The Best American Mystery Stories 2012

Hard Truths by Thomas J. Rice

FROM The New Orphic Review

THE TELEGRAM CAME in the late afternoon on a rainy Tuesday in late April 1958.

Jimmy Dunphy had been delivering mail to this remote farmhouse in the Wicklow mountain range for over thirty years, but he still felt a tingle of excitement each time that distinctive little green envelope showed up in his bundle. Hogan’s of Rathdargan was the last stop on his route, and he always looked forward to a relaxed chat with Kitty Hogan, full-figured woman of the house. Sometimes-if she was in a good mood-she’d invite him in for a cup of tea and a scone to fuel the long, uphill bike ride home to his cottage on the other side of Sugarloaf Mountain.

Telegram presentation was one of Jimmy’s specialties, one he’d polished to a performance art. Unlike regular mail, telegrams meant something was up-and Jimmy loved to watch the faces of people in the grip of suspense. Today he was bitterly disappointed to see that only young Myles, not his mother, was there to share the moment. Was he going to have to waste a performance on this fourteen-year-old upstart? This younger generation had no appreciation of true dramatic talent; most had never even heard of O’Casey, Behan, or Bernie (aka George Bernard) Shaw, born just over the mountain in Carlow. Too busy traipsing to American cowboy pictures and dance halls. Then again, how were they ever going to learn if their elders didn’t show them?

Peering through the rain under his shiny postman’s cap and black parka, Jimmy grinned and stepped boldly onto the stage-his own Abbey Theatre. First he held the prized envelope high for inspection-like a trophy ready for presentation. Rolling it over several times in his arthritic hands, puffing vainly on his unlit pipe, he held the telegram aloft one last time before the final moment of exchange.

Myles Hogan didn’t hear the postman’s whistle right away; he had his hands full dosing an ailing calf from a plastic bottle in the cowshed. But the brace of border collies sounded the alarm, nearly flattening him in their raucous scramble for the cowshed door. Myles liked Jimmy Dunphy and usually welcomed his theatrics, but not today. There was too much work to do; he was soaking wet and in no mood to humor the old man.

Finally, with great reluctance, Jimmy surrendered the telegram into Myles’s impatient hand. Stung by the rude reception, he turned wearily to face the hilly, wet meadow he’d cut though to reach the farmhouse. No tea. No scones. Not even a glimpse of Kitty Hogan’s brunette curls.

Turning abruptly to leave, noticing Jimmy’s hangdog expression, Myles felt a pang of regret and tossed off a quick apology: “Thanks, Mr. Dunphy. Sorry to be in such hurry. Hungry calves, ya know…”

Jimmy seized the opening like a lifeline.

“Maybe I should wait till yer mammie has a chance to read it. Ya never know… She might want to send word back…”

It was a clumsy attempt at ferreting out what was in the telegram; Myles knew how the gossip mill worked and had no intention of feeding it.

“No, thanks, Mr. Dunphy. Mammie’s busy right now, but I’ll let her know your offer.”

Jimmy was not so easily put off, especially by a young bucko getting too big for his breeches. “Maybe we should let the mammie decide. Ya never know…”

“That’s all right, Mr. Dunphy. Thanks anyway.” With that, Myles met the old man’s eyes with an unsmiling dismissal, turned, and raced down the steps, tripping over the tangle of border collies stacked up below him before righting himself and sprinting for the kitchen, where his mother was baking bread over the open hearth.

“Mammie, Mammie, it’s a telegram!” he yelled as he barged into the dimly lit kitchen, borders charging in tow. Kitty Hogan looked up from a deep reverie. She was cranking the handle of the bellows which fed a glowing turf fire. Over it, a covered iron skillet rested. She started, as if coming awake, brushed a wayward curl from her forehead, and nervously wiped her hands on her faded, striped blue apron. A shadow of dread crossed her lined though beautiful face.

In Kitty’s forty-four years, telegrams meant only one thing: bad news. The last one had been two years before, announcing that her beloved Aunt Mary-a second mother to her-had died in New York. The one before that, in October of ’55, had summoned her to Dublin, where Maura, her youngest daughter, had been run over at a crosswalk near O’Connell Street Bridge. She’d died two days later at the St. Vincent’s Hospital, without regaining consciousness. Maura was a bright, good-natured girl, just eighteen, the last of the five sisters at Temple Hill Nursing School, all on meager scholarships. She’d only been in the city a week.

Meeting his mother’s hazel eyes, Myles handed her the telegram with trembling fingers. Kitty hesitated before reaching for it, took a deep breath, and walked to the dresser at the back of the kitchen. Hours seemed to pass before she eventually opened the drawer, pulled out a paring knife, and slit the green envelope in one swift flick. Even the borders sensed the tension and sat on their haunches, as at feeding time, their gazes riveted on Kitty’s every move. She stepped toward the light of the front window, took another deep breath, and plucked out the folded, official note, which she read silently to herself, several times; then, finally, aloud:

Coming home Friday (May 1). 6pm bus to Enniskerry. Jack.

Tears streamed down Kitty’s pale cheeks, dripping on her apron. She swatted them away as a smile erased the shadow, spreading from her lips to her streaming eyes, then to her whole body. She let out a scream of pure ecstasy. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Jack is coming home. Your father is coming home. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I knew he would come someday. I knew God would answer my prayers… I just knew it…”

She whirled about the concrete floor in a wild dance of joy Myles had never seen before, almost knocking him over as she swung her arms wide. Inspired by her exuberance, the borders started to bark, joining the circular dance. Suddenly Kitty pulled up, self-conscious and blushing, almost childlike. She smoothed the faded apron, brushed back the curls from her forehead, and regained her normal no-nonsense comportment.

“Now listen, Myles, we have a ton of work to do to get ready. We have only two days, mind you. We’ll have to paint the road gate, clip the hedges, and cut all those thistles in the cow field. Oh, and Myles, you’ll have to go up to Billy Roach and get a haircut. What would your father say if he saw you looking like that? He’d think I was raising a teddy boy…” She rattled on in this vein, extending the list in her assertive fashion, but Myles had already tuned her out and was walking toward the cowshed to finish his feeding chores.

This was the moment he’d dreaded for two years, ever since he’d quit Enniskerry National School in the middle of the fifth grade to help his mother on the farm.

Myles was the only one in the family who seemed to accept the fact that his father was never coming home. He’d heard the story so many times, with so many variations and subplots, that he felt it was just another fairy tale. Kitty had tried to make excuses for Jack and present him as a heroic figure, but Myles never bought the fiction, sensing an unspoken truth: the real hero was the woman who stuck with him and his older sisters instead of farming them out to relatives, or worse: Killane orphanage, the workhouse in Gorey.

Kitty Hogan was a maddening bundle of contradictions Myles could never figure out. She could be gentle and nurturing, treating Myles as an equal, a partner. Ever since he could talk, she had sought his views on all sorts of grown-up matters, large and small: Should she sell the bonhams or fatten them? Should she plant Furlong’s Field with oats or lease it to John McDonald? Should she let the girls go to the dance in Bray Sunday night? And she wasn’t just humoring a child; she really listened to what he had to say and encouraged him to tell her the truth, especially when it was hard.

Like two years ago when he left the turkeys’ run open and a fox killed the whole flock; it was their only Christmas cash crop. “Mammie, I have a confession to make.” He found her in the middle of baking a cake for supper. “Well, this sounds serious. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Myles sat down, fought back tears, and spilled the story. “It’s all my fault. You told me to lock the gate every time I came out, but I didn’t. I just forgot it, like an eejet. And that’s when the fox must’ve slipped in. I never saw him. Just heard the racket and ran in there. It was too late. He’d killed them all and was gone. There wasn’t even any blood. Just broken necks. Like I said, it’s all my fault and I don’t mind if you whip me with the belt. I deserve it… I’d do anything if it’d make ’em come back… anything.”

Instead of a whipping, she gave him her brightest smile, wrapped her arms around him, and said, “You’re a good man, Myles Hogan. Any fool can tell the truth when it wraps him in glory. It’s the hard truth that separates the men from the boys. Now, let’s have some tea and scones before we have to break the news to your sisters that we have to cancel Christmas this year.” As she said this, her voice broke and she turned away to hide the tears.

This was in sharp contrast to the way she treated the girls, whom she dismissed as a bunch of “gillagoolies.” His sisters resented this, of course, and took it out on Myles with fiendish creativity. Knowing his fear of the dark, they seldom missed an opportunity for nightly terror games. Once, when he was about seven, they put a small goat in his bedroom, complete with horns; the devil come to claim his prey. Myles promptly went into screaming convulsions, to gales of triumphant giggling from under the bed.

The harsh punishments meted out by his mother only made Myles feel more guilty. He tried to make it up to his sisters by currying favor, but to no avail. It was their mother’s approval they craved, not his. But for them, that approval would always be in short supply.

Myles had always been puzzled by the deference people showed his mother. All sorts of people-men, women, prosperous, and poor-seemed to speak of her with a kind of reverence, like they might speak of the bishop or prime minister. It had a magical power that seemed to cast a protective shield around him and his sisters as soon as people knew their names. Being Kitty Hogan’s son was special in Enniskerry; everyone seemed to understand that, for reasons Myles could only guess at. “Can I give ya a lift? Ain’t you Kitty Hogan’s boy?” “Sure it’s all right. Ya can have it for five bob. Aren’t you one of the Hogans of Rathdargan?” “Yer mother’s a great woman. She done a lot for this country. You must be very proud to be her son.” Once he asked her what people meant by this, but she brushed it off with, “Oh, son, we all did a lot for our country in the old days. It’s not worth talking about. Now, run down to the lower meadow and bring in the cows!”

