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She had to pass in front of the tabernacle to go out the side door. Even if she could have genuflected, she wouldn't, she thought. Not anymore. The path brought her into the graveyard. She retraced childhood steps from the memory of a cold November morning. There were a few weeds sprouting from the base of the tilted gravestone, too small to be plucked. The words on its surface were in need of repointing. "Eternal rest grant unto him, oh Lord." To the left of Anthony Graham's grave were those of Elizabeth Corcoran, nee Graham and her husband Frank. To the right, was the grave of Arthur Corcoran, born September 5, 1888, died June 26, 1914. "Let's head home now," Aunt Bridget touched her shoulder. "Lilith is expecting us." They left town by the same road Nana must have traveled with Uncle Frank. Only now it was paved, bright yellow lines separating the lanes. But the towering maples and Jack pines, the smooth rock outcroppings must have been the same, she thought. "How does it feel?" Bridget asked. "Strange, like I'm floating on air." she replied, knowing that her Aunt was asking about having the cast removed, not the feeling of deja vu that was welling over her. "You'll have to be patient with yourself. Don't go too fast or you'll regret it," she continued. Cathleen smiled inwardly at her advice, then looked out at the green canopy cut rhythmically by flashes of sunshine as the car rolled down the road. "C'mon Douglas, jump in. Save your feet for tomorrow." Aunt Bridget yelled out the window as she screeched to a halt on the hill by the far pasture. He was on his way back to the house from a day of fence mending, what was left of a bale of barbed wire hung from the pliers in his tool belt. He tossed the belt and muddy boots into the back and then squeezed in beside Cathleen in the front. His face glowed when he looked at her. He grinned broadly in some secret joke. Six weeks in The Hollow had softened the lines, broadened his shoulders, lengthened his jaunty gait, she thought. A sense of humour, an easy laugh had emerged from the shadows. "Nice legs, Kate." "Get lost." She bunted him playfully in the ribs. Flexion returned quickly under Aunt Bridget's skilled and soothing hands. A cane soon replaced the crutches. It too was abandoned in short order. Now she could go down to the henhouse with Lilith to collect eggs, and to the barn with Bridget and Douglas to help with milking and feeding. Spring had taken root, first in the garden, then along the slick grassy pathway between house and barn and finally in the trees. The white sorrow of winter had melted into the ground to come back as life renewed. Every night when chores were done, when the sun bent close to the horizon, Cathleen returned to the black notebook and to the puzzles her aunts so willingly pieced together for her. Lilith took up her half-worked miracles and bent toward her voice. Douglas nestled into her shoulder and closed his eyes, and Bridget would pretend to read the paper. "Why was Cyril Brennan so attracted to Nana?" Cathleen asked them as she took up the story of the Irish Priest. "I think he was looking for something." Auntie Lilith offered. "She touched a place deep within his soul. He needed her to remind him that it was okay to have a wild spirit and be a priest, too. And when the time came, he needed her to call down God's forgiveness on him." Bridget added wistfully. "He was a grand man, Kate, with a heart as big as the world." *** The Past: 1905 At first, I saw him as one of them, an extension of Uncle Frank's leather belt. Only he was more dangerous. His buckle could pass through flesh and make contact with spirit. Slowly, I came to know otherwise, that my ancestors had sent Cyril Brennan to St Stephen's Church so that I could learn the lesson of the hoop, the lesson of the circle that bound all men to each other. He taught me with an impish and ancient smile and a glass of lemonade. "Did you ever hear tell of the Celts?" He asked one Sunday as we sat on his porch after Mass. We were well into the religious instruction he had promised Uncle Frank on condition that he never laid a hand on me again. "Who were they?" I asked, more interested in the fragrance of lilac wafting past me than another one of his morals. "They inhabited what is now England, Scotland and Ireland long before Christ," he continued. "Over the centuries, they were pushed west and north by invaders from the European mainland, from Rome and the like. The invaders wanted their land, wanted to destroy their identity and culture, replace it with Christianity. Does it sound familiar to you, Annie?" I nodded eagerly, wanting him to tell me more. "Whereas you see the world born on the back of a turtle, the Celts saw their world existin' in a hazelnut at the lip of the Well of Saegis from where all knowledge came." He took paper and pen and drew a circle. Inside the circle he drew a cross with its ends reaching to its perimeter. "This is the holy wheel, most sacred of the Celtic glyphs. In Ireland, you can't walk 'ere five mile without smackin' into an ancient upright bearin' this mark." he chuckled. "It is the sign of the sacred hoop." I too drew the symbol, as the people had always drawn it on their tipis, on their medicine shields and on the birch bark story scrolls passed down from generation to generation. "Aye, that's it. To the Celts it symbolized the cycle of life, the four directions, the four seasons, just as your hoop does for you, Annie." he twinkled. "Man stood at the centre of the circle, in the Middleworld. He looked up to the birds and to the blue sky and clouds as the Upperworld, and down to the earth and the beasts and all that grew as the Underworld. The earth was sacred, the reason why he existed." I was dumbfounded. It made him laugh as he refilled my glass. "Long before Christ, the Celts named their seasons in ways not unlike your own. Im'olk, the season of childbirth and milk-flowin' started on February one, Bel'ta-na, the season of the greater sun, an ghrian mor in Celtic, May one, Loo'nas'a, harvest time, chief-choosin' time, time of gettin' together for business and fun started August first, and finally Sa'wen, dead time, Celtic New Year, time for ghost dancin' started November first." He leaned forward and clasped his hands as if in prayer. "And though the invaders tried for centuries to wipe every vestige of this ancient culture from the face of the earth, they did not succeed. The Celts live on, in their music, in art and literature, even in their religious beliefs and practices." "How did they fight them, Father? How did they manage to keep their spirits alive?" He tapped his chest with his fingers and smiled. "In the end, the only thing that counts is what's held inside. The Celts remembered, and they whispered their memories, their language to their children who in turn, whispered it to their children. So it is that I can tell you about their world today. You can't kill an idea, Annie. Given time, it comes back to claim its rightful place." As Father Brennan spoke, hope soaked me like a sunshower crossing over the rounded mountain behind The Hollow. My body felt light, open to the whispering of possibilities. From that day, I knew what it was that my people were asking of me, why it was that I had been torn away from them. From that day, I knew it would be my destiny to keep the idea alive. *** The Present: "I saw them again, I tell you." A scratchy voice, half-hysterical pierced through Cathleen's quiet reading. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |