Brendan Graham - The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

It wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be allowed to accumulate here like heapfuls of strange fruit, burning in the sun until the blowflies and maggots came. Those over which the maggots already crawled, she picked up with her apron, then shook off what worms remained on her, once she had deposited the putrid limb. Other limbs had corroded to the bone, caked by the sun, stripped clean by flesh-eating things.

To distract her mind she recited the Breastplate of St Patrick:

‘Christ with me,

Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ within me,

Christ on my right hand,

Christ on my left hand,

Christ all around me,

Christ in the heart of all who think of me,

Christ in the mouth of all who speak of me,

Christ in every eye who looks at me,

Christ in every ear who listens to me.’

Even the words of the prayer seemed to take on an incongruity, far removed from their intended bidding.

‘Christ on my right foot,’ she prayed while handling a foot, pierced through like a stigmata. She remembered the poor wretch who had, in a state of fear, pulled the trigger of his rifle before raising it to the enemy and shot himself.

‘Christ on my left foot.’ She had it all out of kilter. But did it matter? She cast the stigmatic foot onto the mound, watched it slide down again in some crucified dance.

‘Christ with me,’ she intoned, invoking again the protection of the saint’s breastplate.

And the stench, the yellow dripping stench: powerful, unavoidable, permeating her clothes, her pores, the follicles of her hair. She thought she would drown in its noisome pool, it oozing over her whole body, closing out air and decency.

She redoubled her prayer but the drenching slime slid into her mouth, over her tongue and down her throat like the melt of Hell.

When they had finished she went straight to Dr Sawyer, gave him her mind about how ‘the great Abraham Lincoln couldn’t even run a decent abattoir, let alone this war or this country!’

That evening the regular cries for relief and ‘Sister! Oh Sister!’ were broken by a new sound. That of someone scratching out a tune on an asthmatic fiddle. Where the instrument came from nobody knew or, if they did, would not reveal.

Soon the fiddler, a Donny McLeod late of the Scottish Highlands, via East Tennessee, was madly flaking out the old mountain reels. For Ellen, the tunes recalled better days of sure-footed dancers, the men hob-nailing it out, striking splanks from the floor, while slender-waisted girls swung from their arms. Now, the magic of the wild fiddle music seemed to banish away forever the misfortunes of the waiting war.

It was Hercules O’Brien who started it.

Up he rose, arm in a sling – which he immediately cast off.

‘Head bandaged like a Turk, with only the ears out,’ as he described himself, he grabbed hold of the remaining arm of a grizzled old veteran.

‘C’mon, Alabarmy – let’s see if you can dance better than you fight!’ the little man challenged.

‘Well, I’ll be darned, O’Brien, if any o’ that Irish nigger-dancin’ will best ol’ Alabarmy,’ the Southron answered back.

And the two faced each other in the middle of the floor, Hercules O’Brien lashing it out heel to toe for all he was worth.

‘You’s sweatin’ like a hawg,’ Alabarmy goaded as the blood seeped out through his partner’s bandaged head. ‘Like a stuck hawg!’

A great roar of laughter arose at this goading of the Irishman.

Not to be outdone, Hercules O’Brien shouted back above the din, ‘And if you’d lost a leg ’stead of an arm, you’d be a better dancer,’ which raised another bout of laughter. Then the Irishman crooked his own good arm in Alabarmy’s one arm and swung him … and swung him in a dizzy circle with such a wicked delight. Until they all thought Alabarmy would leave this earth, courtesy of the buck-leppin’ O’Brien.

Next, another was up and then another, curtseying to prospective partners, the ‘ladies’ donning a strip of white bandage on whatever arm or leg they had left to distinguish themselves from the men.

‘Could I have the pleasure, Jennie Reb?’ Or ‘C’mon, Yankee, show us your nigger-jiggin’!’

Ellen stood watching them, the music reeling away the years. Back to the Maamtrasna crossroads, high above the two lakes – Lough Nafooey and Lough Mask. Them gathering in from every one of the four roads, the high bright moon lighting the way. Like souls summoned from sleep the dancers came, filtering out of the night to the gathering. There, under the moon and the great bejewelled sky they would merge out of shadow – a glance, a half-smile, then hand within hand, arm around waist, breath to breath. Then bodies in remembered rhythm would weave their spell, and they would rise above the ground, be lifted; the diamond sky now at their feet – a blanket of stars beneath them.

The priests were right – the devil was in the dancing, in the wicked reels; the way you danced out of your skin, out of yourself. ‘Going before themselves,’ the old women called it. Leaving sense and the imprisoned self behind. Being lost to the dance.

Remembering wasn’t good, Ellen reminded herself. A life could be lost to it … wasted, looking backwards. Looking forwards was as bad. She was of late looking too much backwards, and looking forwards, wondering where, if ever, she would find Lavelle and Patrick. Trapped between the future and the past, no control over either. Helplessly suspended in the now.

Ellen took in the scene in front of her. Was that all that mattered? All there was? The now of these broken men, momentarily lifted above the brutal earth to dance among the stars?

Across the room she saw Foots O’Reilly in conversation with Mary. Then she watched Mary bend, her arms encircling the man’s back, lifting him into a sitting position. He was from Cavan ‘and a mighty dancer,’ he had told Ellen, ‘could trip over the water of Lough Sheelin without dampening me toes.’ Hence, the nickname ‘Foots’. Then a Southern shell had ripped one dancing leg from under him.

‘That won’t hold Foots O’Reilly back none,’ he swore. Tomorrow he would undergo the surgeon’s saw to save the second leg, gangrened to the knee.

‘I could dance with the one, ma’am, but I can’t dance with the none. Now I’ll lose me name as well as me pegs. “Foots” with no foot at all to put under me.’ He had cried in her arms then.

Ellen watched Mary hoist the one-legged dancer, so that he half stood, half leaned against her, arms clasped to her, head draped over her shoulders. She dragged him out to the dancing square. The others witnessing it stopped, even the fiddle boy. Then Mary whispered into his ear, ‘Come on now, Mr O’Reilly. Dance with me … you show them!’

And she manoeuvred him slowly around in the silence, his gangrenous leg trailing behind them. Then again and again they turned, in grotesque pirouette, she in her white nun’s ballgown, he the mighty dancer, until Mary could support his dead weight no longer.

‘Thank you, Mr O’Reilly … Foots,’ Mary said to him. ‘I shall always remember this dance …’ and she sat him gently down again.

Then, all those who could were once more ‘footin’ it’: the wounded and the wasted, the stumped and the stunted. All flailed and flopped and picked themselves up again as the fiddler played his relentless reel. Then, suddenly, he changed into waltz-time.

‘I thought he’d kill the lot of them …’ Ellen said to Mary who had come beside her, ‘… but isn’t it wonderful to see?’

Mary smiled back at her.

As the young Tennessean, bow astride his fiddle, led them into the waltz, they watched Hercules O’Brien prop up Alabarmy in front of him, placing the Southerner’s shelled-out sleeve over his shoulder. Twins from Arkansas – a crutch apiece – hobbled around in a kind of teetering dance, Ellen ready to catch whichever one of them, who any minute must fall.