But he knew there was more to it. He had seen some of it firsthand.

He recalled the fate of the schoolteacher, Brigid Breen, after she slapped his oldest sister, Nora, for misbehaving in school. For other children, beatings in the National School were expected and accepted. Except the Hogans. Myles remembered the terrible spectacle of Miss Breen falling on her ample knees on the gravel road, pleading for mercy, as Kitty stood leaning against the stone wall, cool as a lioness ready to pounce.

Miss Breen’s plea was in vain. With one backhand swipe, the hefty schoolmarm practically flew across the road, landing in a pile of nettles, nose gushing like a crimson fountain. “Now, Miss Breen, let that be a lesson to you. That’s how it feels to be slapped by someone stronger than you are. Never lay a hand on one of my children again. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hogan. Oh, for the love of God, please… It was just a misunderstanding. It’ll never happen again. You have lovely girls. All so bright…”

“Thank you, Miss Breen. I’m glad you approve of them. If they give you any trouble, just let me know. I’ll deal with them myself. I discipline my children, not you. Your job is to educate them. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, yes… of course. We all have a job to do. Thank you, Kitty… I mean, Mrs. Hogan.”

“You’re most welcome, Brigid. Safe home, now.”

The other episode that puzzled and frightened Myles was the exchange he’d overheard between his mother and the Hannigan twins two years before. Billy and Bobby Hannigan were neighbors. They worked the big family farm and general store in Newtown, just off the Dublin Road, near Sally Gap. They were tall, burly redheads, popular with the girls and well liked by one and all. Both were gifted football players, dominating defenders for the senior Wicklow team. They came from a well-respected family. Their father (Sean the Gap, as he was affectionately known) was a feared and famous IRA guerrilla fighter. The twins seldom visited Rathdargan, so it was a surprise to hear their voices downstairs speaking in hushed tones with his mother early one Friday morning as Myles was waking.

Billy Hannigan, in his distinctive tenor voice, was speaking softly as Myles came fully awake.

“With all due respect, Mrs. Hogan, what we do or don’t do with girls at the dances, that’s our own business. I don’t see where ya get off summoning us here to lecture us about Molly Redmond or what happened at the dance in Kilkenny Sunday night. If she has a complaint about anyt’ing, she should call the Garda.”

Kitty’s voice, calm and deadly, came back-the same tone Myles had heard her use with Miss Breen. He felt a tightening in his stomach and fought back a wave of nausea. Suddenly he felt sorry for the Hannigan twins and had to resist an impulse to.

His mother’s voice continued the deadly inquisition.

“That’s a good speech, Billy. It shows courage, which is admirable, given your situation. Now, Bobby, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“Not a t’ing, Mrs. Hogan, except that I’m sorry it had to come to this. Tell ya the God’s honest truth, we didn’t mean no harm. We had a few pints an’ t’ings got a bit out of hand, I s’pose. An’ the reason we’re here is ’cuz me father has great respect for you ’n what ya did for the cause. We all have. We meant no harm, as God is my witness, Mrs. Hogan.”

“Very good, Bobby. God is your witness, always has been and always will be, but we won’t need to call on him just yet. Your brother should take a page from your book, since contrition is the gateway to redemption. But you’re both whistling past the graveyard if you think this is just about making nice.

“No. That won’t do at all. Here’s why: I’ve known Molly Redmond since she was a little baby. Her mother and I were in the movement together long before you lads were even a gleam in your daddy’s eye. She’s a lovely girl and it so happens I’m her godmother-not that you should know that.

“But after the dance last Sunday night, she came by for our little chat, as usual. Only this time she was hysterical. She told me everything. Everything. About what you blackguards did to her in Kelly’s hay shed-or tried to do, I should say. I’m glad you have a few scruples left. Since her mother died in that ferry accident, I’m the one she turns to for advice. Thank God she did. And that’s your bad luck…”

The long, ominous silence that followed was finally broken by Billy Hannigan’s blustery voice.

“Look here, Mrs. Hogan, like I said, we came over here ’cuz Da respects you-we do, too, don’t get me wrong-but what do ya want from us? Molly is no saint; she’s a bit of a tayser-if you ask me. So I don’t know what you want from us. What’s done is done. It won’t happen again, I can assure you of that. Is that the sort of t’ing ya want us to say?”

Upstairs, Myles had moved a little closer to hear his mother’s reply. He could see her pacing back and forth through the cracks in the floorboards.

“Oh, I know it won’t happen again. That’s not what I’m worried about. No, not a whit. But as I said, it’s not going to be as simple as assuring me of your noble intentions. The road to hell is paved with those, as the fella says. Your amends will be much more tangible than mere words. As a show of good faith, I want three hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes for Molly’s education, with a written explanation to her that this is your way of apologizing to her and her family for the emotional distress you caused. Be sure you both sign your names with Sean, your da, signing as witness. I also want you to donate one of your best Jersey cows to Pete Redmond to make up for the one that got killed on Dundrum Road last month. It was the only one they had. It’s only a neighborly thing to do anyway; I’m sure your da won’t mind.

“Oh, and while you’re at it, it would be grand if you cut out five Cheviot ewe lambs and donated them, too. The Redmonds have had a couple of bad years and need a bit of sun to shine their way. You’ll never even notice, but it’ll make a world of difference to them.”

Whatever had happened downstairs, the Hannigan twins went mute. Not a word of protest was spoken, as Myles heard their hobnailed boots scrape the concrete kitchen floor.

“Right so, I see you boys understand me. Much better than calling the Garda, wouldn’t ya say? I’ll see you at eight sharp tomorrow. Oh, if for any reason you don’t make it, I’ll be up by noon for a little conference with himself. Yer father and I go back a long ways, as you know.”

Billy Hannigan was back the next morning at eight sharp, just as Kitty had ordained. He did not come in, but after a quiet conversation at the kitchen door, he walked slowly out of the farmyard. Myles watched him from the upstairs window, red curls flowing over his collar, as he closed the iron gate and walked slowly up the laneway. Even now, Myles remembered his mother’s last words, in that menacing “Miss Breen” voice:

“Don’t thank me. Always knew the Hannigans would rise to the occasion. Say hello to your parents for me and tell them there are no hard feelings here. I’m sure the Redmonds won’t be pressing charges. That’s the kind of thing that can ruin a young man’s life. None of us would want that to happen, especially to a Hannigan. Safe home, now, Billy.”

Myles recalled his visceral relief at what he saw as a reprieve for the Hannigans. He’d feared the worst for them, like Miss Breen. But they were men, of course. It was different. He couldn’t imagine what they’d done to Molly Redmond to make his mother so mad-maybe pulled her hair or tried to kiss her-but he was glad it was over and done with. It still rankled him that this whole village seemed to know something about his mother that he did not. One thing was sure-it struck the fear of God in them. That part was a comfort to Myles; some people deserved to be afraid. Fear was the only thing they understood, like some of the brutal mountain boys at school. But it also scared him, for reasons he could not explain. And he was sick of being called “Young Hogan of Rathdargan.” He longed for an identity that he, Myles, could call his own.

He was also weary of hearing the depressing details of his father’s neglect of his family dredged up and embellished, year after year. It was a story the whole community seemed to delight in telling and retelling, with each recitation a little less credible, a little more vicious.

How Jack missed his birth-as he did for all but one of his eight children born in their two-room farmhouse-and came home just in time to find his only son a cadaverous cluster of skin and bones, slumped in a coma. This rare visit had come in October 1943, as the winter winds were returning to their ghostly antics, herding leaves from the giant oaks into every corner and crevice of the desolate farmyard.

A robust infant, Myles had lost half his body weight to a twin epidemic of whooping cough and German measles that had ravaged thousands of children across Europe. Myles’s blond three-year-old sister, Sheila, had suffocated in Kitty’s arms. The local doctor-an alcoholic who practiced without a license-had prescribed baking soda.

Kitty just had to pray and wait “for God to take her,” as she told Myles one chilly afternoon years later by the turf fire, where Kitty often surprised him with her reflections. Father Cavanagh, the parish priest in Enniskerry, was two days late coming to offer last rites and condolences. Uncle Patrick, Kitty’s alcoholic brother, had been charged with the job of fetching the priest, but went to Dalton’s Pub and forgot.

People never seemed to tire of telling how his penny-pinching Uncle Mike-Kitty’s grand-uncle-had insisted that the undertaker delay closing Sheila’s tiny white coffin until Myles should expire and join her in it. (After three days, when Myles seemed to be hanging on, they went ahead with the burial.) True to form, Uncle Mike was calculating the cost of another coffin and Jack missed Sheila’s funeral.

But he arrived in time to save Myles’s life. Or so the legend went. He’d heard of Kitty’s predicament through the grapevine in Birmingham, where he worked on the line at Austin Motor Works. There was talk of a special type of paraffin lamp that worked magic in bringing relief to children stricken by the epidemic. Jack claimed he’d bought one for the family as soon as he got word. It was too late for Sheila, but for Myles, it worked; he got immediate relief and came out of his coma within hours of his father’s homecoming.

