DAD SAYS SO
DAD SAYS SO (An irish story)
It had been a cold autumn, but now it seemed an indian summer was approaching. So it was. The last day of October was pleasant in Miriam’s small cottage on the side of the Birr road , and the front door was ajar late in the evening. The breeze blew it open and closed again.
Yet again her daughter, Helen, had forgotten to close it properly - almost as if she deliberately forgot. In the kitchen Miriam dried her hands on her apron and came to the door to see if it was someone calling. She stuck her head out in the near darkness, looked left and right down the road and over the boggy landscape, and sniffed the warmth in the air. Not a living soul was to be seen on the road right or left so she closed the door firmly.
“Helen, how many times have I got to tell you? Close the front door, girl!”
Slowing her pace on her way back to the kitchen, Miriam’s knuckles rapped on the closed bedroom door, her voice a little tired at the end of the long day. Through the closed door she overheard the sound of her twelve year old daughter talking about her collection of grouse feathers.
“Sorry mum,” came the reply from behind the door.
There was no point in reprimanding the girl about the forgotten door-locking, thought Miriam. She was a good kid, went to school, got pretty good marks, did the washing up, and some other chores. A good daughter really. And it was so unfair what had happened with her father’s terrible accident on the bogs two years ago. So mum sighed and kept on walking to the kitchen.
Little Helen O’ Connor was very close to her daddy and they shared many interests like the wild-life on the bogs nearby - plants and butterflies, hares and red grouse. They often went for long summer walks especially around Arragh More bog, looking for hares, or additions to her colorful collection of red-grouse feathers. And in spring the carpet of bluebells in Capard Woods near Slieve Bloom. Oh, it was gorgeous.
Miriam didn’t share their zeal for the wild, but loved seeing the pair of them so close. Mum didn’t interrupt her daughter but sauntered thoughtfully back to the kitchen down the long passageway while her daughter continued talking with her dad for some time.
“How are you doing tonight, princess?” he opened, with a big hug around her narrow shoulders.
“All right dad - where have you been all this time? Have you been away? I missed you so.” She stressed the last “s” with her slight lisp which he loved.
“Oh, just out hunting on the bogs. Caught nothing, but got you another feather from an abandoned red-grouse nest. Been empty at least six months, I’d say.”
His daughter reached to a shelf and took down a small straw basket decorated with her drawings of birds’ feathers. “Oh lovely - I’ll put it here with the other five and now the collection is six. It’s very pretty.”
“And what now, Helly? Is your homework done?” he smilingly enquired in feigned disapproval with a frown which was hard for him to hold ….
“Oh yes, I will give that essay in tomorrow - and after school there’s Siobhan’s party, . .” she added with excitement.
“Daddy, can you tell me again about that time you and Uncle Joe almost caught the big hares on that Slieve Bloom trip ? You know, when Uncle Joe hurt his leg so bad....er... if you want to, . .” she added quietly.
“Well sure, if you’d like to hear it again - but listen carefully a minute - I know you have that party, but tomorrow I don’t want you to go to school on the blue bus. Instead, you and me, we’ll go for a ramble in the Capard Woods, eh?....Now remember that tomorrow - - so be sure you don’t forget and just go off to school.”
Helen’s face brightened like the morning sun. “OK dad, just you and me - in the woods and the yellow leaves, it sounds like a great idea ! I won’t forget,” she enthused.
And as he rambled on about the hare hunt with Joe, and their guns, and the rainy weather, and Uncle Joe falling and breaking his leg, she felt secure and in familiar territory, and enjoying a story she had heard so many times before, she almost knew it by heart. Then at last she fell asleep - for once without crying.
Martin O’ Connor was senior maintenance mechanic working on the Bord Na Mona leviathan peat-cutting machines in the bogs in County Offaly. Enormous blades and tractor caterpillars had to be kept in perfect condition: and it was his work. He prided himself on his skills handed down by his own father. If the machines needed serious repair they had to be loaded onto trucks and transported by road to maintenance factories many miles away. Martin prided himself on minimizing the danger from these road trips by keeping his blades and caterpillars perfect. They had never gone to the factory on his shift.
The bogs were more than just a workplace to him. Martin loved to go there, hunting hares with his brother Joe at weekends. Just over two years ago, Joe’s leg had been hurting really badly so Martin had gone alone, hunting in the bogs. He hadn’t come home all day. Miriam had called the police when it got to midnight. Everyone had waited with long-ash cigarettes and bitten nails, but the worst had happened. Days of frantic worry and weeks of gradual resignation had passed, but he had never come home - and he was never found. The coroner had pronounced that he was “presumed drowned” in the bog.
Martin’s little daughter Helen was absolutely grief stricken and in shock for a long time; and even after two years was still crying herself to sleep each night.
The next morning, Miriam was serving up porridge and asked her daughter, “Were you crying or talking last night?”
“Was talking with dad... And he gave me another feather, and now I got six - wanna see? “
Helly dashed to get the decorated straw basket from her bedroom and shoved it on the table. Miriam looked down into it - still only five feathers as before - and she turned sideways, trying to hide her sad face. “Uhuh - um - yes, lovely, . . . . aren’t you a lucky little girl to have so many,” she nodded in pained disbelief, pushing a spoon towards the plate of porridge for her daughter, ”Now eat up or you’re going to be late for school.”
“And he told me not to go to school today, mum,” Helen added.
“What?! But why, Helly? . . . you have an important exam today and your friend Siobhan is going to expect you at her Hallowe’en party after school. . . . “
“But dad said to be sure not to go ‘cos the two of us are going for a hike up at Capard, so I’m not going to school. Dad says so,” she mumbled, shoving a spoon of porridge into her mouth.
The girl was adamant about going for a long walk in the woods. So many times she and her dad had walked there, where the spring carpeted the forest floor with bluebells and the autumn spread golden leaves everywhere, as it did today.
Just as mum was about to argue again in favour of school, the discussion was abruptly ended as Auntie Maria rang at the doorbell.
“Hello, Miriam - just popping in on my way to the shops. Do you need anything?” And she stepped in for a chat.
Helen took advantage of the diversion and hastily said hello as she dashed out the door into the garden and was gone in seconds across the fields to the distant woods.
“Oh my god, Maria,” confided Helen’s mother, “do you think she will ever get over the loss? It’s two years now since Martin. . .you know.. . . died. She was starting to calm down and was ‘seeing’ him less, but now it has begun again. . . . like last night when she was ‘talking to him’ for ages. Maria, I swear she was there for about two hours talking to an empty room. . . I’m starting to get really worried about her.”
Maria’s eyes poured out sympathy for her sister. “ I know what you mean - a neighbor of mine had a similar situation when her niece felt gutting pains in her stomach for months with the loss of her mother to cancer. It sometimes takes years, you know . . . ” They made some tea and sat down for an extended sisterly chat.
The young girl loped across the damp fields and her long legs soon carried her to her favorite all-day walk in the Capard Woods. Ploughing through the deep golden leaf carpet felt oddly peaceful; and, free from school, Helly was filled with gladness when a red-grouse suddenly flapped her way out of the undergrowth and up through the trees skyward. Freedom. Helen O’Connor felt as though something had soared over her and lifted a burden from her narrow shoulders. And somehow, at that moment she finally, subconsciously, accepted in her heart that her daddy was really gone.
Helly picked up a grouse feather left by the escaping bird.
“Now, that makes seven,” she muttered to herself almost silently. She lay down in the deep, springy undergrowth and gazed at the sky, just allowing her soul to experience the lightness.
“No,” she suddenly said out loud, “that’s only six.” And she smoothed the vanes of the feather out and carefully put it in her shirt pocket.
Nine kilometers away, that same afternoon, there had been a horrific accident on the main road to Birr. A huge truck carrying heavy peat-cutting machinery had collided with the blue school bus. The two vehicles had rolled down into the ditch and all eight schoolchildren in the bus had been very badly injured.
The fire brigade cutting the wreckage apart to rescue the kids could count only eight unconscious forms. The police knew there should normally be nine, until one of the officers telephoned the school and was told that Helen O’Connor was absent from school that day.
“She was a lucky little girl, I’d say,” whispered the fireman cutting through a door with his acetylene torch.
Helly got back home towards sunset, and showed her mother the new grouse feather.
Her mother asked, “How many does that make? Seven?”
“No, mum, only six.”
And the mother and daughter hugged each other tightly and smiled with unspoken understanding.
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