But for me, it might just as well have been the dead of winter. I felt nothing but cold around the heart as I pedaled back up that hill.
AOIFE STILL REFUSED to eat anything but carrots.
I’d tried feeding her salmon, bread, rashers, and all manner of vegetables, but it was no use. She wouldn’t even touch the dark chocolate, which she always steals from my fridge. My twin sat in bed for days, chewing nothing but those little peeled carrots with a smiling rabbit on the bag’s label. I’d stupidly expected her to be as murderously amped up as me, to check the action on Father’s shotgun and aim it out the window every few minutes. But Aoife just shook her head silently whenever Fiona or I told her it was time to tell the gardaí, or at least let a doctor come by. She’d walk outside barefoot and stand, immobile, in the forest clearing near the back of the house, letting the wind blowing through the trees grab hold of her dress and slap it against her thighs. For hours Aoife would remain there, and when she came back, she only nodded at us and went back under the covers, tucking into another bag of that rabbit food.
At night, Fiona and me took turns keeping watch outside.
I’d never spent that much time outside in the fresh air at one time, and my head swam for the first couple of days. I looked down at our town and tried to remember how it had been before everyone became dazzled by the seanchaí and unable to think for themselves. Tourist season had begun in earnest, and the sounds of lads drifting down Main Street having drunk the last pint carried up the hill like crows fighting for scraps.
Fiona fetched her books and got comfortable on the couch.
I brought along my shortwave.
On one particularly beautiful night, when the stars crept along the back of the Slieve Miskish Mountains like glass marbles thrown in front of a flashlight, I cranked it up. Fiona was asleep on the couch already, with a coffee-table book about Amenhotep across her chest like a pup tent, and the sounds coming from old Aoife’s room told me she was watching one of those shite TV programs about who the most wretched dancer in the nation might be.
My hand steadied the biggest dial, and I began my search for a new voice. Evvie was visiting with her parents in their Russian country house and couldn’t come visit for at least a month. I hated the place named Sochi where she’d sometimes text me from, because I had to stay behind. I was lonely and angry. I needed to talk to someone other than my siblings for a change. And on that night, the voices popped up on the band quickly, as if I had hung a net into the air, catching each one.
There were fishermen out in the Irish Sea, trolling for salmon on the way out and easy women coming back in. I saluted them and dialed past, leaving them in the sizzling electronic wake of my very own invisible ship. Next, a political voice, sounding old and disillusioned, belonged to a woman calling herself SocialConscience and advocating that we rescind all public ownership for the good of the land. She vanished aft like those boys on the trawler. The signals dimmed. And just when I thought that night would be another waste of time with teenage shortwave surfers asking me what I was wearing, a voice broke through the din after I’d keyed the mike for the hundreth time and found only people I’d never have nodded to in the street.
“This is Nightwing, flying across your rooftops and trees and hairpieces,” I repeated to the great void, disheartened. “Someone come on back; over?”
There was a crackle, like someone turning on a switch far away. And then I heard it.
“I’m so glad to be speaking with you again,” the male voice replied, so softly it felt as if he were stroking the airwaves that had brought him to me. “I have missed you and your friend. Can you tell me how you are?”
My heart beat in my throat and cheeks, because I knew instantly who this was. And still I had to ask to make sure.
“Can you identify yourself before we proceed; over?”
I stared at the green band, and at the needle resting next to 3101.3 MHz, and heard the voice tell me what I already knew. Because prophets and madmen use the same door to people’s hearts, don’t they? They always grab hold of your hope and start turning the handle until it gives, whether you want them to or not.
“Gatekeeper is what I believe your friend christened me the last time,” he said, and chuckled pleasantly, the way my father used to. “We were speaking of storytellers. You didn’t believe me, as I recall.” He took a deep breath and let out more than air as he exhaled. It sounded to me like frustration, or even grief. “Tell me something, dear Nightwing. Think of what has gone on all over West Cork in the last months. Then tell me what you are now willing to believe.”
