Puckoon (3 page)

'Ah, top of the morning to yez,
Father,' Milligan said dismounting.

'Well, well, Dan Milligan.' There was
surprise and pleasure in the priest's voice.' Tell me, Dan, what are you doing
so far from your dear
bed ?'

'I'm feeling much better, Father.'

'Oh?
You been ill
then?'

'No, but I'm feeling much better now
dan I felt before.'

There was a short pause, then a
longer one, but so close were they together, you couldn't tell the difference.

'It's unexpectedly hot fer dis time
of the year, Father.'

'Very hot,
Milligan.
Almost hot enough to burn a man's conscience,
eh ?'

'Ha ha, yes, Father,' he laughed
weakly, his eyes two revelations of guilt.

'When did you last
come to church, Milligan?'

'Oh, er, I forget - but I got it on
me Baptismal certificate.'

The priest gave Milligan a long
meaning stare which Milligan did not know the meaning of. Then the Milligan,
still holding his bike, sat down next to the priest.' By Gor Father, wot you
tink of dis
weather ?'

'Oh, it's hot all right,' said Father
Rudden relighting his pipe.

Producing a small clay decoy pipe,
Milligan started to pat his empty pockets.' Here,' said the priest, throwing
him his tobacco pouch.

'Oh tank you Father, an unexpected
little treat.'

Together the two men sat in silence;
sometimes they stood in silence which after all is sitting in silence only
higher up. An occasional signal of smoke escaped from the bowl and scurried towards
heaven. 'Now Milligan,' the priest eventually said, 'what is the purpose of
this visit?' Milligan knew that this was, as the Spaniards say, 'El Momento de
la Verdad', mind you, he didn't think it in Spanish, but if he had, that's what
it would have looked like.

'Well Father,' he began, puffing to a
match, 'well, I - "puff-puff-puff

" -
I
come to see - "puff-puff" -if dis grass cuttin' - job - "
puff-puff' -

is
still
goin'.'

The inquiry shook the priest into
stunned silence. In that brief moment the Milligan leaped on to his bike with
a
'Ah well, so the job's gone, good-bye.' The priest
recovered quickly, restraining Milligan by the seat of the trousers.

'Oh, steady Father,' gasped Milligan,
'dem's more then me trousers yer clutchin'.'

' Sorry
,
Milligan,' said the priest, releasing his grip. 'We celibates are inclined to
forget
them
parts.' 'Well you can forget mine fer a
start,' thought Milligan. Why in God's name did men have to have such tender
genitals.
He had asked his grandfather that question. 'Don't
worry 'bout yer old genitals lad,' said the old man,' they'll stand up fer
themselves.'

What about that terrible, terrible
evening so long
ago ?

Dan Milligan was
seventeen,
he had arrived for his first date with Mary Nolan. Her father had ushered him
into the parlour with a forked vermin stick. Alone in the room with him was
Mary's youngest brother, a little toddler of four. The little fellow carried in
his hand such an innocent thing as a clay lion, but this, plus momentum, and
brought unexpectedly into violent contact with Milligan's testicles, caused him
to writhe and scream with pain; at which moment the radiant Mary chose to enter
the room. To be caught clutching himself so was too much for the sensitive Dan.

With only the whites of his eyes
showing, he disguised his convulsions as a macabre Highland fling.

Cross-eyed, bent double and screaming
'Och aye!' he danced from the room and she never saw him again. For many years
after, young Dan Milligan wore an outsized cricketer's protective cup; during
the mixed bathing season, many ladies made his acquaintance, only to be
disappointed later.

'Yes, there's plenty of work to be
done, Dan,' the priest was saying. He led Milligan to the gardener's hut. A
small wood plank shed tucked in a cluster of cool elms.
'
Michael
Collins himself hid in here from the Tans,' said the priest
proudly as he opened the door.

' Did
he
ever cut the grass ?'

' No
, but
once, when the English was after him he set fire to it.

What a blaze! Twenty courtin' couples
nearly burnt to death!

Them's
the
tools.' The priest pointed to four sentinel scythes standing in the corner like
steel flamingoes.

