by Ken Bruen
He sniggered, said,
“Thomas is going to get a kick out of this.”
“Thomas?”
“Thomas Clancy, superintendent of the Guards.”
I held my hand up, said,
“Lemme guess. A golf crony?”
He picked up some papers, said,
“Good day, sir.”
I didn’t move.
He looked up, said,
“You’re dismissed.”
I turned to leave, left with,
“Funny, that’s the exact same thing the Guards said to me.”
*
It is said that if you are at the Claddagh Basin in the hour before dawn, after Saint Brigid’s Day, and you sit very still, you can see the famine ships glide across the bay and along the wind hear the faint whisper of the names of the coffin ships.
Emma Prescott
Joshua Carroll
Margaret Milne
C. H. Appleton
The Luculus
William Kerry
So it was that I was thus perched, at the end of that bitter cold month, looking at Nimmo’s Pier. Not so long ago, I had stood on that very spot, a revolver in my hand and suicide on my breath. To this day, I’m not sure what turned me ’round.
I saw a man there now, standing real close to the edge, almost exactly the place I had stood. Shook my head to dispel the illusion.
He jumped.
I muttered,
“Fuck.”
I tore off my Garda all-weather coat, shucked my shoes, and went in the water.
Christ, it was cold. I lost sight of him twice and he was going down for the final time when I reached him. I grabbed his collar with my hand and kicked for shore. He fought me, the bad bastard. Nearly drowned us until I got a fist to his chin and stunned him.
Pulled him up the shore and collapsed. He was muttering,
“Cold, so cold.”
I got to my feet and retrieved my coat, wrapped him in it, then got my phone and called an ambulance. My whole body shook. I reached back into my jacket, got the flask, got some of the Jay into the man’s mouth. Took a long swig my own self.
The ambulance came within minutes with a squad car right behind. I explained the situation. The attendants got the man wrapped fast and offered me a blanket, said,
“You better come too.”
I said no.
I saw the flash of an iPhone. Damn dog walker.
The Guards treated me with suspicion. One of them suddenly said,
“God almighty, it’s Taylor.”
His partner, young and eager, asked,
“Who’s that?”
The older guy said,
“Trouble is what he is.”
Leveled a hard stare at me, barked,
“What are you doing here, this time of the morning?”
The ambulance attendant said,
“Being a hero, is what.”
I took a slug from the flask to the disapproval of both Guards.
The ambulance attendant handed me my coat, said,
“You might well have saved that man from hypothermia.”
Not to mention drowning but I said nothing.
The young Guard grabbed the coat, said,
“That is an official Garda coat. I’ll write you up for that.”
The attendant said,
“Christ, don’t be a bollix.”
My thoughts exactly but they kept the coat.
Before the ambulance departed, I went over to check on the man. He managed to sit up and beckoned me. I was ready to say,
“No need to thank me.”
He leaned real close, whispered,
“Fuck you.”
The ambulance guy heard him and, as he prepared to leave, said,
“It’s the shock.”
I thought about that, answered,
“He’s probably a Guard.”
Coatless, I made my wet, frozen way home.
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
(Mother Teresa)
4
The country was reeling under a double horror.
The Grace case where vulnerable children were left in a home where abuse of all kinds was not only known to have occurred but had been reported numerous times to the department of health. Grace was removed once, but
Then returned to the same home.
And this was not a matter of months but twenty years.
As people tried to find some way of analyzing this, it was revealed that a
Septic tank, yes a septic tank, was the dumping place for babies of unwed mothers or mothers deemed unfit, and children up to three years old had been thus dumped. A cursory search had disclosed that at least eighty-five bodies were
Thrown there.
The order of nuns in charge of the poor women refused to take any responsibility and had indeed hired a PR lady who, on hearing of the accusations, replied,
“So?”
Further, she told a TV crew investigating that the most they would find was
“A few old bones.”
*
I made the papers.
“Local hero saves drowning man.”
They detailed how ex-Garda John...
John!
“... Taylor risked his life to save a man in the Claddagh Basin.”
It didn’t mention the Guards confiscating my beloved coat.
In the pub, I took a fair amount of slagging.
Like
“Oh, save me Johnny.”
“Throw us a lifeline, John boy.”
It did earn me some free drinks. I was on my second of these when Renaud appeared. Not, alas, to praise me.
Opened with,
“You have time to jump in rivers when you should be searching for the killer of my sons?”
I nearly said,
“I was looking for clues.”
But went with,
“I found nothing in my investigation.”
He looked like he might spit in my drink.
Which would have been a very, very bad idea.
