Whiskey Island (12 page)

Then Darrin’s letters stopped. Months later a third letter came, from the priest, a Father McSweeney of St. Brigid’s. Like all of Darrin’s letters, they had taken it to their own priest to be read. He told them that Darrin had died in an accident on the docks. The money the good Father from Ohio was sending was the last of Darrin’s wages.

What should be done with Darrin’s house now that the young man was at rest?

Once there had been four Tierney sons, born healthy and strong despite the famine that swept the country. As a boy, their father, Thomas, had saved the life of the largest landowner in the county, and when the famine came to Mayo the first time, the same man had saved Thomas Tierney’s life and those of his family.

But when the second wave of famine came, there had been no one but Darrin to save what remained of the Tierneys. Land had changed hands, men had died, and no one remembered the courage of the boy Thomas, who was now a starving old man.

Terence’s two middle brothers were gone by then. One had traveled to Liverpool, never to be heard from again. The other had died of a sickness that might have been cured by good food, had any been found.

Like thousands of families before them, the Tierneys pooled what resources they could muster and sent Darrin to America to save them all. And when Darrin died, they sent Terence to take his brother’s place, using the last of Darrin’s wages for passage on a Cunard sailing ship: thirty-seven dollars and what food they could acquire, packed in a basket Terence guarded like a king’s treasure.

Now Terence lived in Darrin’s house on Tyler Street in the place called Whiskey Island. He had expected little, an expectation that had been met. The house was nothing more than a shanty constructed of rough grade lumber and tar paper walls. The lot was as narrow as an Englishman’s heart, just wide enough for two tiny front rooms and a kitchen in the back. There was a rickety staircase with a room at the top that caught the constant dripping of rain from a roof that never stopped leaking. The foul Cuyahoga ran past his front door; the lake lay behind him.

But it was his. And now it would be Lena’s, too.

On an evening in May, Terence stood with his best friend in the sitting room of his own home. The room was misnamed, since at the moment it had only one place to sit. Nervously, he wondered what his new bride would think.

“You’re a lucky man. You know that, don’t you, Terry?”

Terence’s fingers twitched at the starched collar chafing his neck. “Aye, I know it, I do, Rowan. Lena’s all I’ll ever long for, her and the health of my family.” He bowed his head, and the collar chafed again.

“She’s a beauty, she is. I don’t recall you telling me just how beautiful. Did it worry you, then, that your new wife might catch the eye of your best friend?”

Terence laughed. “Hardly that. I only wished to spare you the sin of envy.” He faced Rowan. “And myself the sin of pride.”

Rowan was grinning. He was a dark-haired man, stocky enough to unload ore on the docks along with Terence and his countrymen, but smart enough to have found a better way to earn his living. He was a policeman, and even though he wasn’t on duty, today he wore his uniform, a stiffly pressed affair that constricted easy movement.

“A man who wasn’t proud of Lena Harkin—”

“Lena Tierney,” Terence corrected. The words sounded magical on his tongue.

“Lena Tierney. Ach, it’s a glorious name.”

“I only wish my mam could have been here to see us wed today. And my da.”

“They’ll be with you soon enough.”

Terence wanted to believe his friend. Rowan inspired confidence, with his glowing health, ham-fisted strength, and a cockiness in the way he tilted his head and raised his thick eyebrows that told the world he deserved everything he’d earned.

At first sight, Terence himself inspired less. He was tall and thin, like a schoolmaster or a monk. He did not look like a “terrier” who could shovel ore deep in the bowels of a ship and survive to descend again the next day. There was nothing of strength in his finely boned features, and his pale blue eyes still seemed haunted by ghosts of hunger and disease.

Luckily for him, appearances were deceiving.

“I’m far from having saved enough money to bring my parents over,” Terence said. “And now that I’ve married…”

“They say two can live as cheaply as one. And your Lena will do what she can to help.”

Terence knew this was true, although he didn’t want his wife out in the world without his protection. Whiskey Island was a rowdy, godforsaken place. “Had her own mother not sent her, I don’t know when I might have paid for her passage.”

“Will her mam expect you to send for her, as well?”

“Sure, and I’ll be honored to do it. She has no one but me. My parents, Lena’s mam. It’s on me now to do whatever I can to help them.”

