The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  Bricks and mortar will not stay,

  Will not stay, will not stay,

  Bricks and mortar will not stay,

  My fair lady.

  Kevin and Tess were pure electricity when they skipped along the top then down the side of that small hill. Tess’s pink skirt blowing out in a breeze. I was back in the river. I said nothing to Stephen and Hannah about what I had seen. I was learning to be secretive. Then Kevin and Tess were behind me, but I didn’t turn. I didn’t want to give them any hint that I was in the know. I reached down and flung handfuls of water at Stephen and Hannah. They kept shouting at me that I’d frighten all the brickeens away, but I didn’t stop. I laughed. I played the fool. The fool being the next-door neighbor of the secretive. Late evening sunshine on the water and on the two large rocks on the opposite bank. The sweet smell of ripening hay, the laughter and the shouts from my younger brother and sister, and behind me my elder sister and Kevin Lyons giggling.

  I’m not sure how it came about. I did think Tess and he were still in the mud behind me, though next their laughter came from up the riverbank, then harsh words from him, clothes being ripped, a scream from Tess, a splash, Tess crying, and the bluebottles before me turning furious.

  None of us could swim, and the water between Tess and us was crowded with the stiff rushes and the slimy water lilies and the sharp reeds that would slice your skin open. Columns of wasps skimmed in and out of a mossy hole in the riverbank—but I dashed out of that river, ran along the bank, past the unripened blackberry bush, slapping at the midges, calling my sister’s name, who was crying and calling my name. Hannah was also crying and Stephen was crying because Hannah was. Kevin stood on the edge of the riverbank, his arms flat against his side, his head down. I said nothing when I ran around him, down the riverbank, through the soft mud, and into the water, where I grabbed my sister’s hands and pulled her to her feet. She would not have drowned. The water was shallow. But you never know. And Tess was otherwise in bits. Stephen and Hannah were by then beside us. Hannah held her sister’s right hand while Stephen and I walked Tess out of the river and sat her on the bank. She was crying and gripping the ripped blouse at the neck. The buttons had vanished. I looked up to see Kevin Lyons running at the edge of the meadow. He clutched his boots and socks to his chest. He’d made powerful tracks.

  The two men in the kitchen were on their third or fourth bottle of porter. My mother was cleaning up and circling the men like a hawk. Asking what else they needed. They ignored her unless another bottle was called for. Their pale ashes and the burned-out butts of Sweet Aftons scattered across the range top, where a blackened kettle and teapot sat. And then us huddled in the middle of that kitchen. Like we had stepped unwillingly onto a stage. Tess’s red hair matted against her cheeks. Broken rushes sticking out of her hair like knitting needles. Like swords stuck in stones. The muddy and wrinkled pink skirt. Tess was still crying and gripping the blouse to her neck. Hannah was still crying. She stood in front. Stephen was on one side of Tess. I was on her other. And the first thing my mother said when she saw us was for us not to drip all over the tiles that she had spent the last hour mopping. And the second thing she said was did she not warn us a million times to be careful when we ventured to the river.

  Hannah blurted it out.

  —Kevin Lyons shoved Tess into the river and ran away! And because of that all my brickeens escaped!

  —What has come over that young fellow at all, Michael turned to my father and said.

  —The same thing that’s come over these wretches before us, my father looked at his friend and said.

  My mother smoothed the front of her apron then stepped between the men and us. She pushed the hair from her face and placed her hands on her hips. Her eyes were on Tess.

  —Go down to your room immediately and put on something decent! Fix your hair, and did I not warn you a million times to not plaster that muck on your eyes, how many times! How many! How many!

  —I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Tess cried.

  —You’re not sorry! Not one bit! If you did like you were told devilment like this wouldn’t happen.

  Then my father stood. His wife stepped aside.

  —Clear out of this kitchen! Or I’ll get the stick to yez! And pull that door after yez!

