Shannon

  They never asked Robert to sing. Nor did they pressure him in any way; nobody monopolized him, nobody moved in on him. Had he been sharper, he might have guessed why: This town also knew about shell shock; it too had its “old soldiers,” as they called them, some of them still in their twenties, vacant-faced men who were never cured and never would be. Consequently, out of politeness and respect, nobody handed him a letter to deliver to a cousin in Arizona or an uncle in Brooklyn Heights.

  But when the night came to an end, the guests, almost without thinking, stood in line to shake Robert's hand.

  The first woman said, “I lost my husband and my brother in the war.”

  A man behind her said, “We know what the Yanks did for us, Father, and we'll never forget it.”

  And an older man, with a face as wrinkled as a Peruvian, said, “The Munster Fusiliers, our local regiment here, they took a hill in France one Sunday morning. But they lost so many men taking it that they couldn't keep it. And their chaplain, Father Gleeson—did you know him at all, Father? He was a hero too—d'you know what he did, Father? When he saw his officers killed, he tore off his chaplain's tabs and led his men. I lost three sons that week.” His eyes were like wet stars.

  The last man said, “If you count the casualties, we in Ireland lost more in proportion to the size of our population than any other country in the war. We lost one out of every six breadwinning men.”

  Robert stood mutely, accepting handshakes— and money: four envelopes. “A little Mass offering, Father,” they each said.

  How could these votives know he might never say Mass again?

  Late that night, when everybody had gone and the house had fallen asleep, Robert lay awake. At three in the morning, still unable to sleep, he rose and sat at the table playing solitaire— with the deck of cards that he took for the first time from his rucksack.

  The card game played a major part in Robert's recovery. Dr. Green-berg had suggested it after a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Shannon. He had asked them for details of Robert's mental games as a child, and they had told him of jigsaw and crossword puzzles— that he had continued as an adult— and endless games of solitaire on wet days. The psychiatrist had grabbed at this.

  “Very good. Yes. We can use card games to measure his progress.” He instructed the daily-care doctors and nurses to make a deck of cards available. They should then observe whether Robert used them. At first Robert did pick them up; he even shuffled them and began to lay them out, but he lost his way. A nurse helped, spreading the cards in the Yukon formation— seven across—then starting the game for him, stacking where possible red upon black, and then turning every third card.

  Day in, day out, whenever she came on duty, the same nurse did this— until the day when Robert stopped her and began to do it himself.

  He made no progress for weeks, and then one morning he actually got as far as the four kings turned up and all aces out. There he stopped for several more weeks. He resumed in time, and slowly his interest grew, until not a day passed without several games.

  Dr. Greenberg asked two “essential” questions, as he called them: Does he play at the same time every day? And has he ever won a game?

  “Yes. And no,” were the answers he received.

  Now, sitting in the candlelight of Sheila Neary's best guest room, Robert almost won his first game since France.

  The name Ballinagore means “place of the goats.” It sat thirty miles east of Robert as he played solitaire that night in his Limerick room. He was safe and well cared for throughout those still, small hours— unlike the young men of Ballinagore.

  Next day when the dawn showed the deeds, the watchers denounced Ballinagore— again. If they'd had a tune to their words, they could have written a song: always had bad blood there; never a good place; nobody but savages ever lived down in Ballinagore. Six men, young Irregulars, had been rounded up and roped together to a kitchen table, explosives were tied to their bodies— and they were blown to shards by a breakaway faction of their own organization. Their blood spattered the house's whitewashed halls.

  In one sense the neighbors were right; that cottage had never been good luck. Twenty years earlier it had housed Larry Ryan and his family, a house of known rancor and pain. By now, though, the Ryans had long been in Boston, far away from that night of uncivil war.

