The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  The next morning, in the damp, half-cleared field, amid a debris of sawn logs and torn-off stumps, Fergus found him and beat him without quarter. As he served out the blows, he gasped and grunted to himself like an old man at stool. Doyle understood what was happening to him although he couldn’t give it words: His errant desires were being violently reversed, hammered back inside his body like metal spikes into a rail. Later, at supper, when Anna saw the dried blood and bruises on his face and asked what had happened, he told her it was nothing at all, and when she touched him in sympathy, he pushed her roughly away. He had no wish to speak to her now, and even the sight of her, so old and ugly, repulsed him. That night, he packed his belongings into a bundle and left the farm behind. He walked five miles to the crossroads and waited there until dawn for the first wagons to roll past heading west.

  He stayed in Harrisburg through the fall and winter, working in the rail yards, then drifted farther north along the Susquehanna Valley, then into New York, never settling in any place for long. For four years, he slept head-to-toe with Chinamen and Jews under damp and fetid sheets in cheap lodging houses, whoring and drinking when he had a dollar in his pocket and filching or going hungry when he hadn’t. He labored beside Greeks and Poles on the coal wharves and ice ponds, and in the tunnels and the red clay railroad cuttings, digging and hauling in the cold hard dark before dawn and in the yellow liquid heat of the day. He saw men crushed by rocks and torn asunder by machines, stabbed or beaten senseless in taverns and alleyways, but such sights didn’t scare or trouble him. He owned nothing but his boots and the clothes on his back and had no friends to speak of. When he talked, his gray eyes flickered from side to side and his voice was low and hesitant, as though stretching out for words that were just beyond his reach.

  The recruiting sergeant in Albany offered every man a cold glass of beer and twenty-five dollars if they would sign for a three-year term. He explained that if the traitorous Southerners won this fight, the whole nation would revert to savagery and ignorance, and all their hard-won greatness would be lost. Then he smiled and pointed his finger straight at Doyle and said that right there was a bold-looking young fellow who he knew would do well in the fight and would he be the first to come up here and sign his name? Doyle had no interest in politics or affairs of state, no knowledge or understanding of the arts of warfare, and no great love for the darkie either, but he liked the look of this sergeant, who had waxed mustaches and a brass-buttoned coat, and twenty-five dollars at once was more money than he had ever held in his life.

  They gave them all new boots and uniforms and put them on a train headed south. In the camp, they drilled each morning for three hours straight: A hundred men conglomerated, moving together in time, the whole company moving together, like a well-trained animal or a fine machine, turning on command, wheeling, marching, halting. Doyle didn’t see the purpose, but he did as he was told. He was content for the moment to be warm and well fed. He thought he would stay in the army so long as it suited him and then he would leave. When the other men told their battle stories, he listened but gave them no credence. They were all boasters, he thought. He had seen fighting and bloodshed before, so why should this time be any different?

  It was Fredericksburg that changed him. After that, he understood that war was true and real in a way that nothing else was, or ever could be. As he charged toward Marye’s Heights into a hail of rebel bullets with the men dropping dead on either side—some falling silently like stunned cattle, others howling out with terror and pain—he lost all sense of himself as a singular or particular being. He was everywhere and nowhere at once: in his body, but also outside it; in the corpses of the dead, and in the screams and curses of the living; in the sound of the shells exploding above, and in the trampled, bloodstained earth below. It was a kind of vision, except vision was not the right word because there was no right word, and when it dissolved, when he was safe again and the fight was finished, he felt not relief so much as grief and sadness at the loss.

  They made him a sergeant after that, then a captain. He followed their rules like a monk follows the rules of his chosen order—because such discipline was a way of conjuring truth, of allowing the mystery to become real. He survived Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and the bloody angle at Spotsylvania, and by the time they reached the siege works outside Petersburg he was the longest-serving man left alive in his regiment. His blue uniform was ripped and faded, the soles of his boots were held on with baling wire, and the aimless years of his orphan youth were like a weightless dream.

