Irish Tiger

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Get some ambulances up here so we can evacuate these survivors,” the sheriff ordered. “Get them here right away.”

  The cops didn’t seem to understand that the fight was over, they were milling around, looking for someone to shoot. Then I saw Joe McMahon shoot out of the back door running toward the woods. These stupid rural cops would let him get away. I took off after him. As I almost caught up with him I felt the whiz of a bullet as it rushed over my head.

  Nuala Anne

  “MIKE,” I shouted, “this focking asshole is trying to kill my husband.”

  He raised his rifle to shoot again. I hit his right arm with my camogie stick with all my strength.

  “Cunt!” he screamed as he fumbled for his pistol.

  I smashed his hand and he dropped the gun. He bellowed curses.

  “Cease fire,” the sheriff begged, “no more shooting!”

  The chief of policed lunged toward me. I hit him in his balls and he fell to the ground and groaned.

  I glanced at where Dermot had been. He was standing up, holding the rodent. A line of grey Tac forces were deploying around him with their M-16s at the ready.

  “That’s enough, young woman!” the sheriff barked.

  “It will only be enough when I beat his brains out and yours too. He was taking a second shot at my husband and you were letting him do it. You are as much guilty of attempted murder as he is.”

  “Casey here.” Mike had taken the megaphone. “We have seized the principal coconspirator whom you were permitting to escape. I am a deputized officer in the Illinois State Police. I’m arresting the trigger-happy perpetrator that fired at one of my consultants as he captured the escaping Joseph McMahon. If there are any more random shots at any of my people I will authorize my men to shoot back.”

  My Dermot stood next to me.

  “Is that the guy that shot at me?”

  He pointed at the chief of police, still twisting in pain.

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to slug him. I see you beat me to it.”

  “You could always hit this asshole of a sheriff who let him do it.”

  My poor Dermot clutched his fist and then saw that the sheriff was sobbing.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” he groaned. “I ordered them to cease fire and they kept on shooting.”

  “In my report on this I will say that you lost control of your men, that in fact you never seemed to have control of them and that you thereby endangered not only the success of the mission but the lives of my personnel. . . . Nuala and Dermot, get out of here. Report to Maria and her family what has happened. . . . Sergeant Reed, will you escort this couple to the red Lincoln?”

  “Yes sir . . . Miss, could I carry your hockey stick for you?”

  “Certainly, Sergeant! Only it’s a camogie stick. My husband usually carries my weapons, but he has been rattled by the recent events. . . . And, Superintendent Casey, tell them back at the CPD that they should have sent that cute little Godzilla creature.”

  My spear-carrier took my arm.

  “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

  “Those poor men weren’t meant to die, Dermot. They shouldn’t have died. They were so frightened.”

  “And so stupid.”

  Maria Angelica

  AS THE hands on our old grandfather clock moved from one o’clock to two o’clock, I became more uneasy. I knew that the war in heaven between good and evil—the historic conflict in my family of origin—was going on across town. I was afraid we’d lose. Yet we must begin to eat at two o’clock regardless, because some people had to leave. I moved back and forth from the parlor where our guests were sipping Cokes and coffee lest they ruin the meal that they would be expected to demolish. I was also exhausted from the trysts with my ferocious new husband. I knew what would happen when he came into the house, his eyes alight with hunger. I had brought it all on myself and loved every second of it. But I was tired.

  At five to two I entered the kitchen.

  “Are you ready, young people?”

  “Yes, Mom!”

  “Then let’s eat!”

  “Dinner is served!” I announced and the meal was carried out and presented on the table amid much deserved applause. The guests and young people swarmed to their places.

  “Man of the house, will you ask God’s blessings?”

  I had warned him that I would assign the task to him.

  “This is St. Brigid’s grace which our friend and protector Nuala Anne taught me.

  Bless the poor

  Bless the sick

  Bless the whole human race

  Bless our food

  Bless our drink

  And all our families please embrace.

  Amen.”

  More applause and then our happy young people began to devour the food.

  Later, as my assistants began to remove the food plates and prepare for dessert, Mary Fran whispered in my ear, “Nuala and Dermot are in the study. They want to talk to you and Dad and Johnny Burns in the sewing room.”

  This was a room off the kitchen where a mother could retreat momentarily to sew or read or in this era watch TV. I caught Camilla’s eye and nodded toward the sewing room. She inclined her head toward Johnny Burns. I nodded. We would surely need a psychiatrist.

  I took my husband’s hand and said to the assemblage, “We must see to some matters before dessert.” His hand was as cold as mine. Nuala was pale and somber, her lovely face frozen in sadness. Dermot looked grim and determined. Granne O’Malley’s crowd coming ashore from Galway Bay.

