A Galway Epiphany

by Ken Bruen

  All you need is love?

  Not really.

  Just keep it simple.

  A gun.

  Your balls.

  Lots of drugs.

  Flask of Jameson.

  Such was the plan.

  I’d finally got time to meet with my wife—ex-wife—Kiki.

  I hadn’t seen her since our child was killed in my arms. At the funeral, she’d wailed,

  “Why, why wasn’t it you who died, you bastard? It’s your fault my lovely girl is dead.”

  There was more but you get the drift.

  She was now a member of AA so maybe forgiveness was part of her gig.

  We met on neutral ground, the Meyrick, at the bottom of Eyre Square. It was fairly hopping as the Galway Races were to start on Monday. The heat wave was still in full merciless blast. I was early, nervous as a nun’s cat.

  I had dressed in order to not intimidate or provoke. She had always hated my lack of clothes finesse. I was wearing chinos, blue shirt, mocs. I looked like a geek’s grandfather and felt it.

  She arrived in heavy black, mourning for effect.

  In deference to her AA status, I was drinking Galway sparkling water—even had a slice of lemon to whip up the bitter atmosphere hovering.

  I stood to greet her, she snarled,

  “Don’t even think of hugging me.”

  Gotcha.

  She told the waitress she would have chamomile tea.

  ’Course she would.

  She sat, tentatively, cleaned the seat with medic wipes. I couldn’t begin with

  So how’s the crack?

  I tried,

  “You wished to see me?”

  She leveled her eyes at me; hatred burned her eyeballs, and didn’t do mine a whole heap of good either. She said,

  “I’m bringing Gretchen home to be buried. I want her gold miraculous medal back. You don’t deserve it.”

  How could I say

  “The devil child stole it?”

  Like that would fly.

  Thinking I hadn’t quite heard her, she repeated the awful words.

  “I’m taking Gretchen away.”

  Like fuck.

  I said,

  “You can’t do that.”

  She laughed like a banshee, said,

  “I’ve already had the paperwork done. She will be disinterred today and flown home tomorrow.”

  My turn to snarl. I went,

  “No fucking way.”

  She pushed home.

  “My lawyer already described you as a washed-up drunk and—guess what?—the judge knows you and despises you so you’re screwed, mister.”

  Weak, like close to passing out, I pleaded,

  “But she’s all I have. What will I do?”

  She stared at me for a long-tensioned minute, then,

  “Drink. It’s your life.”

  My heart was pounding. I implored,

  “Oh, please, Kiki, please.”

  She stood up, victor triumphant, said,

  “You never held her until the day you had her by the hand and let that man shoot her. It’s your fault she’s dead. You, you killed her.”

  I felt a tear roll down my face, plink in the sparkling water. I begged, truly begged, ended with

  “That day, that awful day, we really bonded, we connected, I swear to God.”

  She was walking away, threw out,

  “One day is not connected, it’s bogus affection, meandering sentimental horseshite. She meant nothing to you and you mean even less to me. I ordered you a large whiskey to be served when I leave. Oh, don’t worry, it’s paid for, as is everything in your evil existence, paid for by others. Keep the miraculous medal. It’s already tainted by your hands.”

  Then she was gone.

  The drink appeared in jig time.

  What did I do then?

  I complained about the ice in it.

  In Jameson? I mean, c’mon.

  The next six days are lost to nigh total blur.

  It was the Galway Races; you could do blitzkrieg drinking and still blend into the engulfing insanity of the week.

  Many days later I came to in my own bed, had a tattoo on the inside of my left arm. It was a dove with 3.5 printed underneath.

  I had what looked like a busted left cheekbone.

  My face was covered in dried-out blood, bruises already fading, torn lips, upper teeth broken.

  And lo, a miracle of Galway, maybe even a fucking epiphany: a duffel bag stuffed to the brim with fifty-euro notes, blood on the top layer, lots of blood.

  I was wearing a newish T-shirt that featured the logo:

  Don’t sweat the small stuff

  They too deserve to live.

  Really?

  It took two pints of water, two multicolor vomits, three aspirin, three fingers of Jay to be able to function, then a Xanax to measure me out, focus a little bit.

  I did a scan of the room, no bodies immediately found.

  My Garda jacket was hanging on the back of the door, the apartment wasn’t trashed. It might even have looked tidy! Nobody likes a messy drunk.

  “I’m not necessarily

  Saying I go to a lot of funerals.

  (I do.)

  But

  What does it say about

  A man’s life

  That he has the undertaker

  On speed dial?”

  (Jack Taylor, the Galway Races, July 2019)

  I checked the calendar. I’d been MIA for five days.

  As I sipped the coffee, added a hint of Jay, I finally got the courage to check my phone.

  Fifteen messages.

  Took a deep breath.

  Two from Ceola, the first berating me for not turning up to meet her, the second saying she and Dysart were heading for the farm and she hoped maybe I had already gone ahead.