  * * *

  —

  He is woken by the sound of a church bell counting the hours. He rubs his eyes and straightens himself. Neary nods and smiles as if welcoming him back from a journey.

  “The fog’s worse now,” Neary says. “You can hardly see ten feet ahead.”

  Doyle looks out into the muddy darkness, shrugs, then checks his pocket watch.

  “Tell Skelly to drive around awhile,” he says. “Then he can let us down at Piccadilly and we’ll walk back.”

  Neary opens the door and calls up the instructions. Skelly gees the horse and there is a creak and a rattle of harness as they move away. After a few minutes, they turn right onto Mosley Street past the banks and shops and cotton warehouses. The fog holds them tight in its gray-brown fist—carriages emerge then disappear, dark figures shimmer briefly into life like shadows on a cavern wall.

  Neary has a long, drawn-out face; a square jaw; sunken, cadaverous eyes. He is not quick-witted, but he’s steady and sure, and Doyle trusts him. The others, Rice and Riley and the rest, still think like children. They drink down their whiskey, bawl out their tearful ballads, and dream of a peasant army marching over the Wicklow Mountains with pikes and scythes in hand. Nine months before, Doyle was up on Tallaght Hill at midnight when a hundred or more of the bold lads dropped their Enfields and ran like rabbits at the sight of half a dozen policemen, so he knows what that dream amounts to and it isn’t much. The British won’t be beaten on the open field, anyone with an ounce of sense will tell you that, but they can be made to suffer and bleed if you do it right. When that bleeding becomes too much and they cannot rest from the awful, nagging pain of it, then they will break and this war will finally be over, and when it is, it will have been won not by the apostles or speech makers, but by the ones like Patrick Neary who waited in the shadows and did whatever dark deeds were required of them without comment or complaint.

  They go around once again to kill the time, then Skelly stops the cab by the steps of the infirmary and the two of them get out. They walk back toward Milk Street, heads lowered, collars upturned. This fog is a blessing, Doyle thinks. It will muffle the noise of the shots and bewilder any onlookers. By the time the peelers understand that a fresh outrage has been committed, the perpetrators will be far away and safe.

  * * *

  —

  O’Connor is sitting in his usual place in the Commercial Coffeehouse on Oldham Street. The evening newspaper is open on the table in front of him, but his mind is on other things. He has been thinking about Rose Flanagan, on and off, for most of the day. He is wishing now he had not offered to give away his money. That was reckless of him. If she asks, he will have to do as he promised, but if he gives it to her, what will it mean? Will it mean nothing, except he is sorry for her and she needs his help, or will it mean they are attached in some new way? And what kind of attachment does a gift like that imply? He rubs his face and takes a sip from the glass of sarsaparilla. He will be more careful in the future, he thinks; he will hold his tongue until he has thought these things through.

  A moment later, the bell sounds and Frank Malone steps inside and looks about. He notices O’Connor in the corner, nods at him, and makes his way across. Malone is a cheerful fellow, talkative and fond of his own opinions. You could call him arrogant, O’Connor thinks, but he’s not the worst of them for that.

 
“It always gives me a raging thirst coming into a place like this,” Malone says. “It never fails.”

  He feels in his jacket pocket and hands O’Connor a note.

  “For you,” he says. “Came in from Knott Mill Station this afternoon. The sergeant thought you might want to see.”

  The envelope is gummed shut. O’Connor checks the handwriting on the front, tears it open, and unfolds the paper inside. He reads it through once, then reads it through again to be sure.

  Malone asks him if it’s bad news.

  “They’ve got one of my informers locked in the cells over there,” he says. “They pulled him drunk out of the Rochdale Canal last night, and now that he’s sobered up enough to talk, he’s telling the sergeant that the Fenians have hatched a plan to kill the mayor. He says it’ll happen on Milk Street, but he doesn’t know when.”

