“Still, wouldn’t you send her back? If she really wanted it?”
He sighed. “I’ve come to believe it is her true desire.”
I changed the subject. “What was that about a worm and having the gift?”
“Old Cavan beliefs. The gift is healing—laying on hands and such—and prophesying. The worm test tells whether a child has the gift. When the worm’s placed in the hand and shrivels up, that signifies the child was born with the gift.”
“But she said it thrived in yours.”
He smiled ruefully. “Likely so.”
I asked him to tell me about his family. It turned out he’d known his father scarcely more than I knew mine.
“I was three,” he said. “All’s I recollect was him there, skin white as paper, laid out amongst us. Brighid lifted me up to see . . .”
. . . lying alone, beneath the pale light . . .
“. . . women keenin’ and cryin’, men drinkin’ from jugs. . . . And that’s all I can remember. Next we was on the boat, everybody moaning and throwing up.”
“Coming here?”
“Yes, and lucky too. By then, ’forty-nine, a million had died. Blight set in, and the praties—’taters—failed three straight years. Folks swarmed to cities and died in the streets. We tried to hang on. Father wouldn’t hear of leaving the land. But conacres—wee parcels he rented out—stood vacant. Finally our crops failed too, and since the linen mills and gypsum mines had closed long before, the game was up.”
“What part of Ireland?”
“County Cavan, near Swanlinbar. Hills and lakes. Father couldn’t leave. He died of heartache—and of whiskey bein’ cheaper than meat.”
. . . like putting a gun to his head . . .
Andy’s tone lightened. “Old Hickory’s folks lived in County Antrim, near us. I’m named for him, in fact. Andrew Jackson Leonard, same as my father.”
“I’ll be damned.” I nearly told of Grandpa naming me Samuel Clemens. Instead I said, “What happened after he died?”
“Mother and Gavan sold the land for pennies—barely enough to cross in steerage. By the time we set foot at Castle Garden, Liam, my wee brother, was dead of consumption. Gavan found work as a tanner in Newark, so that’s where we went. Not too many Irish there yet, though Sweaze’s folk lived near. We had to learn the new ways quick. I had the easiest time, bein’ the youngest. Mother never changed a lick, Irish to the core. Even Brighid’s still a good half Old Soil.”
“What about . . . Cait?”
He paused so long that I wondered if he were going to answer. “She’s in Cincinnati.”
My heart did a funny little beat. “So you’re close?”
“These years we haven’t a great deal to say to each other.” A tired sound came from him. “It’s a sadness for me.” Again he was silent.
“What exactly are Fenians?”
He looked at me. “Why?”
“Well, you and your mother disagree about them. Also, somebody said it was Fenian money that McDermott lost at the Haymaker game.”
“They’re tryin’ to get a free Irish nation,” he said slowly, as if threading through a complex subject. “Over here it’s called the Fenian Society, but it’s properly the American wing of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood.”
I envisioned TV-screen images: IRA youths fasting . . . howling, rock-throwing mobs choking Ulster streets . . . Tommies in armored cars . . . bomb-blast carnage. . . .
“A terrorist group?”
“You’re talkin’ Dutch, Sam.”
“You know, operating in secret, using violence.”
“Well, in Ireland they tried to be secret—but now they’re all in jail. Over here they’ve been in the open all along, marching in their green uniforms and holding picnics and benefits to raise cash.”
“Sounds tame enough.”
“Well, they did invade Canada three years back.”
I looked to see if he was joking. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why’d they do that?”
“Intended to work a ransom game. Give England back its territory after Ireland was free.”
“Andy, are you kidding me?”
“Rumors have ’em trying it again soon. Read the papers, you’ll see.”
“Isn’t that pretty farfetched?”
“I dunno, Sam, tens of thousands of Irish boys fought in the war. On both sides. They’re trained troops—that’s what Fenian means in the old legends; from Fianna, for ‘soldier’—and most still have their service weapons. In ’sixty-six, all trains runnin’ north to the border were suddenly full of armed men.”
“What did the government do?”
“Steered clear and let the Canucks handle it. Which they did, once the surprise wore off. But the society claims it’ll be proper organized next time.”
“How could we just steer clear?”
“Easy. England ain’t ’zactly the cheese, you know, since they helped the Johnnies.”
For some reason I had the sudden shocking realization that the nation wasn’t even one hundred years old. There were people—many people—who carried vivid memories of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin. Incredible.
“Irish votes carry weight now,” Andy continued. “Politicians’re anxious not to rile us.”
“Okay, but stand by and let part of the population—an immigrant army, at that—invade a neighbor country?”
“Governments can’t control everything.”
“If McDermott lost Fenian money,” I said, changing tack, “he must be in trouble. But how’d he get it in the first place? Is he one of them?”
“No, but he lays in stores for ’em—stores not easily come by, if you take my meaning. Word is he’s trusted by General O’Neill. Sits in on the councils in New York, privy to the inside workin’s.”
“How’d he manage that?”
“Dunno. He come out of the war with a medal—nobody knows for what—and puffed himself hard. For my money he’s a chin artist and crooked as a crutch.”
“What about the O’Donovan your mother mentioned? The one who came visiting with General O’Neill.”
“He’s O’Neill’s chief of operations. Mean-tempered as an adder and short as piecrust. Even McDermott wouldn’t want to cross him.”
“And yet he takes care of your sister?”
Andy looked at me silently for a good ten seconds. “Sam, I can tell you’re freezin’ to know about Cait. I saw you studyin’ that old picture.”
“Well, okay, why won’t anybody talk about her?”
“Me’n her were close once, the two youngest. Now we don’t get along.
“But the whole family avoided talking about her.”
“Cait’s gone
