By Michael Corrigan

It was just after two o’clock when Gettysburg officials unveiled the Irish monument. It was a Celtic cross listing three circled companies of Patrick Kelly’s Irish brigade. A beautiful sun blazed above an Irish harp. An Irish wolfhound lay beneath the cross, mourning his dead master.

John Mulligan had left his two children back in San Francisco, and looked around the field for his father, Michael Mulligan. He could have been waiting for a stranger. As officials described the terrible three-day battle of 1863, noting it was a Confederate Irish soldier who had designed the Irish monument, John Mulligan felt no sense of reconciliation with the man who had fathered him. It was awkward to feel betrayal, still, at the age of 33. 

But he did fight on this field that day, John thought. What a slaughter it must’ve been.

If the crowd expected the ghosts of Union and Confederate dead to rise on the Gettysburg field and demand recognition, it didn’t occur. It was a pleasant warm day. The reddish cross in a small grove of trees faced a green peaceful meadow. As two veterans from each side joined the mayor on the platform and the band played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", John Mulligan wondered if he would even recognize his father. How much had age changed him? 

Then he saw a gentleman emerge from the crowd and walk toward him. He was tall and straight with thick white hair, his weathered face lined; a darkness gleamed in the eyes that made John Mulligan think of a character out of literature: the vengeful Heathcliff. Though now 68, Michael Mulligan possessed a striking handsomeness; he was well-dressed in the New York style of 1888: dark pants, Norfolk jacket, derby hat. John Mulligan tried to remember that awkward first meeting when he was 20 years old, or the sad farewell at the war’s beginning. Perhaps the conflict between the States had become a marker for them both. 

The two men shook hands.

"So nice to see you, son."

"So nice to see you."

With eyes averted, Michael Mulligan tipped his hat to some passing ladies, elegantly dressed. John decided to remain silent.

"I trust the twins are fine?"

"John Jr. and Kate are doing well, Father."

"Good."

"Thanks for asking."

"I enjoy your letters."

"You could write more."

"I could." Michael Mulligan examined the monument. "Nice job, it is. I can think of another they should honor. Then again, war is an obscenity. Why celebrate it?"

The two men found a bench and sat down. John Mulligan glanced at his father, searching for words. The latter had removed his hat.

"I assume this is sacred ground?"

The older man looked surprised. "Sacred? Cursed is more like it. As for the Irish Brigade?" He didn’t finish the sentence.

"Are you ever coming to San Francisco?"

"I could bring a show there."

"A show? The twins would like to meet their grandfather."

John saw a brief moment of pain in his father’s eyes.

"Of course," he said. "How’s the wife?"

"Making clothes. Watching the children."

Another speaker was holding forth in an oratorical style that seemed dated after Lincoln’s eloquent sparseness. For some reason, John remembered a day at the beach. He was a boy chasing his father with a piece of seaweed when the man turned sharply and John ran into the surf. The tide caught him. Strong hands seized his ankles as the tide retreated. John was still spitting sea water when he caught his father observing him.

"You look good, John. Handsome as ever."

"You don’t look so bad yourself."

"I feel ancient." He gazed across the peaceful battlefield. "I often wonder why some people survive and others don’t."

"I guess you knew a few who died?"

Michael Mulligan nodded. "That I did."

"You don’t like to discuss it?"

Again, his father nodded. They watched the milling crowd as the speaker described the glories of war.

"War does make for nice speeches," Michael Mulligan said. "And empty words."

For the first time, John noticed a scar along his father’s temple. When he spoke, it was a man choosing his words carefully.

"In 1852, I met Thomas Meagher in San Francisco. He had escaped exile to Tasmania. I was an exile myself."

"That I don’t doubt. Why?"

"I’ll get to that." John waited patiently for his father to speak. "Meagher, now. Silver tongue he had. He liked to talk, ride horses and drink. I had rebuilt the Jenny Lind Theatre after an earthquake, and started producing shows. When the war broke out, he let me know the Union Army needed someone good with horses. I guess it’s better I didn’t join Meagher’s Irish Brigade. They were slaughtered at Antietam and Fredericksburg. Meagher, sword in hand, had his horse shot out from under him. From behind the stonewall, Irish Confederates shot down their Irish Union brothers."

