Very Old Bones

In early childhood Peter Phelan had heard the Malachi events spoken of in cryptic bits by his mother, later heard more from his brother Francis, who was seven when it happened, and in time heard it garbled by street-corner wags who repeated the mocking rhyme:

If you happen to be a Neighbor,

If you happen to be a witch,

Stay the hell away from Malachi,

That loony son of a bitch.

When the story took him over, Peter moved out of portrait sketching into scenes of dynamic action and surreal drama that in their early stages emerged as homage to Goya's Caprichos, Disparates and Los desastres de la guerra. But in his extended revelation of the Malachi and Lizzie tragedy (and mindful of Goya's credo that the painter selected from the universe whatever seemed appropriate, that he chose features from many individuals and their acts, and combined them so ingeniously that he earned the title of inventor and not servile copyist), Peter imposed his own original vision on scandalous history, creating a body of work that owed only an invisible inspiration to Goya.

He reconstituted the faces and corpora of Lizzie and Malachi and others, the principal room and hearth of the McIlhenny three-room cottage, the rushing waters of the Staatskill that flowed past it, the dark foreboding of the sycamore grove where dwelled the Good Neighbors, as Crip Devlin arcanely called those binate creatures whose diabolical myths brought on that terrible night in June of 1887.

His first completed painting, The Dance, was of Lizzie by the sycamores, her bare legs and feet visible to mid-thigh in a forward step, or leap or kick, her left hand (continued on page 112)Very Old Bones(continued from page 88) hiking the hem of her skirt to free her legs for the dance. But is it a dance? In the background of the painting is the stand of trees that played such a major role in Lizzie's life, and to the left of her looms a shadow of a man, or perhaps it is a half-visible tree in the dusky light. If it is a tree, it is beckoning to Lizzie. If it is a man, perhaps he is about to dance with her.

But is that a dance she is doing, or is it, as one who saw her there said of it, an invitation to her thighs?

In the painting, it is a dance, and it is an invitation.

•

Why would Lizzie McIlhenny, a plain beauty of divine form and pale brown hair to the middle of her back, choose to dance with a tree, or a shadow, or a man (if man it ever was or could be) at the edge of a meadow, just as a summer night began its starry course? Aged 26, married ten years to Malachi McIlhenny, a man of formidable girth whose chief skill was his strength, a man of ill luck and no prospects, Lizzie (nee Elizabeth Cronin) had within her the spirit of a sensuous bird.

Malachi imposed no limits of space on their marriage, and so she came and went like a woman without a husband, dutiful to their childless home, ever faithful to Malachi and, when the bad luck came to him, his canny helpmate: first trapping yellow birds in the meadow and selling them to friends for 50 cents each, but leaving that when she found that fashioning rag birds out of colored cloth, yarn, thread, feathers and quills was far more profitable; that she could sell them for a dollar, or two, depending on their size and beauty, to the John G. Myers dry-goods and fancy-goods store which, in turn, would sell them for four and five dollars as fast as Lizzie could make them.

At the end of a week in early June, she made and sold 16 birds, all of a different hue, and earned 27 dollars, more money than Malachi had ever earned from wages in any two weeks, sometimes three. The money so excited Lizzie that, when crossing the meadow on her way home from the store, she kicked off her shoes, threw herself into the air and into the wind, danced until breath left her, and then collapsed into the tall grass at the edge of the sycamore grove, a breathless victim of jubilation.

When she regained her breath and sat up, brushing bits of grass from her eyelashes, she thought she saw a man's form in the shadowy interior of the grove, saw him reach his hand toward her, as if to help her stand. Perhaps it was only the rustling of the leaves or the sibilance of the night wind, but Lizzie thought she heard the words "the force of a gray horse," or so it was later said of her. Then, when she pulled herself erect, she was gripping not the hand of a man but the low-growing branch of a sycamore.

•

Malachi's troubles crystallized in a new way when he lost his only cow to a Swedish cardsharp named Lindqvist, a recently arrived lumber handler who joined the regular stud poker game at Black Jack McCall's Lumber District Saloon, and who bested Malachi in a game that saw jacks fall before kings. Lindqvist came to the cow shed behind Malachi's cottage and, with notable lack of regret, led Malachi's only cow into a territorial future beyond the reach of all McIlhennys.

