Galway Girl

I was waiting outside my apartment, a battered holdall, a crate of hooch by my Docs, the wax coat cutting the strong, bitter wind off the bay.

I missed my all-weather coat, the Garda one.

Gone with my nun.

A vintage Land Rover pulled up, the driver got out, followed by a German shepherd; the man and dog had the same vibe:

... don’t fuck with me.

We’d take that under advisement.

The man said,

“Taylor!”

I nodded, he held out a large callused hand, covered in scars and recent bites, the falcon I figured. He said,

“Keefer.”

He was a cross between Robert Shaw, as he was in Jaws, and Keith Richards, after he fell out of that tree.

Wore a Willie Nelson bandanna, biker boots over combat trousers.

He had plenty of gray-white hair, a face so lined you could see craters in it, eyes behind aviator shades, and a lean muscled body, none of it going to fat.

He growled,

“What’s in the crate?”

I said,

“A selection of Jameson, bourbon, scotch, and Bushmills.

The Bush in case you are a black Protestant.”

He nearly smiled, said,

“Let’s get you stored away, dude.”

We did.

His voice, I would learn, was a blend of

Hipster (the sixties type)

Scottish

Surfer

Biker.

If he’d been literary, he could have played Hemingway or James Crumley.

I sat in the shotgun seat. He put the jeep in gear and eased into traffic, hit the music band, and the Stones’

“Sweet Virginia”

Flowed.

He asked,

“You speak American?”

I sure did, said,

“Like a good ole boy.”

He went down-home South Carolina, drawled,

“I sure done check you out, boy.”

That might get a little bit irritating, but I asked,

“What did you find?”

He reached into the glove department, drew out a spliff, asked,

“Do us the honor.”

I did, took a hit, and passed it to him, trying to ignore the gun butt I’d spotted in the glove compartment. He drew deep, said,

“You read like a mean son of a bitch.”

The dog leaned from the backseat, nuzzled my ear. Keefer said,

“You just done passed the crucial test.”

I knew he meant if the dog didn’t like me, my arse was gone.

The joint seemed to ease the grim line of his jaw and he expertly navigated the son of a bitch roundabout on the Headford road. He said,

“Here’s the deal.”

Looked at me.

I said,

“I cannot bear the excitement.”

He snarled,

“I just added a new rule to the series.”

A line of spittle on his mouth as he warned,

“Don’t be goddamn snarky. I hate that shit, and Jagger was always running that gig.”

A low rumbling from the dog.

Keefer pulled into a lay-by, said,

“I need a piss.”

He and the dog disappeared into some brush.

Was it some sort of bizarre test?

It crossed my mind to fuck the hell off. He’d left the key in the ignition and, just as I thought I’d do that, a new track flowed from the speaker,

“Strange Boat”

      By

The Waterboys.

The name of the foundation that began and maintained the Circle of Life Garden was Strange Boat, in honor of a young man who worked as a sound tech for the Waterboys.

Ah, the Waterboys, like the Saw Doctors, one of the great bands to come out of Galway in the eighties.

The lead singer / lyricist, Mike Scott, looked like what a rock singer should look like. Many of us believed they should have been the band that emerged globally, not U2.

If you come to Galway, get thee to the Roisin Dubh and maybe catch Mike doing the awesome “Fisherman’s Blues” — almost like “Waltzing Matilda” on ludes.

(Note to millennials, if you can spare a moment from the goddamn phone: ludes were quaaludes, the chill-out drug of choice for mellow times.)

Keefer and the dog were back, got in, he burned rubber out of there. He handed me a flask, said,

“Chill, bro.”

I took a slug. Wow, hard-core. Near spluttered, asked,

“The fuck’s that?”

He cackled, said,

“Maker’s Mark with sipping sour mash.”

I drew a breath, my eyes watering, choked,

“The rules?”

He growled them

Like this:

1. Don’t ask for Rolling Stones anecdotes.

2. Ten hours in the field.

3. Stay away from the armory.

4. Keefer’s word is the word.

I lit a Red, blew out a near perfect ring that the dog tried to snatch, and said,

“I don’t do rules.”

He laughed, loud and lethal, the dog gave me a quick nuzzle. I asked,

“What’s his name?”

You could see his face soften when the dog was the topic. He said,

“Jones.”

Dilemma, was this a Stones anecdote?

Fuckit.

I asked,

“For Brian Jones?”

He sneered,

“That loser. No, I had me a heroin jones, real bad, and just as I went biblically cold turkey the dog found me, in the woods, the barrel of my gun in my mouth.”

We rounded the bend where you come to Cong, bypassed the lake, pulled up on the edge of the woods. He said,

“Home.”

A log cabin, frontier style, sat back in a clearing, smoke rising from a chimney, piles of neatly cut wood stacked on the side, a corral with two horses, then to the back, a small cottage, neatly white and solid. He said,

“The cottage is yours.”

We put away the supplies. No sign of the falcon. I asked,

“The bird?”

He strode across wood floors, his boots resounding, opened a room to the back. There on its perch, hooded, was my falcon, looking way better than my last sighting. He said,

“This is a full-fledged falcon. She’d been trained and by an expert. Somebody should be missing a bird as valuable as this but, then, maybe the owner was shot too. I made some inquiries but no one is reporting a missing falcon.”

