The Troubles (2 page)

     “Kiera lets get ya out of here!’’ My father’s colorless expression comes into my stupefied frame of vision, much like a cold mannequin behind a window dressing before he roughly grabs me by my small waist and drags me like a ragdoll in the teeth of a pit-bull out of my reverberating bedroom which is in an uproar of flurried fire. The curtains behind me are engulfed in a yellow light so radiant it obliterates the remnants of my nightmare in their blaze. My mother’s grim face is so remote and stressed I do not recognize her expression until I realize the screams I am distinguishing are hers. There is an acrid smell that hits me square in my face, rushing and pushing its way into my lungs and demanding me to choke on its vile death.

     “Kiera are ya all right?” My mother gets ahold of herself and clamping down on my wrist with nails biting deep, she leads me down our steps with little care into the damp, freezing night before us. We collide in a heap of bodies on the cold concrete sidewalk. ‘’Yer father is he...?'' Mother weakly asks as she begins violating me with her cold hands searching desperately for burns on her only child.

     Our house is a humble yet sturdy dwelling; I can hear my father cursing loudly through the rawboned plaster walls, “This bleeding house is bogging ruined!'' as my window blinds are torn from the view and doused with a pail of frigid water. Through the decimated glass pane he frantically insists for us to call the police. “Ring the damn peelers!'' Disheveled Cambrai Streets residents are streaming out of their laid brick attached homes to inspect our damages; they placate nervously amongst themselves to resolve the panicked fear that they too have been accosted. Their quiet concerns of inaudible sympathy are replaced by jarring audible sighs of self-interested relief. I do not fault them for their obvious callousness as I too have felt the same when it has not my father who was lying prone on the slab.

     Shankill Road used to be a protestant haven with the government appointed UVF, covertly decimating separatist Catholic defectors, though not cloaked enough for me to not to comprehend their level of brutality, gossip is to this community as wood is essential to fire. The night’s boorish dreams are penetrating through the shocking episode of the eve as I sympathize that the attack on my home seems so insignificant in comparison to the retaliation I see in the vengeful eyes circled like the Masonic Freemasons with my small family ensnared in their ritual.

CHAPTER 4: “Erin Go Bragh’’ (Ireland Forever)

      Alastar Taggart…Reardon Sloan’s mother has a malicious tone in her cold cadence as she stares down at her boy’s lifeless face. She had insisted I go with her to view and identify him. The matronly woman informs me on the way over to the morgue this morning that I am completely responsible for bringing her young son of seventeen to meet his demise. Never more feeling as though I am marching to my own impending end, I want to look in her broken eyes and tell my best friend’s mother, I too am but a fledgling man on the precipice of true adulthood, but I am paralyzed with a fear when I look into her accusatory eyes as I have yet to encounter her true justice. 

     Reardon is a ghastly mosaic of early decay, grey and white. His limbs have stiffened with rigamortous and his youthful musculature looks gnarled like a worm ridden holly sapling on the steel slab before us. His skull has been broken in such a way that the schoolboy’s once robust rounded features are lopped to one side like my uncle after his stroke and his broken neck has given his head an unnaturally bent posture. Sour vomit and revulsion rush through me and before I can stabilize myself I collapse. ‘’Away on with ye, ye dirty blurt. Don’t ya dare consecrate me lad.’’ Mrs. Sloan crisply dismisses my anxiety and I run like a coward away from my friend and one-time comrade, as it is too much for me to comprehend at this moment how he could have been alive and animated yesterday and now departed and lifeless.

     Outside on slick green grass comes a torrent of searing vicious bile. My cheeks split painfully from the brutal, repetitive, irrepressible revulsions. As I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand I muster some semblance of my outer propriety. The brave decorum I possess must return before I am to face Father and my siblings. Father will already have the biased account of what has happened; as malicious gossip is the only conversation he bears human contact for. 

     As I have aged into a man I have taken on the appearance of my father but the nature of his wrath, addiction and contempt for having being abandoned by his wife and relegated with four incessant bellies there is little resemblance to. My onyx black hair carry’s youthful sheen whereas his lackluster gray has lost its candescence years earlier. My verdant green eyes still reverberate my authentic emotions before I can conceal them. My father’s dull eyes, which harbor his defeat, are the color of sea kelp, yet through all the abuses his body is still enduring, he is robust and maintains himself as my most fearsome opponent.  

