The Harrow: Early on Bride's Morn

Liam uncurled in the passenger seat of the stranger's truck. He hadn't been asleep-he hadn't slept the whole way up from Fall River— but he stretched and yawned as if he'd just awoken. Anything to buy a last few moments of the pickup's warmth. Anything to avoid walking up that sidewalk and knocking on that door.

"Yeah," Liam said. "This is it." He pulled his knapsack up from behind the seat, opened it, and pulled out a pint of Jameson's.

"Thanks for the ride, mister. I don't have any money, but you can have this if you want it. I brought it for someone else . . . but he won't need it."

The driver eyed the bottle for a moment, looked out at the snowy road ahead and then, licking his lips, took the whisky from Liam and slipped it into his jacket pocket. "Thanks, bud. That'll hit the spot."

A moment later, Liam was alone on the street, snow falling silently around him, the pickup's red taillights diminishing in brightness till they turned and disappeared altogether. He shifted the knapsack on his shoulder and shivered as a stray gust of wind spun eddies of snow off the only bare tree on the street. He'd come this far, and it was cold and almost midnight. Did he really have a choice?

Led by the vaporous plume of his breath, Liam stepped up to the door and knocked loudly.

He hadn't known what to expect since the urge descended on him, compelling him to come home to Boston for the first time in, what, seventeen years? Would he find an empty house, the old ones dead or moved away? Or would he find everything preserved like a lurid newspaper photo, stark and immutable as it had been when it drove him away?

Liam hadn't known what to expect, but he felt the breath catch in his throat at the sight of the red-eyed wreck of a man who finally opened the door.

"And if it was Him, would you leave Him standing out in the cold to freeze his holy ass off?"

Without smiling, the old man turned and walked away from the door leaving it open until Liam stepped inside and closed the cold night out. Liam watched the old man shuffle across the floor, his robe a tattered rag, frayed and hanging off a pair of shoulders that looked bent and frail as a clothes hanger. His father stopped beside an end table where a half-empty bottle of Jameson's sat beside a glass heavily smudged with fingerprints. Picking up both, Liam's father poured a mouthful of whisky into the glass and tossed it back, moaning as he swallowed.

What he'd told the driver had been right, Liam thought. This old man didn't need any more whisky. He'd apparently had enough for a lifetime.

The old man turned into the flickering light of the television where John Wayne commanded the Green Berets. Liam could see every bone in the old man's skull, every vein stretched like canals under his papery skin.

"'Where's Mam?'" his father repeated. "Jesus, you walk in this house at midnight after all these years and all you can say is 'Where's Mam'? Have a drink."

Liam felt his jaw tighten as the old man held out the bottle toward him. It would be a colder day than this that he'd share a drink of whisky with the likes of Michael Shannon.

"For Christ's sake," his father snarled, pouring himself another mouthful. He drank it down and tossed his head toward the stairway. "She's up there."

Liam couldn't read the old man's tone, but something about the look that passed over his father's eyes told him that something wasn't right. He threw his knapsack down onto a dusty antimacassar and climbed the stairs.

"Early on Bride's morn
The serpent's out of the hole
With milk and straw adorned
Though the air is gray and cold."

When he recognized it as singing, Liam had a sudden memory of all the songs his mother had sung to him when he was a child. Celtic songs about the passage of the seasons. Milk standing white in the pale. His heart swelled a moment then turned leaden as he entered the bedroom and saw her lying on the bed.

If his father had seemed haggard, his mother looked absolutely skeletal. She lay naked and shivering atop the sheets with nothing but the thinnest shawl draped over her shoulders, her breasts withered, the bones of her hips and legs angular and protruding from beneath her. Liam revolted at the sight of her blackened gums that showed as she sang:

"Light the crosses made of straw
With Brighid's fire let 'em burn
Tongues of flames burnin' tall
Give the wheel another turn."

"Ah, God, Mam!" Liam cried. He fought down his gorge as he ran to the bed, gathered up the blankets on both sides of her and wrapped her up like a newborn infant. When he lifted her off the bed, she felt like a bundle of sticks inside a bag. Carefully, he carried her down the stairs into the warmth of the lower rooms, and laid her down on the sofa where wisps of dust swirled into the air around her.

Liam's hands balled into fists at his side. "You son of a bitch. How long has she been like this?"

The old man turned his filmy eyes onto Liam. "I'm the son of a bitch? I stayed. Who left her here all these years without even a call? You, your mother's only son. You lace-curtain bastard. Too good to stay with the shanty likes of us. But now you come back. And have you asked yourself why?"

Liam felt it rising like mercury in a thermometer. The rage, the old blind anger that had driven him out of this house in the first place. Why had he come back? He took a step toward the old man, but his mother's voice from the sofa held him in place.