Rowan shook his head sadly. “I’ve no one who needs me. They’ve come already or passed on. It would be my honor to help you, Terry. You know it would.”

At his friend’s words, Terence felt a lump lodge in his throat. He clapped his hand on Rowan’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “You’re a good friend, Rowan. You were a good friend to my brother and now to me. It’s help enough you give by paying rent for the room upstairs—”

“I could share my bed, Terry. You could take in another boarder.”

Terence shook his head gravely. “There’s hardly room enough for one, and who but a friend would tolerate the water that seeps through the roof or the wind blowing through the cracks? You should be living up the hill with the others who are making their way, not down here with those who aren’t.”

“I live with my friend Terence, wherever he is,” Rowan said solemnly.

Terence nodded his thanks. His heart was too full to express it.

Rowan pushed Terence’s hand away. “And now, we’re going for a taste of the creature. I know you’re not a drinking man, but you’ll need a nip tonight to keep up your courage.” He winked.

“But Lena—”

“Katie will bring her here and settle her a bit.”

Katie Sullivan was the wife of Seamus Sullivan, a friend of Terence’s and Rowan’s who lived on the next street, in a house much like this one. Like Rowan, the Sullivans, who had been friends of Darrin’s, had befriended Terence when he arrived, and Seamus had taken him to the docks to find work on his second day in Cleveland. Katie was a no-nonsense woman who guarded the couple’s two small children the way a vixen guards her pups. And she saved every extra penny Seamus earned so that someday the family could move up the hill.

The dream was common enough on Whiskey Island. Moving higher, always higher, away from the stinking river, from the fumes of Standard Oil’s nightmarish refinery, from the fevers that persisted in the mosquito-ridden marsh they called home.

“I’m hoping that Katie doesn’t give Lena fits,” Terence said. “I don’t know what stories she’ll be telling.”

“And you’re thinking the girl hasn’t already heard stories about what’s to happen tonight? If Katie tells stories, it will be better than those. But she’s a practical woman, our Katie. My guess is she’ll be showing your Lena how to plug holes in the roof or sweep out the fireplace.” Rowan nodded toward a peg on the wall. “Get your coat now, Terry. And follow along.”

Terence didn’t drink. He had little taste for it and even less for the power it wielded. But he knew that Lena would benefit from some moments alone in the house before he returned.

The twenty-four hours since her arrival had been filled with activity, all of it strange to her. And the wedding at St. Brigid’s that afternoon had surely taken the heart out of her. An Irish lass didn’t hope for much, but she did hope to have her mother beside her on her wedding day. And Lena had been denied even that small blessing.

“Just one drink,” he told Rowan, slipping into his threadbare overcoat. “Where shall we go?”

Rowan clapped him on the back. “It’s not as if there’s no choice now, is it? We’ll strike out for the closest.”

Whiskey Island, less than a mile long and a third as narrow, had fourteen saloons. Desperate men needed their dreams.

Terence had his dreams, but they didn’t include the creature. He had dreamed of Lena, and now that she was here, he dreamed of the old folks who would come to join them, and of the children he and Lena would raise together. Children who would never know hunger or disease or long for an education, as he had.

“Are you happy, Terry?” Rowan asked at the door. “Tell me you are.”

“Aye. I’m happy, but I’ll be happier when the old folks are out of Mayo and we’re all out of this place, Rowan. When we’re up on that hill looking down at the river. All of us together.”

“One moment at a time. You can only live that long, no longer.”

Terence smiled and blew out the lamp. “Then we’ll make this moment a happy one.”

Rowan opened the door. “Consider it done.”

Lena had been prepared for the condition of Terence’s house. Yesterday, under Katie Sullivan’s watchful eye, she had walked the length of Whiskey Island, weaving through the narrow streets and examining her new circumstances. And although Katie hadn’t pointed out Terence’s house or street, Lena had adjusted her expectations with each step she took. She had not come to Paradise, but she had not expected to. There was food here, and work. The craggy coastline of the west of Ireland might be nourishment for her soul, but it hadn’t produced more than a pittance for her flesh.

“It’s not much,” Katie was saying, “but it will do until Terry can afford better. You must never criticize him, Lena. He works harder than any man I know.”

