A Galway Epiphany

The Children

Children of the Galway miracle.

Bannered the red top papers.

In bold emphatic headlines, they screeched,

Where are they?

 Who are they?

  Where did they come from?

The journalists had no answers to the above

But

They speculated wildly; it’s their raison d’être.

Later, oh, so much later, they would be known as

“The children of the lie.”

Sara and Salazar were not siblings, but they were related through

Brutality

Pain

Abuse

Torture

Terror.

Sara was part of the above in a sly, subtle fashion.

Sara was sixteen or eighteen but, in the ways of the world, she was middle-aged.

She had developed a chameleon ability to alter her appearance so that she always seemed younger then she was. The drug Eltroxin kept her body as a perpetual girl. No physical development. She found it worked to lower the defenses of the predators and she viewed the world as dominated by the predatory.

She was intent on being the most ferocious of that breed.

Salazar was small and traumatized.

To Sara, he was disposable, as were all the others.

They had been thrown together when a line of refugees were swept up by U.S. border guards then, in a series of errors, they were put on a boat to Europe, landing in Greece, on the island of Kos, where Concern, the Irish charity, rescued a group of children.

More travel. The children had bonded by then and it was just taken as fact that they were siblings. Sal didn’t speak, ever, such was the degree of his trauma. Sara protected him with a ferocity that was almost lethal. She knew how to handle a blade and was rarely without one. Her appearance of utter innocence lured many to mistake her as not only younger but harmless.

She’d been reared in Guatemala and her proudest memory was the trick she’d learned with blue light and a tattoo that spiraled up her left arm. It was of a cobra about to strike and when she bent her arm it gave the illusion of the snake in motion.

She had in her journey three previous “siblings.” She’d slit each one’s throat when they annoyed her.

Sara adapted fast to new surroundings and in the Galway refugee center the inmates were shown a series of religious movies by a bored and misguided nun.

In rapid succession Sara saw such gems as:

The Miracle of Lourdes.

The Secrets of Fatima.

Medjugorje Wonders.

Saw an opportunity.

Then found a leaflet about a dying Irish village, Ballyfin, desperate for a miracle. She knew she’d found her final nirvana.

Persuaded Sal to actually speak, just one sentence, and short,

                    “La Madonna”

Sara had once actually had a sort of mother, at least a woman who lived long enough to name her. In the days before she died (during an attack among the refugees by a cleansing squad), she had told her of Camargue.

The Camargue in southern France, an hour’s drive from Marseille, or if you are fleeing then maybe a lifetime.

A group of people constantly on the move or run has its antecedent in

Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

A region of

Gypsies.

Lagoons.

Black bulls.

Flamingos.

White horses.

It possessed a ferocious kind of beauty that was almost threatening in its fierceness.

So many displaced persons fled there that it was known as the Gypsy Pilgrimage.

According to legend, the Three Marys, witnesses to the Resurrection, were set adrift in a boat from Palestine in AD 45.

With them was their servant Sara.

Sara remained in Camargue, built the church, was buried there.

Every year, bands of Gypsies crowd into the church to pay homage to Sara.

The woman, before she was murdered, said to Sara,

“You will be the one the Gypsies,

The outcasts.

The discarded will worship you but you must give them a miracle.”

In Guatemala, Sara found the blue magic trick of light, knew she just had to wait to find her very own Camargue.

Along the way, she found her own murderous nature; she would be the legendary Sara, with a killer twist.

I’d been watching Durham County.

Fuck, it was dark, darker even than Ozark.

Weird things had happened to me since/because of my accident.

My limp had virtually disappeared, my bad hearing had improved significantly, and the phantom pains in the mutilated right hand were definitely gone.

Miracles?

Fuck knows but I knew enough to ride any gift horse for all it’s worth.

And okay, I’ll fess up: I did a Matt Scudder, meaning I gave tithe to the Church.

And golly, gosh, as fools say, I recited the Our Father daily.

I even added the Protestant rider to it,

  “For thine is the kingdom,

  And the power,

  And the glory.”

If God turned out to be Protestant, I’d be covered and, God knows, bigger turnarounds have occurred. Look at Brexit.

But how was the three-pronged investigation proceeding?

Keefer had met and threatened Benjamin J., our suspected arsonist; he also met and threatened the wife beater/killer.

My part, find the children. Nope.

Not yet.

Monsignor Rael, the Vatican hatchet man, was almost daily harassing me, stressing the amount of money he’d given me.

Maybe I should have gotten Keefer to threaten him.

I continued to exercise ferociously to regain some muscle and energy, and, hold the goddamn phones, I was even taking “African mango.”

It supposedly had terrific restorative powers.

Mainly, it was cheap, like my own self.

Twenty-third of March, we got a few days of nigh summer weather.

