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CHAPTER 1
I am the shadow of the eagle hiding the coalfields from the sky I am the water that's undrinkable, I am the tears you never cry I am the sigh of endless yearning behind the burning of the day I am the warrior remembering that I am the child who came to play.
— DANNY ELLIS, "I CAME TO PLAY"
Liz and I call it Cooper's Cabin, after our landlord and friend Cooper Cartwright. I'm just back from my gig at the Mountain Air Country Club in Burnsville, where I sing during dinner. My wife is asleep in our tiny bedroom, where the wind sneaks through the chinking between the logs as easily as the ants. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, Irene, is also asleep upstairs. After I've checked on Irene, I creep into the bedroom for a sleepy kiss from Liz.
"How was the gig, sweetie?" She reaches out a hand to touch my cheek and is back asleep before I can answer.
I load up the firebox in the living room to the brim — enough wood, I hope, to last till morning. It's our only source of heat, our first departure from central heating. With the heat from the log fire wafting up over the open balcony, the loft is ten degrees warmer.
I catch my reflection in the picture of Liz and Irene on the wall behind the fire. I look very tired. My focus changes to look at the girls. I took this photo — Siesta Key Beach in Sarasota, Florida — a couple of years ago. It's my favorite picture of my girls. The palm trees in the background and the sugar-white sand in the foreground are exotic and evocative, but it's the look between Liz and Irene that gives the scene its strength; it fills the whole frame. That gaze characterizes their relationship. That deep, mother-child knowing never ceases to surprise and fascinate me. My focus changes once more and I'm looking at my own reflection again. I shrug off my vague dissatisfaction with the image. I step outside to fetch my keyboard from the Ford, and set it up in my studio: a tiny, separate building, five yards from the cabin.
Though I'm tired after the four-hour gig and the long drive home, I'm soon tinkling away on the keys as I let myself relax into the music. This is how I unwind: the hair of the dog. It works for me. Tonight, I'm a little fed up. I don't know why.
Maybe it's because Christmas is coming.
Usually, when I'm taken by this mood I'll start a new song. Something nice and sad that no one will ever hear. Thirty years of meditation have taught me to embrace emptiness as a friend. I'm always up for a little downward mobility. I've been here a thousand times. Down I go, playing the keys: lonely chords, seeped in the melancholy maybe only a certain type of Celtic music or Indian ragas are comfortable plumbing. Melodies rise, feelings fall; the sad notes are unashamed of their nakedness, proud of their vulnerability. I hum the cadence, letting it take me. The music articulates what words cannot. I let myself float, then sink more deeply. Words are taking form now, vowels and consonants springing freely from this primal surrender. I let them come up unedited — as I always do with a new song — without knowing their meaning. I barely comprehend them:
800 voices echo 'cross the grey playground Shouts of fights and God knows what I still can hear that sound.
Christ! It's him. The kids are playing in the orphanage schoolyard! He's standing by the gate, watching them, petrified with fear. The song continues to unfold the playground tapestry within my body and soul. I'm transfixed, leaning over my keyboard, aghast that I've allowed this, but unable to stop:
With their hobnail boots and rough tweed Angry seas of brown and green The toughest godforsaken bunch that I had ever seen.
Outside, the cold winter air falls heavily over Tanbark Ridge. It makes its way down through Bull Creek Valley to moan in the pine and poplar that grace the 150 acres of the Cartwright Farm. The wailing wind encourages the reverie. From a well deeper than I've ever drawn from, the song continues to write itself, the words springing up in phrases — as if already written:
I was taken 'cross the schoolyard In the cold December morn Through the games of ball and the wrestling kids All fighting to stay warm There I handed in my trousers and my khaki gabardine Farewell to the last reminders of a home in smithereens.
Silent tears run down my cheeks. I can't stop this headlong descent into the memories of that first dreadful day in Artane. I'm not sure I want to stop it. My quivering lips can barely form the words:
I'll be back for you this Christmas I can hear my mammy say And the bitter truth within that lie I've yet to face today.
Now I'm shaking, and the quiet tears have turned to heaving sobs, each one a wave surging up from my stomach to my chest. I can't believe I'm letting myself feel this. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself. This isn't supposed to happen! It's the kind of indulgence I've avoided for nearly five decades. I've meditated my way past it, transcended it, shouted my way beyond it in rock 'n' roll songs in smoky pubs halfway around the world.
Now, here I am letting that whiny little eejit of an eight-year-old boy come through unbridled in a damn song, for God's sake. Get a grip on yerself, yer falling apart here. That's better. There ya go. Sorry 'bout that. Went a little bit mad there for a bit, didn't I? Tighten up, man! Get above it.
But another wave of sympathy for the boy breaks across my rationale, catching me between compassion and abhorrence. For a moment, compassion wins. Okay. Let's sing the damn song again and see what happens:
I'll be back for you this Christmasa I can hear my mammy say And the bitter truth within that lie I've yet to face today.
