May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel (57 page)

She’d arrived two Fridays ago and looked all around the colored
settlement near Salem Chapel, then went into the few shops there and even stopped people on the street, asking if any of them knew of a man named Micah. Then, figurin’ he might’ve changed his name for safety, she went into long descriptions of him and his skills as a carpenter, and still received not a single encouraging response. The next mornin’ she was at it again, and every mornin’ since, even speaking to the few white abolitionists from another section of town. And still she’d found nothing.

The old woman who ran the boardinghouse where Mary stayed told her about a number of other settlements stretching out over hundreds of miles along the Canadian border. She said he might’ve gone to one of them, and Mary began to wonder if that was a possibility. Maybe circumstances had forced him to cross the border somewhere else. Maybe he’d married another woman before he ever arrived here. Maybe he’d never made it at all, gettin’ swallowed up by the snow and winter in the Blue Ridge Mountains. No—she wouldn’t allow that thought, she insisted to herself. And that was when she decided to look for work, figurin’ this might be a
The Lord helps those who help themselves
kind of situation, like Gertie used to say. She’d work, and wait, and search, for as long as it took.

When the Sunday service at Salem chapel was done, she stayed in her pew a little while to let most of the crowd pass. Some of them, people she’d spoken to in the past few days, nodded to her as they walked by, and she felt encouraged that she’d be accepted here. ’Til eventually she stepped outside the chapel and down the several steps, and all around were people assembled into little groups and sharing a few words or some laughter before they were on their way home. And Mary stood there for a moment and took it in, realizin’ that it was the first time in her life she’d seen such a congregation of colored folks, well dressed, cheerful, leisurely. It brought a smile to her face as she moved along, planning to return to the boardinghouse. And then.

Mary.

Spoken in a deep voice, not as a question but a statement. And in the time it took for her to turn around, that quiet, determined faith that had allowed her to even conceive of such a moment surged through her once again. She
felt
it was him before she set her eyes fully upon him, then breathed in with a gasp when her sight could confirm it.

Without words, she stepped toward him, seeing the imprint of exposure and hardship upon his face—the time intervening written in lines across his forehead, but the hope still radiant in his kind eyes. And unable to do anything more than match his weary, relieved smile, she simply buried her face against his shoulder and became surrounded in his embrace. For this moment, and many more to follow, words would only seem like the unwanted wakeful moments after the sweetest of all dreams.

He was here.

Seated here along the lake like this, on a rock big enough to serve as a chair with your feet stretched out to the edge of water, you can almost remember what it was like back then, back when the men and women who’d survived the hard life of the Old Country long enough to have crevasses runnin’ the length and width of their faces would get to reminiscing in the way they used to do. And someone’d be sure to say,
Was it dat laahhng ago, sure it cahhn’t be twenty years now … ohch how th’time pahses …
and you and the other children would look at them amazed that anyone could live so long to describe twice your own lifetime as if it were nothin’ more than half a planting season waitin’ on the new potatoes. But now, though there aren’t any crevasses on your face just yet, twenty years doesn’t seem like such a vast expanse of time after all.

The whole family is up for the occasion, everyone but Uncle Paddy that is, and him havin’ to drive his ferryboat back and forth across the East River was excuse enough for remainin’ behind. And who could blame him for wantin’ to miss what was likely to be a funeral twenty years in the making. It’s always been a day you try to simply get past each year, only
this
year, this twenty-year
anniversary
of the day, it seems as if time is determined to slow itself down in ways it hasn’t since you were in the army. There’s the sun to prove it, no more than an hour in the sky, even though you’ve been wide awake for three or four at least.

Mary was by the house just after first light, wantin’ to see if Marcella and Aislinn—little Aislinn, dear love—would come along for the mornin’ walk they sometimes take. And the surest indication of what a long day this’ll be was the way you could hear Marcella whisper how she better not go along as well, as if the memorializing had already begun. Still, little Aislinn wasn’t to be denied, and she and her Anta May set off not long before you did, with Marcella lookin’ at you through beleaguered eyes and saying
oh yes, that’s a good idea, yes you take a walk too … I love you …
as if you’d only been married four weeks and not as many years—and still you are smilin’ at her on the way out all the same, just because.

You hadn’t set out with a plan, but somehow the walks you take by yourself along the lake almost always end up here in the slight clearing where you sometimes come to talk to her. There’s something about the shore of any body of water, even a lake or a river, that’s made you feel through all these years like all you have to do is send off a whisper’s worth of words and they’ll be carried back across the ocean, all the way back to the Lane outside Enniskillen, and maybe she’ll know you haven’t forgotten. Not this day, or any other.

But you don’t say anything right off, just watch the tiny ripples across the water and think of
how th’time pahses
indeed. Before long you can almost remember what it was like to be that young, to see twenty years as if it were twice a lifespan. And then, closin’ your eyes to let the memory wash over you, it’s as if you can hear the words again, with Father Laughton up to his old tricks racin’ though
Th’LahrdismyshepherdIshallnotwant …
as if his Protestant bladder was overflowin’, and not in the good way it did during the less somber occasions. It’s not the chill of that twenty-years-ago morning you feel, or the emptiness of the days that followed, but the helplessness of a boy trying to be a man … and all the ways you’d let your family down, let
her
down … the funeral Mass that wasn’t fit for a stranger that’d died wandering the countryside, let alone her … with the too-small coffin … and the tiny slate laid flat on the ground left to the carnage of the overgrowth. And you begin to imagine what it must look like now, with the weeds and grass covering it a little more each year, suffocating the only thing that ever made her final resting place appear to be anything more than a patch of grass
beside the decaying old church … until it must’ve become nothin’ at all … nothin’ even for the folks to walk past and say,
Oh poor lass, just sixteen what a pity, what a tragedy, musta been The Hunger
. And what of the promise you’d made to her that you’d never let such a thing happen?

