The Troubles (14 page)

CHAPTER 24: Is fear rith maith na drochsheasamh (He who runs away, lives to fight another day)

     Quinn Taggart…Quinn’s vision burned and struggled in the dimming light of the subterranean stone cavern, sharpened ornately by bygone worshippers of medieval era. Worn by time’s incessant destruction, edges had softened and pale grey sediment rested upon ancient tablets and Pagan alters. His excitement was palpable as he squinted past his brother’s closest of compatriot’s obstructing presence.  “Alastar, tis that ya? Are ya there?” Behind great stone columns there was a fluttering of soft padded paws and gracefully coming into view, wild, abnormally large feline eyes were the only other sentient presence in this shaded cave, making Quinn feel evermore melancholy. “Coraline, come here little one!” The tall figure purred and reached down to stroke the minute beast that had begun to figure 8 the man’s long, strong sinewy legs. Quinn’s confounded bewilderment was painted unapologetically across his handsome, cherub like features, ones that conveyed within him his gentle attributes.

     “Why did ya bring me here Sir? Where is me brother?”

     “Do ya believe in the Lord, Quinn?”

     Dutifully polite, though taken aback, the boy answered, “Aye s’pose I do. But seriously, where is Alastar?”

     The man’s face morphed in the shadows allowing the menace of this soldier’s true sadism full disclosure. Quinn was instinctually afraid, as there was something awry in his companion’s tone and he maneuvered with stalking motions as he was ensnaring his prey and hunting his victim. “Would ya die for the Catholics or is it the bloodlust of the IRA that yer keen on?”

     ‘’I am Catholic Mister.  I believe in Jesus Christ.”

     “What of the Bible then, Son? Does it vanquish the need for all the scripture come before it and all that is now to be scribed in this new day?” The interrogating man stood just two feet away from the much smaller and trembling youth.

     “Sir… the Bible has brought peace to me family and I through all this horror, but, but, I would never be so vain as to deny any of me kinfolk’s pagan writing’s. I know, that Alastar believes truly in the Druid like.’’

     “Well son, I have surmised that the Bible’s parables and platitudes are daftly anemic, even unnecessary, as the glory of one’s life surmounts the Christian fear of death. Good, holy Christians fear hellfire, so to avoid it, they are kind to their fellow man. Good pagans like Alastar do not have this fear, so they can be who they are, good or ill, as their true nature dictates.” The man’s mouth grinned wide displaying his decaying teeth now savoring every word on his tongue with obvious satisfaction. “We have no fear of God so we are accountable to no one but each other.’’

     Quinn desperately attempted to deescalate what was a torrid growing tension. “That tis a terrible, great responsibility, Sir.”

     “Aye that is true, straight from the mouth of babes,” he sneered. With a torrent of agile motions the determined soldier drew an antiquated serrated blade from a undisclosed location, the steel forged with molten force and preserved for human sacrifices. He slid it’s sharp edge across the soft skin of Quinn’s throat and was witnes
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to the boy’s fear and immeasurable sorrow for the child, in that awful instant, knew he would never see his family and life again. From the victims clasped fist, a crumpled token of good luck, a shamrock, fell onto the ground. The insane smile on the mortal’s face flared wickedly against his weather beaten, pale skin. He was jubilant that his grand undertaking had parlayed perfectly into fruition as the plan was then in flight.  Embracing the blood soaked limp body of the innocent lad, he murmured quietly into an open ear, “Thank ya child. This ‘tis not yer end but yer beginning. Ya will be held like a king in the Otherworld, riches aplenty, beauty of youth eternal and in time ya will be joined.”  Unquenched, unsmiling lips dripping with the pink saliva of his goodbye, stained the aging man’s powder white beard as he bent to kiss the boy farewell.

