by Anne Emery
* * *
’Twas great craic altogether taking on the dramatic personae of Duane and Ruby Jean (“Don’t call me Rube!”) from Paducah, Kentucky. The MacNeil was having the time of her life working on her dialect and outfitting Brennan as a southern redneck, with herself as his downmarket southern belle. She had been to a couple of charity shops earlier in the day, and the costuming was being done at the Collins residence in south Belfast. The two children, Normie and Dominic, were enjoying the spectacle. They had been told their mother and Father Burke were going to a costume party.
While the kids were occupied with the kitsch their mother had procured, Brennan filled her in on everything he’d been told about MacAllan and the Stockwell event in Tennessee. She took it all in, then got back to the comedy.
“How ’bout Huckabee as our last name?” the MacNeil asked him.
“Not believable. Particularly when you sound as if you’re choking to death on that first syllable.”
“There are Huckabees in Amurrica.”
“Where the hell else would there be Huckabees?”
“All right. A plain, no-nonsense name.”
This went on for a while and then they settled on Ballard. Maura had found a surprisingly real-looking wig that gave Brennan long, straggly salt and pepper hair. Knowing him well, she had shampooed it and dried it before bringing it into the room with him. He had gone without shaving, so there was a bit of dark scruff on his face. She had found a ball cap with the Dallas Cowboys logo on it, and he pulled that down over the wig. She had resisted the temptation to rig him out in a Hawaiian shirt and settled on plaid with a pair of jeans. There was a plain denim jacket and another with a longhorn steer on the back, his choice. But the garish white and green track shoes were obligatory. After he’d got himself kitted out with the longhorn jacket and all the rest of the clobber, she slung a big camera on a strap around his neck, stood back, and then decided that was overdoing it. She would bring her own little camera. She did insist, however, on what she called a “fanny pack,” a nylon money pouch that was tied around one’s waist with a belt. It looked ridiculous.
“American tourists always have these. You’re going to wear yours in front. I’ll put mine over my fanny.”
“Don’t be using that word around here, darlin’. Trust me.”
“How come?”
“Let’s just say it applies only to women and it doesn’t refer to your arse, and we’ll leave it at that.”
The MacNeil had outdone herself with a big bouffant hairdo, gobs of makeup on her eyes, and bright pink lipstick. She wore a fluffy pink sweater with little puffs of wool all over it and skin-tight leggings of a darker pink satin. She, too, had oversized, boat-like track shoes on her feet. She acknowledged the February weather with a white fake-leather jacket.
She hauled him over to a mirror, and he could hardly believe his eyes. He would not have recognized either of them.
“All right, now, hon,” she said, “let’s work on our dialect. Do I sound like the li’l southern lady you’ve always dreamed of?”
“You sure do, sugar. Let’s git out there in the pickup and scrape up some roadkill fer supper.”
“When we greet folks in the saloon, should we say ‘howdy’ or would that be too much?”
“I’d leave it out.”
“Okay.”
They carried on with the foolishness for a few more minutes, until Monty came in from a Saturday stint at the office. He did the best, completely genuine, double take Brennan had ever seen. “Jesus Christ, you two! This is unbelievable.”
“What are you lookin’ at, stranger?” Brennan challenged him.
“Have we gone too far over the top?” Maura asked.
“We’ve all travelled, and we’ve all seen worse. But . . .”
“I know,” said Brennan. “Over the top doesn’t begin to describe it. Gotta tone it down, darlin’.”
“Yeah, but it sure was a load of fun while it lasted.”
In the end, Brennan jettisoned the wig but kept the ball cap, pulled down low, and the plain denim jacket over the plaid shirt. Maura brought her hair down from humongous to merely big, wiped off the pink lipstick and some of the eye makeup, and put on a generic pair of dark trousers with a white shirt and the white leather jacket.
“One more thing, Brennan,” she said. “We should have wads of gum in our mouths. Americans are always chewing on something.”
“No need to go that far.”
“Right. We wouldn’t want to be tacky.”
“Only thing going in my mouth, sugar, is moonshine.”
“Speaking of mouths, did you ever notice that tourists often have their mouths gaping open when they gawk around them, blocking everyone else on the sidewalk?”
“I’ll have to remember that.”
Monty turned serious then. “You know what I think of this scheme. This isn’t theatre. This is a hard-core Loyalist bar where you’re going to be meeting a killer. And others like him. There will be nobody there to pull you out if it gets dangerous.”
He was right. For all the fun of dressing up and carrying on, the actual performance was fraught with risk. Going back into character, Duane said, “I’m goin’ in alone.”
He could have predicted the MacNeil’s reaction. “You’re what?”
“I’ll do this. There’s no need for —”
“No need for the little woman, is that it?”
“That’s it,” Monty chimed in and received a black stare from his life’s companion.
“Let me spell things out for you two gallant swains,” she said. “Nobody knows me here; hence, there is nobody who can recognize me. No member of the Burke Battalion of the Bold IRA drinks in the bars of east Belfast. Am I correct in that, boys?”
Brennan conceded the point with a reluctant nod.
