Early Warning Signs

I’m lounging in Ma’s tubular armchair in the kitchen, my socks, still wet from playing over in the Green, steaming against the fire’s red-hot coals.  It’s a Tuesday night, eight o’clock.  All the sixth-class homework is done, checked, and back in the schoolbag, leaving Scratchy no reason to send me to Brother Ailbe’s office for six slaps of his leather across the hand.  

Now I get to relax for an hour, leave Castlebar behind, and head off through the black and white tunnel to the rest of the world: The telly!

Rockford’s buzzing around LA – “LA” … just saying them letters together makes you sound cool – in his golden-brown sports car.  He spin-twists-turns the car, barely touching the steering wheel.  That’s not how Da drives, white knuckles grabbing the steering wheel as if we’re sinking with the car and us after skidding over a cliff, and really we’re only going up Bests for groceries.  No, Rockford shakes off the bad guys, with just the tips of his fingers on the steering wheel, a little kinda-sorta smile on his face, as he leaves them in his dust.  It’s weird how the roads are so dusty in LA. 

Then, Jim – that’s what I call Rockford – heads back to his caravan parked on the side of a “highway.”  He calls his caravan a “trailer;” in Mayo only Travellers live in “trailers.”  So you do be scratching your dandruff about Jim.  I mean he is a great PI, better than that ould fat Frank Cannon or that eejit above on a horse McCloud, but he is different how he makes a gobeshite outta everyone, even himself sometimes, the way he does win, but still kinda-sorta loses.

Problem is tonight, the black line is back on the telly. 

It comes every few months, across the bottom of the screen.  It’s thin first, like you’d only notice it ‘cause you knew it meant trouble was coming.  It goes away if you turn off the telly and let it cool down.  But back it comes, and thicker every day.

Da’ll pretend it’s not there until it’s about a quarter the way up the screen.  By then you miss bits of what’s happening in the story, especially if someone’s reaching for their gun or sneaking something under a table.  All them weird Russian subtitled films, that Da says RTE musta got for free, sure you can’t watch them at-all-at-all-at-all ‘cause you can’t read any of the words. 

Finally, when it gets fierce bad, Da’ll send for the telly repair man.  The telly repair man’s a bit like a telly himself, ‘cause he comes from another world.  I mean he only comes over from Claremorris, sixteen miles away, but he seems to live in a different world. 

First of all, he looks like Lou Grant from the Mary Tyler Moore Show; for real, he does.  I suppose he’s lucky he ended up looking like Lou and not like Ted Baxter – who’s a ferocious gobeshite altogether.  No, he’s just like Lou; short-stubby-bald, bulge-filling his yellowish shirt and grey pants, with a rake of creases in the pants where his short, thick legs meet his short thick body, and then more lines, but in his skin this time, where his thick neck meets his shoulders.  And he always has a cigarette in his hand, a Major; just like himself; short, thick and strong. 

He points at Da with the cigarette:

“So this beaut that’s threatening to drag me into court, he’s a small bit of a nuisance during the day, but he’s a creel full of trouble with drink on him,” he says, sitting at the edge of Ma’s tubular armchair. 

The Major moves like it’s a part of his talking, blue smoke rising off the grey-red ash. 

“He’s claimin’ the toilet floor washn’t cleaned.  Sure, a toilet floor’s made for to be wet an’ slippy, ishn’t it.  Sure that’s why they put down tiles in there.”

He waves the Major wildly.

“Where was he expectin’ ta end up an’ him goin’ for a piss?  The lobby of the Gresham Hotel!”

“Ooohhh, ye’re in choppy waters now my man,” Da twist-turns his head in warning-disgust.  “Fet’ then if that blackguard gets the right solicitor, he’ll be livin’ above in the Gresham, an’ you footin’ the bill!”

See the telly repair man owns a night club.

Yeah, imagine that. 

A nightclub. 

In Mayo. 

Sure, nightclubs should only be in Dublin, like the add in the cinema, with all flashing disco lights, that says: “ZHIVAGOS …, where looovvve stories begin!”

Da somehow gets word to nightclub owning, telly repair man that our telly is sick again, and over he comes to pick it up.  Then he stays talking and smoking for hours, usually trying to figure out how to make the nightclub work better.  I don’t know how he thinks Da could help him.  Da doesn’t drink, he always wears a Pioneer Total Abstinence Association pin on his jacket, he for-sure-for-sure doesn’t dance, he doesn’t ever go out at night, and the only things he even watches on telly is boring stuff like the news and maybe Outlook, or Mart and Market. 

Outlook is religion, and it’s so borin’ I’d prefer to watch the RTE Test Card – that stupid circle full of black and white and grey squares that’s on before the programs start at four o’clock.  That’d be better than watching that priest, and him with a face on him the length of a fishing line, listing off all the things we can’t do, unless and we want to end up burning below in hell.

Mart and Market’s nearly worse.  It’s just farmers selling cattle. This ould bald fella sits at a desk, reading so fast you can’t hardly hear him, telling us how much “dry heifers an’ bullocks sold for a hundredweight” – whatever a hundredweight is.  Then the farmers come on the screen, their hands buried in anorak pockets, all stand-staring down at the cattle getting driven around the mart ring by this gobeshite in shite-splattered-wellingtons.  The cattle kinda-sorta jolt around in a nervous circle until they’re finally sold to some meat factory to get slaughtered. 

Every now and again one of them tries to turn on the gobeshite.  Then, just like Brother Ailbe does to us with his leather when we’re bad and sometimes even for no reason, the shite-splattered-gobeshite raises his arm high up over his shoulder and brings the stick down that hard it bounces back up off the cattle’s turning head.  Ailbe’s leather leaves a fair track of long-burning across the palm of your hand.  But God help you if he makes himself all red-faced mad and delivers a few lashes of it to your head. 

I’d say Jim Rockford wouldn’t put up with any of this at-all-at-all-at-all.

“Ya see, the punters pay their two pound fifty ta get inta the nightclub,” the stubby-fingers with the Major are going again, stabbing the air in Da’s direction.  “An’ for dat dey get a bowel of soup an’ a roll, … an’ a course the dancin’, with the late bar.  The problem is them two hours off a Sunday night that ya can’t open the bar.  For me that’s one hunderd an’ twenty long minutes of not makin’ a bleddy penny, and that gobe…,” he flicks his eyes toward my staring eyes, “fella above there in the discah booth barkin’ inta the microphone, ‘playin’ he’s toons.’  Ah, good Lord, deliver me!”

He sits back in Ma’s armchair, shakes his head, jams the Major between his lips, the red ash quiet-crackling its way down the cigarette’s white paper.

“Sure the licensing laws in dis country is pure cracked,” he’s off again, behind  clouds of smoke gushing outta his nostrils.  “Waitin’ until wan minute after midnight on t’Monday morning ta open the bar.  ‘Tis pure madness.  Lads an’ lassies lamping down my soup, with their tongues hanging out a them for a pint or a vodka an’ whatever.  The bleddy cash registers dead silent, with me payin’ the barmen, the doormen, yer wan in the coat check, an’ that ould fool above in de discah booth.  The lot a dem on damn good money!”

He tears into the Major again, reaches for the pack to light the next one off the one already in his mouth.

Hours later, he and Da, huff-huff-huffing with the importance of being careful, carry the telly out to the boot of his car, and off it goes to Claremorris: Not to be seen again for months.

That’s how things get fixed.

One time we had a clock that Da and Ma got for their wedding all them years ago, a fancy, shiny-wooden thing, and one day it just stopped ticking.  It took the clock-fixer fella above in Ballaghaderreen, thirty-three miles away, two years to get it to tick again.  After one year, we drove up for the Sunday spin to ask if it was ready: Only he was above at a Sligo Rovers match that day – the neighbour woman tol’ us.  A year later, we got a letter to come and pick it up; ‘twas finally fixed.

When the washing machine breaks, Da writes a letter to the repair man who lives in Tobercurry, thirty miles away.  The repairman writes back, says a day a few weeks out that he’ll come and fix it.  All the washing gets done by hand for them weeks, or not done at all.  The repair man shows up in a white Hi-Ace van, with “BENDIX” in blue letters on the side.  The key to the house is left hidden under one of the empty milk bottles outside the front door – the letter lets him know which bottle.  In he comes, fixes the washing machine.  A bunch more letters go over and back to get the bill paid by Postal Order.   

But that’s not how a telly gets fixed. 

Getting a telly fixed is a bit like one them subtitled Russian films, full of confusion, strange places, and disappointment.

The telly’s gone for so long we have ta find something to fill the evenings.  Da digs out a chess set from way in the back a the press under the stairs.  We don’t have a chessboard, so he makes one outta a few pieces of letter-writing paper Sellotaped together.  We don’t need letter writing paper anymore.  Only Ma used that to write to Granny and Auntie, and sometimes Uncle.  Da uses my ruler and black pen to draw the chessboard squares.  There’s hardly any ink left when I’m finished colouring all the squares black.  That’s all right, ‘cause Scratchy doesn’t hardly let me write in pen anyways; “‘cause ye’re always makin’ stoopid mistakes!”

Chess is a bit like the news, except it all happens in a quarter of an hour and not over weeks.  You use your pieces to attack the other player’s king, who’s just like a real king; lazy, good for nuthin’, an’ can’t even defend himself.  The other player tries to defend their king and attack yours.  But it’s hard goin’ to be defending and attacking.  So, I just defend, and wait for the other player to make a mistake. 

I use the French Defence. 

It’s very good. 

The French must be fierce scaredy-cats; probly ‘cause Hitler lived next door.

The other players – mostly my brothers or friends; girls don’t play chess – usually get impatient and make bad moves while I’m setting up my French Defence.  Then it’s easier for me to attack.

Maybe the French are scared-smart.

If we had a telly, we’d a been watching people scared-smart up in Belfast and Derry.  Every evening there’s news at six and again at nine.  If there’s good rioting on the six o’clock news – you know, fellas in balaclavas throwing petrol bombs exploding in a burst of flames at the British Army, and the soldiers standing behind Saracen armored cars, all ready for battle, helmets, gas masks, rifles aiming at the lads with the petrol bombs – then I’ll watch it all again at nine.  They always show it again, and maybe even show more, ‘cause nine o’clock is the main news.    

The only thing I like on the telly more than Rockford is rioting.

The weird thing is that the RTE reporters use the same voice when they’re talking about rioting or the body of some fella shot be the IRA or UVF, lying booby-trapped on the side of the road, as when they’re talking about a strike at some factory or a disease killing cattle abroad in Cork.  They don’t talk regular on the news.  It’s like every word is heavy and means more than if I was just talking with the lads or even Rockford talking to Angel, his awful gobeshite friend.  I suppose to get a job with RTE, you have to be fierce important and that’s the how your words do get so heavy.

With no telly, the house is just children moving around all evening; in and out of rooms searching for anything not boring to do that you mighta missed the last time you were in there – four minutes ago. 

Sauntering into the girls’ room and saying something stupid is a great way to start a fight.  Fighting makes the evenings go quicker, but in a small house with eight other children to fight, it can get bad fast.  The fights carry on for days, and you’d be worn out remembering which brothers and sisters need how much, and what kind, of meanness.

There’s always books.  Reading is better than the telly for getting out of Castlebar, ‘cause in a book you’re with them for so long that you really get to know the people: It’s like you’re living with them.  With the telly gone, I move in with the Jordache family from Rich Man, Poor Man first, and then I devour the second one, Beggarman, Thief. 

After a few games of chess, and maybe a small fight in the girls’ room, I race into bed, the soles of me feet still cold from the lino floor in our bedroom, pull the blankets up tight and read a rake more chapters about the Jordaches: They’re fierce crack altogether!

The fighting they do with one another makes our evening fights look like two hens wing-shoving one another over who can scratch what bit a dirt.  I mean, the Jordaches are not actually fighting like they do up the North; no one’s getting shot dead or burned outta their houses, but they fairly make things bad for one another.  It’s all great stuff, and they do be having sex!

  In and outta bed with one another.  There’s none of that sex carry on in Ireland.  Father Blake and the other priests make sure that only happens in America and England.  But maybe Irish people that emigrated to them places do get to be doing sex?

One rainy Saturday afternoon, with the boredom meter ticking up towards a Jordache-sized fight, Da announces we’ll go for a swim in Claremorris.  As well as having a nightclub, that’s the other weird thing about Claremorris: They have an indoor, heated swimming pool. 

We have a swimming in Castlebar, over in the Green, but it’s outdoor, not heated, and it’s only open in the summer.  The “duck pond” everyone calls it.  Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are for boys swimming; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are for girls; and everyone can swim of a Sunday.  It’s only open from two to five on Sundays, so everyone can get mass and have their Sunday dinner.  It’s great crack in the pool, swimming under water, fighting with the lads, but when you get out your eyes are all red from chlorine and you’re blue-purple with the cold.

In Claremorris, you have to pay 10p to go in, but everyone gets to go, and it’s hot.  Not as hot as a bath, but close.  When you walk into the kinda-sorta warehouse where the Claremorris people keep their pool – a big blue tub sitting on the floor, with wooden ladders you climb up to get into it – the smell of chlorine hits you, along a watery-hotness that immediately makes you start sweating all over your body.  You don’t get to stop sweating until you splash inta the made-blue-by-the-blue-tub, lukewarm water.

We have a great time, and come out after an hour, exhausted and with our skin cleaner than our souls would be coming outta Father Blake’s confession box.  ‘Cause you know how you might on accident not tell him about the Jordaches doing all that sex, so the next time you see him on the street, he doesn’t be lookin’ at ya like you’re on the divil’s team.

“We’ll run down an’ see if the telly is fixed,” Da says.

I’m for sure happy about the telly, but I was hoping instead, we’d go to the chipper in Claremorris for our tea.  

Da opens the door beneath a small sign that says: “EXPE T TELEVISION REPAIR.” 

The bell tinkles as we walk into the repair shop’s dim darkness. 

“Hello Tom, HELLO!” Da says too loud.

‘Cause of the dimness and the chlorine it takes a minute for my eyes to be able to see.

“The next time we come we’ll have to bring our own lightbulb,” Da says, sighing, shaking his head.  “Hello, … HELLO!”

By now I realize the reason for the dimness is shelves full of broken televisions towering all around me.  There’s ones with their screens gone, and only the wiry guts dangling inside the plastic-wooden box.  Other ones with dead screens stare blankly at me.  Some of the shelves are just the screens pulled outta the box.  Them ones are weird looking, with this kinda-sorta triangular shape ballooning out behind them – I suppose, if I was still little, I’d a thunk that was where the small-people lived inside the telly and acted out all the parts.

“HELLO, HELLO!” Da says, fierce loud this time. 

He waits and then says softly:

“Are ya there at-all Tom?”

Tom wasn’t there. 

Neither was our telly. 

Or at least we couldn’t see it amongst what seemed like hundreds of other sick and dying televisions. 

We’re walking back to the car when the tinkle of the bell makes us stop and turn around.

“Aragh Joe, I didn’t know ya were in town,” the telly repairman, looking like Lou Grant coming out his office to yell at Mary Tyler Moore, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, a pair of glasses wedged up against the top of his bald-round skull.

“Ah, sure this crowd needed baths, an’ I said I’ll throw them in the car an’ take them over for a swim …,” Da tosses his head back, rolls his eyes.  “You know, an’ I thought while we’re in Claremorris, sure why don’t we grab the telly.”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no.  ‘Tis not ready at-all-at-all-at-all yet.  There’s a few ahead a ye, an’ I have parts ordered from above in Dublin.  Sure, the Dublin crowd do on’y be laughin’ at us down the country looking for parts. ‘Buy a new one,’ they’ll say.  An’ sure that bleddy nightclub has me heart broken.  Now the priest is after me.”
            His stubby hand comes up fast, and he rubs it down slow-hard over his face – just like Lou does!

“‘Are they sellin’ French Letters within in the toilets?’ says Father Quigley to me.  Sure, how would I know?  Amn’t I beyond at the door taking in me few measly quid?  French Letters, good Lord deliver me.”

“Run on over there to the car,” Da flashes us a don’t-you-dare-bother-me-now look.

Half an hour later he’s back.

“Good God,” he sighs loudly, dropping into his seat behind the wheel.  “Ye’ll be fit to bate Bobby Fischer by the time our telly gets fixed!”

“What’s a French Letter?” I ask.  “Is it anything to do with the French Defence.”

“Never mind you an’ your bleddy questions.  We’ll go an’ get the tea below in the chipper.”

I smile. 

Another French Defence win.

The television did get fixed, … eventually.

By the time the telly made it back, RTE had sold some cattle or inherited money, ‘cause now they had money to get better programs, including a miniseries from America of Rich Man, Poor Man.

Excitedly, I raced through my homework and plonked myself into Ma’s tubular armchair before anyone else could get there ahead of me.  The fire’s burning in the hearth, the telly working with no sign of a growing-black-line across the bottom.  I couldn’t believe I’d be seeing the Jordaches for real, not just imagining them in my head.  Maybe they’d even be doing sex. 

The boring old here-comes-the-program music starts, with these stupid pencil drawings of all the characters.  Everyone in the house arrives to watch.  There’s just enough chairs, plus one, and a fight breaks out over me, the nearly littlest, hogging Ma’s armchair.  By time that’s over, I’m on a reg’lar hard chair and the Jordaches are for real on the telly.

But wait a minute! 

Lou Grant is there pretending he’s the Jordache’s father. 

Sure, this is total rubbish.  No one could believe Lou’s a vicious ould baker, when he’s really a cranky-kind television station manager. 

I’m furious, it’s all rubbish.  Plus they don’t do sex, not really anyway, just stupid ould kissin’. 

At the end, pretending I’m still mad over losing my place in Ma’s armchair, I burst outta the kitchen and up the stairs.  Lying on my bed, I thumb through the pages of the big thick books of Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggarman, Thief, remembering how all the Jordaches and Falconetti came to real pretend-life behind my eyes.    

I suppose everything on the telly is made up.  

Rockford’s not really Rockford.  When he drives his own car, he probably drives like Da, hands stuck to the steering wheel.

They’re all just actors. 

Probly the shite-splattered-gobeshite is paid to act the fool, walking round in a circle, with his head nearly boppin’ the cattle’s arses. 

Maybe the cattle are stunt cattle like they do have in John Wayne films, and that one that tries to run away is taught when to turn, so the gobeshite knows exactly when to do Brother Ailbe with his stick.   

I drop the books off the side of the bed and turn over sleepy-tired.  The heavy blankets, warmness and sleepiness are like the French Defence, keeping me safe.

The British soldiers and the rioters, do they know they’re on the telly and so they act it up a bit more?  Maybe the RTE reporter tells the rioting lads when to throw the petrol bomb.  The soldiers never shoot anyone when the camera is goin’, but they do often shoot people. 

It’s all just acting. 

Everything is acting.

I suppose the only real people on television not acting are the dead bodies lying at the side of the road, booby-trapped!

Interring Youth

I’m fifteen years old, standing at the bar in a Castlebar pub, white knuckled hands gripping the edge of the counter, praying I’ll be served a pint of Smithwicks. 

It’s September 12, 1980, and the Inter Cert exam results came out this afternoon.  I rushed home after school to tell Da I got all A’s and B’s.

“Sure, the Inter is on’y a joke,” he says, throwing his head back. 