The lost cow seemed to confirm to Malachi that his life would always be a tissue of misfortune. At the urging of his older brother, Matty, who had come to Albany in 1868 and found work on a lumber barge, Malachi, at the age of 17, had sold all that the family owned and left Ireland in 1870, along with his ten-year-old sister, Kathryn, and their ailing father, Eamon, who anticipated good health and prosperity in the new world. In Albany the three penniless greenhorns settled in with Matty at his Tivoli Hollow shanty on the edge of Arbor Hill. Within six months Matty was in jail on a seven-year sentence for beating a man to death in a saloon fight. Within a year he was dead himself, cause officially unknown, the unofficial word being that a guard, brother of the man Matty killed, broke Matty's head with an iron pipe when the opportunity arose; and then, within two years, Eamon McIlhenny was dead at 59 of ruined lungs. These dreadful events, coming so soon after the family's arrival in the land of promise and plenty, seemed to forbode a dark baggage, a burden as fateful as the one the McIlhennys tried to leave behind in County Monaghan.

Malachi did not yield to any fate. He labored ferociously and saved his money. And, as he approached marriage, he bought a small plot of country land on Staats Lane, a narrow and little-used road that formed a northern boundary of the vast Fitzgibbon (formerly Staats) estate, and built on it, with his own hands, the three-room cottage that measured seven long paces deep by nine long paces wide, the size of a devil's matchbox. In 1882 Malachi moved into the cottage with his bride, the sweet and fair Lizzie Cronin, a first-generational child of Albany.

After five years the marriage was still childless, and Lizzie slowly taught herself to be a seamstress as a way of occupying her time, making clothing for herself and Malachi. But, with so few neighbors, she found other sewing work scarce and her days remained half empty, with Malachi working long and erratic hours. And so Lizzie looked for her pleasure to the birds, the trees, the meadows of the Fitzgibbon estate and the Staatskill, a creek with a panoramic cascade, churning waters and placid pools. Malachi saw his wife developing into a fey creature of the open air, an elfin figure given to the sudden eruption off her tongue of melodies that Malachi did not recognize. She began to seem like an otherworldly being to Malachi.

In the spring of 1887, two days after Malachi lost his cow, the waters of the Hudson River, as usual, spilled over their banks and rose into the lumber mills, storage sheds and piles of logs that were the elemental architecture of Sage's lumberyard, where Malachi worked as a handler. One log slipped its berth in the rising waters, knocked Malachi down, and pinned his left shoulder against a pile of lumber, paralyzing his left arm and reducing the strength in his torso by half, perhaps more. So weakened was he that he could no longer work as a handler, that useless left arm an enduring enemy.

He found work one-handedly sick-ling field grass on the Fitzgibbon land, work that provided none of the fellowship that prevailed among the lumber handlers. He worked alone, came home alone, brooded alone until the arrival of his wife, who grew more peculiar with every moment of Malachi's increasing solitude. He topped her at morning, again at evening after she returned from her communion with the birds of the field, and he failed to create either new life in Lizzie or invincible erectness in himself.

To test himself against nature, he sought out the woman known to the canallers and lumber handlers as the Whore of Limerick, her reputation as an overused fuckboat appealing to (continued on page 157)Very Old Bones(continued from page 112) Malachi's free-floating concupiscence. After several iniquitous successes that proved the problem existed wholly in Lizzie, Malachi abandoned the fuckboat and sought solace again in Lizzie's embrace, which cuddled his passion and put it to sleep. He entered heavily into the drink then, not only the ale that so relieved and enlivened him, but also the potsheen that Crip Devlin brewed in his shed.

Drink in such quantity, a departure for Malachi, moved him to exotic behavior. He lay on his marriage bed and contemplated the encunted life. Cunt was life, he decided. Lizzie came to him as he entered into a spermatic frenzy, naked before her and God, ready to ride forever into the moist black depths of venery, indeed even now riding the newly arrived body of a woman he had never seen, whose cunt changed color and shape with every nuance of the light, whose lewd postures brimmed his vessel. Ah love, ah fuckery, how you enhance the imperial power of sin! When he was done with her, she begged for another ride, and he rode her with new frenzy; and when he was done again, she begged again and he did her again, and then a fourth ride and a fifth; and, as he gave her all the lift and pull that was left to him, his member grew bloody in his hand. When the woman saw this, she vanished, and Lizzie wept.