  Tess and I were down in the girls’ room. Tess was sitting on the edge of her and Hannah’s bed. Tess’s legs were crossed. Left over right. The left one was shaking. The girls’ door was open and so was the toilet door. Hannah was sitting on the toilet bowl and crying. Her cries echoed up and down the blue corridor. She cried that Tess brought this on herself. Did she not say many times that something like this was bound to happen! And next Hannah cried that we’d never see brickeens like those again! Why, oh why did Tess always have to ruin everything for everyone! Stephen was in the boys’ room. Stephen was most likely whispering to dying brickeens on the windowsill. He was bored with this drama. Tess was staring at the floor. I reached out and held her shoulders and begged her to look up. She had stopped crying but her hand still gripped the ripped blouse. And that left leg still shaking. Her wet scraggly hair fully hiding her face. Like the river before we ripped the lilies from it. Rushes wilting in Tess’s hair and rushes scattered at my feet and muddy water dripping from her hair and dress onto that bedroom floor.

  —I saw you, Tess, I said. —I saw what you and him did.

  Tess looked up.

  —Don’t tell them, Jimmy. Don’t ever tell. If they find that out they’ll kill us—

  —I won’t tell them, Tess, I promise I won’t ever tell anyone—

  And I never did tell that Kevin Lyons’s hands shoved my sister’s blouse out along her raised arms and the same hands reached around my sister’s back and unclipped her bra and tossed it like a cigarette butt into the meadow. Nor did I tell that I saw my sister unbutton Kevin Lyons’s shirt and shove it over his shoulders and down his arms like she was skinning an animal. Nor did I say my sister reached in and pulled Kevin’s cock out through the zipper she had just unzipped and she laughed and kissed him fiercely on the mouth before she leaned over and gave him his first blow job.

  The adults made no inquiries with regard to the why, the how, the what. The adults just went to work. We were banned from going to the river for the rest of the summer. Mascara, blush, and eye shadow were burned on the range. Pinups of pop stars on the girls’ bedroom wall were ripped down and burned. Teenage magazines the girls read were burned. Tess had borrowed those magazines from school friends. And Tess’s scrapbooks were burned. I forget what she pasted into them, but she had quite a few. The adults didn’t touch her paintings. Those stayed, one here, one there, on that otherwise bare wall. And the pink skirt vanished from the wardrobe. I’ve no clue what the adults did with that. And one morning my father took the platform shoes into the far corner of his garden and pounded those daring heels to bits with a crowbar. Then he picked up each shoe and tore off the cheap flashy straps and buckles, and he cursed under his breath when he flung them at his raspberry bushes.

  The Lyons family had their troubles. Kevin vanished for three days. One story was that he stayed with his uncle Roger, and because Michael and Roger didn’t speak, Michael never visited Roger. But I think the real story was that the eldest son hid out in hay barns and stole eggs from henhouses and ate unripened blackberries and crab apples. Every morning of the three days he was missing, his father and my father had the same solemn conversation in our yard while they smoked and half-glanced at each other across the bed of Michael’s Nissan truck.

  —Any sign of him, Mike? asked my father.

  —Not a sign or a word, Tom.

  —You didn’t ring the Guards, Mike.

  —I’d like to not bring them on me, Tom.

  —It’s good you didn’t do that. He’ll pipe down, my father said.

  —Didn’t we all have to, Michael said.

  —He�
�ll be back in no time. Don’t I know it, my father said.

  —I was trying to train him, Michael said. —Now God only knows what’s going to become of him.

  —He’ll pipe down, he will, my father said.

  —Odd fucking life, ha! Michael said.

  When Kevin did come home his parents bought him new clothes that we considered cool—a snug Dingo denim jacket, flared Dingo jeans, a wide leather belt, platform shoes.

