A Tale Before Departure

By John F. Dillon

Can murder and death be predetermined by the utterances of a drunken curse?

A stranger carrying an unusual cloth handbag engages in conversation with a fellow traveler during a flight delay. When questioned about the bag, the man relates a gloomy tale.
His tale begins when a clap of thunder causes a peacefully grazing bull to stampede into a young man. The trample mans body is later linked to the beating and rape of a young girl found comatose at the bottom of a rocky ravine.

Shrouded in mysticism, the travelers narrative chronicles four generations of tragic marriages-a soothsayers cursed son forced to flee Ireland during the Irish Uprising, a secreted child, an alcoholic mothers neglect, self-imposed isolation and untimely deaths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467037679

John F. Dillon

Author of Teejus Journey, Return to Islamorada, Downsized, A Fool and the Jew, and Passage Notes as well as numerous short stories, John F. Dillon is the father of four boys. After a stint in the U.S. Navy, John returned to Long Island and married. A graduate of C. W. Post College, John began his writing career in the early 1900’s. He now resides in Tamarac, Florida with his wife Sharon.

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© 2011 John F. Dillon. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 5/10/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4670-3768-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-3767-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

   Ma   

Ireland

Liam

Gary

A Very Sick Man

The Social Worker

Plan Development

Goodbye

Arrival

The Orphanage

Daily Life

Visitors Day

Christmas

Sister Marion

Mournful Years

Futile Search

Educational Decision

Rules

Creating Personality

Revelation

The Street

The Navy

Aura

First Time

Lovers

Marriage

Routine

Cost

Warning

Home

The Accident

Neglect

Chilling Ride

The Interrogation

Alone

William

The Old Man

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my three sons, Jeffrey, Michael and Gary who will always be in my heart as well as my oldest son-John Joseph.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of my editors Gina Blasé Elliott, John Letter and Sumr Carter, my friend Frank Fortunato, and of course, my wife, Sharon.

Information on the Great Irish Famine was obtained at the following internet sites.

Great Famine (Ireland) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

An Gorta Mór: The Great Irish Famine

history.wisc.edu/archdeacon/famine

The History Place - Irish Potato Famine

www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine

Prologue

Some time ago, while researching material for my novel ‘Return to Islamorada’, I was returning to Long Island aboard a flight from Miami to Islip with a scheduled stop at Jacksonville International Airport for change of Aircraft. Upon arrival in Jacksonville, passengers were advised there would be a delay caused by a line of severe thunderstorms passing through the area. I found an empty cafeteria table and was studying my notes when approached by a casually dressed gentleman, slightly older than myself. The trench coat draped over his deeply tanned right forearm, partly covered a most unusual cloth handbag bearing the equal vertical tricolor green, white and orange of the Irish Flag.

May I? he asked indicating one of the vacant seats.

Once he had settled, we engaged in conversation and before long I commented on the bag. Although I couldn’t detect emotion behind his dark sunglasses, I did notice an uptake of breath and quick contractions of the muscles of his long face. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the laminate tabletop and tightly clasped his hands. His mouth tightened then relaxed and he asked, May I tell you a story?

Without waiting for a response, the man moved back in his seat. I want you to know every word is true, he said and immediately began to unburden himself in the same manner as I am relieving myself by telling you.

You should be forewarned that it is not a happy tale.

   Ma   

The story began before the turn of 20th century on one of those dismal days in the outskirts of a tiny village in Southern Ireland not far from Dublin. A cold dampness wrapped like a wet cloak about those venturing outdoors. Late in the day the heavens crashed and released a flashing bolt of energy on a crooked path to hell before crashing with a deafening snap and charring the area beneath the flaking bark of a large Yew Tree. The occurrence propelled a sleepy bull grazing peacefully nearby into a mad charge. The following morning the mangled body of a young man was found in the pasture. The hide of a bull grazing nearby was soiled with splotches of blood. The discovery of charred earth at the base of the tree and the fact lightning strikes being not uncommon to the area reinforced the conclusion that the animal, probably spooked by the crash of lightning, blindly galloped over the young man killing him instantly.

An unusual locket bearing the likeness of a teenage girl linked the young man to the body of a girl found unconscious five-days later in the bottom of a stone-laddered ravine. The body was identified as fifteen year-old Kate Michael who, since her father‘s suicide a year earlier, lived alone in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of the village. She had been severely beaten and raped before being discarded head-first onto the stones where she lay hidden by the dirt and brush that followed her into the pit.

An already exhausted medical profession, fighting mass starvation and disease brought about by a potato blight, all but ignored the barely alive waif. Had they been able, it is doubtful 19th century medical techniques would have been unable to correct the deformations that gained permanence while she lay unattended.

Somehow, almost totally neglected, she did survive. She also survived having been impregnated by her attacker. Consequently, in the crisp air of a December morning the loud cry of a newborn shattered the stillness about the tiny cottage and Kate Michael gave birth to a perfectly normal son she named Liam.

It wasn’t long after Liam’s birth that tales began to circulate about the amazing young girl that defied death. Rumors that she possessed mystical powers and commanded a bolt of lightning from the heavens to strike vengeance on her attacker gained momentum and spread throughout Ireland. Soon, troubled minds sought her intercession with the supernatural.

Many were horrified upon encountering the woman with the long unkempt white hair hanging before her face while shuffling along her twisted path clutching a separated tree branch as crooked as her spine. Her hideous face was so deformed it lacked any degree of symmetry. There was a deep indentation on one side where a smooth cheekbone had once extended. A bulbous mucus covered orb bulged from a contorted purple eye socket buried within the indentation. The adjoining red rimmed socket contained an unseeing milky spheroid. Her nasal structure was damaged to the extent it had lost all sense of smell and greatly reduced the function of her respiratory track. She was almost totally deaf, a condition that resulted with her speaking in a loud, piecing voice frequently interrupted by wheezing attempts to fill her lungs through a continually ajar mouth assisted by air forced through a small hole off the side of her lower lip —the result of a tooth forcefully ejected through the skin—that constantly seeped saliva. The fight for breath accompanying her shill voice conferred an emphasis that made her most unexceptional inferences appear miraculous.

Although horrified, the people returned and their numbers grew. Kate Michael—initially frightened by the attention— came to welcome the adulation and associated compensation from those seeking her counsel after recognizing a source to support the purchase of alcohol and nicotine that she craved for relief from her excruciating pain. Soon, Kate also came to believe she possessed supernatural powers concluding, I wasn’t made to suffer for no reason.

Kate’s son Liam never questioned his mother’s physical deformities or her inability to see or catch a breath without wheezing. He never considered the constant dribble from the hole near the corner of her crooked mouth, nor the loud shrill voice and the fact he had to shout to be heard. Reared by an often intoxicated mother and deprived of the normal schooling only available to Ireland’s ascendancy class, his education vacillated between realism and mysticism— between his mothers’s drunken proclamations and the silent observation of those attempting to gain his mother’s favor.

Ignored by those so absorbed in purpose of the visit they didn’t realize the boy could overhear the hostile remarks about his mother’s appearance and the supernatural powers she supposedly processed. In time he grew to fear those powers spoken with such reverence.

Although, there were many more unskilled laborers such as Liam in Dublin than there were jobs for them, it was through the intercession of those seeking his mother’s favor that enabled him to become one of the workers of the Dublin United Tramway Company. It wasn’t long after gaining employment before he was approached to join the first Irish trade union to cater to both the skilled and unskilled—‘The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union’. While outwardly proclaiming to safeguard worker’s rights, the union fermented views for bringing about a socialist revolution