Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  “The doctor should be here any minute,” the sergeant said, and, as if Sergeant Morrissey were a puppeteer, Doctor Roberts’s black pony came trotting around the corner. The doctor, as usual, was sitting too close to the back of the trap, causing the bellyband to snap against the pony’s belly just behind her front legs. Over the years, the continuous snapping had caused the pony to develop a personality every bit as abrasive as her master’s.

  With angry ears laid back, the pony came to a stop on top of the hill beside Mister Lamb. It promptly nipped him painfully on the upper arm. Acting on an instinct developed over years of dealing with willful animals, Mister Lamb, equally as promptly, smacked the pony in the nose with the back of his hand and said, “You impudent get!” The pony threw her head up in the air in pain and surprise and, like any defeated bully, immediately became docile.

  The doctor, unaware of the mild altercation between his pony and the farmer, got out through the back door of the trap, and as he walked past Mister Lamb he absentmindedly handed him the reins.

  With obsequiousness in his tone and body language Sergeant Morrissey greeted the doctor. “Good morning, Doctor Roberts.”

  And from the top of the hill, Mister Lamb held up the pony’s reins. “I always knew if I lived long enough I’d get to do something terrible important before I died,” he declared.

  Ignoring Sergeant Morrissey’s greeting, Doctor Roberts went down on one knee on Sally Hill. He put his hand on the victim’s chest, glanced at the mess on the face, moved it about with a curious finger, wiped the finger on the seat of his trousers.

  “Would you like any help, Doctor?” the sergeant asked, but he was ignored again.

  The doctor rheumatically stood up and rested for a moment with his hands on his knees before going to the head of the corpse. He bent down and peered, the right knee of his trousers floured with the dust of the road. Without looking at the sergeant or Kevin Lalor, he held out his right hand, made a weak click with his thumb and middle finger, twirled his hand in a circle and said, “Turn him over.”

  In the bushes, Barlow said, “I can’t look,” but Mikey did not hear him.

  Kevin and the sergeant pulled and lifted until the head moved. What was left of the ejected eye unstuck itself from the cheek, swung off the face, and became swingingly suspended in midair on stringy bits of tissue. The doctor got down on his knee again and poked at the back of the head with the pointed end of his pencil. Satisfied with his examination, he gradually stood up again, wiped the end of the pencil on the leg of his trousers and said, “That’ll do.”

  Sergeant Morrissey and the Civil Servant lowered the body back to its original position. As they rubbed their hands together to cleanse them of contact with the dead, the doctor bent down and put the misplaced eye back on the cheek. He cleaned his fingers on the corpse’s coat. Then he searched in several of his own pockets before pulling out a used envelope that looked as if it had been torn open by a hungry monkey looking for a peanut. The doctor vaguely indicated the Civil Servant with his penciled hand: “You’re Lalor, Kevin Lalor.” He stuck the lead of the pencil in his mouth before he wrote, used the palm of his left hand as a resting place for the envelope. He made a slight gesture in the direction of his pony and trap. “Your man on the hill, he’s Lamb. Matthew? Mark? Luke?”

  “Simon Peter,” Kevin Lalor said.

  “I knew it was a quare one,” the doctor said, the recent medical probe flashing to his lips before he wrote. Then, with a glancing gesture at the sergeant, he asked, “Your name?”

  Morrissey straightened himself against this indignity. “I’m the sergeant in Gohen,” he said.

  “I know that. What’s your name?” The doctor did not look at the sergeant as he spoke.

  “Sergeant Morrissey.”

  “Christian name?”

  “Joseph.”

  The doctor wrote again and then pointed the end of his pencil at the corpse. “Do you recognize the corpse, guard?”

  Morrissey reddened at this instant demotion through the ranks, and he could not allow the insult to pass. “Sergeant!” he said, and paused for effect.

  “The corpse’s name, not yours,” the doctor snapped.

  “Jarlath Coughlin, priest,” the cowed lawman replied.

  The doctor wrote and put the envelope back in his pocket. “I’m finished,” he said, and he started back up to his pony and trap.