"A corn doll for the maiden
And a crocus for the crone
Soon the ewes will be a-laden
And the milkin' to be done."

The old woman's hand slipped out of the blankets and dangled limply at her side and her breathing took on the steady cadence of sleep. Liam knelt beside her and placed her hand back inside the covers, noting its chill skin, its twig-like bones.

"We've got to get her to a hospital," Liam said, his anger subsiding as he listened to the steady rhythm of his mother's breathing. "She needs to see a doctor."

When the old man didn't answer, Liam turned to find his father sound asleep in front of the TV as well. With a strange sense of deja vu, Liam walked over to the old man and took the glass from his hand. He turned off the TV and in the sudden darkness, surrounded by the sounds of his parents' breathing in their sleep, Liam's own body felt increasingly heavy, the long hitchhiking journey up from Baltimore finally taking its toll. He felt his way blindly through the room till he found the chair where he had tossed his knapsack. Moving the bag out of the way, he sank into the chair and soon fell asleep himself.

The smells of morning—coffee brewing, the rich smell of frying bacon—awakened Liam with a peculiar word spinning around inside his head: home. When he moved for the first time, a half-dozen stiffened joints reminded him he had slept all night in an understuffed chair whose frame poked at him with its angles and corners. Another pain deeper than the rest reminded him that he'd forgotten the last real meal he'd eaten. So he stretched and yawned and followed the breakfast smells out into the kitchen.

He found his father sitting alone at the table, cupping a mug of coffee in his hands. On the table in front of him sat an open newspaper and a plate smeared with bacon grease and the telltale yellow swirls of an egg yolk. Liam noticed the skillet already soaking in a sink half full of greasy water.

"Morning," Liam said. His stomach rumbled as he gestured toward the plate. "Any left?"

Liam's empty stomach filled with heat as the old man turned his gaze back toward the newspaper spread out in front of him.

What was it he'd thought before—home? If there was a question this was the place called home, the old man's face removed any doubt. Not as cadaverous as he had appeared the night before when Liam had arrived, his father nonetheless wore his sins as another man might wear clothes. Eyes and nose road-mapped with veins, a face full of crags and shadows. Michael Shannon had carried his fate with him in a bottle since he'd been not much more than a boy—not much older than the boy Liam had been when he'd made himself disappear to escape the violence of that fate.

"So, Mr. Liam Francis Shannon," the old man said without turning. "You honor us with your presence."

"Baltimore," Liam said. He opened the refrigerator and pretended to look inside. "I've been in Baltimore for about two years. Richmond before that, and before that Dallas."

Those places and more. All true. All one friendless, loveless passage through the world. Never a friend to share a drink. Never a woman to share a bed.

He'd told the old man more than he needed to know, but where he'd been was a much easier question to answer than why he'd come back. What could he tell the old man-that he'd had dreams, visions? That he'd heard a voice calling him away from the streets of Baltimore to the colder streets of Boston? How could he tell the old man these things?

Michael Shannon snapped the newspaper. "And now you're back in Boston. A homecoming, is it?"

Liam grabbed a quart of milk and reached for the coffee pot as the old man began to laugh.

His father's laugh rattled in his throat, became a paroxysm that shook his frail frame with coughing till Liam thought surely he'd shake himself to pieces.

"Just that you're back here now, boy," the old man said, steadying himself against the edge of the table. "Just that you've come home."

Liam took a drink of the coffee, felt its warmth spread through the emptiness inside him, and decided with some effort to ignore the old man's continued chuckling. He stepped over to the table and sat down beside his father.

"What's wrong with Mam, Pop?" The familiar term for the old man felt false upon his tongue.

"There's no need for a doctor," the old man said, never moving his gaze from the newspaper. "Your mother would tell you so herself."

Liam stared straight ahead through the steam rising off his coffee. On the wall hung an old needlepoint sampler, threadbare and yellow with age by now. Instead of counting to ten, Liam read the words stitched into the canvas:

Invocation to Saint Bride
Dear Saint Bridget of the Kine
Bless these little fields of mine,
The pastures and the shady trees
Bless the butter and the cheese,
Bless the hay and bless the grass,
Bless the seasons as they pass
And Heaven's blessings will prevail
Brighid—Mary of the Gael.

Liam remembered when his mother had stitched that sampler when he'd been no more than a boy of five or six.

"It's pronounced 'Breed,'" his mother had answered. "And she's the goddess of the spring. The end of winter and rebirth." His mother had winked at him. "Her other name is the same as mine: Brighid. Isn't that a pretty name?"

