Pete Hamill - Forever

Thunder picked up his scent through the rain and whinnied in greeting. Once, twice. Like a signal. The whinnying stopped as Cormac came closer to the barn. Thinking: I would know that voice anywhere (for it is a voice). Thunder is alive. Here. My father’s horse. My horse now.

The barn door was unlocked and he slipped inside, leaving the door ajar behind him. A way in, a way out. A lamp burned dimly to the right, and in the light he saw Thunder. There were a dozen stalls, filled with horses and piles of hay, but Thunder was alone in his own small jail. Some of its slats were hanging loose from his resistance. Cormac turned down the wick of the lamp and went to his horse. He opened the stall’s gate, and the horse nuzzled him in a wet, frantic way while he ran a hand over his coat and felt the welts from a whip. More than a dozen small ridges of flayed horseflesh, some of them open. Thunder didn’t care. He bounced. He shuddered in joy. He shook his great mane. Other horses made soft pleading sounds.

Then Cormac heard a voice behind him.

“I say, what’s this?”

The man was small and wiry, holding a whale-oil lantern. Cormac recognized his face from the road where his father was killed. He gripped the sword.

“I’ve come for my horse,“ Cormac said. “And for the Earl of Warren. You understand why. You were there, you bastard.”

The small man shook his head and smiled a toothless grin and gazed out through the open door. Thunder stomped at the earth, warning of danger.

“Ach, sure, you’re too late, lad,” the small man said in a soft, reasonable way. “Sure, the earl’s gone off. To America, they say. I suspect—”

He suddenly whirled with a pistol in his hand. Cormac swung at him with the sword. The way his father had taught him: short, quick.

The small man’s pistol hand came off with the pistol in it. Blood spurted, and he tried to scream in a shocked way. The lantern fell. Cormac picked up the pistol and smashed the butt into the small man’s nose. He fell to his knees, blood streaming now from his nose, staring wide-eyed at the pumping blood from his wrist, gripping his forearm to try to stop the flow, gazing at his lost hand, at the door, at Cormac. Stunned. Wordless. Cormac kicked him in the face, and he fell over on his side, with the blood still pumping. Thunder whinnied again, ready to leave, but Cormac wasn’t finished. He jammed the pistol into his belt, beneath the shit-smelling poncho, and then moved from stall to stall, releasing the other horses from the Earl of Warren’s wooden cells. Cormac thought: Maybe they’re each worth more than five pounds. Maybe each will find its way home.

Finally he picked up the lantern and went to the door. Horses raced past him into the rainy night, clumping and breathing hard. Thunder waited. Cormac hurled the lantern into a pile of straw. It burst into flames.

Then he mounted Thunder, without a saddle, and they raced around the corral with the frantic horses, who were plunging now through a gap in the corral fence into the Irish night. They rode to the big house. When Cormac glanced back, he saw the handless man crawling out of the burning stable.

The big house was built in the style of many others in Ireland: to create an image of power. About twenty marble steps rose from the earth to a gallery framed by Doric columns. Cormac raced toward the house, urging Thunder up the rain-slick stairs, his steel shoes clattering.

The front doors burst open, and four alarmed men came out. They were led by Patch, who was barefoot in a long gray night-shirt and carrying a shotgun. He was the only man with a weapon. And he wasn’t wearing his patch. One eye socket was a black hole; the other glittered. Patchless Patch.

He started to say something.

Cormac cut off his head.

Which bounced and rolled down the marble stairs. For a moment the headless body stood upright. Then it fell chest down. Without urging, Thunder pounced upon the body, stomping at it, while the other men scattered into the rain. Cormac took the pistol from his belt and fired a shot after them. Thinking: That will bring out the earl. The men ran into the rain-drowned darkness.

For a long, blurry moment, the world seemed red. Red house, not white. Red blood mixing with lashing red rain. Then the red was gone, and Cormac urged Thunder into the house, through the open doors, to find the earl.

The rooms on the first floor were empty of furniture or paintings. The fireplaces were cold. Piles of lumber were stacked against walls. The earl clearly had not yet furnished his grand mansion. An uncarpeted staircase rose to the second floor, with a chandelier hanging in the stairwell. None of the candles were lit, but the device glittered with crystal and cut glass. Up they went. Horse and rider.

Before them were a dozen doors, some of them open. In one, a table was covered with whiskey bottles and jugs and fancy glasses, obviously the lounge where Patch and his men had been drinking earlier in the night. Cormac dismounted and kicked open the other doors. Empty. He arrived at one near the end of the hall where an oil lamp was burning on a side table. He flipped the latch and entered a kind of suite. Dressers and an armoire and dozens of mirrors. A second door leading to a bedroom. Someone was under the covers of the canopied bed.

“Come out of there,” Cormac said, gripping the sword. There was no movement.

“Come out or I’ll chop you to pieces.”

The covers came down. A woman’s face appeared. Red-haired, pale, trembling, about fifteen. Irish.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

“M’name’s Bridget.”

“Are you the earl’s whore?”

She turned her head, her eyes wet.

“Aye,” she said.

She turned to gaze at Cormac.

“I had no choice, sir. Didn’t me own father sell me to him during the great cold?”

She buried her face in the pillow, a picture of shame. Cormac didn’t trust the image he was given. And he knew the earl was gone, headed for other parts until any talk of murder had drifted away, or until Patch and his men had hunted down the only witness.

“And where is the great earl?”

She turned to him again.

“Away,” she said. “Left for America for a while, says he. Two days ago. A boat out of Galway, he said to me. That’s what he says, of course. That’s what he told me. He could be in Dublin, for all I know. He could be in London. But I think maybe ’tis America.”

There were plates beside her bed and an empty wineglass and a piece of bread. Cormac came closer and took the piece of bread.

“I should kill you,” he said. “Whorin’ for that English bastard.”

“Then you’d better kill me father too,” she said angrily. “He put me in this bed.”

She looked weepy again. He lifted a half-eaten chop from a plate and gnawed at the bone.

“Would you like to have me?” she whispered.

She rose like an offering to a sitting position, showing him one full, rosy breast above the line of her nightgown. Yes, he thought, I’d like to have you. Yes, I’d like to slide into those smooth sheets and enter your body. Nipples. Hair. Wetness. Sleep.

“I can’t,” Cormac said. “I must go. And you should too. Now. Get dressed, pack, and go home. Before they come back.”

“You mean Patch?”

“Patch is dead.”

“I don’t believe it. Not Patch.”

“His head is out there on the steps,” Cormac said. “I put it there.”

She moaned. Cormac started to leave but then felt pity for the girl. If the men came back with a platoon of redcoats, they’d probably kill her too.

“Get ready now, woman,” he said, “and I’ll take you into the forest. You’ve got ten minutes. Then I’m burning this place to the ground.”

He took the reins and led Thunder to the staircase and then down to the door. Awkwardly, delicately, the horse afraid of slipping on the stairs made by men. Cormac told the horse to wait. Then he took the stairs two at a time, reached over, and cut the four chains that held the chandelier to the ceiling. It fell with a ferocious crash, scattering glass and crystal over the oak steps. Thunder pawed the wooden floor, as if saying to Cormac: You’re taking too much time. Outside, the rain was still falling. Cormac saw Patch’s legs jutting awkwardly and naked above the marble steps, aimed at the front doors. He found dry matches in one dead fireplace and went through the main floor, making small piles of wood, chopping planks into kindling with the sword. Thinking: Our house is gone, the home of the O’Connors, and now it’s your turn. Thinking: Patch’s men must be nearing Belfast now, or at a guard post, alerting the militia. Thinking: Hurry .