As far as Myles was concerned, he never believed the heroic rescue story. It just didn’t fit the man he’d come to believe his father to be. It seemed just another example of Jack Hogan getting off the hook. If it had been true, why did he leave them the next morning, without a word of goodbye, without leaving Kitty a single penny, or even a boarding-house address? He simply walked out and left her to cope with her grief, to face the bleak winter with a house full of children and an empty cupboard.

Myles knew the real story, much less noble; he’d pieced it together from snippets of gossip he wasn’t supposed to hear. Jack had lost his shirt gambling on “the nags” and had abandoned his family when Jim Dalton and Pete Coady, the local publicans, began to deny him credit for his belligerent binges, tolerated as long as he sang and paid for every round.

Jack’s comings and goings were never quite clear to Myles. As far as he could tell, Jack first abandoned Kitty and their six daughters in February 1937, five years before Myles was born. That time he stayed away for two years and then came home only to dodge the WWII draft. He stayed for three years, then vanished again in February 1942, two months before Myles was born.

After that fleeting visit for Sheila’s funeral in the fall of 1943, Jack went missing again, this time for keeps, it seemed. Other fathers who had to work in England came home every Christmas, Easter, and for the summer holidays. But not Jack Hogan. While his friends proudly displayed their visiting da at midnight mass, Myles meekly followed his mother as she marched to the front of Enniskerry Chapel with her brood of six to claim the family pew. No husband. No word. No hope.

Until now.

As word of Jack’s heralded homecoming spread, the story of his departure gained new life. The neighbors warmed to the gossip, trumping Kitty’s romantic renditions of Jack’s adventures with details of their own.

“Now, when was it that Jack left again…?”

“Did he sell the bay mare to Father O’Meara-or was that the black stallion he’d won with at Gowran?”

They recited and embellished every painful detail of the deception. How he’d lied about taking the mare to Foley’s blacksmith’s shop. Joe Foley told Kitty the shoes had never been fitted. They relived the story of how he’d sold the last brood mare, Dolly, before jumping the ferry to Holyhead, then on to Birmingham.

That Jack Hogan. What a character! Never a dull moment when he was around. It hasn’t been the same since…

Myles heard from others how his mother had first got news of Jack-over a year later-and then only because he was accidentally spotted by a cousin singing at a concert in Shrewsbury, England, on a Saturday night.

“Ah, what a wonderful tenor voice he had… Myles, sure some a dat talent musta rubbed off from yer father. Can you sing ‘Slievenamon’? It was one of his favorites…”

There were times when Myles really hated him, with a burning, vengeful, damn-you-to-hell hatred. He was baffled by his mother’s loyalty to her elusive husband. He hated how the locals kept reminding him of what a great hero his father was in the IRA as captain of the fabled “flying columns” and their daring assaults on the British occupation forces. Myles particularly resented the constant, invidious comparisons-whether in sports, singing, dancing, or work. “Sure yer all right, but you’ll never be as good as yer father. He was a great man for the football. Do you play…?”

More complicated was Myles’s constant awareness of missing, not the flesh-and-blood man who was Jack Hogan, but the idea of a father and what he saw his friends enjoying with their das-hurling, boxing, football, prideful glances, tender touches to soothe the bumps and bruises. At such times, Myles longed for his da to be around, but it was a fleeting emotion, like dreams of winning the Irish Sweepstakes or owning his own team of Arabian horses.

After twelve years without so much as a single visit-Jack was a mere ferry ride away-Myles had given up, hardening his heart to the notion. The only sign of life he saw from his father over the years was the annual abusive letter pressuring Kitty to sell the farm. No money, not even a pound note; just a rant about how she’d always held him back with her lack of trust. Sneaking a peek at those missives, Myles could scarcely believe his eyes.

She’d once confided, in one of her fireside reflections, that the letters began in the aftermath of Jack’s concerted efforts, against Irish law, to sell Rathdargan farm “out from under her”-without her permission, which he knew she would never give.

After getting one of these letters, Kitty cried for days, trying to hide her heartbreak behind red, swollen eyes. “I have such a problem with the pollen this year,” she’d offer, fooling no one.

For all of that, there were still times when Myles tried to will the father of his dreams into existence. One specific incident stood out in his memory. He was about nine at the time. It was fox-hunting season. The local hunters found him indispensable for one reason: the Hogans had a terrific little fox terrier, named Nell, a white-and-tan spark plug with classic markings.

Nell was famous for her ferocity and skill at flushing foxes from their dens-or dragging them out, if they were so foolish as to take her on. During the hunting season, there was a hunt every Sunday, and Nell was Myles’s front-row ticket to the action. He was proud to be able to tag along, though it was dangerous-loaded shotguns in every hand. He was not even allowed to hold, let alone shoot, the old single-barreled shotgun that hung from its rack at the head of the stairs.

Myles knew it was Nell the hunters wanted; he was along as baggage, resented by some of the hunters for slowing them down. On this particular Sunday afternoon the hunting party was in hot pursuit when they encountered a fast-running brook, three feet deep and four wide. The fox and dogs cleared the brook with no effort. Impatient fathers boosted their own sons over the stream but in their haste forgot about Myles.

He remembered standing on the bank, crying, praying to Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost things, for his father to appear. When he didn’t, Myles cursed Saint Anthony for letting him down. “The curse a God on you, Saint Anthony. Ya never come through when I need ya. An I’m never going to ask you for another favor as long as I live. Ya can go to hell.” He recalled his other grievances against Saint Anthony when the stakes were high, like the time he’d lost his only hurling ball in the thick brambles behind the barn.

Eventually Myles found a low spot downstream and waded across. But by the time he caught up with the hunt, he was soaked, bleeding from thornbushes, and sobbing. No one even noticed that he’d been missing. Nell had the fox cornered and her distinctive growls were punctuated by sharp yelps, meaning she was in trouble. It was only when Myles called her off that the hunters paid attention.

Saving Nell from the likely carnage of a cornered vixen meant spoiling their fun. “Sure we were getting along fine until ya came along and ruined it. Maybe next time we’ll just bring the dog…”

Jack Hogan came home to Rathdargan on May Day 1958. It was a perfect spring day, rare in the moody western Atlantic. It dawned sunny and cloudless, and for once never broke. May, Ireland’s greenest month, had once again delivered its bounty.

The upper fields, next to Carrigoona Commons, were ablaze with daisies, their tiny white-and-yellow flowers forming the magic carpet dreamed of all winter. Daffodils, lilies, and forget-me-nots danced in the gentle breeze, blending their fragrance with the massive lilac hedge that formed a purple canopy over the handcrafted iron gateway to the farmhouse.

Birdsong echoed across the valley. The swallows were back-a welcome sign of spring-to reclaim their nests in the eaves of the cowshed. It was an idyllic setting to celebrate a family reunion.

Myles was like a jack-in-the-box at school that day, and was chastised repeatedly by Miss Breen, who found his conduct out of character. Having skipped two grades, he was one of her favorites, and she expressed her disappointment in no uncertain terms. Others, for the same transgression, would have been dealt six lashes of the dreaded “rod”-a mountain ash plant about two feet long. A standard teaching tool, used more than the atlas or textbook.

In Myles’s case, Miss Breen had her reasons to show restraint. Besides, she genuinely liked and approved of Myles; just not today. “I must say that I find your conduct most unbecoming. Whatever has gotten into you, Myles Hogan? Very disappointing. I’m going to think twice about further privileges for you to go fetch you-know-what.” This was her reference to Myles’s perk of fetching her cache of jelly-filled doughnuts from Coady’s grocery. She gave Myles one for his labor; it was their secret. But everyone knew of Miss Breen’s weakness for doughnuts; it was hard to hide with her sixteen-stone waddle. And Myles’s pals at school razzed him mercilessly for being “teacher’s piggy pet.”

Myles bolted from school at the clang of the bell, taking the shortcut across Carrigoona Commons. Normally he dawdled, taking at least two hours to cover the two miles. Pickup hurling games, a fistfight to kill the boredom, skinny-dipping at Powerscourt Waterfalls, all offered distractions on the journey. This day he was home in no time, determined to finish weeding his patch of the vegetable garden. He wanted to leave no room for Jack’s famous fault-finding, which Kitty inadvertently taught him to dread. “Wait till your father comes home. He won’t put up with that…”

The mere thought of these encounters infuriated Myles. Who the hell is he to tell me about my duties? Hasn’t he neglected his for twelve years running? And haven’t I done fine without him all these years? And what about Mammie? Sure she’ll just become sad again, as she always has whenever his name is mentioned? And he’ll just leave us again, anyway? Maybe I can just wait him out.

In the midst of elaborate preparations, Kitty had been on the lookout all afternoon. As Myles did when his sisters came home from nursing school, he watched for Ned Delaney’s Vauxhall-the only taxi in Enniskerry-to appear on the Carrigoona Road, which he could see for miles from his perch on the Rathdargan ridge.

Kitty wore a bright yellow dress with a brown belt-an outfit Myles had never seen before-and her dark, curly hair blew in the breeze. He’d never seen her look so beautiful, or so happy, smiling and laughing at things that weren’t even funny. He guessed she was practicing her new routine.

Five-eight in her bare feet and a strong, athletic figure, Kitty knew how to make the most of her elegant good looks. This day she wore nylons and high heels that invited disaster on the farmyard cobblestones. The four surviving girls were away at nursing school, so the welcoming party was down to Myles and his mother.

