Blood From A Shadow (2012)

by Gerard Cappa

  In that moment, I decided to give Lutterall’s flight a miss.

  I left the hotel at 7.40 am and was in the train station at 7.45. Sorry, the train line doesn’t run to Armagh, you can get a bus next door. The 8.00 am Goldline bus sailed along the empty motorway until the driver veered off to pick up at little towns and villages along the way. One of the stops was at a War Memorial in a small village. The memorial was a simple stone, maybe 15 feet high, inscribed with “In Proud and Never-Dying Memory of the Men who Fell in the Great War 1914—1918”. About twenty names, mostly Royal Irish Rifles and Royal Irish Fusiliers. A lot of names for such a small place. There was some sort of wreath of faded flowers, looked like it had been there for a while. I had stood beside plenty of monuments to the Glorious Dead, from the abstract legends of the Civil War’s Irish Brigade to the charred scraps I cradled in Iraq. There was always something missing, they could only conjure words to celebrate the sacrificed victims. But maybe that was enough. Enough to allow those left behind to continue. More would be cruelty.

  A guy going to work in Armagh waited at the monument for this bus. He folded his newspaper under his arm and hopped on, flopping into the seat beside me. I wanted to ask him about the memorial, but he stuck his face in his newspaper, reading about the US Presidential election. That was weird, I thought, this guy was more interested in who was in the White House than I was. What was it to him? By the time he had finished, the moment to ask about the memorial had passed, but we did fall into conversation. He worked in the Planetarium in Armagh, which was really a city because it has a Cathedral, so was a Cathedral City. In fact, it has two Cathedrals, one for Catholics and one for Protestants. I told him I was going to see friends of mine. Those McErlanes? Immediately, he folded the paper under his arm again and jumped into a vacant seat across the aisle, and studiously looked out the opposite window for the rest of the journey. Ferdy would have got a kick out of that—his family name still producing fear or hostility, two edges of the same blade.

  I got off the bus in Armagh city and walked through the shopping sector until I found a cellphone shop. I reckoned my movements could be tracked through the phone Duffin had provided, so I had slipped it into the bag of a sleepy student type who was at the bus station in Belfast, waiting for the Dublin bus. I hoped that would irritate Lutterall. The girl was very obliging, but disappointed when I bought the cheapest phone she had, with no state of the art anything. It was 10am here, meaning it was 5am in New York, too early to phone Rose. I sent her a text message instead, “Find out assholes no. text it to me”. I would speak to Gallogly later.

  The McErlanes live 15 miles south of Armagh city, close to the international border with the Republic of Ireland. Ferdy had told me that the border was what the fighting had been about since it was created in 1920, but I knew there had been fighting here for as long as there had been people. I waved a taxi, braced myself for her face, 20 minutes to breathe. I didn’t have the exact address for the McErlanes, so got out at Davan Country Stores, a solid looking collection of shop, house, pub and funeral directors, all under one roof. Inside the shop part, a middle-aged woman polished red apples before stacking them on display.

  “Sarah McErlane, you say? You are a reporter?”

  “No, I’m a friend of the family, from the United States,” I said.

  She looked me over, vetting me before committing to anything, then opened a door leading to the kitchen of the living quarters. A tall, fit man of about 65 followed her back into the shop. As soon as he saw me, he turned to her, and said,

  “How don’t you know him? Of course it’s him, it’s the Irish Pole!”

  I hadn’t been called that in nearly twenty years but I had travelled 3,000 miles to hear again that nickname, that had only ever been used in the few blocks that separated and connected Yonkers and the Bronx.

  He skipped around the counter like a dancer and took my right hand in a firm grip, his left hand ruffling my hair.

  “Come on, son, I’ll drive you over, I think they’re expecting you,” he said.

  He wore old trainers, baggy, wrinkled pants and an old “Yonkers Hoot Owls” black and white baseball sweat jacket, with a gaping hole in one elbow. It was the only Owls jacket I had ever seen, that team had folded years ago, when I was a kid. I followed him out of the shop and around the corner of the house. He pointed his keyring and popped open a sleek, black two seater Merc SLK.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” he said. “I was in the States myself, went over in the 70’s, came home in ‘95. I was in the McErlane’s apartment many’s a time, you were only a cub then, of course.’