Michael Mulligan stopped and stared at the grass. Then his voice continued. "Irish and eventually Africans—always on the front lines." Michael Mulligan met his son’s eyes. "I could’ve died there." 

"But you were here—at Gettysburg?"

After a pause, Michael Mulligan said, "Yes—I was. With a unit that’s forgotten."

"Tell me about it."

"Not now."

The speaker had concluded his speech. John felt himself growing hot and edgy. "The war meant a lot to you. You have a silver tongue, yourself. Sure but you left a five-year-old child with friends and ran off to fight, so why can’t we sit and tell stories of glorious charges uphill into Rebel guns?"

Michael Mulligan didn’t answer. A wind blew through the trees.

"Sorry," John said. "I shouldn’t be talking about all this after so long."

"You have a right. I asked you here."

"I was surprised you did."

"Did the Maguire family care for you well?"

"Very well. But I often wondered what had happened to you. Now and then we got a bulletin from the front. Then when Lee surrendered, I thought—"

"Thought what? That I was rushing home? Can you imagine what those three days were like at Gettysburg?"

"I’ve read the history books, Father. I can!"

"Ah yes, the history books. A man with a broken leg watches a grass fire started by hot guns burning toward him, and when he dies screaming, the historians capture his pain so well."

John Mulligan closed his eyes, knowing he had to let the drama of this meeting play out. The band began to play. The crowd dispersed. Michael Mulligan stood up and motioned to his son to follow. As the two men walked, John asked a question: "What happened to General Meagher?"

"They wouldn’t let him recruit for a new brigade. Then he became governor of Montana, got drunk one day and fell off a boat into the Missouri River. He drowned," Michael said, with finality. He stopped and listened to the small band.

"Play ‘Dixie’," he shouted. The band members finished and Michael Mulligan shouted again. "Play ‘Dixie’. Even Lincoln requested it. Let’s not forget, men from both sides died here!"

The piano player looked at Mulligan. "I don’t play that Rebel music."

Michael Mulligan got up on the stage. "Then play ‘The Irish Washer Woman’."

Following the piano’s lead, they broke into the familiar Irish tune. Michael Mulligan threw off his hat and began dancing, his arms straight down at his sides, his legs moving and kicking like a younger man’s. Piano, horns and fiddle carried the lively melody. A few in the crowd gathered and smiled at the amusing spectacle. Some boys clapped. John Mulligan watched his father dancing an Irish jig with a rising maniacal fury and looked away. Color touched his cheeks. Once again, he had lost his father to a distraction. Then he heard a man’s slurred English voice.

"Is that respectful? We’re here to honor the dead."

"And you’re dead drunk," a fat man said.

"So are you."

Michael Mulligan’s boots rang on the wooden platform

"The old bugger can dance, though," the fat man continued. "The bloody Irish are good at two things: drinking and dancing. Can’t fight worth a damn." 

John Mulligan confronted the two men. "That’s my father," he said.

"Is that right? Well, your old man’s better than any dancing nigger I ever seen in a minstrel show."

The two men laughed. John Mulligan looked at the fat drunk and before he lifted the flask to his lips, struck out at the florid face. Blood spurted and he felt the second man hitting him in the back. Michael Mulligan jumped down from the stage and separated them; with a backhand blow, he struck the second man to the ground. The fat drunk knelt, a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. "You hit me," he screamed. "I’m bleeding!"

"I fought here and I have a right to dance here. And you better stay down," Michael Mulligan warned. "Let’s go, son."

As they walked away, the piano player began "Dixie." They hurried across the open space, the crowd parting for them. In another part of the battlefield, Michael Mulligan found a flat rock and sat down. John was panting from excitement.

"What was that spectacle back there?"

