Jig

by Campbell Armstrong

  Make him come here, she thought.

  Just make him come here.

  Soon. Soon now. Soon she’d be gone from this house.

  She laid her cheeks against the glass and looked out across the night, and thought how hard she’d tried to pretend she cared for Harry Cairney. And how close she’d come to the peril of actually believing she felt something, when all she carried in her heart for him was no more feeling than a slug had when it slinked insensately through blades of grass and left a trail of crystal. When you pretend to be something for long enough, you become that thing.

  But she’d done her duty. She could always say that about herself.

  Poughkeepsie, New York

  Patrick Cairney pulled into a closed gas-station and turned off the engine of the car. The pain he felt was searing, as if the flesh were peeling away from the bone. He reached down and turned up the left leg of his pants and gasped because even something so simple as the brush of clothing against the wound was excruciating. He drew his hand back up. It was covered in blood. He knew that a bullet had passed through, close to the shinbone, burrowing a ragged hole in his flesh. Pretty soon he’d feel numbness around the wound, and then there would be the sensation of uselessness in the limb. He wondered how much blood he might have lost since leaving the River View Motel.

  He struggled to take off his coat, which he tossed into the rear seat. Then he removed his shirt and tugged at the sleeve, managing to separate it from the rest of the garment. With this improvised bandage twisted around a ballpoint pen he found in the glove compartment, he made a very crude tourniquet which he applied to the wound. It was extremely painful to do so, but he realised his choices were more than a little limited. He could bleed to death or he could attempt to stem the flow of blood with anything he had at hand – and hope he’d make it to Roscommon before he became weak and delirious.

  He rolled the window down and breathed night air deeply into his lungs. He had to keep a very clear head. When he reached Roscommon he’d make up some kind of story – something about an accident. He wasn’t sure quite what yet. That was the easy part anyway.

  For a moment he sat with his eyes closed and his head tipped back against the seat. It was odd how, when he thought of Finn now, he was unable to bring into his mind an image of the man’s face. It was lost to him suddenly. He could hear the voice still and he imagined he was listening to Finn whispering quietly in his ear. I asked too much of you this time. I sent you in there on a wing and a prayer. I was only thinking of the money. I wasn’t thinking about the danger to you. Nobody could have done anything better in the terrible circumstances. I’m sorry, boy.

  Cairney shook his head, opened his eyes.

  Roscommon. He’d go there and see his father. He’d go there and heal for a time. It was a safe place for him now. He’d avoid Celestine. He wouldn’t think about her. When he passed her in the hallway or ran into her at mealtimes he’d be polite but aloof. She’d get the message quickly.

  Goddam, the pain was agonising. He bit on his lower lip hard. There was a way to transcend this kind of pain, if he could only reach inside himself deeply enough. The trick was to remove yourself from your physical cage and soar. To cross that bridge between the corporeal and the spiritual. To divide yourself.

  Bullshit. Pain was pain, no matter what you tried to think.

  Groaning, he retrieved his overcoat and drew it around his shoulders. Then he turned the engine on. You’re young and strong and the wound will mend. And after that you can go looking for Finn’s money again.

  Finn’s money, he thought. He’d been sidetracked, detoured, that was all. When he’d healed, he’d go back to Kevin Dawson’s house. And if Dawson didn’t have the money, then the President’s brother might be able to give him a lead to the character Mulhaney had called The Old Man. When his wound was better, he’d go back out again, he’d find the money and take it back to the house near Dun Laoghaire.

  The empty house.

  The room of muted harps. Finn’s old wall posters, collected over the years. There were a couple from the Irish general election in 1932. End Unemployment! Vote Fianna Fail. Vote Cumann na nGaedheal! Cairney recalled them with clarity, the way he remembered the whole whitewashed house, the airy rooms, the crooked hallway, the stairs that went up to Finn’s immaculately spartan bedroom, which was like a monk’s cell. But he still couldn’t see Finn’s face. He wondered if he’d ever be able to bring it to mind again or if, like the man himself, it was lost to him for all time.