'Ooh!' Milligan backed away. 'They
look awful heavy, Father.

Would you like ter lift one to see if
me fears are well
founded ?'

'Saints alive, Milligan, there's no
weight in 'em at all, man,' said the priest, lifting one and making long
sweeping strokes. 'See?

No weight in 'em at all,' he repeated,
holding his groin for suspected rupture. He stood at the door and pointed out.
'You can start against that wall there and work inwards. If only I was
younger.'

So saying the priest made off up the
path. As he did, Milligan thought he heard suppressed laughter coming from the
holy man. Carefully Milligan folded his jacket and cap and placed them on the
roots of a flowering oak. He turned and faced the ocean of tall waving grass.
His unshaven face took on that worried look of responsibility. Spitting in his
hands he took hold of the instrument. Placing his feet apart he threw the
scythe behind him, then, with a cry of'Hi ayeee! Hoo! Hup-la!' he let go with a
mighteous low curling chop; it started way behind him but, never a man of
foresight, so great was the initial momentum, by the time the scythe had
travelled ninety degrees it was beyond his control.

All he could do was hang on; the
great blade flashed past his white terrified face disappearing behind his back,
taking both of his arms out of sight and sockets, at the same time corkscrewing
his legs which gave off an agonized crackling sound from his knees. For a brief
poetic moment he stayed twisted and poised, then fell sideways like a felled
ox.' Must be nearly lunch time,' he thought as he hit the ground. The Lord
said:' Six days shalt thou labour and on the seventh thou shalt rest.' He
hadn't reckoned wid the unions. Forty-eight hours a week shalt thou labour and
on the seventh thou shalt get double time. Ha. It was more profitable to be in
the unions.

As Milligan laboured unevenly through
the afternoon, long overgrown tombstones came to light,

R.I.P.

Tom Conlon O'Rourke. Not
Dead
, just Sleeping.

'He's not kiddin' anyone but
himself,' Milligan chuckled irreverently. What was all dis dyin' about, anyhow?
It was a strange and mysterious thing, no matter how you looked at it.' I
wonder what heaven is really
like?
Must be pretty
crowded by now, it's been goin' a long time.' Did they have good lunches?

Pity dere was so little information.
Now, if there
was
more brochures on the place, more
people might be interested in going dere. Dafs what the church needed, a good
Public Relations man.
' Come
to heaven where it's real
cool.'
' Come
to heaven and enjoy the rest.'
' Come
to heaven where old friends meet, book now to avoid
disappointment!' Little catch phrases like dat would do the place a power of
good. Mind you, dere were other questions, like did people come back to earth
after they die, like them Buddhists say.

In dat religion you got to come back
as an animal.

Mmm, a cat! Dat's the best animal to
come back as, sleep all day, independent, ha!
that
was
the life, stretched out in front of a fire, but no, Oh hell, they might give me
that terrible cat operation, no no I forgot about that. Come to think of it,
who the hell wants to come back again
anyhow ?
Now,
honest, how many people in life have had a good enough time to come
back ?
Of course if you could come back as a woman you could
see the other side of life

? By gor, dat would be an experience,
suppose you wakes up one morning and finds you're a
woman ?
What would he do? Go for a walk and see what happens. Oh yes, all this dyin'
was a funny business, still, it was better to believe in God than not.

You certainly couldn't believe in men.
Bernard Shaw said ' Every man over forty is a scoundrel', ha ha
ha,
Milligan laughed aloud, ' Every one round dese parts is
a scoundrel at sixteen!' Bernard Shaw, dere was a great man, the Irish Noel
Coward. A tiny insect with wings hovered stock still in front of Milligan's
face. 'I wonder if he's tryin' to hypnotize me,' he thought, waving the
creature away.

The sun bled its scarlet way to the
horizon and the skies nodded into evening. The birds flew to their secret
somewheres, and bats grew restless at the coming of night. Milligan puzzled at
the church clock.
4.32 ?
Good heavens, it gets dark
early round here.

' How
are
you getting on then, Dan ?'

