Priest

19

Found a new pub. From necessity, it would have to be one that existed below the radar. I’d often heard about Coyle’s, at the arse end of Dominic Street. It was almost an urban myth, had a rep. beyond salvage. The rumour was, it never closed, merely shut the doors come midnight, kept the bodies on an even keel. Come early morning, the doors opened and a dawn batch of the living dead entered. The only requirement was money. Fights, brawls, derangement were accepted. What wasn’t accepted was civility or citizenship, in the sense of being a pillar of the community or belonging to the community in any fashion.

It was the last port of call before the street or the grave.

When I washed up there, no one objected. An empty stool at the counter with, if not my name on it, then certainly my condition.

Welcome to hell.

My first session there, I recognized a few faces, the faces of the disappeared. Guys I knew at school, guys I’d grown up with and presumed dead. In a way they were. As I ordered a large whiskey, a few of them waved, if weakly. I heard Jack. . Taylor, and perhaps imagined, What kept you? The barman/owner, called Trade, had been a boxer and looked like he lost each and every fight. The nickname was due to his trading anything, anyone, anytime, for money. He wasn’t in business to make friends, be popular, his sole concern was money.

Bald, big, with dead yellow eyes, he looked at me, said,

‘We have one brand of whiskey, a house brand. You OK with that?’

House translates as no brand, to rot gut. I nodded, laid some bills on the counter and he poured, put it in front of me. I had a shake in my hand but that was mandatory. I knew if I took a slug it would catapult me off the stool, 100 per cent proof and tasting like turpentine. He asked,

‘That to your liking?’

The sheer proximity of the alcohol had momentarily robbed me of speech and he said,

‘Like you give a shit about taste.’

I swear he chuckled as he moved off. It was said poteen was added to the mix and I was a believer. A dense cloud of smoke hovered above and the walls were yellow from nicotine. The new anti-smoking ban in pubs etc. wouldn’t be having a whole lot of impact here. I chanced a look around, saw an ex-Guard, but he wasn’t seeing anything, he had the punched-out expression of one who is not responding to any count. Moved from the stool. A chair was vacant beside a beat-up table and I took that. Seemed to me that the atmosphere was similar to the asylum, the same sense of blunted despair. A guy across from me asked,

‘How you doing?’

His tone had a hint of challenge. I looked at him, taking my time, not doing anything too quickly. He could have been twenty or sixty, his eyes were out of focus. I said,

‘Not bad.’

Seemed to take that as an invitation, rolled up a chair and joined me, said,

‘I’ve a gambling problem.’

I nearly laughed but held it back, nodded solemnly. He indicated a man in the corner, asked,

‘See him?’

I thought of the REM song.

I warranted I did and, still staring at the man, he said,

‘Used to be a priest.’

I nearly asked,

‘What happened?’

But if ever a question was redundant. The guy laughed, a high-pitched titter, not quite hysteria but as close as you’d get without howling, said,

‘Used to be. . that’s what you get here.’

No fighting that. He stared at me, an edge creeping into his voice, asked,

‘So what’s your story, what used you to be?’

His body had tensed. In a split second he’d gone from amiable to aggressive. I asked, letting a little hard leak into my own voice,

‘It matter?’

He laughed out loud, then abruptly stood up as if he heard some call to arms and marched out with singular purpose.

When I was leaving a time later, Trade said,

‘You didn’t touch your drink.’

Sounded almost friendly. I asked,

‘You’re open during the night?’

He gave me a long look and I wondered if I’d crossed some invisible boundary. He said,

‘Tell you what, you’re passing in the middle of the night, knock on the door, see what happens. That answer your question?’

I nodded and got out of there.

That night I dreamt of my father. He was sitting in his chair in the kitchen, weeping, weeping, no words, only a silent woeful crying. I woke up — it disturbed me more than your out-and-out nightmare. He was a strong man in every sense of the word, and I don’t remember him being afraid of anything. Not that he was some type of macho asshole, but he faced whatever life threw at him without any fuss. Whatever came down the pike, he was, if not ready for it, at least willing to meet it. Like everyone, though, he had his area of vulnerability, some odd quirk that made sense only to him. His was the back door. We lived in a terraced council house with a small garden at the rear. My mother was a fresh-air fiend. She was a fiend full stop, but fresh air was one of her favourite methods of irritation. The depths of winter, she’d have all the windows open and God help you if you closed one. My father suffered that in silence, as he did most of her actions, but the back door was the exception. It drove him crazy to see it open. It’s the only irrational act of his I ever saw. My mother, of course, was forever opening it and he’d straight away close it. One of those little scenes of brooding warfare that marriage entails, conducted without words but laden with intent. An evening, she was at the rosary in the church and she’d opened the door prior to her departure. As soon as she left he hopped up, didn’t quite slam it but certainly closed it with force. I always had a great relationship with him, could talk to him and ask him questions and he never cut me short. I realize now that it was a blessing of rare stature. That evening, I asked,

‘Why do you need the door closed?’

