Free William H. Hallahan - by The Monk Page A

ruptured a blood vessel
in his throat and suffocated and died.
    "To have died thus," the priest told Aunt Maeve, "was
a kiss from God." Some of the family wished that God had kissed
Terry and left the delightful man and his always-ready keg of ale on
earth for a few more years.
    When Hardy died, Maeve was at sixes and sevens, restless, lonely
and secretly grieving for the man who had filled her life "like
a quart in a pint bottle."
    Hardy had been dead little over a year when Maeve brought
fifteen-year-old Brendan to her home. And the first thing she did
after closing the door was to take him into the kitchen, brew him a
cup of tea and say, "I'm not doing you a favor, taking you in.
There will be no debts of gratitude. I've been fond of you since you
were born and I'm delighted to have you fill up my home with life and
vitality. I hope you'll be happy here. It's your home for the rest of
your life. And we're going to be the best of friends."
    Aunt Maeve's house was as clean and polished as a lighthouse lamp.
The story was that it had belonged to a ship captain, some said a
ferryboat captain, who'd had it built on the Brooklyn Heights so he
could have a view of the entire harbor. It was made from beautiful
rose-colored bricks taken from a famous brewery that was torn down at
the time that the old Fulton Street ferry to lower Manhattan stopped.
"And that was even before my time," Aunt Maeve told him.
The roof was slate and there were working fireplaces in every room.
    The house had nautical touches throughout. It was even built like
a ship. The floors were thick ship's planks, teak, taken in salvage
from the Edna J ., a celebrated clipper ship that had partially
burned and sunk in the Erie Basin. The flooring was fitted by a
ship's adz and hand-pegged. Like a ship's deck, it gleamed like
glass. There were Delft tiles around each fireplace, and they all
dealt with nautical scenes. The windows were all oversize and
many-paned to fill the house with light even on the dullest winter
day. In the brick-paved backyard garden there was a heavy brass stand
for a ship's telescope.
    Aunt Maeve told him one day, "I don't care who gets what in
the rest of the world. Let them have whole continents, give them
enough money to fill an elevator shaft in the Empire State Building.
All I want is this house."
    Wherever Brendan went for the rest of his life, he could evoke
that house simply by shutting his eyes. He could hear the old
grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs, could see the cat
cleaning her coat on the deep sill of a kitchen window and feel the
contentment that filled the whole building.
    On the first night Aunt Maeve put Brendan in Terry's old bedroom.
She pulled up the window shade so that he could look out over the
harbor from his bed, bade him good night and shut the door. He was
alone for the first time since his parents had died.
    He lay there thinking of his lost home. He missed the excitement
that his father always brought home and missed his mother's
sympathetic ear. There was no one else in the family he could discuss
his second sight with. He wanted to talk about the black hawk that
had attacked him and about his father's last cry to him: purple.
Purple what?
    Something distracted his thoughts. There was another presence in
the room. He lay alert listening and watching. Where was it?
    A voice said with shrill clarity, "They were drinking beer
behind Uncle Jim's house." Brendan raised his head from the
pillow. "I saw them." Brendan recognized the voice; it was
his cousin Terry's.
    Silence followed. Then Brendan heard deep, inconsolable weeping. A
moment later he heard Terry's angry voice speaking through clenched
teeth. "I hate you all!" Brendan was astonished when he
realized where the voice was coming from. Sullen, scheming, unloving
and unlovable Terry had left emanations of his life--emotional
debris--in this room, and here, years later, like a reluctant magnet,
Brendan was drawing it all to him: He was absorbing all