blisters on our hands every day for you for an honest shilling earned?”
It was then that Harris cut a quick look at the long piece hanging over the fireplace. It was an ancient thing I could see (knowing something more than most men about musketry) & a terror maybe to the fowl in the fields but not to the like of us. Sure Tom & myself would have time to brew coffee & pack a pipe in the age it would take the farmer to load that gun. I think Harris did know this too.
“Just move it out,” says he looking away. “And don’t darken this land again or—”
“Or what?” says I for I was bold now with the wages in my pocket. I set the hat on my head right there in the kitchen & looked over to the son who had no grin on his gob now & would no more dare meet my eyes than his father.
“Just go,” says Harris.
“We will,” says I.
And then to spite myself I did tip my hat. It was the habit of years of cap tipping to the Masters & Landlords back in Ireland & 4 years of Army ways being hard to shake off. At the time I was ashamed of myself for doing this because part of me believed the old ruse that in America no man is better than any other whether he was born the Queen of Sheba or in a low cottage in Timbuktoo. Of course I know now there is no truth in this.
But my shame was fleeting for as I took my leave of the Harris house there came to be a lightness in my step the same lightness I felt once before when myself & Tom boarded the boat at Queenstown for a new life across the sea. It was the lightness of change I tell you the lightness of new things & of things terrible bypassed. It was a feeling like the fluttering in a man’s heart when the dice still rattle in the cup or when all the cards do still be in the dealer’s hand.
WE TOOK TO THE ROAD that very evening walking until Chillicoth was behind us not far behind but enough so that a man might think he would never lay eyes upon it again & in the case of Tom & myself he would be right & Thank God for that.
The light of morning was just beginning to pale the sky & there we were 2 brothers passing over a covered bridge of the kind as be common in Ohio. Our footfalls rung hollow on the bridge planking in the darkness under that roofed bridge & I did say to Tom, “Is your heart still sore about that calf brother?”
Why I asked it I do not know for there are some things in the world we are better off not knowing. I tell you Sir I could feel Tom’s smile in the darkness & it was not a smile you would want to of seen at all.
Says he, “Not as heartsore as that c___ of a farmer will be when he finds it.”
It took a moment for me to understand Tom’s dread meaning & I stopped in the shelter of the bridge still some distance from the light outside.
“Oh Tom how could you do something the like of that? How could you?”
I spoke to him in Irish the way we did for matters of import or matters of the heart though I came to wonder betimes if my brother did still have one beating in his breast.
“I will not be taken for a fool Michael,” says he. “Run off something rightfully mine because a man has a farm of land & money in his pocket. You asked me not to kill Harris & his boy you said it would be wrong—”
“Wrong!” I did cry at him. “Killing that calf was wrong Tom! Christ Wept in Heaven you loved him like a pet.”
Tom spat on the bridge boards & said to me, “We rared him up for slaughter Michael so give over your crying for him. I only done what was coming to him soon enough. You may blame that f_____ Harris for it coming now & not later.”
He said this to me in English & some of his words were garbled & some I missed altogether but I took the main of his meaning & it was myself who was heartsore. Heartsore for that calf surely for I