"Soot"
Book One1875 - 1880Chapter OneShe Ought to be Married Oh, father dear I ofttimes hear you speak of Erin's IsleHer lofty scenes, her valley green, her mountain rude and wildThey say it is a princely place wherein the king might dwellSo why did you abandon it the reason to me tellOh son I loved my native land with energy and prideUntil a blight came on the crops the sheep and cattle diedThe rent and taxes were to pay I could not them redeemAnd that's the cruel reason why I left old Skibereen.Irish Ballad, circa1848, Author unknown November 18, 1875Thursday, a rainy mending day, the kitchen table is piled with overalls, socks, underwear. I wash clothes for the bosses' wives on Monday. Iron on Tuesday, bake on Wednesday like my Mam taught me. Today I mend what needs mending. This is my job now, to earn money, whilst my father works in the Pottsville Coal Company mine all day. Da I call him, he's Danny to his butties, Mac or McAllister to the bosses.'Tis just the two of us now that my Mam is dead. I grieve for her with every push and pull of the needle and thread but I can't think about her. I can't breathe when I do. Sympathy pains says Mam Mary. Pains for my mother dead of the consumption. Too poor to go to hospital. She was killed. Murdered, not by a gun, not by any Molly Maguire assassin, but, like Da says, by those what own this mine and keep us beggars. Frank Gowen is his name, the owner, and I hate him.My handkerchief is in my pocket but it is my doll that reminds me not to cry. Dolly, Mam made her for me out of rags, sits on the table with the mending. Black stitches sewn into sunshine yellow for her eyes, a patchwork of colors make her body so she doesn't need a dress. She looks at home on the pile of mending.“You have your grandmother's special way of knowing, Bridie,” Mam told me when she was sick, words coughed out, stuck between gasps for breath. Dolly will remind you of that. She'll help you to be strong, to use your courage. Every time you're afraid, hold on to Dolly and remember how much I love you, Bridie girl.”I save my mending money, like Mam saved hers, tucked it away for me, she did. With every jab of the needle into my finger I remind myself that I, Bridie McAllister, nine years old, will leave this mine patch town and take my Da with me. That's what Mam wanted for me. Da too. He says I could be a teacher like he was back in Ireland. That's why he makes me study every day. I'm good at sums but I hate spelling.A big city, that's what I dream about, Dolly. A place where soot doesn't stain everything. Buildings so tall Mam said I'd get dizzy looking up at them. Pipe dreams, Da says. Only a miracle would get ye that dream, he says. A real bed, too, under a roof that doesn't leak, in a room that is warm in winter. Outside there are streets that are swept every day. Streets I stroll alone with new shoes on my feet and not get muddy. And a bonnet on my head. I'd laugh and feel free and talk proper English. I'll take you with me, Dolly. We'll have coins to buy the bread and goods Mam said are stuffed into carts pulled by horses clip clopping on cobble stones just like in the magazines Mam loved to read. Hear that Dolly? Clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves . . .. I jump up to see what's making the sound.The mules snort as they stop in front of my house, the wagon wheels crunching on the dirt road. I race out of the house when I hear my Da's agonizing cries. Men shout about how to lift his body.A wild gust of wind flings my hair into my face as an outburst of wet rains down chilling me right to my gut. The rain has made dirty streaks that run along Da's gray face and around his bluish white lips. His head is flopped back like a drenched rag. I think he's dead. That I heard the last thing I will ever hear from him, a scream. I can't breathe. My chest is closed up and my feet won't move. I have lost him. I sink into a puddle.“Aargh,” my Da yells again, panting.He's still alive. I would be glad to hear his voice again but for the agony in it. I get to my feet and go to him.“Sweet Jaeesus.” He sucks his breath in. “Don't let'em . . . anyone cut me leg off, Bridie,” he begs. “Sweet Jaeesus . . ..”Da's butty, Kelley, shoots me a look and shakes his head. “Dan, Dan. Here drink this down.” Kelley puts a bottle of whisky to Da's lips. Da drinks, chokes, drinks more.Four men hoist him from the wagon, Murphy and Gallagher on one side, Kelley and Quinn on the other, the rain pounding all of us. They are black with wet, muddy coal dust. The blood-soaked shirts wrapped around my Da's leg splat to the road. His leg is chewed up, great chunks of his upper leg torn off. The lower part flattened, the flesh ground to pulp, looking more like a dead animal attacked by wild dogs than a leg. His foot, gone entirely. White bone sticks through like when Maeve broke her arm when she fell out of the tree. She died of infection.Murphy looks like he's holding back tears. Gallagher looks at me then looks away and then at John. They say nothing as they side-step toward the door.“Oh my God,” I yell. I shut my mouth and clap my hands over it. “Oh God, he can't die.” I yell through my hands.Kelley tells me Da's leg got crushed by a roof fall while removing pillars in the mine. I know that's a job more dangerous than working with explosives. When the pillars come down, the roof's sure to follow, Da told me.The men get him on the table in the kitchen, on top of the clothes. Dolly! Da!You'll get blood on all those clean clothes that don't belong to me, I think. My Dolly! My Da's gonna die. I don't want him to die. I don't give a damn about the clothes, the damn clothes. Still, I pull them out of the way. Dolly's not there.“The only reason he didn't bleed to death, Bridie, was his leg was crushed flat. 'Tis gonna have to come off. Sean has gone to fetch the company doctor,” says Kelley.People rush all around me. Everything whirling. Kids crying. Voices saying something, somewhere. All I see is Da. I don't feel anything or see anything else but Da.