  He drove the car out of the gas station and headed back in the direction of the highway. For the next twenty miles he wasn’t even conscious of the pain. He’d found a useful trick to deal with it. He kept thinking of his father, the sick bed, the claustrophobic enclosure of an oxygen tent – and these images dispelled at least some of his own anguish.

  Not all. Just some. Maybe enough to keep him plugging through the miles still ahead.

  Danbury, Connecticut

  Inside the diner, Artie Zuboric waited impatiently for Tyson to finish his coffee but Bruno was obviously reluctant to hurry. He’d been like this all the way from Kevin Dawson’s place, hemming and hawing, wondering aloud if what they were doing was the right thing. It never occurred to Bruno that what they were doing was the only thing and that questions of right and wrong didn’t come into it.

  Tyson Bruno dropped a sugar lump into his coffee and said, ‘When Korn finds we’ve split, he’s going to shit bricks.’

  Zuboric was tired of hearing his colleague talk about the things Leonard M. Korn was going to do. ‘Look, you want out, that’s fine by me. I’ll go on alone.’

  Tyson Bruno shook his head. ‘I’ve come this far.’

  Zuboric was very anxious to be on his way, but Bruno had insisted they stop for coffee. Now, though, Zuboric felt the kind of urgency that had the relentless quality of a runaway train. He knew he’d overstepped his authority, that he’d defied the personal instructions of The Director, but he hadn’t seen much point in hanging around Dawson’s house and waiting for Korn to show up just to vent his considerable wrath on himself and Bruno.

  This was all or nothing time now.

  It had taken nerve to walk away from the situation. But then his own reserves of nerve had astonished him. He’d actually gone upstairs in the Dawson home and interrupted Kevin in the middle of his grief, gently taking him aside, pulling him away from the figure of his sedated wife, saying he had a couple of questions to ask and they had to be answered even though the time was wrong, but the process of justice couldn’t wait, sorry sorry, a million apologies, but that’s how it had to be. Zuboric didn’t want to go through all that again ever. Kevin Dawson had responded to the questions like a man submerged in ten feet of stale green water.

  ‘If we bring in Jig,’ Zuboric started to say.

  Bruno interrupted. ‘If we bring in Jig we’ll get medals. And if we also happen to bring in Frank Pagan, hey, write your own citation.’ A bruised little smile appeared in the middle of Tyson Bruno’s face. ‘But you can’t open a bank account with ifs, Artie. First off, you got to keep in mind that Kevin Dawson wasn’t exactly at his best when you talked to him. The man’s in an awful lot of pain and turmoil. In that condition, you don’t always get your facts right. Second, you could be making a trip way out to the sticks for absolutely nothing, because by the time you get there Jig might have been and gone, and Frank Pagan as well. If either of them was ever headed there in the first place, that is.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to lose,’ Zuboric said. ‘Neither have you.’ And he thought of Charity Zuboric taking off her copious bra and her G-string for the gratification of sick old men.

  Tyson Bruno finished his coffee, pushed his cup aside. ‘That’s the truest thing you ever said.’

  Zuboric started to get up. Tyson Bruno tugged at his coat sleeve. ‘I want you to know it took a lot of balls to talk to Kevin Dawson the way you did.’

  ‘I did what I had to,’ Zuboric answered.

>   Both men stepped outside into the parking-lot of the diner.

  ‘It would be neat if we happened to find both these guys in the same place,’ Bruno remarked as they reached the car.

  Zuboric said nothing. He surreptitiously patted his shoulder holster, a man taking inventory of himself. He got inside the car on the passenger side and Tyson Bruno sat behind the wheel.

  ‘Drive,’ Zuboric said. ‘Drive like your life depends on it.’

  ‘It does,’ Bruno said.

  Rhinebeck, New York

  The old guy in the twenty-four hour convenience store did everything slowly and deliberately. When he said the word ‘Roscommon’ Pagan thought he counted at least fourteen syllables.

  ‘You mean old Franz’s place,’ the man said. ‘Used to belong to a brewer before Harry Cairney came along.’

