" 'She'll be done with all that foolish talk then,' sez me dad. 'I'll have no trouble inside this house of that sort,' and off he goes for his pint and bit with the boys. Kate waits him out, shrewd she is, then stands up fresh as ever and the blood still wet on her mouth. 'Good-by, Mother,' sez she, 'for you'll not see me again.' 'Oh, Jasus,' cries me poor mother, 'don't say that, Kate, for there's some that says you've been made wild by that Driscoll boy and he's to be shot in the mornin', and let the devil take his own but don't bring down trouble and shame on your poor old mother's head.'

" 'Tis not disgrace but glory,' says Kate." The old woman's hands stopped for the first time, immobilized by her words. She repeated the phrase in wonder and her grandchildren seemed to lean forward slightly to catch it the second time. " 'Tis not disgrace but glory."

The hands moved again, spinning, creating. "Ah, God love us, but she ran from the house and the mother pulled a shawl about me and sez, "Follow her, Mary. Follow your mad, wild sister. Don't let her get herself into something terrible. Your dad'll kill her for her wildness one day.' Well, I followed her but she ran so quickly, Kate did, always faster even than my brothers, and headed straight as an arrow to where the lads held their dark secret meetings, and weren't the English always trying to find out where, but couldn't.

"Well, I waited the long cold night, not knowing what I feared the most, those crazy plotters inside or the English outside or my own father himself waiting at home. I was a slip of a girl then, yes.

"And then the dawn came, all cold and shining hard. Out they came, the plotters, all sleepless and frozen-eyed from plotting their terrible plans all the night long. At first, I didn't even know me own big sister, she seemed for all the world some fierce dread stranger, her hair loose and wild, her eyes all large and seeing things not there and not seeing what was. I caught her arm. 'Kate,' I sez, 'for the love of God, Kate, it's your own sweet sister Mary and the mother sent me to fetch you home.' And she turned to me and sez in so strange and lovely a voice it sent the shivers along me spine, 'I'm goin' to me own home with Johnnie Driscoll this mornin' and we're to take some of them with us, but they'll go their own separate road from us. It's hell for them this mornin', dear.'

"And, oh, holy saints protect and love us but she was a sly one and kept her arms locked tight inside her shawl for that was where she carried the sticks of dynamite.

"And marched proud she did, right to the encampment where they had the poor lads all tied up to their death stakes and themselves lined up and facing them with their great long guns. And I stood shaking with the fear of death, and not ashamed to admit it." The old face looked up, scanned them, dared any to call her coward but no one did. "Well," she continued, "anyone with any sense at all in their heads would have feared that dreaded place, but not Kate. Went right up to that British commander and all his soldiers there about him. Shook her head of wild black curls in all directions and he was taken by the astonishing beauty of the girl. He sez to his men, Well who's this beautiful thing here?'

"Well, Captain,' sez my Kate, all soft and sweet, 'why don't you and your good lads go on about to your homes and tend to your chores? Sure, what is it you're about this early in the mornin'?'

"He laughed, the captain, and sez, 'I'll tend my chores, girl, and then have some time for you.' And at this, doesn't Johnnie Driscoll, at the stake, let out a terrible earth-ripping cry to reach heaven and hell and it stopped only by the louder sound, the sound of guns going off all in the row, for the captain had given his signal behind Kate's back and the men fell dead and dying at their stakes and then the captain gave his orders and they was all finished off.

"Kate walked all smooth and floating like to Johnnie Driscoll, then turns and faces the British captain, who followed close behind. Jasus, save us, but her face was like white marble, all cold and lovely and composed, and her voice, sweet and lovely and calm. All the more terrible, for there was her own sweet love, Johnnie Driscoll, dead at her feet, his blood all over her skirt.

"'Come over close to me, Captain dear, do, for I've something nice to show you.'"

