by Ken Bruen
I made a fast move toward him and he backed away, lost his balance, into the water. One of the girls laughed. He struggled for a moment then swam to the bank. I said,
“Nice stroke but you need to work on your dive.”
11
“Then
I had the kind of dreams
Where big black birds try to
Pluck your eyes out
And you wake up
With the sheet knotted around you
Like a vine.”
Mercedes Lambert, Dogtown
The fine Australian crime writer Peter Temple died aged seventy-one.
Ireland beat Scotland to win the Six Nations, and if they beat England at the dreaded Twickenham they’d have the Grand Slam.
We hoped, as this fixture was set for St. Patrick’s Day, we had some hard-core charm on our side.
I Never Sang for My Father,
A grueling emotional ride with Gene Hackman, was on cable.
Did I watch it again?
No.
My own father was great.
Few people in my life had such an impact on me. He was that rarity, a good decent man, as opposed to my mother, the walking bitch.
He once said to me,
“I’m not an aggressive person and I rarely feel aggressive but sometimes . . .”
Pause.
“I do feel the need to cut loose, be reckless, and be a man.”
I was twelve and this meant little to me. I always felt aggressive and vented on the hurling pitch.
My father worked on the railways. After a particular shift, his overtime and a win on the horses collided to leave him with the grand total of 1,500 pounds.
A friggin fortune in those days.
He hadn’t yet told my mother and I think he was on the verge of handing it to her when she from nowhere exploded,
“When do I get a new kitchen set?”
Before he could flash the money, she sneered,
“What kind of pathetic excuse of a man are you? I could have married somebody in the Post Office.”
He grabbed his coat, said,
“C’mon, Jack.”
And we were out of there.
Walked to Salthill, my father silent most of the way.
I didn’t care. As long as I was in his company, my world had a foundation.
The Castle Inn had just opened and was doing a thriving business, mainly due to the extras from Alfred the Great filming in Galway then.
They were earning mad money as Anglo-Saxons fighting draftees from the Irish army.
For a pound, you’d get eight pints, ten cigs, and change for chips on the way home.
My father ordered a pint and a Paddy chaser.
Boilermaker.
We didn’t know such terms then, it was simply a short one to keep the pint company. He got a mineral for the boy.
All soft drinks, which were either Claddagh orange or bitter lemon, came under the heading of that.
My father rarely drank spirits, had said,
“Road to hell.”
True that.
The very first Wimpy bar was due to open and we’d soon be able to try the very first hamburgers to hit the country.
My father drank fast; again, unusual for him, said,
“There’s a poem titled ‘If.’”
He paused.
Then,
“Lines in it that if you can make a pile of your winnings and roll them on one turn of the dice, it says . . .”
He looked at me,
“You’ll be a man.”
This seemed to deeply sadden him.
We crossed to Claude Toft’s, the only casino in the town. Such things as online betting, a myriad of bookies were all in an unimaginable future.
My father went straight to the roulette table, took the money out of his jacket, looked at me, the wad of cash in his right hand, hovering, asked,
“Red or black, Jack?”
I near whispered,
“All of it?”
He nodded.
I watched the wheel spin, looked up into my father’s face. He said,
“Choose.”
12
“Upon my return to Ireland,
I told my friends about Irish people
Who had done well.
Not everybody was happy for them.
Fuckers
Thieves
Probably born with it.”
Darach Ó Seaghdha, Motherfocloir
When I was a child, the sternest warning uttered by parents went,
“Don’t ever bring Guards to the door.”
Now, the day before St. Patrick’s Day,
The Guards came to my door.
Loud, hard, and shouting.
Slammed me up against the wall, screaming,
“Don’t fucking move.”
As if.
I wanted to say,
“I paid my TV license.”
But levity was not in the air.
At the Guards station, I was flung into an interview room, left to wait.
Time droned on until supercop himself, Sheridan, appeared.
He was supposedly on loan from the States but his accent danced a wobbling reel between broad New Jersey and Shantalla.
He was dressed in FBI mode: tight clean-line suit, tiny mic in the ear, buzz-cut hair. He turned the chair around so he sat cowboy style, arms resting on the back. He had watched way too many movies. He began,
“You’re like seriously fucked, Jack.”
I waited a beat, then,
“What else is new?”
Amused him.
Slightly.
He said,
“No wisecracking your way out this time, buddy.”
Buddy?
I said,
“You’re not my buddy.”
He reached into his jacket, produced a cigarette, lit it, blew an impressive cloud of smoke, looked at me, waiting for a comment.
He got none.
He asked,
“You know a young boy named Jimmy Tern?”
Uh-oh.
