola was gifted with magic at the churn, a churn which was crafted minutely to her exact specifications, and her secret of pouring the skim milk to break the lumpiness was said to be a formula learned from the fairies. Her butter was velvet. . . rich, creamy, smooth, sumptuous, unadulteratedly glabrous.
Now, aside from the known fact that Conor was my closest friend and idol, one of the rewards of hanging around the Larkin cottage was a daily slice of bread and butter. "Don't be afraid of the butter," she would tell me and I would heap it on so that it was thicker than the bread itself. On it went in great swathing strokes like the Protestants troweling mortar between the stones of their houses.
Seeing Liam enter with those two enormous pails, I thought it would be an appropriate time to kneel at Kilty's feet and say a few Hail Marys. Just as I finished my prayers, a donkey belonging to the poteen-making widows was led into the room with creels filled with bottles of mountain dew. The stew was thickening to a boil and the room swelled with tobacco smoke when who should arrive but Dooley McCluskey, that legendary skinflint, still in his apron and bowler hat, his eyes always screwed up in a squint from peering in the dark to see that nobody cheated a drink. And what do you know! Dooley McCluskey came with a dozen bottles of whiskey, all legal, with government stamps on them, and from that stingy man no greater compliment could be paid Kilty Larkin. It was getting so crowded you could hardly pass a straw between the people who were spilling over into the byre and the yard.
Just like that, the noise outside screamed to a dead halt and the silence rode in on a wave clear through the cottage as Tomas Larkin appeared. He looked neither to the left nor right nor acknowledged the whispered condolences. The visitors parted like biblical floodwaters as he moved toward his daddy and stood over him.
Knowing that Kilty sought absolution, a terrible tension invaded the room. Would Tomas fall to his knees or rip the place asunder? Well . . . he just sat alongside Kilty laying his hand on his daddy's hand gently and the whole place heaved a simultaneous gasp of relief. Conor came to him and they gave wee sad smiles to one another . . . "Aye," Tomas said, ". . . aye." Dooley McCluskey took off his bowler, held it over his heart and thrust a bottle of whiskey in Tomas' direction which he nearly half did in on a single go and then he took a pipe from Brigid, patted her head and retreated into a corner.
The room sighed again.
It was the signal for Finola to commence keening.
She emitted a horrendous, piercing shriek that shivered the place and dropped to her knees and crawled toward the corpse.
"Kilty! Kilty! I knew you were leaving us, for I saw the banshee last night with my own eyes!"
Well now, that sobered things up. A frightened murmur arose.
"Indeed!"
"Where, old dear?"
"I’ll tell you," Finola gasped, afeared with the thought of the terrible event . . . "I was going into the byre . . . there” — she pointed — "to feed the chicks. I remember a glance to dear Kilty when I saw the sky graying up . . . just like the day old Declan O'Neill took his leave from us …”
"Aye," was the universal response of recollection, with universal signs of the cross and a magnetic inching closer to the now entranced mourner.
"Graying as it did, I struck a light and on me toes turned up
the lantern, and as I did, I was thrown into a chill by a blowing dagger of ice and bringing on a fright for my unborn baby. The lantern blew out all by itself and I trembled to light it six times over, and each time it doused out, plunging the byre dark as a tomb!"
Jaysus, the room got quiet.
Palms was damp and mouths so dry that tongues was sticking to teeth.
"And then," she moaned weird like "a glow came on all by itself. I turned ever so slow from the lantern and seen a shimmer at the far end of the byre. Fearing to go closer, I could not make out the body of it but over the face was . . . a shroud.,."
"Hail Mary," someone said.
"The hair was long and raven mixed up with streaks of red and on the shroud . . . blood stains and teardrops."
"The banshee of Doreen O'Neill! Sure and didn't I see the very same sight myself on the passing of my beloved Caley!" one of the poteen widows cried.
A spattering of screams and cries erupted but Finola overrode them.
"She gave out a cackling laugh and said over and over . . . "Kilty . . . Kilty . . . Kilty . . . Kill-tee Kill-tee' . . . and as she did she kept reaching out for me and then . . . she melted . . . right into the ground . . ."
