The Magnificence of the O'Hannagains

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THE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE O’HANNAGAINS

Bartholomew Cormac Dawson Flannery Jefferson Magnus Reuben O’Hannagain was the son of seventeen other O’Hannagains. He knew this because his Father had told him so, every single night.

At seven PM, Bartholomew would lie in bed, ragged black stuffed bear in one hand, sawdust-scented blankets covering his small body. Father would walk in, and lean down, and Bartholomew would smile because he knew the sacred litany to follow.

"Your grandfather, Dylan Sullivan Dixon Casey Maximus Finnegan O’Hannagain, bought your toy bear for himself when he was seven years old. Did you know that?"

And Bartholomew would wriggle in his blankets, smile a little bit, and shake his head. He did know it, though. Father knew that Bartholomew knew it. But there was an order to things, a truth to things. That was the most important thing to the O’Hannagains. Without order, without tradition, the world was like a body with no skeleton--disorganized and incomplete.

Thus, Bartholomew knew the litany of every possession in the house. He knew that his old chair had been passed down every single one of his descendants, that the chip on its right leg was because of a bar fight by the tenth of those seventeen descendants. Inside his house, Bartholomew knew all.

Bartholomew knew all, that is, except his own house. His house was a mystery to him, until he asked Father, who told him rather shortly that this wasn’t his house. This shabby little one-story building was not his real home. Then Father took him on a long three-hour drive to his real house.

Bartholomew’s real house was a mansion, giant and foreboding. Still, security emerged once Father began to talk, to explain. That balcony was where great-great grandfather broke his knee. That patch of ground used to hold great-great-great-great grandmother’s garden. Bartholomew’s eyes were filled with glassy wonder, and his fingers tightened around his father’s hand. He could feel his ancestors latching on, and he knew who they were, and he smiled, because he knew who he was. He realized that his new knowledge was a truly magnificent thing.

Bartholomew grew older, and found that there was something hollow now in the litany of his descendants. Bartholomew’s real house was far away, and didn’t belong to them any more. They had to pawn off Bartholomew’s chair because the roof collapsed. Bartholomew was thirteen when he saw the chair go, and something within him broke. Whoever got the chair wouldn’t know the seventeen O’Hannagains who had owned it before, much less care. All they would think about was the chip on its leg, which they would explain disparagingly to guests, trying to make people forget it by drawing attention to it.

Bartholomew grew tall and thin, and his brown eyes were bored. Father stopped reciting the litany of ancestors every night, and Bartholomew stopped listening. Slowly, gradually, a silence grew up between them, as easily as tap water grows in a cup. The money started disappearing. Bartholomew got a job, but it wasn’t enough. They had to sell more furniture. Bartholomew’s heart stopped aching, because, after all, only things were being sold.

Father wanted to take Bartholomew to their old house again, but Bartholomew said no. He was too busy. Time and time again, months later, weeks later, Father asked. Bartholomew always refused. Their old house bored him now. He wondered if they’d ever lived there in the first place. Eventually, Father stopped asking. More and more things were sold.

Bartholomew grew even older, and went off to college, and got a job. He even got a wife, a tall black-haired girl named Clarice. He didn’t come home very often, especially not with her. It was too awkward. Father was quiet. Plastic plates had replaced the old silver ones. Father was very small now. So was the house. So were the remaining possessions of the seventeen O’Hannagains.

The old house of the O’Hannagains was bulldozed to make way for a Burger King. Bartholomew almost went to say goodbye, but he was still young, and his heart told him more important things were on the horizon. He had a baby with Clarice. A little boy, with brown eyes like his. He named the boy something short, something simple. Bartholomew Dylan O’Hannagain. Little Bart for short. Father smiled at the baby with tired eyes, and rubbed the back of his head, bald spots against his tired fingers. He had moved in with Bartholomew and his wife. The final possessions of the magnificent seventeen O’Hannagains had been sold, except for the stuffed bear and a cuckoo clock.

The cuckoo clock broke, and it could not be repaired. Clarice couldn’t stand its uselessness, so the junk yard claimed it. Bartholomew felt a pang in his heart as he let it go, but his hardness rebelled against it. Bartholomew told his son bedtime stories, but changed them every time. He would catch Father retelling family stories to Little Bart occasionally, but Father always stopped when Bartholomew entered.