     Thinking of the disappointment that waits reminds me of the rival affection, lest loyal love, I feel for my father. I do not wish to involve him or my young brothers in convoluted IRA actions. I know there is acceleration in recruitment, which makes us all prime candidates. I am the eldest and it is my place to defend us from our neighbor’s let alone the monarch, which could be continents away for all I give a shit about. As I raise my shoulders and wipe my soiled, vomit-streaked face I have nobility to my stance now. I walk past the gaudy repugnant murals that line the consecrated streets feeling purged and anew. 

     My father’s stench of pungent brown liquor and stale sweat greets me as I make my way into our unpretentious kitchen. I am starving; my hunger etching its way deep into my gut. The day’s expulsions have weakened my burgeoning form’s normally steely vigor. I noiselessly make my way past the inebriated loathsome figure that sits foreboding like an aging monarch at our kitchen table. A cigarette is sitting in the crook of his mouth unlit and unnoticed.

     “Bout ye Da? How are ye doing this morn?’’ He ought to be acknowledging me as his eyes flicker with recognition. There is muteness in his dull lack of a response, which I am grateful for.  We communicate in polarizing dark violent blacks and sentimental forgiving whites and I’m covetous for the pale calm grays in between but that ability if it ever existed in him, must have been extinguished before I was born. 

     ‘’Have ye seen Quinn, Da?” My voice is low and respectful and I feel that aching paternal concern for my younger brother. “Come on, let’s get ya away from the kitchen door. Ta se guar go elor inniu. It is bloody cold in here.’’ His gaze lazily drags up my body to meet mine. I know just by the absence of electricity that courses through our exchanges when I have apparently blundered that he must be oblivious to yesterday’s calamities. There is a part of me that masochistically wants him to pummel me to show me he cares even if the abuse is ugly, but nothing, he is vacant. He latches like a leech to my shoulder and we walk in warped sync as though we have done this march thousands of previous times and there is nothing obtuse about a son chaperoning his father to bed.

CHAPTER 5; ‘’ IS Fhearr fheychainn na bhith san duil (It is better to try than to hope)

     Kiera Flanagan… “Is cuma liom. Mom, I’m okay, please let me stay home. I’m too tired for the service today.” In actuality, I know the Flanagan family will be the public face of victimization exploiting the erosion that is eating the fabric of our society. It feels much like an outbreak and I am patient number one. Mother is nervously making her way through our home inspecting, repeating her tasks neurotically.

     She interjects dismissing my reluctance,“Ya cannot stay here because yer Da and cousins are going to fix the bummed upstairs.” She pauses and grabs my hand so tightly the blood washes white. “Oh me Lord, me lovely daughter.’’ She is inspecting my face again for any damage that I might be concealing as I am getting more proficient at disguising my fears as the months go by and I leave my childhood in the wake of Ireland.

     “Stop it. Leave me be!” I am equally frustrated with my parents and yank my face away. “I’m frigging fine! We are Okay, could have been a whole lot worse Ma.”

     How can they be so visionless to how shortsighted the political conflict is? Why have they chosen to align with their side of circumstance? Do they have any real tangible reason to be on one side or another? I clearly think not!

    I am lazily behind my mother in submissive step as we are making our way to the dead center of our Shankill suburb. On the structured horizon the West Kirk Presbyterian Church comes into a crowning glory. Though its gray stonewalls are enveloped in a morning mist instead of evoking a calm in my spirit, the spiritual stronghold presents faithless to me like every other inanimate dwelling on the summit in the foreground.

     Beyond the heavy cast iron doors the cathedral ceiling is buckled and recessed in the common fashion of midcentury architecture. Seated piously in the wooden pews hold with exception, every protestant I know; they are my relatives, neighbors, and classmates. Not one of them, though, with their downcast piteous glances has invoked a passionate response that the bewitching young man with vivid green eyes has. I am unapologetically naive to this kind of captivation and as I stand on shaky legs in the aisle, delicious delirium erupts deep in the recesses of my torso. ‘’Sit Down child.’’ Mother choicely demands me to slide down the narrow pews, as she finally looks me clear in the eyes.