The following morning when he awoke, Malachi found not only his wife already gone from the house, he also found himself bereft of his privities, all facets of them, the groin of his stomach and thighs as hairless, seamless and flat as those groins on the heavenly angels that adorned the walls of Sacred Heart church. Here was a curse on a man, if ever a curse was. God was down on Malachi---God or the Devil, one.

Malachi clothed himself, drained half a jug of potsheen, all he had, then pulled the bedcovers over his head. He would hide himself while he considered what manner of force would deprive a man not only of his blood kin, his strength, his labor and his cow, but now, also, his only privities. He would hide himself and contemplate how a man was to go about living without privities; more important, he would think about ways of launching a counterattack on God, or the Devil, or whoever had taken them, and he would fight that thief of life with all his strength to put those privities back where they belonged.

•

In the painting he called The Conspiracy, Malachi's nephew, Peter Phelan, created the faces of Malachi and Crip Devlin as they sat in Malachi's primitive kitchen with their noses a foot apart, the condiments and implements of their plan on the table in front of them, or on the floor, or hanging over the fireplace. The bed is visible in the background, a crucifix on the wall above it.

Malachi is in a collarless shirt, waistcoat and trousers of the same gray tweed, and heavy brogans, his left arm hanging limp. Crip Devlin wears a cutaway coat in tatters, a wing collar too large for his neck, a bow tie that is awkwardly tied.

These men are only 34 and 40, Malachi the younger of the two, but they are portraits of psychic and physical trouble. Malachi's face is heavily furrowed, his head an unruly mass of black curls, his black eyes and brows with the look of the wild dog in them. Crip is bald, with a perpetual frown of intensity behind his spectacles, a half-gray mustache and sallow flesh. He is moving toward emaciation from the illness to which he has paid scant attention, for at this time he considers all trouble and trauma to be the lot of every man born to walk among devils.

Crip was in a late stage of his pox veneris, not knowing how close he was to death, when he brought his mystical prowess to bear on the lives of Lizzie and Malachi. He had studied for the priesthood briefly as a young man and later taught primary school but was unsuited to it, lacking in patience toward eight-year-old children who could not perceive the truth. In recent years he had worked as a lumber handler with Malachi, and in the winter they cut ice together on the river. But his disease in late months kept him from working and he lived off the sale of his homemade liquor, which, by common standards, was undrinkable but had the redeeming quality of being cheap.

Crip had brought the recipe for the potsheen with him from Ireland, as he had brought his wisdom about the Good Neighbors, those wee folk who, he insisted, inhabited a grove of sycamore trees and hawthorn bushes not far from Malachi's cottage. Crip was a widower who lived with his nine-year-old daughter, Mab, and he taught her all the lore of the Good Neighbors that he himself had learned from his mother, who had once kept one of the wee creatures (a flute player) in the house for six months, fed it bread and milk on a spoon, and let it sleep in the drawer with the knives and forks. And didn't Crip's mother have good luck the rest of her life for her generous act? Indeed she did.

When Malachi listened to Crip Devlin talk, something happened to his mind. He saw things he knew he'd never seen before, understood mysteries he had no conscious key to. When Crip stopped talking, Malachi felt eased, relieved to be back in his own world, but felt also a new effulgence of spirit, a potential for vigorous action that just might give back a bit of its own to the foul beast that was skulking so relentlessly after his body and his soul.

In Ireland, Crip boasted, he'd been called the Wizard, the Cunningman who could outwit the Good Neighbors. And when Malachi heard this, he confided to Crip that he had lost his privities.

"Did you ever lose them before?" Crip asked Malachi.

"Never."

"Was there pain when they went?"

"None. I didn't know they were gone till I looked."

"It's a shocking thing."

"I'm more shocked than others," Malachi said.

"I've heard of this," said Crip. "Somebody has put the glamour on you."

"Glamour, is it?"

"A spell of a kind. The Neighbors could do it. I read of a man who lost his privities and thought he knew who did it, and it was a witch and he went to her. He told her his trouble and also told her she had the most beautiful bosoms in the village, for he knew how witches love flattery. And she took him out to a tree and told him to climb up it and he'd find what he needed. When he did that, he found a great nest full of hay and oats in the treetop and two dozen privities of one size and the other lying in it. And the man says, I'll take this big one, and the witch says, No, that belongs to the bishop. So the man took the next smaller size and put it in his pocket, and when he got to the bottom of the tree and touched the ground with his foot, the witch disappeared and his privity was on him. And he never lost it again."