Liam remembered her hands flying across the canvas, the needle moving like quicksilver in her hands. In his mind, he saw her long red hair pulled into a bun atop her head, her milk-white skin gathering all the light in the room. All the light-and all his love.

Liam sprang up from the table, toppling his chair and spilling his coffee as he hurried to the back door. He flung it wide and immediately a chilling wind blew snow into his face.

Out in the little yard behind the house, Liam's mother sat naked in the snow. Hands trembling from the cold clawed at the skin of her wizened breasts until red scratches bled beneath her fingers. She smeared her fingers red in the blood and plunged them down into a hole she'd dug into the snow beside her.

"A Brideo'gas for ye," she muttered, black gums bare in a beatific smile. "The serpent's out of the hole."

"She'll be fine," the paramedic said, removing a blood pressure cuff from the old woman's arm. "Those scratches aren't deep. She's a little chilled from the exposure, so keep her warm. Lots of fluids, lots of bed rest."

Liam watched the man store the blood pressure cuff away in his bag as his partner stood between the old woman shivering on the sofa and Michael Shannon looming behind him. The old man nearly hadn't let the men into his house, cursing and barring the door when they'd arrived. Not until Liam physically forced his father's fingers from the doorjamb could the men come inside and minister to Liam's mother. Now, the old man leered over one paramedic's shoulder, his hands balled into fists, red eyes staring at the other man talking to Liam.

"Can you step outside for a moment?" the paramedic asked Liam. "There's some papers I need you to sign."

Liam glanced down at his mother on the sofa, wrapped up in every blanket he could find, still trembling from the cold but asleep now, her lips parted in the semblance of a smile.

"Yeah, sure," he said. He felt the old man's eyes following them as they moved outside.

"Ok," the paramedic said, "I can tell your father's . . . not well, so I didn't want to disturb him any more. But I'm telling you this. Your mother needs medical attention."

"The cold isn't the problem. Not directly, anyway. She needs more care than he . . . than she's getting right now. Full-time care. She can't look after herself and he can't take care of her."

"Or some other residence facility, yes. I'm sorry, but you can see the condition she's in."

Liam's eyes watered from the cold and the smoke as he listened to what he knew was true.

"She probably hasn't eaten in days. The only reason I'm not calling the police is because you seem like a decent guy. You know the right thing to do."

"Yeah," Liam said rolling the cigarette around between his thumb and finger. "Look, I've been . . . away. I don't know any places for her."

The paramedic hugged himself to keep warm. "We've got your number. I'll call you with a few names."

"Yeah," Liam said. He felt the morning's cold sting on his face as a tear ran a course down his cheek.

The paramedic turned toward the warmth of his truck. Then he stopped and said to Liam, "Your father. He could stand to see a doctor, too. Have someone look him over, you know?"

Liam took a last drag on the cigarette and tossed it down on the walk. As the paramedics drove away, he ground the butt slowly under his toe till it was no more than a dark place in the snow.

Liam turned toward the old man and brought his hand up before he knew what he might do with it, so fast the old man flinched and took half a step backward.

"How could you let this happen?" Liam said, his lips pulled tight, his finger trembling in the air between them. "How could you let this happen to her?"

"You can send yourself to hell in a bottle for all I care," Liam said, "but to let this happen to her?"

The old man's lips twitched, their edges turning up into a smile. "You couldn't stay away, could you boy?"

"Bride's Morn tomorrow, and you couldn't stay away, eh, bucko?" The old man began to laugh and Liam turned away toward the kitchen for something to eat.

"January's wasted, lad. Today's the thirty-first-and tomorrow's the Feast of Brighid. Bride's Morn. You'd do well to take a drink with your old man."

The day passed slower than a funeral. Snow began falling again in the afternoon, a light dusting that nevertheless seemed to muffle the sounds of the house. Liam felt it calming him, his breathing measured and controlled in the stillness until the only sounds he could hear were the occasional moans of his mother as she slept fitfully and the clink of bottle against glass as Michael Shannon drank throughout the day.

By nightfall, the old man had grown sullen, his chin bobbing against his chest as he drowsed in an old recliner in the living room. The smell of whisky filled the rooms downstairs with its sour reek and forced Liam up the steps and into the room where his mother lay sleeping.

He'd gotten the heat going upstairs, and his mother lay under layers of blankets, her breathing deep and stentorous as she slept. Liam stood at the side of the bed, gazing down at her face in the room's mute lighting, trying to see his mother behind the mask of wrinkled flesh lying there on the pillow. He touched her wispy halo of hair, its gossamer lightness, and felt his heart seize within his chest.