Surrendering to the feelings, I allow new words to spring up without conscious direction:
When it gets too much for feeling You just bury it somehow And that eight-year-old abandoned lad Still waits for her right now.
That's it. It's all over. Those words, they'll never go back in again — ever. Under the cover of the melodies and the feelings, he slipped out past me when I wasn't looking. But I'm looking now and I can see him. Feel him, too, and smell that rough orphanage tweed that chafes his thighs and wrists till they're blood raw. I hear him; Mammy, Daddy, Mammy, Daddy, Mammy, Daddy, Mammy, Daddy. There's a fire in the center of my chest, and again I give in to the heaving sobs. Thank God Liz can't hear them. I'll never play this song for her — or anybody else. This stuff is mad and I'm lost in it. But I'm breathing more deeply and freely than I've ever done. Why does it feel so bloody good to be so bloody lost?
I've been lost before, God knows. Meditation and contemplation have shown me some home truths about myself that shattered me to the ... well, almost to the core. My personality is a fake, it's all made up, isn't it? Bits and pieces of stuff I've gathered from everyone, all held together by glue, Scotch tape, and hope-nobody-notices. It's been broken and rebuilt, challenged and found wanting so many times that I'm almost happy to have it fall apart every now and then so I can start over. But this is different. Till now, I always felt sure some angel of light would fix it from above; through meditation, the wisdom of the soul would trickle down and put everything right. Well, whatever is underneath my transcendence isn't getting any trickle-down. It's pissed off, with plenty to say, and I'm not at all sure I'm ready to hear it.
I lock up my studio and shuffle across the yard to the cabin in the cold. I'm a little unsteady on my feet and it's not because of the wind that's shaking the evergreens. As I creep into bed beside Liz, she sighs contentedly. She feels soft and warm — and whole. I snuggle up beside her in the dark, trying to stop processing what just happened.
But my mind is racing. No sleep tonight. After a while, I creep out of bed and tiptoe into the living room. I sit and stare at the fire. It's burning way too fast. Adjust the damper, quick, for God's sake. But it's too late. It's blazing far beyond turning down. He's not going away, is he?
Then it hits me like a smack in the face: I'm talking about a part of myself in the third person; my childhood self. I'm calling that part of myself him. My God! I've abandoned him just like everyone else did. This realization fills me with sadness. Something inside cracks open and I find myself asking softly, Okay, what do you want to say to me?
No answer. But at least now I'm calling him you. That's about halfway between him and me. Maybe that's close enough for now.
I stand up from the fire and stretch. I feel a little better. I get a drink of water, grab my old Washburn guitar from the hook on the cabin wall, and start to sing the song again — quietly, so as not to wake Liz or Irene. It feels so different on the guitar, more intimate and personal than the keys. I'm surprised to realize I want to finish the song, surprised to find that I don't want to lose him again.
I take down the old picture of the orphanage band from atop the oak cabinet: The Artane Boys Band. I've had that picture for almost four decades and I've barely glanced at it. But there he is now, in the back row, with the trombone section; God, but he's a sorry-looking sod! Lost as Lent, no trace of a smile, no glint in his eye. I look at him for a long while with mixed feelings of rejection, pity, and shame.
But I know what I must do. This is going to take a while — all night maybe. But after fifty years, what's the hurry?
I drape myself around the guitar, my chin resting on its waist. As my fingers strum the chords, deep within my breath something moves to make room.
Here they come: memories, gentle as the breezes that blew over Ireland from the Gulf Stream; sudden warmings in the dead of winter that lifted the drab, sunless mornings to new hope. Then they're cold and gray as the concrete of the orphanage playground where I was forced to hide my sorrow away like a deranged relative. Memories: soft and easy as the light from the old street lamps on Green Street, then hard and cruel as the leather strap across my legs on a cold day.
Right from the beginning, even before I had the words to record why, it was so easy for me to drift away into an inner world. The casual rejection of Ma and Da was surely present even before my first memory of it at the age of two. I had impetigo, my face was red, raw, and covered with sores. Da recoiled like he'd seen a leper as Ma tried to get him to hold me.
"Get that scabby git away from me, before I throw up."
"I've been rocking him for an hour and now it's your bloody turn. If he doesn't stop crying, I'll throw him out the shagging window."
Ah, yes, out the window. That's nice. Out I'll go and fly off like a bird. Pushed away from the harshness of their world into a realm of fantasy, I was already an expert at disengaging. Completely self- absorbed, left alone on the cold floor, hardly even noticing the chill, I'd still be in the exact same position when they turned back to me an hour later with the Guinness breath.
"Come to yer mammy, ya poor unfortunate crature. Yer bloody freezing with the cold."