“'Tis the Leaving Cert every job wants now.  You’d be lucky to get a job as street sweeper today with an Inter Cert, no matter how good it ‘twas,” he gives his head a quick-shake, and goes back to reading the paper.

Freezing my disappointment at barely qualifying as a streetsweeper, I take the stairs in twos and threes, burst into the bedroom, fling the Manilla results envelope on the desk I’d studied so hard at all spring, and head for town.

Some of the lads are standing in front of Parsons Shoes window, pooling money and planning how to get a few six packs.  A few more got brave and are already below in the pub drinking. 

I’d drank plenty before, but I never drank in a pub.  

A pub is where men drink.

Young fellas like us go up the lake in the dark, hiding in the thick pine trees from the Gards with their big flashlights dancing around in the darkness.  Us in the darkness, slugging down bottles of beer that some older fella bought for us for a pound extra.  Sometimes one of the lads’d whip a bottle of vodka or whiskey from home.  We’d lace it Coke or Fanta, and in about a half hour flat we’d be as drunk as forty cats.

I look down the Main Street. 

Rubbish flits about in the gutter.  

I qualify now to sweep that, … maybe. 

Without saying anything to the lads that were too scared to try the pub, I drift off from in front of Parsons.

Me stomach is sick walking up to the pub door.  But sure me stomach’s always sick.  The slightest change from the world of yesterday and the day before, and the first thing to pack it in is me stomach.

I push in the pub door.

Inside the low-ceilinged room is dark, the bar barely lit with strips of creamy-white light, and only a steely-blue, neon Harp sign on the wall lighting the seats. 

First up on the right is a table full of Travellers; then the two lads huddling around a small, low table; then a group of fellas in after work playing cards under the Harp sign, and lorrying pints.

The jukebox blares “The Coward of the County.”

Me brain is going so fast I don’t notice if the lads had pints in front of them.  They might have already been refused and are just sitting there being thick.  I don’t go near them, ‘cause if they have been refused, then me going over to them would have been an automatic refusal. 

The ways to get served underage had gotten more studying amongst us than the Inter Cert exam itself.  Every Friday night up the lake, we’d be discussing it for hours.  All the lads that had been served said that it’s one of them things you have to do by yourself, and that there’s rules to follow:

Two underage lads standing at the counter have triple the chance of getting refused. 

If you act like your supposed to get served, then you will get served.

With this advice racing around in me brain, I swagger up to the counter, where the barmaid, a plump, dark-haired woman, probably around twenty five, is washing glasses in this thingamajig that looks like a small bucket with a black toilet brush upside-down inside in it; water and suds flying everywhere. 

She finally stops sloshing the glasses into this thingamajig for long enough that I say, all casual-confident:

“Eh, give me a pint of Smithwicks there.”

She pays no heed of me, just grabs another dirty pint glass and sticks it down over the toilet brush, more suds flying.

Not sure what to do, I freeze with desperation. 

If I get served, I’ll be a hero: If I get turfed out, I’ll be a right gobeshite.

I want to turn around and see if the lads have pints.  But if they do, then I’ll be so desperate, that I might make a mistake, and if they don’t, then I might give up too easy. 

As I watch her jamming the pint glasses into the toilet-brush-thingamajig and paying no heed to me, I start to get thick.  That’s always my way through this sort of situation.  I’ve seen Da do it a thousand times.

Fuck her anyway, I start to say to meself.  She should serve me or tell me to get the fuck out of here.  But this not paying attention to me, that’s not on! 

She puts a cleaned glass upside down on the shelf behind the counter; a once-upon-a-time white dishcloth spread out across the shelf starts to stain wet under the glass.  Without so much as a turn of her head, she reaches for another glass, splashes the dregs into the sink, and then plunges it into the glasswasher thingamajig.

That’s me breaking point.

“Hey!” I say, a bit louder than I expected it to come out.  “I’m waiting here for me pint.”

She stops, the cuff of her white cheesecloth blouse stuck to her arm with suds, and stares at me.

“Aragh, would you fuck off outta that,” she scoff-laughes.  “You’re probably on’y after gettin’ yer Inter results.”

I make my best angry-impatient face, and it’s well I know angry-impatient faces:  I’ve spent fifteen long years watching Da, and teachers, and every other grown up in my life.

“Would you give me me fucken’ pint,” I snap, forcing a fake weariness into my voice.  “I’m after a hard day’s work.”

I hear the words, and I know I’m saying them, but still I don’t recognize them as coming out of my mouth.

For effect, I let out a big sigh, and give an angry quick-shake of the head, me shoulders drawing up like I’m getting madder.

She pulls the glass, suds and all, out of the washer thingamajig.

Still looking at me through the corner of her eye, she dries off her wet arm with a dishcloth.

I feel the thrill of victory rush over me.  But like Da would do, I keep me angry-impatient-face until I have in me hand that which I wanted.

The pint glass clinks against the black plastic of the Smithwicks tap, and the beer flows with a quiet hiss, brown-yellow swirling bubbles flowing into the glass.

As I watch, a little fog of coolness settles on the glass while the beer fills up.

“Sixty p,” she says, setting the pint down on the counter in front of me, but looking away.

I hand her a pound note, and grab hold of the pint glass.

When she turns to the till, I take my first sip.

I drank plenty of warm and sudsy beer from bottles, but this pint of Smithwicks is cool and bitter, almost sharp.

She slaps four ten penny pieces on the counter, three salmons and one harp stare up at me. 

Immediately, she turns back to her glass washing.

I drop the coins into me Wranglers’ pocket, grab the pint and head for the lads. 

We’re giddy-grinning at one another, big pints on the little-low-table in front of us.  Still, we try to act like we’re just in for a regular Friday evening, after work pint.

“No problems,” I mumble to the lads.

“The boyos here,” one of the lads whispers, nodding toward the Travellers, “were hassling her.  She thought wan a them was barred, so she served us first and then dealt with them.”

I raise my eyebrows and glanced over at the Travellers.  There was a fair clatter of them, four or five, all leaning in over the table staring at their pints.

“You shoulda heard wan of them goin’ on about how it ‘‘twasn’t him, ‘twas he’s brether as smushed the telly’ in here last Easter.  Supposedly that brother’s up in the Joy now, and he broke the telly up there too.  He must fucken’ hate televisions.”

We all snigger.

“Is that them?” I nod at the jukebox.

The lads nod back.

“Jaysys, what’s next? ‘Who Shot J.R. Ewing?’  If I hear that fucken song played wan more time on the radio, me head’ll explode.”

I reach for a tenpenny piece in me Wrangler’s pocket.  

“Should we put on U2?  Even here must have ‘11 O’Clock Tick Tock’ by now, hey?  You know they played below in Ballina back in May!”

“No, no, no better to stay low key, not come to anyone’s attention.”

“I suppose,” I shake me head, and from behind a swig of me pint, glance over to the other side, towards the fellas playing cards. 

More fellas have come in, people who had actually done “a hard day’s work,” and were thirsty from it.  Well, some of them probably had worked hard, but they were all thirsty.

I keep an eye on me pint, trying not to drink too fast or too slow.

The game of poker next to us gets bigger; the stacks of ten pences and five pences on the table grow taller. 

One fella heads up to the bar to break a pound into five pences.

“Shag off outta that!” the barmaid snaps at him.  “Where d’ya think y’are, above in the bleddy Bank of Ireland?”

“Ah go on now, ya will, ya will.  An’ sure ye’re looking smashing yerself today,” he plawmasses her.  “Here, just give me fifty and ten fives.  That’ll do me fine.”

She gives in, turning to the till with his pound note.

We’re mad keen to play cards.  When no one has money for drink we play a lot of poker and blackjack ourselves, and fancy ourselves as card sharks.  But this is not the game to join.  If we won, they’d be pissed off at getting beaten by underages, and maybe tell the barmaid, or, more likely, bate the livin’ shite out of us. 

Still, in between big slugs of our pints, we watch them like hawks.  After a few minutes it’s clear that one of them is cheating, badly.  He kinda actually doesn’t even make a big-bones about it, which none of us can understand.  If he gets a hand that’s no good, he slips a few colored cards into the folds of a Wrangler jacket sitting on his knees. Then he throws the rest of his hand in on the table, being half-arsed careful to mix his cards in with all the other cards.  The other fellas had to know, but still they played on. 

It gets so bad that at one point, the cheater gets up to take a piss, and he very carefully picks up his jacket, keeping it in its folded position, looks the other players in the eyes and says: “Shake well before use, huh, huh?”

He gives the tightly folded jacket a little shake, laughs a cruel laugh, and heads for the jax.

Before I know it, me pint is finished, and I’m feeling extra good.  Me stomach is fine now.  It’ll only play up again when I need to go back out and deal with the regular world.

In fast whispers the lads argue that we should start a round.  But I wasn’t so sure about that.  What if someone went up to the bar and didn’t get served?  Then we’d all be fucked.  The lads say that’s how it’s done in pubs, and if we don’t do it, then we’ll stand out like underages. 

Still, I’ve been watching everyone, and only some people came back from the bar with rounds, more just go up and get their own pint.  We end up agreeing to be like Solomon, except we’re more extreme and we do cut the baby in two: We start a half round.  The oldest looking fella will go up and get two pints. Then a little bit later, one of us will mosey up and get another pint.  That way all of us would become familiar to the bar staff.

The poker players are back at it, everyone with their cards held up tight to their chests, peering over the top at the other players.  The cheater doesn’t seem to be the smartest card player, ‘cause for all his saving colored cards, he either can’t get them out of the jacket when he needs them, or he just fucks it up.  For one hand he backs himself on two pair of queens and jacks, only to lose to three fours. 

He gets fierce mad at that, glaring at the three fours winner, like he’s the one cheating.

Meanwhile, the Travellers are lashing into pints, still mostly leaning heavy on their table, but a couple of them now sprawling back across the taped-up, maroon pleather couches.

“Awright, I’ll drive out t’Breaffy Road tanight an’ tell de Cock ye’re on ta fight ‘im,” an older Traveller, with huge porkchop sideburns, says from his sprawl on the couch, staring hard at a pudgy-faced, nervous looking fella of about twentyish.

“Cock’s a big man,” another one of them says, nodding wiseman-like, before he takes a long slug of his pint. 

“An’ a strong man, an’ ….”

Another big gulp of beer, dampness all across his upper lip and moustache.

“An’ he ken fight like de divil, bu’, ….”

More beer, little rivers of it now running off the sides of his mouth.

“But ‘e’s too fond a dis stuff.”

He holds up his empty glass.

“I’ll drive out dere tanight, if an’ ya’ll fight,” the older one on the couch nods at the younger man.  “But if an’ I say fight ta de Cock, den it’s fight.  Dere’s no backin’ out.”

He turns to the fight advisor, but he’s gone for more pints.

I look over the shoulder of the card player next to me.  He has three sevens and two tens; and he’s having a hard time keeping it in.  It’s not even his turn to bet, and he keeps reaching for the stacks of coins in front of him, and then drawing back his hand. 

The cheater pushes a pound fifty in fives and tens into the pot; a bullying smile on his face; his cards held close to his chin. 

My fella’s hand stop moving, he peers over the top of his cards at the cheater, and then back to his three sevens and two tens. 

He folds, slowly placing his cards face down on the table.

The fight advisor is back with new pints.

“I’m telling ya, ya bitter git dis fight done afore de Cock starts ataken’ it serious.  I mane, he could astart trainin’.  He’s a trained man ya know, done a year’s boxin’ in a club over Kilburn.”

“’E could,” another older Traveller slurs damply, his head weaving from side to side.  “But what ya shud do, is ta challenge ‘im ta fight off a Chews-day night, after de dole.  He’ll have cash den, an’ as sure as brown shite comes outta my arsehole, he’ll drink de lot.   Dat’s de best time ta fight de Cock!”

He tries to nod, but mostly his head just weaves from side to side. 

The pudgy-faced young fella that’s going fighting, takes a deep breath, lifts up his pint and drinks heavy.

At the next table, the cheater lays down three kings; hearts, diamonds and spades.  He leans over the table to collect his heap of coins. 

My fella shakes his head, gathers up his money, slugs down his pint and leaves.

Our Solomon’s half-round arrives from the bar.

“That was great,” the round buyer says.  “She was nice and friendly to me this time.”

“We’re in now,” I answer, grabbing a hold of my pint, putting on the serious face of a fifteen-year-old man.

The Famous Five On Crack

I’m standing, hands on hips, with the kids and their cousins staring at twenty or thirty geranium pots outside the front door of our castle. 

“Jesus, when they said the key would be under the flowerpot, they could have been a bit more specific,” I whine, like a castle renter locked out of his castle.

“We’ll just have ti look under them all is all,” a niece throws out with youthful good humor, and pragmatism. 

The kids launch into the search with kids’ boundless energy and enthusiasm for the adventure of staying a week in real castle.

“Shouldn’t a place like this have a hunchback-butler who just appears out of a crack in the wall, and glares through his one good eye at us to let us know that we don’t belong here?” I posit to my brother-in-law.

“Awh, would ye’s quit ben borin’ ould adults, an’ help us with the scavenger hunt,” the pragmatic child snaps.

After a lot of toppling over of geranium pots, we crack the code.  The key was not under a flowerpot, but was under a small piece of concrete that, along with quite a few companions, had separated themselves from the façade of our rented castle.

Of course, we should have known there’d have been trickery involved – the castle crowd couldn’t have ruled Ireland for eight hundred years without the use of trickery!

The castle’s setting could hardly be more idyllic.  An imposing promontory, overlooking the grassy, dotted with sheep, islands of Clew Bay.  At the mouth of the Bay lies Clare Island, half mountain, half lowland, it’s rocky coastline sculpted by countless Atlantic storms.  Across the Bay, a conical mountain dominates the skyline, and psyche, of west Mayo: Croagh Patrick.

On that mountain, a devoted Christian, from France, or maybe it ‘twas Wales, or maybe he was son of a Roman fish and chip shop owner in Glasgow  … well, he had to come from somewhere foreign anyways, cause the Irish were too busy killing one another over who owned what piece of bog to be thinking of anything spiritual.  Anyways, up that mountain this fella, fasted for forty days and forty nights before coming down, stopping in for a pint in Campbells in Murrisk, copyrighting the name Saint Patrick (he probably had to do it by fax, it ‘twas long ago,) and then going on to drive all the non-human snakes out of Ireland.  Good man yourself Paddy!

Creaking open the appropriately heavy castle door, we launch into our adventure:

Once inside, we’re greeted by the obligatory grand stair sweeping into the Front Hall.  It’s important to note, I know this as the(one week) kinda-sorta owner of a castle, that castle room names are always capitalized to distinguish them from the rooms in peasant homes – and by peasant homes, I simply mean all non-castle dwellings. 

With an American twist, that we narcissistically imagine is for us, there’s moose head mounted above the front door.  Just for record, as moose were last recorded as living in Ireland around about the year never, it can be safely assumed this stuffed moose was just more of the castle dwellers’ trickery.

On we go, into the Living Room, a large, high ceilinged, used furniture warehouse, with a fireplace the size of a Galway flat.  The Dining Room sits twenty at the table, has its own large fireplace, and a two-person breakfast table by bay windows that perfectly frame Clew Bay.  Off the Dining Room, runs a Servants Corridor to the kitchen, which is a full production affair; an eight-burner stove, with an oven the size of a Galway …, you get the gist: Everything is castle sized! 

Out the kitchen door is the sort of high-walled yard in which once upon a happy-for-a-few-miserable-for-most time was likely a kitchen garden, but now it’s just an overgrown mess, and a series of rambling sheds for the storage of ‘castle stuff:’ Vats for boiling oil, spare parts for the portcullis, wooden stocks for punishing miscreant servants, cans of anti-sapper spray.

We stomp up the sweeping staircase, to find there’s enough bedrooms to sleep a small village, and a series of dodgy bathrooms with early 1900’s plumbing fixtures by “Maguire & Gatchell, Ltd., Sanitary Engineers” – an old firm from Dawson St, Dublin.  The kids chose the servants quarters, which have a plethora of beds to choose from, all at odd angles, perfect for pulling all-night-movie-watching-tall-telling sessions.

As one does, we occupy the castle – also known as bringing in our luggage.

That evening, decidedly non-period, disposable grilles flare up under copious amounts of starter fluid.  Soon the smell of meat – beef from the Centra in Newport, not moose valiantly hunted in a mythical time – fills the castle grounds, which happen to mainly used for parking cars now.  After a veritable feast, washed down with a rich sampling of the best-of-the-West’s craft brews, we retire to our enormous bedrooms like feudal lords and ladies: fat, happy and drunk!

The next morning, with my internal clock unable to reset itself to holiday mode, I’m up at six rambling, Quasimodo style, around the castle.  I stare out the Living Room window, the sun is well up over Clew Bay.

Inside our castle, my senses sharpened by a mild-trending-to-severe hangover, I start to “notice” things:  Like the door of the fridge needs a broom jammed against the opposite wall to keep it closed.  Last night, retrieving yet another brown bottle, this was hilarious; this morning, it’s a pain in the arse.  The Dining Room floor creaks, a lot – so much that, to avoid an unscheduled visit to the basement, I unconsciously start to use a circuitous route to get from the Servants Corridor to the breakfast table.

The Servants Corridor is quite simply a crime against humanity: Part symbol of the dark life of the downtrodden Irish, forced, by the threat of starvation, to smilingly serve their colonial masters; part public health hazard, arising from years of food pounded under servants’ feet into the blackened carpet; part architectural insult, an unlit, dangerously uneven floored passageway, that separated the “have-nots” from those who “have” by virtue of forceable taking.

Two cups of strong coffee and a walk on our beach later, I’m feeling a little more positive.  The listing agent indicated that we could “tell anyone we wanted to leave the beach, after all, it is private!” 

I’m imagining that I’m a few reincarnations away from having the stupidity or arrogance (if there is in fact a difference) to tell an Irish person that they have leave a beach because, “after all, it is private!”

Kids, with their magical sense of wonder and fluid imaginations make the most of their castle.  With them, we explore further, finding a staircase leading to a tower roof – sadly, and badly, shut off from access; “DANGER” a handwritten sign taped to the piece of wood, not-blocking our access, warns.  In the Games Room we uncover a trove of old games, play darts and billiards, check out an aged tourist map of Ireland. 

Behind an odd sized door, the kids find the motherlode – kayaks, a standup paddle board (of sorts), an inflatable canoe.  With the sun, now high in the sky, transforming Clew Bay into a tray of glistening diamonds, the kids don bathing suits and head for the water, which is a little colder than advertised by the glistening; actually, a lot colder!

Undaunted, the kids wear out Clew Bay, living the “The Wind in the Willows” maxim that “there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” 

The adults spend the day engaged in the uniquely human activity of finding fault with that which previously impressed them.  We discover ourselves to be smarter than we thought, perhaps even “raaather smart!”

As the sun sets slowly on our castle; the not-yet-disposed-off disposable grills get pressed into savory service once again; the broom-handle-jammed-close fridge stocked with the finest west of the Shannon ales, ciders and lagers; we tipsily damn our enemies; marvel at the size of the moon; scream at a World Cup Soccer game being played thousands of miles away in Russia; eventually stumbling off for our feudal bedrest.

The castle, it turns out, is not really a castle.  It’s more a manor built in the castle style of architecture.  About one quarter of the footprint was a real castle, as evidenced by the narrow-slit windows, and the tower with its winding stair badly blocked off.  The rest of the building is a landlord’s house, built to mimic a castle. 