  A message from Malachy, saying,

  “You were supposed to kill me two days ago and, what, you couldn’t even rise to a birthday card? Would it have been so difficult to do that? Some friend you are.”

  Okay.

  Then two from Dysart, calling me a cunt, demanding I show up. Another from Ceola. She sounded hysterical, scared, nigh screaming, like this,

  “God, oh God, Jack, this has gone very bad, oh no!”

  Then her phone went dead.

  The rest were from Owen Daglish, urgently demanding I get in touch.

  I rang him with a deeply ominous dread.

  He opened by launching into a severe bollocking, then roared,

  “Stay put, I’ll be at your apartment in jig time.”

  He was.

  He stormed in, asked for a large Jay, urged I have one too.

  Looked at me, added,

  “One more for you.”

  He lit a cigarette, blew out a cloud of tense smoke, said,

  “There has been a massacre at the farm of your buddy, the Rolling Stone guy.”

  He let that hover, snarled,

  “Where the fuck have you been?”

  I didn’t want to hear him say what my mind conjured up. He said it fast.

  “Your friend is dead, a young lady who I believe lived with him, she’s dead, and a man we have identified as an ex-priest and, weirdly, a falcon.”

  I asked,

  “No teenage girl?”

  He was furious, went

  “Girl? Christ, aren’t there enough dead for you?”

  I said with an audible tremor in my voice,

  “There was a girl of maybe fourteen staying there, the miracle girl, Sara?”

  He said,

  “Not the fucking miracle kids again. They have been a bloody curse.”

  How right he was.
<
br />   Slowly, he described the scene.

  Keefer with his face shot off. Ceola, her throat cut.

  Dysart was burned alive when the farmhouse was set ablaze. The falcon was beheaded.

  Forensics was treating it as some sort of bizarre murder(s)-suicide.

  I put my head between my knees and vomited onto the carpet.

  For a week I was put under the Garda hammer.

  Questioned.

  Quizzed.

  Threatened.

  Cajoled.

  My answer to everything was constant:

  “I don’t remember.”

  And I didn’t.

  Melvin Minkler, now a senior officer, snarled,

  “You’re telling me you were in a blackout for a week?”

  I looked at him. I was so shattered he could have beaten me to pulp (which he sure seemed inclined to wish for) and it wouldn’t have touched the pain I was in. I said,

  “No, no, I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you I don’t remember. It could have been five days, six?”

  He threw up his hands in exasperation, said to the young Guard taking my short statement,

  “You fucking believe this cunt? He’s admitting he’s such a drunk he was out of it for days?”

  The young Guard, named Sweeny, I think, said in total sincerity,

  “I believe him. My dad was like that.”

  Melvin was enraged, went with

  “Did I ask for your fucking family history? You think I give two shites about what your father does?”

  Sweeny, undeterred, said,

  “Does? No, did. He died screaming in the jigs.”

  When I was released, alibied by most of the barmen in the city, I leaned over O’Brien’s Bridge, lit a cig, despair waltzing through every slow membrane of my beaten mind, and grief like a pounding blast of heavy metal hammering on every nerve.

  A man approached, dressed in a fine white shirt, black pants with a crease (who irons anymore?). He was in his late fifties with short, neat brown hair, heavy black shoes. Despite the heat wave he had an aura of black anger. I know. I’ve been there often.

  He near spat,

  “You Taylor?”

  I said,

  “Unfortunately, I am.”

  He had spittle at the corners of his mouth, said,

  “I’m Mister Haut.”

  Prick.

  You call yourself mister, you obviously never had a real punch to the face, but it wasn’t too late.

  I said,

  “And?”

  He literally quivered, managed,

  “The name means nothing to you?”

  I lit another cig, tasting nothing, said,

  “Nope.”

  His hand shot out, grabbed my shoulder. I said,

  “Two seconds before I break your nose.”

  I didn’t feel angry, not even remotely stirred up, but I would break his nose.

  He pulled back his hand, said,

  “My daughter, Greta, you threatened her, claimed she was a troll, the cause of a young woman’s distress.”

  Took me a few seconds then,

  “Distress? Fucking distress? Your bitch daughter hounded and terrorized a young girl named Meredith so much that she hanged herself with her dad’s tie.”

  He backed away. I followed, consumed with rage, murder aflame in my heart, tears in my eyes, I shouted,

  “Distress, talk to me of that!”

  I looked at the bridge, warned,

  “You say another fucking word to me, just one, and I’ll throw you over that bridge and then I’ll go to your fucking home and have another chat with your dote of a daughter.”

  He was moving away, said,

  “You’ll pay, Taylor. I’ll see you will.”

  I got home, reasonably sober.

  The young Guard Sweeny had followed me after I’d been released, asked,

  “You okay?”

  I asked,

  “This good cop/bad cop?”

  He sighed, said,

  “I just wanted you to know that I was at the scene of the killings and I’ll never forget the burnt horses.”

  Jesus H.

  I said,

  “What?”

  What fresh horror now?

