Free Falling (17 page)

“Sure, it’s a great long way,” the woman said, offering a cup to Julie who shook her head. “Which is why we’re never there. And why the needing of a man was so desperate.”

David looked at Julie. “So it’s not you that needs help?” he said. “It’s your mother?”

Julie looked away and her mother answered for her.

“Sure, nobody would come help an ugly crow like me,” she said laughing. “You’ll not be blaming Julie for our little ruse, eh? I practically had to beat her to do it.”

Julie looked back at David.

“I’m sorry, mister,” she said. “But me mam needed help, same as you thought I did. No difference.”

Except for the part about being lied to,
David thought with growing anger. But he said: “You’re right. There’s no difference. And I’m here now.” He stood up. “Can you show me the well?” He looked at the older woman. “Was that part true? You have a well that’s collapsed?”

“Ah, sure, don’t be mad at us, now,” The woman said. She indicated the kitchen chair again. “Plenty of time for that and too late to get started today, so it is. My name is Betta, by the by. And you’ll be called?”

It didn’t matter how many times he’d told her what his name was. She always called him Danny. He’d been on the farm a total of two days when he fell off a ladder, hit his head and broke his arm. Julie had left long since. At first, Betta had been the soul of care and attentiveness while he lay helpless and disoriented. The head injury was the most disabling, preventing him from even getting out of bed for weeks at a time. During that time, Betta fed him, cleaned him, and sang to him as he dipped in and out of consciousness. She set the arm break, badly, but in the way of countrywomen who have had to do this and worse many times over the years—efficiently if painfully. Gradually, David got stronger although his broken arm mended poorly. His head cleared and he spent more and more time out of bed, even if it was just to shuffle to the outhouse and back. The stronger he got, the more anxious Betta seemed to become.

One morning, before he was awake, she crept into his bedroom and chained him to the anchor in the room. He could move about the room but not leave it. When he broke the bed and the window frame in an attempt to free himself, she waited until he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep, slipped in and tied his feet to the bed.

That had been nearly two weeks ago.

David developed pressure ulcers lacerating his backside and thighs and he could feel the muscles in his legs shorten by the day. His days consisted of alternating threatening her and begging her to free him. Hers, entreating him to stay with her willingly. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to let him go. There was much work to do on the place.
Didn’t he think she wanted to free him to do it?

Once, she got close enough to him and he was able to grab her by the throat with his weak arm. He would’ve killed her, but in the end he couldn’t do it. The next day she drugged his food with over-the-counter chloral hydrate and strapped his broken arm to his chest. He remembered feeling relief she hadn’t rebroken it.

Sarah worked the knots out of the small of her back with her fingers. The morning was cold and she needed to start the tea. Dierdre snored loudly on the couch, bundled up in two wool rugs with one of John’s dogs. The fire was long gone cold.

Her arrival last night had been their Christmas miracle. Just the feeling of welcoming someone to their hearth on such a special night reminded her of Christmases past.
And the dear woman had brought dinner
. A cold roast chicken with potatoes and even gravy. It truly was a feast, as John kept saying all night.

Sarah walked softly to the stove to light it without disturbing them. She took a moment to warm her hands around the flame and then closed the stove door and began measuring out tea into a pot and pulling cold biscuits from the breadbox.

What Dierdre had
not
brought with her was Seamus.

Sarah eyed the grey clouds from her kitchen window. It was cold but it didn’t look like more snow on the way. She put a pan of water on the hot stove.
As if I’d know snow clouds from any other kind,
she thought to herself. And then she stopped. The fact was, after weeks of observing them, she
did
know which clouds spelled snow and which ones didn’t. The thought surprised her. But snow or not, she would need to leave their snug little cottage today. Now that Dierdre could stay with John, Sarah could finally go to Balinagh to see if there was any word on David. In fact, that was the first thought out of John’s mouth when he realized that Dierdre had come to stay for a while. He’d blurted it out over dinner and his words brought tears to Dierdre’s eyes.