He used to smoke then, not a lot, just a few Woodbines after work. If he finished a ten pack in a week, it was pushing it. He took out the packet, slowly extracted one, lit it with a kitchen match, the long ones, shaped like tapers. I can still recall the aroma of the cigarette and the sulphur, it seemed like the scent of safety. He looked at me, said,

‘You leave the back door open, rodents will come in.’

And I nearly laughed. That’s what I remember most, suppressing that bubbling urge to guffaw, and I thank God a thousand times that I didn’t. He was so solemn and I realized he was deadly serious. We never mentioned it again.

The night after my father’s burial, some neighbours had been in, drinking Jameson, eating fruit cake, reminiscing about him. I was sent to bed right after they left. As I lay there, numb with the loss of him, I heard my mother throw open the back door and I hated her with a fierce passion. I must have dozed, as I heard her screaming as if from a distance, then sat up and she was roaring like a banshee. I took my time going down. She was standing on a hard chair, a look of terror on her face. She shrieked,

‘There’s a rat, the biggest rat I ever saw. He ran in — I think he’s under the table.’

I pretended to poke about, but mainly what I did was shut the door, loudly. I came round to look at her on the chair and she asked,

‘Is it gone?’

I threw my eyes towards the door, said,

‘I don’t see it.’

Then I went up to bed. I don’t know how long she stayed down there, nor do I care. All I know is the back door stayed permanently shut. Shortly after that, I bought my first pack of Woodbines, the ten size. I don’t have any moral or wisdom to draw from that event, all I know is that, like my dad said, sooner or later the vermin show up.

I am, of course, aware that some might say that, one way or another, I’ve been shutting doors ever since.

A state of mind that could only be described as savage, somewhere in the literature of recovery that is used to describe the dry alcoholic. ’Tis sad, ’tis true.

I was in my apartment, trying to shed the remnants of the dream about my father. A loud howl of anguish had awakened me. I’d sat up, terror in my soul, wondering what on earth was happening to some poor fucker to make them emit such a sound, then felt the tears on my cheeks and realized the person who’d made the cry was me. I don’t think distress gets more awful than that.

I was carrying the tiny swan in my pocket like some dumb talisman. I decided to pay a return visit to Tom Reed, the bouncer. He’d been fairly receptive and I wanted to see how he’d react to Michael Clare’s admission of guilt. If anyone knew Michael, it had to be Tom.

En route, I bought some coffee, milk, biscuits. As I approached his house, I could hear the phones shrilling, so business was still hectic. Rang the bell and the same harried girl answered. I said,

‘This time I brought supplies.’

She waved me in and rushed to answer a phone. Tom was in the kitchen, and if he appreciated the shopping, he didn’t say. I said,

‘Hope you don’t mind, but I just v/anted to run a few things by you.’

He looked tired, said,

‘And a carton of milk, some biscuits, they entitle you to what?’

His tone was borderline hostile, so I tried,

‘To a cup of coffee, maybe?’

No response.

I attempted that bad cliche they use in movies.

‘If this is a bad time?’

Didn’t fly.

He sighed, letting out a suppressed breath, asked,

‘And a good time would be when?’

Before I could counter with some lame reply, he said accusingly,

‘You went to see Kate.’

‘Am, yes. Was that not a good idea?’

He was wearing a white shirt that needed a wash — many washes — and navy pants that were too wide in the waist. He pulled at them but it made little difference. I didn’t know how to get this on a friendlier level, said,

‘I walked the prom, thought I might run into you.’

He snapped,

‘I don’t do that shit any more, I’ve a business to run.’

Then he seemed to weigh something in his head.

‘Kate and I have some history.’

I kept my face neutral, said,

‘Terrific woman.’

Now he began to make coffee, boiled the kettle, spooned heaps of granules into mugs, added the water, handed a mug to me and indicated I should sit. During all this frenzied activity, he didn’t speak and I was content to wait. He took a sip of his coffee, then,

‘Damaged as I was, I was really prepared to make a go of it, but she was obsessed with someone else.’

What do you say, Bummer? I nodded and he said,

‘How do you have a relationship when the woman is in love with her brother?’

Oh.

He continued,

‘As kids they were inseparable. You couldn’t get closer than those two. Then Father Joyce began his. .’