     ‘’Forgive me Ma.” I am gutted with shame, wiping away any lascivious thoughts. They are the most worthy of parents and are doing the best with what they have been attributed in their respective births. She has already pardoned my folly without need of my apology though had I cursed in my father’s earshot I would have received a smart trouncing. The service begins with an enchanting hymn, the organ resonating deep as the chorus of voices enclose around me as I cross my hands over my scratchy, woolen, ankle-length skirt. 

     ‘’Fight the good fight with all thy might; Christ is thy Strength, and Christ thy Right; Lay hold on life, and it shall be thy joy and crown eternally. Faint not nor fear, His arms are near, He changeth not, and thou art dear. Only believe, and thou shalt see that Christ is all in all to thee.’’ 

     There is an ethereal transformative quality to the instructive prayer. My mother’s chaotic molecular vibrations seem to have rearranged with metaphysical transformation visible only to me because I’ve mastered her stirs and cherish these moments with the most rarefied of familial love. Her hand reaches to the worn black bible in the pew before her and strokes it with humility.

      It is not the message of Christianity but the confinement of the church and its interpretation of the Bible that’s been long an issue for me. I prefer Celtic paganism and its openness to a magnitude of interpretations and traditions. I have long had strong misgivings toward female servitude toward men in the Protestant Church. Druid acknowledgement that the Divine has both male and female aspects is enlightening. 

     I have lived my entire existence in Belfast; a cesspool of a city flanked by highland meadows as opposite as fire is to water; lush pastures of striking flowers, bright green patriotic shamrocks, sodden bogs and deep fens, hard oak and white birch wood forests. Predatory red fox, elusive red deer, wily otters, short tailed stoat, and diminutive pygmy shrew roam wild and have inhabited the isle for millennia without disturbance until a couple hundred years my fellow countryman began to hunt them in sustainable manner. In the cool temperate ocean that surrounds the sequestered land dwell deep in the depths curious and playful bottlenose dolphins, lethargic sea walruses, and cunning sleek white and black killer whales. The principle of love and a kinship with nature is perhaps my greatest pull to pagan beliefs. With the incestuous intertwining of  ‘The Lord' and island politics superseding all that is just and honorable to me I have turned my back to any Christian church, pivoting my spirit to unsheltered creatures mighty and small, my soul in awe of indigenous vibrant fauna that has flourished even with extreme isolation from the mainland’s resources. I travel past city limits as often as possible breathing sacred air going unnoticed in my humble journey as perhaps any farmhand would.

     I work in, most ludicrously, the notorious Short Brothers Aerospace Factory, which produces turboprop airliners, and missiles for the British Armed Forces, five wearying days a week, ten hours a day. My job is a patriotic profession, a pride to my family as I am the Flanagan’s only child and having neither resources nor superior intellect to go to London to pursue a higher education; I am confined to a proverbial servitude. At nineteen years old there is an unspoken financial burden I feel from my mother and father to marry. I have had admirers to whom I have appeared uncharacteristically timid and supplicant, my fear masking my strength and sensuality. A fragile beauty my mom appeases all that question her. I have yet to characterize myself as this but her words slowly inhabit me insidiously seeping in, I feel forsaken and isolated in my outlined role. Fortunately the unrestraint of the ancient druidism lest naturism of my homeland inspire my inner wild banshee and when I covertly vacate urban flow I feel at peace with myself not stifled by oppressive conditions.  

CHAPTER 6: “Tachraidh na daoine, ach cha tachair na cnuic.”(Men will meet, but the hills will not)

      Alastar Taggart…Winters icy chill is drawing near as fall comes to its end and the days are resting earlier in cloaked darkness thus giving permission to unsavory characters, as there is unbridled criminal activity from dusk till dawn. November rain is coming down in veracious currents erasing all nefarious evidence as though a city as corrupt as Belfast would have a police force examining and discarding it. Word has migrated to me this morning through backwater channels that I am being summoned to meet with Cathal Goulding.