Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “I’m sorry about yer Da’,” Casey said quietly, “it’ll never be an easy thing to lose a father.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My da’ died makin’ explosives,” Casey said, studying with deliberate nonchalance the cuff of his sweater.

  “My father killed himself,” Jamie rejoined quietly, surprised at how easy it was to say it after such a long and hideous silence.

  Casey met his eyes without provocation, but merely and for perhaps the first time, with honesty. “It’ll be the same difference, then.”

  Jamie nodded, understanding now the twin burdens they carried as sons. “Aye, it’ll be the same.” He was silent for a moment, taking a swallow of whiskey, feeling with gratitude its golden burn. “Your daddy, it will have been no accident, then?”

  “No,” Casey shook his head, “no, the man knew his way around explosives, had since he was a boy. He wanted it that way I suppose, so that we could think it an accident an’ live easier with the grief.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie said and meant it.

  “’Tis alright,” Casey said rolling the whiskey bottle back and forth between his hands. “My Daddy was never quite right with the world, if ye know what I mean?”

  “Nor was mine,” Jamie said.

  “He was a bit too sensitive, I suppose for the sort of work bein’ a Riordan meant. I don’t think my Grandda’ ever wanted him to be part of the family legacy, but when all the other boys died an’ so did his Da’ there wasn’t much of anything else for daddy to do but to pick up the reins an’ continue.”

  “Do you ever wish he hadn’t?”

  “Aye, I’ll admit that there are times that I do. I’m more built for it though, Da’ was like Pat, things bit him too deeply an’ he could never stop the bleedin’ from it.”

  “You believe you can keep Pat from it?” Jamie asked, looking out from under eyebrows that were becoming increasingly numb.

  The answer was a blunt and unequivocal “aye”.

  “Yer Daddy, why did he do it?”

  “The black dog,” Jamie said with great gravity, peering with one eye through the wavy glass lines of a rapidly emptying bottle.

  “I take it we are not talkin’ about four legs, fur an’ a waggin’ tail here,” Casey said trying, with little success, to balance a stalk of clover on his nose.

  “It’s what Winston Churchill called it,” Jamie sighed, and drained the remainder of the whiskey. “Depression that is, my father always had it but sometimes it will get worse as a person gets older and it had got to the place with him where there were many more bad days and not so many good.”

  “Ye have it yerself?” Casey queried, seeming to Jamie’s increasingly bleary vision to be having some trouble focusing himself.

  “More good days, not so many bad,” Jamie replied, feeling, at the moment, that there was very little wrong with the world that a pint or two of Black Bush could not cure. “What happened to your mother?”

  “Ran off, if ye can believe it,” Casey said with great and martyred seriousness, “with an Indian an’ runs a curry takeaway somewhere in Londontown.”

  “You don’t see her anymore,” Jamie asked, finding his lips slipping fuzzily about any word of more than one syllable.

  “The Belfast Queen?” Casey snorted, “It’s not likely I would then is it? Gone for near to eighteen years an’ not so much as a phone call on Pat’s birthday, nor a card for him at Christmas. It didn’t matter to me if she remembered myself but I can’t forgive her for forgettin’ Pat, because it did matter to him. His wee face on holidays was always full of hope thinkin’ Santa Claus could bring her, an’ the disappointment in his eyes when she never came would break yer heart.”

  “Should we be this drunk?” Jamie asked, realizing in some dim way that it was far past time for such a serious question.

  “No,” was Casey’s blunt answer.

  Lack of judgment, prompted by the excessive alcoholic goodwill coursing through his veins, could be the only thing that led him to ask the next question.

  “Why did you marry her?”

  The same boozy love of mankind was likely the only thing that stopped Casey from beating him senseless. “Why didn’t ye?” Though preferable to being punched was rather too close to the point for even drunken comfort.

  Jamie looking across the rustling and shadow-laden space thought with a twinge of panic that Casey didn’t look near as sodden as he had a moment ago.

  “It’s a fair question,” Casey said the lush harmonies of a few sentences ago altogether stripped from his speech.

  A breeze, rippling and sweet, stole speech for a moment and allowed Jamie to gather what senses were left and construct from them some answer.

