Chapter Thirty Five

 

 

Mulrooney’s Inn had been a fixture on the Cork Road for over a hundred years. It had seen good times and bad, but now it was seeing the worst times in all its history. The Inn, situated on the only major road that led to the west and south of Ireland, was usually bustling with the comings and goings of men of commerce, farmers, and bankers of every stripe. But since the hunger, fewer and fewer people needed a reason to pass this way and the Inn, experiencing a sharp decline in business, was on the verge of financial ruin.

When Jerry Fowler and the others walked into the Inn’s pub room, there was no one there except the proprietor, who was standing behind the bar cleaning glasses.

The four men sat at a corner table. “How about a round of pints?” Fowler called out.

Mulrooney, an angular man with a shock of white hair, brought the mugs. He looked frightened and his hands were shaking so badly, he spilled half the ale onto the rough-hewn table top.

“Have one yourself,” Fowler said, winking at the others. “It’ll calm your nerves.”

The proprietor, grim as a mortician, wiped up the spill and quickly retreated to his place behind the bar.

 

Michael didn’t want to call attention to himself and resisted the temptation to bring the horse to a full gallop. But even at a canter, the superbly conditioned animal covered the ground with ease. He was making good time. Still, mindful that the sight of a raggedy-dressed farmer on a sleek hunter was bound to attract attention, whenever he saw another horseman or carriage approach, he led his horse off the road and waited in the hedges until they passed.

Back on the road, he rounded a turn and there—barely a hundred yards ahead—was Mulrooney’s Inn. He was about to dig his heels into the horse’s flanks and cover the last hundred yards at a gallop, when suddenly his eye caught a glimpse of something shiny in the hedgerow across the road from the Inn. He dismounted and tied the horse to a tree. Concealed by the hedge line on the Inn side of the road, he crept closer. And then he saw him. A small, wiry man with a broken nose standing next to a tree, directing the placement of several men armed with rifles.

My God! He’s setting up an ambush. Michael was still fifty yards from the Inn and on the same side of the road, but he was afraid that if he continued, he might be spotted by the men. He got down on his hands and knees and set off crawling the last fifty yards.

 

Inside the Inn, the men sitting at the table had become very quiet. There was no more laughter or banter. The long, tense wait had drained the false bravado from everyone, even Jerry Fowler. Frankie, the man who was supposed to bring the rifles, was over an hour late.

Dermot shot a sideways glance at Sean and William. They’re as uneasy as me, he said to himself. Why don’t they say somethin’?

Finally, he couldn’t take the tension any longer. “So where is he?” Dermot blurted out.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be here.” Fowler tried to sound confident, but Dermot noticed that he was nervously tapping his empty glass on the table. “Innkeeper, how about another—” Fowler turned toward the bar, but the owner wasn’t there.

Suddenly, Jerry Fowler was conscious of a great stillness. He cocked an ear. Not a bird was singing outside, not even the ever-present cawing of crows. Fowler felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“Dermot,” he said softly, “be a good lad and take a look outside and see if you see Frankie comin’.”

 

Exhausted and covered with mud, Michael had crawled to within twenty yards of the Inn when the back door opened and a man with a shock of white hair slipped out and ran off into the woods. Ignoring his burning lungs and the pain of scraped-raw elbows, Michael quickened his pace. Finally, when he was sure the building blocked him from the view of the gunmen across the road, he stood up and raced the last ten yards for the open back door.

 

Michael barged into the pub room just as Dermot was opening the front door.

“No, Dermot,” Michael shouted. “Don’t—”

But he was too late.

Dermot had already swung the door open. At the sound of Michael’s voice, Dermot turned with a puzzled expression at seeing his brother here. At the same time, there was an explosion of gunfire from the hedges across the road. Dermot, framed in the doorway, was struck by a hail of bullets and blown back into the room. He crashed to the oak-beamed floor, screaming and writhing in agony.

In the next instant, the pub room became the center of a terrifying maelstrom of sound and fury. Bullets crashed through windows, exploding shattered glass across the room. Bullets thunked into hundred-year-old walls, crumbling plaster and knocking faded paintings off the wall. Behind the bar, bottles and pots exploded, spraying spirits everywhere.

Ducking behind the thick oak bar, Michael glanced across the room and saw a petrified Fowler and another man cowered behind an overturned table. Behind them, a third man was slumped against the wall with half of his face blown away.