Hour after hour he watched the Dundrum Road. Most of the cars just kept going, not making that right-hand turn at the crossroads for Rathdargan. Finally, after hours of lookout duty, he spotted Delaney’s Vauxhall. It turned right. Knowing it had to be Jack, he sounded the alarm: “Here he comes! They just turned at Doyle’s Cross.”

With the alert, Kitty went charging toward the lilac canopy, running the full 200 yards of winding sycamore laneway, uphill in her high heels. In that moment of euphoria, of hope against hope, all was forgiven: the abandonment; the drunken abuse; the deceptions and neglect. Once again Jack Hogan was being given a hero’s welcome; Kitty’s faithful heart greeted him as any loving husband coming home from a normal, essential breadwinning trip.

Myles couldn’t stand it; he refused to join the parade. He expected to be coaxed, as usual, but Kitty hadn’t even noticed his absence. He sat on the front steps, brooding, while Kitty and the border collies rushed to greet the prodigal father. By the time they emerged jubilantly through the gateway next to the farmhouse, 30 yards away, Myles had arrived at a plan of action.

His parents strode forward as in a wedding parade. Kitty had both of her arms locked around Jack’s trim waist. Myles saw his matter-of-fact mother clinging to this stranger with a distant, dreamy look he’d never seen before. It was as if Jack had never left, as if the cover story had been true all along, and this loyal provider had just gone to the forge to have the mare shod.

Jack’s white cotton shirt billowed in the wind and he carried a battered tan suitcase. He was tall and handsome, just as people had been telling Myles all his life. What if he’d been wrong? What if the stories were all true? Jack was laughing, full of life and basking in the glow of Kitty’s adoration. They looked like a couple right out of Failte magazine, out for a stroll in the lush Wicklow countryside.

Kitty was cheerfully explaining why Myles hadn’t been with the welcoming party at the road gate. Apparently he was shy. Finally, with a sharp change of tone, she turned toward Myles and issued one of her sharp commands: “Myles, come meet your father, right now!”

Myles stood up and walked slowly toward the stranger, working hard not to betray the terror he felt at what he was about to do. He felt his big, bold plan dissolve with each step, like a slow leak in his bike tire. They met about halfway to the farmhouse, just above the open spring well. The trickling of the running spout in the yard suddenly grew noisy. Myles had to stifle an urge to turn and run.

Their eyes met for the first time, father and son, searching, like boxers in an opening round. No trust; animal suspicion. Myles noticed his father had the same deep blue eyes and dimpled cheeks as himself. Now those older eyes twinkled with mischief, as if Jack were about to tell a hilarious joke.

He smiled at Myles conspiratorially, then reached in his pocket with crowd-pleasing deliberation, saying to no one in particular, “So this is my great big son. I brought you something I think you’re gonna like…” With great flourish, he pulled out a gorgeous silver watch, a fashionable Timex. It had a chain about a foot long, with a silver T-buckle on the end. He held it high for all to admire, then lowered it to Myles’s outstretched palm.

Without a word, Myles took the watch, gazed at it for a long few seconds, then threw it with all the force he could muster straight at his father’s head, yelling, “I don’t want yer watch! I don’t want anythin’ from ya! I wish ya’d just stay away from us…”

He didn’t wait to see where the watch landed-just tore down the laneway toward his refuge, the garden, vaguely registering over his shoulder the flurry of apologies from his mother. “He’s not like this at all. I don’t know what got into him. Oh, Jack, please don’t be upset. I’ll talk with him… He’ll apologize… I’m so sorry… I had no idea…”

Myles had learned from watching Kitty over the years that the best balm for upset is hard work. Now he threw himself into weeding the lettuce ridges, head down, back to the house, where he could hear the subdued voices of his parents. Then he heard footsteps on the garden path. Kitty was coming to reprimand him, to order him to apologize. He didn’t turn around, just kept working, bracing for the verbal assault.

It never came. To his surprise, it was his father’s voice that broke the silence: “This is a beautiful garden you’ve grown here, son. So clean. I used to plant lettuce and onions in this very same spot when I was your age. It’s the sunniest place in the whole orchard. Did you know we used to call this ‘the orchard’? The field over the house used to be filled with apple trees-people would come from all over to pick them. The trees would be in full bloom right about now, all shades of pink and white. We had such great yield, we just gave them away for free. The cattle and pigs ate the rest.”

He kept up the monologue, squatting down in the row beside Myles in his polished shoes and white shirt, moving with him up the row. This went on for at least a half-hour, during which time Myles kept working but never looked at his father or said a word. The speaker might as well have been invisible. Finally Jack stood up, dusted off his pants, and mumbled something about needing to wash up for dinner before vanishing behind the orchard wall.

Myles waited till he heard the wooden gate close behind him, then broke into tears of confused rage that watered the fledgling lettuce plants, lasting till he finished the row, exhausted and afraid of facing his mother.

At last Kitty emerged, under the guise of picking scallions and lettuce for supper. To his surprised relief, she assured him that she was not upset, that she understood it would take time for him to get used “to having a man around the house.”

It was the last thing he needed to hear. His anger returned, surprising both of them: “I’m never gonna get used to it. We were doin’ fine without ’im. And I’m not goin’ to call ’im Da either, an’ there’s no use trying ta make me.”

“All right, a Cushla, I know this is hard for you. But I still expect you to show your manners and to be polite. There’s no excuse for rudeness. Promise me that you won’t let us down. Do this for me, please!”

Myles dug at his tear-stained face with two muddy fists, promised her without conviction, and went in to wash up for dinner. He was used to being without a father, but now it was beginning to look like he was about to lose his mother, too-at least the one he’d known up to now. Fine, maybe he’d just run away to England; that would show her about a “man in the house.” He could find work on the buildings; four of his cousins had already gone to Sheffield and they were only three years older.

Jack Hogan proved hard to resist; he had a magic about him that Myles felt drawn to. Even mundane tasks like shearing sheep or clipping the pony became occasions of performance and celebration. Everyone-men, women, and children, even the animals-seemed to vie for his attention. He was charming, entertaining, and loved to make people laugh.

Myles knew his father had won several singing competitions, both in Ireland and in England, but he had no idea what that meant. Then, on his second night home, Myles came to understand why Jack Hogan was known as “The Voice.”

With plenty of Guinness being passed around, conversations buzzing in the kitchen, the usual suspects had arrived to perform their party pieces. No one was paying much attention-everyone talking at once-until someone shouted, “Hush up! Jack is goin’ ta sing.”

As if someone had hit a master switch, the house instantly falls silent. Jack stands up, steps confidently to the middle of the room, takes a deep breath, and launches.

His selection is Thomas Moore’s classic, “She Is Far from the Land,” a song familiar to all.

From the first line, all Myles’s resentments and plots for escape dissolve. His father’s voice is unlike anything he’s ever heard-sweet, enchanting, and almost like a musical instrument in its perfection. Like the rest of the audience, Myles finds himself swept up in the emotion of the moment, crushed by the grief, still embracing it with both ecstasy and anguish that he has never experienced with other singers. By the end of the first verse, several people, women and men, are openly weeping. Some are actually sobbing, shoulders heaving. Handkerchiefs are out, arms clasping shoulders in comfort, and Myles finds himself crying openly with the others, without self-consciousness.

The words, poetry sung from the heart, etched themselves in Myles’s memory, words he would recite and sing in faraway places decades later:

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,

And lovers are round her, sighing:

But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,

For her heart in his grave is lying!

In full performance persona, Jack swings toward the kitchen audience he’d had his back to for the first verse. His hands form a moving circle in front of him as he sings, making deliberate and lingering eye contact with each person as he delivers the next lines:

She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,

Every note which he loved awaking;

Ah! little they think who delight in her strains,

How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking

He had lived for his love, for his country he died,

They were all that to life had entwined him,

Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,

Nor long will his love stay behind him.

For the finale, he comes full circle, pauses for several seconds, then turns toward the finish. The silence is perfect as he hits the pièce de resistance.

Oh! Make her a grave, where the sunbeams rest,

When they promise a glorious morrow;

They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the West,

From her own loved Island of sorrow!

As Jack finishes on a caressing inflection of sorrow, his audience sits stock-still, mesmerized. Then come the tears, mingled with self-conscious giggles. The applause is long and loud, everyone on their feet, even Mick Murphy, who never rises unless to relieve himself or to go home. They are uniformly awestricken. Shouts of “No trouble taya, Jack! More! More! Give us ‘The Foggy Dew’” can be heard in the adjoining townsland.

Jack obliges, without coaxing, leading off with “The Foggy Dew,” then “Dawning of the Day,” “If I Were a Blackbird,” closing with a nationalist favorite, “The Croppy Boy.” He delivers his medley of ballads with the same fluid energy, the beautiful voice, the engaging presence. Long before the final song, Myles has been captured by his father’s magnetic field, holding on to his jacket, proud to claim him as his very own da.

The ramblers notice the gesture and applaud that, too, long and loud. In the background Myles can see Kitty, beaming her approval as she busies herself with the tea.

The spring and summer flew by in a blur of manly activity. Myles spent hours with his da, just the two of them, working on blocked drains, collapsed fences, and overgrown hedges. Sometimes they just wandered around the farm, like two pals, taking stock of the dilapidation, while Jack displayed the same comedic skills as their aging neighbor, Andy Murphy-mimicry, jokes, foibles, legends-all in a day’s work.