  I didn’t remember him, not exactly him, but I did remember that apartment being full of the noise and smell and shape and life of men like him. Generous, solid men with stories and laughter and songs. Ferdy and I would be playing our own make believe games on the fringes of their magical gatherings, their kingdom I thought we would inherit, but, by the time we were ready, that world had vanished. He was proof that it had really existed, wasn’t just my invented memory.

  “I knew your father well, a good man he was,” he said.

  My father, another mythical figure. I was too young to remember much more than a grainy vision of him.

  “He wasn’t long back from Viet Nam when I went to live in the Bronx,” he said. “They loved him in the Irish bars, even though he wasn’t one of us. He was a hell of a fighter, you know, like yourself. I remember seeing him take on three Ukrainians that came in looking for trouble one St Patrick’s Night. ‘Stand back boys’, he says to us, and wiped the floor with the three of them.”

  I had heard this story, or ones like it, many times, visions of my hero father passed down to me through an alcoholic haze. Pity he didn’t stick around long enough for me to compare notes, there must have been some truth to scrape out of all the bullshit.

  “I don’t know what happened to him in Viet Nam, but he seemed to be a different person once a fight would start, like he knew what the other fella was going to do before he did it,” he said. “He told me once it was like time slowed down for him, but speeded up for everyone else. And I remember you fighting those two Italian boys outside McErlane’s apartment, you were about 10 years old at the time. Your father’s son, no doubt about it.”

  I remembered that fight. Ferdy had done something to an Italian kid in the East Bronx and two older brothers, big guys, came looking for him. I was going into the apartment and they jumped me. I was surprised at my ecstasy, punching and kicking two big guys up and down the street, the more they cried, the more cruel I became. It was the first time people took any notice of me, and it felt good.

  His eyes glazed with nostalgia as he reminisced, throwing the Merc around these narrow country lanes. The hedgerows had died out and were replaced by stone walls. There was no cement or mortar used, just the eye and skill of the farmers who first built them, God knows how long ago, and kept up by inherited know how. The sun pierced the gaps in the stone like a million spotlights raking my low slung seat in the SLK. He pulled a sharp left and a massive cornerstone whizzed a few inches past my head, then he stopped suddenly.

  We were in front of a black marble memorial, maybe 8ft high by 6ft wide. The gold ing paid tribute to Volunteers Kevin and Arthur McCooey (Irish Republican Army) murdered by Crown Forces, 6th February 1992. On either side of the ing was the lifesized marble figure of an IRA man in combat gear, holding M16’s in the firing position, one kneeling, one standing.

  “I suppose Ferdia told you all about them?” he said.

  “Yeah, he told me some,” I said.

  “If those two boys were still here, Sarah wouldn’t be having all this trouble, that’s what I think,” he said.

  He accelerated off again, flying dust and gravel giving the two brothers the cover they didn’t have on the day they needed it, on this narrow stretch of road between two sharp turns. Whoever had picked the ambush site had picked well.

  “So, what have you heard about this tro
uble? I’ve heard all sorts of crazy things back home, what do you think has happened here?” I said.

  “I don’t know, son, but any trouble we ever had here was caused by the Brits. If you want to sort it out, I would start there if I was you,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not really here to sort anything out, I’m just here to pay my respects, you know?” I said.

  He looked at me, when he should have kept his eyes on the twisting roads.

  “Just like your father,” he said. “He’ll never be dead while you are here.”

  Sitting close to him, I thought maybe I did recognise him, after all. With his wrinkled brown skin and bright blue eyes, he reminded me more of the old men I saw in enemy territory than the vibrant men that surged life into McErlane’s apartment in my boyhood. Those old men, the Iraqis, the Afghans, just like the Chechens, the Viet Cong, the Palestinians, all the peoples who should have been easily defeated by superior forces, had kept the spirit alive that had been choked out of me. I did have it once, I was my father’s son, after 9/11, when we were attacked on our own soil, in our own homes and city. But when we took that spirit with us across the world, it started to fade. The further we went and the longer we were away, the more life left it. For me, the light finally died when I saw it had been distorted in my boyhood friend and it had become his excuse to finally mature into the psychopath that I should have admitted he was, years ago.

