Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  Sam came in with a thick three-ring binder. He put it on the wicker table. In silence he lowered himself, and, when his ancient muscles failed, he plopped the last four inches onto his rosy cushion.

  “Sam,” Elsie began, but she was immediately silenced by an uplifted hand.

  “Patrick,” Sam said, and his tone indicated he was about to deliver an introduction to the transcript. He put the closed binder on his knees. “My wife is a naturally curious woman. Where she believes there is a secret, she will dig. She is incorrigible. On the other hand, I am a naturally cautious man when it comes to other people’s secrets.”

  “Naturally stubborn is what he—”

  “Else, I have the floor. All our married life I have been hiding, and Else has been digging. The more insistent her digging, the more protective I became of my privileged information until, I will freely admit, I became paranoid—afraid to talk about anyone in the town just in case what I knew about them had come across my desk in the sanctity of my office.”

  “Sanctity, Sam?”

  “Every bit as sacred as the confession box, Else, and you have always had your ear to the door, in a manner of speaking.” Sam held up his silencing hand to Elsie again. “Patrick, you have been very forthcoming about yourself and your relationship with Mikey Lamb and the sorrows of your own family. It’s only fair that I should be as forthcoming with you in matters which are not privileged information. Even if some of what I tell you is borderline between privileged and gossip, I know now that anything you hear in this house will remain here.”

  Missus Howard silently clapped her hands, and she beamed. But her husband said, “Now, Else, you are not going to find out anything you don’t know already, so don’t get all excited. But there is one thing you don’t know. When business was slow in the office, I dabbled in writing—wrote down little things for my own amusement over the years. The dabblings are harmless, just my observations about matters in the public domain, like transcripts of inquests, wills and land sales, sales of hay and straw. I presided over only two inquests in my lifetime, Patrick. Besides Jarlath Coughlin, there was Jack Duff who drank weed killer after several other unsuccessful attempts to shake off his bodily coil. Poor bugger! Imagine the pain as the chemicals melted his guts.”

  “Jesus! Sam!” Elsie exclaimed.

  “I have often thought about that, Else—death by horror, terror and unspeakable agony—like Father Coughlin falling or Jack Duff’s intestines melting—or worse, a rape victim played with like a mouse by a cat. When the victim is dead, the terror and agony are gone because they were in the victim. But the survivors continue to be terrorized vicariously when they remember their child fighting and screaming and crying and pleading and choking and bleeding and hurting and despairing and dying. It is the survivors who keep the terror alive, who keep the victim in a state of terror forever. When I think of our David, I can’t help thinking of the terror of his last seconds, but his terror is over with, it went with David. David is gone, and it’s only me and Else and his brother and sisters who keep his terror alive.” Sam looked out into the garden, but Patrick knew the old man was not seeing anything out there.

  “Remembered terror plays some part in the instinct of self-preservation,” Sam mused to his own reflection. “But remembering the terror of someone we have loved seems to have no purpose at all.”

  “Sam,” Missus Howard said, and in the word Patrick heard love. Mister Howard looked at her across the wicker table. His left arm and her right arm bent across the legs of the green teddy bear to each other, and the ancient fingers clasped while the two pairs of ancient eyes held each other in the embrace of ancient love. Elsie said, “I never think of David’s terror, Sam, because I don’t think he was afraid at all. I think he turned around and faced the train and embraced it because it was putting an end to his pain.”

  Fixed like an old couple on a Valentine card, Sam and Elsie Howard bequeathed support on each other—a pair of elderly parents talking out their memories of a lost child together.

  “Remember how he used to hide my wallet in my shoe?”

  “Remember how he used to hide in the dark and say ‘boo’ to frighten us? And his ‘boo’ wouldn’t frighten a robin off a branch.”

  “He was a lovely child.”

  There were no tears, just sad, diaphanous smiles.

  Patrick Bracken, observer and reporter of human behavior at its worst and its best, decided that this moment had to play itself out between the old couple. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and enclosed his face in his long-fingered hands. For the first time he allowed himself to look at his sister, AnneMarie, sinking down into the water that would carry away her pain, carry her away from the search for her lost childhood and for her lost childish friends in a place where they could never be found. AnneMarie’s hair floated up from her head and slowly swung around like the flaring skirt of a flamenco dancer in slow motion as she sank down into the nothingness that was far better than the laocoöned life that was strangling her. Thinking of his sister’s choice in this way did not relieve Patrick’s sadness, but for the first time he did not think of her as a suicide. Tears dropped off his chin.

  Patrick used his handkerchief on his face and nose and looked at the Howards. Husband and wife were disengaging themselves.

  “All right,” Sam said too loudly, as if he could magically restore the atmosphere that had escaped from the sunroom on the wings of remembered deaths. “Everything’s all right now,” he continued, with an exaggerated show of opening the binder. He cleared his throat loudly and intoned, “A reading from the holy gospel according to Sam.” But he was no Merlin, and he wasn’t even quick enough to smother the sob that leaped up his throat. The old body shook from the force of the seismic pain, but he kept Elsie at bay with an outstretched hand.