He floundered for a word and I wanted to help out, the way it is when you’re with someone who stammers but you know you’d better not. He finally settled for,

‘. . Activities, and Michael was lost to her, to everyone. She has never stopped trying to get his attention back — is that the saddest fucking thing you ever heard? Years later, when we hooked up, it was only so she could maybe get a way to be with Michael. Her other passion, horses, she loves them, saw her bring down a wild mare one time. Her hands, did you notice them? Jesus, I’d have given me soul to have touched them.’

He seemed broken and his attention had rooted in the past. To jolt him back, I said,

‘Michael told me he did Father Joyce. Do you think he did?’

The possibility didn’t faze him. He thought about it, then said,

‘He’s capable of it — shit, I’m capable of it — but my instinct says he didn’t.’

My scepticism of his instinct must have shown and he said,

‘Plus, years ago, when Michael and I were using booze to get by — oh yeah, we drank together — we spent an evening contemplating that very thing, killing the fucker, and discussing how we’d do it. I said I’d burn him, yeah, let him feel hell, as I’ve done for all the years, but Michael said he’d drown him, because he robbed him of the swans, the love of water. The Claddagh Basin, that’s where he’d bring him, let him die beside the very animals he’d stolen from him.’

I thought of how close I’d come to burning the stalker, the look on Cody’s face after. Tom rubbed his face as if this whole trip down memory lane was the most exhausting thing he’d done in years, and maybe it was, said,

‘You’re really taking this seriously.’

I admitted it had got a hold on me, I couldn’t shake it till I knew the answer. He asked,

‘You talk to Sister Mary Joseph?’

‘Who?’

‘I didn’t want to mention her because, despite everything, I always kind of liked her. But she was Joyce’s housekeeper, secretary, woman of all trades and she knew, she knew what he was doing and stayed quiet. I often wonder how she squares that now.’

‘Where would I find her?’

He seemed to find that a stupid question, said,

‘At the church, where else? Unless she’s dead, but I think I’d have known if she was. Yeah, go see her, she’s the one who knows where the bodies are, if you’ll excuse the pun. Bring her some ice cream, she’d a thing for that.’

He’d a small smile at the corner of his mouth as he said that and I marvelled at his forgiveness, said,

‘I’m amazed at your ability to forgive her. That is really something.’

His eyes flared and he asked,

‘Did I say I forgave her? I hate the fucking bitch. With any luck, she’s turned to drink.’

He stood up, said,

‘One more thing. It’s odd, but then what isn’t?’

He seemed to have a struggle as to whether to divulge it, then,

‘Kate, she loves those swans, does all kinds of work to ensure their safety, but. . she is also a hunter.’

I wasn’t following, asked,

‘She hunts swans?’

And got a look of total irritation. He snapped,

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, course not the swans. She shoots pheasants and any other wildlife that moves.’

I didn’t believe him, stammered,

‘I don’t. . am. . believe you.’

He gave me a deep serious stare, then exclaimed,

‘By Christ, you’re stupid. Are you sure you’re in the right line of work? This is a woman who cuts her own wood, for fuck’s sake. She is the real thing, a primitive, and yes, she hunts. Next time you go visit and you want to get her attention, ask her to show you her rifle, watch her light up.’

He let out his breath. His face had gone grey, the effort of this explanation had taken its toll. I asked,

‘You need a shot of brandy or something?’

Hoping he did and maybe I could join him. He shook his head, then sneered,

‘You look like you want to hit the sauce your own self.’

The interview or whatever the hell we were having was over. I tried,

‘Yeah, well, it’s been a rough time.’

And hated myself for even trying to justify it, especially to a person like Tom. He walked me to the door and as I said goodbye he gave me a long look. I figured he was going to suggest AA or say something sympathetic. He said,

‘Go to the Claddagh Basin, it’s quicker.’

More rattled than I wanted to admit, I headed for my afternoon pit stop, went to Coyle’s. Trade nodded as he saw me, didn’t say anything, just poured a large whiskey, pushed it down the counter. I laid the money beside the glass and went to take a seat, to move away from him. I really didn’t need any more bitterness that day and one thing you could rely on, Trade would be bitterness with ferocity.

Found myself beside the ex-priest and thought, Oh shit, and was about to move when he stirred, said,

‘Could you kick my right leg?’

I thought I heard him wrong. I echoed,

‘Kick your right leg?’

‘Yes, please, it’s gone to sleep, there’s no feeling there.’

His voice had a strangulated quality, the result of surgery or cigarettes or both. I gave his leg a gentle kick and he shook his head. I was aware of how crazy my life had become. I’m sitting in a pub, kicking a priest, and worse, because he asked me. Gave a harder one and he nodded, said,

‘Yes, it’s coming back.’

He had a face that had been massacred by time, deep ridges on the cheeks, sunken eyes, a grey pallor that had death all over it. His eyes, beneath the red, were once blue, now haunted. He asked,

‘Might I buy you a refreshment?’