I said,
“A spoiled brat.”
He blew more smoke, then,
“His friends say you threw him in the canal.”
For fuck’s sake.
I said,
“For fuck’s sake.”
He got right in my face, asked,
“Why’d you kill him?”
God almighty.
I said,
“He’s dead?”
Sheridan said,
“As a doornail.”
*
Some beliefs just defy logic, and no matter how much you rebel against it the notion persists.
Like this:
If you need a lawyer, our genetic code, our history, kicks in and we want a guy with three essentials:
Brit accent
Anglo-Irish roots
Disdain
And, not essential but valued,
Double-barreled name.
I got
Jeremy Brett-Shaw.
That hyphen is worth the exorbitant fees.
But
He didn’t get to me until I’d been locked up two days,
Missing a wedge of real sporting history.
On St. Patrick’s Day,
At Twickenham,
We beat the English in rugby to add
The Grand Slam to
The already secured Six Nations title.
I also missed Cheltenham, where Irish horses won over twenty races.
All this with the murder of a child hanging over my head.
I don’t much remember those two days as I had the mother of a hangover, ferocious guilt, remorse without the aid of booze, Xanax, even a cig.
I did learn that the boy had been hit over the head once with thundering force.
“A hurley,”
Said Sheridan.
Adding,
“Your weapon of choice, Jack, eh?”
I though
t about that, asked,
“When was the lad killed?”
He sneered, said,
“You already know that, surely.”
I bit down, asked,
“Humor me.”
Resigned sigh from him, then,
“Eight in the evening, the day after you tossed him in the canal.”
The proverbial light above my head. I did a rapid calculation and, bingo!
Fuck me, I had the most incredible alibi ever, hugged it close like all the rosaries I’d meant to say but never did.
Sheridan sussed the change, demanded,
“What, what is it, you have an alibi?”
I gave him the most vicious smile I had, said,
“Lawyer.”
*
Jeremy Brett-Shaw arrived with trumpets.
Like loud.
Presence felt.
He was a short man but booming; everything about him screamed,
“Look at me.”
It was hard not to.
He used his reduced stature like a sly intimidation.
Storming into my cell, roaring,
“Gather your gear, Mr. Taylor. We are so out of here.”
Throwing in the American phrase to show he was current.
I had spoken to him very briefly on my one allowed call, enough to tell him my gold alibi and, most important, prove I could pay his outrageous fees.
He was in his late sixties and seemed like every single year had been of note.
His suit was just the biz, the kind you could throw in a ball and it would bounce right back to pristine shape, a suit that declared,
“It may have cost the earth but, I mean, just fucking feel the quality.”
He had a well-trimmed beard, a substantial belly, tiny feet, and his hair was that salt-and-pepper style not seen since the TV show Dynasty.
As I shrugged into my jacket, Sheridan came blustering in, snarled,
“Who the fuck are you?”
He made the mistake of seeing Brett-Shaw’s small stature as something to exploit.
Phew-oh.
Brett-Shaw drew himself up to all of his five-foot, five-inch height and the energy emanating appeared to increase his stature.
Righteous indignation has its uses.
He hissed,
“Sheridan, I believe, the so-called supercop?”
He paused as if to savor the taste of what was coming.
Continued,
“Honest to god Guards, real cops, are out searching for a cop killer and you,”
Venom dripped from his lips,
“Are instead harassing a local legend, a bona fide hero who saved the swans of Galway, you . . .”
He looked like he was going to spit.
Didn’t, quite.
“You, who didn’t even take the blooming time to check a rock solid alibi.”
Sheridan, momentarily lost, rallied,
“Alibi? Fucking alibi? I’d bet a week’s salary to hear that.”
Brett-Shaw rocked back on his heels, said,
“Nun.”
Sheridan was orgasmic, shouted,
“None. I fucking knew it, you sniveling ambulance chaser, none, fucking beautiful.”
Brett-Shaw held out his hand, asked,
“The week’s salary? All major credit cards acceptable.”
Sheridan, confused, near stammered,
“But you said none.”
Brett-Shaw with exaggerated care fixed the knot in his Masonic tie, said,
“Nun. My esteemed client was with a nun.”
The Poor Clares are as much a part of the tapestry of Galway as the swans.
They are a secluded order,
But they’ve recently gone online!
Go figure.
And they have an outreach program, in the form of Sister Maeve.
A dote of a woman if such can be said of a nun without provocation.
She wasn’t quite yet part of the
Me Too movement but early days.
’Tis a shame but true that in the manic years of the Celtic Tiger the bells of the Poor Clares rang out, a plea for alms.