The tatting ceased. Abruptly, she put the ivory-colored thread to her mouth and bit at it. Carefully, she smoothed the bit of lace on her lap, then looked up. "And show them something she did, God love us. The simple fools clustered about the girl. Oh, Jasus, they flocked to see what it was she had to show the captain and it was the blinding flash of hell. Then there were bursts of dynamite and guns all around for wasn't my poor sister Kate's explosion the very signal the other lads, hidden all about, were waiting for? And they blew up all the artillery the troops had stored there and the explosions went on for all those many hours until your head was like to break from the noise. And many a lad died there that day."

There was a fragile, thoughtful silence and a thin, tired, dreamy voice asked, "And they never did find a single trace of Kate's body, did they, Nana?"

No one turned or glanced at Kit. Her voice was eerie, not her own, and it was easy in the dimness to dream many things about their own wild sister.

"Ah, they never did at all, love, they never did at all. Nor of Johnnie Driscoll either, for though he was seen to be shot, all trace of him disappeared in the explosions, and that's strange, isn't it?"

The old woman rocked back in her chair and studied the ceiling, then said, "And there was some who said they've seen the two of them, wild and happy as you please, racin' up and down a mountainside and laughin' and carryin' on in the devil's own way." She hugged her body, arms close, hands on elbows. "Well, I'll not say nothin' about it, one way or the other, not havin' seen for myself. But I've heard about such things. Yes, I've heard tell of such things."

Kit drowsed, warm and distant, holding the wild, brave girl deep inside herself till she fell asleep where she was on the sofa, and Brian heard her call out once during the night from inside of a dream. He couldn't make out what name she'd cried. He folded his arms beneath his head and stared at the black space and heard the sounds of breathing, each one so individual from the other, marking and defining the sleeper.

His grandmother shouldn't tell Kit the stories about that wild dead Kate; the kid was wild enough as it was. But it was strange, when he thought about it. It was strange. All of them, each of them, part of each other and part of people who had lived and felt and been angry and been brave and been cowardly. Whatever truth there was or whatever Nana made up, they had come from a long, unknowable line of people whose names they carried. Kevin O'Malley, who danced and sang and fiddled, married the old woman, who was young then, and who it was said Roseanne resembled; and Martin it was said bore the same solemn face of some other Martin, long buried in distant hills. All of them carried lines and threads as intricately woven as his grandmother's tatting and tales.

All of them contained within them not just themselves but parts and pieces of each other and of the strangers whose names they bore. Brian watched the darkness become heavier and heavier and he rocked his head from side to side, puzzled by his gentle and contemplative mood.

FOURTEEN.

PEADAR O'MALLEY LEANED HIS long body against the back of the wooden chair and flexed his shoulder muscles. They were good muscles still, fireman-strong and flexible and reliable. Barely moving, just turning his head toward the hallway, he said softly, "If I catch any of you damn kids out of your beds, I'll whip the bejesus out of you and give you a second dose tomorrow." He waited, allowed the bare feet to run almost soundlessly before he checked the hallway. "Lucky for them," he called out loudly through the apartment, then turned back into the kitchen.

"Damn little bastards," he said good-naturedly, "always think they're missing something. Well, Brian, is it some beer you'll be drinking?"

Brian knew they were all a little uncomfortable with him. It gave him the edge he needed for the advantage was all too much with his uncles. He moved his hand vaguely. "Nothing just yet, Uncle Peadar, but thanks."

"All around for the rest?"

Matthew O'Malley reached for his glass and sipped his beer and wished to hell Peadar would get on with it. It was well enough for him, he'd worked an afternoon shift and had all morning to sleep away.

Eugene O'Malley, the youngest of the brothers at thirty-four, turned his dark-blue gaze to his nephew. "Matt treating you all right, Brian? He's getting on for an old fella is Matt, but we can't let him take advantage of your youth and inexperience."

Brian slid a cigarette from his pack and hunched over the match which Gene extended. "Thanks. Well, I think I can handle my end of it, Uncle Gene."

"That was quite a spell of time you were on your own altogether, Bri, wasn't it? Well, you've fit in hack home and done a good job of it too, haven't you? And you managed well enough when you was on your own, I guess?"

Peadar had his father's voice; Gene had his father's eyes and dark hair. Only Matt, quiet, thoughtful, somewhat vague, demanded nothing from him, no explanation. Brian's voice was a little taut and dry.