It took every bit of self-control for Michael to keep himself from rushing across the room and strangling Fowler, the cause of all this. But he had to help his brother. With bullets whining all around him and shattered glass raining down on him, Michael crawled toward Dermot. Shards of glass tore at his clothing, lacerating his arms and legs. Dermot had stopped screaming, but now, sprawled on the floor, he lay ominously still. A rivulet of blood oozing from his chest snaked its way across the planked floor and pooled by the leg of an overturned chair.

Michael reached out and grabbed Dermot’s collar. “Dermot can you hear me?” he shouted over the gunfire.

Dermot tried to turn his head, but he couldn’t. “Michael, they’re killin’ us…”

“We’re gettin’ out of here. Can you help me?”

Dermot started to sob. “Michael, I can’t feel my legs…”

“It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

Slowly, Michael started pulling his brother toward the back of the room. There was no letup in the fusillade of bullets, but Michael felt a small measure of comfort in that because he knew that once the bullets stopped, they would be coming. Michael’s chest heaved with the effort and he was beginning to feel lightheaded, but he had to get Dermot out of the Inn and into the fields before the men came. It was their only chance. He’d pulled Dermot about half the distance when his strength gave out. He could pull his brother no farther.

“For the love of God, give a hand here,” an exhausted Michael called out to Fowler.

The man hiding next to Fowler, tears streaming down his face and holding his hands over his ears, kept screaming, “We’ve got to give up... For Jasus’ sake... We’ve got to give it up…”

From his position behind the upturned table, Fowler glanced at Dermot and shook his head. “Tis too dangerous. It’s every man for himself.”

Fowler’s response didn’t surprise Michael. That’s what Fowler was—a coward. Michael had planned to lead Fowler and the other man out the back door and to possible safety. But now, it would be as Fowler said: Every man for himself.

All I have to do is get Dermot outside, Michael told himself. From there I can carry him to the horse and then we’re free and clear.

Calling on every ounce of strength he had left, Michael yanked on the back of Dermot’s collar and, slowly, Dermot began to slide across the floor. Tugging and pulling, Michael finally got his brother to the back door and pulled him through.

Outside, Michael, gasping for air, took a quick look around. Thank God they had not sent anyone around to cover the back. He looked down at Dermot. His brother’s face was drained of color and the front of his shirt was covered with blood.

“I’m gonna die,” Dermot whispered through parched lips.

“You’re not gonna die, Dermot. Didn’t I promise I’d take you to America with me?”

A little spark came into Dermot’s eyes. “Aye, you did. When can we go…”

Michael lifted his brother up and carefully slid him over his shoulder. “Soon, Dermot. We’ll go soon.”

“That’s good, Michael. Ireland is cursed…”

 

Taking a chance that the gunmen would be too busy firing into the Inn to notice them, Michael ran along the hedgerow with his brother over his shoulder until he came to where he’d tied the horse.

Carefully, Michael slid his brother across the horse’s back. Suddenly, the shooting stopped. After the constant din of gunfire the sudden stillness was unnerving.

Michael moved to the edge of the clearing and watched. Someone was shouting from inside the Inn, but he was too far away to hear what he said. Then, someone in the hedges shouted a response, but, again, he couldn’t make out what was said. A moment later, the Inn’s front door opened and the man who had been screaming about surrendering came out with his hands high over his head.

“It’s just like Jerry Fowler,” Michael muttered. “Let someone else do the dangerous work.”

Cautiously, several men carrying rifles came out of the woods. The man with the broken nose seemed to be in charge. He walked up to the man who’d surrendered. There was an exchange of words and then, to Michael’s horror, the man took a revolver out of his waistband and shot Fowler’s friend in the head. The man dropped to the ground like a sack of wheat. Stepping over the body, the broken nosed man led the others into the Inn. Seconds later, there was another shot. And a minute after that, two of the gunmen came out dragging a dead Jerry Fowler by his feet, leaving a trail of blood on the graveled driveway.

Michael ran back to his brother. “Dermot we’re got to get out of here before—” He stopped talking when he saw Dermot’s lifeless eyes staring at the ground.

Wordlessly, Michael closed his brother’s eyes, turned the horse around, and headed for home.

 

It was almost dark by the time Michael got back to the cottage. As he came up the road, Da was outside tending the potato field. When he saw Dermot laid across the horse’s back, he called out to his wife, “Mary, you’d better come out here.”

Mam came out of the cottage just as Michael pulled the horse up to the door.

Michael hung his head, unwilling to look into his mother’s anguished face. “Mam, I’m sorry…”

It took a moment for it all to sink in, then Mam, shrieking in grief, rushed to the lifeless body of her youngest son.

 

Inside the cottage, Dermot’s bloody body lay stretched out on the table. Mam, sitting beside him, stroked his hair. “We’ll have to make arrangements for a proper burial,” she said.