"You're thinkin', is it, that a witch did this to me?" Malachi asked.

"It well could be. Do you know any witches yourself?"

"None."

"Have you had any in the family?"

"None that I know of."

"And your wife's family?"

"I've never heard it spoken of."

"They don't speak of it, don't you know."

"I'll ask her," said Malachi.

"I saw her up on the Neighbors' hill two days ago."

"Is that so?"

"It's so, and she was dancing."

"Dancing, you say?"

"I do. Dancing with her skirts in the air."

"No."

"Didn't I see it myself, and the shape of a man in the woods watching her?"

"The shape of a man?"

"Not a man atall, I'd say."

"Then what?"

"One of the Neighbors. A creature, I'd call it."

"Lizzie dancing with a creature? You saw that. And were you at the pot-sheen?"

"I was not."

"Did you go to her?"

"I did not. You don't go near them when they're in that mood."

"What mood?"

"The mood to capture. That's how they carry on, capturing people like us to fatten their population. They like to cozy up to them that come near them, and before you know it somebody's gone and you don't even know they're gone, for the creatures leave changelings in place of the ones they take. But there's no worth atall to them things. They melt, they die, they fly away, and if they don't, you have to know how to be rid of them."

"You know how to do that, do you?"

"I've heard how it's done. I have the recipes."

•

Two books lie on the table in Peter Phelan's Conspiracy painting. The first is the Malleus Maleficarum. Its subtitle, not visible in the painting, is The Hammer of Witches Which Destroyeth Witches and Their Heresy as with a Two-Edged Sword. The book is a 15th Century theological analysis of the anarchical political forces that for centuries sought the overthrow of civilization through witchcraft, plus abundant remedies for this evil; and it is a work that had motivated Crip Devlin since the days of his priestly intent, for its divinely inspired misogyny conformed to Crip's own outlook, especially after his infection with the pox by his wife. And did she give it to him, the witch? Well she did. Didn't she die of it herself, and die before Crip? Was that the proof or was it not?

When Malachi listened to Crip's wisdom, handed down from the sages of history, he felt like a chosen man, one who would yet again do battle with the dark spirits, the lot of the true warrior in every age. Malachi accepted the role without complaint, for its rules and its goals were as familiar to him as the streets and the fields of Albany. He agreed with them, he understood them and he knew from his wound that he had been singled out for this challenge. As the Malleus pointed out so clearly, devils existed only with God's permission, and Malachi perceived that God had allowed these devilish things to happen to him, allowed his life to be taken away piece by piece, in the same way He had allowed Job and Jesus and the martyred saints to be warrior sufferers for His sake.

Without ever having heard the phrase, and with small capacity for understanding it if he had, Malachi had become an ascetic idealist, as obsessed by his enemy as Peter would be by his art; and when you look at the eyes Peter gave the man, you know that both Malachi and Peter understood that the world was inimical to them and to their plans of order and harmony, that their lives existed at the edge of disaster, madness and betrayal, and that a man of strength and honor would struggle with the dark armies until he triumphed or died on the battlefield.

Malachi truly believed he would win this struggle with the black villain. He had done as the Malleus counseled, had said his Aves and his Our Fathers, had made the Stations of the Cross on his knees, had talked to the priest and confessed his sins (not his loss) and had gone to mass so often that the women of the parish thought he must be either very guilty or dying. But, in truth, he was coming to understand that some sort of action that went beyond heavenly recourse was called for, action beyond what was known on earth---except by a chosen few whose courage was boundless and whose weapons were mighty.

The second book on the table in the painting is a slim volume that is open to a sketch of a plant with leaves and berries that any herbalist would recognize as foxglove. Also in the painting, Crip is holding a chicken by the neck with his left hand and from its anus is receiving droppings in his right palm, some of these already floating in a bowl of new milk on the table.

Crip, before the moment shown in the painting, has enlightened Malachi on the things witches fear most, things that cure enchantment and banish the witch back to her own devilish world: foxglove and mugwort, white mullein and spearwort, verbena and elf grass, the four-leaf clover and the scarlet berries of the rowan oak, green and yellow flowers, cow parsnip and docken, a drawn sword, the gall of a cow, the tooth of a dead man, rusty nails and pins, the music of a jew's harp, a red string around the neck, the smoke of burned elder and ash wood, the smoke of a burned fish liver, spitting into your own shirt, pissing through a wedding ring, and fire.