The kids, keen on the killing parts of history, had wondered how you’d keep Vikings out of this castle.  Turns out our castle was temporally saved from such a fate: The Vikings had stopped their trademark raping and pillaging a solid thousand years before our castle was even built.  And lucky we were too, as even the most obese Viking, Sigurd the Stout, would have easily clamored in the Dining Room windows, his great sword held aloft to slay all before him, until he tripped in the dark of the Servant’s Corridor, and impaled himself on the sword blade.   

Trickery, I tell you.  They held this country by trickery!

We get used to castle living. You get to burn off half your breakfast calories repeatedly toing and froing along the Servants’ Corridor for forgotten items.  Dining formally turns out to facilitate wine consumption.  We learn to tell visitors to go around to servants’ entry. 

When out and about in the local area, and getting ready to go home, the kids revel in loudly proclaiming, “Awright now, time to go back to our castle.”

And then of course, seven sunsets over Clew Bay are worth everything.

Friends and family visit, sitting in deck chairs, imbibing, marveling at the beauty of the island dotted Bay, Croagh Patrick, Clare Island. 

Some want to know the history of the castle – we don’t know it, and don’t have good enough WiFi to discover it just then, but we suspect it won’t be favorable to the Irish. 

Some want to poke around and get a feel for the castle.

“Ya know,” one of the poker’s says.  “This is sorta like one of dem Famous Five books.  Do ya remember Enid Blyton’s books.  Where the five young ones, they must have ben only twelve or so.  Somehow, they’d end up at Auntie Gertrude’s manor for the summer, an’ they’d find some stupid mystery to solve, a stolen chalice or a missin’ cat.  You know completely pointless, but fun.”

“Yeah, maybe they could solve how to keep the fridge closed without the broom,” I brattily suggest.

“No, no, no you’re just being your cynical self.  This is just like a Famous Five book.  You should write a new one.”

“I will: The Famous Five On Crack!”

Human Dealings

I’m walking to work on a July morning, about 7:30AM, the sun beating relentlessly out of a hazy sky.
It’s already a humid 80°degrees, Fahrenheit that is; God’s difficult to understand measurements, used in the US, Belize, Liberia …, oh and I almost forgot to include the mighty Cayman Islands: This temperature would be 28° degrees in that atheistic, Celsius measurement, which the US sniffed at and rejected, but which is used by all scientists, school kids (even in the US, and probably in the mighty Cayman Islands), and every other country in the world.
In a quixotic effort to cool myself from the effort of being a human office worker cruelly exposed to heat and humidity, I tug at the neck of my shirt, and am rewarded with an unrecordably small amount of perceived cooling. Woe to the office worker not safely ensconced their air-conditioned office, which can be sometimes so cold you have to put on a goofy sweatshirt, but that’s better than being coated all over with a sheen of sweat.
Rounding a corner, there’s a homeless woman, standing by her wheelchair. She’s a regular on this street corner, probably sixty, maybe seventy, hard-hard years. She uses the wheelchair as a carriage to carry her life’s possessions, and occasionally to rest the body within which lives her tumultuous, life.
She never asks for money.
Rarely makes eye contact.
On extreme weather days, she’ll park the wheelchair next to a Starbucks air-vent, and sit there with a grey, homeless-shelter blanket tented against the vent: Hot air in the winter; cool in the summer. On the rare occasion when her eyes are visible, they rove and snap away from any contact in a manner that signals; behind these eyes lies wracking turmoil.
Today she’s got both hands leaning against the Starbucks wall, no blanket, and she’s screaming into the air-vent.
“She’s trying to kill me. I tell you; I’m going to be murdered!”
As I walk past, holding my breath – because that’s how a modern human gets safely through tough situations – she spins around, but doesn’t register my presence: her brown irises frantic against the white of her eyeballs.
“She’s a fucking murderer!”
Spittle flies from her weather-raggedy lips, eyes blazing.
I keep walking, finally breathing again; tugging at my shirt collar, squinting rancorously at the sun.
From behind me she yells: “A murderess!”
Two blocks on, breathing again, but now sweating profusely, the Dept of Public Works is engaged in a street sweeping operation, that let’s say, has gotten a tad over-muscular:
There’s an orange DPW truck, in the bed of which is strapped an enormous loudspeaker, that looks like they bought it used from the makers of the 1953 War of the Worlds movie.
“ALL VEHICLES MUST BE REMOVED FROM THIS STREET IMMEDIATELY,” a recording blares out of the speaker in back of the truck.
“ALL VEHICLES PARKED ON THIS STREET WILL BE TOWED TO ALLOW FOR THE COMPLETION OF ESSENTIAL CITY SERVICES.”
Behind the DPW truck, in a cruiser, with blue lights flashing, a cop taps plate numbers into the cruiser’s built in computer; while another cop, leans his considerable weight on his thumb, as he presses impatiently on the doorbell of an apartment building – offering the car owner their final chance.
Behind the cruiser, three tow trucks hover, like hawks waiting to swoop.
Well behind the tow trucks two street-sweepers whine along the curb, their bristle-brushes spinning wildly. One of the street-sweepers suddenly wheels across the street to clean the other side; the bulky vehicles glides on its tiny wheels with the secretive urgency of a post-apocalyptic cockroach
The tow truck drivers’ elbows and faces hang out their windows. Smoke snakes up from the cigarette jammed between the first driver’s fingers, an anxious scowl on his twenty-something face, as he watches a fourth third tow truck hurriedly hook a green-grey Prius.
The tow truck’s hydraulic pump squeals as the three thousand pounds of metal fashioned into a car, of sorts, in Japan, and shipped to the US gets hoisted for a trip to tow-yard.
The big cop backs up from the apartment building doorbell, shakes his red, jowly face.
“HOOK ‘IM,” he yells at the first tow truck driver, pointing at a silver-grey Honda Civic.
“ALL VEHICLES MUST BE … ,” the refrain continues.
I keep walking, quixotically flapping my arms, tugging my shirt, wiping my brow.
Three blocks on I see yellow police tape.
There’s an unmarked police car parked at an odd angle, closing a whole street. One end of the yellow tape is jammed into the unmarked’s closed door, the other end cinched around a streetlight.
Now my eyes rove, searching for something sensational to break the heated lethargy of this morning.
In the doorway of a she-she coffee shop lies a perfectly laundered, white sheet, barely a crease in the fabric.
Sticking out under one end of the white sheet, is a pair of red New Balance sneakers, the heel worn through, the side of the sneaker so greasy it’s almost black.
The shoes of a homeless man.
They’re not moving.
They won’t move again.
Standing in front of the white-sheet-covered body of a dead human being is the driver of the unmarked police car: Tall, muscular, hair buzz-cut, tree trunk legs in tan khakis, folded arms bulging out of a white golf shirt, police badge clipped to his belt. The thirty-something detective, nod-chats down to a short-paunchy uniformed cop.
The dead man – I’m presuming a man based on the size of the shoes; probably a poor presumption given that homelessness doesn’t typically allow for fussy footwear choices – is presumably, here I go presuming again, a homeless victim of the opioid epidemic. Even if I do presume too much, this is likely not a bad presumption, because every single day in Massachusetts, abuse of prescription opioids such OxyContin, Codeine, Fentanyl, takes the lives of four mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters.
Across the whole US that death count runs up to one hundred and twenty-eight humans dying every day from misuse of “legal” prescription drugs.
No problem there.
If the much Trumped up MS13 gang killed four people every day in Massachusetts, we’d have an FBI-ATF-State Police task force kicking in doors and arresting half the Hispanic population of Massachusetts: If the MS13 gang killed a hundred and twenty people nationally every day, the Trumped-Up-Feds, in the name of National Security, would napalm Chelsea and East Boston, and clamp the burning neighborhoods under siege.
But this particular human dealing, that costs so dearly in lives, is the perfect confluence of Big Pharma and the illicit drug trade; two powerful, fifty plus year old industries, enabled by a small number of money grubbing doctors and pharmacists, who shredded their Hippocratic oaths in pursuit of that house in the Caribbean, … oh and a plane to get there. So, instead of actually doing anything, we just talk about it, … a lot.
My feet keep me moving, even as my body sweats and my mind swirls.
“He can’t hit, it’s that simple-stoopid,” the paunchy uniformed cop complains to the detective, his chubby, red-brown forearm rising to shade him from the sticky sunshine.
“I mean if I’m the Red Sox, how can I afford to pay a guy thirteen million a year, … thirteen, to sit on a bench in Fenway Park. I heard he don’t even like ta fly, so he begs outta a lotta the road trips?”
“And you gotta sell a hell of a lotta shirts to make thirteen large,” the detective smiles wryly, shakes his head, but cold-eyes my rubbernecking the white sheet as I glide past with office-worker anonymity.
Just around the corner from the white sheet, a uniformed sergeant jawbones into an iPhone held a few inches from the side of his head.
“He’s gotta pick one or t’other,” he half-yells at the phone. “It’s gotta be U Lowell or Salem State. I tol’ ‘im I can’t do no outta state schools, not this year, but he’s gotta pick. You gotta taulk to ‘im.”
He stops to take a breath.
I stop and stoop down, with considerable cost in sweaty discomfort, to fake tie my shoelace.
The sergeant interrupts the machine-gun burst of angry words emitting from his iPhone speaker:
“I’n tellin’ ya, I just ain’t got the detail hours. I jus’ can’t do ‘em, not with the ankle like this.”
His free hand stabs the air; the reddened flesh around his eyes narrowing.
“I can’t stand on the goddam thing for more than four hours. An’ them scumbags lawyers from the cruise company is fightin’ me toot’ n’ nail. It aint my fault they didn’t
clean up the water on the basketball court; I don’t give a hot shit if I spilled it or not. It’s still their responsibility!”
The verbal machine-gun out of his speaker starts up again. He pulls a white facecloth from his pocket, wipes his entire face.
I can’t hold out fake tying my shoelaces any longer without looking suspicious.
I stand up; stretch; feel a large drop of sweat run down my back.
“Next yeah, next yeah, if I get the cruise ship money, an’ construction holds, then UConn might be an option. But he’s gotta pick one! I aint picking, you gotta … .”
The machine-gun burst starts up again.
He flashes a this-is-the-shit-I-gotta-deal-with look, holds the phone out toward me, still squawking in machine-gun bursts.
I nod back with fake empathy, walk on, tugging my shirt neck, uselessly.
A tow truck, yanking a silver-grey Civic whines past, cigarette smoke rising from the arm leaning out the window.

Tight Quarters

I’m lying in a hospital johnny, on a white plastic bed, earplugs stuffed deep into my ears, breathing hard through the surgical mask.
The MRI tech’s lips are moving but I don’t hear what she’s says, because my, already construction-deaf, ears are plugged; plus, I’m checking out a room I actually know pretty well but haven’t seen for twelve years.
She smiles a taut, I’m-supposed-to-smile-at-this-point smile, leans forward, and installs hulking, white headphones over my ears.
I stare up at the ceiling of backlit, photographic ceiling panels trying to pretend they’re a fake deep-blue sky, with a smattering of brilliant white clouds; providing a sort of canned hope, in a room where hope of any sort is often in short supply.
I know this, because I managed the construction of this room, and the whole building it’s located in. Back then, I, mean-spiritedly, argued against spending the extra $15,000 for this little parcel of manufactured hope to help the oftentimes deathly ill patients, who spend time in this room getting their failing hearts imaged.
“Now,” the MRI tech’s voice crackles over the headphones. “We’re going to start. If you need me, just squeeze the little ball in your left hand.”
Then the top of the plastic bed starts to magically slide into the magnet – way too fast!
Suddenly I’m in a two-foot diameter tunnel, the top of which is just above my face. My surgical mask billows, then rapidly tightens across dry lips and into my mouth, as I pant for air!
I have to get the mask off!
But the tunnel’s so tight, it’s hard to get a hand up to my face.
It’s too much.
I can’t stand it for much longer.
My fingers start to tighten around the little soft ball in my left hand.
I repeat a Zen mantra: The three false pillars upon which we lean: Wanting, Lusting, Fearing.
Right now, I’m all over Fearing!
But then, in a blinking instant, the karma of Irish claustrophobia-trauma transports me thirty years and three-thousand miles away from the two-foot tunnel of an MRI in Boston to the boot of a Ford Escort parked on the gravel outside the Castlebar Rugby Club.
It’s after midnight on the Sunday night of some summer bank holiday weekend. We’ve been near-continuous lorrying pints of Guinness into our ourselves since the lads all arrived back in town Friday night; breaking only for a few hours of no-rest-drunk-sleep, and two penitential hours of hangover sufferance, before we’re back leaning on the counter in Hoban’s Bar, sipping a hair a the dog.
The Rugby Clubhouse closed a while ago; the disco crowd already drunk-driving all over the barony of Castlebar. We didn’t leave right away, ‘cause we were goofing
around on the field; playing rough-touch rugby in black darkness, using a tied into a bad-knot jacket as the ball.
Then it’s time to go.
There’s nine of us. Way too many to squeeze into the only car left: One of the lad’s old Ford Escort.
Walking the few miles into town gets nary a second of consideration.
Instead, with the bleeding-edge insight one gets after fifteen pints of Guinness, we Clown Car it: Jamming two into the front passenger seat and five into the back seat. With two in the driver’s seat a bridge-too-far, even for fifteen-pints-us, there’s only one alternative left.
I climb into the boot.
The lid is slammed closed.
Immediately, I regret it.
But the muffled sound of the Escort’s door closing and the rattle of the engine trying to start let me know that now, there’s no way out.
With panicked-regretful-me in a crumpled fetal position, the Escort weaves chaotically through the townlands of Horsepark and Mount Gordon, my head taking the odd ding as the driver warms up the tires – racing driver style.
Then we hit the Westport Road.
I know, because even in my tight quarters, with my mouth as dry as a gravel pit, every drop of liquid in corporeal-me now standing on my skin as sweat, I still get the rush that comes to a nineteen year-old brain from a car rapidly accelerating.
But as that rush wears off, I freeze with panic at the thought of the car hitting something, flipping over, and my being stuck in there, upside down, the smell of petrol permeating my tight quarters, as I wait to get barbequed alive.
Propped up, drunken-badly on one elbow, I strain against the boot lid, delusionally.
Panic compounds; hyperventilation; heart thumping the chest.
We skid to a stop the at the traffic light, the only one in town. I can hear muffled laughter, the engine revving for a green-light-launch.
I try slapping the inside of the boot to get their attention, but the space is too tight for my hand to get any momentum.
More head dings, my ear drums palpitating with wild heartbeats, as we hard-left at Heatons, swoop down through Market Square into Newtown; tire screeching hard-rights onto Chapel and Linenhall Streets; then outta nowhere, a sudden, crunching jam to a stop.
My good-for-nuthin-no-more body bundles forward.
Car doors slam.
There’s laughing outside the boot. I hear someone yell; “Is Chipadora open? Get me a steak n’ kidney pie!”
A hand slaps down hard on the metal.
But now, I’m not worried.
My brother is in the group; he’ll get me out of here; and he does.
The sound of the key grating into the lock is the sound of the rest of my life outside of these tight quarters.
“Are you awright there boss?” the driver asks.
“No worries,” I lie Guinn-rageously, my shirt clinging to me with sweat. “Sure, doing the Circuit of Ireland Rally in the boot of your car is all in a day’s work for a fella like me.”
Back in the two-foot MRI tunnel, it’s all worries.
I’ve been in there for what feels like three days now. If the thing didn’t keep shaking and making a series of rhythmic thuds, I’d a thought it was broken, or that they’d forgotten about me and gone home.
Coming to the hospital, even in the middle of a pandemic, I was beyond happy: Being driven there by my soulmate, taking care of myself in a way that I normally never do: It all felt good and right.
As might be imagined, with the self-esteem of someone who elects to climb into the boot of a car, I don’t do a great job at the taking-care-of-myself stuff. And is it any wonder?
As kids we were taught not to take up too much space in the world: That space was made for other, more important people. Doctors, doctor’s offices, and hospitals were most definitely only there for those important others.
One of my sisters walked around for four days protecting a broken arm from the ever increasing, swarm-of-bees-attacking pain that comes with a broken bone.
“Don’t be going up there to that hospital, bothering them doctors!” Da snapped, shaking his head with that resolute belief of his that we were to run low to the ground, and never stray far from cover.
Finally, sanity reigned and a “bothered” doctor got the broken arm into a cast.
A friend’s father was asked by an officious ICU doctor if his dying mother should be revived:
“Ah, give it the wan try anyway,” was the father’s humble answer.
The ailment, that has me bothering doctors today, is a careless-middle-classes “new normal” condition: A disc herniated, as my world, like that of a great many of the luckier people, got a pandemic-shrink to the tight quarters of our dining room tables.
All my bothering the not-to-be-bothered-doctors got me sent into an MRI; a staggeringly complicated piece of technology that can see inside our bodies by using a pulsing magnetic field to send the protons in our atomic structure off on the booze for a few milliseconds, and then, like a judgmental parent or spouse, record how the protons behave getting back home as a measure of our health.
It’s amazing, and terrifying!
But now inside my two-foot home, back from my trauma-holiday, the tightness of the tunnel doesn’t feel quite so bad, compared to the Escort’s boot; the MRI’s clicking and clacking seems tame enough compared to the Escort’s engine revving and tire screeching; and the little soft ball in my left hand replaces that yearning to hear the key grating into boot’s lock.
Who needs Zen, when you’ve got a warehouse in your brain full of fucked-up memories?
“Ok, we’re finished now,” the tech’s voice crackles in my ears.
Magically, the plastic bed slides out of the tunnel, as I quickly replace the surgical mask.
I lie there staring up, somehow begrudgingly proud of the $15,000 fake sky; my surgical mask now back to normal levels of billowing.
“Now that wasn’t too bad, was it?” the MRI tech says, faux-pleasantly as she removes the hulking headphones.
“No worries,” I lie traum-rageously, my johnny clinging to me with sweat. “Hanging out in a two-foot tunnel? All in a day’s work for a fella like me.”

Boomer Zoomers

“Eh, eh, ok folks, is everyone on my … Zoom meeting?  This is Brad …, your intrepid leader, ha-ha-ha, firmly at the helm, during the defining crisis of our time.  Meghan, start recording this for future generations.”

“Sure, … em, hang on, I mean I hit the button but it’s not saying anything.  This is my first time using Zoom.  I mean, as I say to my girlfriends, ‘I’m in tech, but I’m not tech.’ Right?”

“Eh, eh, everyone turn on your cameras, as your boss I need to see you looking at me, eh, eh, …, who’s NMG301?”

“Brad, this is Nance, and they’ll have to pay me a heck of a lot more than they do, for me to turn on that camera and stare at my chicken skin throat for the next sixty minutes.”

“Is that you Nancy Goldberg?”

 “Please, please, call me Nance.  This stoopid virus got my appointment at Gotham Plastic Surgery resched… .”
“Why is your name showing as NMG301?  Didn’t you take the online tutorial on how to personalize your account Nancy?”

“Nance is my name Brad, and as HR rep to the company’s smallest, and still not profitable unit, I do need to note that you shouldn’t cut people off.  That’s rule one of video conferencing … .”

“But you’re not video conferencing Nance…eee.  Please switch on your camera, just click the little TV camera icon.  I’m trying create community here.  If I can stand to look at your … .”