  “The battle is over,” she began as mechanically as a police spokeswoman on TV. “The area is now secure. James and Paul Sabattini are dead. They hid behind their wives as they tried to fight their way out of the police cordon. They shot and wounded two Oakdale police officers who were not prepared for the onslaught. Each held the other’s wife in a firm grip and held a pistol at their throat. They said they would kill the women if the police did not back off. Both wives were screaming hysterically. There was no doubt that they meant what they said. They were both terribly frightened, indeed men with fright which had deprived them of all ability to consider what they were doing. There was no choice but for two officers with telescopic rifles to kill them both. The two men fell immediately to the ground. The women were not injured. They threw themselves on the bodies of their husbands wailing and sobbing their loss. Tamrya emerged from the house and similarly mourned her father. Mr. Joseph McMahon who had been hiding somewhere in the house emerged from the rear door and ran toward the woods behind the plant. He was apprehended by one of the officers, arrested, cuffed, and warned of his rights. He laughed hysterically adding some counterpoint to the noise. Ambulances were removing the dead and the survivors as we left to come here. . . . My husband and I want to express our sorrow to everyone. . . . I want to point out that everyone at this house was a target of a mass murder plot and yet you are all still alive for which we must thank God.”

  The room was silent. No one knew what to say.

  “Are they at the hospital?” I said hoarsely. “We must go to them and console them.”

  “Yes,” Camilla agreed. “They need us now.”

  “You must do what you have to do,” Nuala said softly, in the tones of a gentle mother superior. “I would suggest that you give them time, lots of time before you attempt reconciliation. They have lost their husbands who, however cruel and brutish and however they would certainly have killed them, were still their husbands. They must grieve, perhaps for a long time. Perhaps they will return to Tuscany as rich women and begin to understand. Save your consolations until they are ready to hear them.”

  Johnny Burns broke the ensuing silence.

  “I have to say that Ms. McGrail is correct. They must be given time to hate you and to move beyond it. I can’t predict how long that will take. I will monitor their short-term recovery at the hospital and keep you posted. Camilla, may I suggest that you take a brief leave so that you will not be i
n the ward while your mother and your aunt and your cousin are there?”

  “As you know, Doctor Burns, I am reluctant to admit that you might be right on anything. This time I’m sure you are.” She began to sob. He put his arm around her and she leaned against him.

  “And, Johnny Jim, isn’t Ms. McGrail me ma and isn’t she over beyond in Ireland? I’m Nuala Anne.”

  We all laughed and the tension eased.

  She was crying, poor child, playing the role of the wise old great grandma. Dermot put his arm around her.

  I was crying too. Where was my husband’s arm?

  There it was around me already.

  We pressed them to stay for a bite but they had to pick up their kids back beyond in River Forest.

  Camilla and I dried our tears and supported by our two men returned to the festive dinner as though nothing had happened. Life is stronger than death, that’s what Christmas is all about.

  Epilogue

  THE TRIP to Galway was the disaster I predicted it would be.

  It began with a teary walk down the street with the hounds to the Murphy house where the dogs were greeted with glee by Katiesue and Johnnypete. Our crowd, mother included and Patjo excluded, bid them mournful farewells. I tried to explain that dogs tend to be promiscuous with human friends. So long as there are friendly humans around, they don’t much care who the humans are. However, the crowd did not accept this rationalization. The dogs would miss us every minute of every day.

  Despite all our frantic efforts we boarded the plane just before the doors were closed, having suffered a long delay at the security barrier because our normally well-behaved children took umbrage at the representatives of Homeland Security. The latter I suspect had a purgatorial time during the holidays and were not sympathetic to pushy kids.

  The plane sat on the runway at O’Hare for two hours because of wind problems. The kids demanded to know whether we could get off and go home. The first hour of the flight was bumpy and poor Socra Marie succumbed to motion sickness. With the same bravery that had kept her alive for several months in the hospital, she did not complain. Finally when we managed to rise above the worst of the winds, she collapsed in her mother’s arms and slept the rest of the trip. Patjo and I were the only ones among the rest of the crowd who were unaffected by the milkshake ride. The good Nuala Anne and the equally good Nelliecoyne prayed rosaries with great fervor for our safe transit.

  “You’d think we are on one of them coffin ships,” I said.

  “How do you know we’re not?”

  Then somewhere south of Greenland I began to sneeze.

  “You’re not getting your cold again!” Nuala protested as if that were an optional matter with my organism.

  “Certainly not!” I lied.

  Our van and driver were not waiting for us at Shannon because the plane was late. I argued with the attendant at the rental car counter that the driver should have noted that the plane was posted late. She responded with I thought a deliberately unintelligible brogue. My wife spit out a steady stream of Irish words. It worked. The van with a different driver would be back at eight o’clock sharp in the morning. They had reserved three “quality” rooms for us at the airport hotel and would notify the hotel up above in Clifden that we would be a day late.

  The rooms were nice, if you ignored the jets screaming overhead, the kids piled into their beds, and Nuala and I staggered into our room, large, comfortable and stocked with notes from the management and complimentary fruit and drink.

  She called her mother “up above” in Carraroe and explained in mournful Irish what had happened—while discarding her clothes and donning a warm winter nightshirt.

  “Och,” she concluded in English, “aren’t they all great travelers and themselves in fine form!”

  Even by the elastic standards of Irish truth, that statement was flat out false.

  “Weren’t you right all along, Dermot Michael Coyne?”