  In a few minutes I would be face to face with his mother for the first time since he had died. She worshipped and adored him when he was alive, that mother’s passion could only be inflamed now. But she knew me too, she knew my nature as a child, had comforted me, protected me. When we grew up, I had promised her I would keep him safe. She would know the lie in my face when I pleaded my sorrow for her lost son, my blood brother.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We pulled off the road and raced up a rough laneway that ended at security gates. They opened when the last Owls fan in the world pressed a buzzer on the intercomm, the revving Merc nudged through before arcing to a stop in front an American style McMansion, more glass than brick. The reflected sunlight blinded me as I stood out of the automobile, so I didn’t see Sarah McErlane straight away.

  When I did see her, the script I had rehearsed melted away as she swathed me in a harness of hugs and kisses.

  “Cornelius, you haven’t changed a bit, you’re still my beautiful boy!” she gushed, her keen hands braille reading my face, but skipping my bruises and scars.

  She kissed my face, stroked my hair and kneaded my arms and shoulders. She snuggled my face to her shoulder and I felt the zest of her tears sparkling down my cheek, but when she lifted my face in both her hands, we knew these were my tears seeping through the crust of my fragile shell. Her cheerful laugh and bright words freed the torment from my core and the whispered soothings meant to console only stoked my pathetic sobs. She pulled my face to her shoulder again and held me there until my gagging subsided, her tender voice slowly overcoming my panted sighs.

  “Don’t upset yourself, Cornelius, you’re here with me now, everything will be grand, just like it used to be,” she said.

  I convulsed a final cry before I could force open my throat enough to speak.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs McErlane, I never thought it would be like this, it wasn’t meant to be this way. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I understand you, Cornelius, you don’t need to explain anything,” she said. “You’re back with your own now, just let all the pain out. I know how hard this is for you, I know.”

  She took me by the hand and led me inside her glowing house, into a sitting room where she had tea and sandwiches waiting for me. She guided me to a chair beside the table and sat me down.

  “Take a minute or two to settle yourself, darling, I’ll just heat the tea,” she said.

  I could hear voices in the kitchen, and was glad of the chance to recover my dignity before facing anyone else. My tears had released me to wallow in the melodrama of my childhood, and looking around the room nearly set me off again. Photos framed in my subconscious, flashbacked triumph of faces and voices over time and places. Cups and medals he had won in baseball and boxing. Ferdy and me in front of the James Connolly statue in Troy, me and Ferdy with Steve “Celtic Warrior” Collins. Over the fireplace, pride of place went to him celebrated between Yankees Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. I was there that night too, but didn’t push myself into the shot, it was his big moment. All photos from our divine youth, but no sign of military service, maybe not so strange now.

  I was standing there looking at their faces, remembering, when Mrs McErlane came back in, followed by a man slightly younger than her, maybe late fifties or sixty, wearing new jeans and a faded Lazio soccer top.

  “Cornelius, this is my cousin, Monsignor Arthur. He’s home from Rome and he’s staying with me for a few days. He knows all about you, so just treat him like one of the family, it’s just like our apartment in Yonkers, just you feel at home, ok?”

  Monsignor Arthur took my hand in both of his, we shook and I said something, but all I registered were his eyes, the same dark eyes and brow as Ferdy. He had his frame and easy movement, the same smile and turn of head. I was looking at the future we would never see.

  “I’ve heard all about you since you were a pup, Cornelius,” he said. “Sarah has been singing your praises for as long as I can remember, you were the brother poor Ferdia needed. How are you keeping yourself?”

  Her face almost buckled but she held firm.

  “Fine,” I lied.

  “I knew your parents, a long time ago,” he said. “Two lovely people, a rare couple, I prayed for them.”

  “You were in the United States too?” I said.