As I said, weird all round.

Salthill

In Irish Bóthar na Trá is a seaside area in Galway.

Lying within the townland of Lenaboy.

In the 1930s

Salthill was known as

“The village.”

The Salthill church was built as an outside church in 1938.

In many ways, the whole area of Salthill is other.

If you were born in the actual city, chances are you would never set foot in that church.

I never did until after I met a man named Morgan.

I have not been there since.

One of the great joys of Galway is to stand on the sand at Salthill, gaze out at Galway Bay, imagine the U.S. just over the frontier, to have that almost pleasurable yearning, for what I’ve never known, and maybe that’s part of the appeal.

Early March, who you gonna see?

Dog walkers. Dogs are not banned from the beach until June. People should be banned the rest of the time. Galway City Council were busy fighting over the fact that there were no more graves available in Bohermore (unless you came from money and influence, preferably both).

Bids were already in from firms to have a state-of-the-art crematorium.

Burn, baby, burn.

Dare I say, my dad would have turned in his grave?

I’d burn for sure, before and after.

I’d like to be thrown in the bay.

Especially as I’d thrown various thugs in there over the years. I kid thee not at all.

At the kiosk end of the beach were the stricken remnants of a hen party, a sad to saddest sigh. You could almost smell the Jägermeister, the de rigueur bombshell drink. I needn’t worry about them for a bit as no stir from the scattered bodies.

A man was watching me from the promenade, as if contemplating me or the ocean or both; he definitely seemed to be on the verge of some quandary.

Finally, he hopped from the prom onto the beach, walked determinedly toward me. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kick the shit out of him. It was not only too early but too peaceful.

So far.

Reaching me, he asked,

“Jack Taylor?”

Never, ever a good start. I always wanted to go movie-wise, snap,

“Who wants to know?”

He put out his hand, said,

“I’m Stephen Morgan, and I need your help.”

I sighed, thinking,

Aw, just fuck off.

But went with

“Sorry, I’m all out of helping folk.”

Didn’t faze him. He reached in his jacket, a fine Hugo Boss leather field jacket, took out a stack of notes, large denomination, said,

“Take this, just a few days of your time.”

I took the money. Maybe I could buy a jacket like his. I asked,

“What’s the problem?”

He took out a packet of Marlboro, offered me one, I took it, and he fired us up with a well-bruised Zippo, said,

“I was off them for twenty years.”

Like I gave a fuck, but I said,

“Like the rest of us poor fucks.”

He was in his late forties, jet-black hair in need of a cut, a face that had endured sorrow and recently. He had a look of Tom Hardy but way thinner. His voice was more from learning than genes. He said,

“My daughter, Meredith, has suffered horrendously from trolls, one in particular who goes by the hashtag diebitchsoon.

At first I thought he was speaking German until I broke it down.

Die.

Bitch.

Soon.

Jesus wept.

I asked,

“What age is Meredith?”

He looked like he was having either a stroke or a heart attack, or both.

I put out my hand, held his shoulder, took my emergency small travel flask out of my 501s, said,

“Drink this.”

He looked amazed, asked,

“You carry booze?”

I tried a smile, said,

“And a good thing I do. Drink.”

He did.

Then coughed and shuddered, gasped,

“The fuck is that?”

“Salvation.”

He near whispered,

“Meredith was eleven.”

Past dreaded tense.

Few minutes later, he stood almost straight, said,

“I have tried everything to find out who the demon is, but no luck.”

I asked,

“The Guards?”

He scoffed, near spat, said,

“Cyberbullying they told me is rampant.”

Indeed.

The papers carried horror stories of such daily.

He said,

“Meredith gave me a navy wool tie for my birthday. It was kind of a joke as she knows I hate ties and she had it inscribed with it’s not my thing.”

Fuck.

I said lamely,

“Sounds like a great girl.”

“Was, she was a great girl, the best.”

Oh, God, but I had to ask finally as the past tense again came up.

“How do you mean?”

A small tear rolled down his cheek, the cheeks flushed from the booze. It landed softly on the sand, like an abandoned prayer. He said,

“She’s dead. And I swore to her that I would not only find the bastard but ensure he never bothered her again.”

Then he near shrieked,

“I didn’t find him. He actually increased his campaign of terror as if he knew I was trying to find him or maybe her, who the fuck knows these days.”

I had nothing so said nothing.

With supreme effort he said,

“On her own birthday, she hung herself in her bedroom.”

Pause.

“With the navy tie.”

He rolled up his sleeve, said,

“I was so insane with grief that I got a tattoo. You think I got my daughter’s name?”

I thought so.

He said,

“You’d be wrong.”

Showed me his arm.

In bold Gothic script was

D.

B.

S.