“Hello, hello, this is Tom, Tom Morgan.  Can you hear me Brad?  I couldn’t get all those letters and numbers and periods in my calendar to work – why do they do that?  So I just phoned in.  It’s my home phone, if this is a toll call, is it reimbursable, or do I just write it off with my taxes?  I only keep a home phone because it’s essentially free with my cabl … .”

“Tom, Godammit!  I personally spent five minutes setting up your laptop.  I don’t expect a sixty something accountant to understand how tech works, but, I’m happy to say, as a fellow sexagenarian, that I made the decision to make tech one of my areas of experti… .”

“And Zach’s!  I mean Zach’s the real tech here.  By the way we’re almost definitely recording, … maybe.  Zach messaged me how to do it.  Eloise can you type up the transcript of this call for Brad’s Defining Crisis of Our Time Log.  He’s creating a company archive, so future generations can understand how, even as thousands were being hospitalized, our App got New Yorkers handmade chocolates delivered within one hour, guaranteed!”

“No.  I don’t type.  I wuz hired to answer the phones – occasionally; book the cheapest travel known to man; set up yer never ending meetings; an’ keep Brad caffeinated.  I ain’t typing nuthin.”

“Eloise this is Nance, if it wasn’t in your job description when hired, and you have not received a promotion with new dut… .”

“That’s fine Nance, I don’t actually give a shit.  Plus, I ain’t herd a you since that whole camera in the bathroom thing – I never did get no money from that.  You know the Zoom guys gots a box ya can click that makes you look better. Between that an’ a low light, I’m savin’ a frickin’ fortune in makeup.”

“Eh, eh, let’s get going with this, as your leader, I have urgent matters to deal with.  Some customers are unwilling to pay the extra $4.99 for end-of-delivery CO…VID…19 sterilization of their packages. It’s just a Clorox wipe, but I did ensure a You…Tube video of correct wiping techniques got sent to the Ubers.  Eh, … Zach, Zach, would you mind leaning back a little from the camera, your face is filling my entire screen, and quite frankly it’s a little disconcerting.  You look like you’re in a rage.”

“Brad, that’s Zach HR head shot.  I mean, isn’t it Nancy?”

“Please, please everyone, call me Nance.  Nancy was my aunt, from Brooklyn, who made challah that tasted like Sty…ro…foam, and divorced three cantors, before she ran off with a jazz saxophonist from Jersey City.  Broke grandpa Irv’s despotic heart.”

“Eh, eh, Zach, Zach, are you there?”

“Brad, Zach doesn’t like talking … I mean, not much anyway, he messages me when you ask a question.”  

“Brad, it’s Tom again, I’m so sorry, I have to deal with Zsa-Zsa, our cat.  She’s scratching for food.  If I don’t feed her, she’ll destroy the leg of the dining room table.  I think Peggy’s soul somehow journaled into the cat when she passed.  I mean, it’s even more exhausting taking care of Zsa-Zsa than Peggy.  Thankfully Zsa-Zsa hasn’t discovered martinis at three – yet!” 

“Zach’s not talking to me?  He’s on my Crisis-of-Our-Time videoconference, and he’s not talking to me!”

“I mean Brad lots of the younger generation, like me, we don’t like to talk. I do, a lot, but they ‘thumb’ instead.”

“I taulk, an’ I’m young.  Thurty’s still young on Staten Island.”

“You’re the receptionist Eloise, I mean it’s a job requirement that you talk.”

“Well Meg-man, maybe if you unstuck yer head from Zach’s as… .”

“Brad, this is Nance.  Per HR, employees are allowed not to talk, so long as they use other effective … communication … methodologies, includ… .”

“Oh for God’s sake Nancy, what sort of HR drivel is that?  How can I possibly stay the most successful unit head in … for your sakes, I … don’t get anything extra for being the greatest you know.  It’s all for my employees.”

“Youse did go on the ‘Top Ten to Hawaii’ last year – that wuz nice, heh? ‘Member, I booked you through Vegas, cuz youse wanted to triple your bonus on the way.”
            “Eloise, that’s private …, all employees must remember they need to maintain standard business decorum throughout this trying time… .”

“Brad I’m back, Peg…, Zsa-Zsa just wanted to pee.  Her litter box is in the downstairs bathroom, well it’s really just an old orange crate with shredded Wall Street Journals.  I don’t find it fiscally responsible to recycle until everything is fully utilize… .”

“Tom, don’t tell me you recycle newsprint after the cat …, I mean, hang on, Zach is typing …, he says, … .”

“Eh, eh, please Meghan, I need to get back to my Zooming.  Now the Upper East Side is holding, but everywhere else my chocolatiers ar … .” 

“He says: That’s not just disgusting Tom, but it’s also a violation of Board of Health regs in sixty one of the sixty two counties in New York.  Zach says you should move to Sullivan County if you want to … .”

“MEGHAN! I said I need to get back to my business.”

“Brad, this is Nance.  You can’t yell at people.  You, as the supervisor, are totally within your rights to suggest reasonable … communication … methodology … improvements, but raising your voice above … eighty decibels … is not acceptable per Corporate’s ‘It Takes a Village’ policy.”

“Well every village has an id…, I need to get back to … .”
            “Does that include regular meetings?”

“Sorry?  This is Nance.  Who’s talking?”

“Zach.”

“Oh Zach, nice to meet you, this is Brad, the guy who hired you when Google found you ‘too quirky’ to work with.  So glad you summoned up the decency to use my unit’s preferred communication … methodology.”

“Zach, this is Nance, and to answer your question.  From a HR perspective, of course Brad has his rights as a supervisor, and you have your ri… .”

“It’s ok Nancy, Zach just messaged ‘HR sucks.’”

“Oh well, of course as an employee, Zach is entitle… .”

“With this sort of behavior, how can I … possibly generate the esprit de corps necessary to ensure New Yorkers can get gourmet chocolates delivered to them during the defining crisis of our time – within one hour, guaranteed!”

“What the hell’s spree-de-core?  One of ours new choc-lates?”

Intro to Anthratpology

 I’m glued to the chair, mesmerized by how he talks. 

It’s started as a regular old west of Ireland day, wind rattling the windows, rain belting in sideways.  We were sitting in our regular old kitchen; black and white tiled floor, mint-green walls; the Sacred Heart lamp, with a bit of dried up palm tucked into it, glowing red below a picture of Jesus with a red heart, wrapped in thorns, suspended inside his wide open chest; Da, ankles crossed, lounging back in his tubular armchair, next to a glowing fire, drowsy from the heat and his just finished ham sandwich lunch.  

Everything in my world as suffocatingly boring as ever, except that today who showed up, but the rat-man. 

 “Throw on the kettle there,” Da tosses his head back, acknowledging it’s worth spending a mug of tea’s length of time with this fella.

I pretend to make for the scullery, but stop and turn my head to keep fully plugged in.

“Don’t ya see I had a brether a-below in Australia.  Ah, he went off on a boat outta, I believe it ‘twas South…hampton, back in t’fifties.  Sure, there was nawthin’ in Mayo in them days.  Not a bleddy thing.  I’ll tell ya now, cows considered themselves lucky if an’ they had thistles to ate.”

He kinda-sorta twists and nods his head all at once. 

“Neighbours of ours, t’father driv a lorry for t’Mayo County Council, an’ I belief he could manhandle a bulldozer too, if an’ he was asked.  Sure, we used to call them ‘t’emperor’s family.’  They had that much in the kitchen dresser, which wasn’t much, but ‘twas more than ever got into our dresser.”

 Da waves his hand impatiently at me to get into the scullery and boil the kettle.  From within I can still hear.

“An’ after about ten year a-below in Australia, t’brether come home for a visit, an’ don’t ya see, he stopped within in London for a few nights craic.  There’s a lot of Balla people in London, always was.  Sure they built t’bleddy place.  The Queen wouldn’t be able to go down t’road, if an’ that road hadn’t been built be Balla lads.  Any an’ ways, t’brether knew I liked animals, an’ t’farm was long gone be then.  Ah yeah.”

He stops for more than a breath, and I’m sad I can’t see what his sad-thoughtful face looks like.

“I was above portering in t’hospital, part time, an’ doin’ a bit a milkin’ for this fella, an’ fixin’ fences for that fella.  Don’t ya know that sort of a way. Any an’ ways, didn’t t’brether brung me, from England, yeah, a cage filled with four rats.”

 Scalding the tea, I keep my ears sharp, afraid I’ll miss something important.  

We often had odd fellas in the kitchen: It’s not our fault, I mean we’re a small bit odd, but these fellas were odder.  

See the problem was the birds.

My father bred canaries and budgies; or budgerigars, as the slow-talking fella in the pet shop on Capel Street in Dublin called them.   One day an ould retired Yank came to buy one, and he and his wife called them parakeets.  

It started kinda-sorta as a hobby for my brother and Da.  But now Da has them  breeding like rabbits out in the garage.  I mean you can hardly fit the car in the garage, but there’s cages full of these wing-flappers up on the walls; shite and feathers flying out through the bars of the cages.  

And out the back of the house, Da built an aviary.  It’s like a little room, except the walls are made of chicken wire, only better, small wire squares that a budgie could never get out of – no way.  Or no wild bird could ever get in through that wire.  The wild birds come over and hang on the wire, having a bird natter with the canaries and budgies, but they don’t stay long.  It’s probably like visiting someone in prison; you don’t want to stay too long, in case you get kept.

Inside the aviary, the canaries and budgies flutter around all day, landing on perches or bits of branches, put in there to make it feel like they’re in the wild.  Sure, even a budgie’s bird-brain would have to know that they’re not at home below in dry-hot Australia – they’re stuck in wet-n’-windy Mayo.  

I don’t know where the canaries come from, maybe Spain, ‘cause they have that island down there named after them.   But the canaries are for sure more like the birds in Ireland.  

I mean one time Da and this ould fella – and he was ould, probably seventy anyway – went off and found a goldfinch’s nest, and they kidnapped one the chicks out of it.  They brought it back to the ould fella’s house, and he put it in a cage outside, so that the mother would come and feed it through the bars.  

And she did!

Or some mother goldfinch did anyway, ‘cause it grew up to be a goldfinch in a cage.  

Then they bred it with a canary, to get what they called a “mule.”  Yeah, just like Francis The Talking Mule; except this was just a small bird that wasn’t one nor the other: Neither canary nor goldfinch.  But they got what they were after, ‘cause it for sure did “sing beautifully.” 

But when the regular canary and budgie chicks grow up enough to have feathers and can fly – if you can call flutter-hopping from one perch to the other flying – Da sells them.

That’s when the odd fellas show up.

Lots of regular families, who want a pet bird to drop feathers and shite all over their kitchen floor, come too.  But they’re regular; so they just pick out a bird in a colour the children like, pay for it, and leave.  

The odd fellas have to come in, have tea, haggle a bit over the price or try to get a second bag of birdseed thrown in for free – “to close the deal.” 

It’s as if they think they’re buying cattle, out of cages in our garage! 

But most times the odd fellas really just want to sit in our kitchen and tell stories about animals.  Stories that other people, regular people, would think odd.

I’m back with the teapot and mugs for everyone.  

The rat-man takes his mug, and nods as I pour.

“An’ if you had a dropeen a milk,” he says, nodding.  “An’ a few grains a sugar, that’d be the finast.”

I pour for Da and then turn to go for the milk and sugar.

“So any an’ ways, I kep’ the rats, two whites, a black, an’ a brownish wan.  They were great fellas altogether.”

I stop, and look back to see if he’s spoofing.

He’s not.

“The onliest problem was they were divils for the … you know ….” 

He holds the mug in three fingers, makes a circle with his left index finger and thumb, and then pushes his right index finger repeatedly in and out of the circle. 

“Divils, … divils they were,” he shakes his head slowly, a bit of a guilty grin on his face.  “‘Twas worse now than the bleddy car park behind the Royal Ballroom of a Sunday night!”

I rush into the scullery for the milk and the sugar.

“Ah, sure before you knew it, I had nearly a hunderd a them, … an’ then again a coupley a month later, nearly four hunderd.”

I’m back with a pint a milk and the bag of sugar.

“Jest a dropeen now, to scare away t’darkness,” he says, holding up the same index finger and thumb, millimeters apart.

“Good God,” Da says, shaking his head slowly.  “Four hunderd rats!”   

He has that look on his face like when I break a thing he thought couldn’t be broke.  

“Ye’re neighbours must have loved you.”

“Ah, sure no one knew.  I kep’ them within in daddy’s cowshed.  Unless I brung ya in there, ya’d think I was on’y keepin’ a coupley a pigs.”

“And tell me what happened them all?” Da’s eyebrows knot together as he stares at the rat-man, and I’m imagining him having some choice words when he’s gone.  “You couldn’t sell a pet rat in this country now, could ya?”

“Oh, no, no, no.  Don’t ya see, as t’good Lord,” he kinda-sorta blesses himself using the mug, “would have it, the work ran out … everywhere.  ‘Twas wan a them sort a winters, nothing goin’ on.  T’ospital let me go, an’ t’farmers got their lazy arses outta the bed in the mornin’.  So, I had to go over to Celia in Birmingham to make a few quid.”

He shakes his head slowly, and looks down at the tiled kitchen floor, his hand rising to hide his eyes.

“I couldn’t get no one to take care of me rats.  So, I went out wan morning, … an’ I poisoned t’lot of them.”

The head shaking speeds up.

Da’s eyes flick to mine.

Because we often had odd bird people in the kitchen, we didn’t pay so much attention to oddness after a while.  

There was one fella, he was on the dole, that came and bought a budgie one time.  But then he kept coming back and coming back, talking about getting another one to keep it company. Finally Da gave him one for free – one that was no good for breeding anymore.  

But that didn’t stop him coming.  He’d show up at the door, maybe two or three of his little children skirting around his legs.  He always came at dinner time, thinking Da’d be home for sure, to answer his questions.

“Now, if they’re talkin’ to wan another, an’ the bakes is wide open,” he mimics a budgie’s parrot-beak by reaching his arm out in front of his face.  “Are they roaring at one another?  I’d be afraid they’d start fighting an’ get hurt.  How would you fix a budgie, if it got broken?”

Da, chewing hard on a pork chop, would glare at him, trying to finish the meat before he blurted out some harsh answer.

“Go on there now, ate your dinner, don’t be mindin’ me” yer man’d say, slapping at one of the children for some wrong thing they hadn’t done at all.  “I’m afraid havin’ the two within in the wan cage.  Maybe, I should see if can get another cage?”

When he was finally gone, Da’d blow a gasket:

“And that fella, living below in a houseen the size of, … of, … of a shoebox, and he has them birds in on top of that poor missus of his.  And sure she’s grand, not a thing in the world wrong with her.  She stopped me up the Main Street the other day, and begged me, I mean the woman was nearly in tears, not to give him any more birds.  Do you know where he keeps them?  In the bathroom!”

Gards that work with Da come and fill the kitchen chairs on their tea breaks: Big, thick shouldered men, with serious faces, that split into smiles for three seconds at a joke, and then freeze again.  They sit there, walloping down mugs of tea, and talk in a code of trailing off, half sentences, nods and winks.   Then suddenly, with the sort grating of chairs across the tiled floor that Da’d kill us for, they’re gone, just a pile of still-warm mugs left on the kitchen table.

An ould fella from back the road comes in and sits next to the fire drinking mug after mug of tea.  He goes on and on and on about the “fas…cinating hiss…tory of Castlebar,” and then he starts lecturing us on what we should and shouldn’t do for this thing and that thing.  Da sits there, holding up the Irish Press in front of his face, sighing and rolling his eyes.

“That fella,” Da says through gritted teeth, when he’s gone.  “He’d bleddy well tell ya how to build a watch.”

But the rat-man could keep all our attention, all the time.

“Wan time, don’t ya see,” the rat-man says, slapping his hand off his knee, stopping for a big breath.  

“Wan a them do-gooder groups within in town, the Lions or the Tigers or wan a them things.  Any an’ ways, they were having a funds raiser for handicapped childer, or some cause like that.  An’ they must’ve heard I was a rat-man.”

He raises his little finger and nod-winks knowingly.  

“‘Cause, don’t ya see, how they were raisin’ t’money was a rat race.”

He holds up his mug – ready for more tea.

I glance at Da.  

Not a muscle moves in his face; both eyes bearing into yer man’s. 

I bounce my eyes between the two of them.

“Any an’ ways, they axed me if an’ I’d take care of the rats fer them.  Don’t ya see, git them in an’ out of the cages like.  ‘Tis not every man can manhandle rats.”

He twist-nods his head slightly, but strongly.

“An’ tell me now,” Da says, setting his mug up on the mantle-piece, and leaning forward, tenting his fingers under his chin; like he does when he’s gonna catch me out in a lie.

“Where did they get these rats?”

“Oh, from some place below in Ballin…nah.  Some gang down there had a tin building full a them.  The finest of rats.  But all white wans, no colours at-all-at-all-at-all.”

He shook his head, a kinda-sorta sad look coming into his face.

“A building full a rats below in Ballin…ah,” Da says slowly, knitting his two eyebrows together, reaching for his mug.  

“I remember now,” he nods, and sits back in his armchair.  “There was some sort of an ould lab-roar-itory down there.  It ‘twas Germans or Japs or wan a them crowds had it, doing research.  Maybe now that I think of it, … ‘twas probly something to do with Asahi?”

“Any an’ ways, t’do-gooders brung me in to town that night.  Some lady an’ her daughter, sure she was all growed up too, t’daughter that is.  They come out for me in a blue Renault, an’ the two of them stinking of per…fume.  Course I had t’wedding suit on.  Don’t ya see, I had on’y just got it for Celia’s eldest’s weddin’ abroad in Birmingham.” 

He shook his face fast twice. 

“Oh, … ‘twas a big night. Bright lights an’ the knobs a the town in black suits, with big tumblers full a porter, an’ women in fur scarves, sippin’ glasseens a wine.”

“An’ tell me how do rats race?” Da asks, and adds with a snort.  “Other than the bleddy rats we see racin’ each ‘round town in Rovers an’ Merks.”

“Well now don’t ya see, they had these glass, or maybe they were plaa…stick, tubes.  An’ they put sand within on t’floor a the tube.  Rats don’t like sand; it hurts their feet; so they’ll keep moving.  An’ which ever wan of them moved the fastest down the tube, they called that winning t’race.  The tube washn’t too long, an’ they left food at t’end for them. An’ don’t ya see then t’people of Cashel-bar would bet on them.  That was only wan way they made money.  T’other was a bizhness in town might buy a rat.   Like, not really, they didn’t really own it, ‘cause them rats had to be back to work t’next morning.”

Now Da holds up his mug for more tea, his eyes drifting off.

“An’ so, my job was to get them out of the cage an’ into t’tube.”

“Good God man, a rat’d ate the hand off ya!” Da says, looking all interested again.  “Wouldn’t he?”

I pretend I don’t see Da’s mug; this is getting too good.

“Not if you know rats, he won’t” the rat-man says, his head twist-nodding, slowly, proudly.  “Don’t ya see, the ways ya do it is, you grab t’rat be his tail, ‘tis sticking outta the cage, that’s how they’re built.  An’ then, … then.”

He sets his mug down on the floor, and stands up.

“Then you pull them out of the cage, an’ you whirl them, …,” he starts swinging his right arm around in a circle up over his head and down by the pocket of his baggy black pants.  “Round an’ round a few times.”