He paused, considered, then,

“She’s ready to hunt.”

I gazed at her. She was fierce and beautiful, utterly still, a wonder of the sky. I involuntarily loud swallowed. Keefer said,

“She has that effect on me every time. Your buddy said you called her Maeve.”

I nodded, my throat constricted. He asked,

“That your wife’s name?”

I managed,

“A nun.”

He did a double take, then said,

“Of course.”

I checked his bookshelf, a laden one, tomes spilling out all over the shelves.

I pulled out Charles Maturin’s novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

Published in 1820 by the Dublin vicar, it is a Faustian story.

Melmoth is the classic loner, trailing the prospect of ferocious evil in his wake.

Its most notable fan was Baudelaire.

There were other dark books:

Aleister Crowley, Kenneth Anger and his Hollywood Babylon,

Various bios of the Stones and Led Zep, in particular, Jimmy Page and the years of the occult.

Then Harry Crews, Hunter S. Thompson, Capote’s Music for Chameleons.

Poetry,

The doomed ones mainly:

Anne Sexton

Ted Hughes

Robert Lowell

If you can tell a person by his library, then what did I learn about Keefer?

I muttered,

“Keep a gun ready.”

Keefer provided me with a falconer’s vest; it had an abundance of pockets.

Then a thick leather glove. He surveyed me, said,

“Let’s rock.”

The first afternoon we spent getting the bird to fly from Keefer to me.

Scared and exhilarated me. Took a lot of time and my arm was tired from keeping it outstretched, and it involved lots of small pieces of meat as lure.

I daren’t think where they came from.

I knew, there and then, though fascinated, enthralled by the falcon, I would never be able to like setting it loose to kill birds.

The first time it landed on my arm after exhausting hours, it hit with such force I nearly fell.

God almighty, the power.

Keefer ambled over the length of field to ask

How it felt.

I was almost in a trance, staring at the bird, but managed,

“Like I was hit by a Limerick hurler.”

Attempts by me to tie off the hood for the bird, using my teeth to secure the length of lead from the hood, were a pitiful failure.

Darkness began to fall, thank fuck.

Keefer said,

“Okay, let’s get some brews.”

No sweeter words.

Keefer made dinner, asked,

“Steaks?”

There was a table cut from what seemed literally the stump of a tree. It had been polished but still maintained a rustic vibe. The falcon had been set on her perch, hooded, in the corner.

I asked,

“That to get her used to us?”

Keefer laughed, said,

“No, to get you used to her.”

Hmm.

Keefer was standing over a battered stove, grilling the steaks, adding onions, peppers. Smelled real good, though I worried how Maeve might react.

She was making cooing sounds that had me a little on edge. Keefer turned to me, said,

“She’s happy. Worry when she’s silent.”

That was so reassuring.

Keefer asked,

“With the steaks, a nice Lafite, from ’98, I think.”

Wine.

The fuck I knew from wine.

I’d drink it from the lavatory — might even have over the years. He stared at me for a moment, then laughed, said,

“Buddy, the fuck I care about wine? Pulling your chain. Grab us a coupla longnecks from the fridge.”

I did. He set the steaks in front of us, large French loaf to wipe the sauce, baked spuds oozing in butter, gravy, and beans. I had an appetite.

When was the last time I had that?

I’d hazard ’99, like the Lafite.

Finished, he lit up from a soft pack of Camels, said,

“Eddie Bunker’s fave cig.”

If he said so.

He pointed to a cupboard above the bookshelf, said,

“Have a look in there, see what bourbon you fancy.”

There was a huge range of bottles, and in the corner — right in the corner — a Walther PPK.

I might know fuck all about wine but, by Christ, I know guns.

       The next few days, it was evident my heart wasn’t in falconry.

I loved to see the bird fly, soar, dive, and marveled at its slick, beautiful focus.

But watching it kill...

Not so much.

I know, I know, the violence in my past and, worse, in my heart, but the deliberate hunting down of the birds, it turned my stomach.

And I do understand ’tis nature but, hey fuck, it doesn’t say I have to like it.

I did get a kick out of the long days in the woods, the country, but the city called to me. Keefer nodded at me during one hunt and I knew he knew.

Odd thing, as the evenings progressed, we sat into the wee hours, drinking, doing some spliffs, trading stories.

I told him more than I think I ever told anyone,

Even about the deaths of the children, my own and others. He was appropriately silent, and when I told him about Jericho, he seemed to pay extra attention.

As dawn came, he said,

“There was a small town in Ohio plagued with crows. They became a danger to crops, the local birdlife.”

He laughed, said,

“They’d gone rogue, so a falcon was brought in, cleared out the crows in a matter of days. The moral is?”

The fuck I knew from morals?

He said, very quietly,

“You set a killer to catch a killer.”

Later in the day, as I sweated heavily from the falcon whamming into my arm, Keefer tossed me a T-shirt, said,

“Have a fresh shirt.”

It wasn’t until I was falling into bed that I actually noticed the message on the T.

It read,