Michael looked to his father to say something. Outside, he’d explained to his father that it would not be possible to bury Dermot properly. But now, Da stared into the fire unable—or unwilling—to deliver this final blow to his wife.

“Mam,” Michael said gently. “We can’t have a proper burial for Dermot.”

She looked at him, baffled. “What are you sayin’, Michael Ranahan? Of course we must have a proper burial for your brother. You’ll go and fetch Father Rafferty. He’ll do the service.”

Michael shot a pleading glance at his father, but the old man would not look up from the fire. “Mam, listen to me. The peelers will be crawlin’ all over the countryside lookin’ for someone dead or wounded. If they find out that Dermot has been shot dead, they’ll arrest me for sure, and probably Da. For certain they’ll tumble the cottage.”

When the full import of what Michael was saying finally set in, she collapsed to the floor, screaming, “Oh, Jasus, in Heaven… No….no… Please dear God… tis my son… my son…”

Michael helped her up and gently put her down on her pallet. Soon, she stopped crying and stared up at the ceiling with a terrible resignation in her eyes that broke Michael’s heart. She had always been a strong woman, but Michael wondered how much more of this she could take.

 

“In the bog?”

Michael and Da were standing in the potato field and Michael had just told him where they would have to bury Dermot.

A grief-stricken Da stared at Michael with red rimmed eyes. “Sure the bog is a place of evil things, terrible things, unspeakable things. My son cannot be buried in such a place as that.”

“The peelers will be lookin’ everywhere. If they find a fresh grave, they’ll dig it up. It has to be the bog. Dermot’s body must never be found. If it is, we’re all lost. Do you understand?”

Da stared at Michael, unwilling to accept what he was being told. Then he blinked in resignation. “When must it be done?”

“Tonight.”

Gruffly wiping a tear with his sleeve, Da turned from Michael and went back into the cottage.

 

Inside, Mam was preparing the body. She’d washed away the blood as best she could. There was no clean shirt for him, so she had to leave the bloodstained one on. She wet the tips of her fingers and smoothed down his unruly, straw-like hair. Then she lovingly wrapped the body in a threadbare sheet.

When she was done, Michael carried the body outside and laid it on a length of charred roof beam he’d secured from Scanlon’s tumbled cottage. He tied the body to the plank with lengths of rope. Then he added rocks to Dermot’s pockets until he was sure the body would sink. When all was finished, he hitched the plank to the horse and called his Mam and Da out for their final goodbye.

In silence, the three Ranahans stood by the body. Mam knelt and placed a trembling hand on the shroud. Da stood rigid, his shapeless hat in his hands. He said nothing, but his lips were moving and Michael assumed he was praying for his dead son.

For his part, Michael didn’t know what to think about his dead brother. He’d always been a handful, but, he was after all his brother. Something had gotten into Dermot in the past year and it had changed him for the worst. He’d become moodier, angrier, shunning even his own family. Was it the strain of trying to survive the famine that made him that way? Or was it just something that had always been inside him? Whatever it was, Michael suspected Jerry Fowler had something to do with the change in his brother and was glad that Fowler, too, was dead.

It was time to get on with it. Michael helped his mother to her feet. “Da, you stay with Mam. I can manage this myself.”

As he led the horse away in the darkness toward the bog, a shrill sound ripped the still night. The hair on the back of Michael’s neck stood up. It was the first time he’d ever heard his Mam keen.

 

At the edge of a bog pool, Michael unhitched the horse from the roof beam. He upended the plank into the bank and pushed. The roof beam, weighted down with Dermot’s body, easily slid down the slippery slope. Gurgling and sucking, the bog claimed the body of Dermot Ranahan and it sunk into the ancient black ooze.

The last thing Michael did before he went home was to free the horse. Knowing how Kincaid treated animals, he couldn’t bring himself to take the horse back to the field. As he smacked the horse’s rump and watched it trot off into the darkness, he envied the horse’s freedom—as short-lived as it might be—and hoped that he would find someone worthy to take care of him.

 

It was late when Michael got back to the cottage. Sorrow had acted like a sedative on Da and Mam and, mercifully, they were asleep. Michael was glad of that. He didn’t think he could take any more of his mother’s sorrow just now.

Exhausted, he lay on his pallet staring up at the thatched ceiling, suddenly mindful of the extra room in the bed. No more would he have to shove Dermot back to his side. Never again would he have to reclaim his share of the blanket or ward off the kicks of his restless brother.

In the darkness, hot tears stung his eyes and Michael was finally able to weep.