by Ken Bruen
She was fingering her neck and I realized she was in fact rubbing my daughter’s gold miraculous medal, then her arms went round me.
She leaned in real close, whispered,
“Fuck off, cunt.”
“The Miracle of Small Proportion.”
Known colloquially as the small miracle
Occurs when a person provides
A major service/assistance
To a person they despise.
It is as rare as it is small.
(Comte De Brun, 1900–34)
I’d returned from Keefer’s by cab. Keefer had said,
“You no longer have use of my truck and don’t come here again.”
As I got into the cab, I turned to see Sara standing by the house, a smile of utter malevolence creeping across her pretty face.
I knew the cabdriver, Hugh McEntee. His mother (McEntee-Kennedy), Ena, had saved many girls from the infamous Magdalene. He let his eyes sweep across the farm, said,
“Worth a few bob.”
I grunted some vague assent.
The radio was tuned to Keith Finnegan. He was paying tribute to Kitty Kelly, who’d died at the age of 105, and Hugh asked me,
“Did you know her?”
Everybody knew Kitty. She’d worked Births, Marriages Department in the county buildings. She knew your date of birth the minute you walked into the office. Not too many of that caliber anymore.
She was always cheerful and if you met her on the street she’d greet you with total warmth, like this,
“Young Taylor, you look mighty.”
I’d met her on the day of her ninetieth birthday and she told me she was going to have a ninety-nine for the occasion—that is, the ice cream cone with a flake on top.
Hugh said,
“Kitty attributed her longevity to a glass of sherry every night, even in the nursing home. The nurses made sure she had that.”
I tried to balance that lovely story against the sheer evil of whatever the girl-child Sara was.
It only helped a little, like a rosary against the storm.
I spent a whole day in a blue funk, one of those awful “sit in a chair, stare at the wall, feel unable to rise to anything” ones, the mind in a blitzkrieg of guilt, rage, frustration, and every voice in your head screaming,
“You are a worthless piece of shit!”
A strangely level voice asking,
“Seriously, name one good thing you can be proud of.”
As a gauge of how low I was, I didn’t smoke, drink, or take a Xanax.
Did I wallow in that hell?
Yes.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, after you stood up, full of new resolve, full of a hard-won belief, that you were now a whole fresh page?
Like fuck.
When I did eventually stir, I made some coffee, as bitter as a translated prayer. I showered, the water scalding, the water lashing me. I’d often wondered what exactly the term self-flagellation truly meant.
I wondered no more.
I dressed in a faded T-shirt advertising the Rory Gallagher tour, so you can guess just how old it was. Clean 501s and, it being summer, worn moccasins that loved my feet.
Took a long neglected book from the shelf, from K. C. Constantine’s the Mario Balzic series. Most people never heard of him, and the fact that he remained totally anonymous wasn’t going to raise his profile.
I was half-engaged in the book when the doorbell rang. Did I welcome the distraction?
No.
Opened it to Father Malachy.
He looked terrible, like ill. He was dressed like a civilian, a tired unironed shirt and gray leggings with the cuff that no one on the planet can wear with panache.
He had a blackthorn stick, like a prop from The Quiet Man, and he was leaning heavily on it. He barked,
“Don’t leave me standing here like a bollix.”
I waved my arm in a sarcastic sweep of welcome, because welcome he surely wasn’t. He limped in, sank into a chair with lots of sighing, puffing, generally milking the whole invalid vibe. He said,
“Don’t stand there like an ejit, get a person a drink.”
I was very impressed with my own restraint but it had its limit. I poured him a Jay, asked with bitterness,
“Ice?”
He near snapped the glass, peered at the level, asked,
“You rationing it?”
I looked at the watch I didn’t have on my wrist, said,
“Tops, you have one minute to get your mouth in gear, else I’ll kick your arse so fast out the door you won’t know what happened.”
He looked hurt, I mean as if I had offended him, then,
“There’s no need for that, Jack.”
Use of my first name, sure sign some heavy shite was winging its way. He said/whined,
“No need for that at all.”
I poured a coffee, wanted to lash some Jay, but one of us, I felt, better try for control. I asked,
“Why are you here?”
He said,
“I need you to kill me.”
Over the years, I have sworn a hundred, a thousand times that I’d like to kill Malachy. Few have tested me as he has. But now he was asking me?
I went,
“What?”
His head down, he said,
“I have motor neuron disease, in the advanced stages. From the time of diagnosis, it kills within three years unless you are Stephen Hawking. I am already losing control over my hands, feet, legs, and arms. I won’t be able to talk, walk, or swallow, then I won’t be able to breath without some machine hooked up to me, then I’ll die.”
I said,
“Fuck me.”
Malachy was not one of life’s smilers. Grimace, yes, often, but smiles, no. He smiled now, said,
“No, fuck me.”