I didn’t answer right away, and turned my head toward the living room, but Fiona’s snoring and those fucking waltzing tunes from behind Aoife’s door convinced me I’d better not wake them; I’d do this alone.
“How come you know him so well? Our storyteller out here?”
A sound like the burning of paper crackled merrily. Gatekeeper was having a ciggie and taking a long drag of it at that. “Because he sends me things, you see. He has for years.”
“What kind of . . . things are you talking about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice low and unaffected and feeling terrified within an inch of my life.
“Souvenirs,” said Gatekeeper, lingering on the word, as if it was far too mild for what he had really intended to say. “From his travels. They arrive in envelopes or boxes, depending on what he has decided I should have in the house.” He blew some smoke into the microphone and added with a sigh, “Postman came twice this week, dropping them off.”
I had to look away from the shortwave and out across the darkened waves as I asked, “What was inside?”
“A gift you’d never want to see,” said Gatekeeper, sounding profoundly sad. The fatherly color had drained out of his voice, leaving only regret. “Or think about.”
“I don’t know if we’re talking about the same storyteller, Gatekeeper,” I said, feeling the warm breeze from the bay turning frosty and damp. “But ours is a fucking rapist and a murderer, and you can take that to the bank.”
“Still riding that red Vincent Comet, is he?” Gatekeeper wanted to know.
How could any of us forget that thing? Jim had at least three kids from Sacred Heart on permanent guard duty at this point, making sure no clumsy tourist or drunk looder from town scratched it up. He paid the lads in cash, which gave the chip shop glory days.
“The only one he loves more than that thing is his own bad self,” I said.
“But the murders have stopped, am I correct? Those young women in the towns he visits? No more headlines lately. There’s a reason for that.”
I knew why. I’d seen Jim parading down the bar at McSorley’s, buying pints for anyone with a set of teeth to flash him a smile with. He held poker night each Friday with the lads at the Garda shop. Not to mention the way he’d turned the head of Father Malloy by singing in the choir twice on Sunday. But I wanted to hear Gatekeeper say it.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“You know just as well as I,” said the voice, now fatherly and admonishing again. “He’s getting comfortable in your town. Like a cuckoo throwing other birds out of the nest and taking it for himself. He’ll never leave. I’m guessing he’s already made plans for something permanent. Am I right?”
I thought of the diamond he’d bought our aunt Moira and felt like barging into their bedroom and stabbing that bastard through his sorry excuse for a heart right away. Something permanent, all right. “Who are you?” I asked, wanting to tear the metal box apart and pull the jack out of it. “Why don’t you come out here and fix it, then, if you and yer crystal ball are so smart?”
“Because I’m afraid of him. And you should be, too.”
“What are his weaknesses? How do I stop him?”
Once again, I had the answer. But I guess I needed a friendly voice to tell me I wasn’t alone with that understanding.
“You’ve seen him look at women, haven’t you?” said Gatekeeper, stabbing his cigarett
e into what sounded like a crater-sized ashtray. “There’s your weakness, Nightwing. There it is, naked and out there for all to see.”
“Did you ever try to stop him yourself?” I asked. But there was nothing but the eternal megahertz ocean, its waves cresting and falling no matter who was listening on the other side.
I heard something stirring behind me and turned.
Aoife emerged in the doorway, pale face framed by the rising sun. She was wearing my motorcycle jacket against the morning cold and those flowery rubber boots. My twin came out and ruffled my hair with both hands. I felt like crying, I was so happy to see her up. Fiona shuffled out on the porch to join us, three of my ciggies in her mouth, all of which she had lit and now passed out like solemn gifts. I regarded my family and felt the kind of pride I can imagine mothers feel for their children when they fall and get back on their feet.
I turned to both of them and smiled. They only looked glorious, my sphinxy sister and my blond double. And I knew what we had to do next.
“I’ve just had a brilliant idea,” I said.
OUR MOTHER’S WEDDING dress shimmered in the sun, a silk ghost from my childhood.
