Bold Sons of Erin (37 page)

“YEP, THERE’S A DOC IN MINERSVILLE, ALL RIGHT,” MR. Downs informed me as the wagon creaked along. “Doc Hooper. Say he’s more inclined to cut things off than sew ’em back together, but I guess it saves him some trouble that way.” His fingers wrestled within his nasal cavities. “Major, you are one man who just seems born to get himself hurt, if you ask me. Last feller I knew like you, he fell out of a tree he shouldn’t of been in to start with. Broke his neck dead. I tried to tell him, ‘Homer, you don’t need to climb no tree to drink no whisky, it tastes just fine here on the ground.’ But he wouldn’t listen, now would he? Had to climb that tree. Poor, old Homer. Damned fool wasn’t even Irish, though his widow was. Get on, mules, get on.”

It was a long journey.

The ache in my hand was a trivial thing, though the bleeding did concern me. I felt a seep that wanted proper tending and my rag of a bandage was soaking. Mr. Downs speculated that he might soon witness the amputation of my hand, if not of my arm entire, and I half thought he might propose my beheading as well. I do not think the teamster had a mean character, but many’s the man who delights in another’s misfortune. The fallen angel makes our heaven sweeter.

Had I delighted in the priest’s misfortune? That may sound queer, yet I could not help but wonder. I had been so merciless with him, furious unto a rage. Now his words returned to haunt my ears. All his prattling on about love. And God. I had wanted
so badly to wound him, to prove that he was wrong, to make him see it. To make him admit that things were best my way.

Perhaps the priest was mad. Perhaps Father Wilde had a streak of evil. Perhaps I was right to chastise him. But my slapping and barking did not sit well with me afterward.

You see, I harbor deep doubts of mine own, though it shames me to speak of them. So many of God’s projects leave me mystified. Not least regarding matters of the heart. Had Mrs. Walker loved Mr. Evans honestly? Had she been able to love him, truly and yearningly, despite her spendthrift attitude to virtue? Is love less a hothouse flower than a doughty weed triumphant? Are we in error to think that love needs virtue? Have we been given a will to love that cannot be extinguished? Does all our Christian diligence only blind us, leading us to mistake a gift as poison? Might love renew virtue?

What of Mary Magdalene’s redemption? Are we so pleased by her moral reformation that we fail to remember her love for Jesus Christ? Was her changed behavior more important than her change of heart? Why was she stalwart below the cross, when all His disciples fled? Why did
she
go to the tomb? And why did Jesus show himself to her? I do not suggest impropriety, only that love is more than good deportment.

Is all love equal in weight on the scales of Heaven? How could that be, when so much love seems soiled? Or is the filth in our eyes, not in the loving? I cannot answer such questions, and wish they would leave me in peace.

The difficulty is that I had come to believe that Mrs. Walker
did
love Mr. Evans. As it appeared he had loved her. Yet, he had loved his sister, to an agony of the soul. Danny Boland loved his wife so hopelessly that he accepted his own sister’s murder at the hands of his beloved, then took the blame for a general’s death, willing to go to the gallows to spare a madwoman. All because he loved her. And the madwoman had attacked me because she believed that I was keeping her from her love, though God alone knew why she thought such a thing. She had killed her husband’s sister, when Kathleen Boland tried to
break their marriage. Perhaps the general had been killed because she feared he might recruit Danny Boland for Thomas Francis Meagher and his Irish Brigade. I still felt parts of the story come short where the general was concerned, yet the priest might have spoken truly when he said it was all about love, all the murders, all the sorrow and suffering.

The priest loved enough to sleep beside a corpse.

I wondered how much love there was in me.

I was ashamed, see. My hand gave less discomfort to me than my memories of selfishness and greed. About the will, I mean. I had been far from any love, except self-love, the day it was read aloud. I sat there lusting for riches on which I had no more claim than a beggar. Less claim than a beggar’s, for the wretched have a right to Christian charity. I had sworn to myself that the inheritance was due to my Mary, to our John, to the child unborn. Yet, I sat there slavering like a dog held from his dish. When the bequest to Mrs. Walker was read, my heart curdled within me. As if the money had been robbed from my purse. So mean I was I could not bear that a man had left his property to his beloved.

