The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Their howls filled the room.

  They seemed unable to speak, coughing and sputtering and gasping, their faces beet red, hands clawing at the bulging veins of their necks. Siofra giggled and clapped and jumped from one foot to the other. They clutched each other for support, their bodies writhing on the floor in torrents of pain.

  “Scalded!” the woman managed to scream. “My mouth's been scalded! Medic! Call a medic!”

  Jed, his legs buckling, was being carted past them, one arm around Paddy, the other around Dymphna. He paused over Agent Matcham.

  “Maybe MI-6 is coptering in their own doctor for you,” he said. Then he spat in their faces.

  Even as Ursula's heart sang the praises of the Lord and Virgin Mary for Their help, she sought to contain her rage and feelings of betrayal as Frank the Faith Man jerked on the floor before her. She grit her teeth. Her right foot twitched. How it longed to shoot out and stomp time and again against his hateful, sinful body. But that would be another sin chalked up to her, and another confession. She had had enough confessions. She headed to the door.

  Fionnuala swiftly grabbed the paradise mugs and spilled out their liquid contents. She was going to bag a souvenir from this trip to flaunt to her neighbors no matter what. She quickly inspected the sputtering, roaring woman for any fancy jewelry or accessories on her way out. She froze in shock. That necklace jerking atop the bulging veins of the woman's neck! A sparkling, intoxicating dark blue and shaped like a—it was the Heart of the Ocean! Just like in the film! The one that went overboard and sunk to the depths! Eyes still shining their disbelief, Fionnuala trailed it off the woman's neck, shoved it in her pocket and raced outside.

  “H-how are ye getting yer hair to do that?” she wondered of Dymphna, all the while thinking how supremely worldly she was going to look blessing the cobblestones of the Moorside with her presence, the necklace displayed on her décolletage, though she didn't use that word in her mind.

  “What are ye on about?” Dymphna asked, groaning at the weight of Jed on her shoulder.

  “Making it look all alive like that. How...?” Fionnuala was aware of her ponytails hanging, glum, dead.

  “Och, mammy, it be's the wind, so it is,” Dymphna explained.

  “The tropical storm! The eye has passed!” Louella squealed.

  “Hurricane!” Paddy corrected.

  Indeed it was. Rain bit into their faces, shard-like, in the whipping wind. Jed was carted outside, and his hat was wrenched from his head. It disappeared into the enraged sky. Their hair smacked against their faces, even Fionnuala's ponytails, their bodies were buffeted by the fury of Mother Nature, unleashed in all her rage and barreling down upon them. All around them, trees and signs and vertical things creaked and shuddered and strained to stay put.

  They could see the furious wind now, carving paths through the air and battering everything in its path. Massive leaves slapped faces, shrieking iguanas, eyes agog, sailed past, garbage and filth swirled into mini-tornadoes and ripped into their tender exposed flesh. They screamed and clutched for something stable, but there was nothing. They slit their eyes as flying bits of grit threatened to spear them. They were ten steps from the door of bungalow 12.

  Jed seemed to strengthen with every thrust of the foot forward. The battered little group seemed all to be gravitating toward Slim and grabbing onto his various parts of his body for leverage. He seemed unaffected by the wind, his mass a levee.

  “How,” Ursula screamed through howling wind, “How are we meant to make it back to the ship?”

  She glanced back through the door that was smacking open and shut. She saw the bodies of the kidnappers running around in a frenzy. The hot sauce wouldn't keep them non compos mentis forever. They couldn't go back. They had to go forward. Into the jaws of the hurricane.

  Louella screamed and stumbled to the ground, elbow cracking into her handbag. She looked down and roared out of her, clutching her side.

  “Arrghhh!! I've been shot! They've gone and shot me! I'm bleeding! Bleeding to death!”

  They forced their heads around on their necks to look at her in alarm. Nobody had recalled seeing a gun on the kitchen table. Ursula staggered across to Louella and fell on top of her.

  “Look! Look at the blood!” Louella squealed through the whipping wind and Ursula's bulk.

  Ursula lifted herself as best she could and winced at the red mucus-like mess that was slowly oozing down Louella's side. Her eyes narrowed in the wind.