CHATPER 25:  Nuair a bhionn an t-ol istigh, bionn an chiall amuigh. (When the drink is in, the sense is out)

     Kiera Flanagan…The amber liquid is broiling an ulcer deep in the core of my innards. I had gone through every cranny of the house and landed with a thud at my Father’s bar of patriotically Irish whiskeys. The bottle had touched my lips with such a need that I nursed until I gasped for air. Perhaps the only way to feel is to feel the white-hot pain of alcohol poisoning my organs in a slow yet sincere form of suicide. I am as empty as the great open sky above as I mimic a beleaguered mourner. Funeral proceedings were mine alone to prepare and respectfully deliver as my father’s accountant sat before me going over the meager Flanagan estate. He had squarely asked me, “Lass are ya to be betrothed? I can’t imagine a fair child alone in that house with it in that condition to be maintained.” I wanted to tear out his throat and scream neither can I and damn you and Father for not so subtly coveting a man in place of a girl. I barely betrayed my grieving exterior as I meekly signed each document and left the building fleeing from the anxiety the reality-inducing situation had brought on.

     The Shankill Methodist church was crowded between buildings within the fever of the Middle Shankill suburb. Washed with a cloudy film across the sparse group of my extended relatives was the tension and trepidation of entering a site, which was now clearly being targeted. “I will not risk me life and limb. I’m sorry!” my aunt declared not so mutedly, allowing further ripples of fear to ruminate and create suspicion.

     I wearily attended to the wide-eyed furiously blinking, elder sister of my brother. “Please Aunt Sarah, this is what father would have wanted.”

     “Nay. He would have wished us all to stay home, away from fear of death,” the matriarch insisted, taking her stout body upon the steps and blockading us from barging through the heavy iron doors. As if in some universal synchronism, a booming loud bang was heard as our huddled mass all clamored wildly and some fleeing not so heroically, screaming bloody murder, as forcefully as so many elderly lungs could. My senses guided me as I smelled the crisp clear winter air for there was no scent of fire nor gun smoke and as my hooded eyes scanned the narrow street left then right, I could see in the midday light, not a thing out of the usual character of common street life. The people closest to me all appeared to be assessing the situation similarly allowing our judgments to guide us. Moments ticked slowly until my young cousin, a mechanic, loudly determined it was but a car engine back firing which allowed the group an ease to the adrenaline that shone wickedly in every eye. Without any contention from myself, the assigned preacher proclaimed civilly that he would allow the service to continue in the Shankill Methodist Churches graveyard as to appease any fraught superstitions.

     “Let’s head out for wee dander folks,’’ the preacher stated. His brown shrouded face wore sad detachment and perhaps exhaustion as he gave the funeral address that I had mulled over and decided upon, thinking to please Mother and Father.

“Psalm 90: Lord thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst form, the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which growth up.

In the morning it flourisheth , and growth up; In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.”

     Loud, coughing sobs poured frantically from Aunt Sarah who had placed herself to the right of the preacher, thus assuming leadership. Without so much as a twitch to his lip, the preacher carried on.

    ‘’The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength, they be fourscore years, yet it is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. ‘’

    The remnants of last evening’s liquor swirled in a perfect storm inside my foggy mind as the prayer simultaneously eased and yet put every stable foundation I have ever known in disarray. I squinted with blurred sight at the December sun that shone a burnished gold through wilting yellow edged green leaves breathing life upon the wintering foliage. As I raised the pale skin of my face to placate to the rare sunlight I gulped in the fresh nipping air.

     “I truly cannot imagine a life where me brother Piaris is not here for me to chide and his wife Una was like me very own flesh and blood.’’ Again Aunt Sarah was crowing garishly amongst a trapped group of relatives as they formed a misshapen circle around her and with little avail attempted to comfort her. I fixed my gaze upon my father’s only living sibling and marveled at the genetically similar features on her lined face.  With a rare impish thought, I curled a thin smile, as it was glaringly apparent the woman was subconsciously sucking the air dry for her own need of constant, coddling attention.    ‘’Oh my why, Piaris?  Ya will be the death of me!”