Little Bart had constant questions about his descendants. Bartholomew wondered what the harm was in telling him, but then he realized with a pang that he didn’t remember most stories. He gave the stuffed bear to Little Bart, and told the kid to be careful. Little Bart was, most of the time. Still, one cold winter day he broke the bear’s arm and leg. Bartholomew tried to sew it up, but nothing could be done. He planned to toss it, but Little Bart cried, so Bartholomew let his son keep it.

Father started to cough one winter, and wouldn’t stop. 911 was called, and the ambulance came. Father was loaded on. Bartholomew’s heart hurt for once and wouldn’t stop, and finally his eyes turned red around the edges. Little Bart’s face was wet, and his nose ran. The ripped-up bear dragged from his hand. Even Clarice, usually annoyed with Father, tugged on her sweater and let her cheeks grow hot and wet. They stood in the hospital room, faces aching, eyes glassy, and everything turned and turned and turned. Father’s eyes were rheumy and weak. He didn’t die, but he came close.

Father was never the same after that. The days past, and his stories stopped coming to Little Bart. His voice trembled, became reedy, and his eyes looked strangely confused. He repeated things many times a day. He couldn’t remember things he had just been told. And then came the horrid day when Bartholomew came in and found Little Bart sobbing because Father hadn’t known who Little Bart was.

Father went to a nursing home and they visited every week. He remembered them less and less. One day, he didn’t remember who Bartholomew was. Little Bart grew older, taller, and his brown eyes were heedless. His arms stretched out like rubber bands, bouncing back and forth from his joints. Bartholomew grew older and older, and he became tired. He felt squashed. Little Bart didn’t like being called little, or even Bart. Everyone began to call him Dylan. One day, the boys on Dylan’s basketball team saw the stuffed bear, and laughed at it. Dylan slammed it into the trash, eyes red-rimmed. His fingers twisted into fists as he walked away. Other families had photographs and such. Dylan’s family had only an ugly old teddy bear. He almost went back for it, but didn’t, and thus the final possession of the magnificent seventeen O’Hannagains disappeared.

Father had a heart attack several weeks later. His hands twitched towards Bartholomew’s, and Bartholomew cried. Dylan’s face twisted, and he almost wished he’d kept the bear. Father died. Bartholomew couldn’t remember where the other seventeen O’Hannagains had been buried, so Father was left in the local cemetery where Clarice’s family had been buried.

Bartholomew’s hair was gray and his eye sight flickered. He started to remember his youth almost fondly. He tried to recall the stories, the old possessions, but they disappeared from his mind. He couldn’t remember the name of his grandfather, or his father before him. He struggled to recall whether it was sixteen or nineteen O’Hannagains.

Dylan graduated high school. He didn’t go to college, but got a job in their small town. He said he wanted to embrace his roots. His roots from Clarice’s side. He asked Bartholomew about the O’Hannagain family, about Father’s stories. Bartholomew had forgotten. Dylan was disappointed, but it wasn’t a big deal. Mother had her own tales. He moved on. He married a blond girl named Sandra, and waved excitedly at the funeral. Bartholomew smiled, and embraced his Clarice, and for once she smiled.

Bartholomew’s joints ached, and his arms shrunk. His mind flickered. Clarice died. He stood alone, and he stretched his hand out but his ancestors did not latch on. Dylan took him into his home. Bartholomew met Dylan’s son. Bartholomew Nolan O’Hannagain. A chubby, brown-eyed boy named Barry. Dylan’s enthusiasm for family history was not reciprocated in Barry. The quiet boy liked video games and consoles, math problems and programming languages, just like his mother, Sandra the physics professor.

Bartholomew forcefed Barry stories, but he didn’t know if they were old O’Hannagain legends or not. Part of him barely even cared. Still, he would stand outside and watch the sunshine stream over the earth, and he would feel an ache inside of him. He started to forget more and more, and the day came when he saw a boy in the house and knew not who he was.

Dylan brought his Father into the nursing home with care, and sighed quietly, feeling sudden regret as a son. Barry’s brown eyes were bored, but Sandra sobbed. Dylan started to wonder about his own forgetting, and his mind became urgent and sad. He didn’t want to forget. He thought of making Barry his memory, but then he realized that he had nothing of real worth to tell Barry. He worried the kid wouldn’t want to hear. Clarice’s stories had been exhausted, and he knew only a few scattered tales of the seventeen O’Hannagains, now eighteen. Nineteen for Barry. He knew nothing of his old house, his old furniture, his true old world.

