Leon Uris (78 page)

Weather seems to be the one thing everyone has in common everywhere in the world, hot or cold, good or bad, wet or dry, it comes up first thing every morning and is our last worry at night.

In the South Island we get a pot full of rain so that sunny days…or hours…are revered like a blessing from a saint, although I don’t know if there is a saint assigned to spreading sunshine in the South Island. If there is, he’s doing a lousy job.

Today is a little bit of everything, mist, fleeting darkening clouds, chill, wind, and some nice periods of complete calm and the almighty feeling of sun. I guess weather is pretty much like life itself.

Whatever the elements, I still love most to climb to the crown of my hill over my land by my tree and the best trout stream in New Zealand, which is also mine. From up here the world down there seems understandable and manageable. These days when I meditate I seem to come up with a lot better answers.

The latest on Ireland was explained to me up here. It went like this. Sir Roger Casement was hanged. A few days later the British general in Ireland disappeared and has never been found. The executions stopped and those under death sentence were commuted to prison terms. A year later everyone was freed on amnesty including seventeen
hundred republicans from the prisoner of war camp in Wales.

In 1918 the Irish voted in the Sinn Fein Party, which recognized the Republic that was declared at the General Post Office in the Easter Rising of 1916. This compelled the British to sit down and talk things over, but they came kicking and screaming all the way.

Whatever the fate of the conferences, Ireland is bound to get the shaft and no doubt will have to gird up for another round of troubles. Nonetheless, we are moving in the right direction.

As for my family, things are in good order, relatively speaking. There are family quarrels, some sickness, misunderstood children, and all the disasters that befall every family in every lifetime. However, the view from the crown of the hill says that the Larkins have come through in grand fashion. From the moment Rory and I declared our love, I got around to seeing my kids differently.

Like Tommy, for example. I had him slated as the minor partner in the ranch, never stopping to think that Tommy might have a few plans of his own. So, one day his teacher calls me in and shows me some of Tommy’s paintings of scenery and Maoris and the animals and says, “Liam Larkin, this boy is an artist, a gem who will go as far as his ambition will carry him. He needs training.”

Well, shyte, what does a South Island schoolmaster know? Then Mildred showed me Tommy’s hidden trove of drawings and paintings. There were sketches of me that spoke off the paper, they were that fine. And one of his mother like to brought me to weeping. See, he never showed me his art because he was afraid I’d be disappointed by him not wanting to be a rancher.

Christ, I hope a person can make a living by painting pictures. My position was real clear. I was going to do
everything to encourage and support him and I’d be there if, God forbid, he fell on his ass.

So Tommy Larkin is in Paris. I don’t know how much art he’s learning yet but he sure is getting an education on women and having a hell of a time.

Madge, my oldest girl, was the only one to fulfill her mother’s dreams. She married a nice boy, Donnie, who got through the war in one piece. The government gave out veterans’ homesteads and he’s doing very well on a good section of land. I’ve a grandson from them, already.

My major problem with Madge and Donnie is to try not to give them too much too soon. Anyhow, Donnie is a proud kid, up from poverty and determined to make it on his own.

I might add that I showed extraordinary tolerance by making no fuss over him not being a member of the true faith. He’s a good hunting partner. He used to have to bag a rabbit when he was a kid, or go hungry. I kind of hope they raise their kids as Catholics, but on the other hand, it doesn’t really make much difference now, does it?

If Tommy fooled the old Squire here, Spring totally flabbergasted me. She got into a group of anthropologists who were studying Maori origins and customs and became completely taken with that sort of work. She wants to spend here life learning the various native tribes and peoples of the South Pacific islands.

Now I can’t honestly figure out the value of such a profession. Well maybe, if she spent her time tracing Irish roots, that would be different. But, mind you, my daughter Spring is the first accepted and only female anthropology student in the London School of Economics.

Spring is no beauty but well endowed, and she has a way with the lads, and although she likes them and they like her, her anthropology comes first…so she writes. She and Tommy exchange London and Paris visits often and apparently know how to have a good old time. Mind you, these kids never…hardly ever…ask for extra
money. You know how good it makes me feel that I can provide this life for them?

I suppose the Larkin of us all is Father Dary. He’s not “Father” any more except that he’s an expectant father. He fell desperately in love with a magnificent creature, I’m told. Her name is Rachael and she’s the daughter of Atty Fitzpatrick. Rachael is the fancy spelling for Rachel.

When he returned from the war and resigned the priesthood we figured there would be hell to pay, but his Bishop, Mooney, made a powerful stand on his behalf on his right side and the Countess Caroline Hubble made an equally powerful stand on his left.

Dary had given years of devoted service in the Bogside, working the bottom of the pit. Powerful support arose for him from the people.

The Larkin name in Derry and Donegal is not to be underestimated, and I suppose his Rachael girl is able to charm the devil’s grandmother.

Caroline Hubble helped sponsor his founding of an institute of advanced study and personal tutoring for exceptional students from all over Ireland.

In his last letter Dary said he was seriously considering running for the late Kevin O’Garvey’s seat, be it in the British Parliament or an Irish Parliament.

Brigid…well nothing much will change there. She remains the keeper of the ashes.

Like I said, things are in pretty good order, relatively speaking. I’ve got a special love for Georgia. I have signed over a hundred acres of land and with my help and government help built a rehabilitation facility large enough to hold twenty war veterans at a time.