  ‘That’s the place,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Can’t figure why you’d want to go there this time of day.’

  ‘I’m looking for a friend.’ Pagan kept the impatience out of his voice.

  The old guy stepped out of the store to the sidewalk. The cold apparently didn’t bother him. ‘Go down that a way,’ he said, pointing one long bony finger down the main street of Rhinebeck, which was sleepy and clean. ‘You want three oh eight for five miles. There’s a crossroads down there. You take the left fork. Quiet road. There’s no signs. Keep going maybe two miles. You can’t miss it. Big house about a hundred yards back from the road.’

  Frank Pagan thanked the old man and went towards the truck. He climbed up inside the cab and turned the key in the ignition. His whole body, still shaking from the vibrations of the vehicle and all the miles he’d travelled, felt like a tuning-fork. Fatigue gnawed at him. There was some small corner of his brain that was still alert, but it was like a room lit only by a twenty-watt bulb. It was a room occupied by two people. Jig sat in one corner. Ivor McInnes, the Terrible, was silent and surly in another. I know what you’re up to, Ivor, Pagan thought. And all your silences, all your denials, won’t save your white Presbyterian arse now.

  But first there was Jig.

  He backed the truck up, headed out through Rhinebeck, passing the unlit windows of small stores. He adjusted his rearview mirror, catching a quick flash of his own reflection. He looked like something disinterred and carted home by a dog and dumped in the middle of the Persian rug to the general dismay of the whole family.

  Frank Pagan, an old bone.

  But an old bone with a mission.

  Roscommon, New York

  There was a weak suggestion of dawn in the sky when Patrick Cairney drove through the gates of Roscommon and passed the security jeep that was parked between the trees. The driver of the jeep recognised him and waved him to continue.

  Cairney, who felt disoriented because the pain in his leg had been crippling for the last twenty miles, slowed the car in front of the house. He made no move to get out at once. He reached down and grabbed the leg, massaging it lightly, trying to ease the pain with his fingertips. The cuffs of his pants were soaked with blood, his sock squelched inside his shoe, and there was barely any feeling left in the limb itself. It might have been a stranger’s leg, a graft that hadn’t worked. He pushed the car door open and got out awkwardly, standing in front of the steps that led up to the front door. The injured leg pulsated, several scalding little spasms. Cairney moved towards the steps, dragging one foot.

  She materialised there in the shadows, a sudden bright spectre in the gloom. She wore a blue robe and her hair was tied up on her scalp with a simple rose-coloured ribbon. Cairney stared at her expressionlessly. He didn’t move. Nor did he want her to see him in pain because he didn’t need her concern or any offer of assistance. He didn’t want her to touch him, a supportive hand on his elbow, the nearness of her body, her perfume, anything. No contact. No connection.

  He gazed at her. She was standing very still, her arms at her side. She looked remote. He had absolutely no way of knowing if she was pleased to see him. But then she wasn’t going to smile, was she? There was a sick man inside the house, it wasn’t a situation for merriment or pleasure. It wasn’t a time for happy reunions, even if he’d wanted one.

  He moved up on to the first step.

  It was a brave effort, but he couldn’t pull it off. The leg buckled under him and he went down, and suddenly she was coming down the steps towards him, her arm held out and her look one of worry.

  She saw the blood on his clothes. She went down on one knee and moved the cuff of his pants aside and her touch, which he still didn’t want, was pleasantly cool, almost a cure in itself. She raised her face, looked at him. Cairney closed his eyes. Pain could be seductive at one end of its spectrum, it could lull you out of your body, carry you away into a numb place.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I had an accident.’

  ‘We better get you indoors,’ Celestine said. She helped him stand, let him support the weight of his body against her. They went up the steps, bound together as surely as if they’d been roped one against the other. She aided him inside, took him along the hallway, made him lie down on the living room sofa. His blood came through the useless tourniquet and soaked the velvet material of the couch.

  She decided to undo the tourniquet he’d created. She tossed aside the bloodstained ballpoint pen, the sleeve of the shirt, and then she was studying the raw wound itself. She saw at once that it was a gunshot wound, but she didn’t say anything. She looked at him, and what she felt was pity for him.

