He backed away. I followed, consumed with rage, murder aflame in my heart, tears in my eyes, I shouted,
“Distress, talk to me of that!”
I looked at the bridge, warned,
“You say another fucking word to me, just one, and I’ll throw you over that bridge and then I’ll go to your fucking home and have another chat with your dote of a daughter.”
He was moving away, said,
“You’ll pay, Taylor. I’ll see you will.”
I got home, reasonably sober.
The young Guard Sweeny had followed me after I’d been released, asked,
“You okay?”
I asked,
“This good cop/bad cop?”
He sighed, said,
“I just wanted you to know that I was at the scene of the killings and I’ll never forget the burnt horses.”
Jesus H.
I said,
“What?”
What fresh horror now?
He said,
“The horses were doused in petrol then set on fire. People saw them in flames streaking through the fields, giving a sound that one man said was like the demons of hell had been released.”
I had to lean against a wall, my eyes spinning in my head, images as if from William Blake careening round my mind, a nightmare that I’d never unsee nor unhear.
I thanked Sweeny for his concern, said,
“You’re too decent to be a Guard.”
He gave a sad smile, said,
“You’d know.”
I rang Malachy, not knowing if he was dead, but he answered, snarled,
“You fuckhead!”
Hung up.
Went better than I’d hoped.
I met with Owen Daglish, tried to convince him that Sara was behind the massacre at Saoirse Farm. He was sipping from a pint of Guinness that had a creamy head it seemed a damn shame to disturb, but needs must.
He put the glass down slowly, didn’t look at me, whispered,
“You need to see someone.”
I was easing my sick soul into a Jameson, said,
“Right, right. I’m seeing you, telling you.”
He gave me a long look, said,
“The week you were MIA, a drug dealer was robbed, someone gave him a beating and cleaned out his money.”
I wondered,
Me? The bag of money?
He shook his head, as if the whole world was skew-ways. I asked again,
“Sara, the girl?”
He did something that underlined his despair of me. He pushed the pint away, said,
“You’re sick in the head, Jack. You need professional help.”
Walked away.
At a loss, I walked my own self, had finished my drink. I was fucked but not quite. I nearly drank Owen’s remaining pint but I had some standards, ragged and blown, but still.
Went to St. Nicholas Collegiate Church. The Protestant one. I felt a niggling guilt at entering there, Catholic guilt never fully dispelled. It was silent, which I loved, and I felt an odd rare peace, sat down, remembered the last time I was here, during the maelstrom of Galway Girl.
Then mourning a dead child, I’d found an old poem on faded vellum by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It had been uncanny in its lines, echoing the sorrow of the time, my time, not GMH’s.
No poem this round but, as I lowered my head in my hands, a memory of my days at the Bish in Galway, not a prayer away from where now I sobbed in hopelessness, our English teacher, a spoiled priest, beating me over the knuckles because I couldn’t for the very life of me remember one line of a poem.
The poem was “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”
By Yeats.
Out of sheer tenacity, many years later, as a Guard on border duty, I’d found a tattered copy of Yeats’s Selected Poetry in a derelict house we were sheltering in from out of the rain.
I memorized that poem, remembered it there in the Protestant church.
I recited the lines under my breath.
They were scant comfort but the music of the structure was almost soothing.
I passed a guy who was wearing a T-shirt with a quote by the late Robin Williams:
“If it’s not one thing
It’s
My mother”
Elicited a tiny smile from me. You take any trace of humor where you find it — even from a T-shirt.
The heat wave we’d been enduring rather than relishing was in its fifth week; the humidity was intolerable. Not that the vexed humanity was tolerable either.
I came out of the church to torrential rain, absolutely dashing, muttered the title of the very first Dennis Lehane book I’d read,
Prayers for Rain.
Hard to blame Dennis, I guess.
I balanced all,
Brought all to mind,
The years to come
Seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath
The years behind
In balance
With this life,
This death.
I was at my apartment, trying not to think about
My deep friendship with Keefer.
The touching strength of Ceola.
The determination of Dysart.
The fierce beauty of the falcon.
The utter fear of the horses.
As distraction, I counted the money in the duffel bag, came to nearly 20,000 euros.
I sat back, went,
“A miracle?”
The doorbell shrilled.
More Guards, I figured.
Nope.
Monsignor Rael, the Vatican fixer.
He was dressed in a light black suit, immaculate white shirt that kind of glowed, his hair neatly cut, thin gold glasses, and his face like a shard of ice. He asked,
“Might I come in?”
Sure.
I waved my hand to signal suit yourself.
He came in, moved to the window as many did, and gazed at the expanse of Galway Bay. Then he said, without turning,
“We have us somewhat of a clusterfuck.”
I lit a cig, said,
“You think?”
I asked,
“Drink?”
He turned, adjusted his glasses as if to scrutinize me more fully, said,
“Indeed, how hospitable of you. Black coffee, please.”
I got that as he studied my bookshelf, said,
“Somewhat eclectic taste. Beckett next to Becky Masterman, Rilke next to a bio of Neil Young.”
I said,
“What can I say, I’m nuts.”
He smiled that thin smile that bespoke nastiness.
He said,
“Our chap Dysart, he was, I imagine, less than candid with you.”
I had to be careful not to pick up the jagged tempo of his speech. It was contagious, like a disease, a faint mocking tone leaking over his words. I asked,
“Pray tell.”
(See what I mean?)
He indicated the armchair, raised his eyebrows. I said,
“Sure, get comfortable.”
He did, even if comfort was not really in his catalog. He began,
“The girl/woman, Sara, is not an orphan. She was born to the remnants of a cult who worshipped the cobra, on the run from authorities in the U.S. and U.K. They settled in the south of France briefly, where Sara was born, then some of them fled to Guatemala with the girl. Needless to say, they were not exactly model citizens and rumors about dark acts were numerous, but they had one vital ace, money, lots of it, and some government ministers were not disinclined to participate in their doings, especially child abuse and any sordid activity involving sex and drugs. But eventually they got bold, went too far, and a death squad wiped out most of them. Sara blended into the train of refugees fleeing the country. She had quite the reputation for tricks of light, languages, and a predator’s skill of camouflage. But a bloodlust appetite would always surface and a number of bodies of young boys lined her passage.”