Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  Missus Howard looked over at Patrick and smiled. “As the man said, Fury finds its own weapons.”

  “But what had you to be furious about, Else?”

  “Oh, Sam! You’re getting to be such an old fogey. I told you all this before, and you must have heard me telling it a hundred times to others.” She turned to Patrick. “That one was so prim and proper it was only a matter of time before someone spilled something on her. Every woman in the town was furious at her, not just me. It just happened that I was in the right place at the right time. You can never get rid of a tea stain. The Civil Servant was lucky he never married her. Better a life of loneliness and mild insanity than married to a yoke like that. ‘Yoke’ is a Catholic word. In looks, Deirdre Hyland could have competed with our minister’s wife—what was her name?—Libby Metcalf. But Libby was down to earth; no need for an accent there.”

  Patrick turned to Sam. “Knowing what you knew from Deirdre Hyland must have made you doubtful about what you heard in the Woodwork Room, Sam?”

  “As the Coroner, the only thing I knew about the death of Father Coughlin was what I heard at the inquest. I could not bring anything else into the room with me. The jury heard the evidence. The jury reached a decision of accidental death. I was a glorified referee making sure that the legalities were observed.”

  “But you were the one who asked the questions.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You had control of the answers.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The witnesses could not answer the questions you didn’t ask,” Elsie said.

  “Did you believe what Deirdre Hyland told you, Sam?”

  “I’m being cross-examined. That is a moot question, Patrick. When I realized she was passing on secondhand information, I stopped her, wouldn’t let her talk about the case at all. Besides saying the death was not accidental, all I heard her saying was, ‘Eddie Coughlin killed his.’”

  “You still heard her saying, ‘Eddie Coughlin killed his,’ and, as Elsie said, she wasn’t talking about chickens at the time—she was talking about the Coughlins.”

  “Patrick, I have always maintained a wall between my professional and personal self.”

  “If you don’t mind, Sam,” Patrick said, “during the inquest you asked Kevin Lalor if anyone came along while he was waiting by the corpse on Sally Hill. Kevin said that Simon Peter Lamb passed by on his way to get the sergeant. He didn’t answer your question fully, and you didn’t ask him again.”

  “And,” Elsie said, “it was obvious at the inquest that Eddie-the-cap was very upset about his brother’s strong-armed begging, and it was obvious that Father Coughlin all but stole the money from Missus Madden.”

  “Hold on a minute, now,” Mister Howard said, and there was a flash in his old eyes.

  “But isn’t it possible that Deirdre Hyland’s gossip did manage to seep through the barrier you maintained between your personal and professional life? Perhaps you did not press Kevin Lalor when he didn’t answer your question because your sympathies—”

  Mister Howard sat forward onto the edge of his chair, his hands on the arms of the wicker chair as if he was ready to propel himself forward. “Patrick,” he said, “I never let other people’s stories—”

  Patrick interrupted. “Sam, it was other people’s stories . . .”

  36

  Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

  1951

  In which Mikey Lamb and his best friend, Barlow Bracken, learn from experience and observation that adults do not always tell the truth.

  IT WAS OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES that motivated Mikey Lamb and Barlow Bracken to get out of their shared bed at five o’clock every morning during the mushroom season, to gallop through the misty, hauntingly quiet morning fields, swinging their one-gallon once-upon-a-time sweet-cans by their wire handles. But on this, the twenty-fourth day of August, with two mushrooms in each can, the boys’ hopes of ever finding the fungal El Dorado were fading. Not once had they found a trace of the manna-like harvests which other people claimed to have reaped in the past. The boys had even heard stories of mushrooms growing in such profusion on August nights that at first glance it appeared snow had fallen.

  But now there were signs that the enthusiasm which had propelled them out of bed during the first half of August was waning. No longer did they line their cans with soft hay before leaving the farmyard to keep the mushrooms from bruising; no longer did they excite each other with imaginings of such harvests to be reaped that they would have extras to sell and Barlow would have more money for his mother. There had been a time when they had galloped out of the farmyard, chased each other through the damp grass to distant fields, vaulted over gates on the run and urgently helped each other through fences of barbed wire as they raced to get to the fields with fantastic mushroom reputations.