  “Is he dead or what, Doctor Roberts?” the sergeant called angrily.

  The doctor did not turn around as he raised a hand in the air and swept the sergeant into oblivion with a dismissive gesture. “‘Course he’s dead,” he muttered. He continued on past Mister Lamb, taking the reins from the outstretched hand, and stepped into the trap through the door in the back. The bellyband whipped up into the pony’s stomach and she angrily laid her ears back along her skull. Mister Lamb raised his hand in warning.

  “You ought to put a muzzle on that pony of yours,” he said. But Doctor Roberts did not hear him as he jerked the pony’s head around and started back toward Gohen. The three men and the two boys watched, and the moment the trap disappeared around the corner, the sergeant began the task of recovering his authority. “Of course, any eegit can see your man is dead, but a doctor has to say a body is dead before it can be moved. Only for that I wouldn’t ask him at all. Fecking contrary Protestant!”

  “The sergeant cursed the doctor,” the whisper in Mikey’s head said.

  “I’m going home to milk my cows,” Mister Lamb declared, and he emphasized his intention by putting his foot on the pedal of his bike.

  “No, Mister Lamb, you are not going home.” Sergeant Morrissey grasped at his ruined authority with his angry voice. “You are going into Gohen on that bike of yours, and you’re going to tell Guard Doran to call Dublin and tell them we want the superintendent because we have a corpse.”

  “Aw, Joe. Have a heart. I’m starting on the headland of the barley today, and I’ll never get going with this carry-on. Can’t you go into Gohen yourself?”

  “Remember you’re assisting the Law, Mister Lamb, and—”

  “Will the fecking law help me with me barley, Joe, or—?”

  “Mister Lamb, the Law says I have to guard the body. Go to Gohen and tell Guard Doran to come out here to relieve me so I can go home to polish my boots before the super gets here. Don’t tell Guard Doran who ‘tis that’s dead. The Coughlins have to know the news before anyone else, and Mister Lalor here is going to go to the Coughlins to tell them.”

  “Joe, I’m late for work as it is,” Kevin Lalor objected.

  “You’re assisting the Law, Mister Lalor.”

  “Well, if I have to assist the fecking Law,” Simon Peter Lamb said, “I’m going to do it right now or the fecking day will be over before I get to sharpen the fecking scythe.” He turned his bike toward Gohen and put his foot on the pedal.

  “Wait, Simon Peter,” the Civil Servant called. “Joe here is doing this all arseways. I have to go to Gohen one way or the other, so I can tell Doran when I pass the barracks. You’re only a mile from the Coughlins, and you can tell them and then go home to milk.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Mister Lamb said, and he turned his bike back down the hill.

  Kevin Lalor walked into the roadside grass to retrieve his bike from the barbed-wire fence.

  “Now, hold on there a minute,” the sergeant barked. “I’m the one in charge here, and youse must do as I say.”

  But Simon Peter was already on his bike, and, while avoiding eye contact with the corpse, he swept down the hill past the sergeant. “Kevin makes more sense than you do, Joe,” he called out.

  “Mister Lalor—” the sergeant began, but Lalor cut him off.

  “I know what to tell Doran,” he said, and he pushed his bike up the hill, threw his leg over the saddle and rode off.

  Sergeant Morrissey slowly climbed the hill and stood looking at the empty road leading to Gohen.

  “Now,” Barlow said, and he poked
Mikey. “Come on.”

  “The cans,” Mikey said, and they took their mushroom cans out of the grass. Mikey led the way back through the sallies into the Back Batens. When he emerged into the sunlight, he turned, put his finger across his lips. Doubled over like osteoporotic old men, the two shuffled along the hedge until they knew the Lower Road had bent away from Sally Hill.

  When Barlow caught up, the two boys collapsed into the long cool grass. They stretched their arms straight out and made vees with their extended legs. For a long time neither spoke. In the distance, a magpie sharply chattered, and a crow passing over their heads on lazy wings cawed tunelessly. Faintly, the summer hum of insects started to build up, and the sun shone warmly on the boys’ faces. The tension seeped out of their bodies into the absorbing earth.

