Cry Heaven, Cry Hell. Howard Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ could see that Patrick was more interested in being with his friends than in family outings by the way he was eyeing some of the teenaged females involved in the mock battles, bread making, flag sewing, and cooking activities. He also was excited about engaging in a pickup baseball game with some of the young men of the community. He decided to pursue some of his own interests, as he watched a rather interesting lady bend over to wipe a smudge off of her shoe. He smirked at her and said it would be less interesting to him, but kinder to her if she let him wipe it off for her. She stood up all startled and blushing to tell him to mind his own business and to take his rude brogue back to Dublintown, or wherever he came from. He laughed and said Dublin wouldn’t exactly appreciate his presence; he further indicated he’d take her on in a game of darts at any pub in Belfast. At this, her anger subsided, and she laughed. She told him that she was looking for a job as a mock nurse in the mock battle. He hired her for the job. She was so excited that she didn’t ask if he worked there. She asked when she could start, and he said he didn’t know, but he’d ask the personnel manager if she gave him her name. Before she could get all angered again, he asked if she’d give him and his family a tour followed by the best Irish dinner she ever ate. Her name was Molly Karhill. The anger that started in her soul was changed to laughter by the antics of Tyndall, Moses, Mendel, the rest of the Mikawber/Doleman clan, and last, but not least, Craine. What he expected to be the worst smack in the kisser turned out to be the nicest kiss he ever got.

      There were picnics in the park and swimming at the beaches in Virginia, New England, Coney Island, trips on the Freedom Trail, trips to presidents’ homes, to museums. Molly accompanied Patrick to Hebrew classes and learned to read Scholem Aleichem in Yiddish. She also learned to read the poetry of the old Gaelic writers from the Protestant minister and some of the priests. He even introduced her to Bugs Moran, who was struggling, in vain to keep his empire from crumbling to dust. She was aware of his notoriety, but she enjoyed him as a person from it. Craine felt the pangs of guilt about considering another woman to take the place of Malkia until he had a talk with Patrick about it. Pat said that his leaving home was but a few years off, and though he loved him and Grand Da and Da Moses, he’d be building his own life. He said he also found Molly fun and loveable.

      The following weekend, Craine took Molly to a cave in the Berkshire Mountains. She thought the woods were romantic and groaned as they ascended the peaks to the cave. She was awed by the point where a stalactite merged with a stalagmite. A tear came to Craine’s eye as he described what the merger meant to him. It meant that the righteous anger of God was joined with the unrighteous greed and lust for power that Satan sought and that Mankind would be in an eternal conflict over which could be applied to do the most good. Molly startled him with a question that asked why doing good had to be attached to anger. Couldn’t loving one’s self and one’s fellow man be a guide for seeking the good in life?

      Craine considered this proposition and tried to annex this thought to his belief that he had to fight for everything he got. Molly told him the story of the friendship that developed between a lion and a mouse when the mouse pulled the thorn from the lion’s foot, and how Joseph earned the reputation of being skilled at dream interpretation by interpreting a fellow prisoner’s dream and having this passed on to Pharaoh. That night they swam in the hotel pool, and she divested herself of her suit and swam into his arms and kissed him tenderly. He carried her to their room by using the elevator and laid her gently on the bed. They enjoyed the rest of the night making love.

      As Craine had grown up in the violence of the “War to end all wars” and the violence all around him, Patrick had to grow up around men building themselves up at the expense of others to the extent of creating a disparity in the income available to owners and producers. Sympathy for the little guy with the guts to work his way to the top has been a cornerstone of American philosophy. When Clyde Barrow made the statement, “We rob banks,” it won him a name amongst many impoverished small time dust bowl farmers. When the monied classes found themselves reaching into empty pockets after the stock market crash, they began to jump out of windows. Those that survived did so because they found that two parties have to cling together to fight their way through a mechanical, impersonal world, composed of people who don’t care about others. “By the sweat of your brow, shall you earn your bread.” Men like Craine and Bugs Moran were, through the consequences they were suffering, being shown that there are alternatives to getting ahead by stepping over a corpse.

      In addition to the philosophical contrasts stimulated by the meeting of the stalactite and stalagmite, Craine had an ulterior motive: He wanted to take Molly flying. He showed her the plane, explained the history of its building, and uses, and asked her if she wanted the freedom and beauty of the air God had made for them. He took her up in the sky, where the clouds were like vapors of smoke, and the land looked like little squares of green and bustling ants along the highways. She was utterly fascinated by the change in view she saw and was also just as intrigued by being able to get away from the smallness of life, as illustrated by the ease by which a living being could have the life snuffed out of him/her. Viewing the vastness of the sky/universe renewed her faith in the concept of a power beyond Man, whose plan we cannot fully comprehend.

      The hopes of Patrick and Tyndall seemed to hinge together in the hope that Craine could see some good in life. He did not know his mother very well since most of her life was spent trying to remove herself from the earthly existence that bound her pain wracked life to her husband and children. Craine knew the tearful emptiness his father had felt and wondered how he had the strength to love him, as he did. Life was further complicated by the practice of fighting to preserve who you were. His concept was beginning to be shaped into what can we build ourselves to be by loving one another, despite the obstacles in our way.

       Section II

       Rodin La Monde

       Chapter 1

      Before describing the battle that scarred a family name for centuries, I would like to paint a picture of what I saw over two hundred years later at a park site, which was erected on the battlefield that had ended a war. I saw greenery that was divided by bicycle paths, upon which I had attempted to ride a rented bike and had a flat tire. For the first time in my life, I saw a beaver. These sights were not conducive to understanding that British influence and not French influence would prevail in Canada. Yet Quebec remained an area where French influence was heavily felt. Is the argument that might makes right, indeed a truism, or does the suppression of minorities act to create people that are frozen in the dialectic of revenge, as were Craine Mikawber and Rodin La Monde.

      The physical date of Rodin’s birth was 07-14-1887. However, historically he was born on 09-13-1759. On this date a battle was fought on the western edge of the wall of Quebec. It marked the date of the defeat of the French army by the British army and navy. Both opposing commanders lost their lives, and the entire battle took an hour after Britain had laid siege to the city for three months. The point of the battle was to see who had the right to exploit the Native American, as their colonizer.

      Among the French soldiers were militiamen, who were not completely trained. They had not mastered maneuverability skills so that they could fire and reload rapidly enough to keep up a consistent pattern of concentrated fire. Among these was an ill prepared battalion under Charles Michel de Langlade. He was part French and part Odawa (later Ottawa) Indian. He led a battalion of Odawa under the tribal leadership of Lonely Otter. When the consistency of the firing pattern fell to the wayside, a French officer verbally assaulted Lonely Otter then cut his ear off with a sword. He subsequently led his men into a slaughter because he couldn’t hear from what direction the firing of the enemy came. The descendants of this man spoke about the incident from one generation to the next, including men, thought of as French citizens. These were the people of Rodin’s family. And the hatred was passed on.

      Rodin СКАЧАТЬ