"You got angry watching your father dancing an Irish jig, and you hit a fat drunk."

"No, I mean why were you dancing like a—"

"Like a what? People show grief and respect in different ways. For God’s sake, we’re Irish, son. We’re both a little crazy. Sit down. I need to tell you something about this place."

"Haven’t we already heard a speech about Gettysburg?"

"I mean, this rocky field. To the north, Pickett had done what the Irish did before—led a disastrous charge across open ground into cannons and guns. He lost an entire division. But here, near Slyder’s farm, General Judson Kilpatrick ordered Elton Farnsworth to lead his cavalry against some Rebel foot soldiers. They had cover. Look at this ground—rocky, with fences and ditches, terrible for horses. Farnsworth knew it was suicidal. We had won the day. Why lose more men? Kilpatrick, may he 

John looked across the rocky field at the distant woods. He could imagine hidden sharpshooters firing into the charging cavalry, and for a moment, heard the screams of dying men and horses.

"I rode behind Elton. I had trained his men and horses."

"Weren’t you too old to enlist?"

Ignoring the remark, Michael Mulligan continued.

"Not that day. Farnsworth, saber in hand, fell on the hillside, shot to pieces. My horse went down, blood shooting from his snout. I hit a rock and woke up in a Union hospital, screams of men all around me. An oil lamp cast a ghastly light over the sick and wounded." John stared at his father’s drawn tight profile. "I never forgave Kilpatrick for that order. I understood what Pickett felt for Lee. Anger. Disgust. All those men and beautiful horses—slaughtered."

John touched his father’s knee. "They’ll have a plaque someday."

Michael Mulligan looked into his face, suddenly appearing older. "They were summoned to ride into death. Make sure there’s a plaque—to the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 1st Brigade, 3rd Division."

"At least that took you out of the war."

"It didn’t. They sent a regiment to put down the draft riots in New York. We had to shoot other Irishmen who wouldn’t fight to free slaves and hanged every black they could find. God, weren’t we once slaves ourselves? Then I fought at Cold Harbor. Another slaughter, this time under Grant. When Lee finally surrendered, I was a mad man. I could not go back to San Francisco and produce shows and embrace my ten-year-old son. I just couldn’t do it! Maybe if your mother was alive, I might have, but she died giving birth to you."

For just a moment, John expected the old man to cry, but he didn’t.

"Do you blame me she died?"

"No, of course not. And I was wrong. I should have come home. You might have healed me."

"Where did you go?"

"That’s not important."

"I lost you at five. Then discovered you at twenty. Fifteen years, Father. You don’t think I need healing?"

"You did. I’m sorry."

John Mulligan stood up and walked some distance. Somewhere, another band was playing. He saw a group of men taking pictures of each other with a new invention, the portable Brownie camera. He turned and approached his father.

"In 1866, Mark Twain appeared in San Francisco to talk about his trip to the Sandwich Islands. The Maguires took me."

"Twain? Brilliant writer. He talked about Hawaii."

"And wasn’t I impressed to see my name on the program? Mark Twain’s lecture produced by Michael Mulligan and Company! I guess work is one way to assuage grief?"

His father stood up and confronted him. "Yes—it is," he said.

John turned away, not wanting to think his missing parent sat in the wings watching the humorist work while he sat in the audience with the elderly but kindly Maguires. Before he could speak, two policemen appeared.

"Were you the gentleman dancing on the platform, back there?"

Michael Mulligan tipped his hat. "That I was, officer."

"We have two inebriated fellows who claim you assaulted them."

"Two? Against an old fellow like me?"

"I assaulted them," John said.

The two policemen were young but not impolite. The taller of the two looked at John Mulligan. "Did you, now?" He then addressed the older man. "Could you explain, sir?"

Michael Mulligan told the story.

"He’s a bit of a dancer, you know," said the shorter policemen. He had an Irish flavor in his speech. "I used to know the jig, myself. What sort of work do you do?"

"Produce shows for Broadway."

"Did you know Edwin Booth?"