"Well, I managed, yeah. And learned a few things too, I guess. I guess you'd say I learned the hard way-on my own."

"Well, that's the way a man's got to learn things, isn't that so, Peadar?" Gene's eyes stayed on his nephew though he'd addressed his brother.

Peadar took a long swallow then put his glass on the table. "Well now, then, Brian. I guess we've a few things to clear up here, haven't we, lad? Is there anything you'd like to say, anything on your mind that we might like to hear about before we get to the business at hand?"

It was the old challenge voice: Go ahead, kid, go ahead. Try. We're ready for you, you cute little bastard.

But Peadar wasn't his father and he'd gone through what he had had to go through with his father. It was strange; he felt they were trying to bait him and he felt no need to rise to their bait.

"I thought there was something you wanted to say to me, Uncle Peadar. Hell, that's why we're all here, isn't it? Ma said you wanted to talk to me."

Gene narrowed his eyes and studied him, then said, "He's sharp, Peadar, is our young Bri."

Brian nodded. "That's what I am, Uncle Gene. Sharp. A little young maybe; a little damp behind the ears still. But sharp enough."

What his mother had told him was that they were out of money. They had managed for nearly six months on what Brian brought home from his two jobs, on the small amounts Kevin and Martin kicked in occasionally from their odd jobs, on the few dollars Roseanne contributed from her evening job in Loehmann's department store.

It had come as a surprise; whenever he'd tried to discuss their financial situation, she'd brushed it aside and he'd assumed they were okay. Then she'd told him: the insurance money was nearly gone except for the sum set aside, irrevocably, for Martin's seminary studies. That was untouchable. It had been a small sum to start with and there had been the expenses: her hospitalization and clothes outgrown and food eaten and all sorts of things.

The only thing they had left was a piece of property which his dad had bought along with his brothers.

"They bought this lovely bit of land, Bri," his mother said, "not an hour's drive from here. We were all to build summer cottages. There's a lovely sparkling lake and all and it will all be private, Brian, just the family. Peadar and Eileen and Matt and Ellen and Gene and his family and your Aunt Ann and Uncle Dan Reilly and Maureen and John Kinelli, the whole mob of us was planning to have cottages and keep it for the family to spend summers together."

When his uncles questioned Margaret about her financial situation, though she'd been reluctant, she had finally revealed that they were low and in need of some cash. His uncles had offered to buy out the piece of land his father had bought.

"It was decent of them to offer, Bri. They've even offered a bit higher price than your dad paid. And of course we'd all still be welcome to use any of the cottages any of them finally build. We are part of the family, even so."

He was angry, first, that she'd discussed their situation with them; it touched a raw edge of pride in him. He was either the head of his family or still one of the boys and he had to have it established once and for all.

It was his grandmother who fixed it in his mind, whispered crazily into his ear, dug his arm with her long, hard, bony fingers. "Hold on to that piece of land any way you can. I don't give a damn in hell whose house you're to be welcomed into; hold the land yourself."

That was exactly what he intended to do, though they'd no notion of it yet.

They were treating him as though he were still a boy; they kidded with him, prodded him a bit, provoked him a bit in the way of men, but he wasn't fooled. They considered him a boy.

"Well, Brian, we're all family here and there's no need for any of us not to speak right up," Peadar, the oldest, told him. "Hell, that's why we didn't have John the Wop here tonight or even Ann's husband for that matter either, but just the O'Malley men." Peadar kept his eyes on the beer as he poured into his glass from the small jug. "I understand you've signed up at Delehanty's, lad, and you're studying for the Department examination. It's a long way off yet, isn't it?"

"I figure that'll give me a long enough time to prepare myself, Uncle Peadar. I'll take the exam when I've just turned twenty-one. Maybe I'll get lucky and get right to the top of the list."

"Jasus, Matty," Gene said, "but don't the time go by fast. Here's our Brian's son and talking about making the list. I look at you, Brian, and I see myself not all that many years ago. It goes fast, the years, lad."

"I guess so. But that's not what we're here to talk about tonight, right?"

