A Galway Epiphany

The nurses were staging a one-day strike, the government was deep in panic as to what would happen if the U.K. crashed out of the EU with no deal in place. Talk of return to a hard border in the North sent shivers through the land; already, two bombs had been exploded in Derry.

Trump was pictured in the White House surrounded by hundreds of McDonald’s Big Macs, fries, milkshakes, for his guests.

A priest refused Communion to a politician who, he said,

“Supported abortion.”

Another step in the Church’s insane determination to alienate all of the people all of the time.

I was in my apartment, reading Declan Coyle’s The Green Platform. I literally had weights on my feet, doing exercises to strengthen the wasted muscles: The weights on my mind had no known exercise to help there.

There was a timid knock on my door.

All sorts of calls had come in the past and none of them ever could be described as timid; knocks usually announced chaos and strife.

I opened the door cautiously. A woman in her fifties stood there, holding a large parcel. She was dressed in what used to be called a sensible coat.

Meaning no frills, simply utilitarian.

She had a face about one feature short of prettiness but energy there suggested a decent nature, which in my troubled life implied she was not going to knife me in the doorway.

Yet.

She had an unlined face, such as you observe only in nuns.

She asked,

“Jack Taylor?”

I nodded: She put out her small hand, said,

“I’m Saoirse, a friend of Sister Maeve.”

Phew-oh.

I said,

“Come in.”

She sat near the window, the large package near her feet. I asked,

“Tea, coffee, whiskey?”

She gave a lovely smile, tinged with melancholia, said,

“No, thank you.”

I asked,

“Are you a nun?”

I seemed to be up to my arse in nuns. She said,

“Heavens, no. Maeve and I have...”

Paused, corrected,

“Had been friends since school.”

Then silence until she shook herself, said,

“Dear me, you must be wondering why I’m here — it’s just so odd to meet you after all Maeve told me.”

Oops.

I tried,

“I was not always at my best in her company.”

Alarm on her face, she protested,

“Oh no, Good Lord, she loved you.”

Wallop my heart. I was astonished, went,

“What?”

She gave me a look that showed some steel beneath the gentle face, asked,

“Nuns can’t love?”

I was lost, said,

“I’m going to have a drink. You want something?”

She relented, asked,

“Perhaps a small sherry?”

I laughed, said,

“Seriously, I look like a guy who keeps sherry?”

I couldn’t quite keep the contempt from my tone, and added,

“Sherry is what you drink in Lent, for bloody penance.”

She bowed her head, as if I’d punched her. I attempted,

“Um, didn’t mean that to sound so harsh.”

She gave a tiny smile, said,

“Maeve said you were angry at the world.”

I bit down, lest I do more verbal carnage, poured two Jays, left her glass beside her, knocked back my own. She indicated the package at her feet, said,

“That is for you.”

When I made no move, she continued,

“Your Garda jacket was at Maeve’s. She asked me to put it in the dry cleaners. Said it was the only real link you had to your past, but she...”

Pause.

“Died, before she could collect it so I felt I should honor her wish.”

I still didn’t move, I was so taken aback.

She stood, adjusted her coat, said,

“Well, I’ll be going. Thank you for seeing me.”

She let herself out the door and was gone.

I have done a lot of shitty things in my life, reached all sorts of lows, but, right then, right there, I felt I had hit a whole new level of bollix.

Sister Consuela/Connie was in a rage, said,

“I’m so angry I could freaking spit.”

Her second in command, a woman from New York named Brid, had just told her that the expected revenue from new recruits hadn’t materialized.

Their hastily erected tent, close to the site of the miracle, had cost them more cold cash than anticipated. Brid said,

“These Irish muthus, these sons of bitches, they have so much work from other interested parties that they can charge what they like.”

And indeed, every half-baked religious band/con men/charities/refugee campaigners were vying for tent space close to the memorial.

Miracles were a surefire chance to make a fast buck but the window was small. Public interest would fade, the media would lose interest, and the golden calf of lucre would be lost.

Connie asked,

“Did you find the children?”

They were key.

Who held the children held the ace.

Brid said,

“I know where they are but, again, ‘it costs’ for the info.”

Connie was scheming like a banshee; she’d survived two marriages to two assholes, served a year in hard-core prison for fraud, and knew how to fight.

Mostly, she knew how to fight dirty.

Ireland was pretty much the last chance for the Sisters of Solace to acquire a presence. Connie allowed herself a rare cigarette, Virginia Slims, blew furious clouds of smoke, asked,

“What is needed to differentiate this miracle from all the other gigs?”

  Lourdes

  Knock

  Medjugorje

  Fatima

It was telling that Connie saw all these shrines as gigs.

Brid said,

“Well, they usually have poor children, seeing the Madonna, promising reward for penance, and, publicized properly, they create a whole industry.”

Connie, not the most patient of nuns, snapped,

“I know all that, but what, what has never happened with them all?”

Brid didn’t know, was wishing Connie wouldn’t blow smoke in her direction.

Connie said,

“Graham Greene said,

  Why after all should

  We expect God

  To punish the innocent

  With mere living.”

Brid didn’t know much about Graham Greene and had no idea what the quote meant so she said nothing.

Connie was excited as the notion crystallized in her mind, said,

“For the visionaries to die.”

Brid had been with Connie long enough to know she had a deep, well-hidden insanity, a madness that knew very little of morality, but she was appalled as she risked,

“You mean hurt the children?”

Connie’s face lit up. She said,

“Exactly. Kill the little bastards.”

Meanwhile, Benjamin J. Cullen had selected a new target. He didn’t have a system of choice, relying on someone crossing his path who invoked his ire.

Such was Thomas Rooney, an American grad student at National University of Ireland, Galway. This was a cosy racket to lure naive Americans to study in the West of Ireland. Hopscotch of

Joyce.

Beckett.

Yeats.

And the usual suspects.

Were put on a reading list for the gullible Yanks, then doled out in haphazard lectures by Real Irish Writers.[1] The yearlong course cost upwards of 15,000 bucks. Plus of course the grad students would be given the opportunity to drink in real Irish pubs with the above writers and talk shite.

Rooney’s path crossed Benjamin’s in Garavan’s, where Rooney was lecturing a young woman on the merits of Beckett versus Joyce.

Benjamin had actually interrupted Rooney mid-lecture, said mildly,

“I think you need to reread Krapp’s Last Tape before you attempt to discourse on his merits.”

Rooney had looked at him with derision, dismissed him with,

“What would you know? You’re too old to even grasp the meaning of Godot.”

Benjamin felt the age insult was way out of line. It didn’t take more than two days for the insult to mutate to hate.

Rooney had a ground-floor apartment along the canal, had been out for a scatter of pints with a Joyce scholar who had insisted,

“All you need to understand about Joyce is contained in the line shite and onions.”

Rooney had no idea what that meant but felt it might be the kind of conversational showstopper he could drop among his fellow students.

Took him a few minutes to fumble his key into the lock, finally managed it, staggered into the hallway, and was hit hard on the back of the head.

He came to, tied to his one kitchen chair and his clothes drenched in liquid, a liquid that smelled strongly of...

Of what?

Gas?

Diesel?

A man was standing by the door, holding something in his hand, something small; the guy looked vaguely familiar. Rooney stared at him in terror. The man said,

“See this?”

Held up a long single match, continued,

“This is not a safety match so basically it should light against, say, this doorjamb.”

He struck the match against the wood, it didn’t catch, he said,

“Oops.”

He asked,

“What do you say, best of three?”