  She didn’t want to feel such a thing. If she entertained pity, then it would only make everything more difficult. She lowered her eyes and examined the wound again. She touched it gently. Cairney winced, drawing his leg aside.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  He struggled to control the pain. ‘How is he?’

  ‘As well as can be expected.’

  ‘I need to see him.’

  ‘It can wait.’

  Cairney moved his leg. Celestine pressed firmly on his shoulders. ‘Stay where you are,’ she said.

  ‘I can get up. I can make it upstairs.’

  ‘Patrick,’ with a warning in her voice.

  Cairney swung his leg to the floor. She wasn’t going to stop him from going upstairs. He tried to stand, but the leg gave way and he had to sit down again.

  ‘I told you,’ she said.

  Cairney stared at her. He hated feeling so damned feeble in front of her. He hated the idea of being at her mercy.

  She said, ‘There’s a way to take your mind off pain, Patrick.’

  She undid the buttons of her robe and leaned towards him, her small breasts swinging very slightly.

  Cairney caught her by the hair and turned her face to one side. Her ribbon came undone and the hair spilled out over his hand and he remembered how, when she’d come to his bedroom, she’d woven that same hair around his penis in a gesture that was perhaps the most intimate he’d ever experienced. Desire and pain. There was a strange interlocking of sensations inside him right then, as if desire and pain had fused together in one feeling that was indescribable and fresh and beyond any emotion he’d ever registered. He shut his eyes, let his hand fall away from her hair, felt her fingers move over his thighs.

  ‘Trust me,’ she said.

  It was a whisper, barely audible. He felt her breasts against the palms of his upturned hands.

  She undid his belt slowly. Then she slid her fingers against his groin.

  ‘Trust me,’ she said again.

  He felt her mouth, the slight friction of lips, the motion of her tongue. He retreated into the darkness of himself, a refuge of pleasure, a place where all the pains subsided like dead tides. She was climbing up into his lap, and he could feel the edge of her open robe rub the side of his face, then she was taking his hand and directing it between her legs, where she was moist and warm and open for him.

  He opened his eyes, looking directly into her face. There was a quality of opaque glass to her beauty,
he thought. Just as you thought you could see straight into her, a glaze moved over her eyes, leaving you with nothing.

  ‘Love me,’ she said. ‘Love me just one time.’

  He closed his eyes again and felt himself float out through the estuaries of pain as if on some very frail raft of himself. He wasn’t thinking now of Finn nor of the sick man who lay upstairs at this very moment nor of the money stolen from the doomed Connie O’Mara, he wasn’t thinking, he was out of the range of his own thoughts, beyond the radar of conscience or guilt, moving his hips while Celestine tilted her head back and her hair toppled in disarray over her bare shoulders. It was a fragile moment, and an intense one, and he wanted to believe he was capable of this treachery, that nothing else mattered to him except this woman who straddled him now and in whose body he had lost himself. That the man who lay ill upstairs meant absolutely nothing to him. He had lost Finn – what was the loss of his father compared to that? Besides, he had spent years creating and maintaining fictions. What was one more? He could imagine all the events of recent days collapsing behind him into oblivion. Here and now, nothing else.

  And then it passed. The moment was gone. Cairney sighed and fell motionless against the back of the sofa.

  Celestine stared at him. She was also conscious of a precious moment passing away. She had an empty feeling, a realisation that this particular segment of time was never going to come again, no matter how long she might live. And it couldn’t be otherwise. She slid away from him, lowered herself to the carpet, looked up at his face.

  ‘I asked too much,’ she said very quietly. ‘Or maybe I didn’t ask enough. Go see your father now.’

  How could he go upstairs and into the old man’s sick room with the smell of Celestine on his fingers? How could he stand by the bed and look into that dying face and not feel the weight of a terrible guilt? He stared down at his wound. Dear God, he’d been so determined to avoid this woman, so intent on staying away from her – and then this had happened, this travesty, this bastard intimacy.