  “I peed in my trousers,” Mikey said.

  “So did I, a little bit.”

  Mikey stared directly at the sun, imagining it was a hole in the sky letting in light from the outside. When he looked away, he could still see the silver disk even when he closed his eyes.

  “I think Eddie Coughlin hung his own brother.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t you hear Kevin talking about the rope in the tree?”

  “The rope was to knock his brother off the bike. He tied one end to a tree and held the other end.”

  “Oh. I thought he hung him.”

  Silence.

  A woodquest rocketed across the high sky on furious and squeaking wings.

  “Why did he knock his brother off the bike?” Mikey asked.

  “He stole money from Missus Madden, and Eddie wanted to take it and give it back.”

  “A priest would never steal money.”

  “That’s what Eddie Coughlin said in the bushes, that his brother took it.”

  Silence.

  Barlow plucked the flower off a buttercup and, close-up, examined the golden petals.

  “Did you hear the noise Father Coughlin made?”

  “That was the worst.”

  “No. The worst was when Kevin and the sergeant were standing ferninst us and the sergeant nearly peed on us.”

  “Gold dust rubs off the insides of buttercups,” Barlow said.

  “I know. Sometimes when you run through a field of buttercups you’d think you had golden boots.”

  “Big people all tell lies.”

  “Kevin said he never touched the corpse.”

  “The sergeant said they were to tell lies when he fell on the corpse. The catechism says it’s a sin to tell lies.”

  “If the gold dust in buttercups was real gold—”

  “We can’t let on to anyone what we saw,” Mikey interrupted.

  “We’d be in terrible trouble.”

  “They’re going to ask us why we’re so late getting home, but we’ll have to tell lies.”

  “What will we say?”

  “Say we never heard the Angelus.”

  “But everyone hears the Angelus.”

  Silence.

  “I thought when there was a corpse that everyone standing around would be crying.”

  “So did I.”

  “Maybe something happens to you when you go away for a long time.”

  Silence.

  The hum of the insects grew louder. The chattering magpie was answered by another.

  “One for sorrow,” Mikey said.

  “Two for joy,” Barlow said.

  “Three for a wedding.”

  “Four to die.”

  Mikey looked into the sun again, imagined what it would be like to fly through the hole in the sky, zoom through it as quick as a woodquest into the brightness on the other side of the blue.

  “We’ll just say we went looking farther today, because we only found two each. We’ll say we went off into the Protestant fields to see if we’d find any, because we said we wouldn’t get up early anymore unless we found a whole lot today.”

  “That’s a good one,” Barlow said. “And after what we saw in the bushes, I don’t want to look for any more mushrooms.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The warm sun raised the summer hum another few decibels.

  “Everyone who told us about the mushrooms they found was telling lies.”

  Their exhaustion, the sun and the hum of the insects sent them into a semiconscious state. When the first bong of the clock in Gohen began to announce the time, Mikey forced himself to count.

  Ten!

  He jumped up and called to Barlow. They examined their fronts for wetness and ran all the way home, the cans swinging wildly, two battered mushrooms rattling around in each one.

  37

  In the Sunroom

  In which Patrick Bracken startles the Howards by announcing that he knows who shot Doul Yank.

  PATRICK BRACKEN LOOKED at Sam Howard. Sam Howard looked at Patrick Bracken. Elsie Howard said, “Well, well, well.”

  “Well, well, what?” Sam said.

  “It’s not gossip or rumor any longer. There were witnesses and, for sure, the verdict was wrong.”

  “Bullscutter!” Sam said.

  “Oh, oh,” Elsie said.

  “Oh, oh what?” Sam demanded.

  “Patrick, when my husband says ‘bullscutter’ he is not referring to that which is propelled from rear end of bull. It is a Protestant expletive which Sam reserves for special occasions, like when he sees he’s trapped in chess.”

  Sam said, “Based on the evidence presented at the inquest for Father Coughlin, the jury decided his death was accidental. As the coroner supervising the inquiry into Father Coughlin’s death, I insist that the verdict rendered was the correct one.”