Jack seemed to have lots of money, spent it freely, and was in no hurry to find work outside the farm or new ways to provide for the family. No one questioned the source of his largesse. Irishmen often came home from England feeling flush and spending lavishly, even if they couldn’t afford it. After all, Jack had been gone for over a decade and might have changed his ways. Rumor had it that he’d won the lottery in Birmingham. Another had it that he had a recording contract with Decca Records and had been given a big advance. Sure, wasn’t he “a finer tenor than John McCormick”?

More remarkable still, he never touched a drop of drink all summer. Given the man’s reputation, that was nothing short of a miracle. Jack brushed it off with a simple comment that drink “doesn’t agree with me anymore” when pressed with “Sure one bottle of stout won’t kill ya.”

Some days, instead of farm projects, they went hunting down in the lower meadows. At last Myles had his chance to do what he’d been dreaming about for years: show off Nell’s skills and his own knowledge of game and fox habitat to his da. In turn, Jack taught him how to shoot the ancient single-barreled shotgun that had hung unused in the upstairs rafters. Kitty had warned Myles against the dire consequences of even touching the gun, though he sometimes sneaked in and played war games, pretending he was an IRA marksman, killing scores of British soldiers as they came swarming across Sugarloaf Mountain.

That was before Jack came home. Now he was allowed to take target practice openly in the orchard, using a thick wedge of oak nailed to an apple tree as a bull’s-eye. Once he got used to the violent kick of the butt against his jaw-which knocked him flat the first time he pulled the trigger-he showed a lightning speed and accuracy that drew praise from all quarters. Soon Myles was bagging pheasant and rabbits weekly, beating his father to the mark when the dogs flushed the game from the furze.

It was on one of those hunting expeditions that Myles came to know another side of his father. He also learned a well-kept secret about his mother that cast her in whole new light. The conversation began after Myles had downed a pheasant with a brilliant shot and Jack, sensing his son morphing to a man, opened a delicate subject: his years in the IRA.

“You know, son, the crack of a gun always reminds me of when I led the flying column down in Bunclody back in ’19. We’d been tracking the Black ’n’ Tans for a week after they burned out the whole village of Kiltealy. Well, we hit ’em at three in the mornin’… blew up the barracks where they were billeted, out toward Vinegar Hill. Never knew what hit ’em. Bastard foreign riffraff… Criminal element turned loose from British prisons and armed on condition they come over an’ massacre us. Five of ’em escaped the first blast, but we blew their balls off as they came charging out of the back.”

“What happened after that, Da?”

“They caught us in Enniscorthy four months later, but not before we’d done several more jobs like that.”

“How come they didn’t kill you like they did when they caught Padraig Pearse and the others in the Easter Rising?”

“Did yer mother never tell ya the story? Sure I’m not surprised; it’s not like her to dwell on the past. Or to brag.”

Myles was now listening to an entirely different man than he’d known before. Gone was the funny raconteur. In his place was a soldier, focused and gleaming at the memory of battle. This was the real IRA hero, the one he’d never believed existed. Yet here he was listening to the firsthand account, like a dream come to life. Myles sank down on the stone wall, ready to drink it all in, watching his father’s glistening blue eyes harden as he warmed to the story.

“Well, see, we were arrested and taken to the local jail in Enniscorthy. The whole county knew what happened: someone had informed on us, one of our own. We were to face the Tan’s firing squad the following Wednesday. So here’s what happens. We were allowed one last visit from family and friends to say our goodbyes. No men, only women. I was dating your mother at the time, sort of-she was Kitty Cusack then, a gorgeous slip of a girl, but secretly a commander in the local Cumann na mBan.

“I thought only the men could be commanders?”

“Oh, no, son. The women were commissioned, too. Kitty had a reputation-well deserved, may I say-as a fierce Republican. Absolutely fearless. And deadly. She shows up on Tuesday night, acting the green, gawky country girl-‘Sorry to bother ya, sir’-with freshly baked brown bread, four packs of Sweet Afton fags, and guess what else?”

“A hacksaw blade?”

“Ha, you’ve been reading too many comics. No-a sawed-off shotgun, stowed under her big winter coat.”

Jack smiled at the memory and lit his pipe, puffing to fill the silence. Myles felt his pulse race. His mother with a shotgun? Was this the same woman who forbade him to even handle the old shotgun gathering dust upstairs before his da came home? He watched Jack’s face for a few more seconds before asking, “So did she manage to hide the shotgun from the guards?”

Jack laughed and rolled on. “No, that was not the plan. She had a different idea. The guard, a Tanner, never knew what hit ’im; she fired at point-blank range… right through the coat… blew a hole in him the size of yer fist.”

Myles tried to swallow, but felt his mouth go dry and his chest tighten. Then he heard himself say in a faint voice that sounded high-pitched and distant, “You mean ta tell me that Mammie killed the guard… I mean, the Tanner?”

Jack smiled indulgently at the boy’s amazement, continuing calmly, as though telling a bedtime story. He moved in closer to Myles, holding his gaze, warming to the subject, enjoying both the memory and the discomfiture of his audience.

“Oh, absolutely. Dead as a doornail. He made one fatal mistake-didn’t think a country lass would have the nerve to pull the trigger. Stupid ejeet dared her: ‘Go ahead,’ he sez, ‘ya Feinian bitch. I dare ya. Ye don’t got the fucken nerve.’ Sure we all heard ’em yell it from up an’ down the cell block. We knew they’d be the last words the Tanner ever spoke. Didn’t know Kitty Cusack like the rest of us… That woman had nerves of steel; tougher than most of the lads in the movement. Kitty always took care of business. Always got the job done.”

With that, Jack looked off in the distance and paused to relight the pipe. A long silence followed before Myles broke in, choking back tears.

“I never knew any of that, Da. Mammie never told me… How could she? So how did you escape?”

Another long pause, puffs on the pipe, and a resigned sigh. “Well, after Kitty sprung us-all twelve of us… Oh, listen, ’tis a long story, son. We split up. Packie Hayden, Denny Brennan, an’ me stayed together an’ got out to Canada; ended up in Montreal. We had contacts and a lot of help up the chain of command. But that’s why yer mother and I had to meet up in New York after it had all settled down years later.

“I’ll tell ya the rest some other time. Sure Mick Collins and I were best buddies; started out as handpicked lieutenants in the IRB-Irish Republican Brotherhood-before De Valera and the treaty tore us all asunder. I can’t bear to even think about the betrayals and treachery; all those fine young men and women, tortured and martyred for… for what? Look what it got us.”

The memory seemed to wilt him. Gone was the aloof storyteller, spinning a yarn. His soft tenor voice broke and tears welled up in the blue eyes, turning gray in anguish. Embarrassed, he turned away, trying to regain his composure. “I’m sorry, son. I shouldn’t have told you all this. Promise me ya won’t tell yer mother I told you about Enniscorthy. I shoulda let sleeping dogs lie…”

“I promise, Da. I won’t say a word.”

With that, Jack stood up, stuffed the pipe in his pocket, and started up the hill toward the red-tiled farmhouse. They walked the distance in silence, deep in their own thoughts, Myles a few steps behind his father. His mind raced with questions and the dawning realization that his world had just been turned upside down.

Suddenly the mysteries of deference to his mother made sense.

After each incident, Myles had assumed his mother, a naturally dominant personality, intimidated her targets with sheer force of will. Now he understood the pitiful pleading, the sudden show of compassion, the ready admission of guilt. They all had one thing in common: terror. They weren’t facing his mother; they were facing Kitty Cusack, legendary commander in the Cumann na mBan and secret enforcer for the IRA.

But did they know the whole truth? That she’d shot a Black ’n’ Tan prison guard, and the only living witness was Jack Hogan? Maybe the whole truth was worse. Perhaps she’d shot others? If so, how many? And who besides Jack knew?

Myles was left to ponder these questions alone. He would have to bide his time before he could even broach the subject with his da, and Kitty was completely off-limits; on that front, he was sworn to secrecy.

After that one extraordinary tale of his jailbreak, Jack returned to his other persona: an endless fountain of hilarious mimicry, ancient wisdom, songs, and poetry. Myles, in turn, decided to focus on the bright side of this newly revealed heritage. He was the only son of Kitty Cusack and Jack Hogan, Cumann na mBan and IRA insurgents who’d trounced the Black ’n’ Tans, hooligans and murderers all. This was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, he was proud of his pedigree. After all, Kitty and Jack had put it all on the line for Irish freedom when it mattered most. He didn’t know anyone else who could say that about both their parents.

So resolved, he got up each day now intent on making the most of being alone with his da. He never raised the topic of the IRA again, and Jack avoided all references to his days “on the run.” Instead they seemed to have reached a tacit agreement that Kildargan farm would be their new cause.

Jack taught Myles the verses to all his favorite songs-“Slievenamon,” “The Croppy Boy,” “Dawning of the Day,” and Myles’s favorite, “Kevin Barry.” They cleaned out the old car shed, built a workbench, and cut down several hardwood trees-ashes and oaks-for the new paddock they’d planned behind the stable.

At night Hogan’s farmhouse turned into a lively “rambling house,” the center of community fellowship and entertainment. Gone were the days of isolation when Myles and Kitty wouldn’t see a soul from one Sunday to the next. The Voice had raised the ante; singers never heard from before emerged to perform and match their talent against himself. The same with the music-and all the other performances, including the storytelling, poetry, and occasional tug of war on the long summer evenings. It was the best summer of Myles’s life, far and away. He finally had a father of his own, and one who was supremely talented, great fun, and a genuine IRA hero to boot.