  Now, downcast under the weight of the accumulating disappointments, the boys trudged through the grass, leaving two weaving trails in the fresh dew behind them as they aimlessly and unexpectedly veered back and forth in their search. In silent frustration, Mikey swung his can at a tall thistle and sent pieces of purple spikes into the sky. While the battered flowers were still in the air, the sound of the seven o’clock Angelus came whispering across the fields from Gohen. In more enthusiastic times, Mikey had believed he could see the soft gongs vibrating in mild waves across the grass, while imagining Spud Murphy swinging up off the floor in the belfry on the heavy bell rope, his Wellingtons beginning to slip off by the time he landed again. But the music had faded and the Angelus bell was merely a signal that the boys should begin heading homeward.

  Barlow stopped walking and looked at Mikey for direction.

  “Will we give Doul Yank’s Back Batens a try on the way home?” Mikey suggested.

  He waited for Barlow to join him before heading for the hedge of whitethorn bushes on the far side of the field. The last stroke of the Angelus was still trembling in the clean morning air, and Mikey knew that Spud Murphy would be tying the bell rope into its iron ring on the wall out of the reach of children. The bell-ringer had told Mikey that one morning he had found so many mushrooms in Doul Yank’s fields he had to take off his topcoat to make it into a sack; that he dropped so many mushrooms from the bulging sack on the way home, he had to go back and pick them up to keep anyone else from following the trail to the secret place where they had grown; and that the dropped mushrooms alone had filled two big buckets. When the wide-eyed Mikey repeated the story to his father, Simon Peter said, “Spud Murphy! That eegit doesn’t know the difference between brussels sprouts and mushrooms.” But despite his father’s observation, Mikey had led Barlow through all Doul Yank’s fields every morning in hopes of finding Murphy’s manna.

  Now, they reached the whitethorn hedge, and the boys used a moldering, ivy-covered tree stump as a stile and the three rows of barbed wire stapled to its side as steps. When they jumped down into the Back Batens, they stood there, Barlow again waiting for directions. Barlow’s hesitancy only made Mikey feel more despondent. In the corner of his eye he saw Barlow shifting his feet in the grass as if he were bored.

  In the end, Mikey swung his can at the yellow head of a chest-high ragwort and said, “Come on. We’ll just walk straight across to Sally Hill.” He indicated the direction with a swing of his can. “We’ll get out on Glower Road and go home that way. I’m hungry, and I’m tired of looking for mushrooms.”

  Side by side and in silence they started across the wide field. There was an unspoken understanding between the boys that they would not stray far from each other in the early morning stillness. Even though they tried not to believe them, the stories they had heard about strange goings-on in morning fields kept their anxiety on a low simmer.

  Without even looking up, Mikey swung his can at the tall weeds in his path. Barlow kept his eyes on his boots gliding through the dew-wet grass; saw with every step taken how the seeds of weeds and grasses were moved from one spot to another on the dripping toes
of his borrowed Wellingtons. He was startled when he heard Mikey loudly declaring, “Why would he have to go and tell lies about it?”

  “Who told lies?” Barlow asked, just above a whisper.

  “Spud Murphy, telling me he had to make a sack out of his topcoat, there were so many mushrooms.” In his effort not to give away their presence to lurking unknowns, the fierceness in Mikey’s whisper exaggerated his whistling esses.

  “Paul Butler, too,” Barlow offered. “He said he found buckets of them, and so did Mister Gorman.”

  “Doul Yank!” Mikey hissed in derision. “They all tell mushroom lies—Paul Butler, Spud Murphy and Doul Yank. Mushroom lies are worse than fish lies.” Even though Kevin Lalor had told colorful mushroom stories too, he was excluded from Mikey’s angry list of liars. “We’re the first people out in the fields every morning, and we’ve never found what they say they found.”

  “And as well as that,” Barlow said, “we never see anyone else out looking, so how can they find all those mushrooms when they’re at home in bed?”

  “So many mushrooms it looked like it snowed in the night!” Mikey said with as much grown-up indignation as he could muster. “That’s what Spud Murphy said. I think my father was right—Spud Murphy is a bit of an eegit.”