  With a tinge of mockery her hand dramatically fanned her apple red chubby cheeks. “There, there, t’is the only way.  They are with the lord. We should get Mother to her gaff.  She’s obviously bate.’’ Her adult daughter, whom had received every genetic trait possible when she was born, gave me a pointed look of consternation and turned to walk away. The family I felt I barely knew, although we had lived with them but weeks earlier during our homes fiery invasion, like newborn blind mice, trailed Aunt Sarah’s emotionally garish departure. The shock and irony that I was not dealt the same level of sympathy angered me as I could feel the lasting effects of whiskey’s irrationality in my lithe physique and with keen olfactory senses smelled the sour stink of drink perspiring from my agitated pores. I was the godforsaken one alone and now sullied. Ena’s parents had restrained her will to accompany me to my parent’s funeral. Tearfully she wept weakly and broken, as she had left the threshold of my empty home.

   “Kiera I must go to their gaff!’’ she had gasped. “Da will give me a batin’ if I dare put meself in direct peril by going to the West Kirk Church. But as soon as ya return give me a ring and no matter what, even if I must creep out an open window, I’ll come over.’’ I had little energy for restraint but nevertheless, the moment her warm-blooded body left me, the weight of the abject emancipation I felt, cut like a hot blade piercing it’s blade through my ribs deep into my heart.

     The weight of semi-frozen deep brown dirt weighed heavily upon glinting silver shovels which moved in an artificially sub-human formation, maneuvering the native terrain of fertile topsoil; heavy wet mud, light grains of sand and particles of green peat moss peaked through the rich earth, as broken pieces of city gravel crashed onto the two perfectly rectangular coffins which lay lonely and subterranean in the six foot deep grave. The thudding of the dirt was perhaps too monotonous and methodical and it began to irritate me as I stared down like a lifeless drone at the only real love I have ever known awaited to disappear under a ton of terra firma.

     Piaris Flanagan had been orphaned by the suckling age of two and had been left in the care of my great grandparents along with his two close in age older siblings. Undoubtedly, this common occurrence had imprinted upon him that strictness of the law was the only maneuver in polite society, as the generous age gap between himself and his legal guardians was a gaping one. My grandmother had succumbed to the of modern age trivial ailments of home birthing and had gasped her last breath seconds before my father had screamed into life. My grandfather’s tale is the more infamous one, as the man I never met, had tirelessly milled on the hull of the RMS Titanic and through his own ingenuity acquired a respectable job as a crewmember on the 1912’s disastrous maiden voyage. His watery grave seemed to haunt Father as he avoided the ocean like a plague and wickedly cursed at the violent storms the Irish Sea drew. My mother Una, perhaps too beautiful, for a commonplace Irishmen, seemed unaware of his insecurities and delighted in taking me to the ocean shore and would partake like a kid sister frolicking in the surf as Father had clucked nervously some distance away.

     The recent expenditure of morbid, bereaved and ultimately dismal emotions exhausted me and had bankrupted any reserves I might have had. The weeping had been loud and aggressive at times and at others weak and pitiful. I had fallen asleep at moments of false distraction only to wake seconds later as though a shotgun had ripped through my very core.

     The cold earth beneath felt inviting and as my legs pleaded I sat next to the now covered grave, sights against a neighboring recently constructed headstone. I did not look at the etched in granite name and age of the deceased, as I could no longer humanize the dead in this overflowing graveyard, as that would imply to my broken mind that Mother and Father rested here as well. Once again, the inviting chill of December’s dusk kept me roused though sleep kept beckoning.  My recent bout of hypothermia still marred my rosy pink flesh and hypersensitivity to the cold brought tears to my eyes as liquid mucous streamed down my ashen face. One could mistake my physical reaction as grief and pass me by but as I sat like a small child sullenly having a spoiled temper tantrum, in a way I had succumbed to the dismal scene.  Mercifully, a strong male voice reached out through my fog of grief and I guided my eyes up past long legs that stood like thin, steady birch tree trunks, looking upon a navy blue wool winter’s jacket with worn cuffs and in desperate need of darning, finally resting my teary sight upon a unkempt, cotton soft beard of white that bordered a plainly ordinary smile of an upper middle aged man.