Crip mixed half a dozen potions for Malachi and he drank them; the two men burned ash wood and fish liver; they found foxglove and cow parsnip and made a paste of it, and Malachi went off by himself and rubbed that on his groin. He thought of pissing through his mother's wedding ring, but remembered that he had nothing to piss with. More things were done, but every one of them failed to restore Malachi's privities.

Crip then moved to the next logical step: an inquiry into the behavior and physical properties of the women around Malachi (his sister Kathryn, the Whore of Limerick, Lizzie), for it was well known that witches sometimes assumed the shape of living people, especially women. Even so, they could be found out, for they always had marks and traits that were not human. Crip knew of one witch who had an extra nipple on her stomach, and another with nipples on each buttock. A third witch always lived with two creatures sucking her, a red one at her left breast, a white one at the inward walls of her secrets.

When Malachi heard these revelations, he immediately undertook a thorough but surreptitious study of his wife. For the first time he realized that she had shrunk in height by four inches, that the mark on her left thigh could well be an extra nipple. He remembered that she brought a succubus to their bed and encouraged him to copulate with it until he was bloody. Also, Crip swore to him that on the night he watched Lizzie dancing on the Neighbors' hill, her partner, the shadowy creature, had the webbed feet of a goose.

And so Malachi made ready to launch his counterattack against the demon (and all its hellish consorts) that inhabited his wife's body.

•

Peter Phelan, obsessive artist of Colonie Street, subsumed in the history of his family, all but smothered under his ancestors' blanket of time, had willfully engaged it all, transformed history into art, being impelled to create, and purely, what Picasso called "convincing lies"; for Peter believed that these lies would stand as a fierce array of at least partial Phelan truths---not moral truths, but truths of significant motion: the arresting of the natural world at an instant of kinetic and fantastic revelation, the wisdom of Lizzie's lofted leg in her dance with the shadows; the wizardly acceptance of chicken droppings by the demented Crip Devlin; the madly collective flailing of arms in Banishing the Demons.

This latter painting is the largest of the Malachi suite, that remarkable body of paintings and sketches that made Peter Phelan famous. By the light of an oil lamp, a candle and a fire in the McIlhenny hearth (shadowed homage to La Tour), the players in the Malachi drama enact their contrary rituals: Kathryn Phelan (abundantly pregnant with Peter, the arriving artist) is sitting on the bed in the background, holding the hand of the beset Lizzie, who is supine in her calico chemise, blue flannel nightgown and black stockings, her hair splayed wildly on her pillow; and the Malachi minions---the wizard Crip Devlin; Crip's daughter Mab; Lizzie's father, old Ned Cronin, who badly needed a shave; Malachi's ancient cousin Minnie Dorgan, with her dropsical stomach and her stupid son, Colm, whose hair was a nest of cowlicks; and, central to it all, Malachi himself, with his wild curls and wilder eyes, all these clustered figures pushing upward and outward with their arms (Colm gripping a lighted candle in his right hand and thrusting upward with his left), ridding the house of any demons that may have been summoned by the archdemon that Lizzie had become. The entrance door and two windows of the house are open to the night, and those errant demons, who well know that this room is inimical to their kind, are surely flying fearfully out and away, back to their covens of hellish darkness.

Malachi had gathered his counsel, his blood kin and his in-laws about him for a communion of indignation at what was happening to Lizzie, and also to people his house with witnesses to his joust with the evil forces. He'd begun that joust with interrogation of Lizzie.

"What is your name?"

"Lizzie McIlhenny. You know that."

"Is that your full name?"

"Lizzie Cronin McIlhenny. In God's name, Malachi, why are you asking me this?"

"We'll see what you think of God's name. Why are you four inches shorter than you used to be?"

"I'm not. I'm the same size I always was."

"Why are you asking her these things?" Kathryn Phelan asked.

"To find out who she is."

"Can't you see who she is? Have you lost your sight?"

"Just hold your gob, woman, and see for yourself who she is. Don't I know my wife when I see her? And this one isn't her."

"Well she is."

"Are you Lizzie McIlhenny, my wife?"

"Of course I am, Malachi. Can't you see it's me? Who else do you think I am?"

"Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost?"

"I do, Malachi, I do."

"You do what?"

"I believe in God the Father, Son, Holy Ghost."

"She didn't repeat it exactly," said Crip Devlin.

