Mike agreed, relieved, I thought.
“All right, everyone, get going,” he said. “We’ll meet at the Blarney Stone, and I’ve a table reserved for dinner at Mrs. Hart’s Donegal Castle. Then we’ll watch the fireworks.”
Patrick and I saw a bench under a tall oak tree across from a row of neat cottages and settled ourselves down as the rest scattered. Agnella chose to stay with us.
“What does that say?” she asked, pointing to a sign stuck into the grass.
“‘This sod comes from Ireland,’” I read.
“It’s very green,” she said.
“’Tis,” Patrick agreed.
After a bit, Patrick and Agnella and I walked over to a building that advertised “Irish antiquities”: The standing stone marked with ogham symbols was made from papier-mâché, but an authentic page from an illuminated manuscript was displayed under glass.
“Look at this, Agnella. See the animals around the letter? The Irish monks drew those almost fifteen hundred years ago.”
“Nice,” she said. “Makes the words pretty.”
Patrick and I laughed.
We wandered along the cobbled street until the grown-ups—Jamesy and Maggie, Stephen and Nelly, Bridget and Ed, Michael and Mary Ann and Bridey—found us.
“The children made short work of the villages and now they’re all at the Blarney Stone,” Nelly said. “Let’s go watch.”
Mike had rented a Kodak camera. One after another, the children leaned out the window of the castle and kissed that hunk of rock, then waved at Mike as he snapped their pictures.
“A great souvenir of this happy day,” said Jamesy’s wife, Maggie.
“Aren’t we lucky with the weather,” Mary Ann said.
“The sun shining just for us,” Bridget said.
“Listen, Mam!” Jamesy took my arm. “Pipes!”
We followed the sound to a crossroads in the center of the village. And there he was—a piper—seated under an oak tree, a tall, dark-haired fellow dressed in a kilt and a cloak, the uilleann pipes under his arm. We surrounded him.
“Charles McSweeney, at your service,” the piper said.
“Our da was a piper,” Jamesy said to him. “And our grandda, too.”
“And where were these pipers from?” McSweeney asked.
“Kelly Country,” said Patrick. “Gallagh of the Kellys.”
“Ah,” said McSweeney. “Where William Boy O’Kelly gave his famous party. One of the greatest pipers of all time was a Kelly from that area. Long before me, but I’m sure some of the tunes he played, I’m playing. Probably was your great-grandda.”
“My son plays,” I said, pointing to Jamesy.
“And where are your pipes?” the piper said to him. “We could play together.”
“I’m afraid I’m past piping now,” Jamesy said.
McSweeney looked around our circle. “A load of Kellys here to carry on the tradition.”
And yet not one of the young generation could fiddle or pipe. Still, when he piped the tune, the younger children started dancing, leaping, and whirling, with Agnella in the center, jumping up and down.
Patrick gestured me over to him. “I found a blacksmith,” he said.
We walked to the far side of the green and stood together, looking over the half door into the dark forge. The smith was a big man, and silent.
“Very like Murty Mor,” Patrick said. “How could we ever explain a man like him to the young ones? I don’t know if even your sons would be able to understand who he was.”
“I wish I’d known him,” I said.
The smith put a glowing horseshoe on the anvil and brought the hammer down on it.
“A mighty blow,” I said to Patrick. “How I miss Paddy, my sturdy lad.”
Patrick put his arm around my shoulders.
“Paddy and Michael,” I said to Patrick. “I hope it’s true that they’re together.”
“They are, Honora,” he said. “And waiting for us.”
“Paddy’s telling his da what a fine man Mike is, supporting his mother, brothers, and sister with his wages, helping us.”
And now Mike walked over to us.
“The forge,” I said to him.
“My da,” he said. “I wish . . .” He stopped.
“He sees us, Mike. He does,” I said. “He’s looking at you right now in your linen suit and boater hat. He’s very pleased, Mike. I know it.”
I hugged him. Tall like Paddy and my Michael, broad, that same black hair and those blue-sky eyes rimmed in violet. Michael Joseph Kelly.
“Now,” he said, stepping back. “Dinner in Donegal. Aunt Máire will be wondering where we are.”
The banquet hall at Donegal Castle called corned beef and cabbage “Ye Olde Medieval Fare.” But there were good smells in the air and a slew of happy people.
And there Máire was—heading toward us.