Gene clicked his tongue sharply and nodded. "He's a sharp guy, right, Peadar?"

"All right then," said Peadar, finally. "We've been keeping our eyes open, lad, and, God knows, we realize how hard things've been. You've done a good job, keeping your heads above water, but you know, there's nothin' to be ashamed of at all in running out of the cash on hand. And you're just a lad and you've done a fine job. We know you've been near to killing yourself working that hard-"

Matt observed dryly, "He doesn't exactly kill himself on my wagon. So if he's near death from overwork, it must be from whatever the hell he does in the Loew's Paradise at night."

"Ah, well, when we get him in the Department, Matt, he'll learn what hard work is," Gene said. "Unless he becomes one of the forty thieves, like Peadar here, and learns to sleep a lot."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Peadar said, "can't we get on with the matter at hand without your interruptin' every minute or so?" He glowered around the table and his brothers shrugged and drank their beer. "Well now, Brian, as you know, we all got together more than a year ago, your dad and your uncles and me, and all of us bought this nice land your mother told you about. And we've started some of us putting up our little cottages and all." He cast a far-off glance, over the top of the refrigerator, his eye fixed on another scene. "It's a grand place, truly. And your dad had a nice plan for his house." He shook his head. "Ah, may he rest in peace, Brian had some plans of his own."

"May he rest in peace" circled the table.

It was Brian who brought them sharply back. "Mom says you want to buy our piece of land and divide it amongst yourselves."

Peadar watched him closely. "Well, that's a sharp choice of words, lad, for the reason we've offered to buy is to give you a bit of cash rather than us a bit of land." He raised his chin slightly, ready to see if any offense was intended.

"I realize that, Uncle Peadar."

"It isn't that we're givin' you something for nothing, Brian. God knows, we're all family here and we've all our pride and don't take something for nothing. We've offered your ma a fair price, so there's no problem and everyone should be happy," Peadar said. "And of course, lad, as I've told your ma, why you're all of you to come to the lake any time-"

"Well, there's just one thing, Uncle Peadar."

Peadar leaned forward; they all sensed the tension emanating from the boy. His finely cut profile held very still and he met Peadar's eye straight on. He seemed a little straighter in his chair; something had definitely changed in the room and the change had to do with young Brian. It was as though they all understood: there was something of importance about to occur.

Peadar leaned back in his chair and gave his nephew his complete attention. "And what might that one thing be, lad? Eh?"

He took a quick breath, then said, "I'm not selling."

"You're not selling?"

"That's right."

Gene said, "Well, that's interesting, but the land isn't in your name, Brian, so it's your mother's decision to make, isn't it?"

Brian shook his head slowly and turned to Gene's bright stare: his father's narrowed hard look. "It's in my name now. I thought it would be a good idea, since I'm the head of my family. Mom signed it over to me."

"Signed it over to you? What's that mean?" Peadar demanded, for it meant more than he had been prepared to concede.

"It means the deed has been transferred to my name. It means that I'm the owner of the acre of land which is smack in the center of your property, Uncle Peadar." He licked his lips and tightened his fingers along the edge of the table. "And I've decided I don't want to sell." He waited but held their attention so that they knew he wasn't finished. Quietly, he added, "Just now, that is. And not to any of you."

"Well, exactly what's that supposed to mean, Brian?" Peadar asked in his soft, low, intimidating voice. "The choice of words has me a bit puzzled, lad, you're not wanting to sell 'just now' to any of us. I seem to hear something beneath the words and you're working your way toward whatever the hell it is you really want to say, so since we're all family here, suppose you just cut out all the baloney and tell us what you've got in mind."

Quickly, Brian said, "Okay." The hard image of his father glared at him, surrounded him, from Gene, from Peadar, now even from Matt, who revealed some inner hardness. Brian cast around quickly at them, found no special face to focus on, kept himself from lighting a cigarette and plunged ahead. "The first thing is that I'll offer you the land for rent. Five dollars a month from each of you."

"You'll rent it to us? Rent it?" Peadar asked, incredulous.

Brian studied his fingernails before he risked the rest of it. "If you don't want to rent it from me, my alternative would be to sell it." He looked directly at Peadar now, the challenge finally out in the open. "But not to the family."

