“Did she say what more there is?”
“Are you laughing, Samuel? Do you think my mind unbalanced?”
“No, I think you found what solace you could.”
“It was more than solace. It was instruction. And in part it involved you.”
“Me?”
“She said that a man would come to me through the family somehow. He would want to help. And I would want to love him, but would fight against doing so.”
“And did she advise on that?”
“She said I should not fight, were it a true thing, for love is the means of transcendence, the bridge.”
“To what?”
“That I’m not sure. It was vague and dreamlike to me. I believed that Fearghus was the man she meant. He was Colm’s closest comrade. He visited our home—coming through the family, you see?—but it was all so soon. I knew he wanted me, but he was so different from Colm. Colm had been lighthearted, flowing with music and laughter. There was never music in Fearghus. And then they hurt him like an animal in a British jail, and he came back burning with a mad anger.”
She hesitated before going on.
“The years passed, and I put the prophecy out of mind. It was part of back then, the horrible sadness. When Andy told me of your gift to Mother, I felt my soul being torn open. I struggled against the sad memories, against feeling so badly again.”
“And then you got a good look at my mug.”
“I was terrified of you. Of myself, to say it truly.”
“But you relaxed when you saw I was too big and hairy to be Prince Charming.”
A trace of a smile appeared. “Sometimes you’re a stranger to yourself, Samuel. You frightened me, but I also saw a man who was exciting and alive. I saw that you loved Andy, and that you were kind. Most of all, I saw how you looked at me.”
The band was playing a waltz. Cait’s face was a pale oval in the moonlight. I moved close and put my arm around her. She leaned in, her hair brushing my shoulder, her weight precious against me.
“I’m not sure how to kiss a Victorian lady,” I mumbled.
“And what might be one of those?”
“You’re one.”
“A lady would never be seen here unescorted.” She smiled up at me, her eyes gray with moonglow. “I’m a woman, nothing more.”
Our lips met, and her arm slowly encircled my neck. My fingers rested on her cinched waist, and I could feel the soft fullness of her breasts against my chest. She tasted of warm mint. The night burst into energy, brilliant, pulsing, intoxicating, glorious. The universe smiled.
Chapter 18
On Saturday, August 7, Harry dismissed practice an hour early. I had rushed to pick up Cait and Timmy. By then the city was coming to a standstill. All week the papers had bristled with ads for railway excursions to Louisville, the area’s best vantage point, and for boats to river locations beyond the city’s smoke. The Enquirer ran long-winded installments by James Fenimore Cooper describing the eclipse of 1806. Today’s, billed the “astronomical event of the century,” had brought anticipation to a peak. Those unable to get out of Cincinnati, like us, headed for the cleaner air of the surrounding hills. Now we sat gazing upward, like millions of others.
As the sky took on a greenish hue, birds vanished to nests and mothers called their children. Cait shivered and pulled Timmy close to her. Through a piece of smoked glass I’d bought for the occasion, we watched the final sliver of sun disappear. Sitting in untimely darkness in our Eden Park meadow, we laughed at how strange it was to picnic during a solar eclipse.
I eyed Cait suggestively in the gloom and said, “Maybe you should go back to wearing hoopskirts.”
“That’s wanton and terrible!” she said, half-shocked and half-laughing. We’d seen a woman in one of the huge round things, fashionable a decade ago, step from a curb in front of the post office. Her foot went into in a pothole and she toppled to the pavement. Trapped and unable to rise in the hoopskirt, she kicked petticoated legs in the air and screamed bloody murder.
“Aw, let’s not talk about that,” said Timmy, bored.
“What shall we talk about?” said Cait.
“Baseball! When I grow up, I’ll strike the ball heavy like Sam and run fast like Andy!”
“Okay,” I said, “so long as you don’t run like me.”
“Can I try for the juniors, Mother?”
“We’ll see.” The laughter was gone from her voice.
“Fearghus says I’m to be a soldier, that’s all he talked of when we went—” He halted abruptly and looked guiltily at me. “A soldier like my dad was,” he went on. “Fearghus got mad when I said I’d rather be a hero at ball like Andy.”
“Heroes fight for their country,” said Cait.
“This is my country!”
“Tim, that’s enough now!”
When the sky began to lighten he took his tool chest and worked on dead branches with the saw I’d showed him how to use. It was very possible, I realized, that Timmy was suffering from too many would-be father figures.
“I don’t mean to cause you problems with him,” I said.
“It’s not you alone,” she said. “He hears baseball everywhere. I can understand its attraction. I’m swept up in excitement myself at the grounds. But I’ll not have him believe it’s more important than the brotherhood.”
“The Fenians?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why are they so important to you?”
“Isn’t that equal to asking why a free Ireland is important?”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But why do you feel it so much stronger than Andy does?”
“He’s too young to remember Father’s head bloodied by Orangemen in the pay of the damned English,” she said. “He thinks Father died only of drink. The truth is he was first beaten down by those bastards. Finally, to save his family, he let them swindle us out of the land. Steal our land!” Her eyes flashed and her voice rose. “Andy’s a