  Malone looks doubtful.

  “Where did he hear all this?”

  “It doesn’t say where.”

  “There’s nothing on Milk Street but a few old houses and a milliner’s shop. There’s no reason on earth the mayor would ever go there. The story makes no sense at all.”

  “Perhaps he got the name wrong.”

  “If he was drunk enough to fall in the canal, he most likely dreamed the whole thing up.”

  “I need to talk to him anyway. Find out if there’s any truth to it.”

  O’Connor tucks the note into his pocket and gets up from the table. He folds the newspaper and puts it back on the wooden rack. Every time they meet in the graveyard he warns Sullivan to tread carefully, to keep quiet and not draw attention to himself, but the boy is foolhardy and reckless. They pull bodies out of that canal every month. He might easily have drowned. Not that death is real to them at that age. It’s just an idea, or less than an idea, he thinks, just a word, a sound. You can warn them all you like and it makes no difference. It occurs to him, as he settles his bill at the counter and takes his coat and hat from the stand, that if his son, David, who had died, had lived instead, this is what fatherhood might have felt like: this constant irritating fear, this sense that a vital part of your life is being lived elsewhere, in secret, by someone you may love but can’t possibly trust. Not that he loves Michael Sullivan, of course, not that he even likes him much. The boy is a flagrant fool and a wastrel, but they are knotted together now, it seems, whether they want to be or not, until all of this is over with.

  “It’ll be nothing,” Malone says again. “When they’re in drink the Fenians like to blow their trumpets, but nine times out of ten it’s all a lie. We both know that.”

  “How far to Milk Street from here?” O’Connor asks.

  “Five minutes,” he says. “Less probably.”

  “Then we can stop off on the way.”

  Outside, the fog is the color of weak gruel, and the air tastes bitter and gamey. When they reach Milk Street they walk halfway down, then pause beside a lamppost. It’s just as Malone described it—a few modest houses, shuttered and dark, and a milliner’s shop. There’s no movement or sound and no sign of anything unusual. O’Connor is about to turn to go back, when he hears a sudden whistle, like birdsong but louder. He looks at Malone.

  “Could be burglars about,” Malone says. “Good weather for it.”

  “Do you see anything?”

  Malone shakes his head.

  O’Connor looks about. The blank fog surrounds them, head high, like the walls of a vague and ghostly stockade. Probably nothing to be concerned about, he thinks. The mayor is safe asleep in his villa in Higher Broughton, and they are standing on an empty street hearing the usual squeals and rattles of a city at night.

  “Could be the rats,” he says, “or a cat coming into heat.”

  Malone doesn’t answer. He is peering past O’Connor now, over his shoulder into the thick darkness behind.

  “There’s a fellow standing in that doorway over yonder,” he says in a whisper. “I just seen him move.”

  “One man only?” O’Connor asks.

  “So far as I can tell.”

  O’Connor turns and looks.

  “Police,” he shouts out. “Who’s over there?”

  There’s no answer, no sign of movement at all that he can see. He wonders if Malone was mistaken.

  “We know you’re in there,” Malone shouts again. “Show yourself now.”

  They gaze at the doorway and wait. Most likely just a beggar taking shelter, O’Connor thinks, or a drunk. He checks in his pocket for the handcuffs.

  Malone walks forward, but before he gets to the doorway, the man steps out. He is wearing a ragged tweed overcoat and a bowler hat. His hands are pushed deep into his pockets and his thick shoulders are hunched against the chill.

  “What’s your name?” Malone asks him. “Who are you?”

  Beneath the curled brim of his bowler, the man’s eyes are dark and full of eagerness. His lips are slightly ajar. Before answering, he glances off to the left and right, then looks back at Malone as if deciding how much or little he is required to say.

  “My name’s Harrison,” he says. “I’m a visitor to the city.”

  “And what were you doing hiding in that doorway?”