  “Spud Murphy’s my father’s first cousin,” Barlow said. There was no defensiveness in his voice. “Daddy said Spud’s always telling stories about doing things that can’t be done, like going to Marbra and back in his assencart in an hour because the wind was in his back coming and going.”

  “The wind wouldn’t make any ass go quicker!” Mikey said. “I hope they’re not all codding us—Doul Yank and Paul Butler and Spud Murphy. I hope they’re not, because I’d hate them for doing that, getting us up at five to have a laugh. Some old people think it’s funny to tell tall stories and swear they’re true.”

  The boys came to one of the narrow drains dissecting the field at regular intervals and, like a pair of dancers performing an old routine, they leaped across without breaking their stride.

  “And the stories about bushes moving around when they think no one’s looking—the ones out in the fields by themselves. How do you think they get there, he asked me, Spud did, and I said they grow there, and he looked at me like I was a thick. He said they move out of the hedges the minute the sun comes up, and if you see them moving they’ll run after you and squeeze you into themselves with their branches and suck the life out of you with their thorns, and what’s left of you blows away like a piece of old newspaper in the wind.”

  “People tell him real daft things because he believes them,” Barlow said. “Spud thinks people find babies under the rhubarb in the convent garden. He said he catches goldfinches by just holding out his hand and saying chuck-chuck.”

  During his first days living at the Lambs’ house, Barlow had learned the most important rule of the open countryside: when near a thick hedge, don’t talk loudly because someone might be on the other side. As the boys approached the sally bushes at the edge of the Back Batens, they stopped talking. Mikey pushed aside the thin, big-leafed branches and led the way to the barbed-wire fence on the other side of the bushes. When he emerged he stood to one side, grabbed the top strand on the smooth place between two barbs and lifted. Barlow pushed down the middle wire and climbed out through the hole they had made. But as Barlow turned back to lift the top strand for Mikey, he whispered, “There’s someone on Sally Hill.”

  “Who?” Mikey whispered back.

  “I don’t know. There’s two of them, and one’s lying on the road.”

  “Quick, get back in the bushes,” Mikey said as if warning of an imminent tiger pounce.

  Standing side by side in the bushes, Mikey asked, “What’s the man lying down for?”

  “I don’t know. The other one was looking down at him.”

  “Maybe there was a terrible fight.” This speculation raised the boys’ fear another notch.

  “Come on, we’ll sneak back through the bushes,” Barlow said, and he grabbed Mikey by the arm.

  “No, don’t stir. They’ll hear the bushes and find us and be terrible cross with us for seeing them.”

  It took a while for Mikey to work up the courage to bend down, place the mushroom can on the ground and make a peephole in the leaves in front of his face. And there the Civil Servant was with his hands behind his back and his face bent toward a one-legged man lying on the ground. “It’s Kevin. But it can’t be. Kevin’s on his way to Gohen on his bike. And the other lad has only one leg.”

  Barlow shook Mikey’s arm. “There’s a bike coming the other way,” he warned. And Mikey heard familiar rattles and the sound of a misaligned wheel rhythmically rubbing against a front brake. “That’s Daddy’s bike,” Mikey whispered. “But it can’t be Daddy! He’s doing the milking.” When the two of them turned and made another peephole, there was Simon Peter Lamb pedaling so hard he could have been on his way to get the fire brigade in Gohen to come and put out his burning hayrick.

  They followed the bike through the leaves, and when Mister Lamb ran out of steam halfway up Sally Hill, he hopped off his bike. He didn’t look at Kevin Lalor and the cripple on the road—but kept his face turned away. With as much speed as was left in his leg muscles, he pushed the bike to the top of the hill, remounted and pedaled off toward Gohen. But, clearly and distinctly, the boys had heard what Simon Peter Lamb said as he passed Kevin Lalor and the other man: “I hate the sight of a corpse.”

  Mikey and Barlow looked at each other, eyes enlarged. “A corpse,” Mikey whispered, using hardly any air to shape the words. “A corpse is a dead man.”

  The boys stared unblinking at each other for a long time. Then Barlow indicated he wanted to whisper in Mikey’s ear. “Come on back to the Back Batens.” Gently but firmly, he put pressure on Mikey’s arm.