  On the day after his ash-switch thrashing in the same kitchen, the blond child Vincent didn't rise. He lay on his face, alone in a bed usually shared with three others. No sibling came near him— the taint was too great, all contact a risk. His mother alone approached. The little boy was numb, still tearful and hesitant of speech. She bathed the cuts and pasted sugar in them. Problems beset her. If these stripes were seen, the Cruelty Man was next, a local official primed to watch for such things. So no doctor was called, no nurse saw the cuts, and prosecution was evaded.

  It took the child three days to surface, to walk. The house fell silent, furtive when he appeared; and he still had no ease. His father came home late each night, by which time Vincent was back in bed. Nobody discussed the event; not a word was said.

  In the next few days came the attempts to appease. The child, his face desperate with humiliation, sought out his father, saying “Sorry” again and again. He tried to climb up; he was shoved away. The father had no range, no emotional sense; another attack seemed to loom.

  Thus the family lived on.

  In the haphazard compensation of the world, some light did shine on the little boy. At the local school Vincent blossomed; there he found some peace. A young teacher took an interest and knew how to deal with shame. She gave him time and he streaked ahead of his class. Soon she gave him tasks and he became her favorite pupil. The other children liked it; he took pressure off their shoulders. When a priest or schools inspector came by, Vincent answered for all.

  By now his father had registered what he had done, and in any case his wife spoke it out. Apart from occasional cuffs and kicks, no more thrashings took place—especially of Vincent— but the father continued to hurl javelins of abuse: “You useless article;” “You stupid fool;” “Why didn't we give you away?”

  As those became the only words between father and son, the boy learned evasion, learned to sidestep pain. He read, he stayed late in school, he kept to himself.

  Then came the calamity. Joan Ryan died of cancer; she died a slow and frightened death— frightened for what would happen to the ones she left behind.

  The Ryans left Ballinagore. Two of the older boys stayed on in the jobs they had found, and with one of the girls long gone to San Francisco, Larry Ryan took the remaining six children to the ship. He found work in South Boston, and he found a house and a yard and a life. No wife came to him; he and his six children lived in a welter of angst. School claimed the older ones and the youngest, but he hid Vincent as an unpaid servant.

  The abuse of the child continued and the brutality resumed. For four years the other children brought no friends home; they could not reveal their brother's dreadful life.

  One afternoon a local priest called, with a young and cheerful face. A Ryan girl, just beginning homework and still in her convent school uniform, opened the door a crack and said, “My father's out.”

  The priest, though, had an excellent nose and he wheedled his way in. “Who keeps this house? It's neat as a new pin.”

  The children looked one to the other, and their furtiveness took the priest down the wrong path. He assumed an illicit woman; he found a damaged boy.

  By the next weekend, Vincent Ryan was living away from home. The priest had come back— with another, more senior cleric. Again, Larry's absence helped, and they extracted the family history from the girls. When the tears flowed so did the final secret— and Vincent was fetched from the shed where he slept. He spoke no word, answered no questions. That day his face was free of marks, but not his legs.

  From that moment until he was eighteen, the Church raised Vincent Ryan. He never told them his entire story,
he never spoke the family tale in full. They knew he understood the rawness of his circumstances, and they gave him the deepest support. To reduce his self-blame, they found him tales to read: Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors, medieval cruelties, victims in real life.

  He read all the stories left for him, every book, every magazine. If he recognized himself he never said; if he raised his morale by comparison it never showed; he was mannerly, studious, clever, and quiet. But they never fully unlocked his damage and that was the greatest mistake.

  To leave Limerick, Robert climbed into Maeve MacNulty's shiny blue car.

  “C'mon, Handsome, I'll get you on your way.”

  She rose from the breakfast table; after the singing party she had stayed the night.

  Since eight o'clock that morning, neighbors had been dropping in; uproar had broken out downtown. In Pery Square they already knew; in nearby Catherine Street the guns had opened up at dawn and stammered intermittently since then. Anxious conversation had taken place as to which route out of town could get Robert to the Killaloe road.

