“He looks a bad dose,” judged Murtagh, giving a wide berth to both his little brother and the peddler, whom Tighe was attempting to march toward the door. Noises that seemed to have their source in Pinchas’s diaphragm had begun to emerge from his throat. “Leave off your hold on his oxter, brother,” Murtagh warned. “The man’s about to spew.” Then sure enough, announced by an animal caterwaul, a black substance began to issue from Pinchas’s mouth like feathers from a punctured pillow. Tighe leapt away from his captive to join his big brother as witness.
“The feller’s a fair volcano,” he observed.
At that moment the door opened and Katie appeared, her arms evenly burdened with her produce basket and the earthen slop bucket. Dropping both, she cried, “Lord save us, he’s that sick again!” She straightaway directed her brothers to help her get the afflicted back to bed, though neither would come near. Draping Pinchas’s arm over her shoulder, she returned him to his pallet, where he lay floundering like an eel, alternating his tormented moaning with a racking cough. In the midst of his travail he was heard to ask for a rabbi.
“I fear there’s no such creature in this town, my heart,” Katie assured him.
“Then get for me a priest!”
Lifting a brow in consternation, Katie nevertheless turned to her brothers, who remained stock still. “You heard him, you fluthered elephants, get him a priest!”
Murtagh wondered aloud what the sheeny might be wanting with a man of the cloth.
“Thimblewit,” barked his sister, “would you deny a dying man his last rites?”
Murtagh and Tighe exchanged looks, shrugged, then started for the door, clearly glad of an excuse to quit the wretched scene. As they exited the shanty, they were met by their pickled old man, who was stumbling in arm in arm with his future son-in-law, the barkeep Mulrooney. Florid-faced, Cashel Keough turned briefly to regard his departing sons, then back toward the misery on the pallet.
“What’s all this ruction then?” he inquired.
“As you see,” breathed Katie, with no will left to explain what should have been self-evident.
Pinchas yawped, yammered, and writhed, while Cashel winced and became defensive. “Sure it’s no fault of mine,” he said, though no one had accused him, “and didn’t I tell you from the start he was crow bait?”
Katie paid no attention. She was up again and at the distillery in the corner, dousing a loofah sponge with a beaker containing the dregs of their vile poteen.
“Hold, lass,” cautioned her father, “that’s good shellac yer after wasting on a dead man.” He made to interfere with his daughter, who pivoted in her fury and flung the tin beaker at his head. But her aim was wild and the receptacle sailed past her da’s shoulder to bounce off Phelim Mulrooney’s noggin. The barkeep touched the swelling node on his forehead, whose slope extended hairless to the crown of his meaty skull, and tasted the blood. It did not seem to meet with his approval. “This isn’t the complaisant girl I was promised,” he pouted, and turned to leave, but Cashel held him fast by the rubber collar, insisting, “We had a bargain.”
Again the door swung open and in lurched the brothers with a gosling-headed party wearing a Roman cassock and collar in tow. Other than his soiled vestments, there seemed little of the divine about him; in truth, his pie-eyed visage with its wine-red snoot attested that he was as advanced in drink as Cashel himself. The sweat rolled off his wrinkled countenance in rills.
“God and Mary to you, Father Farquhar,” greeted Cashel somewhat perfunctorily.
“Where lies the candidate for shanctification?” replied the priest.
The sad article whose thrashing and wailing arrested all other eyes and ears was indicated to him. Squinting at Pinchas, Father Farquhar began automatically to recite his office from where he stood, the Latin purling from his lips along with a thread of drooclass="underline" “Miseratumtuiomnipotensdeush …” Having thus acquitted himself of the sacrament, he made the sign of the cross and turned to leave, only to find his way blocked by Murtaugh and Tighe. Still functioning as their sister’s agents, they were responding to her appeal from the death pallet that Father Farquhar not depart without first administering extreme unction. Dutifully they turned the priest back around and shoved him forward toward the infirm.
Forced to his brittle knees by the brothers, the priest fetched a small flask from his cassock. He uncorked it and extended a limpet-like tongue to receive its contents, which were not forthcoming. “It appears I’m fresh out of the holy chrism,” he complained.
Katie offered some cooking oil, but Father Farquhar allowed as how “your mortal soul favors bonded shpirits to attend its journey home.” Katie frowned, but in lieu of the poteen — the better part of which was dripping from Squire Mulrooney’s chin — she presented the sponge with which she’d been bathing her patient’s brow. The priest squeezed it, catching the drops like a nectar on his tongue; then shuddering, declared, “Thish’ll do.” Reinforced by the stimulating drizzle, he began again to recite his office at the parting of the spirit: “Peristamshanctumunctionem …,” sprinkling whiskey over the fever victim’s forehead and hands. The aggrieved girl pressed her fingers to Pinchas’s chest to try and still his agonies. The front of his nightshirt was coated in the lees of the ersatz vomito negro, and when Katie withdrew her hand bits of the awful matter remained stuck to her fingers, which she sniffed. Then her frightened face passed through several seasons of expression, from flummoxed to suspicious to the wry suggestion of a smile. Father Farquhar was merrily rattling off a litany of the sins the poor man must be excused of — sins of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and carnal delectation. He was interrupted, however, when the afflicted sat suddenly bolt upright and cried in a voice that caused pismires to fall from the rafters, “Katie, mayn gelibteh, marry me!”
Then he fell back and recommenced his spasmodic moaning, giving every indication that he was half-dead already. But the reverent mood of that crooked house was broken, the onlookers stunningly disconcerted. As they awaited the peddler’s last gasp, which was surely impending, Pinchas sat erect again. “Marry me,” he pleaded, “so from your kiss I can die!”
Having entwined her fingers with the peddler’s, the girl made an effort to arrange her sheepish features in a show of solemnity. “It’s in the way of being his final wish,” she proclaimed to the priest, as if no other argument could be entertained.
His knees worn out from genuflecting, the befuddled Father Farquhar rolled backward onto his haunches in a most unvenerable fashion, revealing the calves under his cassock like spiny ninepins. With a foot Murtaugh scooted a low wooden stool beneath the priest’s nates to prop him up, but the more dignified perch did nothing to resolve the issue at hand. For the combustible Cashel, however, there was no quandary at all. “I’ll be scragged and gibbeted first!” he bellowed, and confident of allies added, “My friend Phelim here will have something to say about this.” He pounded the barkeep on the back, who fought to keep his balance, muttering, “I wouldn’t have a widder woman.” Then taking heart, he asserted, “The girl is anyhow a sack of cats. The dead man is welcome to her.”