  Mikey put his mouth to Barlow’s ear. “This is old people stuff we’re not supposed to see. If Kevin finds us, he’ll have to kill us.”

  This piece of puerile reasoning glued the boys firmly to the ground. After a long time, Barlow opened up the peephole again. Cheek to jowl, the boys looked out and saw Kevin Lalor still in the same position, still holding his hands behind his back like a pig jobber at the fair trying to look like a businessman.

  “I thought a corpse would be all terrible and rotting,” Mikey hissed.

  “Look,” Barlow excitedly said, too loudly, “there’s someone moving in the bushes on the far side of the road near Kevin. Will I shout to warn him?”

  “No, Kevin will know we’re here.”

  As they watched, a man emerged from the trembling bushes, the peak of his cap low on his forehead.

  “That’s Eddie Coughlin.” Mikey’s whisper was still on his lips when Coughlin spoke. Clearly and distinctly, the two boys heard what he said.

  “Was there a rope, Kevin?” Coughlin called, and Kevin Lalor jerked around as if he’d been startled.

  “Jesus Christ, Eddie. What are you doing here? You frightened the shite out of me.”

  “Bridie’s in a terrible state. Was there a rope?” Coughlin persisted.

  “Jesus, you shouldn’t creep up on a fellow like that, especially when there’s a corpse around.”

  “Did you see a rope?” Coughlin asked again.

  “Of course I saw a rope. How could I miss it? I took it off and pissed against the tree to make an excuse for the grass you flattened when you were tying it. The rope’s under a furze out there in Lamb’s field. Go on home, Eddie.”

  “Did you know it was mine?”

  “I thought it was, but I was hoping it wasn’t.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It was a matter of deduction, Eddie.”

  Silent behind a bush on Sally Hill, Mikey muttered, “Sherlock Holmes,” and he remembered a fox’s tail sticking out from under a bush. He farted loudly, and Barlow poked him with his elbow. “They’ll hear you,” he whispered.

  Eddie Coughlin said, “I only wanted to ge
t the Martyr’s money back, but I didn’t want him to know who took it. I thought he’d fall off the bike in the dark and that he wouldn’t know it was me who was robbing him. But he must’ve fell wrong when he ran into the rope. Come here for a minute, Kevin.” Coughlin gestured with his right hand, something clutched in his fingers. “I nearly died when I was getting the money out of his pocket, and I couldn’t feel him breathing. I got such a fright I ran away and forgot the rope.”

  “Eddie Coughlin hung the corpse,” Mikey deducted aloud, neither his lips nor his tongue moving. Barlow Bracken heard only the sound of a sigh.

  “You’d better go home, Eddie,” Kevin Lalor said, as he walked toward Coughlin. “Simon Peter’s gone to Gohen for the sergeant, and besides that, someone might see you.”

  “There’s no one to see me on Glower Road at this hour of the morning.”

  “Mikey Lamb and Barlow Bracken are out looking for mushrooms every morning at five o’clock since the first day of August.”

  At the sound of their names, the boys looked at each other as if they had caught their first glimpse of their personal gallows, two nooses swaying in the breeze.

  Coughlin, reacting to Lalor’s warning, stepped back out of sight, but he wasn’t finished talking. “Bridie got a terrible brain wave in the middle of the night and said if I gave the money back to the Martyr everyone would know where I got it. She woke me up to tell me, and her teeth chatting like a dying dog’s.”

  Kevin Lalor walked into the roadside grass and stood at the bushes where Eddie Coughlin had disappeared into the leaves.

  “Here, put this in his pocket—the breast pocket in his short coat.” Coughlin’s hand and arm came out of the bushes. “What et his leg?”

  Lalor took the money and looked at the body on the road. “Nothing ate his leg, Eddie,” he said. “It’s bent back under him.”

  “Bridie’s in a terrible state,” Coughlin said. “But to tell you the truth, I can’t feel sorry for Jarlath. He wasn’t nice at all to Bridie, nor me for that matter. Do you think they’ll know I did it, even though I didn’t mean to kill him?”