Redemption - Leon Uris [18]
Liam and Mildred had consented to the most hideous of all crimes and sins. The Squire now had to bear the added guilt of his son’s wretched behavior.
Thank God he had his own shining behavior with Mildred to show himself as the loftiest of men while his son was a scum. Liam cozily sloughed off the pertinent fact that he loved Mildred, and Rory and Junie did not really care for each other.
In another year, June MacPherson became pregnant again, this time with a lesser character than Rory, a lunker who marched off peacefully to the altar.
“Aye,” Liam sighed, “if I couldn’t get through to Rory in a matter of such moral magnitude, how can I get through to him at all?”
That’s the bitter twist, he thought. “If we only had one golden conversation, one in which he would understand everything I told him and probably I had to hear a few things myself.
“But nae, the silence goes into the churchyard and the truth, never heard, is shoveled over by the grave digger. And another generation takes up a life of unspoken anger.”
Suppose, Liam thought, everyone in a family were priests three days a week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday half the family, the priests, would be sitting in the confessional box and the other half of the family had to confess to them. Then on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday the confessors would become the priests and the priests would be hearing the confessions from them. On Sunday, they’d all go to Mass together.
“I’ll wager there are Irish family debating societies in heaven, hell, and purgatory, and the misunderstandings could be argued century after century.”
Or was it that there were always too many children and not enough land in Ireland? That boys lived in fear of forced marriages or married as toothless old bachelors or emigrated? Was it the absence of gracious wealth, or was it the damnable British stranger among them? Was it the Holy Church who force-fed a fear of sin like it was mother’s milk?
“All of the bloody things that made the Irish heap wreckage on one another had brought grief upon grief, departed sons and daughters, shut out shows of compassion and affections from us…. Never touching…made us great fighters in other men’s armies.”
Could any of this have been averted, Liam wondered, with that one golden conversation?
He contemplated where Rory might be. Here was a lad twenty years old bedding down half the grass widows in Christchurch. One of these days some soldier was going to come home on leave unexpected and blow his head off. Jaysus, Liam thought, that boy draws women to him like nails to a magnet.
He draws them like Conor used to. Every other bird in Ballyutogue had broken a wing from flying too hard at Conor. Mr. Lambe’s forge, where his brother worked since his apprenticeship, always had girls hanging around, Protestant and Catholic alike…“just happening by.”
Rory was not much different. He had cornered all the good looks of the Larkin family and left crumbs for the rest of us.
Down the trail he’d go, asleep on RumRunner, who knew the route to Wally’s better than most drovers.
Jaysus, that boy could hold a tank of booze, like his grandfather Tomas. Ah, he could count on Wally to keep the peace, then spill Rory into a bunk when his tank overflowed. Good old Wally. He and Mildred owed Wally for taking them in in the beginning and helping them get started. Wally was the only one who Rory had really taken to and could keep the boy from going on a tear.
Liam switched images as his hand poked through his kit more in hope that some faerie may have slipped in another bottle of poteen.
His thoughts ran to the homestead, now fourteen rooms large with a big and little lorry and a Model T like the one he bought for Father Gionelli. The gem of the Ballyutogue Station was a family chapel, with its awesome silver candlesticks.
Maybe the worst hurt of all was