He sorta staggers a bit; stops swinging; and sits back down.

“Don’t ya see it makes them dizzhy, so they don’t know what’s goin’ on when you stuff them into the tube.”

“Good man, I wouldn’t have thought of that one now,” Da says, nodding slowly in admiration.  “And did any get away on ya?”

He smiles at the thought of a rat running through a half-drunk crowd, all dressed up to the nines.

“Oh no, no, no.  Don’t ya see, there’d a been hell to pay if a wan a them rats got away.”

He slaps his hand on his knee.

“Oh yeah, hell ... to … pay.”

He twist nods his head slow-strongly.

“I was tol’ in no uncertain terms on t’night, be a Chinese doctor, that them there rats was highly educated!”

“Come on so,” Da says, standing up suddenly, setting his mug down on the kitchen table.  “And we’ll get you a bird.”

“Great, great, sure I don’t have no animals ‘round about at-all-at-all-at-all these days, an’ ‘tis just mesell out at the home place now.  We planted Daddy … twelve month ago.”

He nods, and looks sad again, but doesn’t move to get out of the chair.

“Ah yeah, ‘tis nice to have an ould pet around,” Da says; hands on hips, staring hard, waiting impatiently for the rat-man to get out of his seat.

“I’ll tell you now the God’s honest truth,” Da squint-winks and kinda-sorta nods at him.  “But I’d take animal any day, sooner than some ould pain in the arse human.”

He spins immediately and glares at me; I’m guilty of overhearing him curse out a truth.

“Don’t ya see now,” the rat-man says as he pushes himself out of the armchair, eyes glued on Da.  “I’ll for sure be ‘specting ya to throw in a second bag a seed – to close the deal.”

Viral Walking

I’m plodding along the Riverway in Jamaica Plain with two of my kids: Me with a fake smile tiring the muscles in my face: The kids, as teenagers, who don’t truck for free with human fakery, project the standard adolescent why-the-fuck-do-I-have-to-go-for-a-walk scowl.  

All three of us are sick of the lockdown order, sick of having the walls of our apartment exist as our horizon when we peer up from binging Netflix, and sick to our screaming-eyeballs of one another’s quirks.  

Barely fifteen minutes ago, we concluded a series of three-party, inter-familial negotiations that made the Iran Nuclear Deal negotiations look like the calming walk in the park I had been, quixotically, hoping for.  The impetus to cease hostilities, and move into negotiations, was a few small, but shatter-able, ornaments getting propelled across the apartment, at a high rate of speed, and stopping with an oddly satisfying “CRASH!” against one of the aforementioned horizon defining walls.

An abstract of the deal we reached, had it been officially recorded, would read something along the lines of: 

Whereas the father, who never liked that stupid plate from Barcelona anyway, is, albeit under extreme duress, hereby acknowledging himself to be a complete anus in stressful situations; will use commercially reasonable efforts to procure two servings of dairy fat, sugar, artificial sweeteners, and colorings, summing to no less than two hundred calories in the form of medium sized, JP Lick’s ice creams; one each, of their desired flavors, for his incredibly cool, completely unappreciative, extremely-annoying-in-close-quarters-for-long-periods-of-time offspring; in consideration of which access to the JP Lick’s retail outlet, Center Street, Jamaica Plain, will be gained by expending no less than one hundred calories.  

See, that’s the key phrase: “expending no less than one hundred calories.”  That’s how I won my, albeit pyrrhic, victory! 

Because to burn those hundred calories, we have to walk there.  And I imagine we’ll easily burn off the other hundred calories plus in the wash-your-hands-for-twenty-seconds fight and ornament tossing contest after the walk.

But now, outside in the heavily wooded park – although even the trees can’t get my blood pressure down from its 370/360 range – it’s one of those hopeful spring evenings that completely belies the hopelessness being purveyed by the no-we’re-the-real-news-they’re-the-fake-news media.  

The towering, barrel-trunked oak trees are starting to bud for their hundredth plus time; a cherry blossom, in early bloom, radiates pink-whiteness; crocuses peak out of the frozen-three-weeks-ago ground; grass arises, Lazarus-like, from the winter with a refreshing yellowish-green hue.  

In the most reliable sign of the approach of spring, the we’ve-never-actually-been-to-Canada Canadian geese are starting to get crazy again: Heads down, open bills exposing tiny white, hurtful teeth, they hissingly charge at inquisitive dogs and naively staring humans.

On the tableau of yellow-green grass, two robins engage in their unique mating ritual.  Well, … unique that is other than the traditional Irish-human mating ritual: The male and female, in rapid fire stutter-steps, cross the expansive lawns; heads occasionally cocked to listen for a worm (in the Irish ritual, this translates as; “I’m payin’ heed to every feckin’ thing in this world but you”); then, with a sudden explosion of wing power, the male, barely rising six inches above the grass, flits over to the female (this translates as; ten pints into the evening, a wink and a nod in her general direction); the female with her own show of explosive wing power, and disdain, takes off and lands a few feet away (this is her way of saying; “feck off outta that, you wouldn’t come near me if you weren’t bulging with ten pints of Guinness inside in ya”); but the female, perhaps a little too quickly, regrets her disdain, and starts stutter-stepping back into the male’s general area (“but sure come here, stop with them dirty ould looks of yours, and tell me, how your mother/sister/aunt/dog is doing, I heard they were sick/had a baby/won the lotto/got hit by a car); the male’s chest swells up, his wings cocking slightly, as he tries to make himself look as large as … well … as large as the biggest-badass robin in North America (“darlin’, ya don’t know what ya’re missin’, did ya ever see me lift a keg of Guinness with me teeth? And then drink it afterwards!”); the female stutter-steps closer to the male, who launches again, this time landing on her back.  There’s a ferocious clatter of bills squawking, wings flailing, feathers flying: It’s basically a full Irish.  The female’s bill never stops squawking, while with great focus and intensity the male settles on her back.  The whole thing takes about eight seconds, so only about half the length of an Irish-human copulation; but of course they are a bit smaller than Irish-humans.  Then he’s off, with another flutter of wings, back to listening for worms, which is really just his, let’s face it, pathetic version of flicking to SkySports. 

Because we’re still in the post-negotiation-you-suck, silence phase, I do not attempt to point this out little microcosm of Irish life taking place next to us on the grass.  

Instead we walk on through seemingly hundreds of joggers.  There’s ould-fellas out jogging in sweat-shorts so old and disheveled looking, that they were last in fashion … never; there was never a time when these simultaneously baggy and over revealing, sweat shorts were ever cool.  But now, in the teeth of pandemic, they’ve been retrieved from the back of the, until last week never opened, workout drawer, as men in their sixties jog along the pathways at walking pace, a sheen of sweat on their pallid faces, dark socks peeking out of faded Vans that look like they were bought in the 1970s, because, they were bought in the 1970s.  Whatever about the predicted baby boom coming nine months after the lockdown, the expectant mothers will be lucky if they can even get hospital beds, ‘cause they’ll already be full with these ould fellas in for knee replacements.

We walk on, passing twenty seven different young medical professionals, all in blue scrubs, facemasks – which we’ve been, ambiguously, warned need to be left for just such medical professionals to wear at work – and baggy fleeces – which I’ve been, unambiguously, warned to stop wearing in public on threat of patricide! 

Then there’s the family out walking the dog that really wasn’t made for walking:  He was made for killing other dogs, and the odd human. One mom leans back at a thirty -degree angle, as Tyson, a hundred and fifty pound cross between a pit-bull and Chewbacca, lunges at Louie, an obese Pug with a sagging belly and Sinead O’Connor’s eyes.  Louie stares back with a we’re-from-Brookline-and-you’ll-be-hearing-from-my-attorney look of fearful disdain.  Meanwhile, the little kids from both families practice reverse-social-distancing; hugging, kissing, and purposefully pushing their digits into each other mouths.

Louie’s mom kibitzes loudly, over Tyson’s mom’s screechy “be a good dawg now” recriminations, on how tough life is without toilet paper.  

“Can’t help ya,” Tyson’s mom yells over a guttural snap of fangs.  “We barely gots enough for ourselves. An’ Tyson here enjoys chewing on a roll sometimes too.  Gotta keep the pooch happy!”

We walk on, the all-too-familiar horizon of our apartment walls somehow now seeming less boring.  

There’s a mild thaw in familial relations, and I’m allowed to point out the sign that requires we walk clockwise around Jamaica Pond, except that I actually do point – a crime in teenager-world that lies somewhere between misdemeanor and a felony.

“Stop pointing, you’re embarrassing me,” my daughter snaps breathily.  “Do those fingers have to be aimed at everything.  Don’t you think I could make out what you’re talking about?”  

“Yeah. Use your words,” her brother chimes in.  “You’re always telling us to use our words instead of hitting each other.”

“Well it’s just …,” I start to say, and then realize my finger is still pointing at the sign.

“Stop pointing, or I will murder you!”

We walk on.

There’s a bunch of people fishing – hopefully COVID-19 can’t swim.  

Three twenty-something, hippy-dippy types are set up on the embankment with a mandolin, a banjo and an acoustic guitar.  They’re still warming up, or maybe that is the act?  Either way, there’s more musical talent evaporating from their open instrument cases than I’ll muster in my entire life.  

A fit looking couple rollerblade past, weaving easefully between groups of people on the incredibly crowded pathway.

We pass more sexagenarians (don’t worry, we’re not back to the robin-Irish thing; it just means sixty-somethings) plod-jogging along, feet flaring out wildly as they work on burning out those knee-joints with maximal efficiency.

We pass an Arabic family; the women dressed head-to-toe in black fabric, a tiny slit for their eyes; the men in bright designer casuals; the kids are kids – fun to watch as they exude puppy energy and innocence, getting their version of designer casuals filthy in New England spring mud. 

At JP Licks, I wait outside with our dog, Buddy.  He’s so sick of extra-long lockdown walks that lately I’ve been getting mysterious middle-of-the-night-emails warning me of the “dengars of walking two much,” and “the benyfits of driven your dog round, nocking down kats.”  

Originally, I thought these were coded messages from one of the many Nigerian Princesses-with-access-to-billions-in-stolen-money that I’ve been sharing my bank account information with.  But then in the middle of one night, cursing middle age as I rush-stumbled to the bathroom, I heard the click of the computer mouse, and the swoosh of an email departing.  

I fumbled for the light switch, splashing an ornament to the floor, thereby removing it from the list of ammunition for the next “family discussion,” finally found the switch, flooding my confusion with light.  By the time my eyes had adjusted, Buddy was lying on the sofa blinking his eyes open – though I could have sworn that, in the midst of all the fumbling and ornament breaking, I heard the jangle of his tags.  

I returned to sleep, promising myself that tomorrow, I will go ahead open all those credit cards for the Nigerian Princesses to spend down their billions. 

Now outside JP Licks, Buddy stares up at me in disdainful boredom, and I wonder will I get an overnight email on the benefits of “bying iceream for dogs.”

We walk on.

The kids enjoy their ice cream.

Buddy enjoys turning his head and staring over his shoulder at me disdainfully.

Back at the pond, we walk counterclockwise, and everyone, even Tyson, stares at me, the nominal adult in the group, disdainfully.

Up ahead we see a group violation of social distancing, as people huddle at the side of the path staring up the embankment.  When we reach them, the excitement in the air is palpable.

Halfway up the slope stands a red-tailed hawk; feathers puffed up, head whipping rapidly from side to side; his right claw sunk deep into the back of a squirrel’s neck.  The squirrel’s body lies limply, as the hawk keeps moving up the slope to get away from the social-distance-violating, gawking humans.  It’s a heavy load for the hawk.  He struggles to move, but his anxiety that some skiving human will take away his hard-won prey keeps him moving.  As is required for social-distance-violating-gawking humans, we take a video.

“How did the hawk catch a squirrel?” I’m asked.

“Coronavirus,” I answer, glibly.

“Really?  How?”

“Well, the squirrel was standing there, hands on hips, saying to himself, where did that gobeshite in the crazy shorts and ancient runners come from, and BANG!  Out of nowhere, a hawk grabs him.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“How many ornaments are left?”

We walk on.