At first, I thought it was a mirage, buried deep inside the dressmaker’s shop I was passing on Main Street. I’d been up the road with more groceries for Aoife, who had broadened her diet to apples and bread, thank God. I pulled my banjaxed bicycle over on the footpath and put my nose to the glass. In a sense, I was both right and wrong about the strange vision. It had been an old family snapshot come to life, except the face on the figure wearing the dress was no longer my mother’s.
Instead, my aunt Moira beamed like a teenage bride, beckoning me to come inside.
“A bit more around the left,” she whispered to the seamstress, a quiet girl with freckles none of us could ever quite remember the name of. Aunt Moira waited for her to cinch the long ruffled fabric even tighter to her newly acquired slim supermodel hips. Then she faced me, cheeks aglow and eyes seeing a future I couldn’t bear to imagine. What did she hope for? I wondered. A happy, healthy home, with “the romping of sturdy children and the laughter of happy maidens,” as Eamon de Valera had once prescribed for us all? I asked myself if old Dev had ever imagined creatures like Jim starting a family.
“You look beautiful, Aunt Moira,” I said, feeling like taking a lit match to that dress.
“Thank you, dear,” she answered, but there was an alertness in her eyes that showed she caught just how hollow my greeting really was. “Stay awhile. I need to talk to you.”
“Sure,” I answered, picking a red velvet stool to perch myself on while the girl whose name I forgot made herself scarce out back. The look she sent the bride-to-be might just as well have been from the lowliest commoner to the queen just before her coronation. Aunt Moira was now as close as anyone in Castletownbere could get to true celebrity, and she smiled back at the girl with her head tilted in the fashion of 1940s movie stars.
When she was satisfied we were alone, however, the screen siren vanished.
“Didn’t see you and your sisters last Friday for dinner.”
“I suppose that’s right, so,” I replied. What did she expect, after what Jim did, sing-alongs over the roast beef? Rousing card games after dessert?
Moira leaned in, because little miss servant to Her Exalted Majesty was probably eavesdropping. Damn it if my aunt wasn’t wearing Mother’s good pearl earrings, too, the ones our father gave her for an anniversary gift one summer. I remembered them, because we had gone to the movies that same night, and mum had kept checking her earlobes to make sure Tom Cruise hadn’t reached out from the screen and made off with them before intermission.
“I hear the rumors, too,” Aunt Moira said, and looked over my shoulder at something in the street. “They say terrible things about my Jim, you know. They always have, he tells me. And I’m not blind, despite what you girls may think.” She reached up and touched my forearm. “He’s had some wild ways, no doubt about it. Some fooling around and hard drinking, perhaps. But that’s over now. He promised me. And what they’re whispering he did to Aoife—well, I just can’t. . . .” She stopped speaking and still wasn’t looking me in the eye.
“I can,” I said, and reclaimed my hand without seeming obvious about it.
Something shifted behind those Bette Davis eyes, and the blushing bride was banished to whatever dungeon she lived in when the dirty work had to be done. A more steely Aunt Moira leaned forward and nodded for a long time, as if something had just dawned on her. When she looked at me again, I might as well have told her that Plastic Jesus was the evil one himself. If she’d had a needle, she woulda stuck me with it, no doubt.
“I see,” she said, pursing her lips. “So you saw him do it?”
“No,” I answered, catching the loyal seamstress sticking her nose out behind the curtain at the sound of raised voices. “I didn’t.”
Moira shook her head, making the earrings jangle. “Then how can you be sure? How can any of you know enough to accuse him of something that monstrous?” Her face was covered in red spots, and her chest heaved. She had begun to pick at a perfectly manicured nail, and the red flecks fell on the floor like fresh paint.
The monstrous part began long before he touched my sister, I thought, remembering Sarah McDonnell’s missing face. I wondered if Aunt Moira would be missing her own in a few weeks.
“I don’t know anything, Aunt Moira,” I said, in as neutral and obedient a tone as I could muster. “And I’m sorry, but now I really have to go. My sisters are waiting at home.”
