The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue by Trish Hanan (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

had left were sure to go straight to hell for leaving the one true Church and going to the imposter Church across the street. And Sean Donoghue was Satan incarnate walking around the Ridge tempting people to leave the one true Church and disobeying God’s word. He deserved to be burned at the stake until he was sent back to hell where he deserved to be.
“He sure is mad at Sean isn’t he?” Ed Carson said to his neighbor Pete Samuels who nodded. Ted Stevens glared at them.
“Sean Donoghue is the devil and should be tied to a stake and burned,” he snapped and they just shrugged.
“You’re just mad because he gave young Ken those emeralds so he could marry Emily, you should be ashamed of yourself wanting to marry that girl anyway, she was young enough to be your daughter,” Ed told him. Ted glared at him.
“You two are fools, Sean Donoghue is evil, pure evil, the Ridge was better without him,” he spat. Pete laughed.
“That’s not what you said when he gave you that rifle for a field of barley, then you liked him fine enough,” he sneered. “Face it you’re just mad about Emily.” Ted walked over to whisper something to Father Zucker and the two men walked into the back together. Ed glanced over at Pete.
“Someone ought to tell Sean about those two getting together,” he said with a sigh and the two of them rode up the slope to Sean’s farm to tell him.
Sean thanked the two men for their warning, watched them ride down the road and sighed. He turned to the two brothers on the porch.
“Why is it the men who preach the most about love are the ones who hate the most?” he asked them. Ryan shrugged.
“Those priests know nothing about love, they get no love from anyone and it makes them bitter men; that’s why they hate women so much, the women get the men they want,” he said and Sean had to agree, it sounded right to him.
The next day he took the first hundred gallons of whiskey from the aging room and mixed it all together and bottled it in the half-gallon bottles he had brought back from Ennis. He took the first sip and then handed the glass to Ryan who took a sip and handed the glass to Danny who took a sip and handed it to Annie who insisted she had to taste it too.
“That’s a damned fine whiskey, Granddad,” Annie said and coughed a little. Danny patted her on her back.
“Ah, lass, it is a very good whiskey, nice and smooth,” Sean said and the boys agreed. They took a case of it up to Jefferies while Sean took a bottle and a glass up to the cemetery to see Maggie, something he had been wanting to do for a long time and feared for just as long.
Her grave was well-tended, someone, one of the women obviously came up and put flowers on it, there was a bunch of wild flowers on it when he sat down on the grass in front of the headstone. His children had put a very nice stone on it; a rectangular one with angels on both sides. Margaret Butler Donoghue, it read and the date of her birth, June twenty-second, fifteen sixty-seventh, and the date of her death of course, May seventeenth, sixteen thirty-two, she had been sixty-five years old. Bobby had made it to seventy-two, he had had seven more years with him, plus he had met him when they were both younger. He had had fifty-nine years with Bobby and only forty-two with Maggie, it seemed unfair really, even to compare the number of years. He had loved them both equally in different ways.
“Hello, Maggie,” Sean finally got up the courage to speak. He looked around at the neat tidy little gravestones all lined up in a row and wondered if they did it that way on purpose.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, I know your body’s here but where your spirit is, well I can’t say for certain, lass,” he continued. “I hope to think that you and Bobby are upstairs in heaven and having a good laugh making fun of me and teasing each other. That’s what I’d be doing. I wish I had the courage to die and go up there and join you but to tell you the truth I’ve always been afraid of death, of not knowing what’s to come afterwards. Maybe that’s why I jumped in the Moon Pearl Pool, I don’t know but I’m glad that I did, Maggie or otherwise I would have never known you or loved you or had those beautiful children with you.”
Sean talked for several hours, telling her everything that had happened to him since he left the Ridge and he had several glasses of whiskey to ease his sore throat and it made him so sad that she couldn’t tilt her head like she used to, that he was just talking to a gravestone that he was finally silent. And Sean folded his head down to his chest and cried a little because he missed her so much, even after sixty-six years, just like he still missed Bobby after a hundred and eighteen years.
Sean wiped his eyes and noticed movement from the corner of his eyes and turned his head. A girl looking a bit like Susan Johnson smiled and waved at him. He smiled and waved at her and she came over and sat down next to him. She looked at the headstone and his weepy eyes and the bottle of whiskey.
“I guess you really are my great-great grandfather after all,” she said and Sean nodded.
