SATURDAY, 6 DECEMBER, 1980:
Young Donny Flynn drenched himself in misgivings before he had driven the provos an hour out of South Boston, Massachusetts. It had been all very well to parade these two micks on the streets of Old Southie as his mysterious and powerful friends—even though the elder Flynn himself had never set eyes on them before they showed up, the previous Sunday, bearing the nearest thing to an illiterate letter of introduction anybody could ask for. It didn't matter if they'd written the letter themselves, thought Donny; when you were nineteen and a recent flunkout from Boston College you could use the street status these old soddy friends conferred. Donny had made sure everybody knew he would be disappearing with them for a time, for Something Very Important. But cooped up in the goddam BMW with these jabbering drunks all the way to Colorado? Donny would go out of his gourd.
He remembered his father's confusion when Flaherty, the tall slender one with the voice like a fiddle string, and McTaggart, the nervous red-head, walked into their house in Old Southie. Da kept up with soccer and he read the Irish News, but he wasn't much for writing letters since Ma died and Donny couldn't recall when he had last seen a postmark from Ireland.
Donny had never seen Ireland and couldn't care less. Da spoke less about the Irish question than most of their friends, and was definitely not interested in visiting the country of his youth even though as a machinist in nearby Chelsea, he made enough to buy a nice place and little things like a twenty-thousand dollar BMW 733i. Other people went back to visit. Why not Da?
McTaggart, talking for the both of them, dumped a flood of lilting patter the minute he walked in. He wasn't much older than Donny but any dumb shit could see he'd been around. And if he couldn't see it he could hear it from McTaggart. Donny had heard it, dropping his Playboy on his bed and putting his ear to the wall that separated him from his father's hobby room. McTaggart's musical brogue was a tune to make Donny smile, but the lyrics did not please his father much.
It was weird: the sound was muffled to begin with, but in addition to the opaque Irish slang of McTaggart it seemed that Da's own speech had curiously peeled its American frosting away so that Donny was listening to a father he had never heard before. Da had laughed a lot at first. And then Flaherty, the older one, had talked a little in that squeaky voice, not much, and after that Dawasn't laughing much and when he did, it had an undertone Donny did not recognize at first. But when he recognized it, he liked it. It was fear. Donny could use some pointers from anybody who could walk into his father's house and immediately make his father seem less like a fuck-in' knowitall and more like a man who could listen to reason. Who had to listen.
It was all mixed up with some old friend, a provo, who felt that it was time Da earned his keep. It was the Irish Republican Army, and again it wasn't. Donny might be lost in a classroom but he was bright enough to assemble the fact that provos, of the Provisional Wing of the IRA, had abiding disagreements with the IRA's main body. Jeez, it sounded like two entirely separate armies.
It also sounded like a lot of shit about Da earning his keep and Da had made that point himself. But to the provos it seemed that you assumed a debt, boyo, by leaving the ould sod, especially if your machinist's skills were needed for weapons repair, and most particularly especially if you had planted a tin of jelly, whatever that was, in a London railway depot.
Sure, said McTaggart, an' it was a wee time back, but the sojers hadn't forgot and the fookin' protestants hadn't forgot but, as luck wud have it, ould Flynn had the chance to make the provos forget. And that wud break the chain of memories. All square, all debts repaid.
So Da had decided to think about it. The two micks had seemed to notice Donny for the first time after the talk in the hobby room, Flaherty succinct, McTaggart effusive. By bedtime, Donny was trying to get the hang of their melodious jargon, quick to realize that when Da was working during the day, Donny would be their guide and if he could manage it, their confidante. They went to the snooker hall on Monday with Donny, and found new friends with old brogues who helped them become chummily, gloriously drunk while Donny worked to confirm the image of Donny Flynn as a man with connections. But no matter how he hinted and pried, no matter how many stories he began about the swath he cut among the little broads from Brookline to Newton, somehow Donny Flynn was the outsider. He learned, as McTaggart might say, fuck-all about the provo mission—which was to say, nothing whatever.
But Donny found them happy enough to talk about the United States. They found Boston acceptable, though there was much to be said for Quebec, where they had visited before coming down, legal as the Pope, to see the States. The people in Quebec had a villainous language but they understood repression and martyrdom better, and their connections with rich men in Libya and Syria were excellent. Still, the Irish here in the States knew how to give for a good cause. At least they did until thon bunch of blirts on the telly started blatherin' like eejits, makin' sport of the provo cause.
Then Flaherty made an observation, eloquent for him, that thanks to the newspapers he knew how they could be accountin' w'it.
McTaggart had then suggested that Flaherty shut his gub. It was hard for Donny to tell whether McTaggart was the superior or merely the more loquacious. Certainly McTaggart was the talker. Donny wondered what might be Flaherty's special talent.
The next nights had been a pleasure since Da had supplied Donny with money and, Jasus, even the car, so he could enjoy himself in Boston. Donny would have loved to know what the men talked about at home while he cruised in the metallic blue BMW, looking for—he tried the phrase—some wee hoore. Actually he took in a movie each night, and remembered subplots so he could inject himself into them to describe his conquest of the evening, in case McTaggart might ask, or might be willing to listen. McTaggart never asked, and hardly listened at all. It was hard to tell whether Flaherty was listening, the way those yellow-gray eyes roamed from deep in the narrow head. In fact, Donny was beginning to think he had made no impression on the visitors until Thursday, night before last. On that night, McTaggart had brewed up a real Irish stew, all by himself.
Halfway through the meal, articulated at the tail of a monologue extolling the luxuries of Old Southie folk, McTaggart singsonged, "An' ye've been a gracious host, Mr. Flynn sur, none better seein' the bloody great wad ye donated to buy us some proper togs in this cold weather. Mind, the Flaherty and meself, we cud hardly want fer more. But there'll be one more wee askin' fer the cause, and that'll be all."
The harried machinist laid down his spoon with a grizzled hand, wearing an expression of disgust. "An' that'll be what?"
"A car, sur; as the wee lad says, some wheels,"
McTaggart said, with a laughing wink, bestowing on Donny a camaraderie he had previously withheld. "A car an' a driver, d'ye mind, it's the papers to drive that we're needin' and between the Flaherty and meself there's nobbut—"
"Be damned t'ye," Flynn said, coloring. "Rent one. I'll buy ye airline tickets, if that's it, and then ye both can—"
"The BMW," Flaherty said then, his thin voice scything through Flynn's anger, scattering it like dead leaves. "Rental won't do, d'ye see? Ye trust the lad to drive. Aye, all he has t'do. On my honor an' then we'll be away on. Yell niver see us more."
There was a long silence, the two provos watching critically as old Flynn, now older than sin itself, picked up his spoon and nodded. "After that, we're quits," said Flynn. "We won't want to know ye."