Jesus, where did he think we were, the carnival? I said I was good and he stretched out a trembling hand, liver spots covering the skin, said,

‘I’m Gerald.’

I took the hand. The skin felt light as parchment. I shook it gently, said,

‘I’m Jack.’

Before him was a full glass of the house brand and a pack of Players. He gave a wheezing cough, said,

‘They’ll have told you I was a priest.’

It was hard to hear him and I had to lean forward, a scent of woodsmoke and eau de cologne emanating from him, with booze of course in there. I admitted that yes, they had, and he said,

‘They tell the newcomers. I think they like to show me off.’

He gave a tiny smile as if he was the most amused. He tried to reach for the cigarettes but failed, so I helped him out, got one fired up for him. He asked if I wished for one. I said I was still on the patches and laughed myself, adding,

‘Here I am at the end of the road and trying to stop smoking.’

He gave that deep consideration, or else he had gone to sleep, then he asked,

‘Do you believe in evil, Jack?’

I looked round to see if we could be heard, but no one was paying any attention so I said,

‘I’ve seen it first hand.’

He turned to face me, said,

‘Yes, yes you have. And did it burn you?’

I told the truth, went,

‘It did and it still does.’

He said,

‘I was in attendance at an exorcism once.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about that. I had enough demons to carry without getting first-hand testimony on them. He was quiet, then said,

‘You surprise me, Jack. Most people would be full of curiosity.’

I measured my words, tried,

‘The thing is, if I ask you something, can I live with the answer?’

His face creased in a smile of genuine delight and he said,

‘What a wonderful reply. You could be a metaphysician.’

He took a tiny swallow and I ventured,

‘Was the exorcism successful?’

The question seemed to trouble him, then,

‘The boy had said voices were controlling him. After, he said he was controlling the voices. Would you deem that success?’

Needed some time to digest it, then I said,

‘Well, it would certainly be progress, but for whom?’ And as I said it, I realized that only three places were really conducive to such a conversation:

Pubs,

Asylums,

Religious houses.

Gerald raised his right hand, held it there, and it dawned on me he was signalling Trade. I said,

‘Hey, I’ll get it for you.’

He shook his head, said,

‘No need, I’m the only customer he serves at a table and that’s because he suffers from fear. He thinks if he cultivates a priest, even a poor excuse for one, he’ll be saved, the misguided wretch.’

Sure enough, Trade was over in a flash, asking in a voice I’d never heard,

‘What will it be, Gerald?’

‘Two of your finest, innkeeper — one for my comrade.’

Trade gave me an odd look, as if he’d misjudged me, went to get the drinks. My first one stood untouched, like original sin. Gerald said,

‘The demon spoke to me at that exorcism. You wish to know what it said?’

I figured I could handle it, said,

‘Yes.’

‘It said it would kill me.’

Not for the first time, I jumped to the wrong conclusion, asked,

‘Is that why you ended up here?’

He gave a full laugh which disintegrated into a bellow of phlegm, then,

‘Good Lord, no. The demon is the father of lies. I’m here because of drink.’

Trade was back, put two lethal amounts before us. Gerald produced a wad of notes and Trade took three, said,

‘Thank you, Father.’

I moved my glass a few inches, said,

‘Cheers.’

He nodded and said,

‘The cure of evil is simple, but oh so complicated.’

I was hoping to go, so to speed up the deal asked,

‘And it is?’

‘Love.’

What a crock. He must have sensed my disappointment, said,

‘I’ve never asked, in my sentence here, never once asked why a person was here, but I’d like to ask you, Jack, if you don’t mind?’

Did I mind? Well, maybe a little, but what was there to lose? Said,

‘I killed a child.’

He groaned in actual pain, his face contorted and I thought I’d caused a stroke, but he rallied, said,

‘What an awesome burden.’

We sat in silence for a while. Not an uncomfortable one, but laden with significance, and finally he said,

‘There is an answer.’

I insisted,

‘No, Gerald, no there isn’t.’

He seemed to expect that and went,

‘Forgive yourself, that’s the key.’

He disappointed me. What a tired, lousy cliche. I had anticipated better from him, but I suppose he was, after all, just a priest. He said,

‘I’ve disappointed you, yes?’

‘A little.’

‘I’m truly sorry, I don’t have anything else. You’re no doubt familiar with the words Come to me and I will give you rest. Alas, that’s a lie.’

I stood up, said,

‘I’ve got to go. See you another day, maybe.’

His eyes were closing and I saw he was on the verge of sleep. He muttered,

‘The Devil’s right hand.’

I near scoffed, went,

‘Revelations?’

‘No, Steve Earle.’