“The possibility of recognition is remote for a member of the Burke family who, as far as we know, is not a member of said organization or any other paramilitary outfit and who is not even a resident of this island, let alone the city of Belfast. How am I doing so far?”
“MacNeil, why don’t I just —”
“Why don’t you just give your gob a rest and listen.”
“The arse is out of ’er now, b’y,” said Monty in an imitation of his wife’s Cape Breton accent.
“There is no way we can be recognized. Is there a way we could be spotted as fake Kentuckians? Possibly, if there happen to be other southern Americans in the Iron Will bar at the same time as us. How likely is that? All we’re going to do is wait and see if this MacAllan character shows his face in the bar. If we get to hear him called by name, that will be a bonus. If we are able to make the identification, we polish off our mint juleps and walk out. Take ourselves a fair distance from the bar and hop in a cab. The worst-case scenario is we come off as a pair of clowns.”
Everything she said made sense, but Brennan still didn’t like it. Didn’t like taking even a minimal risk with Maura beside him. “How about this? We both go as far as the door, then you say goodbye and warn me not to drink too much. And maybe I get a wee kiss goodbye, all in the cause, of course, and —”
“Maybe you get a wee kick in the arse.”
“Oh. Well, there’s always that risk.”
But it came to him then; he had a plan. “All right, let’s put our game faces on, y’all, and git movin’. We’ll be careful,” he promised in his real voice.
“Yeah, right,” said Monty. “What could go wrong?”
* * *
Monty looked understandably tense as he drove the two impersonators along the Newtownards Road with its Loyalist graffiti and murals. Brennan could see him trying to rally and get into the spirit of things, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Brennan, though, was about to put his friend’s mind at ease. He knew the cross street was coming up, the street where the bar was located. W
hen Monty stopped for a red light, Brennan made his move. He reached over, wrenched his door open, and jumped out into the semi-darkness of the street. He looked through the windscreen at Monty and said, “Go!” Then he turned and walked away, in the direction of the Iron Will.
But it wasn’t just an east Belfast bar owner who had a will of iron. He heard the clatter of footsteps behind him. He didn’t even have to turn around. “Hell hath no fury,” he said.
“You got that right, hon. No sugar for you tonight. There’s more I could say . . .”
“No doubt about that.”
“But the show must go on.” She took Brennan’s hand in hers and got into character, giving him a big corny smile and praising the Lord for giving them such a fun trip to Belfast. He knew it was time to rise to the occasion. There was a cold, damp wind blowing, and they made comments about how warm it must be back home. They walked along the east Belfast thoroughfare, past all the Union Jacks and Ulster Red Hand flags and the Loyalist “No Surrender — No Pope Here — Death to the IRA” graffiti. They posed as starry-eyed tourists, poking their heads into shops and bars along the way, stopping every once in a while to snap pictures of each other. Then they arrived at their destination. “Ah could do with a nice cold beer, Ruby Jean. Just the one. Honest.”
“Oh, that’s okay, hon. We’re on vacation! It will be fun to go into a pub! Let’s go!”
And they walked from the twilight into the dark heart of the Iron Will bar. It was the mirror opposite of the Republican bars Brennan knew so well. There were flags and photos and memorabilia. Here, the flags were red, white, and blue. A huge painting of King William III on his white horse took up nearly an entire wall of the pub. Photos showed Orangemen marching through the city with their sashes and lambeg drums; other pictures showed gunmen attending Loyalist funerals or crouching beside armoured vehicles. Looking around him at the clientele, Brennan had no trouble imagining many of these punters carrying guns and aiming them at members of Brennan’s family on the other side of town. It was a hard-looking crowd that did their drinking in the Iron Will.
Duane Ballard put on a look of keen touristic interest as he gawked around the place. “Look at that, hon. That’s King William on that horse.”
“And there’s a table right by the horse’s hooves. Let’s sit there.”
“Nah, there’s a seat right up at the bar. You take that, and I’ll stand.”
“Typical man, wants to belly right up to the bar!”
The typical man wanted the bar because the place was fairly packed and most likely that’s where Brody MacAllan would end up. So Ruby Jean plunked herself down on a barstool, and Duane stood beside her and asked her what she wanted to drink. There was a big song and dance about what to choose, until she settled on a Singapore sling. Duane took a Budweiser. They babbled away about their vacation, and what the folks back home would say when they saw the holiday snapshots, and on and on. Brennan noticed that people were casting glances in their direction. Little wonder, with the foreign accents and behaviour; now that they’d been noticed, there was all the more reason to stick to the script.
Just when Brennan thought they might not be able to keep the crazy talk flowing, in walked a man who was almost a perfect match for the photo Brennan had seen of Brody MacAllan. The dark hair was shorter, the face older and mellowed by drink, but Brennan recognized him. There was no doubt it was MacAllan. Duane moved over to make room for him. One man managed to get in between them, but Duane was not deterred. Just talked louder.
He engaged in a lot of mindless, voluble chatter with his wife about where else they hoped to go on their short visit to Ulster, and then threw in a bit of speculation about what the folks were up to back home.