  “Wait a wee minute.”

  She dipped her finger into the red and slurped it as if she had suddenly developed a taste for human blood.

  “Pomegranate!” she yelled down at Louella's screaming face. “Tastes like them jelly sticks from—”

  “Dunkin Donuts!” Louella spat, disbelieving. “Still in my bag!”

  She and Ursula gripped each other as they struggled upright and pushed their drenched bodies on through the swirling trash out of the compound.

  Siofra, her tiny, infirm legs unable to stand the force of the wind any longer, stumbled forward, buffeted through the air, tiny fingers trailing vines and leaves, heading towards the maws of a bottomless pit of muck.

  “Uncle Jed!” Siofra screamed in fear, as he was the closest to her. “Uncle JEDDDDD!”

  Jed clomped towards her shrieking form. She was thrust against a tree and clung onto it tight. Jed pried her body from the bark and wrapped her in his arms, shielding her as best he could. Quid pro quo.

  On they trudged, past the store, towards the harbor.

  Out of the corner of her slitted eye, Fionnuala watched in amazement as the roof of a shack shuddered and pried itself from the house proper. The planks of wood soared through the air as a unit, racing downwards. Straight for Ursula. She was struck with a thought, and it surprised her. She didn’t want Ursula to die, she thought. She wanted her to live.

  “Ursula! Watch yerself!” Fionnuala screamed out. “Bloody watch yerself!”

  As the wood propelled towards her blimp, Ursula twisted her head at Fionnuala, confusion on her face. She tripped and fell into lake of mud. The wood sailed past her head.

  A trash can was barreling towards Fionnuala. She put her hands out to stop it. The mugs fell. She screamed. The can slammed into her screaming face. They watched in amazement as Fionnuala was lifted into the air with the can. Twenty, forty feet she flew. Sixty, seventy. She toppled into the sea.

  And then, as suddenly as the hurricane had begun, it stopped. They flung their bodies in exhaustion to the mucky ground. Rain still bucketed down upon their heads, but they were safe. Even Fionnuala, as they saw her fingers clawing over the edge of the dock, and heard the effing and blinding raging out of her parched throat. Nobody helped hoist her body to shore. They would tell her later they had been too exhausted. Ursula put her arm around Jed's shoulder, Siofra looked up at her aunt and uncle with love, Louella and Slim exchanged a sloppy kiss, Dymphna and Paddy stood there, dreading Fionnuala's arrival. Then they staggered up the creaking gangway onto the Queen of Crabs.

  Limping towards the ship ten minutes later, cursing Paddy and Dymphna for not pulling her out, ponytails like dead things, Fionnuala reached into her pocket and draped the showy bitch-lady's loot around her sopping, soggy breasts as if she was born to wear it. She ascended the Queen of Crabs, plotting her revenge, almost smiling genuinely. She softly hummed ‘”My Heart Will Go On,”’ imagining she was Celine Dion herself. Life was good. Or it would be once she had dished out to her family what was due them. And that would happen soon.

  “Neaaaar...” ¡Co-quí! “Faaaar...!”

  CHAPTER 41

  JED HAD DOWNLOADED two weeks' worth of Coronation Street, and Ursula's eyes were bleary from trying to catch up, her head spinning from trying to keep up with the twists in all the different storylines. She switched off the computer, deciding to live in the real world, scratched Muffins on the head, and the dog padded after her as she headed out of the bedroom. Jed was at the store, taking stock.r />
  As she went down the hallway, she looked at the head of the woman from Mali she had gotten from the dirty laundry basket in the basement and hung back up. She would never forget Fionnuala coming to her defense like that with Casino Woman. Nor would she forget Fionnuala warning her about the roof about to smash into her skull. They might never be able to exchange a civil word with each other, but at least now Ursula knew. She knew.

  Ursula felt like celebrating, so she mixed herself a little gin and tonic in the kitchen. She could drink now, as she was off the Xanax. She and Louella had passed the statue of whatever, and, she thought, she felt better than all those immigrants to the US who had passed the Statue of Liberty in the 1880s on their way to Ellis Island. Giving up the love of their families, everything that was familiar to them, packing up and coming to the land of the free. To be free. Even Jed had said when they had gotten home and he had kissed the asphalt of their driveway (Ursula had been mortified) that it was the 'best damn country in the world. I'm happy to be home.'