  “Not hiding,” he says, “just waiting.”

  “For what?”

  The man pauses again.

  “For who,” he says. “A woman. Her name is Annie something. You can find her in the Swan most nights.”

  Malone turns to O’Connor and shrugs.

  “Annie Smith,” he says. “I know the one.”

  O’Connor recognizes the man: It’s the one he saw talking to Tommy Flanagan at the funeral parade, the one with the scars on his face. He feels a strand of coldness trembling and twisting in his gut.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he says. “And your name’s not Harrison.”

  The man shakes his head.

  “You’re wrong, sir. My name’s Harrison. I’m a draper over from New York.”

  “Raise your hands above your head,” O’Connor tells him. “Let us check your pockets.”

  The man doesn’t move. He frowns and then gives Malone a puzzled, quizzical look, as if he believes that Malone, out of the two of them, is the one most likely to listen to reason.

  “Has it become a crime just to stand in a doorway now?” he asks.

  “You’re lying to us,” O’Connor says. “Let us check through your pockets.”

  “There’s nothing in my pockets,” he says.

  “Then show us.”

  He still doesn’t move.

  Malone turns to look at O’Connor. Half his face is sunk in shadow and the other half is made visible by the choked glow of the streetlamp behind. The thickened darkness streams around them like black water around a rock.

  “You say you know him?” Malone says in a low voice.

  “It’s Doyle.”

  “You’re sure of it?”

  O’Connor nods. He is watching Doyle’s hands, which are still pushed deep into the pockets of his ragged overcoat.

  “There are more of us waiting at the end of the street,” he says. “You can’t get away.”

  “I’m a draper and my name is Harrison,” Doyle says again, but the way he says it this time, lifeless, flat, mocking, like a bored child tripping out his bedtime prayers, makes it clear to them all that he is growing tired of the pretense.

  “Enough of this shite,” Malone says.

  He pulls his brass handcuffs out from his pocket and moves to grab Doyle’s arm. Doyle pivots away from him; his right hand jerks upward. When O’Connor sees the pistol, the curved steel cylinder and barrel catching and angling the yellow gaslight, he knows it is already too late, that the decision, which will not have been a decision at all, but an act born of instinct or fury or need, has already occurred. There is a muzzle-flash
and a roar. Malone grunts and gasps like the air has just been kicked out of him, and then bends and twists back into himself, clutching and fumbling at his seeping belly, as if trying to keep hold of something that doesn’t wish to be held.

  As Malone drops down to the cobblestones, bleeding and moaning, Doyle puts the pistol up to O’Connor’s forehead. Shadows swirl and knit around them. Fog swags like stained laundry in the windless air. Here is death, O’Connor thinks. Not the instrument or the image of it only, not the echo or borrowing this time, but the thing itself. Foul and reeking. He feels it pressing, red, against his face and chest like the heat of a wildfire. Just one inch closer, he knows, and he will catch and melt in its roar.

  Doyle’s eyes are like two black holes skived into the darkness.

  “Which cunt told you about our plan?” he demands. “Who was it?”

  “No one told us. We came here by chance.”

  “I can kill you here and now,” he says. “Don’t think I can’t.”

  “I know that.”

  “So tell me the truth.”

  Malone is curled up on the mucky pavement, gasping and mewling like a newborn. O’Connor hears a sash window squeal open somewhere behind, then a door.

  “You should run while you can,” he says. “You don’t have any time for this.”

  “Give me the name,” he says, “or I’ll kill you.”

  “You won’t get away,” O’Connor says. “It’s too late.”

  “I’ll ask you just one more time and then I’ll shoot you dead, I swear.”

  O’Connor can feel the hot mouth of the muzzle pressed hard against his forehead. All we ever get to know is this one moment, he thinks, this single now. The darkness releases us, and then the darkness takes us back, and if it’s not pure and abject fear that keeps us living, then what else can it be?