"Oh, Mam," he said as the tears began. Liam's knees turned to jelly, and he sat down heavily on the floor beside her bed. Seventeen years. He'd left her here alone with Michael Shannon, a man who could barely care for himself, let alone an aged wife. What kind of a son abandoned his mother to waste away like this, her body withered, her mind lost and tangled in old rhymes and meaningless songs?

"I'm sorry, Mam," Liam said, his lips trembling and wet from weeping. "I never should have—"

The sound of glass shattering downstairs shook Liam from his grief. His face twisted into an angry frown—the old man had lost his grip on the bottle or his glass—and a curse hung on his tongue, ready to be spat out of his mouth.

The old man's sobbing, great gulps of breath and throaty, wracking moans. The sound of a man who's just remembered he's damned.

Liam's body felt like lead as he lifted himself up off the floor, expecting to find Michael Shannon sprawled on the floor, bawling over spilled whisky.

Red smears on the yellowed walls. A trail of bloody droplets and broken glass scattered on the rug. And the old man himself, collapsed in a chair, swollen-eyed and blubbering, a drink in one hand and in the other bloody hand a picture frame, its glass shattered.

"So lovely, lad," the old man said, staring at the picture. "No beauty like her."

Liam moved behind his father's chair and looked down at him. From the looks of the old man's knuckles, he must have smashed the frame with his fists. Reddened fingers had smeared its surface, but Liam could see it was a photo of his mother taken before he'd been born.

The old man touched the photo gently, a fresh smear of blood smudging its surface. "I had to come back," he said. "Just like you. I couldn't help myself. I . . . couldn't . . . help . . . myself . ..."

The old man's words dissolved into unintelligible sobs. Liam stood behind him gazing down at the bloody picture. His mother had been a beautiful woman—he could see why Michael Shannon felt he couldn't help himself. Even in that grainy photo, Liam could see her flawless skin that glowed white as fresh drawn milk. Even in black and white, his mother's red hair spilled down over her shoulders in luxurious silken wisps.

Liam felt a sudden fire flare behind his cheeks. Before he could stop it, the warmth spread down through his blood, roaring through his veins, its heat spreading to places that had slept too long in the cold.

His mother stood at the top of the stairs. She swayed there gently moaning, her naked body gathering the shadows around her, every wrinkle a valley, every dried inch of her skin a rough relief map of age.

Liam took a step toward her and stopped again. No—her skin wasn't wrinkled at all. It seemed to be . . . moving.

"Early on Bride's morning
The serpent's out of the hole. . ."

Liam stared transfixed by the patterns emerging on her skin. Grids, subtle at first, pulsed across its surface, then the shadows deepened as her skin bubbled outward in a perfect geometry of intersecting lines.

"With milk and straw adorned,
though the air is gray and cold . . ."

Her voice seemed to be changing, becoming stronger as she sang. Liam took an involuntary step back when he noticed something else about her.

With an uneasy step, she came toward him. Patches of flesh sloughed off of her knee as it bent, and more fell down onto the carpet when she set her foot down onto the next step. She took another step and another, and with every step closer more of the grids swelled and dropped down around her feet, sometimes leaving an empty patch so large, Liam could see what lay beneath.

"Light the crosses made of straw,
With Brighid's fire let 'em burn . . ."

When his mother's hair peeled away from her skull, Liam's legs turned to jelly, dropping him like a stunned calf down onto the carpeted landing.

"Tongues of flames burnin' tall
Five the wheel another turn."

Though his skin felt hot as melted tar, Liam sat shivering on the carpet as she made her way down the last few steps toward him. He stared at her ankles as she approached, then her calves, her thighs, until she was beside him on the landing.

And it was Mam—but not the derelict husk of a woman he'd found when he'd come home. She was the woman in the photo. Red hair spilling down over her milky shoulders and breasts.

She leaned toward him and pressed her lips against Liam's ear. He recoiled only an instant. Long enough for her to do it again.

Liam reached out toward his mother—no, toward this woman with the ivory skin, the flaming hair. She smiled again and took his hand.

Liam felt his father's hand fall upon his shoulder, without strength or force, just the dead weight of slack flesh.

Liam swiveled on the steps, placed his hand firmly against his father's chest and pushed. The old man toppled backward and crumpled at the bottom of the stairs.

"You had to come back," the old man sobbed. "Just like I did—we both had to come back."

Brighid looked down at Liam, her pink lips parting in a smile that made his blood race.

Years of absence made it easy to ignore the old man. Years alone, floating from one place to another without so much as a single human touch made it easy for Liam to concentrate on the warmth of the hand that held his own, the milky legs leading him upstairs toward a future fertile and warm, as new as the last flakes of snow falling early on Bride's Morn.

early on bride's morn - third place 2001

early on bride's morn -
third place 2001