Читать книгу Yet Untitled - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 7

Mary Finnegan was the kind of young woman who made the Irish proud. She was strikingly beautiful and now nearing thirty she had the figure of a woman in her prime. Her work and love of the horse had kept her in the peak of shape. She weighed no more than 110 pounds of solid muscle. She spent her mornings mucking stalls at Miles Park Race Track and served as a contract exercise rider for three outfits. When she galloped a horse she was at once a thing of unique and unquestioned beauty - she, the horse and the wind in one motion. She loved this motion, sitting on this mighty engine, her hands on the withers. She used them as a race car driver would use the throttle, and when she returned to the barn and into the shed row it wasn’t unusual to hear the catcall from the grooms and other exercise boys because when she dismounted and pulled off her helmet her beautiful Irish red hair glistened in the light against her pinkish skin, flawlessly natural with only a touch of lipstick on lips full by any measure. Her eyes were a greenish blue and contrasted with her hair and the color of her skin. Certainly for all who enjoyed the view she could have been a model or in the movies but not Mary Finnegan. She had a work ethic which was only overshadowed by her honesty, tenacity and love of the horse, and her loyalty to her connection to Ireland through her great aunt Ellen O’ Toddy, who had come to the United States by ship in 1932. It was Ellen O’Toddy who had given her the connection to the old country by telling her stories of Ireland, the old family and the ways of the land.

She read to her of the homeland in and around Connaught as described by O’Flaherty: “The soile is almost paved over with stones, soe as in some places, nothing is to be seen but large stones with wide openings between them, where cattle break their legs. Scarce any other stones there but limestone, and marble fit for tombstones, chimney manteltrees, and high crosses. Among these stones is very sweet pasture, so that beefe, veal, mutton are better and earyler in season here than elsewhere; and of late there is plenty of cheese, and tillage mucking, and corn is the same with the seaside track, in some places the plow goes. On the shore grows samphire in plenty, ring- root or sea holly, and sea-cabbage. Here are Cornish choughs, with red legs and bills. Here are Ayres of hawks, and birds which never fly but over the sea, and, therefore, are used to be eaten on fasting days; to catch which people goe down, with ropes tyed about them, into the caves of cliffs by night, and with a candle light kill abundance of them. Here are several wells and pooles, yet in extraordinary dry weather, people must turn their Cattell out of the islands, and the corn failes. They have noe fuell but cow-dung dryed with the sun, unless they bring turf in from the western continent. They have cloghans, a kind of building of stones layed one upon another, which are brought to a roof without any manner of mortar to cement them, some of which cabins will hold forty men on their floor; so ancient that nobody knows how long ago any of them was made. Scarcity of wood and store of fit stones, without peradventure found out the first invention.”

Reading such things as these, and of how St. Albeus, Bishop of Imly, had said, “Great is that island, and it is the land of saints; for no man knows how many saints are buried there, but God alone,” and of an old saying, “Athenry was, Galway is, Arian shall be the best of the three islands.”

Mary Finnegan could not remember a time when her dearest, sweet Auntie Ellen wasn’t about. Her own Mother could not have loved her more. The three of them kept alive by the Irish devotion and commitment to family. Mary’s farther had been killed in Vietnam and her mother forced to work at the hospital as an aide on what they called the ‘graveyard shift’. Aunt Ellen was there though to tuck her into bed and read to her the stories by O’Flaherty of Ireland and her heritage.

She adored her Aunt Ellen, and dotted on her so much so that when Ellen (now Toddy and not O’Toddy for some reason) became seriously ill and in need of a kidney, Mary gladly responded stating flatly, “The good Lord hath given me two and my water will go through one just as efficiently…and if it doesn’t, I’ll simply drink less!”

That’s the way it was with Mary, nothing heroic here, and if Auntie Ellen had needed a foot and it was medically possible, the transplant would have been made.

The house was quiet as Ellen Toddy pulled the door to and heard the faint click of the lock. Mary was fast asleep, so weary from her work at the track and her mother would not be home until the morning. Time for Mrs. Toddy to catch the bus at 6th and Oak Streets in Limerick for the twenty minute ride to Grinstead Drive, where she would get off and walk the three blocks to Shawnee Parkway. She clutched her purse to her midsection, frumpy from years of heavy Irish stews and the homemade rich brew which she enjoyed on a winters evening to drive away the chill and bring the dreams of the Irish seacoast and of a lad who beckoned to her as the sea wind and spray blew his hair dampening his jacket perhaps but not the spirit to see and hold his darlin’ Ellen if only for the few moments allowed by the passing in the night.

Ellen could hear her mother’s heavy Irish brogue and the unmistakable warning, “Come straight as an arrow, lass, do not tarry… for idleness is indeed, the devils work place. Your Father will be eager to fetch the stick if there be any delay in your comings and I, obliged to inform of such activity…though it may pain me to do so…be patient my lovely lassie!”

Ellen remembered well the stick of which she spoke. Her father was a practitioner of corporal punishment and the axiom, “Spare the rod and ruin the child!” but she would rather the rod as to miss the sweet and loving embrace of Eddie Renneally.

“I love you lassie… soon you will be mine forever… we will go to America and be rid forever of this god forsaken place. Soon we will have enough money for the trip, and I swear by my eighteenth birth we will be wed, and free of this oppressive place!”

She remembered the touch, the kiss and even as she resisted slightly, his moving against her, and how he had taken her hand and placed on his, oh very hard, so large, throbbing. She felt it jumping in her hand and she remembered feelings deep inside as he moved his fingers inside her.

Though his promise went unkept, his call to her from the seaside with the wind and spray at his back remained fixed in her mind, a sense so strong that she could never refuse the call of Eddie Renneally. And so she hugged the night shadows and the vivid memory of her sweet, sweet Eddie. Even all the years later on Shawnee Parkway she felt he would be there soon. To see him, to hear him calling her to hurry and come nigh, “Lassie don’t you know we’ve only a moment? Hurry girl before someone sees.”

The dark evening shadows covered her as even the large oaks covered her passage along the parkway. She entered through the side door off the veranda and waited a moment for any sign or sound. There was a faint sound of laughter on the second floor. Ellen made her way toward it and entered a small hall closet. She latched the door behind her and heard the sound of the lock much as she had heard the sound leaving home. She sensed that she wasn’t alone, then, she heard the burner from the hot water heater click on. It was warm; she removed her dress. The laughter was higher now heavy breathing and sounds of pain or joy interrupted it. She lifted a dust pain from its hook and removed the screw revealing a small hole through the wall. Ellen could see the occupant of the apartment, Kathy…there on the floor by the fireplace. She could see Kathy’s breast and the back of the naked young man making love to her.

As Eddie caressed and kissed the nipples, he massaged her thighs and soft spot between her legs. Ellen moaned, “It was there…very hard, throbbing, jumping… and he was in her…Oh my darlin’ Eddie!”

Something moved in the shadow of the hot water heater.