“Whose daughter are you?” he asked her kindly although he didn’t like the hard glint in her eyes, she reminded him of Susan Johnson and that Marianne Hastings, two women he wanted to forget.
“I’m Marianne Johnson, your daughter Megan married Mike Jefferies and had my grandmother Joanie who married Adam Baxter who had my mother Ruth who married Jamie Johnson the third and they had me and my brothers,” she informed him smugly. And then she added, “I’m the only girl out of five children.” Like she was a princess or something, Sean figured they probably treated her like one at home. She looked like a lass who was used to getting her own way. He held out his hand.
“Well, nice to meet you, Miss Marianne Johnson,” he said and she giggled and batted her eyes.
“So how old are you really, you look like your twenty-one or something,” she said and Sean smiled.
“I’m a hundred and eighty-six,” he informed her and she gasped and clapped her hands with delight.
“That must be so wonderful, being that old and still looking so young,” she said, looking at him with a sly smile. “I’m seventeen,” she announced. He smiled again and wished she would go away.
“That’s a very lovely age, do you have a young man that you fancy?” he asked politely just to have something to talk about. Marianne made a face.
“All the boys here on the Ridge are so immature,” she gave an exaggerated sigh. “All they talk about is farming and hunting with those new rifles you gave them and all the women talk about is those damned sewing machines you gave them, it’s so boring I could scream,” she declared. Sean laughed.
“Don’t you like to sew?” he asked and she shook her head.
“Sewing is so boring, and cooking is boring and baking if so boring, all of that stuff boring as shit,” she said matter-of-fact and Sean felt like laughed. This child was definitely related to Susan Johnson, there was no doubt in his mind. He was having another one of those been here, done that sort of moments.
“So what sorts of things do you like to do, Marianne?” he asked gently and she shrugged.
“I like to draw and read, that’s okay, mostly I think about the Fairie Cave legend and how wonderful it would be to find a cave like there here in Anamylia, do you think there’s one here?” she asked eagerly. Sean shrugged.
“I don’t know, the only one I ever heard of was the one that I found back in the Fairie Mountains back in Hamish,” he told her honestly. She frowned.
“Would you take me to Hamish and show me where it is?” Marianne asked him with another one of those sly smiles. Sean looked confused.
“And why would I do that, lass?” he asked her softly. She looked surprised.
“So that you could jump in and swim around and turn the waters back white and then we both could jump in and be immortal together,” she explained. “Doesn’t it ever get lonely you living forever all by yourself, don’t you wish you had someone to keep you company?” she whispered and she put her hand on his knee. Sean was shocked. He was her great-great-grandfather for God’s sake. What she was suggesting was incest, well, sort of, but it disgusted him.
“Ah, lass, sure it gets lonely, but that’s why I have family around and friends,” he told her and carefully took her hand off his knee and put it on her lap. She seemed surprised that he would reject her and pouted.
“Besides I don’t think it would work for two people, jumping in the water like that,” he informed her.
“What do you mean?” she snapped. He grinned at her anger. He guessed she wasn’t used to rejection.
“If two people jumped into the water at the same time, then before they both hit the water, something, some little toe, would hit the water before the rest of the body and the person who it belonged to would get the gift and the other person would just be swimming in the water and keeping the first person company,” he explained and she nodded. At least she was quick; Sean had to give her that.
“And the second person would know right away that the first person got the gift and they would spend their whole lives trying to trick them into coming back to the cave and jumping into the water and giving them the gift,” Sean continued. Marianne nodded again.
“The first person would be forced to run and hide until the second person got old and died before they could have a normal life,” he added. Marianne frowned.
“Why would he do that, why wouldn’t he just kill the second person?” she asked and now Sean frowned.
“Well, if they went into the cave together, then they would have to be friends and friends don’t kill friends,” he said firmly. Marianne shook her head.
“But what about the second person trying to trick the first person back into the cave and trying to steal his gift?” she wondered. Sean shrugged.
“That would be jealously because he gets to live forever and the other man can’t, that’s why no one outside the family can’t know about me, they would torture all of you in front of me to try to get me to reveal the location of the cave,” he explained and her eyes lit up.
“Would that work?” she asked casually. Sean shook his head.
“Why not?” she asked, again oh-so-casually but he wasn’t fooled. He shrugged.
“I found the cave when I was just twelve years old, lass, I’m a hundred and eighty-six, its been so long