Then as Agnella had said, here came everyone: Daniel and his family, Thomas, Gracie and James Mulloy and their two sons and two daughters—and Gracie holding her baby grandchild, Máire’s great-grandson.
All the cousins together, for the first time ever.
An old man stood next to James Mulloy. He was leaning on a blackthorn stick.
“Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph,” I said, running toward him. “Owen Mulloy.”
“Eugene,” he said as we embraced.
So. We talked and laughed and ate; second helpings were free. Portraits of Irish heroes surrounded us: Robert Emmet, Henry Gratton, Charles Stewart Parnell.
“They like their heroes of the Protestant persuasion,” Patrick said to Owen.
“Poor Parnell,” said Owen. “The uncrowned king of Ireland.”
“And we can do without that giant statue of Gladstone in the corner,” Patrick said.
“A stick of dynamite would take care of that,” said Owen.
Patrick and Owen were off, talking Irish politics, two men in the know. “In-dis-pu-ta-ble in-con-sis-ten-cies!” I heard Owen say to Patrick as the talk raced up and down the long table.
A grand reunion, surely.
“What a crowd,” Máire said to me. “Impressive what two sisters can accomplish.”
Charles McSweeney, the piper, walked out on a platform at the front of the hall. “Quiet down now, the lot of you. We’ve some fine entertainment.”
A clutch of fiddlers performed, tin whistles played, and young girls danced, their curls bouncing.
“And now, the tenor!” McSweeney announced.
“Gorgeous-looking,” said Máire as the tenor took the stage.
“I know the fellow,” Stephen said. “He’s a Chicago police captain. Frank O’Neill, you call him. He made a book of Irish songs, collecting them.”
“Sing ‘I’ll Take You Home, Kathleen,’” someone shouted from the crowd.
“That’s not really an Irish song,” O’Neill said. “It wasn’t even an Irish person who wrote it.”
“Well, whoever wrote it, wrote it for us,” said the man in the audience.
“Sing it, sing it!” the crowd shouted.
“It’s a good song,” Owen said. “I used to sing it to Katie before . . . Thank God she died peacefully, in her own bed, with all of her children and grandchildren attending her. But what she desired more than anything, I couldn’t give her. Katie wanted to go home. Ah well, she’s there now, watching the sun go down on Galway Bay.”
More shouting from the crowd. O’Neill said, “You win!” and began to sing. When he reached the chorus—“Oh! I will take you back, Kathleen”—the whole audience joined him: “To where your heart will feel no pain.” We sang together: “And when the fields are fresh and green, I’ll take you to your home again!”
He hit the high note and held it beautifully. There were sighs all around, loud applause. O’Neill raised his hands to quiet the crowd.
“Could we have a Galway song, Frank?” Stephen called out.
“Surely there’s one among you Kellys could sing it!” he said.
“Michael!” his brothers shouted. “Michael! Michael! Michael! He’s our singer!”
“All right, all right!” Michael said.
“Clear the way for the Galway man!” said McSweeney.
Michael stepped onto the stage. “I would like to dedicate this song to my aunt Máire, my uncle Patrick, to the memory of my da, and with great love and thanks to my mam, Honora Kelly. Up Galway!”
Cheers at this.
“Hoo-rah!” Patrick shouted.
Michael sang.
It’s far away I am today
From scenes I roamed a boy
And long ago the hour, I know
I first saw Illinois.
I had never heard the song, but I understood the sentiment. An old man, gone for many decades, longs for home, friendship, and the “sweeter green” of Irish ground. And how beautiful Michael sang of this place he could ever only know through our memories. Connected. Somehow, someway, he
was
connected. Perhaps they all were, more strongly than seemed possible. More strongly than I knew.
He began the final verse. I clasped each word to myself.
’Tis all the Heaven I’d ask of God
Upon my dying day
My soul to soar forevermore
Above you, Galway Bay.
Please God. This. All of us together, hereafter and forevermore, beside Galway Bay. Great applause. Michael hugged me. “Thank you,” I said to my youngest son.
We left the dining room to find the sun setting. Darkness dropped over the Fair.
Ed caught me by the arm. “Wait until you see!” he said to me.
And Mike took my other arm. “Here now, any moment . . .”
Mike and Ed counted together, “One, two, three, there!”
In the snap of a finger, there was brightness everywhere. Light outlined every building: white bulbs, red ones, blue, green, yellow— Chicago making its own rainbow. . . . Glorious.