  And Ursula, the immigrant, was starting to grudgingly feel it was home as well.

  Her heart had frozen with fear when Detective Scarrey had, yet again, called her the day after they came back home. But in the back of her mind, she knew she and Louella were now safe.

  “Mrs. Barnett!” he said. “I've been trying to get in touch with you. I've left you many messages. Why didn't you call back?”

  “I...we were on a cruise, sure,” Ursula said, nibbling on her lower lip. “Me cell phone wouldn't pick up messages so far away.”

  There was a moment of silence, and visions of coppers knocking on the door, throwing on the handcuffs, danced in her mind.

  “I thought I told you and your sister-in-law that you were still under investigation about the missing $100,000. I thought I told you not to leave the jurisdiction.”

  “It was me and me husband's anniversary, so it was. I wasn't gonny spend it here. Would yer wife be pleased to spend yer 35th anniversary here in Wisconsin?”

  “No I guess you're right. Anyway, the reason I was calling...”

  Ursula gripped the handset.

  “First, all charges have been dropped. The statute of limitations has passed anyway, but we were struggling to find the money trail in any event. Actually, and this is strictly off the records, I think that if anything did go down with the church funds, your sister-in-law was more to blame than you. So, you're off the hook. And, second, I was calling because you left your umbrella in my office during your last interview. It's a Mark Cross, I see, and my wife's told me they're expensive. I wanted to make sure it got to you.”

  Ursula's pounding heart stilled. And, oh, the price of that Mark Cross umbrella, bought in the heady post-lottery-win days. She could never afford one now. “Sure, that's wile civil of ye, Detective. I think, but, I've had enough of that cop shop of yers. I don't mind telling ye I'd rather never step foot on yer premises again. Why don't ye give it to yer wife as a wee gift? A lovely little surprise for her to come home to, so it'll be.”

  “Er, I guess, yeah. Well, and there was another reason I was calling you so many times.”

  He cleared his throat. Ursula waited for him to speak.

  “Aye?” she finally said.

  “Now that you're no longer a suspect in an ongoing investigation...”

  “Aye??”

  “Me and my wife, well, I don't think we're getting along so well lately. I wonder if you'd like to have a drink with me some night?”

  Ursula grinned into the phone. “That's dead nice of ye, Detective. But I love me husband, ye see.”

  “Oh. Well. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Ach, go on away a that! I've not given it a second thought. No problem at all. Cheerio, then, Detective Scarrey.”

  “Uh, yeah, bye.”

  The moment she hung up, Jed rang.

  “Hey, Ursula, what about us going to the movies tonight?”

  “Shall we not invite Slim and Louella over for cribbage instead? That movie theater in town be's wile noisy, so it does. Or perhaps a wee game of poker?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  As the conversation continued, Ursula kept smiling to herself. Jed seemed to have left gambling behind. And Wisconsin was becoming her home.

  Louella was clipping coupons at the kitchen table. Slim was at the store, taking stock. She had been behind in her couponing, and was looking forward to all the money she'd be saving.

  As she clipped, she glanced over at the postcard clamped under the fridge magnet from Morocco, the one with the pointy red shoes. The postcard was from her cousin Wanda, who was eighteen and trying to make it big as an actress in Hollywood. Wanda was currently a waitress.

  Louella didn't know how, after all those times in the interview room with Detective Scarrey, she had managed to keep up her lie to Ursula. She was lucky the police had always interrogated them separately. And now they had been cleared, the statue of limitations had passed, and Ursula need never know exactly what she had done with that $100,000.