  “Aside from the obvious, my age, her age, my drinking and the fact that I’m already married, I’m not entirely certain why I wouldn’t marry her,” he said and found the words much less invested with sarcasm than he’d intended.

  “Yer married,” Casey sat up a little straighter, finding this morsel of information of great interest.

  “Aye,” Jamie replied grimly, wondering if the man understood the concept of small talk. “More from a lack of effort at getting a divorce—until recently that is—than any other entanglements you might be imagining.”

  “Where is she?” Casey asked looking really quite happy.

  “In a convent.”

  Casey laughed and then ceased abruptly looking at Jamie’s humorless face. “Christ yer serious, aren’t ye?”

  “Yes,” Jamie said and seeing the next question forming on Casey’s lips, added “she’s a nun.”

  Casey plunked back against the tree, the better to ponder this surprising revelation, Jamie supposed and then said quite genuinely, “I’m sorry man.”

  “Don’t be, she’s very happy or at least a good approximation of that particular emotion,” Jamie replied dryly, ardently missing the drunken jollity of minutes past. “We lost three sons to a nasty little disease with a name ten miles long, that kills before life begins. My wife,” he said and closed his eyes so he couldn’t feel the words quite so sharply, “my wife found a way to deal with the pain. God granted her some sort of reprieve and so she’s devoted her life to him.”

  “An’ did he grant ye one, a reprieve?” Casey said dark eyes mild in the clear afternoon light.

  “No,” Jamie said, feeling there wasn’t a great deal of room for polite lies in this narrow ravine.

  “I married her,” Casey said looping the conversation back on the intake of a deep breath, “because I had to. Not for the usual reasons that make people marry, ye know, the fear of loneliness an’ gettin’ old with no one to care if ye breathe from one day to the next. Or to have children, or reasons of economy or even sheer desperation. I married her because I love her, it’s simple, so simple that I can’t ever explain it properly, not even to myself.”

  “It’s not a terribly sensible reason but it’s a good one,” Jamie said smiling.

  “Aye well there’s not so much sensible about love is there?” Casey said rising from the ground in one restless motion and studying the light, counting the hours Jamie knew until they could make their escape into darkness.

  “If you’re talking about real sense, about the sort of sense that actually makes or breaks a life, then I think love is about as sensible as it gets.”

  Casey turned in the soft green-gold air of the day and nodded, “Aye I suppose yer right. Ye’d best catch some sleep if ye can find it,” he said, filching a cigarette out of his battered pack and tossing one to Jamie. “We go at full dark, we should get back to Belfast in the small hours.”

  “And then what?” Jamie asked taking a heady drag on the cigarette and wondering if he’d revived another destructive habit.

  “Oh,” Casey turned and grinned, “I’ve an idea or two.”

  Chapter Thirty-four<
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  Not Peter’s Brother

  It was rather well known in certain less-than-elegant circles that many a Republican and wanted man, though not necessarily in this particular order, could be found of a Saturday night tipping his elbow at the Sniffy Liffey. It was a comfortable establishment with the required dark corners for the faces and whispers that wished to remain unnoticed.

  The Sniffy never had a set of regulars except for the two old men who sat at the bar and talked to Mike the publican and proprietor, their claims to glory harking back to back Easter 1916, where one claimed to have stood shoulder to shoulder with Padraig Pearse and to have heard his last words before he was carted off to be shot. The story was told several times a day to any stranger that passed through and generally assured the man of his five daily pints. The second, a wee gray man who went by the name of Eamonn, claimed to have been part of the entourage that was guarding Michael Collins on his ill-fated trip through his home county of Cork. Which to be certain was nothing to be after bragging about said Mike the proprietor, for sure hadn’t the Big Fellow been slaughtered right by his car in the middle of the road, without a body to protect him? To which, old Eamonn would hang his head and say with a great sigh ‘tis true, ‘tis true, but it might have been worse.’ How it might have been worse, Mike wisely did not inquire and other than the occasional eye roll he let them ramble on to various and sundry clientele. They were harmless enough and a welcome distraction to men who did not wish themselves to be noticed, who avoided direct eye contact and straight answers.