One gray night in late November, when Barry was a sleepy-eyed high schooler, and Dylan was starting to get tired, Bartholomew’s mind let go, and no one was there to catch him. He couldn’t remember that he was an O’Hannagain, let alone call out the seventeen names to latch onto him. His pulse slowed, and finally flicked out, out and off. His brown eyes darkened, and his body cooled.

Bartholomew was buried in the same cemetery as his Father. Barry felt awkward and angry at the funeral. He felt like a missing link, and he felt sad. Dylan’s hand was around his shoulder, but that didn’t make things much better. He almost grabbed Mother’s hand, but he felt that would make him babyish, so he stood alone. His hollow mind wanted something to fill it, so he glared at the other gravestones, wishing that their secrets would be revealed to him.

Barry’s brown hair grew long and ragged. He went to college and studied history, and learned about other people’s families. Dylan’s work fizzled out, and slowly and surely, he realized he was declining. Sandra’s was as well, and she began to regret not having another child. She imagined a little girl mournfully. Barry got married to a girl, Dixie, with spiky, green-died hair. They didn’t get along. He got divorced, and remarried with a pretty brunette named Martha to have a child, a skinny blue-eyed little boy. He named the kid Bartholomew Cormac O’Hannagain. There was no Bartholomew any more, and thus no need to shorten this boy’s name. Dylan moved in with Barry. The little box-shaped house was hit by a tree during a storm, and they moved to a new town. Dylan’s tired old voice shaped some half-hearted stories for little Bartholomew, but in the end, he couldn’t think of anything. Little Bartholomew didn’t mind. There were games to play, things to do. Dylan’s stories were dumb anyway.

Dylan died too early, in a car crash. He wasn’t buried next to his Father and Grandfather, but instead in the cemetery of the city they now lived in. Barry and Little Bartholomew lived in their house and did their work. Barry wrote his papers, and memorized the family trees of prominent Virginian men and women. Little Bartholomew built a tree fort. Sandra and Martha quarrelled furiously, and both Barry and Little Bartholomew hid to avoid their shrill voices.

Barry grew down and Little Bartholomew grew up, until he was just Bartholomew, and could even be called Big Bartholomew. He dated various girls, but got attached to none of them. He ran around town, laughing and being wild. Eventually college began, and he settled down to the long grind. The grind stopped, and became dead silent, because Barry drowned one day, out swimming in a lake nearby. Bartholomew got a job, and tried to snag a girl. No one trusted him anymore, however, so he just worked. At first, Sandra and Martha visited him all of the time. Then Sandra died, and Bartholomew didn’t come to her funeral. Surprisingly, Martha was mournful. She shouted at him for not going, and he shouted back, pushed her out the door, and slammed it in her face. Martha never came back.

He lived in an apartment, all alone. His relatives were mostly enigmas to him. He didn’t care, at first, but then the years pressed on, stretching him, pulling him, and his little low-income job wasn’t enough for the retirement that would come. Families waltzed past, and he stood alone, grumpy and sad. His blue eyes wavered. He started to read books, to look at old pictures. He traced portraits and smiled. He thought of attempting to trace his own family, but he doubted there would be anything to find. Still, old things fascinated him and he filled his apartment with them.

There were days when his practices saddened him, however. Once he went over to the site of an old mansion, only to find it turned to a Burger King. Even worse, when he did more research he found a long, depressing story about how the mansion’s last owners had lost all of their money, eventually selling all of their possessions quarter-price to anyone willing to buy. Ironically, an ancient article said, a local sharecropper (infamous for having an affair with the daughter of the owner), had ended up with more of the owner’s possessions than the owner himself.

One day, Bartholomew went to a flea market several hours away. He walked about, studying old pictures and toys, aged carpets and blankets. He finally stopped at the furniture aisle, blinking at the largest, and most lauded piece of equipment there. It was an old wooden chair with a chip on one of its legs. He felt a sense of charm from it, and bought the thing.

He felt giddy on the way home, for almost no reason, and sped up the car. It zoomed over the streets, light as a feather, and he laughed until he saw a Honda in front of him, and tried to stop. It was too late, and he smashed forward, head hitting the front of his seat in a splash of red. He blinked, twitched, and the chair crumpled, and then his mind ran away, and for a minute he saw twenty figures and he was one of them, and he knew who he was in the back of his mind, because he was the twentieth of the O’Hannagains. But then he realized that he was dying and their magnificence didn’t really matter. His body iced, and his heart shivered to a stop.

And in that unceremonious fashion, the last of the magnificent O’Hannagains died.