At the sound of the priest's voice,
Milligan put on a brief energetic display of hoeing. The priest blew his nose.
'Farnnnn -

farnnnnnnnn
,'
it went, in a deep melodious Eb.' I think you've done enough for today, it's
nearly seven.'

' Seven
?'
Milligan cursed in his head.' Trust me to work to a bloody stopped clock!'

'You mustn't kill yerself, Milligan.'

' I'm
in the
right place if I do.'

They both laughed.

A cool breeze blew in from the
Atlantic, fetching the smell of airborne waves. The first ectoplasms of evening
mist were forming over the river. Here and there fishes mouthed an O at the
still surface. The Angelus rang out its iron prayer. Murphy, out in his fields,
dropped his hoe and joined hands in prayer. 'The Angel of the Lord declared
unto Mary.'

The near Godless Milligan trundled
his bike towards the Holy Drinker,

'IIIIIII

Once knew a Judy in Dubleen town
Her
eyes were blue and her hair was brown One night on the
grass I got her downnnn and the

. . .'

The rest of the words were lost to
view as the song turned a bend* in the road.

'I wonder if I'll see him again,'
pondered Father Rudden. For that reason he had refrained from paying Milligan
by the day.

*This was a different bend to the
previous one.
S.M.

The pub door flew in and a fast
stream of silent drinkers moved into position. The air was immediately
machine-gunned with a rapid series of orders -' Guinness - Whiskey - Stout -
Gin - Beer -

Rum -Port - Beer -
Stout - Stout -'.
There followed a silence as the day's troubles were
washed away with great liver-crippling draughts of alcohol. Stock still they
stood, waiting the warming glow that makes us acceptable to all men and vice
versa. The first one to feel a powerful benefit was blind George Devine, a thin
white El Greco figure with two sightless sockets.

'Good evenin' all,' he said, 'it's
been a lovely day, has it
not ?'
He spoke with the
authority of a man who had seen it all. Blind since his sixth year, he could
just remember the shapes and colours of the countryside. Those fragile memories
were all he had to relieve his Guinness-blaok darkness. Still vivid was that
last seeing moment.
His sister on the swing, him pushing her
away, mother calling 'Tea-time, children'.

He had turned to say 'Coming Mum',
meeting the full force of the oncoming swing at eye line.

O'Brien was rattling the bar with his
empty glass.

'A drop of the real hard stuff now
lad,' he instructed the spotty thin potboy. O'Brien was the head man round
these parts. He ran the village grocery and took bets. He also had money in the
bank, a cousin in America and a girl in the family way. Forty years old, though
a little puffy in the face, he was still a handsome man.

Like all men in Puckoon, he was
married but single after six at night. When the war started he had, in a fit of
drunken patriotism, joined the Con-naught Rangers, gone to France, caught the
crabs and won the v.c. Arriving home on leave, he was greeted like a hero,
given a presentation casket of blue unction and then thrown into jail for
having obscene French postcards in his haversack. Constable Milli-kudie had
confiscated the offending pictures, and slaved all night duplicating another
hundred. Disguised as a tout, he later sold them to visiting Americans. '

Genuine Dublin night life,' he told
the startled tourists. As a result two American warships were crewless for a
month while the sailors searched Dublin for the like.

O'Brien was joined by his friend, Dr
Sean Goldstein. So Semitic did he look, that even at all-Hebrew parties people
would say,

'Who's that Jewish-looking
feller ?'
He hadjust come from the ailing Dan Doonan, where
the patient had been complaining of a slight improvement.

'He's dying, for sure,' said
Goldstein, parting a Guinness with his nose, ' It's a coronary condition. I
give him the best drugs but,
tsu,
it's just a matter
of time, which I suppose is the sentence we're all under.'

O'Brien lit a cigarette.' I sometimes
think,' he said, mixing his words with smoke, 'it would be kinder to do away
with incurables.'

'Oh, nobody's incurable,' Goldstein
was quick to reply. 'It's just that we don't know the cure, and remember,
what's good for the dying is sometimes bad for the living.' 'Eh?'

'Well, if he dies I'm worse off. Work
it out for yerself.' f