  Then it was autumn. The red tractor brought the hay pikes in from the meadows and we forked the hay high in the barn. Potatoes were dug and pitted. The autumn rains and the wind returned. The cows stopped giving milk. The evenings grew darker and colder. The two sheepdogs didn’t sleep on the cement yard anymore; they curled up in the warm barn when the stars appeared above the elms and frost sparkled on the cement yard—and at last I was on the red bus. What I had dreamed about for so long. I wore my Confirmation jumper, pants and shoes, and I sat on the top deck, where the tough and the cool sat. I wanted very badly to be one of them, though I discovered soon enough this was never going to happen, but I didn’t want them picking on me, and so you learned how to pretend, you learned how to flatter, and you learned how to act like you didn’t care. Anthony sat upstairs, on the long backseat. That’s where the girls who smoked sat. Anthony ignored me. That’s the kind of brothers we were then and the kind we’d be.

  Kevin was king of the bus and king of the schoolyard. Boys wanted to be his friend. Girls turned capricious when he appeared. Every lunchtime he fought who challenged him and he fought who he challenged. The fights happened between the two prefab schoolrooms, which were far from where the teachers ate lunch in the main school building. His fighting method was to kick his opponent in the head, then get that dazed opponent in a headlock, force him to the ground, and kick him in the head some more. Tess was on the bus. She sat on the bottom deck, beside the bus conductor. Not even Kevin messed with him. Our parents demanded that Tess sit there. She was repeatedly warned to bring no more trouble upon any family.

  In the schoolyard I was one of Kevin’s targets.

  —Will you look at small Jimmy Dwyer, he’d shout.

  —Take a good long look at Fatso Dwyer, he’d shout.

  I skedaddled. Skedaddling being the only skill you fully mastered at that technical school. But how many times did he knock you down on their schoolyard? He sneaked up behind and tripped you and the instant your fat belly hit the gravel and dust filled your nose and your eyes clamped shut and the world as you saw it and felt it detonated like a bomb inside your stupid head he planted his right foot on your stunned heap of a body. Then boisterous laughter from him and his followers shot up around you.

  One morning in the metalwork room he shoved a compass needle fully into your left arse cheek. Laughter and pointed fingers followed you for the rest of that day. In the boys’ bedroom that evening your mother walked in and saw the dark stain on the Confirmation pants that you’d thrown onto the floor and you turned from your mother, who then saw the even bigger dark stain on the white underpants that were stuck to you, and you turned back to your mother, who tightly folded her arms and asked what mischief were you up to at that school.

  —Boys messing in the metalwork room, you mumbled.

  —Of all the people I know, you need to stay far away from those kinds of boys, she said, and left the room.

  One October evening he laughed and danced along the bus aisle. I was sitting halfway down. He stood over me, reached into the left breast pocket of the jacket, and pulled out a shiny packet. He shook the packet before my eyes.

  —You know what I have here, young Jimmy, he said.

  —I do, of course, I said.

  I brushed the packet from my face and watched the red leaves spinning against that dirty bus window. Boys and girls clapped their hands, banged the backs of seats, and howled. Beyond the spinning leaves, the mobs of cattle. The shining patches of water in fields and bogs. The red rusting roofs of hay barns. For what the fuck do you do? You could tell yourself that humiliation on a rickety bus crammed with howling, smelly teenagers in a cowed place was nothing compared with the lives of starving African children, but the adults were happy those starving children existed; starving children gave them the perfect tool for control.

  —You don’t fucking know, Fatso, he said, and he pushed the package under my nose. I again pushed it away, and I was smiling when I stared at the spinning leaves.

  —A French letter, he said. —I’m keeping it for your fine sister. I’ll use it on the two of them, when I get them in the same corner, and I’ll get them in the corner. Mark my words. I’ve noticed that the younger one of the Dwyers is budding at last—

  —Fuck you, I said, and sprang out of the seat.

  I’d like to think I swung at him, but what a joke that is. Kevin Lyons could trounce me, do it in seconds, but it was the week after this that he was expelled from school. During lunch, the wheels of the English teacher’s French car were punctured with a penknife. Kevin was blamed, though who knows if he was the one who did it or if the teachers just needed someone to blame. The news went around the schoolyard that when the English teacher, who was also the mechanical drawing teacher, accused Kevin, he laughed out loud and held up his middle finger to the teacher.