I had not known that I could be that way. I never have sought riches, except the riches of the heart and soul. I was content enough with our material state before Mr. Evans’s death, and had enjoyed only temperate hopes for the future. To me, there had been more joy in a loving smile than in a fistful of silver or piles of banknotes. Travesty though it seem to you, even battle pleased me more than money.

I could offer you a dozen and more excuses. I might blame the unsettling Mr. Evans had dealt me with his confession. And true it was that I worried now, most bitterly, about my Mary’s health and our children’s future. But the fact is simply that I had been greedy.

I deserved far less than the Lord and life had granted me.

I thought about a welter of things, in those haunted morning hours of cold, still dark. Twas as if that journey tore a veil from my eyes. I thought of the painful curve to my wife’s
spine—though it is not so evident as that—and suddenly understood her dislike of Fanny. The child was straight and strong and almost a woman. The Lord forbid, my darling feared the child would become a rival for my affections. For I will tell you a secret now: My dear wife does not believe herself a beauty. She thinks that she is ugly and ill formed. Not all my love has ever quite persuaded her of the loveliness of her person. Poor Fanny’s heart is grateful as a hound’s. But that quality of heart only worsened matters.

No matter how relentlessly we love, I fear we never reach the beloved’s heart. Not to its fullest depth. We never know for certain what resides there. We are blessed by the coincidence of our affections, but coincidence is fragile. The unexpected word destroys our world. Mr. Shakespeare saw the frailty of love, as surely as he understood love’s awesome power. Again and again, he reapplies the theme. That terrible Moor would rather believe a liar than his darling, the lord of fair Sicilia condemns his flawless queen. Yet, Macbeth loves his wife to the bloody end, despite her many deficiencies of character. Even Cleopatra, fickle and tawny, loved more deeply than she knew herself.

I know there are betrayals in this world, see. But I wonder if we are not better served by ignoring faithless acts by those we love, instead of living trustless and on guard.

I lack the mind and education to make sense of such matters. I console myself with prayer and the hope of forgiveness. I know I am a flawed and sorry man. I wear my morality like a suit of armor, instead of keeping mercy in my heart. Perhaps it is my long years as a soldier, but I yearn for rules, for order, and for clarity. I condemn others unfairly. I do it out of fear that chaos lurks. Sometimes, it seems to me I live in terror.

Often, I have passed for brave. Yet, I have a coward’s heart. Bravery of the flesh is a minor matter. A drunkard or a fool can be a hero. But courage of the heart is rare and estimable. I wish I might trade one sort for the other.

Well, we must have faith and go through. There is no end of reasons to doubt the Lord’s wisdom. We must pray past our
errors. It is a terrible vanity to argue with God. We must pray and have faith, and go through.

We creaked into Minersville before dawn and woke the doctor. He grumped, but sewed me up. My hand had an alarming look with the journey’s blood washed away. Twas black and blue, and stiff, with a raw-meat gash in the palm and flaps of flesh on the back where the blade had emerged. The doctor offered me a swig of brandy for the discomfort he meant to cause me. I declined, of course.

To the disappointment of Mr. Downs, Dr. Hooper saw no cause for amputation. He told me that, if I escaped infection, I might recover most of the use of the hand. The blade had passed between the bones as if perfectly aimed, but made a mess of the ligaments and such. He cautioned me not to disturb the pus when it formed.

Mr. Downs and I took coffee at the German hotel and gobbled down a breakfast. The food was abundant and fortifying, the joy of it marred only by my driver’s boundless affection for his nose. We forget, see. I had spent my midnight in a house with a rotting corpse, then was attacked by a leprous crone for my troubles. Now I was repulsed by my tablemate’s manners, as if I had been raised in a country manor.