An Easter Rising

I’m sitting on the barstool in Granny’s kitchen, jammed in between the sink with the always dripping tap and the old-fashioned, cream-and-black-squeaky-doored-stove. It’s one of them sort of stoves, “the range” Granny does call it, that just to boil the kettle, you have to set a roaring fire within in the firebox. If I’m in the kitchen by meself, I squeak open the firebox door, and stare in at the red-yellow flames swooshing up the chimney. It’s so hot even your eyeballs tingle, and for a few seconds it’s like you’re with God staring down at the Protestants burning in hell.
Auntie’d stop you dead in the middle of talking if call what I’m sitting on “a barstool.” She’ll stay “it’s a lab stool, we don’t have anything to with bars or pubs or lounges, or any of that sort of terrible carry on.”
I never even knew labs had stools. I’ve never been in a lab, don’t really know what a lab is. I mean I’m only nine, that kinda stuff is for big fellas.
I do go into one bar though. The Highway Man’s, over on the main street, well, it’s the only street, in Granny’s village, Dowra. But of course, I don’t go there to be sitting up on a bar stool, and lorrying back pints of Guinness.
I go to The Highway Man’s to buy milk.
After the village shop closes, people go there to get these weird triangular cartons of milk. I’m not joking.
They’re actually triangles.
And I mean, why is it called the Highway Man’s? There’s no Highway here, like there is in Kojak and McCloud. And the men there are not going rob anyone, that’s for sure: They just sit on bar stools making sad, wet sighs after every slug of their pint.
But sure everything up here in Leitrim is a small biteen weird.
Today Granny’s “range” is roasting hot, making me sweat. I mean, except for in the middle of the night, when you wouldn’t dare move around this big old house, the range is always hot. Sure, it has to be, you can’t do nothing without it being hot.
First thing in the morning Auntie is heaping turf and coal into the range’s firebox on top of a few twigs and a twisted-up yesterday’s Irish Press. Auntie strikes a match – Granny wouldn’t go near a match – with that lovely scraping-explosion sound; sets the Press on fire, and ten minutes later there’s a roaring fire to boil the kettle for a cup of tea.
Today Auntie’s boiling a lot more than the kettle. It’s Easter Sunday morning and there’s pots of all sizes and shapes on the range’s black top. Some of the big wans are starting to ding-rattle-ding, and the smaller ones are already steaming bloody-murder.
Now, you’d never get away with saying “bloody-murder” in this house. Auntie, or even Granny, would give you a good wigging if you said them kinda words.
“That’s the sort of language only a tinker’d use,” she’d say, and her nearly ripping your lug off the side of your head.
This morning, the telly is on over in the corner, and that’s a weird thing too. Usually in the mornings, we’d be run outside to play, even in the rain.
“Get on out there, a drop of rain never kilt anyone,” Auntie’d say, her lips going dead flat, so you knew if you argued things’d just get worser. Then at the last minute, the panic would come into her eyes. “But them cars bulleting down the Drumshambo road at thirty mile an hour, they’ll kill you. So stay inside that wall! If I hear our gate squeaking, I’ll kill ye meself.”
This morning the telly is on for a special reason, ‘cause in a few minutes the Pope will be blessing everyone, but not the Protestants, and definitely not Paisley. Da says the Pope’d give Paisley an awful goin’ over, if he got near him.
“Sure, the Pope’s a highly educated man, not like that bigoted buffoon, going off buying himself a degree in America.”
I didn’t know what the half of them words meant, but I was disappointed, ‘cause if Da was talking about schools, then it wasn’t a real beating the Pope’d be giving to Paisley. Anyway, they’re both so old, it wouldn’t be much of a fight.
It snows on Granny’s telly all the time, but that’s fine, ‘cause she’s so old, it’s probably kinda snowing inside her head anyway.
She’s rocking in the rocking chair, glassy-blue rosary beads thumbing along, loud-whisper-praying the way she does down in Ballinagleragh church for a half hour before – and after! – mass. We sit there, ready to explode with boredom, but all fake quiet-still, too scared to complain. If you complain about anything at all to do with church, you’ll go straight to hell.
This morning Granny’s praying like Heaven’s closing in a few minutes, and she’s too far back in the queue to get in. Her stubbly-grey-moustache moves under the prayer-whispers.
Auntie is slamming the pots around on the stove. There’s some magic, that only Auntie knows, in the way all the pots have to be on a certain part of the range, for a certain amount of time.
Granny doesn’t know nothing about the range. She couldn’t even hardly make tea the day Auntie went to work. But we figured it out, though everyone only got a half a cup of tea that day. So, all we had for lunch was a half a cup of tea and as many biscuits as you could eat.
“That’s enough for us anyway,” Granny mumbled, her disgusting pink and white false-teeth sitting on a saucer on the table in front of me. “Think of the starving children in Bee-afra.”
I don’t know where Bee-afra is, but it’s hard times there. They’re having their famine now. We had ours way back, even before Granny’s time, but we haven’t forgotten it. And anyway, with them pink watery teeth of Granny’s on the table in front of me, it was hard to be hungry.
The onliest time Granny doesn’t sit in the rocker, is where her cousin John-Thomas comes down from the mountains. They’re not really mountains, like Croagh Patrick and Nephin – where no one can live. You can get up to his mountain by driving up the branches-whacking-the-side-of-the-car road, behind the church. John-Thomas is old like Granny, only his hands are just red-glassy-skinned knots of bone, not grey-papery-loose-skinned like hers; that’s cause he was a farmer and she was a teacher. He was always pulling sheep out of ditches and saving hay and turf, and she was just in the tiny school slapping children for bad handwriting.
When he shows up around nine o’clock of a Saturday night, they usually have to “deposit” him in the rocker and feed him Granny’s lunch of tea and biscuits. They say that’s ‘cause he’s as “drunk-as-forty-cats” – whatever that means: I never knew cats drank pints.
But he does be awful drunk, and funny; standing in the doorway, his eyes all watery, one red-shiny hand leaning hard onto his cane. Sometimes he raises one foot, but then it can’t hardly find the lino, so, hanging on by the cane, he leaves it hovering in the air, and we’re all staring like it’s a game of chance, wondering how and where and when it’ll come down.
Then Auntie’ll dart over, grab him hard under one arm, like the way the RUC’ll grab a Catholic at a riot, only she doesn’t fling him into the back of a Landrover to get beaten up later, she “deposits” him into the rocking chair.
I like John-Thomas. He’s not scared of everything the way we are. He looks and smells like the mountains, his face all weather-reddened, his hair white and scraggly. We see him at mass every Sunday morning, leaning on the cane. He looks older then; the skin on his face dangling a bit; eyes dry and deep in the redness of face; a small line of smoke coming out his jacket pocket where he just stuck the pipe. And he talks funny-interesting, like it’s from long ago, or even some other world. And the things he says when he’s drunk are make-your-snot-rattle funny.
Sitting back, still a bit wobbly, in the rocker, his eyes, all watery, looking sideways at us children, he fumbles with a match – scrape…scrape…explosion – the flame disappears into the pipe stuffed with lovely smelling brown tobacco. The black plastic, mouth-end of the pipe gets jammed sideways into his lips, and jammed between his hidden back teeth. He doesn’t have hardly any front teeth, only the one scraggly one on the top; but he must have some at the back, for eating all them biscuits Auntie feeds him. He takes a puff of the pipe, blue-gray smoke drifting back out his mouth.
“Is them Kathleen’s wee wans?” he’ll ask, but never wait for an answer. “Are ye good in school? Be good at school, like your mother, an’, an’ … an’, Father John, … an’ all of them.”
He throws his head back and blows out a big cloud of blue smoke, staring at me with them eyes, so watery they could slide out of his head any minute.
“And what about this buck?” he aims the bite-marked end of the pipe at me. “Does he get many slaps in school?”
“Now John, leave the children be, sure they’re on their holidays.”
Granny calls him John, she’s the onliest one, ‘cause she’s known him for so long. She told us, pursing her thin lips between each historical thing, that she’s known him through two World Wars, the War of Independence, the Civil War, Vatican two – whatever that was, something to do with the Pope, I suppose – and a fella going abroad to the moon in a little rocket.
Soon they’re just like regular grownups off in boring talk about how hard everything is, and some family that “that shut up the home place and went over to Mary in Nottingham,” (where Robin Hood was from!), and two so-far-distant-you’ll-never-know-them cousins who got put on the internment ship, the Maidenhead, by the British Army, and “wan of them’s out, but in hospital now with his nerves.”
Peoples nerves is always going in Granny and Auntie’s world. I don’t even know what that means really, but it’s not good. You can tell by how they stop after they say the “nerves are gone.” Then they kinda-sorta nod, but don’t either. But they look at the other grownup like as if the next time they go to open the front door, who’ll be there but the British Army.
I stop listening when I can’t keep track of who’s who. They’re too many Mary-this’s and John-that’s switching over and back, for a lad to be able to keep them all sorted. I’m staring at John-Thomas’ boots, dull black with the toes turning grey-white, little cuts scarred into them from the fields, when he gets all excited and raises his voice.
“Ah, that fella,” he shakes his head, his face hardening with drunk-anger, smoke gushing out his nose, one hand pressing hard on his knee. “Sure, that man’s as crooked a frog’s leg. A tailor he does call himself. Let me tell you now about the time he went in to figure Mahoney for a new suit, the publican within in Drumshanbo, don’t you know. And he got so drunk afterwards
at the fair, on poteen, from below, … below Arigna way, that didn’t he lose the little piece-een of paper that had all the, … the, … scribbling, you know, the figures on it.”
He takes a breath, which for him is tobacco smoke, and back out it comes the nose and mouth with the words.
“An’ Francy Cleary says to him, ‘you’re in a right jam now, my mister tailor.’ Mahoney don’t you see, was a big man, and sure like any man, he didn’t like to be touched, sure ‘tis unnatural. Anyway, there’d be no going back figuring Mahoney a second time. No way. Let me tell you. Oh, no, no, no.”
He shakes head fast and hard, that I think for sure his watery eyes are going to slide out this time.
“An’, … an’ … if you remember Mahoney now, he was an awful heap of a man altogether; round, a big strong man, but round, very … very round. He was nearly like a, a … a pig-donkey, if such a thing could exist in God’s kingdom.”
He kinda-sorta blesses himself with the pipe, smoke trailing out of the bowl like the smoky-smelly thing the priest swings at a funeral.
“I’ll tell you what, the same Mahoney didn’t miss many sittings in the kitchen. And the wife, she was, as the engineer on the building site in Manchester says to me, ‘of the very same structure.’ She was a famous one for massive big steaming plates of food, with the best of mutton and beef, as only a publican can buy.”
He takes another smoke-breath and staring at nothing only the air in front of his face, he goes on.
“Well, doesn’t the bould tailor turn around and tell Francy, easy as you like, ‘sure I’ll go in there to that field and throw the figurin’ tape round a small haycock. And I can tell you, as a man that figured many, I won’t be too far astray.’”
He rocks in the rocker, laughing; the pipe stuck between his biscuit teeth at the back of his mouth.
But this morning it’s Granny in the rocker, wearing out her rosary beads, waiting for “his Holiness” come and bless us.
Auntie’s at the range.
If she’s not teaching science to Catholic girls in Enniskillen, she’s always at the range. The day she had to go to work, and we ended up with only a half a cup a tea and biscuits for lunch, that I couldn’t eat anyway ‘cause Granny’s dentures were in staring at me with their pink nastiness, Granny hadn’t a clue how to run the range.
No, that’s Auntie’s thing, with the apron glued on like it’s her magic backwards cape; and pots and pans walloping around the place; water gushing into pots, then boiling, bing-bing-bing, out the lids; and then the lovely smell of rashers frying does come, and the hiss-crackling of boxty hitting the pan.
I love boxty. It’s like God invented boxty for Leitrim people, as the best way ever to eat potatoes, to make up for how He nearly let them all starve to death back in our famine.
This Easter morning Auntie is fairly working her range magic. She’s sliding pots from one place to the other, spilling water that hiss-boils on the hot black iron and disappears in steam. Then out of nowhere a frying pan gets slammed down. She’s all elbows and serious face, not cross, but it’d only be a short journey to cross, ‘cause of course she has this huge dinner to cook. The whole rest of the family, all eleven of us from Castlebar, and then Uncle down from down from Dublin, when he’s finished saying mass for the Jackeens, we’ll all be here for the Easter dinner. Some poor ould lamb from up the hills died so we could eat one its legs. Auntie has the
leg within in the oven, and her stuffing turf into the firebox every few minutes, and all the air in the kitchen is jammed with the lovely smell of cooking meat.
Then the Pope comes on the telly with around a million looking up at him on the little porch he does stand on. It’s snowing like mad, but of course, he doesn’t notice, ‘cause it’s only granny’s telly, and anyways, he’s in Italy, and the Romans used only wear curtains, so it must be too hot there for real snow. He’s got the mad-big-cardboard hat on him and he’s waving, a small bit, but mostly, from what I can see through the snow, he’s leaning over looking at a book.
Granny musta tried to rock herself out of the rocker so she could kneel in front of “his Holiness.”
See the rocking chair is bit like a playpen for ould people; they like to go into it, but they can’t really get out of by themselves. John-Thomas, at least when done a few hours in the Highway Man’s, for sure can’t get out of it by himself. That’s why they “deposit him” in there, to keep him in one place.
See, when Granny tried to get out her glassy-blue rosary beads slipped off her fingers.
The beads hit the lino with a rosary beads clatter.
I know that clatter well from lads slapping rosary beads from other lads hands, when we were making our first communion the year before last.
We all turn.
Auntie spins around.
“No you’re not!” she screeches.
I wrap my legs tight around the not-a-bar-stool legs.
“Urbee … ate orbee,” the Pope moans on the telly.
I turn back to the telly to see what he’s doing: Through the snow all you can see is the mad-big-cardboard hat on his head.
But the grunting from the rocking chair makes me turn back there.
Auntie has Granny pushed back into the rocker.
Granny’s hands, whiter than the television snow, are glued to the chair’s arms, but her shoulders are pinned against the rocker’s back cushion.
“You have two broken hips,” Auntie grunts out. “For God’s sake, even Father Faul said there was no need for you kneeling anymore.”
“It’s Easter,” Granny wheezes, gritting her teeth, the veins in here neck tightening blue. “I always bow to his … .”
“There’s no more kneeling,” Auntie’s cheek and the side of her neck is bright red.
The pots are ding-ding-ding screaming, water hissing off the hot-black-iron in little puffs of steam.
“Holi … ,” this time Granny’s mouth opens, and her disgusting-pink-and-white-teeth come flying out, stopping all the words. They fly out over Auntie’s shoulder and land with a sickening crack on the lino.
“That’s not good,” I hear my own voice saying.
Auntie doesn’t know it yet. She’s still red-faced-battling Granny.
Granny mumbles something, and gives up.
The Pope is blabbing away in not-English, the hands going left and right, the big hat bobbing, the snow pelting down in front of him.
Finally, Auntie realizes Granny is done, and releases her grip, but doesn’t stand back from the front of the rocker.
Ding-ding-ding-hiss the pans steam, rattle and roll.
The Pope is going on in not-English – sure we haven’t clue what he’s saying, he could be telling us to go brush our teeth for all I know.
Then Auntie sees the pink-white mess on the ground.
“Ah, would you look at what you did now?” she says, like she’s disappointed and mad, again.
All the children’s eyes connect.
We need to get out.
We could get blamed for some of this before long.
Granny mumbles and starts to cry. But with no teeth, it’s even harder to understand her than the Pope.
“The bishop should’ve issued an ecumenical letter to direct the old and infirmed to stop kneeling. I said that to Father Faul, that’s the only thing will stop the elderly from getting hurt needlessly.”
She stoops over to pick up the teeth. There’s a dark pink line running across the top of the really disgusting part.
She picks them up, and though I feel my stomach making a run for me throat, I can’t stop staring.
“Look at this, good Go… ,” her eyes flare as she turns them in her hand. “Your brand new dentures are cracked.”
In my mouth, I taste the burning stuff from my stomach.
“Turn off that telly,” she snaps, turning to me.
Sliding off the not-a-barstool, I stumble, shocked at how stiff my legs are.
“Nnnnn…,” Granny mouths loudly, tears in her eyes, her hands held up in prayer.
Trapped between the power of Auntie’s blistering anger, just a few feet away from me, and Granny summoning the power of an unseen God, I freeze

Worthington, MN

I’m sitting at the counter in a dive bar in Worthington, Minnesota.  It’s 11:00AM on a July, Tuesday morning.  In a bar like this, at a time of day like this, you’re not going to find the sort of people who can actually help you out when you’re in a jam, but for a twenty four year old Irishman, when you’re out of your element, then a bar is always the best portal into your new world.  Twelve hours previously, myself and my fellow-traveler were zooming along Interstate 90, delivering a car from Boston to Seattle; well, a Ford Escort, if they’re actually considered cars; and even if so, in all honesty, Escorts don’t zoom. 

It’s for sure a dive bar; no windows; ashtrays heaped with last night’s cigarette butts; a smell of piss doused with chlorine permeating the blue-red flickering, neon darkness.  But where else would you find talkative humans at this time of day?  And it’s a real bar: No food, just booze, and boozy, morning drinkers; the sort of people who, even at 11:00AM, are happy to dish out slurred, clichéd advice that they, not even once, attempted to follow.  

But these morning drinkers do know their surroundings, and for sure they know who, outside their narrow universe, can be trusted, because, running low to the ground with all that left’s after drinking every penny you’ve got, your survival often depends on knowing who’s trustworthy and compassionate outside your world.  

Sitting next to me at the bar is a man who left Worthington some time back in the late 60s or early 70s, to take a little US government funded trip – to Vietnam.  He’s been back now in this classic, Midwest, small-town-America, small town, for close to twenty years, but he can’t seem to shake off that trip.  Under his military-green, “US Army” soft hat, his forty-something-year-old face is crisscrossed with a seventy-year-old’s wrinkles.  Sown onto one pocket of his sawn-off denim jacket, is an olive-green shield, centered on a large red “1” – the Big Red One of the First Infantry: On the other pocket, the black MIA-POW “YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN” shield.  

He’s nursing a bottle of bud; next to it, an empty shot glass.

The barman, a bearded, tattooed, self-confident, chatty fella, plunks down two bottles of Budweiser: One for me, one for my fellow-crossing-a-continent-in-a-red-Ford-Escort-traveler.

“There ya go fellers.  Normally that’d be $2.40, but this morning, seeing as how you Massachusett-ians is jammed – is that what y’all calls yerselves?”

“I think they call themselves ‘Massholes,’” I offer.

“No,” my fellow-traveler contradicts. “We call ourselves ‘superior … New England fuckheads.’”

He raises his free bottle of Bud to our new best friend. 

At this point in my twenty-four years of having years, I’ve spent three of them in America.  All the cool Irish people – like the singers; Christy Moore and Paul Brady – seemed to spend their time in America hanging around the Lakes of Pontchartrain, trying get the Creole girl, with “jet black” hair, to marry them.  Though, in all honesty, I’m fairly sure Christy wasn’t thinking yer one’d was going to be in it for the long haul; spending forty years in a tiny, semi-detached in Monasterevin, waiting for Christy to fall in the door, dead drunk, every a Saturday morning around 2:00AM; and him still trying to slide the last few curry-chips from the bottom of the bag.  

But all a gobeshite like me could do in America, was hang around Boston; working long, hard days on construction sites; and spending the weekends waltzing in and out of pubs along Dorchester Ave; with the odd sally downtown, to some “fucken rip-off bar” in Faneuil Hall.  I’d been to New Hampshire and Vermont skiing (actually, falling mostly), NYC for a mad weekend (to sample 4:00AM closing time – not to be fooled with!), Rhode Island, twice, playing rugby (all of 50 miles from Boston), and now I find myself in Worthington Minnesota (1,500 miles from Boston!) on a Tuesday morning, in what my father would’ve called “a back streets’ pub.”

A Minnesota fly walks along the counter next to my bottle.

My hand moves with more speed and intent than I knew was in there, and slams down on the unfortunate insect.

“Oh man, that’s the owner’s pet fly!” the barman chuckles, flicking the insect carcass out onto the bar floor.

 “I wouldn’t want to get in no fight with that guy,” the veteran next to me stands up, gingerly takes hold of his bottle between two fingers, and moves to a table in the middle of the floor.

“Oh, it’s ok, I was just … ,” I start to say, but stop when I see the barman wagging his head.

“It aint you Massa…chusetts.  Freddy jus’ aint liked nuthin sudden to happen in he’s life, not since seven’y-one or seven’y two.”

Up until about twelve hours before our sitting down for a Bud next to Freddy, things had been going along ok; well as ok as things can go for two humans trying to drive three thousand miles in a red Ford Escort, with no radio: Yeah – the cruelest part of it all, the radio was busted.  By the time we hit the Ohio border, there was a firm “No Fucken Singing!” ban in place.  

We left Boston on a Saturday mid-afternoon; eight hours later, the signs for Niagara Falls were dismissed as “stoopid tourist shit!”  We kept going, stopping around 1:00AM at a paper-thin-walls motel just off I90 somewhere in Ohio, for few hours of fitful sleep.  The next day we drove across Indiana, which is really not a state at all; it’s just one never-ending cornfield.  We blew through Chicago; despite my urge, when I saw the signs for the South Side of Chicago, to go see if I could find “Leeroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole darn town.”  Suppressing the urge to sing, I kept driving, the engine in the little-red-Escort-that-could getting hotter and hotter.  

The engine cooled just a little when, somewhere in Illinois, we saw a sign at a rest area for “FREE COFFEE AND HOMEMADE DONUTS.”  Pulling in, I had to slow down behind a motorcycle gang riding in pairs.  On the back of the denim jackets was emblazoned “The Highwaymen:” A graphic of a malicious winged-skull, wearing a Garda hat; well probably more an SS hat, but, you know, the same general shape.  The bike gang pulled up, impressively still in formation, and I very deliberately drove on to the other end of the lot.

The “FREE COFFEE” was being offered by a local Boy Scout troop, their earnest, excited eyes shaming you into the “SUGGESTED DONATION – $0.50;” and the “HOMEMADE” had to have been intended for the barely tepid coffee, because clearly Mamma and Papa Entenmann had baked the good-for-ten-years-in-the-package, sugared donuts.  But what pressured me the most into donating, was that the Highway Men were pawing at their stainless-steel chains as they fished wallets from their grease-stained jeans to stump up their, literally, hard-earned money!

On we drove, the little-red-Escort-that-could eating up, well nibbling, the miles.  We departed Illinois, crossed Wisconsin, where, for reasons unknown, people drive the speed limit in pairs, so you can’t pass them!  Then we moved on into the large corn field that is Minnesota.  With enough Mountain Dew (for the record, the best, or worst depending on your situation, source of caffeine available over the counter) in our system, sleep seemed passé, something for others.  Unfortunately, the little-red-Escort-that-could had a little-engine-block-that-couldn’t, and after a disconcerting, even to the overcaffeinated, bang and a cloud of steam gushing from the engine, we were lucky to get from the fast lane over to the breakdown lane.  Thereafter ensued fifteen minutes of entirely clueless staring through the darkness at the still hissing, odd smelling, engine, before we came to the conclusion that we might just be fucked.

Once again, luck was kinda-sorta with us, as we weren’t too far from an exit.  On shanks mare we made it to town, and found a motel.  There we used a heavy thumb on the bell outside reception to wake the owner; a beer-bellied, thick forearmed, man, whose stone-faced look belied his helpful nature.  A few minutes of confusion on the phone with the Minnesota State Patrol took care of getting the Escort towed to a mechanic’s shop.  

The next morning, we met the mechanic, a portly, red-faced man who was equal parts helpful and evasive.

“That’s yer all veh…icle, with the Mass…ah…chusetts plates, this fer out?” he asks, his thick eyebrows knitting together.

“Er, yes, kinda-sorta, … .,” we collectively kick at the dirt forecourt of his shop.

“Head’s cracked.  I kin show ya.”

A few seconds of watching coolant squirt from a clearly visible crack at the top of the engine block confirmed our hypothesis from the night before: We are well and truly fucked!

There was nothing left but for the mechanic to see how long it would take to get a replacement part, and then spend hours – “it’s a job, I aint for kiddin’ you fellers, it’s a goin’ a be a job” – replacing it.   

For us, it was obvious that our job was to go and get further fucked up!

Around mid-afternoon, with $24.00, plus tips, less cash in our wallets, we wander out of the dive-bar and into Minnesota summer sun.   We need to get to the mechanic before he closes, see how he’s making out.

“Parts is coming tomorrow fellers,” he says cheerily, his face falling at the look on ours.

“Tomorrow?  Isn’t Detroit just down the road?” I start to feel panicky at being trapped in the middle of a continent.  “Don’t ye have warehouses full of them parts and pieces below there?”

“Fellers, just look on t’bright side a things,” he holds out his hands to the sky.  “Y’all got ‘nother day in sunny Minna…sota!”

The next morning, we resolved to be better behaved, and thus went to the Y not the dive bar.

Refreshed and back with the mechanic mid-afternoon, again expecting to pick up the car, with got another healthy dose of Midwest-chill-the-fuck-out.

“Sure, parts arrived by U…P…S, about an hour ‘r so ago, but that’s too big a job for me’s to be a starting in an afternoon. I’ll git right on it – first thing tamorrow.”

“But we could pay you overtime to stay tonight,” we’re talking big now; we haven’t actually thought through paying for anything yet.

“Nope.  I got a farm as needs a tendin’ ta,” he says, staring hard at us.  “But that brins’ up a point: You fellers got the four hunderd or so … in cash, that this is gonna cost.”

“Sure, … I mean, I got a check,” my fellow-traveler offers.

“Come on now fellers, I wouldn’t hardly take a check from ma pappy.  Can’t take one from some guys … like five states away,” he fake-laughs, but still stares hard.

He’s made his point.

We head back to the bar for advice … and soothing.

The next morning our, large-forearmed, motel manager suggests we get a check cashed at a local bank.

“That’s what an’ they’re fer, aint it?”

The logic sounds good, better than the advice we got from Beety, a purple faced drunk down at the dive-bar: “Jus’ wait ‘til dark; pop a back windaw in t’car, hotwire that bitch, n’ zoom off.  Worked twice fer me, but I done three months down Nobles County fer t’secund un.”

So, we dressed up in “our cleanest dirty shirts” and headed off on shanks mare to a local bank.

At the counter, the cashier, an already old, Midwest-plump, twenty-something woman, all but broke out in hives when we tried to cash a $500 check from a Massachusetts bank.