Lena wasn’t offended by Katie’s warning. She supposed that some women might be upset at the way Katie had taken over her life the moment Lena arrived from New York. But she already liked dark-haired, sharp-eyed Katie Sullivan. Katie was a woman with no time to spare for tact, and she probably wouldn’t recognize it in others. She managed a house larger than this one, cared for two children, and still took in washing every day to add to the wages Seamus earned on the docks. Katie was far too busy for the niceties.

“It’s a fine house,” Lena said. “It has a roof, doesn’t it? And walls? And I’m guessing that’s a window of sorts in the front. I have a river view. What else could I ask for?”

“I’m glad to hear you say so. It hasn’t been a happy house, with Darrin passing on and Terry so afraid he might not be able to bring you here.”

Lena stood back as Katie went up the front walk—or what passed for one—and threw open Terry’s door. “He told you that, did he?”

Katie stepped aside to let Lena pass through first. “No, Seamus told me. Seamus said that you and Terry have been sweethearts since you were babes.”

“Our mams played together as children, so we played together, too. I’ve never loved another. It’s fitting Terry and I should marry.”

“Did you want to come, Lena? Or was the choice yours?”

“How long is it since you’ve lived in Ireland, Katie?”

Katie’s voice tightened. “Not long enough.”

“There’s your answer, then. I wanted to come. But I would have stayed in Mayo if Terry lived there still. I would have starved beside him.”

“You’ll do well here.” It was as much a blessing as Katie was likely to offer, and with her new friend’s words, Lena stepped over the threshold.

The staircase in front of her was hardly worthy of the name. Short and narrow, it led, she knew, to the cramped room at the top where Rowan Donaghue, Terry’s good friend, boarded. She didn’t look left at a closed door, knowing she would probably find a bed, which she was not yet ready to face. Instead she turned right and walked through an open doorway.

The room she entered was dark and smelled of mildew. It was too late in the evening for the lone window to let in much light. There was a fireplace against one wall with a straight-backed wooden chair beside it. A small table in the corner held an oil lamp, and another lamp defied gravity at one end of the sloping mantel.

“It needs a woman’s touch,” Katie said as she lit the table lamp. “With a fire on the hearth, some pictures on the walls, it won’t be so bad.”

“We won’t have evenings of sitting together beside the fire, that’s for certain.” Lena giggled before she could think better of it.

Surprisingly, Katie giggled, too. “Aye, unless it’s turns you’ll be taking in that chair. Can you stand and knit, Lena? Can you mend on your feet?”

“Perhaps he hasn’t thought that far?”

“Or perhaps he intends to keep you occupied in the other room,” Katie said, with a lift of one dark brow.

Lena could feel her pale cheeks flush. She was cursed with the paper-thin, freckled skin of her ancestors and the bright red hair to go with it. She minded none of that, of course, only the ease with which her thoughts could be seen.

“It’s not something you’ll object to.” Katie turned away, as if to spare Lena her attention. “Your mam has probably told you different, but it’s me you should be believing. There’s far too few good things in life, Lena. But this is one of them.”

Lena’s cheeks were fire bright. She had a hundred questions, but asking them was impossible. Already, though, Katie’s words had warmed more than her cheeks.

“The Good Lord gave us this to make up for all else.” Katie turned back to Lena. “The good Fathers might not agree, but how could they know? If they knew how fine a thing it is, then how would they remain priests?”

Lena giggled again. It was a foreign, girlish sound from a young woman who hadn’t been a girl in many years. Yet she felt like one tonight. Soon Terence would return, and she would be alone with him. Just the two of them, for the first time. Suddenly she felt much younger than her eighteen years.

“We’ll have a look at the kitchen, then it’s off to bed with you. Terry will expect to find you there, I’m certain.”

Lena obediently followed her new friend to the kitchen. There was a fireplace here, too, with a crane where she could hang kettles for cooking. A kettle hung from a pothook now, and another with legs sat on the edge of the hearth. There was a table in the corner, a shelf to hold what few supplies were in evidence, a sawbuck table beneath the shelf, but no stove.

Katie sniffed. “There’s little enough here. I’ll see what I have to add.”