It is not that she and her staff can restore them to full physical or mental health, but she can do enough so that
when they leave, they can carry on a useful and independent life. Three of her lads are excellent hands on the ranch. For our little country of a million people, our losses were terrible…just terrible.

Hey! Hey! Hey! By God, there’s sunshine for you! Not from that lazy saint up in the sky but sunshine coming up the hill on horseback through the mist.

Rory and Georgia. They are so hot for each other I swear that one of these days they’re going to get into bed and fry each other to crisps.

And would you ever look at little Rory sitting in the front of her daddy’s saddle and Georgia riding with their son…my grandson. He’s a real thumper, that boy. Do you know what they named him? They named him Liam, after me.

Can you ever imagine something like that?

Here is an excerpt from

A GOD IN RUINS

by

Leon Uris

From HarperCollins
Publishers

A Catholic orphan of sixty years is not apt to forget the day he first learned that he was born Jewish. It would not have been that bombastic an event, except that I am running for the presidency of the United States. The 2008 election is less than a week away.

Earlier in the day, my in-close staff looked at one another around the conference table. We digested the numbers. Not only were we going to win, there was no way we were going to lose. Thank God, none of the staff prematurely uttered uttered the words “Mr. President.”

This morning was ten thousand years ago.

I’m Quinn Patrick O’Connell, governor of Colorado and the Democratic candidate for president. The voters know I was adopted through the Catholic bureaucracy by the ranchers Dan and Siobhan O’Connell.

My dad and I were Irish enough, at each other’s throats. Thanks to my mom, we all had peace and a large measure of love before he was set down in his grave.

All things being equal, it appeared that I would be the second Roman Catholic president in American history. Unknown to me until earlier this day, I would be the first Jewish president as well.

Nothing compares to the constant melancholy thirst of
the orphan to find his birth parents. It is the apparatus that forms us and rules us.

Aye, there was always someone out there, a faceless king and queen in a chilled haze, taunting.

Ben Horowitz, my half brother, had been searching for me, haunted, for over a half century. Today he found me.

Tomorrow at one o’clock Rocky Mountain time I must share my fate with the American people. You haven’t heard of Rocky time? Some of the networks haven’t, either. Lot of space but small market.

The second half of the last century held the years that the Jews became one of the prime forces in American life. Politically, there had been a mess of Jewish congressmen, senators, mayors, and governors of enormous popularity and power. None had won the big enchilada. I suppose the buck stops here.

Had I have been elected governor as Alexander Horowitz, I’d have been just as good for my state. However, the discovery of my birth parents a week before the presidential election could well set off a series of tragic events from the darkness where those who will hate me lay in wait.

How do I bring this to you, folks? In the last few hours I have written, “my fellow Americans” twenty-six times, “a funny thing happened to me on the way to Washington” twenty-one times, and “the American people have the right to know” three dozen times. My wastebasket overfloweth.

To tell the truth, my countrymen, I simply do not know what this means in my future. O’Connell was a hell of a
good governor, but we are in uncharted waters.

I’m getting a little fuzzy. I can see into the bedroom, where Rita is sprawled in the deep part of a power nap. Rita and our bedroom and her attire are all blended with Colorado hush tones, so soft and light in texture. At the ranch Rita liked to wear those full and colorful skirts like a Mexican woman at fiesta. As she lays there a bit rumpled, I can see up her thighs. I’d give my horse and saddle to be able to crawl alongside her. But then, I’d never finish my Washington’s farewell to the troops speech.

On the other hand, Rita and I have made the wildest gung-ho love when we were under the deepest stress.

Write your speech, son, you’ve got to “face the nation” tomorrow, Rocky Mountain time.

Straight narrative, no intertwining B.S. or politicizing. Explain the O’Connell ne Horowitz phenomenon. Truth, baby, truth. At least truth will not come back to haunt you.

Strange, I should be thinking of Greer at this moment. Rita is the most sensual soul mate one could pray for. We have loved one another without compromise for nearly thirty years. Yet, is it possible that Greer is really the love of my life?

I’d have never come this far in the campaign without Greer Little’s genius. I would have been tossed into the boneyard of candidates never heard from again. She organized, she raised money, she knew the political operatives, and she masterminded my “miracle” campaign.

I was struck by the realization that Greer would leave soon, and I felt the same kind of agony as when we broke up years before. I had needed to see Greer on some business, and knocked and entered her room. She had been on the bed with Rita, passed-out drunk. Rita had held her and soothed her as though she were a little girl, and Rita had put her finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet.

Well, there was life without Greer, but there could be no life without Rita. Yet it still hurts.

I watch the hours flow in the passageway behind me
like the tick of a suppressed bomb about to be released. I am through with a draft. I write another.

As the hours to dawn tick off, it all seems to come down to the same basic questions. Am I telling the truth? Do the American people have the civility and the decency to take the truth and rise with it?

Why me, Lord? Haven’t I had enough of your pranks? Isn’t slamming the White House door in my face just a little much, even for Your Holiness? I’m at the landing over the reception foyer of the White House. The Marine band drums up “Hail to the Chief” and the major of the guard proclaims, “The president of the United States and Mrs. Horowitz.” Oh, come on now, Lord. Aren’t you carrying this a little too far?

Well, all the stories of the good Irish lives are best passed on around the old campfire from
schanachie
to
schanachie,
and I’ll not spare you mine.

In actual fact, my own beginnings began at the end of World War II, when my future adopted father, Daniel Timothy O’Connell, returned from the Pacific with a couple of rows of ribbons and a decided limp.