“Fairyland,” I said to Patrick. “Tír na nOg.”
“A mearbhall,” Máire said to me. She’d come up beside us. “And I don’t mean only the electricity.”
“I know,” I said. “We are very lucky. Amerikay saved us.”
The crowd grew bigger and happier. More and more groups of young men and women went by, singing and laughing.
Stephen introduced us to a policeman friend of his named Phil McGuire and Phil’s cousin from Philadelphia, Honora Kennedy.
I nodded and smiled, but I must have looked weary because Stephen asked me if I was all right.
“I’m fine for a woman who’s been around the world in one day. Ed told me there are forty-eight countries and two thousand seven hundred fifty-four languages on the Midway.”
“Ed would know,” said Stephen.
“C’mon, everyone,” Mike said. “I’ve reserved a gondola on the Ferris wheel just for the family.”
“And will we fit?” I asked.
“There’s room for forty-five people. They’re as big as Pullman cars!”
“But there’s more than fifty of us, with Máire and her family.”
“I’ll fix it,” he said.
“Look up,” Ed said to me. “The Ferris wheel isn’t just tall. It moves. It takes a one-thousand-horsepower motor to keep it going. The Eiffel Tower can only stand still.”
“Much better to move,” I said.
Chicago will always be the best for Ed.
So, fifty-seven of us crammed into the gondola after Mike slipped a folded bill to the attendant.
“It’s very safe,” Mike said. “Don’t worry.”
“We’re riding through the air in the world’s most beautiful railroad car,” I said to Patrick, next to me. Completely enclosed, glass windows, mahogany paneling.
“It would put you in mind of the canal boats,” I called out to Máire.
“It would,” she said.
Agnella had climbed onto my lap. I held her close as the huge wheel swung into motion. We went up and up and up, higher and higher until we could see all of the lit-up White City spread out below us.
“If I lifted Grellan’s crozier,” Patrick said, “it would touch the stars.” He raised his arm. “Kellys Abu!” he shouted, and Agnella clapped her hands.
“This must be the way God sees the world,” I said to Patrick. “Before and after flowing together. And look, look, the moon!”
High above the electric display, the full moon shone a strong, steady light. Moonlight slipped along the river, skimmed the top of the lagoon. A gleaming path rippled across the waters of Lake Michigan. Michael . . . marking the way home.
“Where’s Bridgeport?” Agnella asked me.
“There, a rún. There, see the moon on the water?” I pointed. “That’s the river.”
“I see, I see,” she said. “And where’s Ireland?”
“Back there, in the Fair.”
“No, no, not that Ireland. Not the village. The real Ireland. Where?”
“Well,” I said, “you could follow the canal to the river and go south to New Orleans, then get on a boat to go across the ocean.”
“Or,” said Patrick, “you could travel up Lake Michigan to Canada and leave through the Saint Lawrence River.”
“Or, take a train to New York and sail away on a big steamship,” Máire said.
“Or even go west,” said Daniel, who’d been listening, “past China and all around the world to Ireland.”
“Do you have to go over water?” Agnella asked.
“You do,” I said. “You see, Agnella, Ireland is an island surrounded by the sea.”
“Could we ride the Ferris wheel to Ireland?”
“Fly over the water, you mean? The Children of Lir did,” I said.
“Who are they?”
“The sons and daughter of a king, they were turned into swans.”
“I’d like to be a swan,” Agnella said.
“You know, Agnella,” I said, holding her closer, whispering into her ear, “you can go to Ireland in an instant. Close your eyes and imagine—Ireland will be there.”
“But what will it look like? Are there birds and flowers? Tell me, please.”
“I’ll tell you, alanna. I’ll tell you everything.”
Our moment at the very top passed. The wheel turned. We faced west as we started slowly going down. Beyond the lights of Chicago, away from the moon, the dark prairie stretched out, no limit to it. Irish people are scattered over the length and breadth of you, Amerikay. Have you swallowed us up whole and entire?
“Are you sad?” Agnella asked me as we stepped off the Ferris wheel.
We stood together for a moment, looking up. I bent down to her. “Why would I be sad?”
“That the ride is over,” she said.
“Oh, but it’s not, a stór. The wheel will keep moving. Circles and spirals,” I said. “Life is circles and spirals. That’s why the great stones of Ireland are carved with circles and spirals, to show us nothing ever really ends.”
“Was it the Children of Lir put them on the stones?”