  He said,

  “The horses were doused in petrol then set on fire. People saw them in flames streaking through the fields, giving a sound that one man said was like the demons of hell had been released.”

  I had to lean against a wall, my eyes spinning in my head, images as if from William Blake careening round my mind, a nightmare that I’d never unsee nor unhear.

  I thanked Sweeny for his concern, said,

  “You’re too decent to be a Guard.”

  He gave a sad smile, said,

  “You’d know.”

  I rang Malachy, not knowing if he was dead, but he answered, snarled,

  “You fuckhead!”

  Hung up.

  Went better than I’d hoped.

  I met with Owen Daglish, tried to convince him that Sara was behind the massacre at Saoirse Farm. He was sipping from a pint of Guinness that had a creamy head it seemed a damn shame to disturb, but needs must.

  He put the glass down slowly, didn’t look at me, whispered,

  “You need to see someone.”

  I was easing my sick soul into a Jameson, said,

  “Right, right. I’m seeing you, telling you.”

  He gave me a long look, said,

  “The week you were MIA, a drug dealer was robbed, someone gave him a beating and cleaned out his money.”

  I wondered,

  Me? The bag of money?

  He shook his head, as if the whole world was skew-ways. I asked again,

  “Sara, the girl?”

  He did something that underlined his despair of me. He pushed the pint away, said,

  “You’re sick in the head, Jack. You need professional help.”

  Walked away.

  At a loss, I walked my own self, had finished my drink. I was fucked but not quite. I nearly drank Owen’s remaining pint but I had some standards, ragged and blown, but still.

  Went to St. Nicholas Collegiate Church. The Protestant one. I felt a niggling guilt at entering there, Catholic guilt never fully dispelled. It was silent, which I loved, and I felt an odd rare peace, sat down, remembered the last time I was here, during the maelstrom of Galway Girl.

  Then mourning a dead child, I’d found an old poem on faded vellum by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It had been uncanny in its lines, echoing the sorrow of the time, my time, not GMH’s.

  No poem this round but, as I lowered my head in my hands, a memory of my days at the Bish in Galway, not a prayer away from where now I sobbed in hopelessness, our English teacher, a spoiled priest, beating me over the knuckles because I couldn’t for the very life of me remember one line of a poem.

  The poem was “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”

  By Yeats.

  Out of sheer tenacity, many years later, as a Guard on border duty, I’d found a tattered copy of Yeats’s Selected Poetry in a derelict house we were sheltering in from out of the rain.

  I memorized that poem, remembered it there in the Protestant church.

  I recited the lines under my breath.

  They were scant comfort but the music of the structure was almost soothing.

  I passed a guy who was wearing a T-shirt with a quote by the late Robin Williams:

  “If it’s not one thing

  It’s

  My mother”

  Elicited a tiny smile from me. You take any trace of humor where you find it—even from a T-shirt.

  The heat wave we’d been enduring rather than relishing was in i
ts fifth week; the humidity was intolerable. Not that the vexed humanity was tolerable either.

  I came out of the church to torrential rain, absolutely dashing, muttered the title of the very first Dennis Lehane book I’d read,

  Prayers for Rain.

  Hard to blame Dennis, I guess.

  I balanced all,

  Brought all to mind,

  The years to come

  Seemed waste of breath,

  A waste of breath

  The years behind

  In balance

  With this life,

  This death.

  (W. B. Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”)

  I was at my apartment, trying not to think about

  My deep friendship with Keefer.

  The touching strength of Ceola.

  The determination of Dysart.

  The fierce beauty of the falcon.

  The utter fear of the horses.

  As distraction, I counted the money in the duffel bag, came to nearly 20,000 euros.

  I sat back, went,

  “A miracle?”

  The doorbell shrilled.

  More Guards, I figured.

  Nope.

  Monsignor Rael, the Vatican fixer.

  He was dressed in a light black suit, immaculate white shirt that kind of glowed, his hair neatly cut, thin gold glasses, and his face like a shard of ice. He asked,

  “Might I come in?”

  Sure.

  I waved my hand to signal suit yourself.

  He came in, moved to the window as many did, and gazed at the expanse of Galway Bay. Then he said, without turning,

  “We have us somewhat of a clusterfuck.”

  I lit a cig, said,

  “You think?”

  I asked,

  “Drink?”

  He turned, adjusted his glasses as if to scrutinize me more fully, said,

  “Indeed, how hospitable of you. Black coffee, please.”

  I got that as he studied my bookshelf, said,

  “Somewhat eclectic taste. Beckett next to Becky Masterman, Rilke next to a bio of Neil Young.”

  I said,

  “What can I say, I’m nuts.”

  He smiled that thin smile that bespoke nastiness.

  He said,

  “Our chap Dysart, he was, I imagine, less than candid with you.”

  I had to be careful not to pick up the jagged tempo of his speech. It was contagious, like a disease, a faint mocking tone leaking over his words. I asked,

  “Pray tell.”

  (See what I mean?)