I got the bottle of Jay, poured for us both. He said,
“Good health.”
He took a drink, said,
“I can’t live without being able to do anything so they’ll ship me off to one of those clerical hospitals where they hide the worst priests and I’ll die being abused by angry, frustrated nuns.”
I asked,
“They have such places?”
He laughed, asked,
“They’re the Church, what do you think?”
I thought they did.
He put his glass down, the tremor in his hand causing the glass to do a mini jig on the surface. He asked,
“So will you, Jack, will you help me die?”
Phew-oh.
Wrong on so many levels.
I asked,
“Isn’t suicide like the worst thing on your guys’ agenda? Eternal damnation, no burial in consecrated ground, burn in hell, and all the attendant fury?”
He smiled, well pleased, said,
“See, here’s the beauty of it, you’ll be killing me, so it’s not suicide.”
Aw, for fuck sakes. I said,
“For fuck sakes, that won’t fly.”
He wasn’t fazed, said,
“If you put phenobarbital in a nice glass of champagne, it will be like I’m going to sleep and you won’t have told me when exactly you’re going to do it.”
I wanted to shake him but he had a fine old tremor already in play. I said,
“So let me see if I follow this. Every time I see you, I give you a lethal glass of champers, a kind of clerical Russian roulette.”
He actually tut-tutted, prepared to bear with my density, said,
“But I have selected the day, my birthday, which is around the corner.”
Of all the insane thoughts storming my brain, I asked,
“Champagne? You don’t drink that shite.”
He sighed, patience
ebbing, said,
“But it will be my birthday.”
Was there logic there?
Fuck if I could find it.
Then my mind cleared a bit, asked,
“What about me, murder and all that mortal shit stuff?”
He waved that away with
“You have so many sins, will God notice?”
It was all so weird, unbelievable. I snarled,
“Where the fuck do you think I’m going to get phenobarbital if, and big if, I even for one mad moment considered doing the deed?”
His patience really was wearing as thin as a nun in Lent. He said,
“You’re in the life.”
Whoa!
Hold the fucking phone. I snapped.
“In the life? What, you’ve been binge-watching The Sopranos?”
He reached in his pocket, took out a vape, said,
“Won’t be needing this shite no more.”
And with what I must admit was a near perfect throw landed it in the wastebasket, then took out the ultimate coffin nails, Major, the green pack that are so strong you need two people to inhale.
He managed to get the cig in his mouth but trying to flick a Bic lighter was too much for the shake in his fingers. Exasperated I grabbed it from him, fired him up. Did he thank me? Did he fuck. He said,
“Give me back my Bic.”
Enveloped in smoke, he said,
“Don’t be modest, Jack boy, you have dope dealers coming out of yer arse.”
Lovely PC turn of phrase.
I asked,
“How do you know about phenobarbital?”
A sly smile, then,
“I’ve been watching Mary Kills People; even better than Google for DIY offing yer own self.”
Offing yer self.
His vocabulary really had changed, if not improved. He stood up, crushed the cig beneath his foot, on my floor! Said,
“I have to go. I’m glad you agreed to be my executioner.”
God almighty.
I said,
“You ever say anything even in the neighborhood of that, you can get your own rope.”
He gave a short merry laugh, said,
“Jaysus, you need to lighten up. No wonder you look so old. Here’s something to cheer you up.”
I could hardly wait. He said,
“A young lad is being forced to drink liters of cider by some older boys: What is the term for that?”
I said,
“Business as usual?”
Impish grin, then he said,
“Cider bullying.”
He gave me a playful punch in the shoulder, laughed again, said,
“Ah, Jack, you’ll be the death of me.”
T. S. Eliot wrote about the dread of
The mental emptiness . . .
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about.
This was not my dilemma.
I had two very focused events to weigh.
Kill a child (Sara).
Kill a priest (Malachy).
God in heaven.
I sat looking out my bay window, seeing/not seeing the ocean stretching to the Aran Islands. Asked aloud,
“How in holy hell did I get to such a fierce dilemma in my life?”
I had a black coffee in front of me, with a glass of Jay riding point. My mind was a sewer of horror. I could do nothing but, like, that was going to solve anything.
I remembered some lines of Rilke.
Still though, alas
I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul.
A knock at the door. I welcomed any respite from my own torrid company, hoped it might be Malachy with a change of mind. He was a priest. Wouldn’t all his clerical training, his indoctrination force him to pull back from the abyss?
But then, Malachy was no ordinary priest; far from it.
Opened the door to Dysart, the ex-priest, the one who wanted to kill Sara, who had gone to Keefer’s place and had a shotgun shoved in his face.
I said,
“Come in. I’m nearly glad to see you.”