  Like a bird seeing its chick off on its first flight, Elsie was perched on the edge of her chair. With his eyes closed, Sam’s head slowly moved up and down as if he were bundling feelings back into their respective tabernacles in his heart. Patrick watched the old man swallowing hard as he slowly gained control and finally said, “I’m sorry about that.” Sam glanced at his wife, and she gave him back a smile pleated out of sadness, gladness and resignation.

  Mister Howard took a deep breath. “All right!” he said. “All right. I have the transcript of the entire inquest, and I’ve decided I will read the whole thing, my own observations included as an introduction to each witness.” He smiled and looked at Elsie. “I will abide no hissing or booing or interference from the cheap seats, so, my wife, no matter what you hear you are not to interrupt.”

  24

  First Witness: Mister Kevin Lalor

  1951

  In which the Civil Servant, a.k.a. Kevin Lalor, gives witness to finding the body, and in so doing raises the ire of Timothy, a.k.a. Spud, Murphy.

  THE INQUEST WAS HELD in the Woodwork Room in the National School on the last day of September. The workbenches were pushed back against the walls; fresh sawdust lay in the cracks between the wide floorboards and old sawdust beaded the cobwebs in the windows. The previous day the summer had suddenly died, and the Great Damp had descended—it had already invaded the people’s souls, and everyone was miserable. School regulations would not allow for the lighting of the fire for another two months.

  Spud Murphy had made two trips between the Picture House and the school with his ass-and-cart to bring twenty chairs for the witnesses, the jury and the coroner’s people. As usual, Spud was arrayed in his perennial haute couture of Wellington boots with the tops turned down, filthy and torn and belted gabardine coat, and broken-peaked cap with an explosive tear as if a shotgun had been at it from the inside.

  Spud had asked Mister Morgan-of-the-shop for a long piece of twine to wrap around the chairs to keep them from sliding off each other and over the sideboards of the cart. The malodorous bell ringer told Quick Quigley-the-road-sweeper that Morgan had asked him to bring back the twine when he was finished w
ith it. “Fecking Protestant! Bring it back—will and me hole,” Murphy said.

  David Samuel Howard, Esquire, Peace Commissioner, was the coroner. The first witness was Kevin Lalor, known locally as the Civil Servant. Every day Mister Lalor came in from Clunnyboe to Gohen on his bicycle. Without dismounting, he free-wheeled through the ever-open cast-iron gates of the courthouse and parked his conveyance in the bike room. To the people of Gohen, Lalor and his bicycle were one organism—a twentieth-century centaur. So, when Mister Lalor walked into Gohen on the morning of the inquest, his arrival was commented on by everyone who saw him: “Is that the Civil Servant off his bike?” “Will you look at the Civil Servant the way he’s walking?” “He’s as bandy-legged as a cowboy in the pictures.” “The Hyland one must have been rough on the Civil Servant last night?” When he took his place in the witness chair, Mister Lalor had the appearance of someone who’d just banged his head on a too-low doorway. He was distracted and nervous; his eyes were on full alert, slightly bulging behind his thick glasses; he continually glanced at the door of the Woodwork Room as if he expected someone to burst in and shout at him; his hair was untidy, and his tie was slightly askew. When the inquest was over, the coroner told his wife that trying to get information out of the Civil Servant was similar to pulling a cat’s teeth. Missus Elsie Howard, known in local Protestant circles as a bit of a wit, asked her husband “When was the last time you practiced dentistry on a cat?”

  The inquest began at ten o’clock in the morning.

  CORONER: The witness will tell his name and occupation to the jury.

  WITNESS: Kevin Lalor, Civil Servant.

  On the morning of August 22, 1951, did you not find a body?

  I did, yes.

  Mister Lalor, please tell the jury how it was that you found a body.

  I was on my way to work, sir.

  What road were you on?—for the recorder’s sake, Mister Lalor.

  Glower Road, sir.

  Glower Road is the local name for the Lower Road, isn’t that right?

  Yes, sir.

  Tell the jury about when first you saw the body.

  When I went around the corner below Sally Hill, I saw the body up there on the road.

  How far from Sally Hill were you when you saw the body?

  About two hundred yards, sir.

  And you immediately recognized it as a dead body?

  No, sir. I thought it was a man lying on the road.

  Tell the jury, Mister Lalor, how you thought you were looking at a man lying on the road from a distance of two hundred yards. Couldn’t it have been a woman or a child or a bundle of clothes?

  Sally Hill is a sudden rise in the road, sir. It’s like looking at a wall in the distance.

  Continue, Mister Lalor.

  The person was dressed like a man.

  Now tell us about going up to the body.

  When I came to the bottom of Sally Hill, I got down and pushed my bike up to where the body was.

  But you didn’t know yet that it was a dead body.

  When I got close, it became apparent the man was dead.