I cringe to think they might have been hungry.
When you’ve been raised in and to poverty, you are keenly sensitive to the very dread of people without their dinner.
On special days, there is a Mass in the Poor Clares’ convent and the public can attend. They usually have a chorister who’d make you believe in love, such is the beauty of the singing.
The church is lit with candles and has a subdued golden glow, like you’d think a medieval service might have appeared.
It is uplifting in a fashion that is just nigh on impossible to articulate.
Sister Maeve had invited me.
She was my friend.
How weird is that?
Me and the nun.
Believe that?
Years back, I had been of some small service to her and her convent—nothing trailblazing but it dazzled her and thus our unlikely friendship.
The bricks
To raise funds for a renovation to the convent, the public were invited to
“Buy a brick.”
To my disappointment, you didn’t actually get a brick; you got a parchment saying you had donated, so I took a brick from the building site, placed a cross made from horseshoe nails on it, and that did for me.
Looked kind of a piece with the crystal skull some intruder had left for me.
So, the evening that the boy was murdered, I was singing in the choir, so to say,
With Maeve by my side.
Afterward, I took Maeve for a drink to Garavan’s.
Like a date.
Seriously?
We got the snug and I treated her to hot toddies.
She protested,
“I really shouldn’t.”
I said,
“ ’Tis the glory of it, not being the right thing.”
She took a deep wallop, purred,
“Ah, that is wicked.”
From a nun?
Is there higher endorsement?
*
The days after my daughter was murdered right before my eyes, I was beyond
Briste.
Broken, in Irish,
But it means oh so much more,
An utter annihilation of every ounce of your beating, bedraggled heart.
And Maeve came to me
Like a vision, almost.
She fed me,
Doled out rationed amounts of Jay,
Held my trembling palms.
And, I will never quite know why,
She recited a section of what I can only term
The Jesuit poem
“The
Wreck
of
the
Deutschland.”
Serendipity that his poem was dedicated
*
To the happy memory
Of five Franciscan nuns . . .
Drowned
Between midnight and morning
Of Dec. 7th, 1875.
*
Did Maeve select this because my daughter was born in Germany?
Or because those poor nuns were drowned?
As if reading my very thought, she intoned softly,
“Your girl is, and always will be, The Galway Girl.”
Made me weep like a banshee.
Later, when I read about the poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins, I learned he was
An academic
Scholar
Poet
And fiercely unsuccessful with his poetry in his lifetime.
Now, of course, when it’s of precious little value to him, they rave about him being
“One of the very greatest Victorian poets.”
Fuck ’em.
*
Of the many odd places I end up,
The Protestant Church is unlikely to be one of them.
Not that I have a grudge against the Protestants, it’s just a
n instinct of not belonging,
Like King Charles on the throne of England.
But here I was
In St. Nicholas.
You can see the imprints of hooves, they say, at the door, supposedly from when Christopher Columbus prayed here before setting off to find America.
They are not the devil’s mark, that’s for sure. He has no business here.
I sat at a back pew, found a modicum of fragile peace, my hand with the mutilated fingers found a sheet of frayed parchment.
It was a fragment of a poem by Robert Bridges,
And the title—
Oh,
Sweet
Jesus
That is not the title, that was my reaction to this:
“On
a
Dead
Child.”
Phew-oh.
Riddle me that?
Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, . . .
Thy mother’s treasure wert thou. . . .
Thy hand clasps, as ’twas wont, my finger, and holds it:
But the grasp is the clasp of death. . . .
Unwilling, alone we embark,
And the things we have seen
And have known
And have heard of
(A long pause is vital here before the killer words.)
Fail us
Here’s the odd thing
I have never been entirely comfortable with the big hitters of poetry,
The
Yeatses
Eliots
Heaneys.
Always more in sync with the minors
Louis MacNeice
Anne Sexton
Francis Thompson.
And among my dark favorites is the leader of the minor league
Totally unknown
Weldon Kees.
Could it be that in 1955, his car was found abandoned on the Golden Gate Bridge and he was never seen again, and
1951 is the year of the birth of one of the minor league mystery novelists?
Weldon’s best poem is, I figured, the coincidentally titled
“Crime Club.”
It has these lines in the opening stanza
. . . the corpse quite dead.
The wife in Florida.
The second line seems to me to be indicative of great dry humor,
And the two-line ending is a doozy:
Screaming all day of war,
screaming that nothing can be solved.
A friend of Kees’s summed up his sad life in a sentence that might well, alas, apply to my own befuddled existence:
“He was absent from his own life.”
What a fucking condemnation of one man’s time.
*
These days of hovering depression, despair, and bafflement.