  On this particular Saturday night things were a bit quiet-like, there was a nervy looking group over in the corner and one or two loners. Eamon and Matty were at the bar, stools shaped with years of use to their backsides. Then through the door came the oddest looking pair Mike had ever seen outside a circus tent.

  The taller of the two, a big man by any standards, wore a gently bemused expression and seemed to float rather than walk. His hair was dark but streaked with powdery white whorls, his eyes, barely discernible behind thick glasses, were decidedly myopic. He wore a robe of sorts, unbleached cotton with ‘Gunderson’s Best Baking Flour’ stamped at random across it. Around his neck was a monstrous rosary, crude wooden beads interspersed with what, given the dim light, looked to be garlic. Certainly the smell that wafted ahead of the man was enough to attest to it. At the tip of it, hanging halfway down his chest, was the largest cross Mike had ever seen strung about a human neck.

  As odd as this first apparition was however, it was the second man who elicited the most gape-mouthed observation from the men at the bar. He had red hair that curled and sprang from his head and was saved from outright riot only by the grubby elastic that held it together and from which it spilled in abundant abandon down his back. Each ear held four earrings apiece and he’d a three-day growth of brightly red beard. On his head was a hat, one of those floppy hippie things, on which ‘Jesus Loves You Man’ was harshly emblazoned. The arms of his t-shirt were cropped off and across his chest was the message, ‘Bikers for Jesus—Ride the Righteous Winds.’ His long legs were encased in a dusty faded pair of denims and on his feet he wore a pair of shiny snakeskin boots.

  The first man sat at a table close to the bar, still wearing a benignly confused look and the second made his way over to Mike.

  “Guinness, two,” he said with a smile that split his dark face into amiability.

  “Travelin’ through?” Mike asked. He prided himself on being able to spot foreigners at a glance.

  “Yez might say dat, da good Fadder and oy’ze jist come home from Sout America. E’s a bit by way of bein’ a celebrity over dere.”

  “Really, he’s—he’s a priest then,” Mike asked looking dubiously over at the flour sacked gentleman in question.

  “A praste man, e’s da fookin’ eighth wonder of da world, yer lookin’ at the right reverent holy of holies, dat’s de Father Joseph Jesus Bunrattey, have ye never ‘eard of ‘im then?” The red-headed man looked at him as if he could not believe anyone would not have heard of Father Joseph Jesus Bunrattey.

  “I can’t say that I have,” replied Mike calmly.

  “Weel, that jist fookin’ beats it then don’t it? We comes ‘ere at the request of de pope ‘imself an’ find dere’s been no advance notice.” He leaned across the counter in one sudden snakelike movement and poked Mike with a grubby forefinger.

  “Yer lookin’ at a fookin’ natural wonder, ‘is mudder named ‘im after da holy family an’ e’s been performin’ miracles since ‘e was three years old. Can make light dance on da ends of his fookin’ fingers an’ water pour up instead av down. ‘E saved me life an’ blinded me in the left eye the first time I laid me eyes upon ‘im.” The man elaborately crossed himself and kissed the tips of his fingers, “Da virgin bless an’ preserve him.” He leaned even closer to Mike and smiled evilly, one eye rolled back in his head exposing a pale bluish white. Mike who had seen all sorts of freakish flotsam and jetsam took an involuntary step back. “It’s glass, ‘isself says ‘e’d never gazed upon sich wickedness short of a daymon. ‘is purity it burned me eye clear fookin’ troo, can ya beat it? I’ve been followin’ ‘im ever since.”

  “And who might you be?” Mike asked with a slight stutter.

  The man sighed elaborately and leaned back into a stool.

  “Lutie O’Toole and no I ain’t Peter’s brudder before ye ask.” He pointed to his chest, “Biker for Jaysus, rode me Harley clear crost Sout America, takin’ Fadder Joseph Jesus to minister to the sick an’ unholy, dere’s a powerful lot of unholies in dis world man.”

  Mike slid the dark frothing Guinness across the bar and darted a look at the priest who was fingering his rosary and mumbling incoherently, his face a picture of beatific holiness.

