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With the damned boat smelling like it did of wet dog, and the motion, the heave and the ho, and the bloody animals and their songs, the stuffiness. Time passed too slowly. How Wee Sean held it in, he didn’t know, but with every pitch and every roll, he thought about passing on all of his meal as well as the Scotch whiskey into the safety of the waves. Nay, he told himself, hold it in. His vomit would stay in the sack and make him sicker for the smell. How he hated traveling by boat. Back and forth and up and down. Wee Sean gagged. “Easy in there, little man,” Corrigan soothed.

“Rot in hell, you bugger!” He tried to kick once, but the motion made him more dizzy. Up and down and back and forth, and roll and lunge, and gag and swallow.

“There was a fair city, where girls are so pretty…” Corrigan sang happily. Sprite accompanied him with the lyrical howl that always turned Liam O'Brennigan into convulsions of laughter. Oars hit the water evenly, swishing water back and forth. “…calling cockles and muscles, alive, alive-O..” Corrigan chuckled, the boat creaked, and the dog howled louder. “Hey, Wee Sean. You know the words. Help us along and maybe you won’t be feeling so ill.” Sean gagged in response. “There was a fish monger, and sure it ‘twas no wonder…”

The sound of wood scraping against the wharf brought relief and the will to fight one more battle. Hotter by the moment and ready to explode, excepting for the wrong voice. “Hey,  Father Patrick! Just as you said, we made it. Where’s our Dad?” The craft steadied and the sack was lifted from the bottom.

“Right here, lads. Wee Sean, ‘tis your lads here,” Corrigan called. “So many of them, I can’t be keeping track of them anymore.“ They set Sean on solid ground and someone began working on the rope around his ankles. He felt the dog’s breath through the weave of the sack as Sprite pranced about at his head.

“Here’s Tim,” the Priest said, “And Daniel, and David, and who else? Oh, ‘tis Robert, too. They’re here to help ya home, Sean.”

“M’home is on Innisfen,” he cried kicking at whoever worked on his feet.

“Dad?” the small voice sounded as if he’d cry at any moment. “Ya don’t like us anymore?”

The sack came off, and Wee Sean found himself sitting on his rump looking at his four lads, each one smaller than the next. Robert had to reach up to wrap his arms about the dog’s neck. This was bloody humiliating. The wind blew in, slapping waves against the rock and concrete wharf, and Sprite licked Robert across the mouth. Sean’s stomach finally gave way. He crawled to the edge and heaved into the Channel itself. Scotch whiskey, eggs, onion, potatoes, and pan biscuits didn’t taste half as hearty the second time around.

When his stomach finally calmed, and he could pull away from the edge, another familiar voice came from behind him. “Hey, Dad, easy. You’re on dry ground now.” Suddenly he found himself on his feet with his arm about his eldest son’s neck. “Hey, Tim grab the other arm,” Eamonn instructed. “No, Robert, Dad hasn’t decided to be leaving us behind. He can’t handle crossing the Channel.”

“This goat better be worth it,” Sean heaved as his sons led him away.

Maureen poured him hot tea when he entered, and helped him to bed when he finished. He kept his own council. Not until the next morning, when clean and scrubbed for Mass, and at last in the midst of the children he hadn’t spent a night with in weeks, did he open up to her. “You have any idea why they dragged me back here?”

“I know all about your football match,” she soothed, as she fussed over Mary Kate’s bonnet.

“And you aren’t angry?”

“I should be angry, should I?”

“Most women in either Village would be angry.”

“And most women in either Village have to be worrying about their men drinking themselves into a stupor when all is said and done. Is that one m’concerns, Sean?” She turned her heart shaped face up to him. Freckles crossed over her nose and her cheeks, and reddish brown curls teased the edge of her bonnet. He missed her particularly at night when the cold settled in about him.

Once Mary Kate’s appearance was as it should be, Maureen straightened herself. “I have one thought about this,” she continued. “Wouldn’t it be more logical to approach Waell’s Crossing about an even trade? Farm animals for whatever it is the Brits left in that warehouse?”

He scratched at the clothing in the center of his chest. “I’ll be leaving now,” he commented, reaching for his cap. He left the two room stone cottage quickly. Deirdre carried baby Sam and Maureen took Mary Kate and little Elizabeth by the hands. Eamonn directed Tim and the other boys along. Another baby would be a wonder.

He led the way from the cottage and onto the pebbled way. He grunted his displeasure. He should have been on Innisfen working his fields.

Killelea was a crumb of its former self. Once upon a time, it was an important port, called North Pale by the British. During the 1700’s and early 1800’s goods found their ways into the old stone storage buildings lining the shoreline, from wharves, and out onto vessels crossing the Irish Sea, and into England. During harder times, immigrants lined the wharves.

The Great Hunger, wave on wave of immigrants, British cruelties and finally the dissolution of the school on Innisfen, brought the number of inhabitants of Killelea to a handful. And now only a few fishing boats took the place of the larger sea going merchant vessels, or even the British warships.

When the Brits expelled the Islanders from their homes, they moved into abandoned cottages stretching out from the center of Killelea. They needed cleaning, and rebuilding, as Erin has a way to taking back its own. Thankfully there was land to be planted for the taking, although nearly all the grain and vegetables the farmers grew in Killelea was sent to France to feed the troops. The flax and wool went to England to be turned into uniforms. There were many more deserted cottages; and the storage buildings and extra wharves were falling apart. Residents were scavenging for building materials to mend their cottages. 

In the midst of Killelea itself, the crossroads met at a turnaround, and centermost there, a rough Celtic cross had been carved into a rock that was as big as a man. Beyond that was the tiny Church of St. John the Baptist, and further beyond even, the grayish wharves, the blues of the harbor, and the compact, lumpy greenery of Innisfen.

Even if his family still resided here, one more night away from Innisfen was one night too many. Above all, Sean wanted to bring his family home to the restored cottage they lived in when he and Maureen were first married.

Wee Sean kept his eyes on the Island and nearly toppled over a chicken who flapped her wings against his legs and clucked at the imposition. Bloody woman wants to trade, he thought. Give her half a head and she’ll be ruining his fun.

Cottages with tall peaks and brown and green grass roofs lined both roads. Fowl, dogs and other animals wandered about the roads and between inhabited cottages. Hitching posts awaited either horses or donkeys in hopes someone from either Village would miraculously come to own one. In the meantime, residents tied rickety old bicycles to them. In the rear, pigs and goats had been penned not far from small famine gardens. On Dublin side, where the Keenan’s lived, where the Killelea Public House opened its doors for business, and where the smithy, O'Hare himself, made and repaired tools, cottages were overshadowed by huge rocks, some of which looked lose and ready to slip away at the slightest pressure. The football field, which was surrounded by fallen rocks, separated cottages from rocks. Above all stood the lighthouse whose beam scoured the harbor.

On the Ulster side was an oval horse track. Funny, how it was that residents maintained paddocks and ground. Hope remained that race horses would be wrapped part and parcel in with the miracle that would eventually produce work horses. The paddocks remained undisturbed and the track weeded and cleared. As surely as the newspaper and the post made its way into Killelea, so soon would shipping, cows, horses, jockeys, and the funds to maintain it all.

Link to A Match With Waell's Crossing - 3