Then, one balmy August evening, their idyllic summer ended.

The ramblers had assembled for another night of music and storytelling, but Jack was still down in Enniskerry on some errand. Myles heard the border collies first, their barking chorus unusually shrill-with Parnell, the big black alpha, dropping into an ominous crouch, hackles up, slamming against the kitchen door with increasing urgency, as if engaged in some mortal combat with an invisible foe. This was a sound Myles had never heard the borders make before, and he felt a shiver invade his whole body.

Kitty finally tuned in to the banging against the kitchen door and turned to Myles without noticing that he’d turned pale. “Myles, will you go out and call off those dogs! They’re giving me a headache with all that randy-boo.” When she saw his hesitation, she picked up the Tilly lamp and, without further comment, stormed into the dark farmyard to see what all the fuss was about. “Parnell! Shep! Rover! Come to heel! I said, HEEL!”

With that the dogs went mute; but not quite. They stopped barking, but Parnell kept baring his fangs in an ugly snarl, while the others growled and refused to lie down as they normally would when Kitty took charge. As one, they paced back and forth, glaring toward the outer gate with baleful suspicion.

Standing just beyond the gate, frozen in fear, was a homely little woman dressed in black, with a large hat on top of a wizened little head. As she stepped into the farmyard, Myles could see her large pair of glasses reflect the light as she introduced herself as Fanny Wilcox, explaining that Ned Delaney had driven her up from Enniskerry but had to go for another fare, leaving her to carry her large suitcase down the long driveway by herself. She looked exhausted, leaning on a cane, and Kitty immediately felt sorry for her. “Well, come on in and have a cup of tea and some refreshments, Fanny. You look famished and sure who wouldn’t be after lugging that suitcase down the lane all by yourself. I’m surprised at Ned to leave a woman in such a lurch. Shame on him.”

Fanny waved this aside with “No, no-Ned seemed like a nice chap, really. Very polite and friendly, ’e was. I don’t want to put you to any trouble, but I’m looking for Paddy Hogan, and I understand ’e lives ’ere.” Here was an accent Myles had never heard, and he could barely make out a word.

“I’m afraid you may have the wrong farm, Fanny. This is Jack Hogan’s house, and he’s away at the moment, but we don’t know any Paddy Hogan.”

Fanny sipped her tea, glanced through her horn-rimmed glasses at the assembled ramblers, and Myles, before speaking. Then, with a condescending cackle and an air of conspiracy, she leaned toward Kitty and whispered, “You may want to ’ear the rest of wot I ’ave to say privately. Can we go into another room, then?” Caught off-guard, Kitty blushed and said, “Of course, of course… sure let’s go up to the parlor so that we can talk. Myles will join us.” Myles moved past the ramblers toward the parlor, but as he walked by Fanny, he felt her cold, clawlike hand grasp his wrist and whisper, so that all could hear, “I don’t think we want our knuck here listening to wot I ’ave to say.” Kitty recognized the British taunt: knuck-dimwit, eejit-but hadn’t heard it since her days as a nursemaid in London, when it was used to ridicule Irish country girls fresh off the boat on the “downstairs” staff of her upper-crust employer.

Ignoring Fanny, she guided Myles in front of her as the three of them withdrew to the parlor, the formal room reserved for company, to the gawking silence of the ramblers. Kitty poured more tea and invited Fanny to proceed, which she did with an air of being in a deep conversation with a long-lost friend. Her story, which took over an hour to tell in her halting, Yorkshire style, erased all doubt of its credibility.

“Paddy came to live at Windgate House about five years ago. I’d been running the boarding house ever since me ’usband died in WWII, rest his soul. He was a career military man, you see, Captain Wilcox. A good man; a good provider. Paddy and I grew very fond of each other, and got engaged a year ago. He told me all about ’is life-about Rathdargan farm, about ’aving a sister wi’ six children, five daughters and a boy, who’d lost her ’usband in the war, just like me. He told me how he was helping her out, letting ’er stay ’ere, though ’e was legal owner of the farm. But ’e was allowing his sister-ye-to live ’ere out of kindness, not cuz ’e had to, mind you. And ’e always did say how ’e intended to come back to Ireland to run the farm when the time was right.

“Being ’is fiancée, I trusted ’im with my life’s savings, five hundred pounds, which ’e said ’e needed to fix up Kildargan, till ’e could send for me. I was planning on selling Windgate House as a going concern-I’m tired of all the ’eadaches that go with running a boarding ’ouse. You ’ave no idea wot goes on.”

Myles looked at Kitty as the story ended. The only sound in the parlor was the loud ticking of the grandfather clock by the heavy mantelpiece, over which stern portraits of Hogan ancestors across the generations hung. Outside, the border collies were still barking in their high-pitched chorus, and Parnell, the alpha, was pacing back and forth, still growling, disturbed by something unseen in the summer night.

From Fanny’s account, there was no doubt that “Paddy” was Jack, up to his old tricks. As always, they’d caught up to him, only this time with his wife and son as stricken witnesses and a gallery of ramblers to spread the gossip as fast as their legs could carry it.

Myles knew trouble when he saw it and this had all the makings. He looked at the intruder with unvarnished hostility. Fanny Wilcox had not been granted her fair share of nature’s bounty. In fact, she was one of the ugliest people Myles had ever laid eyes on; more detached observers would readily agree. Under five feet and somewhat obese, she walked with a bowlegged limp and had one glass eye that looked dead, almost amphibian. To cap it off, she spoke in a high-pitched Yorkshire dialect, “Gur blimey, a rum lot, eh wot?”-as enervating to the Celtic ear as fingernails on a blackboard.

To Myles’s amazement, Kitty finished her tea and, with elaborate politeness, then invited Mrs. Wilcox to stay: “Just for the night.” But Myles was having none of it. “Mammie, I don’t believe a word of what she’s saying. How do we know she’s telling the truth? And why can’t we wait till Da comes home? Besides, where is she going to sleep? We don’t have any room for visitors, unless she wants to sleep in the hay shed.” He said all this while glaring at Mrs. Wilcox and before Kitty had time to issue a reprimand. Embarrassed by his outburst, she now took control. “Myles Hogan, you will not talk to a guest like that. Apologize at once!” But Myles was in no mood to back down in front of this creature he sensed was up to no good. “I will not apologize. I haven’t done anything to apologize for. But I’m going to see what Da has to say before I listen to one more word from either a yez.” With that he bounded out of the parlor and made an elaborate display of stomping up the creaky wooden stairs.

Jack came home after all the ramblers had departed. It was quiet in the kitchen when he walked in to the unlovely presence of Fanny, sitting by the fire, teacup in hand. Caught red-handed, “Paddy” came clean and acknowledged that yes, he and Fanny had “grown fond of each other.” Myles, listening from the upstairs loft, couldn’t believe his ears. He’d been wrong and now his worst fears were being realized. This creature was going to stay here, which meant he would have to give up his room and sleep in the dark, dingy parlor on the lumpy old horsehair sofa.

There was one thing Myles didn’t understand: his father’s lack of taste. Surely, Myles thought, if his father was going to find another woman to “date,” he could have picked someone who was at least presentable. Myles just couldn’t imagine his handsome father being seen with Fanny Wilcox in public, or whatever else “being fond of” meant. When he mentioned this to his mother, she simply said, “Men will do strange things for drink, son. I hope you never know what that’s like.”

The comment made no sense to Myles, but, watching his mother’s mouth tighten, he let it go. But he vowed then and there that this ugly and evil creature had to go. He had no idea of how, but he knew he hated her and would stop at nothing to protect his family from this cackling menace.

Whatever was worked out by the adults, Mrs. Wilcox seemed in no hurry to leave. Whenever she went for one of her solitary walks around the farm, Myles could hear his parents fighting. First his mother’s voice raised in consternation; then his father’s usually soft tenor voice taking on a hoarse, frightening harshness. Sometimes, too depressed to work, Myles would idle in the hay shed, leafing through a comic book, pretending to be busy. Terrified of losing his da again, he began to conjure up schemes to rid Kildargan of Mrs. Wilcox.

This took little effort, for Fanny Wilcox-having always been childless-made no bones about her dislike for children, especially boys and Myles in particular. She kept on referring to him as “our knuck”-a phase he, fortunately, never understood-in her grating, screechy dialect. No one told her to knock off the obvious taunting. Later she tried charming him, but soon gave up in the face of his silent disdain. Myles went out of his way to be rude, refusing to even be in the same room when she was present.

After a month of brooding hatred, he decided to kill Mrs. Wilcox. It soon became an obsession. At first he felt guilty, pacing his room at night and imagining his confession to Father Cavanagh. After all, this would be murder, clearly a mortal sin. Fires of hell for eternity-no priest could even offer him absolution.

On the other hand, Mrs. Wilcox wasn’t even a Catholic. She was barely human-some kind of Protestant. She was going to burn in hell anyway. Surely it was no sin to rid his family of this parasite; it’d be like killing a rat or shooting a cuckoo to keep it from preying on an innocent robin’s nest. God would understand this and so would Father Cavanagh.

Seizing on this line of thought, Myles felt relieved, free to focus on concrete plans.