I finished my drink, brushed past him out to the street. He followed me, uttering a string of French invectives. He reminded me of somebody.
On a wall opposite was a tag that was to be found all over the city.
2
4
J
I was staring at it when Renaud grabbed my arm, shouted,
“You are fired.”
I turned to him, the penny dropping. I said,
“Trump! You are the spit of the Donald.”
He laughed almost manically, exclaimed,
“Le Donald, c’est magnifique.”
The true genius shudders at incompleteness and
usually prefers silence to saying something
which is not everything it should be.
(Edgar Allan Poe)
5
The Tuam babies scandal rocked Irish life to its core.
How do you even vaguely understand how nuns...
Nuns!
Dumped the bodies of babies and very young children into a septic tank.
The Grace shock.
A vulnerable girl, later as an adult, was left for twenty years with foster parents who abused her in every way there is.
And
Despite social workers’ reports, even after she was temporarily removed, was then put back into the same viper’s hole. And other children and adults too.
All vulnerable and horrendously molested.
You listened to the news, the reports and, truly, your jaw dropped.
Enda Kenny, our much-maligned leader of the coalition government, responded with one of the finest speeches of barely contained rage.
Said,
“We did not just hide away the dead bodies
Of tiny human beings.
We dug deeper
To bury
Our compassion,
Our mercy
And
Our very humanity.”
Amid all this horror, you strove desperately to find a reason even to stir from bed. Got some through football.
For once, the beautiful game was... beautiful.
Barcelona were four down going into the second match with Paris Saint-Germain. The papers had crucified Barca in the week leading up to the second match.
Incredulous, I read descriptions of
Has been
Finished.
I mean, seriously?
You can never, ever write off such a team. I knew that team would roar back with absolute ferocity.
Did they just.
Not only had they to score four but, when PSG scored, they had to up the ante again.
And again.
And, fuck me,
Again.
Never have I seen such a comeback.
I’m not your up-on-his-feet shouting at matches unless it’s Galway in the hurling and even then I’m relatively mild.
I was up
Shouting
Wild.
And only sorry I hadn’t my beloved pup to dance with.
*
Thinking of dogs, my heart was scalded by the memory of my gorgeous dog.
Storm.
And a tiny hurricane he was.
Jesus.
I wept when they killed him.
And in such a vicious bloody fashion.
The maniac who did it had a warped awful sense of twisted humor.
Cut the pup’s heart out
And
Left this note, with the heart literally in the middle of the sentence:
I heart Fenians.
I made an unholy pact to enter the darkness of my own mind. The cold place where nothing lives.
I did so with vengeance aforethought.
Did I fucking ever.
And knew such a price as would ensue from that dark territory. They mutter,
“For revenge, then dig two graves.”
I dug a whole brutal field.
I was not consoled.
I would never again go gentle into any sane night.
Ever.
I knew and I was content.
Back Rank Checkmates
In chess, a rank is a row of squares across the board.
Your back rank is the row where you place your king.
Be very careful. Many checkmates are delivered
On the back of the board.
(Beginning Chess)
6
I was listening to Jimmy Norman’s show. He plays the best music for rock heads. News on top of the hour revealed that
1,487
Bodies of children were now believed to be in the septic tank in Tuam.
1,487. Jesus indeed wept.
The nuns named in the allegations, Bon Secours, whose very name implied
Help and succor, were hiding behind a PR lady who told a newspaper,
“You’ll find nothing in the tank but old bones from the famine.”
She had since remained incommunicado.
The night before, reeling from Irish horrors, a search-and-rescue helicopter rushing to the aid of a Russian seaman was lost off the Mayo coast, with all four crew missing.
Desperate for mind distraction,
I binged on
Suburra
Spotless
Gomorrah.
Then found a small gem of a Western,
Bone Tomahawk.
With Kurt Russell and Patrick Wilson.
I made a double espresso, black, bitter like the very air of the present, heard
Marc Roberts on his show give a shout-out to Johnny Duhan’s Winter.
The doorbell chimed and I swore, muttered,
“Better be bloody good.”
Opened it to a stranger.
A man in a very fine long suede jacket, dark cords, and what seemed to be white
Converse. He was tall, in that vague fiftyish bracket, buzz-cut black hair, a hawk nose, and eyes that the romantic novelists might call burning.
He had that Russell Crowe gig of quiet smoldering going on. I snapped,
“Yeah?”
He put out his hand, a rough callused one, said,
“They call me Tevis.”
I had no clue, said,
“I have no clue.”
He gave a wide grin, the kind of shit-eating one that Trump would like, said,
“You saved my life. From drowning.”