"Worked with the man. Great actor. Tragic what his brother did."

"And here at this celebration of the Irish Brigade, your after askin’ the band to play ‘Dixie’?"

"Let’s not forget, a Confederate Irishman designed the monument. I also spilled blood on this field," Michael Mulligan added. "Irish blood."

"Those two drunks were disrespectful," John Mulligan said.

The two policemen considered this. "What do you think, Officer Sullivan?"

"One of them was English," Officer Sullivan said.

The other officer shrugged. "I guess we can let her Majesty’s drunks sleep it off. Good day."

"I might enjoy a show with dancing girls if I visit New York," Sullivan said.

"You will be my guest," said Michael Mulligan.

As they walked away, John smiled and glanced at his father. "Well—and isn’t my father’s a star, himself. Mulligan the Great!"

"And we have more to discuss. Would you like to take a ferryboat ride?"

"Sure. And where, might I ask?"

"Up Lake Ontario to the Saint Lawrence River. There’s a place you should see: Grosse Isle."

"Where the famine ships landed?"

"Exactly."

John remembered an old photo he had seen of ragged people standing on a barren hill beneath a tall Celtic cross. Michael Mulligan reached down and lifted something from the dust. In his palm lay a minie ball.

*** *** ***

THE paddlewheel was silent and John Mulligan felt as though they were floating across the lake. Only when he walked to the stern of the large boat could he hear the paddlewheel turning in the water. He felt happy traveling with his father who smoked cigars and pointed out the sights. Perhaps they were catching up on all the years lost. He had read about the coffin ships landing at Grosse Isle with Irish emigrants sick or dying or dead. After turning up the Saint Lawrence River in the afternoon, they sat on the deck, watching the riverbank slide by soundlessly.

"So you landed at that terrible place?"

"In 1847. Like Meagher, I was wanted in Ireland."

"For what?"

"Stealing an Anglo Irish landlord’s beautiful wife."

John regretted the question.

"You met my mother in San Francisco!"

"Yes. In 1852. This woman’s name was Maria Burke."

"Perhaps we better not discuss this."

Michael Mulligan drew on his cigar. "I want you to hear the truth. After all, I did have a life before your mother and before San Francisco."

"I find it odd you never talked or wrote about my mother."

"Emily O’ Rourke was a lovely woman. I will talk about her and answer any questions you have. But first, you need to hear about why I left Ireland, why I came to San Francisco, why I left. "

John saw people on the bank waving at them. He didn’t wave back.

"I know why you didn’t come back. The war."

"True."

"So what happened to this mistress? What was her name—Mary?"

"Maria. She died of ship fever."

"Of course. Ship fever." John Mulligan found himself asking, "In your arms?"

"Yes." Michael Mulligan stood up and gripped the railing. "Let’s discuss this later. Shall I bring you a drop?"

"A strong one," John said.

When they arrived at Quebec City, they disembarked and had dinner at a fashionable restaurant. Elegantly dressed tourists seemed everywhere. The city had a quaint decorum John found missing in American cities. Over dinner and wine, Michael Mulligan continued his story. He described being a stable groom and horse trainer and how he fled Ireland with the wife of a tyrannical Anglo Irishman named Nathaniel Burke.

"Burke loved the famine. It gave him a chance to starve out the Irish peasants. Plenty of grain sailed down the Liffey and the River Shannon, going to England. No Irishman could afford it. We were betrayed, by England and by the Anglo Irish. Maria and I took a boat to Quebec with plans to settle in San Francisco. Maria took sick with Typhus when we arrived at Grosse Isle. Then she died." Michael Mulligan stopped. He took a breath. "I buried her and I stayed on to work. God but I wanted to die. I felt doomed to live. I only left when the island closed down."

John looked up from his meal. "So this Maria Burke was the love of your life?"

"I left my homeland and risked my life for her. And if I go back and find Nathaniel Burke still alive, I’ll kill him."

Astonished at this remark, John sipped his wine. "After all this time?"