  Yes, her friend Daisy Flynster had succumbed to mesophelioma, and it had been a crying shame, and she had died. But...the real reason Louella needed the money was very different. Wanda had called her up one night and told her she was putting herself up for auditions for a movie. But, oh, not any movie. It was a Christian musical. And she wanted to play the role of Mary Magdalene. Christian as Louella was, she was excited that Hollywood was even considering a religious movie. She did wonder, however, how Wanda, who was dumpy and grotesque—she was Slim's sister's daughter—could every play statuesque Mary Magdalene. Wanda told her she had met the casting director and wowed him with her portrayal of Mary crying at the garden of Gethsemane. But he told her nobody would want to watch her on the screen looking like that; it wasn't horror movie, after all. If she underwent liposuction, breast implants and a bit of light facial cosmetic surgery, then the part was hers. It would cost almost $100,000. Wanda promised her, if she got the part, she'd give Louella a portion of her paycheck. Louella had haggled it up to 30%, and then only had been too happy to promise her the money. The only problem was getting to money. So Louella had. The postcard, lying on the floor amongst the bills when they got home, told her it had worked; Wanda had gotten the part! They would start shooting in two weeks.

  Louella took a bite out of a Munchin and smiled as the scissors clipped through the newsprint, each clack saving her that little bit more.

  CHAPTER 42—SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  FIONNUALA DRAGGED HER hands through the dishwater, her fingers landing on whatever spoons or plates or she didn't really know what lurked in the dank water. She gave the mystery items little rubs with her fingers and balanced them on the top of the towering mass in the draining tray. With Lorcan and Eoin back home, and her mother Maureen now living permanently with them, and, of course, Seamus and Siofra, there were always many things to wash that the Floods had fed off of, and they fed often.

  Fionnuala tugged the dingy clump of hair, hanging before her bleary eyes, with dripping fingers and flung it over her left ear. “Cheer up sleepy Jean...!” sang the song from the radio. She snapped it off, then her hand aimed again for the dingy water with its few tired bubbles left.

  “Does this really be how I live, merciful Jesus?”

  The rain was pelting down outside. She could hear it, but couldn't see it, as Paddy still hadn't replaced the board at the scullery window with glass. Lazy git. But at least this was the cold rain she had grown up with, not the unseemly hot drops as if from Hell she had encountered on that godless foreign land. It seemed a dream.

  She looked down at her hand. Yellowish, chipped fingernails, knuckles like walnuts, a wedding ring now two sizes too small, the flab of her finger almost hiding the tarnished metal, whatever it was. Gold, Paddy had told her at the time. Fecking liar! She had caught a glimpse of a show about cosmetic surgery Dymphna had been glued to, and remembered the narky little toerag in the flash suit saying that the only thing they couldn't help
were the hands. They would always show the age. The bulging veins she looked down on now, the wrinkles crisscrossing like— She flung her fingers back into the water. She gulped more poisons into her lungs, the cigarette clamped to her lower lip.

  She shouldn't have lost it with that woman on the boat, her name letters on a nametag Fionnuaula's brain could no longer conjure up. The black woman. She had promised to do her nails a fancy Yank way. Swanky colors and letters and what not. MARY MOTHER OF GOD, was it? Och, naw, not enough fingers for that. Fionnuala's heart gave a little lurch of regret, then anger. That flimmin Ursula! Why in the name of God had she sided with Her Ladyship the Cunt? Had she been deranged? She wondered what would have happened if—

  The front door clattered open.

  “Mammy, Mammy!” Dymphna called from the hallway, breathless.

  Fionnuala clenched her jaw at the inhuman shrieks of Keanu and Beeyonsay from their stroller. Her fingernails scraped down the length of a plate. This was the last thing she needed! The tart and her two half-Orange bastards, paying her a visit. Well, Dymphna wouldn't be getting an offer of a cup of tea, as the Lord was her witne—

  “Mammy! Ye'll never guess what I just came upon at the Mountains of Mourne market! Och, I even splurged on a mini-cab to get up here to show ye!”

  Fionnuala turned from the sink and wiped her hands on her top. Dymphna was barreling towards her, a look of joy on her face as if she had just woken up in the men's side of a Turkish prison. She held something ratty in her hands, and it was coming closer to an alarmed Fionnuala.

  “Would ye have a look? I couldn't believe me eyes!”

  “I haven't the time to—”

  Fionnuala's eyes widened, the scorn dissolving from her face.

  “It's me satchel!” she gasped. “Me Celine Dion-Titanic satchel!”

  She snatched it from her daughter, held it out before her disbelieving eyes and felt the lump in her throat as Dymphna babbled on. Fionnuala paid her no mind.