I wittily said,
“Oh.”
He asked,
“Might I come in?”
Why not.
He took a brief scan of the living room, checked the panorama of the bay, said,
“Fantastic view.”
I offered,
“Something to drink?”
He seemed to like that, said,
“I could go a stiff one.”
Somehow, in that Brit fashion, investing it with a vague lewdness. Caught that his own self, added,
“I’m a bit nervous. I mean, how often do you get to thank your savior?”
I detected a hint of sarcasm, so went with,
“If you’re Catholic, just about every day, they recommend.”
He smiled, great capped teeth, no National Health dance there. He said,
“They told me you were a hoot.”
“They?”
“Don’t be coy, Jack. May I call you Jack? The dogs in the street tell tales about you, man! You’re a goddamn genuine legend,”
Suddenly, I was tired.
He smiled, asked,
“Where are we on that drink?”
I said,
“Bar’s closed. It’s Good Friday.”
He did a mock emo face, then put his hand in his jacket. I shot out, grabbed his wrist, said,
“You best just have attitude in there.”
Raised his eyebrows, said,
“Bit jumpy, fella, maybe cut back on the caffeine.”
Then handed me a small marble figurine.
“As my thanks to you, Jack, I am going to teach you some first-rate chess.”
The figure was heavy in my hand and beautifully carved, I said,
“It’s a knight.”
He gave a short hand clap, said,
“See? You’re learning already.”
*
When I finally persuaded him that he had to actually leave, he said,
“A man of books like your good self will know what the Chinese say.”
I sighed, sounding horrendously like my mother, who could have sighed for Ireland and did,
Often.
I asked,
“Do tell?”
“You save a man’s life, you are thus responsible for that life.”
“Like fuck,”
I answered.
He headed for the door, said,
“You and me, buddy, now we are joined at the hip.”
I watched him from the bay window. He stood on the promenade, gazing at the water. I could hope he might be reassessing that body of water for another go.
He turned, gave what can only be described as a cheery wave.
I poured a large Jay, the bishop lined up alongside. The glass hit against it, knocked it to the ground. I bent, picked it up, noticed letters on the base.
Peered close, read,
2
4
J
Part 1
The Chessman Cometh
7
Peter Boyne was a pedophile
And
Proud.
No fake remorse, no contrite wailing.
He had been a priest for years but even the Church couldn’t cover for him and booted him. He even looked like the notorious Brendan Smith. Soft build, weak face, and bulging eyes.
“I’m an ugly cunt,”
He told a victim.
But never charged.
Never.
The luck of the very wicked devil.
He gazed at the mound of trophies on his bed.
Red baby socks.
A small Lakers T-shirt.
Tiny hurdle.
Barney the dinosaur.
Teletubbies; he could name them all.
Laa-Laa, Dipsy, and had a way to incorporate then into a song, right before he used the chloroform.
And photos.
Hundreds.
He swooned with the joy of vivid remembrance.
Now.
He had his sights fixed on a new boy.
He’d learned his name, of course, and toned that with an orgasmic slowness:
J-o-f-f-r-e-y.
I don’t know what love is.
I hated my mother so not a great beginning.
I cared for my little dog as if my life depended on it and in a bizarre way it did.
I think I loved my dead friends.
Ridge,
Stewart.
But I certainly never showed it to them.
Not so they’d notice.
And a woman named Ann Henderson; I was truly obsessed with her. She did the big thing and, in Galway, by that we mean
Suicide.
Not a great record then.
Along came Marion.
Phew-oh.
She looked like Kate Mara, whose part in House of Cards was compelling. She was the sister of the more glamorous, successful Romola Garai. In common with the actress, Marion combined that blend of sheer spirit with vulnerability.
I’m a sucker for that shit.
Let me digress as a Booker novelist might do.
Eamon Casey, our former bishop, died.
In the same time frame as
Chuck Berry
Jimmy Breslin
Martin McGuinness. (Norman Tebbit said he hoped McGuinness would rot in hell for all eternity, adding he was a coward.)
Nice.
Eamon had been our most popular cleric, and if the Church ever seemed to be part of the people it was due to the likes of him.
Until,
Like the fallible human being he was, he fell in love.
No harm there.
But
He covered it up—and the birth of a child.
Until
The dame went on The Late Late Show and blew him out of the ecclesial water.
He resigned, despite the pope asking him not to.
He went into exile in South America and eventually came home to live a life of quiet desperation. Much like De Niro’s priest in True Confessions.
Marion went to his funeral and, in a bizarre move, the Church that had effectively banished him declared he would be buried in the crypt under Galway Cathedral.