"Let me ask her," said Ned Cronin. "Are you the daughter of Ned Cronin, in the name of God?"

"I am, Dada."

"She didn't repeat it," said Crip.

"Repeat it," said Malachi.

"Dada."

"Not that, repeat what he said."

"I don't know what he said."

"Ah, she's crafty," said Crip.

"You'll repeat it or I'll have at you," said Malachi. He grabbed her and ripped her nightgown, then pushed her backward onto the bed. When she tried to get up, he held her down.

"Ask her where she lives," said Crip.

"Do you live up on the hill with the Good Neighbors?"

"I live here with you, Malachi."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Lizzie, your wife."

"You're four inches shorter than my wife."

"I'm not. I'm this same size since I was a girl."

"You really are insane, Malachi," said Kathryn. "You're torturing her."

"We'll see who's insane. Do you believe in Satan?"

"I don't know," Lizzie said.

"Crafty again," said Crip.

"By the Jesus," Malachi said, "we'll get the truth out of you," and from the table he took the cup of milky potion he and Crip had prepared for this encounter, set it on the bedside table and lifted a spoonful to Lizzie's mouth. "Take it," he said.

She smelled it and turned her head. "It's awful."

"Drink it," Malachi said, lifting the cup to her lips. Lizzie pushed it away and some of the potion spilled onto her nightgown.

"Oh, you'll take it, you witch," Malachi said, shoving the cup to her lips and pouring it. Some of the fluid entered her mouth and she screamed and spat it out.

"She won't take it," said Crip. "And if any of it falls on the floor, she's gone forever."

"She'll take it, or I'll break both her arms," said Malachi. "Hold her legs, Colm," and the dimwit flung himself crosswise on the bed, atop Lizzie's legs.

"Like this?" Colm asked.

"That's it," said Malachi.

"There's rewards in heaven for them that beats the Devil," said old Minnie Dorgan, rocking her body on a straight chair in the corner, plaiting and unplaiting two strips of cloth as she watched the exorcism. She blessed herself repeatedly and dipped her fingers into a jar of holy Easter water she had brought with her. She sprinkled the water at Lizzie and then at Malachi.

"If you get the drink into her, the witch is dead," said Crip.

"We'll get it," said Malachi.

"That's enough of this crazy talk," Kathryn said, putting herself between Malachi and Lizzie.

"Get out of my way, Kathryn."

"I'll get out and get the police if you don't leave her be."

Malachi walked to the door, locked it and pocketed the key.

"You'll go no place till I say you will," he said. "And neither will anybody else in this house. Build up the fire, Mab." And Crip Devlin's child, silent and sullen, threw twigs and a log on the dying fire. It crackled and flared, creating new light in the bleak room, into which not even the faintest ray of a moonbeam would penetrate tonight.

Kathryn whispered into Lizzie's ear, "I won't let him hurt you, darlin', I won't let him hurt you." And she stroked the distraught Lizzie's forehead and saw that her eyes were rolling backward out of their rightful place.

"You're a vile, vile man to do this to her," Kathryn said.

Malachi looked at the women and walked to the hearth. He picked up a long twig and held the end of it in the fire until it flamed, then he pulled it out and shook out the flame and walked toward the bed.

"You bring that near her," said Kathryn, "you'll have to burn me, too, Malachi," but he quickly put the stick between his teeth, grabbed his sister with his good right arm and flung her off the bed and into the lap of Minnie Dorgan, who sprinkled holy water on her. "Mother of God," said Minnie. "Mother of God."

"You'll not be burning her, Malachi," said Ned Cronin. "You won't burn my daughter."

"It's not your daughter that's here, it's not the wife I married. It's a hag and a witch that I'm sleeping with."

"It's my daughter, I'm thinking now," Ned said.

"Have you no faith, man?" said Malachi. "Don't you know a demon when it's in front of your eyes?"

And he had the twig in his hand again, and he lighted it again, blew out its flame again, and put it in front of Lizzie's face.

"Now will you drink what I give you?"

When she threw her head from side to side to be rid of the idea, he touched her on the forehead with the burning stick, and she screamed her woe to heaven. "Now you'll take it," he said, and with terrified eyes she stared at the madman her husband had become; and she knew no choice was left to her.

"Let her be!" screamed Kathryn, and she tried to move toward Lizzie. But Minnie Dorgan and Ned Cronin held her.