"Sure it was the sign!"
"Kilty!" Finola screamed. "Sweet Kilty Larkin! God love you, Kilty! Oh, you've got away from us, sweet Kilty!" Weeping now, she kissed his feet …
"Grandfar!" Liam cried, and soon the four of them, Finola and her three children, erupted into unabashed grief of the most intense order as Tomas sat in his corner quiet like nipping away at Dooley McCluskey's whiskey. Finola keened with a fervor that could have caused a thunder plump, clutching at the linen sheet that covered Kilty and howling in incoherent anguish.
Liam became hysterical, shrieking until he doubled over and convulsed. His daddy snatched him up, set him on his lap and wrapped his great arms about him until the writhing dulled to sobs.
Finola keened until the cottage was in a fever . . . for she was the greatest keener of the entire east coast of Inishowen and her lamenting for the dead so powerful she was in the most heavy demand for wakes. Since the death of her own parents she had not had close family to keen over for a number of years and she was letting it all out, intent on sending Kilty to the hereafter on a rainbow of glory.
Conor and Brigid soon howled themselves into exhaustion and joined Liam on Tomas' lap, but Finola carried on in the throes of exquisite agony. Being as I was quite little and Tomas' lap quite big, I squeezed my way on too.
Swept up by her frenzy and struck fuzzy by the poteen, a smattering of others, including my ma, were on their knees keening with more wailing coming from that cottage than from two thousand head of cattle on Fair Day in Derry.
Finola's face had gone white as the paint on the priest's house and her hair was a dishevelment of kelp, and wide streaks from the gush of tears smeared her cheeks, dripping down her nose and chin and the corners of her lips, and she sweated like she was being boiled in the big pot. The belly holding her baby convulsed so jerkily I thought surely it would be born at the feet of the deceased.
"You've had enough of your first wake," Tomas said, "all of you scat to Seamus' house and go to sleep." Conor's protest was overridden sternly and we were ushered out with orders not to return.
With the rest of my brothers and sisters gone I had only to share my sleeping place with Colm, who would be waking and chasing girls through this whole night. We had a space where the chickens roosted at night on a huge soft mattress of bog fir, large enough to hold the four of us. We tucked in close together. Although Conor was my closest friend, I always recall trying to be next to Brigid when we slept together for, although I loved Conor, Brigid had a different feeling which I recognized even then. I suspected that wanting to rub up against Brigid had something to do with the sins Father Lynch warned us of but I simply pretended not to know it was a sin because it felt so good. Anyhow, Liam and Brigid were soon dead out but Conor and I kept thrashing.
"Conor?"
"Aye."
"You asleep?"
"Nae."
"What you suppose is happening now?"
"Sure I don't know."
"Can you sleep at all?"
"Nae. My head's dinnling."
And after a time I said,". . . Conor, you asleep?"
"Nae."
"Do you suppose your daddy would be fierce with us if we went back and hid up in your loft? What I'm thinking is, Kilty was your only living grandfar and I just know he'd want you to keep the waking with him."
There was a contemplative silence to weigh the pros and cons after which Conor intoned the magic words . . . "Let's go, runt."
We slipped out of my house with extreme care and with the stealth of cattle rustlers on his lordship's estate slithered over the wall. It was so boisterous now that we would have gone unnoticed if we were a pair of charging bulls. Conor threw the ladder up to the window opening of the loft and we scampered in, diving into the hay and burying ourselves and squeezing our quickened breath to a quiet.
The loft was the sleeping place for the Larkin kids. Aside from the window there were two other openings down into the cottage. A ladder through a trap door into the best room and, on the opposite side, another ladder into the byre housing the cattle, horse and chickens. The Larkins made the pigs live outside. From the loft we had a splendid view of all the doings.