  You liked that teacher. The only one you did like. He told you once you were good at mechanical drawing. And he told you that you weren’t a bad writer, but you needed to practice very hard. You stored up those things, along with all the others.

  The evening he was expelled, that English teacher took him into the science room and locked the door. I was in the group of boys standing outside. The English teacher allowed us to stand there. He was teaching us a lesson. Beyond that door, the sounds of fists, grunts, the clatter of falling things. Then silence, and seconds later the key turning, the door opening. Kevin stood in the doorway. I did not see the English teacher. He was sitting down in there. He was catching his breath. Kevin’s hair was wet with blood and sweat and plastered down on his forehead. The left eye was blackened. Blood from his upper lip dripped onto the collar of the denim jacket. We stared in silence, awe, and dread. Like a rabble, we stared, the upturned plastic chairs behind him, glass from broken beakers at his feet, his bloody, bruised face, and the right sleeve of the jacket nearly torn off. The jacket that helped to make him. He had tried to beat them, but they weren’t to be beaten, and seeing him in the doorway that evening, I felt for him. And I looked up to him. I did, because I despised the adults even more than I did him.

  The crowd parted. He walked on through. He gripped the torn sleeve. The bloody mouth smiled.

  Anyway, behind the striking new pump house the top branches of the poplars swept back and forth like water on a strand. My mother whitewashed the pump house. She made plans to plant shrubs around it. Plans that never came to pass. But cool springwater rushed rapidly and silently through buried pipes, up the fields, into water troughs, and we didn’t have to schlep buckets of water to cattle from the old well, all the way up those fields. We also had water piped into the kitchen. The last job Michael did was install the stainless-steel sink and the immersion heater. My mother talked endlessly about the fine hot water in the kitchen tap. How lucky she was in her life. How good God was to her. My dead mother was in heaven.

  6.

  In January 1988, Brendan and I finally made up our minds to apply for Donnelly visas to the States. It was a Saturday night and a Sunday morning, and we were eating chips under a crowded awning and watching people like ourselves walk across O’Connell Bridge.

  —Where will we go if we get one?

  —People are heading to Boston, Brendan said.

  —We’ll be a statistic, I said, and we laughed.

  Brendan lived with his parents in Cabra. He had a steady girlfriend, with a job that she liked fine. She didn’t want to go anyplace. Brendan and I had jobs, many didn’t, but our
jobs bored us. I still worked in the bar. He worked in the same printing shop as his father. Back then, Brendan and I were best friends, but we haven’t talked since the day I drove him in the Camaro to Detroit Metro Airport, though at the airport gate we put our arms around each other and promised to keep in touch. Back then, in Dublin, we went to the bars. Brendan read Freud and Nietzsche, and he told me about them and I read them, and in the bars we talked about them, and how boring life was, the way young people do, and that night under the awning, Brendan said if he got a visa he’d go and have a bit of fun, try to save some money, then come back and marry. I said I’d suss it out as I went along. No. I forget what I said, although I don’t forget that Una Lyons was huge on my mind, but I kept it to myself, I never even told Brendan—even though more than a year had passed since she and I had last seen each other.

  Brendan and I got visas and we planned to leave for Boston inside three months. Stephen was still in Manchester, Anthony was in Killarney, and Tess was nursing in Cork. I rang and told them I was going. The Friday before I left, I took the train down to say good-bye to Hannah and my father. On the train sat young people like myself, visiting places they still called home—places that had stopped being that the day they took the train out of there. I bought a novel at the station but put it aside, because spring sunlight flashed through the train car, and beyond the window calves suckled cows in green fields, and farmers sat atop tractors and plowed their fields and gardens, and the crows and the jackdaws preened in the fresh clay and feasted on the fat worms the plows threw up.