"Give her the drink, Mab," Malachi said, and the child raised the cup to Lizzie who stiffened at the odor of it and, retching dryly, said weakly, "Please, Malachi."

"Drink it, you hag, or I'll kill you."

And she took the cup and drank and screamed again as the foul concoction went down her throat, screamed and spat and drank again, then fell back on the bed as the cup's remnants splattered on the floor.

"It's done," said Malachi.

"And it's spilled," said Crip. "There's no telling what it means."

Colm, lying across Lizzie's legs, sat up. "I'm goin' home now," he said.

"Indeed you're not," said Malachi. "You'll stay till we're done with this."

And Colm fell back on the bed with a weakness.

"When will we be done?" Ned Cronin asked. "For the love of Jesus, end this thing."

"We'll end it when I've got my wife back," Malachi said.

"How will you know?" asked Ned.

"We'll see the demon leave her," Crip said. "But time is short. Ask her again."

"In the name of God and heaven," Malachi said, "are you Lizzie McIlhenny, my wife?"

All in the room watched every inch of Lizzie, watching for the exit of the demon. But Lizzie neither moved nor spoke. She stared at the wall.

"We've got to go to the fire," said Malachi. "We've no choice."

"It'll soon be midnight," said Crip, "and then she's gone for sure, never to come back."

"We'll carry her, Colm," said Malachi, and the dimwit rolled off Lizzie's legs. Then he and Malachi carried the now limp figure toward the hearth as Mab stoked the fire with a poker. Lizzie's nightgown was off her shoulder and Malachi ripped it away and it fell on the floor. Mab moved the grate and Malachi sat Lizzie on it so she faced the fire.

"Are you goin' to make a pork chop out of me, Malachi?" she asked. "Won't you give me a chance?" And on the dark side of the room the women fell on their knees in prayer.

"Do you know what I'm doin' here, Ned Cronin?" Malachi called out.

"Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint Joseph," said Ned, "I pray you know what you're doing." And he knelt beside the women.

Malachi leaned Lizzie toward the fire, and when it touched her, it set her calico chemise afire. Kathryn Phelan wailed and screamed at her brother, "You'll live in hell forever for this night, Malachi McIlhenny. It's you who's the demon here. It's you that's doing murder to this woman."

Malachi let go of Lizzie and she fell away from the fire, burning. He watched, with Crip beside him, and Colm holding the now unconscious Lizzie by one arm.

"Away she go, up the chimney," Malachi said. "Away she go!" And he waved his good arm into the flames.

"I saw nothing go," said Crip.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women," said Kathryn on her knees.

"Come home, Lizzie McIlhenny!" yelled Malachi, waving his arm, watching his wife's body. The room was filling with smoke from Lizzie's burning clothes and flesh.

"Beast!" screamed Kathryn.

"Do you think that's Lizzie that's lyin' there?" Malachi asked.

"I saw nothing leave her," said Crip.

"More fire," said Malachi, and Colm leaned Lizzie back toward the flames. Another edge of her chemise caught fire and now half her torso was exposed, the flesh charring from below her left breast to her hip.

"Let her down," said Malachi, and from the floor beside the fireplace, he took a can of paraffin oil and threw it onto Lizzie's stomach. Her chemise exploded in flame.

"Away she go!" yelled Malachi, waving his arm. "Away she go!" And he threw more oil on her.

Kathryn Phelan ran to the wildly flaming Lizzie and threw herself on top of her, snuffing the fire, burning herself and sobbing with the grief known in heaven when angels die.

•

The last painting Peter put on exhibit was The Protector, a portrait of Kathryn Phelan smothering the flames on Lizzie's clothing, her own maternity dress aflame at one corner, the smoke obscuring half her face, the other half lit by firelight. Kathryn's burns were not severe but her act did precipitate, two days later, the premature birth of Peter Phelan, child of fire and brimstone, terror and madness, illusion and delusion, ingredients all of his art.

What Peter had intuited from the Malachi story was the presence of a particular kind of thought, a superstitious atmosphere aswirl with those almost-visible demons and long-forgotten abstractions of evil---votive bats and sacrificial hags, burning flesh and the bones of tortured babies---the dregs of putrefied religion, the fetid remains of a psychotic social order, these inheritances so torturous to his imagination that he had to paint them to be rid of them.

