No Country: A Novel Read Free

finished the prayers. But when they put Poor Wally Finn in the ground and began to pour the dug dirt on him, she gave a cry and leaped on the diggers and kicked the dirt about to stop them from putting it on her dead da. She fought tooth and nail, until they frog-marched her off the graveyard, but not before Mr. O’Flaherty gave her a piece of bread which she ate with appetite, diverted momentarily from her da and her bitter fight.
    Every day after that, Madgy came to sit under the tree across from Mr. O’Flaherty’s door, rocking back and forth when we recited our multiplication tables, clapping with delight, as if we had sung to her. And when Mr. O’Flaherty would teach us, she would fall asleep, stretch and yawn, or wander off. But by the time the lessons ended for the day and Mr. O’Flaherty dismissed us, PoorMadgy would sit until Mr. O’Flaherty would emerge shortly with a couple of praties, or a wedge of bread and a rind of cheese. She would smile up at him, her mouth twisted with glee. Biting into the victuals, she would amble off unevenly, though surefooted she was, in spite of one leg shorter than the other.
    As a child, I remember being afraid of Madgy because of her puppet’s staring head, large teeth, and splayed feet that seemed too large for the rest of her. My eyes averted in finicky disgust as I saw her phlegm depending from a nostril. It was only of late I learned to see her through Mr. O’Flaherty’s even gaze.
    During the ceilidh festival time in Sligo Town, she would go and dance at the fringe when the bands played. Aye, but her dance was that odd and beautiful, whirling on the balls of her feet, round and round, tottery with the poteen she would beg off people, but never falling, a gyrating mouth-open puppet, squeaking with pleasure and dizziness until she lay spent and panting in a part of the town square, on the stone itself, and sleep till the morning sun and early flies prised her eyes open, runny as they were with something like amber gum. Up she would stand and off she would go, up the slope towards Mr. O’Flaherty’s school, as if she could not bear to be late, and take her place under the tree, rocking with the multiplication tables, thumb wedged in her smiling mouth, a bairn.
    It was near Christmas, almost a full year before Padraig got his sudden idea to go off to the great meeting at Clontarf so far away. The festival at Sligo Town had been big and raucous with ceilidh bands and drinking and dancing and stirring about. The harvest had been good earlier and so had the ocean’s catch. Many strangers had come to town, some fisherfolk from as far away as Donegal, some had brought horses for sale from the South—some even from the Isles of Aran—and there were tramps and tinkersand poteen makers from around Roscommon inland. We had no school those days.
    The morning after the festival was over, and dogs wandering all over licking the paved stones where people had spilled food or offal, and all the strangers left, and the townspeople were slowly putting themselves back into their ordinary lives, someone discovered Poor Madgy Finn lying behind a paved by-lane like a broken toy, hair matted and reeking from the poteen some jokesters had poured on it, her face torn as if she had been fighting dogs. She had cuts on her hands where some nails had broken off, and she was whimpering.
    In ones and twos the townspeople gathered about her in a growing circle. Padraig’s ma too had gone into town that day. She went to see what people were gawking at, and found Odd Madgy Finn moaning on the ground, a drying splotch of blood on the thin dress she had twisted over her crotch.
    This put Padraig’s ma in a tearing rage. What she said I did not hear, but the townspeople slunk off and Mrs. Aherne lifted Poor Madgy Finn and cradled her home. She was strong. I followed her at a distance, all the way to her home, not daring to get close. She gave a piece of bread to Madgy, who curled up in a corner,