“Y’all gonna need ta talk ta th’manager on this un,” she says, her multiple-double-chins twisting side-to-side so rapidly, I felt an urge to hold my hands out for fear her head would come unscrewed.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re waved into a faux-dark-wood paneled office.  

Behind the desk stands a tall, nervous, forty-something, man; already staring hard at us.  He’s got a long, gaunt face; glassy eyes; and tufts of thick, dark hair either side of a smooth bald scalp.  A brass nameplate on the desk declares: “NILS LARSON”.

“Howaya,” I stride forward, with faux confidence, holding out my hand.

Nils, without moving from behind his desk, leans his tall frame forward, shakes my hand weakly, his eyes averting.

He wordlessly waves us toward the two thick-wooded, black pleather upholstered, guest chairs on the domineered side of his desk.  

He stands, hands on hips, staring at us, until we’re sitting. 

“Now, … young men,” he sits stiffly down into his high backed, black pleather chair.

His glassy eyes dart quickly from me to my fellow-traveler.  

“Stella, my teller, she’s a b’en with me for five years, an’ knows a thing ‘r two,” he stops for a breath, leans forward, places his elbows on the desk, staring at us over tented fingers.  “So, she …, Stella, that is, indicated y’all have a check that’s … problem…attic.  Not sure as my bank can help y’all ou… .”

“See, I got my check book,” my fellow-traveler starts, holding up a slim volume of sky-blue checks, “and I got plenty of money in there.  And you’re a bank, right?  So you cash checks, right?”

“Well, we don’t … not usually, or at least … I … have not had to cash a check, … a per…son…ell check that did not originate from a bank account registered in the state of Minnesota.  It’s just not that usual here.  Not something we come across, not in my twenty three years a banking.”

“Ok, but you could call my bank in Brookline.  It’s right there on Beacon Street.  They’ll tell you the money’s there.  You cash the check, and that’s it.  Right?  That’s how banks work.  See we need the cash to pay for getting the car fixed.”

“And what happened yer’s car?”

“Head cracked; we probably should’ve mailed the fuc…, the Escort to Seattle.”

“Heh?” Nils’ eyes flash from guest-chair to guest-chair, his significant forehead creasing.

My fellow-traveler leans forward and drops the check, already made out to “CASH” in the amount of $500.00, onto Nils desk.

Immediately he pushes his high-backed chair a few inches from the desk, raises both hands, head shaking a-la-Stella.  

“Nuthin I can d… .”

“Don’t worry sir,” I wade in, trying to keep this alive.  “Would it be helpful to phone the bank in Brookline.  We’d be happy to pay for the long-distance phone call”

“I never heard of Brookline and anywa… .”

“It’s right beside Boston,” my fellow-traveler says, nodding sagaciously.  “Only it’s nicer, though boring, … sort of.  Well, the Tam is fun on Sunday evenings, but otherwise, you do gotta head into Boston if you’re going for beers.”

Nils’ eyes slow down a little.  His shoulders rise as he draws in a deep breath; runs his hand down from the top of his head and across his face.  When his hand reaches his chin, he sits up in his chair, and shuffles himself back to his desk.

“Well fellers, I’m sure yer decent folk n’ all.  I mean, I hope y’all are.  But my fiduciary responsibilities to the good men on the board of this here bank is a tellin’ me, that cashing that check is not a something I ken do.”

He stares down at the small rectangle of sky-blue paper.

“Just call the bank in Brookline … the money’s there!” my fellow-traveler’s voice starts to rise.

“But now fellers, what’s to stop y’all from having a friend waitin’ outside that there bank in Brook…line,” he leans forward toward us; his face animated now; eyes darting.  “An’, … an’ as soon I give y’all my cold hard cash, then that there friend goes in an’ cashes yet another check, that y’all gave him, and takes that account to zero in deposits.  Cleans it out!”

His eyes slow down, as he stares first at my fellow-traveler, then at me. 

“No, fellers, I can’t do it,” he shakes his head slowly.  “No, fellers, I won’t do it.”

An hour and a half later, we have our $500 in cold hard cash: Western Union to our, costly, rescue.

We forsake a boozy farewell at the dive bar, for a good-old-fashioned-Midwestern-diner-nosh-up; check out of the motel; go pay for the car; and start heading back towards I90: just 1,500 miles, in a red Escort – with no radio – to go!

As we’re driving outta town, we approach the bank again.  

Nils is standing in the tiny patch of green out front of the bank, fussing with the flagpole lanyards, as he lowers the American flag.

“Slow down,” I say, as we pull close.

“Hey Nils, … Nils,” I have to yell a couple of times to get his attention.

He stops, squints, hands moving immediately to his hips, back swaying just slightly as he peers to see who’s calling his name.

Then his glassy eyes fall on the red Escort.

“Hey Nils, thanks,” I lean my upper body out the window, both arms extending, palms up, toward him.  “Stella cashed the check for us on the way out.  Thanks so much.  Whatever you said worked: You’re the best!”

His face is still pointed in our direction, but his eyes are darting all over the street.

We tried to zoom off, but in all honesty, Escorts don’t zoom.

Purgatory Lodge

I’m sitting in a ski lodge in New Hampshire, stabs of sciatic pain shanking down my left leg, tormenting all my attempts to work on the laptop. Today there’ll be no skiing for me, because yesterday, I committed the eight deadly sin of being fifty plus and stooping to pick up a bundle of firewood.
That’s me done for three or four weeks of anything but grimacing when I sit, groaning when I stand, and weeping when I get out of bed after six hours of barely-sleep.
The kids are up on the mountain: The skiing is good today, three inches of powdery snow fell overnight: They’ll have fun and burn off some adolescent energy.
As I had never deliberately driven a few hours from Boston to sit in a ski lodge, my conceptions of this quasi-public space were, until today, limited. Of course over the years, I had noticed a fair share of lodge-moms: Thirty-something, anxious-faced women, in over-sized, thick knit-sweaters, LL Bean waffle-soled boots, pushing used-to-be-trendy glasses up their noses, knitting (does the world need more over-sized sweaters?), reading, or struggling with the, you-get-what-you-pay-for, free WiFi, as they sat, self-social-distancing themselves (how prescient!), at tables around the lodge, sighing often, awaiting the safe return of their snow-suited brood from the slopes. So, existing in a ski lodge, for one day anyway, did seem like a creditable option.
But mostly ski lodges lived in my mind as the place where you had the ski-booting fight: It’s practically a rite of passage in New England. Sneakers, gloves, jackets all tossed, with hot frustration, across the ski lodge floor, to get trampled by other families distracted with their ski-booting fight, as your seven year old attempts, to the point of tears, to insert their warm, little foot into a hard plastic boot, that looks like it could have been a torture accessory back in the Spanish Inquisition. After a few minutes of your child’s tearful struggling, you suddenly turn Inquisitor and jam the foot into the boot: Then, you become the focus of all the frustration and tears.
Finally booted, wiped-away-children’s-tears on the back of your hand, you tentatively approach the window to buy lift tickets. The sales windows are inevitably at exactly the wrong height – there must be a class taught in architecture schools; The Design of Aesthetically Pleasing, But Entirely Unserviceable Service Windows – and have a small, four inch, circular louver through which no human voice can pass. Music, the sound of dot matrix printers, the strumming of fingers – those sounds all pass easily, but nary a human word. Inside the window, a ruddy, Live-Free-Or-Die, fourteen year-old girl sits perkily on a stool, ready to make you, the paying customer, feel entirely an accessory to the ski experience.
Even when you’ve prepared well – refinanced the house; sold a few family heirlooms – it’s an anxiety provoking situation, as the ruddy teenage swipes your card so many times, you fear you may have just purchased a failing ski resort in Cow Hampshire – on credit!
But, it gets worse, as it dawns on you, that to eat today, you’re going to have to steal lunch from the ski lodge cafeteria: A felony offense, as burgers, fries and water for three people costs in excess of $250!
Today, with support from the worst intentions of my sciatic nerve, I’m getting the full Monty on ski lodge culture. The interior décor is chic backwoods-man: Faux tree bark wall-paneling, wood floors, long farmhouse tables, lined with wood benches, a roaring fire in the middle of the room, the fieldstone fireplace open on all four sides. It’s coming up to lunch time, and the tables are dotted with the lodge-moms, reading hardbacked books, index-finger-stabbing their phone screens, looking up and sighing loudly.
At the table next to me, sits a couple in matching, black sweatsuits. He’s lounging against the table, playing on his phone to the chirping of some game; a light, goofy smile on his face as he thumbs away. She’s straight backed; arms folded tight; resting-bitch-face; her head turning like a chicken watching the farmyard cat, as she scans the lodge, then flicks back with a scowl at her husband.
I look back to my laptop, and pray to the WiFi gods for just a few bytes of sustenance, enough for the email, I just clicked Send on, to depart the ski lodge – even if I can’t!
There’s a tromping of ski boots, and when I look up a group of four kids are trudging wearily toward the couple, their youthful cheeks already reddening in the heat of the lodge.
“Well, look who’s here?” the mother unclasps her arms, a wave of relief washing resting-bitch off her face.
“We got lost in the woods,” one of the girls says, tears tugging at the edge of her voice.
She’s probably ten-ish, purple and pink snowsuit, fluorescent pink helmet, and a face, that’s a mini-me of her mother’s.
“What!” the mother snaps, the relief draining from her face, and replaced instantly by fear-anger.
“Drew made us go into the woods, and we got lost,” the girl says, her mini-me face contorting into the same fear-anger visage.
She rushes forward and leans into her mother’s open arms.
“I didn’t make them go in!” Drew’s chin juts out, his eyes glaring at his sister. “They were being too rough with each other, so I said, let’s go in he… .”
“Be quiet,” the father wades in, sitting upright now, but looking confused, his phone still chirping in his hand.
“We’re weren’t being rough, you’re allowed to be rough, it’s the Adventure Park.”
“Only when there’s an adult with you.”
“Quiet, I said.”
Lodge-moms’ heads rise from knitting needles, books, phones; shoulders locked-and-loaded for an indignant-at-the-disturbance sigh.
“Well, you were in charge and you’re … .”
“Twelve!” the father says too loud – triggering a wave of pent-up sighs. “He’s twelve years old and he can’t go skiing by himself, and have some girls along. Not without this kinda sh… .”
“Drew Senior!” the mother snaps. “Do not … use language like that, their cousins are here.”
She holds out her arms to the two smaller girls; cookie-cutter versions of one another, probably seven and eight years-old. They’re in matching purple-pink outfits; goggles still over their faces.
The older of the two rushes forward to her aunt; the child’s nose and mouth creasing, as she starts to cry.
“Take them … ski glasses off,” the father’s head bobbles, his eyes darting around the lodge. “She’ll ruin the inside of them with her tears.”
“You are in…cred…ible!” the mother loud whispers. “Sidney’s having a moment, and you’re worried about an accessory.”
“Just saying,” he turns away sheepishly. “They’ll freeze up when she’s skiing, and she won’t be able to see. Maybe she’ll crash and break a le… .”
He stops in the face of the withering look from his wife.
“We were like miles into the woods,” Drew’s sister says, working her shoulders in closer to her mother, trying to displace her cousin. “I thought we’d never see you again!”
“Why didn’t you call us?” Drew Senior throws up his hands. “Actually, we was sitting here waiting for a call.”
“I tried,” his daughter’s voice starts to melt into tears. “But my fingers were too … cold.”
The tears flow, the little girl’s shoulders and helmet rocking.
“It’s ok honey, don’t cry,” the mother flicks her eyes angrily at the father, and then to the top of her daughter’s helmet. “We don’t have any service here anyway. We’re in the boonies, remember.”
“I have service,” Drew says, his mouth hanging slightly open, chin jutting out, as he looks from one parent to the other. “I been SnapChatting on the lift with Ethan and Kyle, they’re here somewhe … .”
“You’re fucken kiddin’ me!” Drew Senior’s shoulders push back, as he lurches up from his seat.
Lodge-moms’ heads rise, glare; their shoulders re-tightening.
“You let your iPhone 11 Pro Max fall off that lift, and you’re paying for the replacement. It can come outta your grandparents’ college savings for all I care. I aint paying for it.”
“Senior, you need to chill the ____ out!” the mother, slow mouths the great unutterable.
The fourth kid, the youngest girl, starts to sway a little, her arms dangling; the speckled, pink ski poles, still hanging from her wrists, scrape along the wood floor.
“Oh Lola, come here,” the mother gushes, exaggeratedly pursing her lips. “Your cousins are being mean. Are you ok?”
The little girl shakes head, takes a half step backwards.
“When will my parents be here?” Sidney asks from her aunt’s bosom.
“Well Brad and Lauren said they’d be back for lunch, and …,” the mother elaborately takes out her phone; stares at it; looks up. “And it’s lunchtime now, I don’t where they could possibly be.”
Sidney issues a loud, teary groan; her shoulders and helmet rocking again.
“It’s ok, it’s ok, they’ll be here soon,” the mother waves her arm at the youngest girl. “Lola, come sit down.”
Lola just perceptibly shakes her head.
“Hey Lola,” Drew Senior says. “You gotta lose them sticks, you’re gonna poke someone’s eye out.”
“Shut up dad, Lola’s ok,” Drew juts his chin out at his father. “She never bothers me.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Drew Senior flashes him a confused-angry look.
“Look,” the mother tries to shift in her seat, but the weight of the two girls stalls her. “Why don’t I get lunch, and listen girls, … and Drew. When their parents come, let’s not mention this getting lost in the woods thing. Ok? It’ll only upset them.”
“No, no mommy, don’t go,” her daughter resists. “Stop her Sidney, pin her down.”
“Oh stop kids,” the mother fake-laughs, but gives them both a wide-armed hug.
“Senior, you go, get three chicken nuggets and fries, and waters, no soda. Brad hates to see them drinking soda.”
“What about me?” Drew turns to his mother, arms held out, palms flat. “Don’t I get nuthin?”
“You go with your father,” she waves her hand at the bulging cash registers. “Senior aint gonna be able to carry all that without dropping something, and you pick out what you want.”
“And what about me?” Drew senior mimics his son – arms out, palms flat.
“Why don’t you grow the ____ up!”
The lodge-moms release a collective titter.

Journeying Through the Heart Land

I’m standing at the side of the Milltown Road in Tuam, with my thumb dangling toward the oncoming traffic – stoned out of my brain.

Next to me, sitting on his duffel bag, is my friend, college roommate, and drinking partner – stoned out of his brain.

It’s a Friday winter’s evening; around six, could be seven too, or later; already dark for hours; and all sorts of foggy. Thick pea-soup fog, so thick the Ballygaddy Road roundabout, thirty yards away, is barely visible from our regular hitching stand outside the TV shop. Through the fog of the fog and the fog of the pot, the cones of light from car headlights dance and dissipate; then before you realize it, you’re blinded, and they’re gone!

Must remember to keep the thumb held out all time.

We’re hitching home from college in Galway to Castlebar for the weekend –a short fifty miles, generally hitched in a couple of hours; if you’ve got your head screwed down tight.

My plan, as with most of my college weekend plans, pivots around pints. Step one is to get good and drunk Friday night – I’ve made a solid down payment on this sub-paragraph of the plan, with a poorly rolled, too much hashish, joint: Then Saturday is tamer; work in a hotel bar until two-ish Sunday morning; stuffing a few pints down at the end of the shift: Wake late on Sunday, grumpily refuse a roast beef dinner, so that in the afternoon, I can participate in a kinda-sorta inter-town warfare, labelled as the Connacht Junior Rugby League. No one’s fooled by the labelling: This is full on war. Each match being a fight to the death, in which, as the old line goes, “you need to be prepared to die for your town, or get your opposite number to die for his town.” Then a few pints after the rugby batt… match; an agitated nap, bundled up against the window of the bus back to Galway; more pints in the Skeff, relaying heroic feats (getting more heroic with each pint) executed on the rugby battle-field. Then the busiest part of the week, the weekend, is all done: Back to college, doing hardly nothing at-all-at-all-at-all.

Our first lift coming outta Galway, from the Moneenageisha traffic light, all the way the Milltown Road, was a from a pharmaceutical salesman – an … interesting fella.

He was heading to Ballinrobe, but rather than going there by the direct route, he was taking an extremely roundabout way, basically taking two sides of a right-angled triangle, rather than drive along the hypotenuse – see, I did learn something during the week.

“It’s all about safety, safety, safety. Auto…moh…beel safety, as de Yank’d put it,” he says in his thick Dublin accent. “I wouldn’t go down dat Baa…linn…robe road outta Galway, if you paid me a t’ousand pound. Not for a grand, not for a G, I wouldn’t. Deadly!”

He hit the steering wheel with the small of his hand.

“It’s deadly, dange…err…us dat road is, a killer, a total killer. I tell, I’d rather drive tru de Bronx, I would. Dat’s de God’s honest truth. Fort Apache’d safer dan dat road.”

I’m in the back seat, still trying to click the seatbelt in place – to keep me from floating up and hitting my head off the roof of the car. In the passenger seat my drinking-travelling companion, his eyes glazed over, is staring hard at the driver, his face settling into a look of stoned-incredulity.

We barrel along the luxuriously wide, straight, and apparently safe, Galway-Tuam road at seventy miles an hour.

The driver Dub-drones on in a relentless monologue; distributing the news – as seen through the lens of a travelling salesman – of the world, or at least Ireland, sprinkled with curious references to America, as if that little piece of land had been incorporated as the thirty third county of Ireland.

“… and so ya see, I have a friend, now he done a few year in de College of Sturgeons, below in Stephen’s Green. A bit like Quincy M…D, do ye’s know dat fella off de telly? Wid de big nose?”

He doesn’t wait long enough for an answer.

“Yeah, dis frien’ of mine, he probly done a solid tree or four years in dere, with de cream of de country; rich an’ tick, an’ dem learning de doctoring loike. But, he never finished, no pint really! Ya do get a certain point, an’ ye’s knows everytin’ anyways – roight?” he spins all the way around, still doing seventy, to check that we both definitively agree that finishing your schooling to be a doctor is, in fact, an utter waste of time.

I nod, a bit too vigorously, and wonder if that nod has somehow made me a member of the cult of Any-Bullshit-That-Comes-Out-My-Mouth-Is-True. It’s a big cult, with, as time has taught us, world-wide membership.

“So, now, with all dat medicinal knowledge within in his head, dis lad, he’s got regular job now. He’s a security man at de Lilac Shopping Center, in town – he was bit fond of de gargle.”

He lifts his left hand off the steering wheel, and knocks back an invisible pint.

“Ya know how dat can derail de best laid plans. But, he kep’ de medicinal knowledge in de back of he’s head, an’ so now, on de weekends, he does do a bit a plastic surgery – on de side loike. Yeah, very afford…able too, he is. Me sister got a bit of a nip an’ tuck on de eye skin, ya knows de, … eh, … anyways, somewhere round de eyes. An’ I’m thinkin’ of sendin’ de missus down to him; see if he could get dat arse of hers back into a pair a Wranglers again – I useta like dat, I did.”

He finally stops for a breath, taps the steering wheel with his hand, shakes his head.

There’s an odd silence in what had been a voice-filled car.

We keep barreling along.

“See,” he revs up again. “’Tis like anyting in dis world, if ya sit down an’ study it, it comes easy enough. You know, all ye’s do is open up de skin, take out a little of de…, I suppose it’s flesh is it?”

He turns to see our reactions. I hold up my hands in complete innocence of any knowledge of what resides under human skin.