At this, Moira smiled, because some memories can’t be buried in a hazy cloud of whatever love voodoo Jim was practicing. Perhaps she saw us girls when we were children, just one unblemished slide from a time without her seanchaí. Or maybe she just wished me six feet under but disguised it well, I’ll never know for sure. Then the eyes became narrow again, and she carefully wiped some lipstick from the corner of her mouth.
“The wedding is this Saturday,” she said, in a voice drunk on fantasy. “Sacred Heart at two. A cake has been ordered. With violet candies and fresh strawberries.” She smiled now, all the way back to the molars, and the anticipation of that moment overwhelmed whatever anger she held toward anyone who might think ill of her darling Jim.
Or so I believed. For about two seconds.
“We are going to be happy together,” she said, still smiling like the fairy godmother from folk tales Jim would never tell. “And if any of you girls plan to disrupt the ceremony? Or slag off my Jim around town until then?” She looked at me like a stranger as she smoothed a stray wrinkle in the dress. “Father Malloy and God himself won’t protect you from me.”
AS I STAGGERED out of the dressmaker’s shop, I ran straight into the woman with the shiniest uniform buttons in town. She had also turned my sisters and me into the invisible women. I mean, for over a week, Fiona and me had walked the length of Main Street without getting a single nod. People were caught in a loyalty crisis, we knew that. Believe the town mascot or the crazy Walshes? Even odds they’d pick Jim’s amber eyes. But we had expected better from our former best friend.
“How are you going, Bronagh?” I said, picking up my bike and not really wanting to know if she was going anywhere at all.
“Get in the car,” she said, chin to her spotless shirt. God, she loved that shitty Ford Mondeo. A dirty bar of soap on wheels.
“It’s Get in the car, now, is it? First time yeh say so much as a single word to me, and you put on this bollixy Bronx detective act? Am I under arrest for being ignored?”
“Please,” said Bronagh, drawing stares from two boys from Sacred Heart with illicit ciggies cupped in their hands.
“I’m busy.”
“I know. I’ve seen you shopping for”—she blinked a moment—“for Aoife.”
“Now, look at that. You still remember how to pronounce her name.”
By now, I was walking on the footpath, pushing my bike along. Bronagh blocked traffic
as she crawled next to me, doing two kilometers an hour. Passersby whispered. I could even hear them from the other side of the street. A girl pointed at the white patrol car and covered her mouth. And I knew that, at least for a short while, the brave Sergeant Bronagh Daltry was losing in the public opinion polls.
“Get in the car, Rosie. Jaysus’ sake.”
“Only if you put my bike on the back. And stop pretending to be on TV.”
Bronagh didn’t answer but stepped out and grabbed the handlebars while her face grew slowly paler. As I got in and fiddled with her radio, I could hear my old Bessie taking a beating as it was clumsily strapped to the bumper and felt secretly happy for Bronagh’s trouble. When she got in and started up the engine, her lips were zipped as tight as a body bag.
“Satisfied?” she asked, smiling tartly at the two boys, who gave us finger waves.
“A little,” I answered, getting only routine traffic-stop calls from her radio.
She turned it off, rummaged around for the sweets I knew she always kept in the glove compartment, but found none. “How would you like to talk about a certain man known as Jim?” she said.
“Suppose you arrest him instead of yapping about doing it. How would that be?”
“Oh, that’d be fine,” Bronagh said, so angry with me and with herself she could barely keep her voice down. She drove the car out to the end of the pier, where we’d played as kids. Trawlers were coming in, squadrons of gulls hard on their rudders, and men in wool sweaters stood in silence on the stone pier awaiting the catch.
Bronagh held something in her lap. And I’d be damned if I was going to ask her what it was.
“Dontcha think I’ve tried? I want his brown eyes behind the gates at the Rathmore Road prison before Saturday at two P.M., and that’s a fact.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said, beginning to feel sorry for her despite myself. Somehow, I didn’t imagine that wee Sergeant Daltry was invited to the future bridegroom’s Friday poker games. “So why are we still sitting here, shiting on about it?”
Darling Jim Page 19