  Did you recognize the deceased immediately?

  Yes.

  Tell the jury why it was apparent to you that it was a dead body you were looking at.

  He looked dead, sir.

  Did anything else make you suspect the man was dead?

  There was no movement from the body; the chest wasn’t going up and down.

  Anything else, Mister Lalor?

  The mouth was open.

  Anything else, Mister Lalor?

  One of the legs was twisted back under the body at an unnatural angle.

  Anything else, Mister Lalor?

  It looked like the head was lying in a shallow pothole full of black blood.

  Before we go any further, Mister Lalor, can you tell us what time it was when you saw the body on Sally Hill?

  When I was pushing my bike up Sally Hill, Mister Murphy started ringing the seven o’clock Angelus in Gohen.

  You noticed the church bell despite the circumstances you were in?

  I was looking at a dead man, and the first stroke of the bell reminded me of the dead bell.

  So at exactly seven o’clock you were already on Sally Hill, if Mister Murphy was not late ringing the bell.

  No, sir. He was not late that morning.

  How do you know that, Mister Lalor? Is Mister Murphy ever late with the bell?

  Yes, he is.

  How do you know?

  I always know where I should be on the road at seven o’clock.

  And how do you know that, Mister Lalor?

  I have a watch, sir, and I look at it every time I hear the Angelus to see if the watch is right. But I found out my watch was always right, but that the bell was sometimes wrong. Every morning, except Sundays, I push my bike up Sally Hill.

  VOICE: I’d like to tell Limpin’ Lalor’s son—

  CORONER: You must not interrupt the proceedings, Mister Murphy. If you have anything to say that will throw light on this unfortunate incident, you may give your name to Sergeant Morrissey. He will arrange for you to be heard.

  MISTER MURPHY: I just wanted to say that the last time I was late with the seven o’clock—

  CORONER: Mister Murphy! I must sternly warn you not to interrupt these proceedings. If there is another outburst, Sergeant Morrissey will remove you from the Woodwork Room. I have told you once how you can appear as a witness, and I will not repeat myself. Now, if the recorder will tell us where we were before the interruption?

  RECORDER: Every morning except Sundays, Mister Lalor pushes his bike up Sally Hill.

  CORONER: Thank you. And, Mister Murphy, I will remind you that when the inquest is in session, no one speaks unless he is spoken to by me first. Now, Mister Lalor, without any prompting from me, describe to the jury the position of the body on the road. And, I might remind you, Mister Murphy, that you should take off your cap. The same respect should be given at an inquest as is given in a courtroom. . . . Pretend, Mister Lalor, that you are writing a composition like the prizewinner you wrote years ago. Do not try to spare anyone’s feelings.

  WITNESS: The body was lying on its back in the middle of the road. The left leg was bent out of sight under the backside. A stranger might have thought he was looking at a one-legged man. The other leg was sticking straight out at an angle. It was sloping off to the right from where I was standing. The two arms were stretched out from the body and the palms were turned toward the road. He looked like a one-legged man trying to hold back a crowd pushing him from behind. The left eye was lying on his face near his nose. His glasses were on the ground at his left shoulder.

  Thank you, Mister Lalor. Did you look around? Did you wonder how the body happened to be lying like that in the middle of the road?

  WITNESS: Yes, I wondered where his bike was. He always got around on his bike.

  Was his bike anywhere to be seen?

  Yes, sir. Eventually, I saw it at the bottom of the hill lying in the long grass at the side of the road.

  From what you saw, what did you think had happened to the deceased?

  I thought he must have fallen off his bike; that he fell off and landed on the back of his head; that he hit the ground with such force that one of his eyes came out and the back of his head got flattened.

  Did you touch the bike, Mister Lalor?

  No, sir.

  CORONER: Mister Murphy! Please strive to be normal. Roll up that piece of twine, and put it in your pocket. Missus Moore, where are we?

  RECORDER: In the Woodwork Room in the—

  CORONER: Missus Moore!

  RECORDER: Mister Lalor said he didn’t touch the bike.

  CORONER: What did you do next, Mister Lalor?

  I went back to ask Simon Peter Lamb to go into Gohen for Sergeant Morrissey.

  Why didn’t you continue on into Gohen yourself?

  I thought someone should stay with the body, sir.

  You are
to be commended, Mister Lalor, for doing that, staying with the body. Did you tell Mister Lamb whose body it was?

  No, sir.

  Why not, Mister Lalor?

  I didn’t think it was my place to identify a dead body.

  You showed remarkably good judgment in not identifying the body. A man’s natural inclination would be to blurt out the name. Now, Mister Lalor, did you wait for Mister Lamb to get ready or did you go straight back to Sally Hill?

  I went back to the body.

  While you were waiting for the sergeant, did anyone come along the road?

  Simon Peter Lamb passed by on his way for the sergeant.

  Did he stop to look at the body?

  No, sir. When he was pushing his bike up the hill, he kept his head turned away from the body and he didn’t stop.