“I was off them for twenty years.”
Like I gave a fuck, but I said,
“Like the rest of us poor fucks.”
He was in his late forties, jet-black hair in need of a cut, a face that had endured sorrow and recently. He had a look of Tom Hardy but way thinner. His voice was more from learning than genes. He said,
“My daughter, Meredith, has suffered horrendously from trolls, one in particular who goes by the hashtag diebitchsoon.
At first I thought he was speaking German until I broke it down.
Die.
Bitch.
Soon.
Jesus wept.
I asked,
“What age is Meredith?”
He looked like he was having either a stroke or a heart attack, or both.
I put out my hand, held his shoulder, took my emergency small travel flask out of my 501s, said,
“Drink this.”
He looked amazed, asked,
“You carry booze?”
I tried a smile, said,
“And a good thing I do. Drink.”
He did.
Then coughed and shuddered, gasped,
“The fuck is that?”
“Salvation.”
He near whispered,
“Meredith was eleven.”
Past dreaded tense.
Few minutes later, he stood almost straight, said,
“I have tried everything to find out who the demon is, but no luck.”
I asked,
“The Guards?”
He scoffed, near spat, said,
“Cyberbullying they told me is rampant.”
Indeed.
The papers carried horror stories of such daily.
He said,
“Meredith gave me a navy wool tie for my birthday. It was kind of a joke as she knows I hate ties and she had it inscribed with it’s not my thing.”
Fuck.
I said lamely,
“Sounds like a great girl.”
“Was, she was a great girl, the best.”
Oh, God, but I had to ask finally as the past tense again came up.
“How do you mean?”
A small tear rolled down his cheek, the cheeks flushed from the booze. It landed softly on the sand, like an abandoned prayer. He said,
“She’s dead. And I swore to her that I would not only find the bastard but ensure he never bothered her again.”
Then he near shrieked,
“I didn’t find him. He actually increased his campaign of terror as if he knew I was trying to find him or maybe her, who the fuck knows these days.”
I had nothing so said nothing.
With supreme effort he said,
“On her own birthday, she hung herself in her bedroom.”
Pause.
“With the navy tie.”
He rolled up his sleeve, said,
“I was so insane with grief that I got a tattoo. You think I got my daughter’s name?”
I thought so.
He said,
“You’d be wrong.”
Showed me his arm.
In bold Gothic script was
D.
B.
S.
A miracle
Is defined as a
Wonder,
A marvel,
A marvelous event due to supernatural agency.
One of the mysteries of Galway is a curious thing on the clock over Galway Camera and what it says.
It says Dublin Time.
The fact that now the clock shows ordinary winter time only adds to the mystery.
Not so long ago Galwegians, delighting in the longer days of sunlight than in Dublin and displaying an oddity that makes living in Galway a pleasure, set their clocks a full eleven and a half minutes behind Dublin.
Of course, this plays into the Dublin belief that Galway is/was behind and not just in minutes.
I was standing under said clock when Jimmy Higgins came along; a radio broadcaster, terrific musician, and possessed of a sharp wit.
He handed me a double CD and said,
“It’s old style.”
Just what I love. I said,
“Jimmy, nowadays they say old school.”
He looked baffled, asked,
“Why?”
Indeed.
I attempted,
“They want to change the name of everything now and, get this, get rid of the Angelus.”
Jimmy had written a beautiful book about the show-band era, titled,
“Are Ye the Band?”
He asked how I was after my accident.
I said,
“They called it a miracle.”
He pondered that, giving me that Tuam look of utter frankness, then,
“You appear in fine fettle. I suppose all the hurling you did stood to you.”
Jimmy was that rare to rarest individual — he saw the good in you, little as it was. He added.
“Well, mind yourself Jack, there are few of us left.”
And getting fewer by the day.
I took a measured stroll down the town, passed the bronze seated statues of two writers, on a bench, a distance of two feet between them; one was Edward Carson and the other, well, he was what the locals call a total.
Shorthand for “total stranger.”
I looked in the window of the Treasure Chest; all the goods displayed cost a small fortune to even contemplate.
As a child of poverty, I remember when it was Glynn’s, what my mother called a “dear” place, meaning it wasn’t dear in the sense of sentimental but fierce expensive.
It was fierce.
For weeks there was a beautiful replica of the Titanic, in each and every correct detail, down to the doomed lifeboats: It filled me with wonder.
It cost ninety-five pounds, in what is now known as “old” money before the curse of the euro. The china factory that employed a quarter of the town had a weekly wage of two pounds, ten shillings, and that was with overtime.
A union?
Yeah, dream on.
My father, who worked like an African American on the railway, earned one pound, twenty shillings.
But, oh my God, money felt like money. A half crown was not only a fine sum but the coin, it felt like wealth; eight of them and you had a mighty pound.
A woman I knew vaguely stopped, asked,
“What are thinking of, Jack?”
I gave her what passed for a not unfriendly smile, said,
“I was wondering what I’d buy with ninety pounds?”
She discreetly backed away, her look screaming.
“’Tis early to be drunk.”
My former lady friend/significant other, whatever the hell the fluid term is now, had previously introduced me to
“Danny Doherty.”
From Derry — no, not London Derry — and for odd reasons we became friends, despite Marion, my ex, telling him I was toxic.
Thing is, I agreed with her on that.
Most of my friends were in the graveyard and, yes, because of me, directly or not.
I may not have put them there but I sure paved the road.
Danny was a whiz in an IT company, made serious cash but seemed like he hadn’t a shilling. The best kind of wealth, the nonshowy type.
I saw him making his way past a busker who was mauling “The Fields of Athenry.” Danny gave him some money, smiled when he saw me, said,
“Jeez, he must really hate that song.”
He was five-foot-ten, weighed 160 pounds, was gym fit and looked like a benevolent bouncer. Sounds crazy but then this is Galway. His only concession to being rich was his clothes, discreet but oh so freaking classy.
A cap that made him seem handsome.
He wasn’t.
Chinos with a permanent crease, no mean achievement, one of those tweed coats called Tru Dry, truly expensive. (I checked one time in Anthony Ryan’s; they were as dear as the ship in Glynn’s from my youth.)