"We Irish always take revenge for the death of a family member."

"You blame him?"

"Yes."

"You took another man’s wife!"

"He was an evil landlord."

"I see." After a pause, John said, "Tell me about Mother."

The old man leaned back in his chair. He looked into the past and spoke in a quiet voice. "Emily was an amateur singer and actress—very pretty—and after a proper mourning, I knew it was time so I courted her."

"Proper mourning?"

"For Maria, yes. In San Francisco, our theatre was doing well so your mother and I had three lovely years together. After she died in childbirth, I raised you alone. Then the Southern States seceded and I left for war." He met John’s eyes. "I believed in the Union. The Maguires were good people, trustworthy, and I sent them money. I wanted the best for you. After the war—"

"I think we know what happened after the war." John carefully put down his fork and knife. "Tell me, did you ever love my mother the way you loved this English rose, this ‘Mistress Mine’?"

"Watch your tongue!"

"Did you?"

The answer was immediate: "No. Not in the same way. But I did love your mother."

"You loved her but you weren’t madly in love with the woman who brought me into the world. This unfaithful English wife was your true mate?"

"She wasn’t unfaithful to me."

"How am I to understand all this?"

"You can continue hating me. Or you can accept the fact I was a bad father and let me be a devoted grandfather."

"Isn’t all this a bit late?"

"Maybe so."

"Bejasus, I can accept you were a bad father. Did you abandon any children in Ireland?"

A man in a frock coat and black pants appeared at the table.

"As proprietor, I must ask you Irish to keep your voices down. Be aware, we have other customers who wish to dine in peace."

"My apologies," Michael Mulligan said.

"If we want to argue, that’s our business," John said.

"Allow me to buy the best house wine for any diner feeling discomfort."

The tall maitre d’ bowed. "Very good, sir."

They finished the meal. John felt the old bitterness despite the fine food and the strong wine. They left the restaurant and walked around Quebec City until they found an expensive hotel.

"I guess your theatre business is doing well."

"Well enough. We’ve had some disasters. There was a dreadful Richard III recently. Someone smuggled a donkey under the stage who brayed when Richard screamed, ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.’ The audience loved it so we considered leaving it in every night. The actor quit and sued us." 

After getting keys to their room, Michael Mulligan looked at his son, studying his face.

"What?"

"You know, I wasn’t in San Francisco when Mark Twain appeared."

"Good. That’s a comfort."

"I heard it was a great success."

"Mark Twain is a funny man."

"See you in the morning."

John Mulligan walked around the Canadian city and went to bed near dawn. The next morning, exhausted, he met his father for breakfast and then they took another small ferry to Grosse Isle. There was a bitter wind coming off the river. For the first time, neither felt a need to fill the silence with talk. 

As they came within sight of the barren island where so many Irish died, John could see his father’s composure slip. He seemed to tremble and displayed an uncharacteristic nervousness. They left the group following a tour guide and walked to an old church. A service was in progress and they heard a choir singing hymns. A vast cemetery lay beyond the stone church.

"This way," Michael Mulligan said.

They walked past the singing worshippers into the small churchyard dominated by a huge Celtic cross. One of the many scrawny island dogs slipped away as they entered. In moments, Michael Mulligan found a sunken grave he had dug himself 41 years before. On the weathered granite stone, the name was barely legible: Maria Burke, 1822-1847. Listening to the plaintive music and reading the name of the long dead woman, John Mulligan felt a surprising sorrow. He saw his father’s face in profile, the mouth open, the eyes moist. Here was the man who had left his son to return years later like a pirate, free from responsibility.

"You know, we could clean up that headstone," John said. "Pay someone to recarve her name."

"That we could."

Perhaps Michael Mulligan finally recognized the little boy he had abandoned in San Francisco, the elderly James Maguire taking the crying child from his arms. Then he looked at the headstone and saw Maria’s face and felt his lips tighten.

"My God," he finally said.

John touched his father’s shoulder. "It’s all right, Father. You loved her."