The very thoughts of her now—of how you’d
failed
her—are tiny daggers of guilt and shame jabbing at the place deep within you where you’ve put all such memories away—until bitin’ your lip or shakin’ your head side to side can’t stem the tide that bursts from within you in gasps of air and a few childlike yelps. The water’s not stoppin’ at your eyes the way it always does, but rollin’ down your cheeks and off onto the rock big enough to be a chair as you bury your head in your hands that rest upon your knees. And the memories burst forth upon you,
all
the memories, tellin’ the story of the connectin’ years in disjointed fashion, each of them awash in the guilt, the shame … the helplessness.

There are your boyhood friends, mere lads from Red Hook who went on to become Excelsiors, to become part of the
Fightin’ Sixty-Ninth
of the mighty
Irish Brigade—
then all of them to become maimed or dead. And you, with all your limbs intact and a treasure of a wife and daughter, and all your wits mostly about you, how was it
you
merited such a fate? What’d you done, other than
fail
them all? Where were you to help rescue Harry or Finny the way they’d rescued you at Antietam? Where were the words of comfort and consolation for Smitty, who’d left more than his arm behind at Malvern Hill—and you, the
Perfessor
, without so much as a sage word or two to explain it all—to explain the reason for all the suffering, even if you didn’t know why yourself. There are the wounded lads in the hospital, their faces now as distinct as they were when you tended to them,
lied
to them, told them the arm or leg or the eye they’d lost would be all right, somehow—and all of them now just part of the barrage of vivid, anguished faces that mingle with your memories in flashes and spurts, becomin’ now the grass-stained mouths back on the Lane … or the little girl who was the first to die on the
Lord Sussex
, then Mrs. Quigley who was the last … there are the runaways along the peninsula, left behind to their fate just like the battered souls on the docks at Newry and Liverpool … and there you are to
watch
it all again … powerless, helpless … as if you’ve been that twelve-year-old boy
all
your life—consigned to such a fate because you
failed all those years ago to keep the promise you’d made to her … and what a cruel God it is who’d keep you alive through all of this, the way Suah told you on the dock in New York, no matter
what
the reason might be … until there’s one last involuntary gasp of breath and the tears now abating … the stillness of the morning slowly easing the flood of memories to a more manageable tide … and your thoughts return to her. It’s not her funeral anymore, or the imagination of what her resting place must look like now, or even the guilt of how you’d failed to live up to your promise. The memory that comes upon you in that weary moment is of the night before she died. And with your eyes still closed tight, you can almost see that tiny loft in Aunt Em’s old cottage on the Lane, the place where you and she used to lie awake in the flickering light from what was left of a stale turf fire, separated only by the proud collection that had become your Library, and how you and she would imagine what books might pass through your fortunate hands once Mr. Broderick made another trip to London.

There’s a steadiness to your breathing now, and the fresh memory that comforts you is of nothin’ so trivial as the hope of being handed down another history of the English monarchs or even the great endowment of
The Iliad
or something more from Mr. Shakespeare. No, there you are, all of twelve years old with boyish dreams untainted by harsher realities still to come and full of plans for what your lives will be once the money from Da and Seanny arrives and you’re
all
off to America. There’s you, talking about being a teacher, a professor even, or a famous actor … or maybe you’ll write stories to surpass even the ones that fill your tiny Library … and there she is, just as ever, listening to everything you have to say without tellin’ you all the reasons it might never be so … no, she wouldn’t do such a thing … instead, as you
listen
to the memory that fills your head now, it’s as if you can hear her saying,
You could do that Ethan … sure ya could
. And then, in a voice not born from memory but hers all the same, you can hear her add to that familiar refrain,
But first ya gotta let go of it ahll, Ethan … let go of all the sorrow … you’ve got a worlda livin’ left t’do, y’know …

Anta May, Daddy! Looka Daddy!

Your eyes open in a jolt and you lift your head up from your cupped-together palms as if you’d been caught sleepin’ during the Mass. There’s
grooming to do, wiping the remnants of the water from your eyes and cheeks and clearing your nose as best you can without being so obvious as to take out your handkerchief. And then she’s upon you before you can even stand up all the way. You lift her and strain a little in straightening your back, and it’s far more than a typical morning greeting, even for a three-year-old.

Surely there’s something special for her to be on such an adventure as this and then see you there so far away from everything familiar. And she’s got to tell you about everything they’ve seen so far, even the things she’s seen countless times before on similar walks with you. But you don’t mind, of course, and you smile at Mary as your daughter goes on for a minute or more in a flood of words with hardly a breath in between. When she’s done and ready for some more exploration, she begins to wiggle free of your grasp, stopping only when you press your lips to her cheek and hold them there long enough to help you fight back the water that’s gathered in your eyes again. And when she’s off, there’s just you and Mary there, the evidence of your boyish flood of emotion made obvious by what certainly must be the redness of your eyes. Still, Mary has a way of not making such a moment any more uncomfortable than it has to be, without ignoring it altogether either.