  “Woman, I was . . . But about what?”

  “That this trip is a daft idea, that we should have planned on sleeping here before we drove up to Galway and now yourself with your cold and you’ll be sick for the whole week!”

  “I shouldn’t sleep in the same bed with you. I don’t want to give you my cold and ruin your trip.”

  “You know I never catch your colds,” she said, turning over and wrapping herself in the blanket.

  It was a claim, I thought, to a certain moral superiority. I took my temperature—ninety-nine point eight, typical of my colds. Then I fortified myself with the cold medications that I had brought along and collapsed into feverish sleep.

  The next day was bright and clear. The ride through Clare and Galway was spectacularly beautiful. It was a countryside easy to love, so long as you didn’t plan to earn a living off its fields. My fellow travelers had recovered their élan and they marveled at the splendors of the West of Ireland and listened with rapt attention to the stories their mother told, in Irish now. Poor dear da, sitting dazed in the rear seat of the van, was an object of occasional sympathetic concern.

  I wondered if I should carry a bell, like a leper.

  Carraroe glowed in the rare winter sunlight and Galway Bay took on its Mediterranean persona. We were welcomed enthusiastically at the new bungalow which had replaced the old stone house with a thatched roof, though the latter remained in the backyard because of the Irish conviction that it is bad luck to destroy a home. “You can never tell when you might need it again.”

  Nuala’s ma had “just the thing” for a cold. I knew from experience from my own “ma” (grandmother actually) that it would be a concoction of whiskey (Irish), hot water, and lemon juice, with some other mysterious things added. I agreed to drink it, every last drop. It would not help my cold at all, at all, but it would kill the pain. The days in bed would pass seamlessly without a care or worry. Chicago? Where was that? Joey McMahon? Who he? The hounds? Cindasue and her crowd could keep them. My novel? The check with the advance? It had been duly put in the bank. Me wife and gossons and colleens? There was enough in my accounts so the kids could attend college. So why not go back to sleep?

  My family had a great time without me, all of them babbling in the Irish language, even my poor little second son. The trip was, I was assured, “great craic.” My wife was attentive and caring, as though she were ministering to someone in his final agony.

  The last day or two I pulled out of the worst of the cold and some of the self-pity and insisted on hosting a dinner in a Norman restaurant on the very edge of the bay, a few miles west of Galway Town, called that by the locals, though it was now the fastest growing city in Europe.

  We had dinner at the house in Carraroe the night before our departure. There was much singing and dancing and storytelling and lullabying from me wife and no wasting of a single drop of the creature. Nuala had but one splasheen of the drink, because she had to drive us home in the dark.

  The next day our departure from Connemara and Shannon and our flight home was uneventful, if it seemed to me interminable. The hounds did not seem nearly as happy as they should have been on our return. Why should they be? The Murphy clan had indulged them shamelessly.

  The Chicago scene had not changed much. Joey McMahon was in the psychiatric unit at Cook County Hospital, set aside for patients from county jail. It was not certain that he would stand trial. The brothers Sabattini were buried from the parish church and in the little parish cemetery behind the church. Father Matt had preached powerfully about God’s mercy and love. The widows had refused to recognize Maria and her sister Gina at the wake or the funeral. However, they permitted Camilla to stand in the mourners’ line, but did not speak to her. Young Dr. Burns attended her with respectful attention.

  The two wounded cops were recovering from their wounds. Chief Bell had retired. The capture and charging of Joseph McMahon had been reported in both the Chicago and Rockford media, but with few details.

  A week after the funeral the two widows and Tamrya had
departed on Alitalia for Italy, leaving no indication that they would ever return. There was apparently lots of money in the family construction business which they had promptly sold.

  The now more relaxed merger of the Connors and Donlan families were proceeding and Camilla Sabattini had been included in it. John Patrick Donlan had added two employees to his team, both graduates of the University of Chicago Business School. He and his new wife had finished a belated honeymoon in the Caymans and continued to be radiant in their common life. I had left my cold behind in Ireland, where it belonged and began my new novel. Mike the cop and his wife Annie Reilly celebrated Twelfth Night with a party in honor of me wife and meself in which a number of our cop friends were among the guests—John Culhane, Nikos Mashek, and Terry Glen included. Nuala had changed back into her Irish Tiger life. She sang of course, a whole new line of songs she called “police songs.”

  I worried about her. She had thrown herself back into her pre-Christmas lifestyle, without ever taking the vacation she needed. I debated within myself how to bring up the subject.

  She saved me the trouble.

  One night in mid January with a new blizzard assaulting our old house while we were lying in bed almost asleep, she said, “Dermot love, the small ’uns are all worried ’bout you. They think you’ve worn yourself out. Doesn’t Da need a vacation? I say he does, but he’ll never take one. They say I should make him. So I’ve reserved a suite in the Caymans, the same one that Maria and Jack stayed in, for two weeks. Your parents will move into our house. . . . You know how much they love being with the kids and the mutts. I’m sure you won’t catch cold down below. I’m going, Dermot Michael Coyne, even if you don’t come. . . .”

  More Irish fibbing.