“No! No doctor,” screams Da. “He'll cut me leg off without giving a second t'ought.”Then, Da is like he's sleeping, but he's not. Mary O'Tool's wrapping Da's leg with the clean clothes, me helping her wrap real tight, drenching everything in vinegar. My father waking, screaming with the pain of it, going out again. I fetch more vinegar and Mam's medicine bag even though I see Miss Mary brought her own.The men feed Da whiskey and hold him down when he wakes. Other women come, everyone's talking.“Get more water.”“Poor girl, she's all alone now. Her Ma died a few weeks ago.”“He knew that roof weren't safe.”“More whiskey.”“Bridie?”I don't know who's saying my name.“He reported that roof, Mac did. Said timbers won't hold it.”“Get the children out of here.”“Don't use that vinegar.”“Bridie, it's me, Uncle James. Come here child.”“She's eleven, oughta be married.”“Stop giving him so much whiskey.”“She's not eleven yet, is she?”“Uncle James?” I finally recognize him, James Carroll. He was here just a few weeks ago, after Mam died. “Uncle James, help my Da. He doesn't want his leg cut off.”“Here's the doctor!”Dr. Rowbotham is mean-looking, like we took him away from something important. He opens his bag, hardly looking at Da, puts his doctoring tools on the chair alongside the table — a chair Da made himself. I remember Da doing that, making the chair, because the doctor has saws and other things that look like my Da's tools for cutting and working with wood.“He doesn't want his leg cut off,” I cry, looking at them saws and thinking how bad it will hurt my Da.He looks at me with great scorn, the doctor. “If we don't take the leg off, he'll die. Is that what you want?”Uncle James pulls me close.“Isn't there anything you can do to save it?” he asks.I have to tell them. It's my job to tell them what Da said. Ma's not here to do it. “You're just taking it off 'cause you don't want to be bothered with anything else. He needs his leg to work. He doesn't want to be a man with one leg.” I tell the doctor this even though I know by the looks of the leg there is nothing else to be done. But, I have to tell him what my Da said. I have to. He told me not to let them take his leg.The doctor isn't listening. He arranges the tools. I hear one of the women from the patch talking to me in a soft voice telling me to leave my Da to the doctor. Go into the other room.“Take him to the new miners' hospital. Please, please take him there,” I scream. “They can save his leg.” I knock the saws off the chair, tug on the doctor trying to get him away from my Da. “Don't touch him,” I yell, hanging onto the table and Da's one good foot.“Back, back,” he says, as if he was talking to a mad dog. “They don't save legs there. No sense bringing him to the hospital, he'd be dead before he got there.” He takes his jacket off, rolls up his sleeves.Uncle James says, “C'mere, Bridie. Let the doctor do his work.” Hands on my shoulders force me away. My Da opens his eyes, for an instant, and looks at me. I can tell he doesn't see me. They roll up in the back of his head, making his eyes look all white.I look at Uncle James. He's betrayed me, betrayed Da.Miss Mary startles me when she touches my face. I suck in my breath. “Thanks be to God you're here. Da'll be all right with you here.” She gives me that look too. It'll be all right, Lass, her eyes say. I love Miss Mary, like I love my Mam.Mary O'Tool, my Mam Mary, she's an old woman, a healer like my Mam was, she begins helping the doctor.They put a cloth over Da's face and Miss Mary shakes some terrible smelling medicine on it. The men hold my Da down, him screaming.“This will put him to sleep. Now, go on with ye, Bridie love.” says Miss Mary. The other woman tries to pull me out of the room.I pray to my dead mother to help me remember what to do. “More vinegar on those bandages, Miss Mary,” I cry. “Be sure to give him willow bark for fever,” I scream. I'm pulled away, away from my Da and I know I will never see him again. “Bitter yellow root for infection, please, please. That will save his leg. Mugwort too, and lovage.”Dolly! I see her on the floor, the doctor's foot on her arm. Dolly has a new dress. Mam Mary rescued her. She helped me wash Dolly but we couldn't get her clean. But I still love her. I sewed her arm back on and made her an apron. She reminds me that my Mam thought I was special. She is all I have now.I tuck her in my apron pocket because Uncle James is outside getting the mules ready. He is taking me to Wiggans Patch to live with some relatives. I've been there once for a baptism, another time for a wedding. I don't remember any of the aunts and uncles, or cousins either, but I don't care. I hardly know Uncle James even though he comes here to Pottstown lots of times to the pub. He has meetings with the owner, Dan McMonagle. Uncle James owns a saloon in Tamaqua, Carroll's Saloon, so they talk business, Da said. What kind of business, I used to wonder. When he and Da talked sometimes, I'd hear hushed voices complain about wages, bad air in the mines and say words like revenge and bashing faces. But I don't care anymore. I get put on the wagon and I feel like I'm no more than another sack to be sent to Wiggans Patch.I don't say anything to him, Uncle James. He says something to me. I loved your Da, too, he tells me. That makes me like him. He's taller than Da, but talks like him, and makes the same kind of smile as Da does when he looks at me. We have the same color hair, Uncle James, Da and me, not really red, not really brown. Mine's all tangled. Mam Mary was after me to brush it, but I don't feel like it.Mam Mary gives me a tight hug. “You'll be alright, my girl. You will. Both your Ma's and Da's people are there.” I can't imagine ever being all right. She nods to Uncle James to start. I didn't notice he climbed up onto the seat beside me.“Was it Frank Gowen's mine?” I ask. “The one Da was taking down the pillars in?”“'Twas. Why do you ask, child?”“He killed my Da, then and my Mam. I'll kill him if I ever see him.”from Don T Breathe - Google News http://ift.tt/2faSdRs
EmoticonEmoticon