I was never quite sure why Monk adopted me the way he did, us bein’ of two different professions and all, he of the Hebrew and me of the Roman, but some things in life ain’t worth questioning and Monk Eastman most certainly was one of them. If Mr. Mike hadn’ta sent word to him about the precariousness of my situation, if I hadn’ta helped out Mr. Mike in the Branagan department, if Monk had been busy clobberin’ some poor sonofabitch instead of attending to Hilda and six of his cats at the pet shop…if and what if and I’ll be damned if I know.
One of the reasons I took to Monk so quick was that in many ways he reminded me of my own Da, gone but still very much missed, not only by me and my brother and sister but most especially by my Ma, who dressed all in the black, the way a proper Irish widow should.
Not that my own Da in any way resembled the great Eastman in face or form. Francis Madden was of the Galway Maddens, the handsomest and bravest of all the Maddens, dark-haired and blue-eyed, like my own good self. No, the way in which the one recalled the other had more to do with the way each man carried himself, surefooted and confident and not about to take no guff off of no one.
Which are the selfsame qualities that endeared him to Ma, and which made the Madden brood possible. The story, which Ma was wont to tell encouraged merely by a cool evening and a small libation, was that he’d made the journey from Clifden to Galway City in a donkey cart, and then, realizing it was nearing harvest time and he’d not yet found a wife, continued on to the town of Lisdoonvarna in the County of Clare, there to seek a bride among the many young women who flocked to the Burren spa for the selfsame reason, except in reverse.
When, where and how exactly he first spotted Miss Mary Agnes O’Neill is the stuff of familial myth and legend. Da used to tell me ’twas at a dance, while Ma recollects it somewhat otherwise: that a rude but fine-looking young lad bumped into her in the street and then stared after her thunderstruck as she moved away, straightening herself. The next day she found him standing in the doorway of her father’s cottage, cap in hand, and this time she got a good long gander at him back, and that pretty much was that.
Back home in Connemara, objections were raised about the O’Neills of Lisdoonvarna, discussions were had about the superiority of civilized Galway folk to Clare poor wretches, etc., whereupon Francis and his old man stepped outside to settle things in the Irish manner. This may have been error on the old man’s part, for Francis was regarded far and wide, the length of Connaught in fact, as the finest young pugilist in the province. And indeed, after a few rounds in the little plot of land sandwiched between the farmhouse and shitehouse, his Da saw the strength of his son’s argument, and so grudgingly relented. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints,” said Grandma upon witnessing the results of the discussion. This was the September of 1888.
And so Francis Madden and Mary O’Neill were married, in Corpus Christi Church in Lisdoonvarna, with the bride all of eighteen years old. Corpus Christi was not a grand church, having been built bereft and bare of any superfluous ornament, in the true Calvinist tradition of Irish Catholicism. Christ Himself glared down from the cross with a particularly pained expression on His face as He regarded the miserable sinners in His flock.
Folks flocked to the wedding, from all over the baronies of Corcomroe and Burren, from the towns of Lisdoonvarna, Ballyvaughan, Kilfenora, and Ennistymon, from the hamlets of Carrowney Cleary and Cloughaun and Ballinalacken, and by God even some passing tinkers, having observed the festive commotion, tried to stop in and pay their respects to the newly wedded couple, but the parishioners of course shooed the dirty gypsies away in the spirit of true Christian charity.
Immediately following the blessed ministrations, the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Madden and the entire wedding party made their way west for a mile or two to the O’Neill home, which sat astride the Slieve Elva, with a fine prospect of the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands and the Bens of Connemara. On a clear day, or at least a clear ten minutes or so—so quickly did the clouds scoot in from the ocean, like footballs aimed at a hapless goalkeeper’s head—you could practically see the Madden homestead across Galway Bay. Or so the former Mary O’Neill had whispered during their courtship, the wish and the reality being for the Irish more or less the same thing.
Such music and dancing as then followed can only be imagined, and indeed is still spoken of in those precincts today: “Mna na Eireann,” “Clare’s Dragoons,” “An Cuilfhoinn” and the Sligo song “A Chuaicín Bhinn Dílis” were among the most requested. The pipers let the music ring forth with great vigor, much vim and passable skill. But surely the highlight of the event was provided by Francis and his older brother, Daniel, who, as tenor and baritone, sang the pathetic and beautiful duet “Au fond du Temple Saint,” from Bizet’s opera The Pearl Fishers, which brought tears to everyone’s eyes, so poignant and pathetic was the rendition.
Now, the thing about this party was it was not only a celebration but also a wake, for the Maddens were bound for the English Midlands, where they planned to tarry just long enough to earn their passage to and find their fortune in America. First to Leeds, where Francis had a cousin who knew a man who knew a brother of a mill owner, who might be able to give him a job as a cloth dresser, and which paid eighteen shillings sixpence a week, not to mention whatever Mary could take in from the washing. And thence to the great City of New York, whence Mary’s sister, Elizabeth, had already departed.
“We’re bound for greatness now, Mary, and make no mistake,” he said to her as they crossed the Irish Sea, staring as hard as he could into the future and seeing only the Liverpool shoreline in the gloaming, rising up to meet them faster than he had ever expected it would.
Or so the story goes, the story we got from Ma between drinks and tears back in them early years. Bein’ that it was before my time, I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but can only observe that that’s the way I would have written it, if I could have.