His first idea was to follow Fanny on one of the walks, push her into one of the sinkholes near the far field, where no one would ever find her. Myles had seen one of those quagmires swallow a two-thousand-pound cow; even eight strong farmers pulling on the end of a rope couldn’t save her. He discarded the notion only when he remembered how slowly the cow sank; it took at least eight hours. He could imagine Fanny Wilcox, stuck and screaming in her shrill Yorkshire gibberish that the whole valley would be summoned to witness her accusations.

He finally settled on a concrete plan. It was as simple as it was vicious. He would invite Mrs. Wilcox to go hunting with him in the lower meadow, there would be an accident, and she wouldn’t come back. He rehearsed his lines for the aftermath.

“I don’t know, Mammie. It all happened so fast. Mrs. Wilcox wanted to learn to shoot and I let her give it a go. The borders were barking, which startled her, then the gun backfired and then she was laying there, the dogs surrounding her barking like they’d gone mad… I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have let her use the gun. It’s all my fault.”

He imagined his mother and the neighbors trying to console him.

“Now, Myles, you shouldn’t blame yourself. Mrs. Wilcox was a grown woman, capable of making a decision. I’m sure you were just trying to be nice to her. But I know this must be very hard for you.”

It was now only a matter of how to get his quarry in the lower meadow on a different kind of hunting expedition. Never an athletic person, Mrs. Wilcox was not likely to jump at the chance to go hunting; but Myles was determined to convince her.

“Mrs. Wilcox, would you be interested in seeing where the pheasants lay their eggs in the far field?”

“Wot is this? A wildlife outin’ being offered by our knuck? Well, well, well… Wonders never cease. An’ I thought ye didn’t like me very much. We’ll see. Maybe when I’m feeling a little bettah. Not today, luv. Run along now.”

“All right, Mrs. Wilcox. I could even teach you how to shoot rabbits and foxes. Might come in handy sometime if you’re going to be around Kildargan.”

“Well, it might, at that. I nevah thought a’ that. Me, shootin’. Blimey! You ’ave some imagination for a young lad. I may have misjudged ye. I do believe I’ll take ye up on it, soon as I’m feelin’ a bit more chipper.”

Myles smiled and shivered at the ease of his conquest. Now the question: did he have the nerve to pull this off? He’d killed and seen killing before: Billy Flood butchering a hog; Packie Ryan shooting his old sheepdog, Ben; Peter Doyle putting down the bay colt with the broken leg. No one liked it; they just did what had to be done in the situation. This was no different; just something that had to be done. Another hard truth.

He carefully rehearsed each step until he had it down by heart. First have her handle the gun to get her fingerprints on it-all the detective comics made this point. Then teach her to aim it. Next, take the gun away in mock anger at her awkwardness, start to walk away, turn around, aim, and fire at point-blank range. Easy. Like shooting a jackdaw on a fencepost.

For several weeks, as the days grew shorter, Myles began to panic, badgering Mrs. Wilcox about her promise to go hunting. She kept putting him off; it never seemed to be quite the right time. Maybe she was on to him, evil mind reading evil mind. He seldom slept for more than a couple of hours, and when he did, his dreams turned to nightmares of blood and gore from which he’d awake screaming. Even daylight brought no relief, his mind a chamber of horrors: Father Cavanagh’s voice condemning him to hell; Mrs. Wilcox’s mangled ghost at the window; Myles hanging from a scaffold at Mountjoy Jail, body twisting in the wind.

He was cleaning out the cowshed when Jimmy Dunphy’s high-pitched whistle sent the borders into their frenzied greeting. They knew Jimmy but never ceased to greet him with full-throated barking, delighted at the chance to show off their guarding prowess. This time Jimmy was lucky: Kitty was there to greet him with her steady smile, which faded when she saw the little green telegram in his arthritic fingers.

He went into his ritual delivery, which infuriated Kitty and destroyed any chance Jimmy had of being invited in for a tea and scones. Myles came up from the shed at the sound of the borders, just in time to hear Jimmy plead, “Maybe I should wait in case you want to send word back.” This time Myles didn’t say anything; he just gave Jimmy a hard stare as Kitty abruptly turned her back on Jimmy and trotted down the stairs, tripping over the borders as they swarmed with the excitement of the moment.

Halfway to the kitchen, Kitty pulled up and said, “Oh, my God, the telegram is for Fanny. Do you know where she is?” Myles had seen her go for her regular walk about an hour earlier, and he instinctively grabbed the telegram and ran in the direction he’d seen Mrs. Wilcox go.

He met her at the hazel corral, walking slowly toward the farmhouse, taking in the warmth of the sun as it rose from behind the Sugarloaf. She looked small and vulnerable, and for a moment Myles felt sorry for her and guilty of his wicked design on her life. Seeing him sprinting toward her, she immediately erased his guilt with, “Well, well… if it isn’t our knuck, snooping around, are we?” Myles just stared at her in his practiced nonchalance, held up the telegram, and said, “Mammie said this is for you. The postman just delivered it.”

Fanny snatched the telegram from Myles’s outstretched hand and slit the little green envelope with one sharp flick of her talonlike fingernail. Myles watched her as she read the brief message. After several seconds, she looked past him with her glass eye and muttered, “Oh, dear. I must go back at once. There’s been a dreadful death at Windgate. Poor Peter Boyle, one of my boarders, has hanged hisself in the upstairs bathroom.” With that she turned and trotted toward the farmhouse in her bandy-legged gait, puffing and panting, with Myles walking behind her at a fast clip to keep up.

Mrs. Wilcox quickly related her story to Kitty. Jack was out in the fields, fixing fences, and Myles ran down to tell him the news. He said nothing, just came back to the house, briefly spoke with Fanny, then grabbed Myles’s bike and rode off to Enniskerry to fetch Ned Delaney for Fanny’s departure in the morning.

Next morning, as the sun’s first rays edged across the Sugarloaf range, Myles staggered downstairs to find Mrs. Wilcox packed, with Ned Delaney’s green Vauxhall idling at the road gate. She begged Myles for a hug, and without hesitation he clung to her and sobbed as though his heart were breaking.

“Wot’s a mattah? Don’t take on so. I didn’t even think ya liked me… Blimey! Our knuck has a ’art after all.”

“Bye, Mrs. Wilcox. Sorry we didn’t have a chance to go hunting. Maybe some other time-if you ever come back.”

“Aye, son. Maybe then. Between you ’n’ me, that may be a while. I doubt I’ll be back. But you can come stay wi’ me in Birmingham. I know a lot a young ladies that’d like the cut a yer jib, if ya know wot I mean. Take care, lad. Yer not such a bad knuck, after all…”

The Hogan family-all three of them-waved goodbye as Delaney’s taxi disappeared around the bend down the Wexford Road. They walked back to the house in silence, like a funeral procession, each in a private turmoil they dared not speak.

Something had died during Fanny’s stay; intuitively, they all knew that the innocent laughter and family joy they’d known just a few weeks ago was gone forever. The only question for Myles was how he would get through the next few days without letting his relief, grief, and anger spill out all over the kitchen floor. What was he going to say to his da? To Mammie? To his pals in school? To the snooping neighbors?

Predictably, Jack took the line of least resistance: as soon as the green taxi was out of sight, he promptly changed his clothes, pumped up the bike tires, and muttered something about going to Borris to talk to Jimmy Doran about a horse. From the look on Kitty’s face, Myles knew she didn’t believe a word of it. They had no reason to trust him or believe a word he said. Myles could see some combination of worry and alarm on his mother’s face. It was a new look, one that he had never seen before.

No longer able to stand the furtive look on his father’s face, Myles hastily dodged out to the hay shed to pursue his chores. From there he could overhear his parents’ voices, raised in anger. Kitty spoke first: “How do I know you’re going to Doran’s? You always make up some cock-’n’-bull story when all you’re doing is goin’ to the Joyce’s pub. Or are you just going back with Fanny to Windgate? Why don’t you just be man enough to tell me this time, not sneaking off, as usual?” Jack, his soft tenor now hoarse with anger: “I’ll do whatever I feckin’ well please, and no woman is going to tell me where I can come or go. I was goin’ to Jimmy Doran’s, but now I think I’ll go straight to Joyce’s. Why the hell not? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. It’s all the same to the high-and-mighty Kitty Cusack. You can go straight to hell, woman, for all I care.” Myles heard his mother mutter something unintelligible before they broke off with his da slamming the kitchen door behind him and storming into the farmyard with his hat and coat on.

As Jack angrily wheeled the bike toward the road gate, the borders suddenly became excited and barked menacingly at his back, the way they did at departing strangers. Irritated at the ruckus, Jack wheeled on the closest border collie, Rover, and kicked him viciously in the rib cage. The young dog whined and ran toward Myles for comfort, as Jack slammed the gate behind him with a few muttered curses at the dogs.

That night-the first without their odd guest-the ramblers arrived at dusk, as usual, their expectations high. The borders kicked up their usual racket but quickly settled down to enjoy the routine camaraderie. Mrs. Wilcox’s presence had not dampened the ramblers’ spirits or concentration one bit. It would take more than her awkward attempts at participation to do that. In fact, they’d been more than gracious to her, Myles noted with some resentment.

He’d hoped for a show of support; instead he’d become the target of edgy lectures on the virtues of being polite and “not letting his family down.” That’s a good one, he thought bitterly. I’m the one who’s disgracing the family by not cozying up to this bowlegged creature from Birmingham.