  “Oh yes, I was lucky enough to have a spell teaching at Fordham, back in the old days. In fact, I visited your mother a few times, you were very young then, you probably don’t remember me, do you?” he said.

  “No”, I lied, but I did remember a scary figure in black invading our apartment, when times were bad. My mother deferred to his caste, which frightened me, and I hid when he came. My relationship with authority must have been decided then.

  “You’re a Jesuit then, Monsignor, at Fordham University?” I said, not prepared to investigate our common past.

  “No, no, not a Jesuit, not in the Society, but I managed to survive God’s Marines anyway. They’re not so bad, as long as you let them think they’re always right,” he said, Ferdy eyes twinkling.

  Mrs McErlane laughed, though she must have heard that a hundred times. She radiated good humor and joy. No sign of the unbearable grief I had expected. No searing denouncement of my failure, my bonded obligation to bring him home. I stood before her, prepared, not asking for mercy, but she spared me.

  “And how is young Cornelius now?” she said. “Did he get my birthday card? Do you have a photo of him! Ach, Cornelius, he’s a beautiful boy, just like you were at that age! No wonder he’s so good looking, with a father like you, and Rose too, of course, don’t forget her, I’m sure she’s still lovely. But I’m sure he has your lovely nature, hasn’t he. You must be very proud of him.”

  She hadn’t liked Rose when we were children, was afraid Rose might take Ferdy away from her some day, probably. Now she had no Ferdy and no grandchildren of her own, she would be my son’s surrogate doting grandmother. I didn’t take his photo back, even though it was the only one I had.

  We ate smoked salmon on oatmeal biscuits she had baked. Farmhouse cheese and whiskey cured ham on her Irish wheaten bread. Instead of the intensity I had braced for, there was easy, gracious chat. No questions pointed at me needing the hard answers, just gentle comment and soft humor.

  Just so he wouldn’t be overpowered by her home cooking, Monsignor Arthur had brought a hamper from Rome, Parma ham and salame Milano, porcini mushrooms in olive oil, black olives in balsamic vinegar, giant green olives stuffed with almonds or chillis. Eggplant stuffed with ricotta cheese, it was just like Tombolino’s Re
staurant on Kimball Avenue.

  These cousins crafted their conversation, give and take, serve and return, and had the generosity to make space for me, my hesitant mumbles encouraged and nurtured, then sustained by their indulgence. I almost forgot why I was there, and it was easy to drift along on the swell of their sympathy, but my radar was agitated, this cozy respite couldn’t last.

  “I would take more tea if you have it, Sarah,” the priest said.

  Mrs McErlane fussed around me first, before taking the empty cups to the kitchen.

  “Sarah isn’t really comfortable around alcohol, she’ll do stuff in the kitchen to give us the chance to have a drop,” he said.

  I wasn’t comfortable either, in her house, knowing her experience with drink.

  “Don’t worry about that, she’d be embarrassed if she thought her guests were cramped by her own tastes. That’s what you call hospitality here. She left these two whiskey glasses out for us,” he cajoled me.

  Arthur poured two fingers of amber and sprinkled water into each glass.

  “Jameson’s Red Breast, fifteen years old, triple distilled, that’s what I call whiskey,” he said.

  He drew the glass to his nose and purred.

  “I’m very fond of the United States, and you are the best in the world at many things, but you can’t make whiskey for shit,” he said.

  He took a miniature sip, finally, rolled it on his lips and tip of his tongue, eyes closed, as if savoring a holy sacrament. I couldn’t knock it back the way I usually would, so copied his ritual. It was good whiskey, ok, smooth as velvet but immense on my tastebuds.

  “I’m a Jack Daniels man myself, if I’m drinking at all, that is,” I said.

  “Not bad, not bad, but I wish you would get your own American name for it. Whiskey is the Irish name for an Irish drink, even the Scots admit it came from us, the smart ones do, anyway.” He sipped again. “Do you know where the biggest selling whiskey in the world comes from? No? Japan! Japan! Water of Life my arse! What’s wrong with sticking to Saki?” he said.