Ah, that's what that funny feeling is — cold.
Hunger was the same.
"Ya must be starvin', son."
Oh, is that what you call it? I was wondering what that feelingwas.
Barely aware of my body, my vacuous look drew more abuse than sympathy. "What's wrong with that bloody child?" relatives asked.
Nothing's wrong with me. I'm grand.
I probably came out of myself a little as my sisters were born — first Patricia, strong and willful, then Kate, sweet-natured and shy. When Da left for other shores to find work, the houseful of girls softened my remoteness a bit. But not too much; I still reserved the right to vanish inside myself at the drop of a hat. That was a skill I wasn't going to give up without a fight, a fight I would win until I was forced to show up by events on the Artane playground.
If I'd had the language then, I might have said I was being shaped by absence; absence of love, warmth, touch.
CHAPTER 2
Yeah, absence. It's all over the bloody place. Now, it's the absence of Black Bob, my Christmas present, that's causing all the trouble.
"Where's me Black Bob annual?"
My two younger sisters don't even look up from opening their presents, wrapped in yesterday's Evening Herald.
"What Black Bob annual?" Ma's pretending not to remember her promise.
"The one you said I'd be getting on Christmas morning."
"I never said any such thing." Ma rubs her belly tenderly. She's been doing that a lot lately.
"You did, Ma, didn't she, Patricia?"
"No, she didn't." I wish I had more important enemies than Patricia, but at least she's more than willing to be my first.
Ever since the day I played football with her orange, Patricia has hated me. I kicked that unfortunate orange all the way down Moore Street to Parnell Street and up Little Britain Street to join with the lads, John O and Jemser, on Green Street, booting it all the way to number nine, where we live. Finally, I carried it up the stairs, where Patricia lay sick in bed with the flu, for which the only cure, known to all in Ireland except meself, is an orange.
Ma meets me at the door. Behind her, Kate, my youngest sister, is holding Patricia's hand as she lies in Ma's bed in the living room. Ma's hand is outstretched for the magical cure. I give it to her and she drops it instantly.
"Jesus Christ, what happened to that bloody orange? It's squishy as a squashed fish." Ma groans. "What did you do to it?" A little smack on the head for me.
"It's not just my fault, Ma, I swear. Jemser and John O kicked it too, up the street like a football."
"I'll kick you up the street, you dirty-looking eejit. That orange is good for nothing now. You've kicked all God's goodness out the bloody thing. Patricia could have new-monia for all you care."
I wish she had, I thought, and as if she heard me, Patricia started up like she was a banshee trying out for a job on Halloween.
"Oh, me orange! It's all flat and floppy. I'm awful sick, that's what I am and I'll never get better now. Yer just a fecking bowsie, Danny Ellis!" Ma smacks me across the head again. "Stop cursing, ya Protestant, or I'll banjax ya."
"I'm not cursing, Ma, it's Patricia."
"Don't call me Ma either. Call me Mammy. Only poor people call their mothers Ma."
The orange was months ago, and don't ask me why, but Patricia's still mad at me. Maybe she needs enemies too. No help there then, from her. So with Black Bob's absence laying the seeds of a lifelong hatred of Christmas in my six-year-old heart, I do the only decent thing a lad can do at my age. I run away. Later in the evening, as the girls are doing girly things with girly toys, I take off for America.
Patricia couldn't care less if I run away and I'm not sure about Ma. Patricia's full of a wild, quick fire, like the newspapers Ma burns when there's no wood. They flare up real fast and swoosh up the chimney. That's Patricia — blue-red flames quick as lightning. Wish I could give dirty looks like that; she could stop a bus. So she doesn't care less whether I run away to America or China. Kate cares, but she cares for everyone, so that doesn't really count. What's the use of having someone on your side who's also on everyone else's? But Katie is everybody's favorite. Her gorgeous blonde curls fall around her sweet, wide eyes like the golden, spirally Christmas decorations Ma's hung beneath the gas mantles on the walls. I love Katie and she loves me. I love Patricia too, but I wouldn't tell her, she'd probably ... well, I don't know what she'd do cos I've never told her. Maybe I should tell her. But I'm afraid. I'll practice on Katie first. I give her a kiss. Katie's heart is as open as the gates of Smithfield Market on a Wednesday morning. She cried all day when I first started school at Halston Street. I'm her hero. If I wasn't afraid of me own shadow, I'd fight anyone who upset her. But she's too sweet to ever get upset at anyone, so my cowardice is never revealed.
But she's going to miss me in my absence. I'm off to the docks. I'll cadge a lift across the ocean on a boat and I'll meet Da in New York. He'll buy me a Black Bob annual and I'll join him in the American army. Wait, now. I'll need his address. I grab one of his letters from the stack behind the clock on the mantelpiece and stick it in me back pocket.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Boy at the Gate"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Danny Ellis.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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