Read Online Shannon by Frank Delaney - Free Book Online

with Dr. Greenberg ran at least twice its allotted length as the big, bony archbishop asked more and more questions.
    Desperate for some means of protecting the young priest, he said he might accompany Father Shannon to Ireland. What good would that do? Dr. Greenberg had asked. The point was to let the recovering young man find his feet in a place he wanted to visit. “Otherwise,” said Dr. Greenberg, “the two of you might as well walk the coast of Massachusetts.”
    Failing in this quarter, Sevovicz went back again to O'Connell's office and tried to bargain: no good. He railed again: to no effect. Father Shannon, he was told, had expressed to the cardinal a desire to find his ancestral origins in Ireland; the archdiocese would pay for his journey. Was the cardinal, Sevovicz asked himself, taking advantage? Of course he was.
    He tried another tack. “His father wishes to travel with him.”
    Not a good idea. His Eminence wants Father Shannon to have every opportunity of rediscovering his vocation.
    After that, nobody bothered to reply; the cardinal wanted his young cleric out of the way— and soon. The trip was finally couched as a homily, freighted with words like
pilgrimage
and
healing.
But such language was the wrapping on the package that makes the bomb look like a gift.
    Defeated by superior forces, Sevovicz went back to his own roots. He knew how the Church worked at the parish level and how the Church worked for bishops. And he also knew that his dear young protégé was about to walk across a land where every cleric had clout.
    The Archdiocese of Boston sang with Irish names, and the Vatican, Sevovicz's own most recent station, was pulled by many Irish strings.
    Once he had taken the temperature, he'd reckoned that yes, the Irish clergy and their Catholic flock would vigorously relish helping an American priest. In his mind he saw the handing-on process clearly, and selecting the dioceses where bishops and priests could and would help became a matter of mere geography. He wrote his letters.
    Each Irish bishop replied. Each Irish bishop understood. Each Irish bishop offered help in any form, in every way. They grasped and applauded the principle of the journey. And they saw and appreciated the care implicit in the idea of the network. Each prelate undertook to write to his appropriate local clergy; they supplied Sevovicz with the names, addresses, and even thumbnail profiles of the relevant priests.
    Thus the Irish Project got under way, buttressed by the security of these watchful men, and Sevovicz felt somewhat easier in his mind.



A t nine o'clock Monday morning, 3 July 1922, Robert Shannon crossed the invisible county border from Kerry into Limerick and walked toward the village of Foynes.
    “Watch out,” Joe had told him, “for a hill called Knockpatrick. It's where Saint Patrick stood to bless the rest of the west. He wouldn't go any farther; he was afraid of us.”
    By the gateway to the little house, Robert had offered his thanks. When he had first arrived at the O'Sullivans’ he'd spoken— if at all— in short sentences: hesitant, tentative, dull. But he had grown less jerky, as the days sauntered by, and had framed longer speeches. Of late he had even asked questions, gathering small information, which he repeated to himself many times.
    Essentially, he was restocking his brain. The guerrillas in the fields and the soldiers on the river had not caused a serious halt. His recovery maintained its nervous course.
    On this bright morning he had even asked, “What does the name
Tarbert
mean?”
    “An isthmus,” Joe had said. “Yes. We think it might be a very oldname, because if you look”—he pointed across the river—”the only chance of a small piece of land connecting two bigger pieces is over there. But they weren't joined since the Ice Age.”
    Robert had shaken hands with each of them and set off in the warm air. Shep had trotted with him, tongue like pink rubber; Joe and Molly had