Finally, MacAllan took the bait and leaned across the other man. “What part of America are youse from?”
“We’re from Kentucky!” Ruby Jean declared. “We’re a long way from home, but we’re havin’ a real good time here in Belfast!”
“Kentucky. What’s that close to?” MacAllan had one of the harshest Belfast accents Brennan had ever heard.
“Well,” Ruby Jean answered, “it’s right next to Ohio, and to Missouri and Tennessee and West Virginia. It borders on a lot of states. And — folks over here like horses, don’t they?”
“Aye, they do, unless they lost their pay packet at the races over the weekend.”
“Sure, of course, it’s not always good. I was going to say we have the Kentucky Derby, which is really good. Unless, like you say . . .”
“No, no, I like the horses myself, and I’d like to go to the Kentucky Derby someday.”
“Oh, you should! Pack up the kids and take them over to America! If y’all have as much fun as me and Duane are having here in Northern Ireland, it will be just wonderful! I’m Ruby Jean by the way. And he’s Duane.”
MacAllan didn’t introduce himself but nodded to her and Duane, then ordered a Bushmills. It was obvious to Brennan that MacAllan had been lifting a few prior to arriving at the Iron Will. MacAllan got his drink and exchanged a few words with the man in between them.
Duane had completed the critical part of his mission, which was to verify the presence of MacAllan in the bar; if he could get the fellow talking, all the better. But he didn’t want to push things, so he babbled away to Ruby for a while longer. The man who stood between them polished off his drink and made to leave. MacAllan gulped down his whiskey and it looked as if he was about to follow the other man, but he stayed put and eyed the bottles behind the bar. Duane took advantage of the situation to say, “Could we treat you to a drink of your choice?”
“Wouldn’t say no to a Bushmills.”
So Duane ordered the Bush for MacAllan, another Bud for himself, and a sling for Ruby. “My wife is real taken with sweet drinks like a Singapore sling. Girly stuff!”
“I like drinks that taste just like dessert!” she said. “Anyway, like I was saying, you should come visit America. I know people think we’re always bragging up our country, but there really is a lot to see and do.”
“I’ve been to America,” MacAllan said then.
“Oh! Whereabouts?” Ruby Jean was on the case again. “Let me guess now. New York! That’s where most people go when they come to our country.”
“No, Tennessee. Not far from you, if I heard you right.”
“Just next door. What brought you there?”
“Went to hear a minister, years ago. One of those big revival meetings. Went on for days.” Reiterating his alibi, all these years later.
“Is that right?” Duane asked. “Who was the preacher, if you don’t mind me askin’? We love to hear the Word from a man who knows his bible.”
“His name was Stockwell.”
The drinks arrived then, and MacAllan looked grateful to have a jar in front of him. He raised his glass to them and took a long swallow. Duane Ballard was grateful that the man was on the drink and talkative with it.
Duane took a sip of his beer, then said, “Hiram Stockwell!” He took his wife’s hand and squeezed it. “Me and Ruby Jean have heard the Reverend Stockwell preach in Mississippi and over in Arkansas. We’ve heard Billy Graham, too, and I have to tell you, Hiram Stockwell is every bit as good as Mr. Graham. Both men of the Lord and they do Him credit.”
“We didn’t get to hear Billy Graham, but I agree with youse about Stockwell. Well worth the trip.” MacAllan took a good generous gulp of his whiskey and went on, “Too much of a gentleman, though.”
“How d’ya mean?” asked Duane.
“There were a few times when he should have let loose and told the people what he really thought. A barmy crowd of geezers with long beards and raggedy clothes were up near the stage and kept telling Reverend Stockwell that the end times were near and he should let them up on the stage to give the people detailed instructions about where to go and what to do. He just smiled and went on with his talk.
And another bloke elbowed his way through the mob and waved a piece of paper at Stockwell and shouted out about some new Roman Catholic churches that had been built, saying the papists were taking over the country.”
Ruby Jean put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, her eyes gleaming at MacAllan.
Encouraged, he embellished the tale. “I felt like saying, ‘Take a trip across the sea to my wee country if you think you’ve got a problem with them here!’ But all Stockwell did was make a bunch of gooey statements about the United States welcoming all kinds and living in peace, and all that guff.”
“Same problem everywhere,” Duane drawled. “They breed like goldarn rabbits, the RCs.” Brennan Burke, Father Burke, Roman PhD recipient and choirmaster, knew papists were a minority in the United States, always had been, but Duane Ballard kept that to himself.
“Aye, that’s what Ian Paisley said. ‘They breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin.’ Doctor Paisley was dead on,” MacAllan affirmed and took a quick, hard drink of his whiskey. “Hiram Stockwell, now, he was the best preacher I ever heard. The wife bought all these eight-tracks of him preaching. We’re on our way off the grounds, day’s turning to night, and we have to catch our plane, and she’s there, loading up on tapes. Still listens to them, as far as I know.”
So the wife wasn’t living with MacAllan now? Maybe she was still in Scotland where he had gone after the bombing. Duane said, “The women are all in love with him!” And he directed a pointed look at Ruby.