Perhaps that is our secret, the gift the Good Lord grants us to help us through: We forget.

MR. GOWEN HAD NOT FORGOTTEN ME. But he did forget himself.

“Good Christ, Jones, you can’t burst into a respectable law office looking like that,” he instructed me. “You’re unshaven. And you stink.”

I had not bothered to seek him at the courthouse, but had gone straight to his chambers down along Centre Street, where I found him behind a china cup of coffee and stacks of papers tied with red or blue ribbons. When he stood up, he looked like a well-fed walrus in one of those picture books.

“I want you to write out a warrant for the arrest of Mary Boland, wife of Daniel Patrick Boland, of Heckschersville, on a charge of murder.”

“What sort of nonsense are you up to now? I’ve warned you to leave the Irish in peace. Does Washington really want to stir up trouble?”

“Sit down and write the warrant, Mr. Gowen. Or I will see you arrested by the provost. And then you may write the warrant from a cell.”

“Ah, yes. That infamous letter that you bear. What if I don’t go along?”

“Then you will go to jail.”

“And if my constituents choose to defend me? I might not be able to control them, you understand.”

“That is an idle threat. Sit down and write. Do it now, Mr. Gowen.”

He sat down. But he did not take up pen and paper at first. He glowered at me. “You’re a fool,” he said. “In more ways than one. And I’m warning you. There are no deputies or magistrates available to assist you this time. They’re all occupied with other charges. You’ll be entirely on your own, if you insist on having it out with the Irish.” He flicked his fingers toward my bandaged paw. “Literally single-handed, it appears.”

“Write.”

He smirked, as men do when they are beaten but wish you to think they retain some superiority.

He angered me, so I did a nasty thing. Quite on the spur of the moment. I began to build a great lie, which is unworthy of a Christian. It emerged, though, that the lie would continue to benefit me for years. This world of ours is not a simple place.

“You did not ask me the name of the person Mrs. Boland is accused of murdering, Mr. Gowen.”

He looked up at me, with the barest hint of suspicion on his brow. “General Stone, I assume.”

“No, Mr. Gowen. That charge will come in due time, I believe. This warrant is for the murder of Kathleen Boland.”

He was a strong, aggressive man. But he could not control the color of his face. It went from the pink of bluster to a pallor. In a slice shaved off a moment.

“I see you have heard the name before,” I said.

“Never in my life. Who is she? A mother? Sister?”

“A sister. Whose choice of occupations was lamentable. She worked in a disorderly house. Where I am told many of our leading citizens traffic.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. Listen here, I’m a respectable, married man.”

“I made no suggestions regarding your own person, Mr. Gowen. Calm you down, now. But since you are elected our district attorney, you will have to learn all about these sorts of things.”

“So, you want a warrant . . . written out for the murder of a whore? Instead of a general?”

“I thought you were the one concerned with the law’s impartiality, Mr. Gowen? And with the plight of your loyal Irish voters?”

“I think you’re making this up.” It was a foolish ploy for the fellow to try, but he wanted badly to regain the upper hand.

I was having none of it. “You know better than that, Mr. Gowen. And it seems to me you are writing very slowly.”

“I take it there is a body? Proof of some sort?”

“Proof there will be in plenty,” I assured him, “and more than some will like. But there is another thing . . . about this Kathleen Boland. Strange it is that no one seems to know of her, although I am told she enjoyed a great popularity during her stay here in Pottsville. And doubly strange it is because Miss Boland kept a diary of those who consorted with her . . .”

White as the polar snows the fellow went. I do not mean to suggest he engaged in such untoward commerce himself. I cannot say. And do not care. But he had knowledge of the sins of others.

“ . . . and the diary happened to come into my possession.”

“That filthy bitch!” he cried. He made to leap from his chair in his anger, but his generous breadth of hip and stomach tugged him back down, in full accordance with Mr. Newton’s law. “Dolly Walker’s going to be run out of town over—”