Once Were Cops

One

“Where do I begin?”

Wasn’t that like a song?

And a pretty fucking bad one.

Like my story.

The old chestnut, and how did what started out so good, go so freaking bad?

The Yanks whine...

“Who you gonna call?”

God?

Do me a favor.

Whatever else is in this narrative, it ain’t Him.

Unless He was seriously fucking with us.

Somebody was.

My name is Matthew Patrick O’Shea.

And you’re thinking,

“Does it come any more Mick?”

Not a lot.

Course, everybody called me Shea.

Has a ring to it and the first thing I did in America, yeah, Shea Stadium.

Predictable.

Sure.

If only I’d stayed thus.

Right at the end, when the shite was coming from every direction, I’d have given a lot for a dose of me own predictability.

I grew up in Galway, the son of a Guard, and it was never for debate but that I’d follow in me old man’s heavy shoes.

I HAVE THIS SPLIT PERSONALITY GIG GOING, TRULY, good cop/bad cop.

You’ll notice the caps there, so you’ll know I told you from the off.

Part of me has always wanted to be a decent human being, and being a cop seemed like a way I could make a difference. People like me, no shit, it’s just the truth and I’ve always known how to get them to do so.

Nothing wrong with that.

Then there’s the zoning, from the time I was a child, I’d go someplace in my mind, a cold place and it’s like seeing the world through a fog or very heavy glass and what I most want is to do damage, biblical damage, it’s beyond rage, more like a controlled fury that oh so careful watches, then strikes. I saw a cobra once on the TV and that hooded head, the poise and then the ferocious strike...

I never saw anything more beautiful in my life and I felt I was inside that hood. My mother used to say,

“Shea lives in another room.”

A room covered in ice and fierceness.

My father said,

“Ah, he’ll grow out if it.”

He was so close... what I did was grow into it. I knew some bad stuff happened when I was zoned but I’d only barely recall it after. There was a priest in our parish, named Brennan, he liked me as I was one hell of a hurler.

Hurling is our national sport, a cross between hockey and murder.

I’d zone in games and some poor bastard would end up with forty stitches in his head.

Fr. Brennan liked to win, and our team never lost because he used to say,

“Let Shea loose.”

He spoke to me one time and asked,

“How does that change happen, is it the adrenaline of the game?”

And I told him of the zoning, he looked worried, then said,

“Don’t ever tell another soul about this, they’d lock you up.”

Then he handed me a green rosary beads, it was a few weeks before Easter and the days were offering up rare moments of sunshine, as I took them. It was a lovely piece, gold cross, emerald beads and silver threads. The sun came flooding through the windows, catching the beads in a shaft of sheer translucence, and I felt a jolt of electricity that nearly knocked me off my feet.

Fr. Brennan said,

“You grip that beads when the shadows invade your mind and pray to our Holy Mother and all the saints to deliver you.”

I did grip the beads like a vise when the shadows came creeping but didn’t ask for help, I wanted something entirely different, a release from the pressure building in my head, and the longing for this sometimes had the beads cutting into the palms of my hands.

I felt like I’d been gloriously crucified.

It was such delicious agony.

I began to collect rosary beads but they had to be green, and I began to watch movies like a person possessed, cop movies especially.

Thing is, I always loved cop movies. Thing was, being a Guard didn’t jell with the cop movies I watched.

I mean, do you really think you’re going to see a movie titled:

The Guards?

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

First, the Guards don’t carry guns. Fuck that.

Right.

Saturday night, you’re facing off against a drunk gang, you think a baton is going to disperse them.

Especially as the bastards were carrying.

And not sticks.

Like fuck.

I did me year.

Pounding the wet miserable streets of Galway, soaked to the skin, freezing me nuts off and thinking,

“Has to be something better than this.”

Then my old man died, he’d been connected, to a politician. He’d gotten a drunk driving gig quashed and did some other stuff too.

The guy, Kearns, at the funeral, said to me,

“Anything you need, you call me.”

I did.

Told him,

“I want a green card.”

He had the eyes of a rat, and the smile of one too, he stretched back in his oh so expensive leather chair, asked,

“And why would you want to go to Amer-i-kay?”

Leaning on the word, playing with it, playing with me.

The bollix.

But I let him screw around, I wanted this and if it meant eating shite, give me the shovel.

He added,

“The whole world wants to come and live here, especially the Yanks, and you, you want to go the other direction?”

Story of my life.

I had me a temper, a bad one, hair trigger me mother said.

Mind you, she said a lot of stuff, most of it garbage.

I said,

“I’m still young, want to travel a bit.”

Biting down on the anger I felt building, trying not to tell him to go shove it. He said,

“Not as easy as it used to be.”

Here we go, so I said,

“My old man, he kept files, I was thinking I should burn them, what do you think?”

Got me green card.

And the green rosary beads.

My mother wept... buckets, course, the half bottle of dry sherry she put away before lunch might have helped.

“And what will you do, amac?” Son.

I gave her me best smile, the one in me first communion photo, said,

“I’ll do the best I can.”

We’d recently had Clinton on a visit and he was especially impressed with our police force, that we didn’t carry guns. He helped put in place an exchange program where twenty Guards would go to America and twenty of their finest would come here. The Guards would be sent all over the States, for that overall view. I knew what I wanted and it wasn’t some backwater down south, I wanted the big one, New York. I went to Kearns again and he sighed, the guy could have sighed for the Olympics, and he snapped,

“What is it this time?”

I told him of the program and how I wanted New York.

He tut-tutted, there really is such a sound and it sounds ridiculous, unless you’re a woman in her late seventies and even then. He said,

“That’s for the best and the brightest.”

I smiled and he said,

“Confident little bollix, aren’t you?”

I gave him my best smile, I’ve practiced it, blends humility with the right amount of attitude. He said,

“I thought we were done with our little arrangements, you have, how shall we say, no further leverage, do you?”

I looked a bit bashful and said,

“I lied.”

Now he was sitting up and I added,

“An underage girl you put the meat to, I have her sworn statement.”

He couldn’t believe it; he’d called in a lot of favors to get this to go away, but I’d pried a copy loose from the officer in charge, a guy who hated Kearns.

He debated on the prospect of telling me to go fuck meself but knew with the election coming up, this story would finish him. He said,

“It’s going to take some time and I’m not sure I can swing it.”

I said,

“I have every confidence in you.”

He was right about one thing, it did take a while, and I walked those streets of Galway, the beads in the top pocket of my tunic. There was a woman, her car had stalled and she called me for assistance, I zoned but I do remember her beautiful neck, the rest is a blur. Those were still early times in my development of the beads and I took them with me when I was done.

Only later did it occur to me that to leave them would be like reverence.