  Sheila Neary's farewell surprised all who saw it. She hugged Robert; she implored him to come back and hugged him again— nobody had ever seen her hug a man before. Robert accepted the embrace and assured her that he would return. The car turned around in a circle, and the neighbors waved from the steps.

  The journey they made that morning was leafy and long. Not a soldier was to be seen, not a person was abroad, and not even Maeve MacNulty spoke as the car bumped and swayed. On small roads they sputtered; over little bridges they clanged. Robert looked everywhere; he was like a man new to the world. He felt refreshed and encouraged— by the welcome, by the success at solitaire, by the bright morning air.

  After an hour and more the car swung into a road too narrow almost to fit. “It widens,” she promised. “This place is called Ardnacrusha.”

  The road certainly broadened— into a lane with a much worse surface—and it ended in a farmer's gateway on one side and a high bank on the other. On top of the bank there seemed to be a path. She turned the car in the gateway until it faced back the way they had come. When she climbed out, Robert followed and unloaded his rucksack, plus the food that Sheila Neary had given him. He strapped on the rucksack.

  “If it wasn't illegal, I'd ask you to give me a kiss. I always love forbidden fruit,” Maeve MacNulty said.

  Robert took her hand and kissed it.

  She laughed and said, “That'll have to do. At least I don't have to talk about you in Confession.” Then she pointed. “That's your pathway there. You have a lovely walk from here to Castleconnell. Take your time.”

  She climbed back into her car, waving a hand in her merry style, and roared away, a large and hopeful Amazon of romance.

  Firmly established within one of his good days, Robert climbed the grassy bank. At no stage had he or anybody else calculated daily walks. He had a vague impression that he could travel one mile or twenty be interrupted with hospitality or meet nobody. With no schedule, he had no farewell date.

  In Limerick, some said, “He'll be here a year.” Others doubted: “He'll be gone next month.” He himself was still without competence in the crucial matter of time.

  North of Limerick the Shannon has rapids as wide as the stream itself, and the water tumbles down a long slope of the countryside. Sometimes, on summer days after dry weeks, there are pretty and chuckling torrents; these are the Falls of Doonass, the picture on the Shannon family's wall. On that July noon, after a shower twenty miles north, the river bubbled like a child.

  Robert sat down to enjoy the sight— but didn't at first connect it to the picture at home in New England. The word Confession, used playfully by Maeve MacNulty had jarred him. But I'm not shaking. I'm not shaking at the word. That's good. I'm not even trembling.

  Whether he yet understood it, he had begun— first sure sign of returning health— to map his own progress.

  Archbishop Sevovicz knew— but never voiced— his mandate. He never had the chance. When he had arrived in Boston, he presented his letter from the Papal Legate— and watched the big man across the desk.

  Warned of wiles, he tried to second-guess: Will he say yes? Will he say no? Will he say neither? Will he let me in? Will he force me out? Will he shut me down?

  Cardinal O'Connell was vague. Tapping the letter as though quoting from it, he said, “Every part of my archdiocese needs more attention. My flock is like any other— it needs and suffers.” He looked out of the window and murmured, “Very kind of the Holy Father. Very kind.”

  Was this the cardinal's resistance? Sevovicz asked for a clearer brief.

  His Eminence said, “I have no clearer brief to give you. You're to add greater care to my see.”

  To which Sevovicz said, “Perhaps I have misunderstood.”

  “And you'd like me to be specific?”

  Thus did His Eminence yank the trapdoor shut; thus was Sevovicz caught. Specific was the last thing the Papal Legate wanted; Sevovicz was supposed to roam.

  “Anthony,” said the cardinal, “I have something very specific. I have a true human problem on my hands; it needs compassion and experience. It needs a man of special gifts. I haven't been able to find the right person until now. God sent you.”

  Sevovicz had risen through the byzantine politics of the Catholic Church. After the Vatican briefing on this, his newest, post, he had few illusions about His Eminence's astonishing skill. He faced now a man of cunning and style; he faced a man who could get things done without ever seeming to ask for them. No church politician could do more; Sevovicz himself had done these things quite well and quite often.