“Sure, I knew there must be a reason why we hadn’t seen him in so long,” she said. “I told Seamus something awful bad must’ve happened.” Dierdre looked meaningfully at Sarah and Sarah knew it was because she needed her to go back to the farm and find Seamus. He’d walked away, “wandered off, as he’s wont to,” two days earlier. Given the weather, Dierdre wasn’t optimistic, but neither could she rest until he was found.

“But, there’s no hope for Seamus,” John had blurted out, looking from Sarah to Dierdre. “
Dad
might still be alive.”

“Of course, of course,” Dierdre had patted his hand. “Your mother must go and find your Da. Seamus can wait, sure he can.” But her eyes were sorrowful and belied her words.

Sarah poured the tea and mixed milk and sugar into two mugs. John would sleep a little longer but she could see that Dierdre was awake now. She realized how good it felt to have an extra person in the cottage. Dierdre was a strong countrywoman and a veritable font of useful information and skills. Having her stay with them would make everything so much easier—for all of them.

“Sure, you don’t have to be waitin’ on me, darlin’,” Dierdre said as she shuffled into the kitchen.

“I like to,” Sarah said, handing the woman a mug of tea.

“Needing to feel useful, are you?” Dierdre laughed and sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs.

Sarah turned to slice the biscuits open and lay them face down on the hot stove.

“I probably will never need to ‘feel useful’ again in my whole life,” she admitted. “I’ve never felt more essential and at the same time more irrelevant to our survival than I do here.”

“Ahhhh.” Dierde smiled and sipped her tea. “As soon as life gets too much for us, we finally let go and allow the Almighty his turn.”

“I guess it takes a world crisis to make us realize we’re not in control.”

“Nor were we ever.”

Sarah placed the toasted biscuits on a plate with a dish of jam and goat butter and set them between them. She sat down and cupped her own mug of tea.

“I’ll go find Seamus today,” she said quietly.

Dierdre looked at her over her mug. “And then you intend to go on to Balinagh afterwards.” It wasn’t a question.

Sarah looked again at the snow clouds outside the kitchen window. “I can do both.”

“Sure, the needin’ to know is a powerful thing,” Dierdre said, watching her. “I’ll not talk you out of it. I know he’s gone, my Seamus.” She put her mug down and stared out the window. “It’s just that…”

“I know.” Sarah reached out and touched the old woman’s hand.

“I wish you could’ve know him,” Dierdre said. She shook her head. “Sure, I see what you see...an addled old man who can’t remember his way home from the woodshed, but my God he was a force in his day.”

“Mike Donovan said he was the village school teacher.”

“Did he?” Dierde made a face. “Well, that’s true and all but I’ll be surprised if that’s really what people will remember Seamus for.”

“What do you mean?”

Dierde took a deep breath and Sarah could see she was fighting her emotions.

“Seamus was the handsomest lad in the village, many years ago. The glint in his eye was matched by the brightness of his wit. Oh, he had a tongue. Every lass in Balinagh was in love with him, sure.”

“But you got him,” Sarah said, her eyes moving to John’s form in bed wondering if he were asleep or listening.

Dierdre shook her head again. “If you could’ve known him,” she said to Sarah. “As alive and bright as any could be…that he chose me was mystery enough. To end up…to end up…”

            Sarah touched her hand again. “I’ll find him, Dierdre,” she said. “I promise I’ll find him.”

            Dierdre nodded, her tears falling now. “Please, God,” she said.

Betta stood by David’s bed and wrung her hands. Her face was florid as if she’d just run a race, her hands were grey with grime. She was looking at him as if she expected him to levitate or spontaneously combust at the very least.

David’s stomach growled. He couldn’t remember the last time she had brought food to him. His head was aching and he felt so weak. It was all he could do to speak.

“I need water, Betta,” he said, hearing his voice resemble more of a croak. “I can’t do anything. I can’t help you unless you give me water.”

Betta appeared not to hear him.

“What could I do?” she repeated to him. “I did what I thought was best. Did I do right, Danny? Did I?”

David tried to wrap his mind around what she was saying to him but she been nonsensically rambling or ranting for weeks now and the effort to understand her usually mattered little in the end. He closed his eyes.

“You did right,” he whispered. “Water, Betta. Please, water.”