He had always rejected as extraneous any pragmatic or moralistic element to art and could not abide a didactic artist. Nevertheless, his work already had an effect on the moral history of the family and would continue to do so through the inevitable retellings of the story associated with the paintings; and these retellings would surely provide an enduring antidote to the poison Malachi had injected into the world.

•

The Burial was Peter's major unfinished work. But if he lived on, it would very probably not be his last in the Malachi suite. He'd already made several sketches of Malachi and Crip in hell and was trying to assign a fitting punishment for them; but The Burial was as far as he'd gone with his great graphic leaps through those abominable events.

It is raining in the painting, and Colm Dorgan, with the point of a spade, and Malachi McIlhenny, with his muddy right brogan, are pushing the half-folded corpse of Lizzie into her muddy grave, which is too short for her. The grave's borders are a sea of mud, and Malachi and Colm are drenched. Lizzie is naked except for her black stockings and a burlap bag over her head. Colm is pushing her feet into the grave. Malachi is stepping on her right breast with his foot. The left side of her chest is a broad crevasse of flesh, her half-charred rib cage and parts of her internal organs protruding, the flesh burned off two fingers of her left hand, leaving the charred bones visible.

A small cottage, Malachi's, wherein the other witnesses to Lizzie's burning are locked and awaiting the return of Malachi, is visible in the distant background, as are a sky and a landscape full of demonic figures, including the lithe form of Lizzie dancing on a hill with a web-footed creature with the head of a goat.

Piles of dirt beside the grave will be heaped on Lizzie and the secluded grave, which is at the side of a ditch, with a high fence on one side and trees on the other. When the grave is covered with dirt, it will be hidden by leaves and twigs, and Lizzie will lie scrunched in it for five days before searchers find her corrupted body, tortured even in death.

Upon his return from the grave to the cottage, Malachi will, with a long knife in his hand, swear all present to secrecy and will invent the story to be circulated: that Lizzie ran away from the house in a crazed condition the previous night. Malachi will be especially threatening to his sister, Kathryn, whose throat he swears that he will cut if she peeps a word of what happened. When Kathryn swears this out of fear, Malachi will then scrape his trouser leg with the blade of his knife and say, "Oh, Kate, that's the juice and substance of poor Lizzie that I'm scraping."

And Kathryn will say, "Malachi, even if you scrape off your skin, God will not let the stain be off you. You're damned, my brother, and I hope the devils in hell never let you draw a painless breath."

Upon public revelation of this story, neighbors will sack and burn Malachi's house, and Malachi and Crip Devlin will be tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Colm Dorgan will be sentenced to ten years, will serve all ten and emerge toothless, hairless, mindless and without a family. Ned Cronin will be given, and will serve, one year in prison, and live six more months before dying of public shame. Minnie Dorgan, though guilty of conspiracy to murder, will be set free because of her advanced age and will sell all that she owns to move away from Albany.

In the first six months of his incarceration Crip Devlin will sicken from the pox, develop intolerable headaches and lightning pains to the legs. He will vomit and become incontinent, will develop ulcers of the heels, soles, toes and buttocks, blockage of the penis and rubbery tumors in the testicles. At the moment when his memory vanishes and he can no longer remember who he is or what he did to Lizzie, he will die of suppressed urine and an exploded brain.

In 1890, during the third year of his sentence, Malachi, with leather thongs he created in the shoe shop of the Albany penitentiary, will hang himself in his cell, swearing to the moment of his death that it was not Lizzie but a demon that he burned, and he will be buried in a potter's field. On the day after his burial his grave will be violated and his corpse stabbed through the heart with a wooden dagger in the shape of a cross, a suitable implement for destroying the soul of a heretic.

Kathryn Phelan will be the chief witness against Malachi. Already the mother of Francis, Sarah and Charles, she will give birth to Peter two days after Lizzie's death.

Mab Devlin will become a charge of the city but will escape confinement and become a vanished child.

•

Poor hubristic Malachi, think of it. When you cross the border of the real world, as he did, the way back is perilous at best, and not only for yourself.

We are, after all, a collective, a unified psyche that so desperately wants not to be plural.

I am one with the universe, we Phelans say, but I am one.

The universe answers us with black riddles of the past that refuse to yield their secrets: lost faiths and barren dogmas that weave the web and the winter that the poet of order had seen: The web is woven and you have to wear it, the winter is made and you have to bear it. . . . It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you.

"The money so excited Lizzie that she kicked off her shoes and danced until breath left her."