“God sends your ex
Into your life again
To see if you’ve learned anything
Or
If
You’re still the same dumb fuck.”
(Keefer)
Before I could front Dysart on his poor showing in front of Keefer, he took me totally by surprise with
“Tell me, Jack, what has scared you in your life. I mean the stuff that haunts you for days after with its image.”
I was fairly spoiled for choice there. I went for evasion.
“Well, the two movies by Ari Aster, Hereditary and Midsommar.”
When I was a Garda cadet I saw Polanski’s Repulsion, which lingered for months in my head.
But for the sheer moment of terror, when my hair stood on end, that would be when the bag moved with a body in it in Audition.
He was annoyed, said,
“You’re being flippant. I mean, have you ever been face-to-face with utter evil?”
Was he fucking kidding? I snarled,
“Don’t be a supercilious prick. I’ve been right up and personal with evil on a nearly fucking weekly basis.”
His hand went up; he let out a fake,
“Whoa, dial it down a notch, buddy.”
After Malachy, after the fracas with Keefer, I went into meltdown, grabbed him by the throat, spat,
“You don’t come into my home and tell me to dial it fucking down.”
He was scared. I thought for a minute the white cold fury wouldn’t ebb and I’d kill him, but some epiphany hit me from left side and I let him go.
Much later, when all this was done, I’d be able to put words to the epiphany but not then, not there. I was too wrought up.
I slumped back, as if I’d been the one struck, and thought I might keel over.
Dysart was shaking, trying to catch his breath. He looked at me, said,
“A moment there, you had true evil in your soul.”
I whispered,
“Believe it.”
“An
Epiphany
Is
an
Experience
of
Sudden
and
Striking
Realization”
(dictionary definition)
I gave Dysart a large Jay and he produced a crumpled pack of Camels, lit one bruised cig with a heavy Zippo, said,
“I was off these for ten years, then I came to Ireland.”
I said,
“Go ahead, blame us. You must have British blood.”
He rubbed his neck, muttered,
“I thought you were going to kill me.”
I looked at him, said,
“I was.”
That put a kink in chat for a while, then he said,
“I met your wife, sorry, ex-wife, at meetings.”
The fuck he said?
I went,
“What?”
Drinking the Jameson, he, brazen as a wild pup, tells me,
“AA meetings. Kiki has a year now.”
I wanted to strangle him again, asked,
“But you’re drinking and aren’t those meetings supposed to help? And, mainly, aren’t those meetings meant to be anonymous. Isn’t that the fucking point?”
He said,
“I can control my drinking. It’s okay once you know when to cut back.”
I used all my wisdom, all my experience, all my failed methods of a way to drink without being slaughtered, summed it up for him with
“Horseshite.”
Kiki.
Phew-oh, to
capture Kiki in a brief summary.
Years back, after I’d investigated the suicide of young girls, I fled to London and I mean I was truly fleeing.
Spent a year on Ladbroke Grove, wasted, like the character in Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square. Thank God, most of it is a blur, my very own version of London fog.
Got married, yeah, fuck me.
To a German metaphysician, Kiki,
The top had barely settled on our Guinness when we got divorced and I slunk back to Galway with a leather coat I bought on Camden Lock. The lyrics of Van Morrison’s “Madame George” wafting in my head.
Such are the vagaries of my life that in my holdall were albums by Rory Gallagher and the Pogues. I was barely a week back home when the leather coat was stolen, much like my marriage.
Years later, Kiki turned up with a gorgeous little girl. She said,
“This is your daughter.”
Like holy fuck.
Right?
Took a time but I bonded with the little girl and my heart was fit to burst. I could hardly breathe for sheer joy.
The child was murdered right in front of me.
And Job wailed he got a rough ride?
Kiki in her own form of insane grief took up with a psycho known as Silence. A savage ice-cold calculating predator that became fixated with destroying slowly everything and everyone I held dear.
I was slow to react as I was in a state of traumatic paralysis until, finally, I stole a high-powered rifle and gut shot the fucker in the drive of the home he shared with Kiki.
Kiki went back to the booze with fixed fatalism.
Our child was buried in Rahoon Cemetery, made famous by James Joyce with his ode to Nora Barnacle’s dead lover. With apologies to Joyce, I saw it as
The place where my dead daughter lies.
There is no greater grief. None.
Dysart held out his glass and I snapped,
“How can you attend AA meetings when you drink and it seems you drink like a sailor?”
He gave a self-satisfied smile that riled me. I pushed further.
“You went half-cocked or, now I imagine, half in the bag, to see Keefer, got a shotgun in your mouth?”
He said,
“I wanted to get the perimeters, not to mention the parameters, for when we go to take the girl.”
The sheer bloody cheek of the prick. I said,
“I’ll take care of the girl.”
He lit up, amazed, echoed,