When Jack was not home as the ramblers ambled in, the disappointment and curiosity was palpable. From the forced humor and the knowing looks, it was clear what they were thinking: the worst, the obvious, why not? Had that not been borne out since Fanny’s arrival in August? Surely there was no reason to assume things were going to be suddenly hunky-dory. They could barely restrain the winks when Kitty told them that himself had only gone to Borris to see Jimmy Doran. They knew better. The more Kitty reassured them, the more pity Myles could detect in their ruddy faces.

They knew all along the arrangement couldn’t last, and while they felt sorry for Kitty and Myles, they felt even sorrier for themselves. Myles could see it in their sad faces, looking at the door as people filed in, staring past each familiar face to see if Jack might be among them. Then the shattered look when it was “only” Packie Breen, Jim Gallagher, Danny Doyle-the regulars.

By eleven o’clock the neighbors had disbanded and Jack had not come home. With mumbled words of comfort-“Sure, he probably just got held up at Dalton’s”-each little group wandered off into the inky night.

About 2 a.m. the borders started up, waking Myles from a deep sleep. He peeked out the window and could see them in the moonlight, swarming around the road gate. It seemed as if someone was trying to come in the gate, someone they didn’t know. Who could be coming at this time of night? This went on for some time, about a half-hour, then they fell back, growling and seemingly cowed. Then all fell silent and Myles fell back to a fitful sleep.

Around 3 a.m. Myles came suddenly awake with an urgent hand on his shoulder. His mother was shaking him, a strange tension in her voice: “Myles, wake up! Wake up! Will you please come into the other bedroom with me? Your father’s been drinking and I’m afraid.” Like he’d been stuck with a hot poker, Myles sprang out of bed. His fearless mother, afraid? He’d never known her to be afraid of anything or anybody in his whole life. What could she be afraid of? What was his da going to do to her?

As he came in the inner bedroom, Myles could hear the borders, back in their high-pitched barking, some joining Parnell in his deep-chested growl. Why were they growling at Da? Would they remember that he’d kicked Rover? Were dogs capable of revenge for one of the pack?

That’s when all hell broke loose. As Myles shuffled toward the damp outside bedroom, he heard his father crashing through the front gate. He could hear the distinctive voice over the din of the borders, shouting in a hoarse, drunken diatribe. Myles fought back his fear, thought he might be having a nightmare, an illusion soon erased by the menacing voice descending on the house. Abruptly the dogs went silent, a silence that was almost deafening in contrast to the howling chorus of a moment ago.

Then came the hoarse, bullying voice: “Get up, Kitty! Get up and make me my tay! Goddamn you, woman. You bitch… you whore. Why don’t you have the door open for me when I come home? I’ll teach you to show some respect when I get my hands on you. How dare you humiliate me in front of Fanny Wilcox-a woman who never done you no harm. I’m gonna show the whole cockeyed world who’s gaffer around here for once and for all…”

Kitty started to cry, first slowly, in a stifled sobbing, then in an anguished, high-pitched confession, in terror of what was about to unfold. The wailing, desolate sound was unnerving for Myles to hear, all by itself.

“Oh, a Cushla, this is a side of your father I’d prayed to the Blessed Virgin you’d never see. He can be so cruel when he has drink taken. I’m not worried so much for myself, but if he does anything to hurt you, I don’t know what I’ll do… I just don’t trust myself to…”

As the sentence trailed off in a wail, an ear-splitting thud from downstairs told Myles that Jack had just kicked down the kitchen door, which was never locked. The splintering timber could be heard for miles. Cowering under the blanket, shivering in fear, Kitty and Myles waited for their fate to unfold. Cursing at Kitty, yelling for her to “come down, bitch… I’ll teach you to…” Myles could hear his father staggering toward the dark stairwell.

Fighting back panic, gasping for breath, Myles’s own cowardice struck him, like a sharp kick to the pit of his stomach. What kind of man would be hiding like this? What kind of man would be putting up with this abuse? Had his mammie not just asked him for help? Well, she was going to get it.

A towering rage rose up through Myles’s body at his mother’s tormentor. No longer was this beastly intruder his charming, fun-loving da; this was just a nasty, foul-mouthed animal invading their home. All fear and compassion gone, Myles made a decision then and there: this brute was not going to make it up these creaky stairs even if he, Myles Hogan, had to die stopping him.

In one smooth motion, Myles sprang out of bed, grabbed the old single-gauge shotgun from its rack on the wall, and yelled, “She’s not comin’ down. If ya want the tay, make it yerself.” The words flew from his mouth, like he was channeling a grown man, someone older and braver. He cracked the shotgun, checked the live cartridge-just as he’d seen hunters do before sending out the bird dogs-and stepped toward the stairwell, ready for battle.

Hearing his son’s trembling voice for the first time, Jack’s whiskey-fueled anger exploded anew. “Ah, the little bastard is going to challenge his da, is he? Well, I’m going to put some manners on you while I’m at it. You’ve been asking for a good whippin’, and now you’re goin’ to get it.”

With that, he lunged for the stairs.

Myles pulled the heavy shotgun up to his shoulder, hands shaking as he fumbled for the trigger. He aimed the long barrel at the empty stairwell, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Come on! Ya bastard! I swear ta God, I’ll blow yer fecken’ head off if ya take one more step.”

From behind him, Myles heard his mother’s voice, calm and steady now-a complete contrast to the wailing victim of a few moments ago. “Give me the shotgun, Myles, right now, and step back from the stairs.” Myles was used to obeying his mother when she adopted that tone; despite his resolve, he reflexively handed over the gun. She motioned him to back up behind her with a quick snap of her head.

A wintry blast shook the rafters, chilling the dimly lit bedroom. Myles recognized that voice, conjuring frightful images: Miss Breen’s bloody nose; the cowering Hannigan twins; the dead Tanner. In a flash, Myles’s rage turned to fear-fear for his da and the danger he was in. His mind raced. What should he do-beg her to stop? Jump in front of the gun? Start screaming to distract her?

In the end he just stood there, frozen at the terrible spectacle before him as Jack kept stumbling closer to the top step. Too drunk to navigate the steep steps, he kept falling down, then dragging himself back up to continue the ascent. He was only one step from the top when he saw Kitty and the shotgun’s shadow in the flickering candlelight. Up until that moment, he’d kept up the drunken rant. Seeing the gun, he hesitated briefly, then charged ahead with renewed ferocity.

“Well, well, well… if it isn’t the fucken warrior queen herself. Kitty Commandant Cusack, the pride of Cumann na mBan. The vicious bitch who never quite got what she had coming… I’ve punched yer silly eyes shut before and will again, just for pointing that fucken gun at me. Who do you think yer dealin’ with here? The Tans? Do you take me for one of them eejits you can scare the shite out of with yer fierce fucken stare and general’s bearing? Fuck you! I’m gonna teach you who’s gaffer around here…”

Kitty’s voice cut off the diatribe in that low, calm voice Myles had learned to dread: “No, Jack, that’s over. You’re never goin’ to lay a hand on me again. Not tonight; not tomorrow; not ever!” She said this without emotion, the shotgun steady as a rock, and without taking her eyes off her husband, who stood swaying in the stairwell, still wearing his faded overcoat and rain-soaked felt hat.

For a moment Jack hesitated, cocking his head to one side, as if considering her words. Undaunted, he lurched over the final step, yelling, “Why, you miserable bitch, I’m gonna take that fucken shotgun ’n’ shove it-”

That’s when Myles heard the thud of the hammer and saw his father’s white shirt explode in crimson across his chest, his body jerking backward into the dark stairwell. Everything went into slow motion. He had lots of time to observe the details of Jack’s surprised expression, the wordless calm of his mother’s profile, and the seemingly endless racket of the creaky staircase as it absorbed the crash of the tumbling body.

The borders started up again. This time the sound had gone from the high-pitched bark to keening-all of them in unison, as if on some invisible signal. They were answered across the valley by other borders, keening back, their eerie chorus reverberating around the Sugarloaf range.

Myles stared in horror as Kitty’s right hand slowly and steadily set the shotgun against the bedroom wall. She betrayed not the slightest tremor as she picked up the flickering candle and followed her husband’s tumbling corpse down into the kitchen. The turf fire was still smoldering in the grate and a moaning wind swept down from the Sugarloaf, rattling the ancient doors and windowpanes. The borders continued to keen as Myles absorbed the horror of the scene on the kitchen floor, the same concrete floor where it all began a thousand years ago, on that first magical evening in May.

An hour later, a somber, rain-soaked dawn was breaking over Enniskerry as Myles pedaled his Raleigh across the Dargal bridge, just a mile from the parish priest’s house. Still in a daze, head down against the driving mist, he relived the scene in the kitchen: his father’s blood-soaked corpse stretched by the fireplace; his mother calmly blowing the bellows, as if nothing had changed.

“Mammie, what are we going to do?”

“Go straight to Enniskerry and fetch Father Cavanagh!”

“Right now, in the dark?”

“Right now. It’ll be light by the time you get there.”

“What should I tell him?”

Kitty slows the bellows, then stops, glancing around the kitchen. The borders have gone silent, creeping into the kitchen, subdued, licking Myles’s fingers and lying down in a circle around Kitty, by the bellows. The ticking of the grandfather clock amplifies the heavy silence; hazel eyes meet blue, holding them in a longed-for caress through the miasma of the smoking turf; then comes the calm, dispassionate response:

“The truth. Tell him the hard truth, like the good man you are.”