  When he met Bill O'Connell, though, he saw that he, Anthony Isidore Sevovicz, former Archbishop of Elk, stood nowhere near that height. The subtlety. The complexity. The power. He peered at the cardinal as though testing his own eyes and testing his own grasp of human nature— because he saw before him a man of great decency and corruption, a man of huge bombast and sad expression, a man who would die for those he loved and who had lied to the pope.

  Everybody who knew him saw that O'Connell pressed into service every encounter in his fierce life, every moment of his own existence. Whether chairing his archdiocese meetings or pumping bigwigs for cash, he drained each hour of its potential. Thus, when Sevovicz sat back and considered the cardinal's brief to “adopt” Robert Shannon, with all the unsaid words, all the floating hints, he knew he had witnessed a piece of fine work.

  Many times he replayed the conversation.

  “Anthony, isn't it? Anthony I. What's the I—Ignatius?”

  “Isidore.”

  “So you're not a Jesuit?” He smiled at his own joke and built upon it. “I knew a seminarian once whose first two names were Ignatius Loyola— but he cut.”

  “Cut, Eminence?”

  “Never got ordained.” O'Connell smiled. “So— Rome sent you to help me?”

  “Indeed, Eminence.”

  “Yeah, Rome is like that.”

  As Anthony remembered his brief— finances, priestly behavior, unseemly style— the cardinal murmured as though to himself, “They knew I wanted somebody special.” In a single move he had made it seem as though he himself had sent for help and asked for the best.

  That was the first time Sevovicz met Cardinal O'Connell— and he met him only once more. The occasion still rang with alarm, not least because the cardinal came without warning to the house where Sevovicz and Father Shannon lived. They saw the car arrive— and they saw the big man climb out of the backseat, accompanied by Bishop Nilan.

  “Oh, my God!” murmured Sevovicz, and went down the stairs to the hall.

  The greetings over, His Eminence spoke. “Now, where's our young hero?”

  A soft call up the stairs brought Robert into view; he came down, dropped to one knee, and kissed the cardinal's ring.

  Sevovicz had never seen Robert with His Eminence— with Bishop Nilan, yes, many times and always with ease and comfort.


  “Father Shannon, let me see you,” said the cardinal, who had donned the full red of his formal robes.

  The eyes narrowed, the dark jowl tightened as he peered this way and that.

  To Sevovicz's surprise, Father Shannon stepped back and made gestures of wishing to be excused. The cardinal showed a touch of annoyance but then raised his hand in blessing, and Robert left the room.

  “You seem to be doing a good job, Anthony.”

  “Thank you, Eminence.”

  Bishop Nilan, flushed with importance, said pleasantly, “It has been an exercise in diligence, Eminence. And it has been my pleasure to observe it.”

  The cardinal said to Bishop Nilan, “A room to sit for a moment?”

  The fretting bishop hurried. All three men, led by the cardinal, sat at the dining table with the door firmly shut. Nilan opened his mouth to offer food and drink but the cardinal took control.

  “How is he, Anthony?”

  “I would say still fragile, Eminence.”

  “Fragile? Hmmmm. How is his memory?”

  Nilan looked down at the table; Sevovicz never flinched, even though he knew that the word memory in this context carried as much freight as a ten-ton truck.

  “He is more— shall we say, settled, Eminence.”

  Anthony Sevovicz had not become an archbishop by accident. He possessed that greatest of corporate political skills, the sense to give the perfect answer. In a body as political as the Catholic Church, that meant always knowing what the questioner was seeking. The cardinal sought reassurance, and now Sevovicz knew for certain why he had been given this job.

  “Settled? Calmer, is that it? Would you say, Anthony— would you say that he had been delusional?”

  “It's part of the condition, is it not, Eminence?”

  “Does a man like that— I mean, a sufferer— does he forget the things he said when he was delusional?”