  Lutie leaned close again and said in a whisper, “Could ye help me out an’ tell ‘im dere’s like a three drink limit or sumfin’ coz fer all his religiosity de Fadder ‘as a powerful keen likin’ fer da drink.” He looked about himself suddenly as if every ear in the place were trained on him, which indeed most were, “if e’s ‘ad too much ta drink ‘e’ll start channeling’ da Virgin ‘erself. Oy’ve seen ‘im do it meself,” Lutie shuddered dramatically and recrossed himself, “’an it’s not a sight I’d wish on de Scratchman ‘isself, it can go on fer hours, ‘til ye fair tink yer ears are goin’ ta bleed if ‘e don’t stop. Mind now dere’s no one I’d radder have on me side in a fight, ‘e’s de former Golden Gloves champeen of Brazil an’ Paraguay, ‘e knocked an ape out colder dan a witch’s tit one time.” Lutie smiled reminiscently and took a slug on his Guinness. “Fookin’ amazin’ it was. I’d best git ‘im ‘is drink now, e’s a mightly thirst on, ‘e always does after da bleedin’ though.”

  “The bleedin’?” Mike said, swallowing as a chill raced down his normally implacable backbone.

  “Aye, da bleedin’. It’s only rare an’ ‘e gets no warnin’ as to when it’s comin’.” Lutie lowered his voice even further and darted his eyes from side to side, rolling the glass one round in an arc that did terrible things to the pit of Mike’s stomach. “E’s got da stigmata on ‘is ‘ands, like the very man ‘imself,” he hissed directly in the barman’s face, letting fly a warm Guinness impaled spray of saliva, “da peoples in Sout America, dey tougt ‘e was da Messiah.”

  “An’ is he?” asked Mike recovering some of his composure.

  “Weel, I’ll not say ‘e is an’ I’ll not say ‘e isn’t, but oy’ve seen ‘im do some powerful strange tings.” Lutie grabbed the two drinks and made his way over to Father Bunrattey, who was becoming progressively more pained looking at each ‘fook’ out of Lutie’s mouth.

  Mike was rather taken aback when the priest took his Guinness and in one fluid motion drained the glass, then leaned across the table and grabbed Lutie less than gently and said something rather urgently into his face. He would have been even more surprised had he heard the conversation that was
taking place in low hissing tones.

  “Channelin’ the Virgin fer Chrissake that’s layin’ it on a wee bit thicker than I’d like,” said Father Bunrattey, “I only said to create a distraction not put on a fockin’ sideshow.”

  “Indeed,” said Lutie in a well clipped, Oxford honed voice, “well I’m thinking on my feet here and not used to being the lure for some murderous lout, you’ll simply have to follow my lead.”

  The Father, his myopic eyes shooting black flame through his heavy lenses was about to retort when a voice above them broke into their cozy tête-à-tête.

  “Would ye be the self-same Father Joseph Jesus Bunrattey that saw the face of Jesus in his ma’s kitchen curtains when he was but an infant?”

  Father Joseph Jesus looked startled then suddenly jumped up in his seat and upon regaining his perch shot a murderous glance across the table.

  “Weel ‘e would be if yer talkin’ about da very same Joseph Jaysus Mary Bunrattey that was born in a caul an’ could speak in the tongues of angels from da time he was six months old,” said Lutie O’Toole rising rather menacingly out of his seat. “An’ indeed ‘e would be if yer talkin’ about da man who was struck dumb for ten long years, ‘an ‘e certainly would be if ‘e’s da man dat sat on a mountain top in Tibet fer forty days an’ nights widout da benefit of food nor drink an’ lived to bear witness to it. Would dis be da self-same Father Joseph Jesus Mary Bunrattey dat ye speak of wid yer sinful tongue, an’ furdermore,” said Lutie puncturing the air with his index finger,” who da fook would you be ta ask about the likes of dis holy an’ righteous man?”

  Father Joseph Jesus was rather desperately trying to wave the incensed Lutie back into his seat as a sizable crowd began to gather around their table. Even Matty and Eamonn who once seated had never been known to move until closing time had wobbled their way over to get a closer look at the growing spectacle.