  “Sam, let’s leave the Father Coughlin thing alone for the moment and talk about the Yank Gorman matter.”

  “But I want to clear up—”

  “If I may, Sam?” Patrick interrupted. “I’d like to tell you something else that I discovered and which you may not know about the death of Lawrence Gorman. Remember Gorman was letting the bank get in on the ownership of the farm. When Mattie Mulhall asked you what could be done to stop Doul Yank from giving the farm away, you told him there were no legal maneuvers available to stop him.”

  “And that was a privileged conversation—”

  “Oh, Sam!” Elsie said. “It was privileged for about one half minute. Mattie Mulhall had told everyone he was going to talk to you about the money being drawn against the farm, and no sooner was he out your door than he was telling everyone that you said nothing could be—”

  “But you know how I am, Else, about stuff like that.”

  “We went through all this before, Sam. I was the one who heard it all back in gossip the next day. Mattie was saying that people had been murdered for less than for what Doul Yank was doing. You asked me not to get involved in the gossip in case anyone would think I was using privileged information that I’d heard from you.”

  “Well, then I concede it’s outside the bounds of privileged information,” Sam allowed.

  “Patrick,” Elsie said, “right after Mattie Mulhall’s visit to Sam about the bank and Doul Yank and the farm, Sam told me how Doul Yank would get killed. Everyone knew Gorman hunted snipes for the sick nuns and anything else he could shoot, and Sam said he would have an accident with the shotgun. Just like that: he’s going to have an accident with the shotgun, and two days later, just after Father Coughlin was killed, Doul Yank was dead too, shot, like Sam said, by his own nephew.”

  “Else,” Sam said sternly, “I never said that his nephew would shoot him, and I have never said that it was the nephew who shot him. It was rumored so long that the nephew killed the Yank that it has become a fact in people’s minds. But it was never proved that he did kill his uncle.”

  “Sam, you are the only one in the whole world who believes it was an accident.”

  “What else can I believe? The Dublin inspector said the death was an accident—that there would not be an inquest.”

  “The inspector was very
cross that he had to come down here to Gohen for a second time in a week, Patrick,” Elsie said. “He’d just been down for Father Coughlin, and, two days later, here was another violent death to be ruled on. He shouted something very funny at the sergeant, the one with the Cork accent. Do you remember what it was, Sam?”

  Mister Howard chuckled as he spoke. “‘Why couldn’t he have been dead when I was down last Tuesday all the way from Dublin in the motor looking at your man?’ meaning Father Coughlin.”

  Elsie could not contain herself. “And the sergeant says in that dreadful Cork accent of his, ‘Sure, Inspector boy, he wasn’t the kind of man who was given to conveniencing other people.’” Missus Howard laughed at her imitation of the high-pitched Cork accent, and Mister Howard laughed with her. “Oh, Else!” he said.

  Patrick asked, “Why did the Dublin inspector recommend an inquest for Coughlin and not for Gorman?”

  “Without casting aspersions,” Sam said, “I would say it all came down to a matter of gray cells. Being a member of the Garda Siochána in those days should not in any way be equated with having brains. Brawn would have been the main ingredient looked for in a young country trying to get on its feet after the departure of the English. But even so, that Inspector Larkin was particularly lacking, Patrick. It was generally known in the legal community that Larkin believed all parts of the country should have a fair shot at having an inquest—that no one county should have more than another. He decided there should be an inquest for Coughlin because there hadn’t been an inquest in our county for eight years. He decided against an inquest for Gorman because it would have meant a second inquest for us too soon after the other.”

  Elsie joined in. “Most of the guards only had minimal education. In those days most boys left school after sixth class, when they were fourteen. When they were recruited later on, they spent six months training in Dublin. Every guard in the country opened his court statements with the same words, whether they applied to the particular case or not, because that’s what they learned by rote: ‘Your honor, as I was proceeding . . .’ Every week in the local paper guards announced they had been proceeding somewhere or other.” Then Elsie used a mimicking voice. “Your honor, as I was proceeding up the road, I saw the suspect with no light on the front of his bike. On closer inspection, I discovered he hadn’t a light on his rear end either.”