With the heavy lamenting over for a time, the older folks tucked in their niches, smoking away on clay pipes, playing cards and telling stories. Some of the young wanes scampered about stuffing pepper into the teapots and tobacco jars, setting off sneezing seizures, while outside the bachelor boys and spinster girls snuck into the shadows to play kissing games and perform mock marriages. There was a group of troublemakers too gawky to mix with girls who amused themselves by a water fight right in the best room, and just near the corpse a group of older men engaged in a dexterity contest, holding a broom handle in both hands and leaping back and forth through it. Directly opposite them, on the far side of the corpse, a dozen women knelt in prayer and keening. The water fight took on a heightened dimension with the addition of potatoes as missiles which buzzed alarmingly close to the worshipers. Just outside, Donall MacDevitt, Finola's cousin from the next village, passed around a bottle of ether to a group lifting weights and leaping a stone wall. In a matter of minutes they were tore out of their minds, staggering crazy and doubled up laughing like maniacs and thinking they was birds trying to fly off the roof or over the wall, bashing themselves fearfully but feeling nary a thing. Someone broke out a fiddle and bagpipe and them that wasn't singing revolutionary songs kicked up their heels in a jig, and the widow women were getting their juices stirred looking over the eligibles in a way that spelled no good at all. Arguing broke out over arguable subjects, which covered just about anything. . .. Ah, it was a grand wake, a grand wake indeed. Had he not been dead, Kilty would have been the proudest man alive and surely he was making an impression on St. Peter and all the angels for having so many darling friends.
"Shhhh," Conor said, nudging me. Someone was climbing the ladder from the outside. We burrowed into the hay, leaving only room for our noses to breathe and our eyes to see. Sure it was Billy O'Kane helping Bridie O'Doherty into the loft and in no time at all they were thrashing about and giggling and his hands were reaching under her petticoats. Me and Conor clutched each other to keep from breaking out laughing. Just as suddenly, Billy and Bridie stopped their spooning and dived under cover as they heard someone else coming up the ladder, and just that quick, Maggie O'Donnelly and my own brother Colm had entered the loft and were having at it.
Fortunately the wake was off bounds for Father Lynch and Father Cluny, but we all knew they were stationed in some shadowy place within earshot to amass evidence of bawdiness, nudity, dirty language, ether drinking, kissing, or worse . . . and all the other things in their endless catalogue of carnal sins.
Father Lynch had so much as forbidden boys and girls to walk on
the same side of the road together, always hovering like a sharp-eyed gannet over every gathering, watching for members of the opposite sex touching, giving endearing glances and, by Christ, he could tell if anyone was even thinking about it. His blackthorn stick put a lump on many a head as it struck into the haystacks of Ballyutogue like God's own lightning rod.
It was a good thing he wasn't in the house of Tomas Larkin this night because the loft was getting severely crowded. Our amusement turned to awe at the things they were starting to do to each other. Just as it was getting the most interesting, a fearsome thing happened. Some hay tickled my nose so that I burst into a sneezing spell. Heads popped up all over the loft
"Jaysus!"
"Holy Mother, have mercy!"
"Tell the priest and I'll kill you, Seamus," my very own brother said to me.
They poured out of the loft like it was on fire. However, the entertainment soon continued as our attention was drawn down to the byre where Dinny O'Kane and Bertie MacDevitt were bashing each other around to a fare thee well. . . winging in punches that clouted off their noggins with accompanying grunts. Their blows had little aim and less power but the cows were getting upset and would be giving off sour milk for a week.
It was only a matter of time for this fight to have occurred, for there was bad blood between the O'Kanes and MacDevitts as a matter of historical tradition.
Those two had gone into a partnership that was bound to end in disaster. One day, when in a brotherly mood, they decided to buy a horse together. The animal had to be purchased early in the spring for the plowing and then sold after the last harvest to carry their families through the winter. Therefore the buying and selling of a horse was serious business.
In order to pay for his half of the horse, Dinny O'Kane went over the water to work at the Liverpool docks during cattle shipping season and, for his half, Bertie MacDevitt harvested Dinny's crops.
Figuring they knew just about everything about horseflesh between them, they set out to swindle a tinker horse trader at the Carndonagh Fair and laughed up their sleeves all the way home.