She pulled up a chair to the bed and leaned in close.

“Margie and Jamie came this morning, did you know? Did you hear? Sure, you must’ve heard them.”

David tried to remember who they were. His brain seemed to have stopped working. He licked his dry lips.

“You heard them, Danny, didn’t you? They asked about you. Did you hear that?”

David opened his eyes.

“They were…people were…here?” he managed.

“Margie and Jamie, I told you,” she said with impatience. “They just left. I know you saw them.” She stood up and jerked open the curtain across the window in the room which looked out over the front yard and the entrance to the house. “You saw them and you heard me tell them you’d gone.” She sounded like she had caught him in a terrible crime.

“My…my horse…” he stuttered as he realized rescue had been minutes from his front door and he had slept through it.

“Your horse is in the barn. Do you think that stupid
get
my daughter married was going to go looking for your horse? They believed me when I told them you’d left weeks ago.”

She sat and watched as a single tear escaped his eye and found its way down his face.

“You hate me, don’t you?” she said. Her voice was flat. “You hate me for keeping you here.”

David turned to look at her face. From the haze of hunger and blighted memory, he could see her insanity. His words formed slowly as if he were speaking through cotton.

“Don’t hate you,” he said, closing his eyes again.

She stared at him. Nothing moved, no sound anywhere.

He spoke again before exhaustion and sickness carried him back to unconsciousness.

“Forgive you,” he said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sarah stood in the barn brushing Dan. The physical exertion helped the roiling anxiety in her stomach. He was so big she had to stretch to brush his back and when she’d finished her shoulders were aching. The disappointment of having to push her expedition back was intense. The rain had started right after breakfast and turned to a downpour of snow soon after. As Dierde said, as bitterly disappointed as she was, there was no sense going and ending up frozen and lost herself.  

No one was more disappointed than John and while he fought to understand the decision, Sarah needed to escape the unhappy house. Two people they loved were somewhere out in that swirling maelstrom of white and cold, two people who needed their help and who would have to wait a little longer. No one needed to say out loud that the longer wait could be the death of both.

Sarah cleaned Dan’s feet and ran her hands down all four of his legs. He nickered and turned to look at her. She put her arms around his neck and buried her face in his mane, just like she used to do when she was a horse-crazy teenager with a problem that only her pony could understand.

Could he really still be alive? Was David out there somewhere trying to get back to them? The agony of not knowing coiled in her stomach like a black knot. Like Seamus, was this how it would end for him? A brilliant academic back home, loved by his students, admired, respected. Was this really how it was to end for him? Riding off into the Irish countryside never to be seen again?
Sarah laced her fingers in Dan’s mane and held him tightly. The big horse shifted his weight but otherwise stood quietly for her. Over his shoulder through the plastic of the barn window, she watched the snow fall.
God help me
, she thought.
Will I not even be able to go tomorrow?

The sounds came to David as if they were part of the feverish dream he was having. At first, he couldn’t be sure what was real. But as the voices got louder, he found himself being jolted awake. His bedroom was dim—it was dark outside—but his view of the front of the house was unobstructed by the open curtains Betta had pulled back earlier. The loud and terrible voices came from the front of the house. He could hear men with rumbling deep and, it seemed, mocking voices. Underneath it all, he made out the terror in Betta’s high falsetto voice. She was pleading, it seemed to David. He had heard that begging shrill voice even in his nightmares. Out the window, he saw a crowd of people and horses in the front yard. They were trampling Betta’s garden. Some were fighting. He could not make out what they were saying. He heard three gunshots, one right after another. Betta’s horrible wailing scream grew higher and higher.

David struggled to sit up and pulled uselessly against his restraints. His legs were covered in bedsores that wept onto the dirty linens when he moved. His left arm lay impotently against this chest, duct-taped around his upper body. He pulled against the chain that was attached to the boat anchor until he was sitting up. He saw one of the men drag poor Betta down the porch front stairs, then slit her throat and toss her body onto the dahlias in the front flowerbeds. David jerked up and rasped out the single word “No!” It felt like barely more than a whisper, but the killer, wiping his blade on his shirt, turned and looked directly at David through the open window.