“Well chosen,” McCauliffe said. “Not even Bubba can do much harm to a cheeseburger. What brings you to our parts, Mr. Howell? I know you from your journalistic endeavors, of course.”
Howell gave what was becoming his standard explanation of his presence, one which everybody seemed to accept with a grain of salt. Nobody seemed willing to believe that he had actually come to Lake Sutherland to write a book. “Enda… that’s an Irish name, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed. So’s McCauliffe”
“Seems like I’ve run into a lot of Irish names around here – for Georgia, anyway.”
“I expect you have. There are still a number of us scattered hereabouts.”
“Still? Were there once more?”
“There was a little community of us in the valley before it became the lake. A group that somehow ended up in Savannah instead of New York or Boston during the potato famine of the last century. They were hired right off the boat to work on the railroad up here, and eventually they bought some land in the valley and settled in. Their descendants lived in the valley for nearly a hundred years before the lake came. A very tight little community, they were.”
“I saw a priest on Main Street the other day and thought that unusual.”
“It would be in any other Georgia town of this size, I suppose. There were just enough Catholics in the valley to warrant one.”
“He looked a little worse for the wear.”
McCauliffe smiled and nodded. “Well, the Irish clergy have never held with the Protestant attitude toward drink, and I suppose Father Harry held with it less than most. Still, there was a time when he wasn’t always drunk. After the lake came, his parishoners scattered, and he was getting on a bit. The archdiocese pensioned him off. He’s past eighty, now.”
“Remarkable that the booze hasn’t finished him off.”
“Ah, me lad, you underestimate the resilience of an Irish constitution.”
“Where is the Catholic church, then? I don’t think I’ve seen it in my travels.”
“It’s under the lake,” McCauliffe said, wryly, “like a great many other things hereabouts.”
“You’re the first person I’ve heard who seems less than enthusiastic about the lake,” Howell said. “It seems to have done a lot for the area.”
“For a very small area,” McCauliffe replied. “And a very few people. I’m afraid that my lack of enthusiasm for the lake is reflected in my law practice. There are two lawyers in town, you see; there’s Swenson, who’s the attorney for the power company and Eric Sutherland and for the quality folk hereabouts; then there’s me.”
“What sort of practice?” Howell asked, intrigued.
“Whatever’s going. Drunk driving, the odd bootlegger, though that’s dying out, since liquor came to Sutherland. Terrible thing, legal booze. A lawyer could do very nicely in the bootlegging line a few years back. I do a will now and then, though most of my clients don’t have enough to bother with a will. And I sue Eric Sutherland and the power company for people who get mad enough. Not many of them about,” he grinned. “If you’re mad at Eric Sutherland, I’m the only game in town.”
“Somehow it doesn’t sound very profitable to get mad at Eric Sutherland.”
“A good rule of thumb,” the lawyer agreed. “You’ll fit right in around here.
“Well, I don’t expect to be around long enough for that to matter. Say, do you know the Kelly family, out near where I’m staying?”
McCauliffe nodded, but didn’t speak. He simply concentrated on the stuffed cabbage, staring at his plate.
“They’ve been very nice to me; Brian brought around some firewood, and Dermot came and tuned the piano. Their mother apparently sent them around. I can’t imagine how she knew I needed those things.”
McCauliffe stopped eating and looked at him. “Mama Kelly sent her boys to you?”
“That’s what they said.”
McCauliffe continued to stare blankly at him. “Jesus Christ,” he said, finally.
Howell hardly knew how to reply to that. “Uh, how many Kellys are there?”
“There’s the twins, Brian and Mary, they’re the youngest; Dermot is the oldest, and Leonie comes after him, I think. There were a couple of other kids who died in infancy. Their father, Patrick Kelly, has been dead for twenty years, I guess.”
“Brian’s retarded, isn’t he?”
McCauliffe resumed eating and nodded. “His twin, Mary, is, too, from all accounts. Dermot’s all right, except he’s an albino, of course. Leonie’s… Leonie’s very bright. She’s… like her mother, in some ways.“
“What’s her mother like?”
“She’s… unusual, I guess you’d say. After Patrick… passed on, Mama Kelly made her living for a long time – raised those children – as a sort of fortune teller. She’s been sick for a couple of years, now, though. Just hanging on, I hear.”
“Dermot says she wants to meet me. I guess I should go by there and thank her for the wood.”
McCauliffe stopped eating again. “John, let me give you some advice; you can take it or leave it.” He kept his voice low. “The Kellys make a lot of people around here… nervous, I guess you’d say. Eric Sutherland is prominent among them. A lot of people will have a piano tuner up here from Gainesville just to avoid using Dermot. You’re not going to endear yourself hereabouts if you have much to do with them. They… oh, Jesus, I’m sounding like some sort of snob. That’s not what I mean to convey at all.”
“Well, just say it, Mac,” Howell replied. He was baffled.
“Oh, shit, I suppose you may as well know about this. It’ll come up sooner or later. Mama Kelly was married to her husband…
Howell laughed. “So…?”
“I’m really screwing this up,” the lawyer said, shaking his head. “What I meant to say was, the parents, Patrick and Lorna – that’s Mama Kelly – were brother and sister.”
It took a moment for this to sink in with Howell. “Jesus H. Christ! And they had how many kids? Why didn’t the law…?”
“The valley was a very backwoods area for a long time, until the lake came. People just minded their own business. After the lake came, though, Eric Sutherland and some other prominent locals started making noises about doing something about it – arresting Patrick and Lorna, I guess, and putting the kids into an orphanage. Then… ”
“So what stopped them?”
“Then Patrick died – a tree he was cutting down fell on him – and it seemed better just to let things lie, I guess. There wouldn’t be any more children, and nobody would ever have adopted the others. Dermot was nearly grown, anyway, and Brian and Mary were… well, you’ve seen Brian. The whole thing just died down.”
“What about the priest? You said he’d been around here for a long time. He would have had a lot of influence with Irish Catholics, wouldn’t he? Couldn’t he have stopped it in the beginning?”
“John, what I’ve told you so far I know to be true. But this, I stress, is just rumor. Nobody knows for sure but Lorna Kelly.” He paused, seemed undecided as to whether to go on.
“Well, come on, Mac,” Howell said, “you can’t just leave me hanging.”
“It’s said that Father Harry married them in the church.”
Now Howell was speechless. “Well,” he was finally able to say, leaning back in the booth and shaking his head, “every small town has its eccentrics, I guess, and its skeletons, too.”
McCauliffe shrugged and returned his attention to the stuffed cabbage.
6
There was a parking ticket waiting for Howell on the windshield of the station wagon. He had put money in the meter, but his conversation with Mac McCauliffe had kept him at Bubba’s longer than he had anticipated. Five bucks down the drain for want of a dime. The back of the ticket said that it could be paid at the sheriffs office, opposite the courthouse.