"Holy Mother of God," Peadar intoned and they stared at their dead brother's son and absorbed what he had just said.

"Brian," Gene said, "you ought to get your goddamn head shoved right through that wall."

"You're talkin' a bit of blackmail, sounds like," Matt observed thoughtfully.

It was Peadar who reached out finally and punched him roughly on the side of the arm with the side of his fist. It was a man's gesture to a man, respectfully, grudgingly admiring. "You sure are a cute son of a bitch, Bri," he admitted. "Is that what you learned all that time out on the road?"

"I learned how to survive," Brian said. "Could I have that beer now, Uncle Peadar? I could stand to wet the whistle now."

"I think we'll have a good belt of whiskey all around," Peadar said. "I think we could use it at this juncture."

It was a mark of passage and he swallowed the hard shot of whiskey down the back of his throat and blinked the rush of tears back and absorbed the new way his uncles looked at him with a growing sense of his own place among them.

Finally, Matt O'Malley said to his brothers, "Sweet Mother of God, if the old man could see his grandson, oh, wouldn't he ever spin in his grave. The little bastard's turned himself into a landlord of all things!"

FIFTEEN.

IT HAD BEEN KNOWN from his earliest childhood that Jimmie John O'Brien was marked with a special gift: the gift of joy. It was not a wild and frightening joy, tinged with the constant threat of violent action such as surrounded the O'Malleys. It had a special quality and it was all his own.

Jimmie John had been a somewhat quiet, contemplative child who had done all chores willingly if somewhat absent-mindedly. If rebuked or walloped by his father, it was all the same to Jimmie John for he was not given to grudges or brooding.

Mostly, his failings were caused by his being taken to things most people didn't even notice, and so he forgot what it was he was about. He saw and held to all the minutiae of his daily life. He found a special beauty in sights and sounds and smells and was entranced by the vast unknowable connectedness of things one to the other. He could stand for hours, his eyes scanning and counting and recognizing each of his flock; he knew the relationship each bore to the other, for though they might seem identical, each animal was special and had its own special and particular way of viewing life. Jimmie John saw and knew what others could not be bothered with.

It was this special vision and awareness which filled him, lifted him, enabled him to catch the sudden hint of spring air that wafted through a dark winter morning before anyone else had any idea that winter was indeed coming to an end.

Jimmie John sang nearly all the time. His was a clear, pure voice which could rise and fall with ease, which caressed and tasted and savored and enjoyed equally the saddest of songs or the gayest His instinct for melody was true; he could sing anything he'd heard just once and return the song with something extra added to it: a part of himself.

He joined the O'Malleys, to whom he was twice connected by his two sisters, when he was a fair-haired lad of twenty-two. Even then his look marked him out as special, for at that tender age, his hair, which was long and silky, was as purely white as if he were a man of sixty, yet his heavy brows were black and his eyes a clear grass-green. He had been a gangling boy at home, all large knobby wrists and raw hands, and he'd seemed constantly stooped against the wind. But he had grown into himself and held himself tall and straight in a manner that might be called proud by those who did not know his gentle nature.

The O'Malleys immediately tried to take possession of him. They found him a job as a dishwasher for a small but honest wage, with lunch thrown in, at Schrafft's restaurant on Madison Avenue. His large hands were reddened even more by the harsh water and soap but the constant good nature of the boy was always evident. Before long, Jimmie John, decked out in clean starched white trousers and shirt, neat little black bow tie clipped to his collar, jaunty little hat perched over one eye, was serving in the position of sandwich man behind the gleaming dark wood counter. The manager had guessed, quite rightly, that the lad had a quality which was good for business. He had a lovely politeness and bright pleasant smile and happy manner which came over as great vitality and he was attractive to the lady lunchers.

Jimmie John became a focal point at the counter and he was seemingly unaware of the watchful, hopeful, hungry eyes which followed his swift, graceful, effective movements as he delivered the little toasty sandwiches from the dumb-waiter to the counter, unfailingly delivering the right sandwich to the right lady.