“And ‘tis actually stitching it back up where all de skill comes in. Sure, me ma could have done it, if on’y she knewed dere was a shilling in it. You have to be very patient, and slow, and careful with de stitching. He does it all dere in de back bedroom, above in he’s house in Blanchers’town. See, he’s so cheap, cuz you don’t need de half of de stuff dey have in dem hospitals. All dem beeping n’ blinking machines! Sure, dey’re only in de room so’s dey can drive up yer bill; ya don’t need de half of dem, he tol’ me. Sure, dey’d rob, dem ‘ospitals would, if you let ‘em, dat is. Sure, I’m tellin’ him; tis cancer, ya know, de cigarettes an’ de sunshine, dat’s what he should be getting into – dats where dere’s big dollars!”

He pulls to a sudden stop, fifty yards down the road from where we’re standing now.

“Here ya are now lads – Chew-em; de biggest little town in de west. Are ye’s sure ye’s don’t want to come on ta Baa…linn…robe?” he says, loathing the loss of an audience. “I just have de one stop dere, an’ den I’m heading back to Dublin, back to de big city. You’re welcome to go dere too, if an’ you’d like dat. ‘Tis a great city, sure ya couldn’t beat de pubs in Dublin!”

We get out.

“Jaysus, what a fucken freak?” I say, but I don’t retell all the lines he just said. That’s what I usually do to remember them, to store them up to be told another time, over pints somewhere, to get a few guffaws, a sign that I contributed, that I matter.

I don’t retell his lines, ‘cause with pot, talking, even inside my head, is the first thing for me to go.

It’s a new thing to us, pot that is. We, inevitably, discovered it in the ‘opium dens’ of Galway’s student underworld; though it turns out the ‘opium dens’ are just filthy kitchens, in moldy, rented flats. In fairness, in these ‘opium dens,’ you’re much more likely to come across a Fanta bottle full of poteen, nestled in amongst dishes not washed since 1921, or a crate of Harp liberated by a drunken shoulder charge to a pub’s backyard storage shed, or, once, a keg of cider, serendipitously liberated from a careless delivery to the College Bar.

But it’s the mid-1980s and the availability of pot has expanded from the, likely cleaner, kitchens of farmhouses restored by scruffy-smelly-back-to-zee-land, German hippies, and their, never-left-the-land-we-just-want-your-marijuana, Irish hangers-on, and into the towns filled with regular Irish wasters.

Initially, the economics of pot seemed to work out well: £10 for a little nut of hashish that produced enough silent glee for several evenings. But, to get the full benefit, you need to be out and about, gaining the observances that are real dividend of smoking pot. For us, out and about meant pinting in pubs, ending up in those filthy kitchens. Still, somehow you saw a lot more when you were high, everything slowed down to get observed, inspected, examined – but sadly, not usually stored in memory.

The fog, the real fog, that is, must’ve helped that evening, ‘cause the memories stayed in my brain, albeit in distributed fragments.

Through that real fog, a Jaguar emerges, picking up speed, coming out of the roundabout, clicking down a gear as it starts into the hill. It passes us fast-slow; a man and woman in the front seat: He’s in a tuxedo, thick-dark moustache, frowning; she’s in a fur coat, blond hair, smiling.

About thirty yards away, the Jag pulls to a fast-no-indicator-stop – almost lost in the fog again.

The passenger door opens. The woman stands out, with a foggy-evening-loud-click of a metal heel. As she stands fully upright, her black fur coat eases down over her tights. She takes a few steps to the back of the car – two clicks and a drag of a metal heel. One leg is stiff.

“Come on lads!” she waves us toward the car. “Sure, we were nearly past ye, before we knew it ‘twas ye.”

Then I recognize the voice, the gait – it’s a neighbor from Castlebar. A good person.

Safely ensconced in the back seat of the Jag, I’m having a hard time keeping up with the conversation. We speed along the winding road, swooping through foggy Milltown; edging along slowly behind a blue-shite-spattered Massey-Ferguson tractor, the brightly lit pubs of Ballindine glowing in the foggy darkness; then the tractor driver pulls in for a pint, and off we zoom.

I’m in and out of the conversation – mostly out.

Miles of blurry darkness. Then we’re nudging along in the traffic on James Street, Claremorris. A Gard, thumbs hooked on his uniformed chest, stalks along the footpath, eyeing us, from out under his peaked hat, with Gard-like suspicion.

There must give a class in that look up in Templemore: Garda staring 101.

Breaking free of the traffic, we lurch through the gears, and speed past the Sisters of No-Mercy Convent.

In the Jag, there’s talk of the burden of attending Rugby Club Dress Dances, and Mitchel’s GAA club do’s, and the Song Contest; all that dressing up, all that expensive drink; a bit of ould chicken hiding out under a mountain of mashed potatoe.

The townland of Brize appears and disappears with a flash of the Beaten Path’s neon sign.

Then, for reasons not registering with me, we pull up, with a gravel-spitting-stop, in front of a pub in Balla.

I look around a cue.

Everyone’s making for the doors, so I do too.

Inside, it’s a cozy pub; well lit; a fire in the corner; a couple of ‘the lads’ – men in their sixties and above; paunchy-jowly; blue veins snaking across red noses; balding, with wild-bushy, defiant hair growth on the sides of their head; caps magically resting on their barstool-bent knees.

The barman has that barman’s magic motion, where his legs never seem to move, as he rails along the bar, distributing pints.

We order.

Two pints, a brandy, a vodka and Coke.

The barman stares fixedly out over the taps at us as he pulls the Guinness.

Our driver asks about the pub owner. The barman points his thumb at the ceiling; his curiosity sated; he pays us no more heed.

I grab my pint, my first of the weekend, and take a deep draught.

My tongue is still locked by the pot; but my eyes and ears are accepting information.

“But do you know how much it costs ta built a car?” one of ‘the lads’ raises his voice with a sudden burst of energy, sitting up high on his stool. “Do you know that now? Do you know how much?”

He twists his head, almost threateningly at the other ‘lads.’

“Heh? Do you know? I do, ‘cause I read all about it in a maga…zeen the brether posted over from Luton. There was other phot-toe-graphs in there that Father Goalie wouldn’t have liked. You must come up some night, an’ I’ll show them to ye. But let me tell you first what it costs an Englishman, or … an Irishman living in England, to make a car.”

He stares at the ‘lads’ to ensure full listening compliance.

“It costs a bleddy fortune, that’s what it costs!”

He stabs the bar with his index finger.

“By the time you’ve paid the wages a lad would need to live in Luton, and have a few of them,” he lifts his pint of Guinness, “and put the childers below into a God-fearing school. And that doesn’t even take into figurin’ all the bleddy pieces an’ thingamabobs that does go into a car. Sure lookit, a car radio itself would cost ya what a fella’d get for a calf above in the Mart, … or so the brether says anyway. Oh, no, it can’t last.”

He raises his pint, and downs a good quarter of it.

The other ‘lads’ do likewise, watery eyes drifting over pint glasses to the telly, where Tom Selleck is busy stroking his Magnum moustache. He’s halfway into the red Ferrari, smirking as he pulls the piss out of the kinda-sorta Brit. The Brit, his legs sticking skinny outta Bermuda shorts, wanders off, moidered, into the lush Hawaiian estate, stroking his pencil mustache.

Turns out the telly is big on mustache stroking.

No one in the pub, other than our driver, has a mustache, and his hands are busy working a brandy and a cigarette.

“And, do you see then,” the alpha ‘lad’ starts up again, stopping as he raises his hand, wiping the glistening wetness off his lips. “The bleddy Ja…pan…eze, sure they don’t have no wages problem hardly at-all-at-all-at-all. A lad over there never goes out for a pint. Not at all. Sure, all they need to get paid is a bowleen of rice. That’s all.”

He twist-nods his head for emphasis.

Behind him Magnum is making great speed on the highway, his eyes dead ahead, palm trees zipping past the window, but his arm turning the steering wheel like he’s on Atlantic Drive, back in Achill.

“Like that now, give them a bowleen of rice,” he holds up both hands, cupped to signify the size of a small bowl, “and you’ll get a day’s werk out of them. A bowleen of rice. Sure you couldn’t compate with that, at-all-at-all-at-all.”

Behind him Magnum is now halfways out of the red Ferrari, smile-leering at a voluptuous young woman in a red bikini.

Turns out, the telly is big on red, and big breasts.

I take a deep draught of my pint, make glazed-eyed contact with my fellow traveler.

He smiles a stoned-knowing smile.

I wander over to the fire, and take a look out the window.

Balla’s Main Street, uncharacteristically wide for an Irish town, is sparsely lit by streetlights, and devoid of people. Most of the businesses closed and darkened for the evening. The fog is starting to lift, leaving the street drenched in glistening damp.

Reflected in the window, I see the alpha ‘lad’ twist-nod again.

“A bowleen of rice,” he repeats. “The brether says there’s no way you can compate with a bowleen of rice.”

Behind the alpha ‘lad,’ Magnum is reflected in the window: He stands up out of the Ferrari; strokes his mustache.

Behind Magnum’s leering smile, the shot takes in a sundrenched landscape, blue skies, palm trees curving upward, brilliant-white breakers crashing in on a sandy beach.

Behind the reflections on the glass, outside the window, the world is in cold, wet, darkness.

Motor Heads

I’m wedged into a bus shuttling patrons from the Massachusetts Convention Center’s south parking lot to the entry.  The bus, other than the indomitably pleasant Javier, is crammed with scowling, plump, white people, in bulging winter coats, their hats and gloves balanced precariously on their laps, as they squint, distorting their faces, and stab index fingers at phone screens.  

“Well, Lucille’s not exactly a motor head,” says a pink-jowly, sixty-something man, with a tightly trimmed, silver goatee.  He looks over his foldable reading glasses, across the aisle to a wool-hatted companion.  “But she does know racing.  

He nods knowingly, still staring across the aisle.

“Oh yeah, you can take Lucille to a race not be ashamed.” 

“You’re lucky,” the friend answers, the wool-hat shaking ruefully.  “I needed something like that to keep my … .”

His words trail off, but the wool hat keeps shaking.

The shuttle bus lurches around corners, plump, white people crushing one another; alternately flashing hey-nuthin’-I-can-do-about-it smiles, or it’s-your-own-fault-for-taking-the-seat-next-to-me scowls.  

It’s actually entirely appropriate that we’re burning fossil fuels, extracted from a mile below the planet’s crust, refined and shipped (using more fossil fuels) thousands of miles to Boston, to be exploded in a carefully choreographed pattern inside the combustion engine that propels our Ford shuttle bus along at seven miles per hour, as it stretches out what is a two block walk, into a ten block bus ride through the Convention Center’s labyrinthine, internal road network.  

I mean, it would be a sin against the shiny gods of industrial marketing to walk to the opening night of the Boston Auto Show! 

It’s only diehards that turn out for the bitterly cold January, Thursday opening night.  They’re simply unable to wait for the weekend, and a leisurely meander through three acres of carpeted concrete on which the latest models from the big American and Asian auto manufacturers, dare you to show, that by owning that very car, the one parked, provocatively, in front of you, you have truly arrived!

My son and I are, as is often the case for us, unwitting diehards.  We’re here because it’s the only time that works for him, with a Martin Luther King weekend ski trip looming.  Somehow New Englanders have decided, despite widespread, heartfelt appreciation for the great civil rights leader, that we should celebrate his legacy by spending the day devoted to his memory on entirely white, in every possible way, mountain slopes.  But, we are diehard enough “motor heads” – who would hopefully not bring shame upon anyone at a race – that this is probably our sixth or seventh Boston Auto Show, plus a lot of summer evening Classic Car Meet Ups, strolling across still-radiating-heat asphalt, gazing longingly at what may have been the pinnacle of American design in the form of immaculately maintained, antique Mustangs and Corvettes.

 The bus finally docks, and we disembark, not without a few plump, white people scowl-jams in the aisles and doorway.  We make our way to the security checkpoint, where, like the good citizens we are, we drop to our knees, proclaim unswerving allegiance to our stable, genius, Dictator, strip to our underwear, and walk, hands up, through a metal detector, set so high that the fillings in my teeth start to boil off saliva.  Safely through security, and with only a few articles of clothing missing, one sock and my jeans, we soldier on, grimly.  

Actually, for real, we join a lengthy line at security, in which all the plump, middleclass, white people, excited for an evening out, immediately transform, in the eyes of the Security Guards, into suspected ISIS members.  These “suspects” are then funneled, very, very … very, slowly through a seemingly-never-stops-beeping metal detector, after which the Security Guards wave their powered-by-two-AAA-batteries-ultra-metal-detecting wands up and down our plump white torsos, and finding no ordinance, with an indifferent nod, we’re released into the display of American style capitalism at its finest.

Walking into the Main Hall, our senses are assaulted by bright lights hitting shiny metal, the purr of a few hundred motor heads appreciating topnotch engineering, and the new-car-smell of $4M worth of automobiles.  

Three steps in, senses clearing, we get the not-so-subliminal message that the most classic element of the automobile industry is that slim, young women, in spray-on, black clothes, sell cars.  

Cars, just as horses once did, hold a peculiar place in the human psyche – particularly so in the US.  Humans have become to be defined by what car we drive; how we drive it; even what types vehicles your country proudly manufactures.  Does anything capture the essence of the French quite as contradicting-ly well a Citroyen?  

Attitudes to cars are beginning to define cultural fault lines: Are they a necessary evil or the zooming symbol of upward mobility?  

Is the Chevy Suburban – “which seats nine adults comfortably,” though it can’t stop them from making snarky comments – the greatest family car ever?  An urban attack vehicle, par excellence?  Or is it a prime example of modern, clunky Yankee engineering?  

Is BMW’s X3 really the “greatest all terrain Sports Activity Vehicle of all time” – even if the closest it comes to sports or all terrain usage, is parking in a barely paved lot at a kids’ soccer game?  Or is the X3 a company parking lot, required accessory to display social status?  Or is it simply a fair warning to others of the approach of an obnoxious asshole?

Car brands, like every brand from coffee to beer to shoes to just how organic-fair-traded-dolphin-safe-voted-for-Bernie is the very food you stuff into your face, are now asked to continually shore up our ever more fragile sense of self. 

Toyota, the biggest car manufacturer in the world – the second biggest, in market value, Tesla, who have shattered the longstanding car sales model, isn’t even at the Show – has taken the stand by the entry doors, presumably flexing their financial power.  Even though we’re much more likely to drive one of their cars, we didn’t come out on a nasty January evening to look at Toyotas.  Thus, we hurry through a maze of Supras, 4Runners, and definitely-not-your-grandmas-Camrys to get to my son’s favored section: Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler – and let’s not forget their owners, FIAT; or as a they used to be known; “Fix It Again Tony!”  

Dodge is the spiritual home of American automobile brawn: Black (stealing from Henry Ford; “you can have any color you like, so long as it’s black!”) pickup trucks ripple with beefy fenders, Hemi, V8 engines, and a suspension system that can handle, without breaking a sweat, the ever expanding American girth, and anything it’s likely to encounter on the road.  

A regular dweeb, like me, can’t hardly get into the cab of one of these trucks, but I finally make it, with some help, and the, $1,015 accessory, running board.  Once inside, elevated by a crucial few feet, the closed doors effectively shutting out the noise, the Auto Show looks like a muted documentary: MAGA hatted, young men, proud of their drunkenness, slam in and out of Jeep Gladiators (now there’s a name for our times), beer cups splashing.  Sprayed-on-black-clothes, saleswomen, avert their eyes, looking for the suddenly no-longer-looming security guards.  A forty-something couple, a handful of all-you-can-eat-buffets away from full-blown obesity, pose for each other in front of the royal blue, fully loaded, $89,000, Challenger Hellcat (now there’s a …).  She’s in a purple full-length dress, well coiffed, thick-vivid makeup, a big black leather bag, with a VL black metal clasp, dangling from her arm:  He’s in Timberland boots, baggy jeans, a brown Carrhart jacket, scraggly goatee.  

A sprayed-on-black-clothes saleswoman, literally a fraction of their size, approaches. 

Her lips move; her head nods; she smiles.  

Their lips move; their heads nod; they smile back.  

She takes his phone, holds it gingerly between her fingers.  

The couple stand in front of the Hellcat, his arm held stiffly behind her back.  They smile rigid smiles, eyes pointed at the phone, unfocused.

We climb in and out of several Dodge pickups, a Gladiator, a Wrangler, a Cherokee, a Charger – the Hellcat’s off limits.  

By now, I’m already Thursday-night-tired, drained of energy and auto-enthusiasm.   

We stroll past McLarens and Aston Martins, each of them costing two, three hundred grand – as much as a one bedroom condo in the burbs.  

Ford have an electric Mustang SUV – but that’s just confusion on so many levels.  We want the smell of burning oil from low-slung, muscle cars; not an half-assed SUV with the electric whirr of an uncertain future.

We stroll on.

KIA’s marketing department, in an effort to break the young-women-in-sprayed-on-black-clothes sales mode, instead have a team of young women in sprayed-on-sky-blue-retro-floral-mid-thigh-dresses.  They look more like smiling air stewardesses, departing on a Pan Am flight to Honolulu in 1968, than “auto sales associates” in 2020, flogging affordable cars in Southie.

But KIA have a winner in the race car simulator, the graphics for which are exciting enough, and the fake gear shifter makes enough of a rumbling boom, for my son to join the long line awaiting their turn.

I stroll on.

Volkswagen, the only European car company there – you can’t really count Fiat as being present, with just two tiny cars on show, both of which look like the door of a Dodge pickup would crush them – strikes a typically German pose.  Their cars are practical, more affordable than the comparable competition from America or Japan, and ruthlessly clean: Some of the only people of color in the enormous room, are two older black guys gently wiping down a Golf and a Tiguan with beach towels. 

Near VW are some chunky cars with a logo I don’t recognize.  A plus size, sprayed-on-black-clothes sales woman approaches my confused self.

“What cars are these?”

“Eh, Buuiick!” she says, extending the middle syllable.

“Oohhhh,” I extend right back at her.  “You just don’t see Buicks around anymore.”

There’s an awkward silence, except for the sound of her inhaling a deep breath.

“We’re keeping our market share,” she says, furrowed brow replacing her smiling eyes.  “Maybe not so much in thiiisss region, but in the heartland.”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry.  I just don’t get out much,” I don’t lie, and move on.

By now my legs are tired from the slow walking, and there’s nothing quite like a $60,000 Lexus SUV to sit in and rest.  I climb in, no assistance required, and close the door.  They’ve left the window half down, so now the documentary has sound.

Three generations of a family have stopped at the $85,000 Cadillac Escalade.  The toddler tries to climb the tire. His dad, a balding, goateed, thirty something, in black sweat pants, and a grey Celtic’s long-sleeved shirt, scoops him up, holds him horizontal, tickling gleeful squeals of laughter from the little boy.  Mom, in a matching pink sweat-suit, looking a several months pregnant, opens the Escalade’s rear door.

“Plenty of room in here for you, an’ mom, an’ the kids,” she turns to the grandfather.

His baggy eyes and fully bald head turn from her, as he looks the Cadillac up and down.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says, breathing out slowly, hands on the hips of his old-guy, grey sweat-suit.  “But what if you guys get a dawg, or ya throw a couple a hockey bags in there?  The little guy plays pop-Warner?  I dunno?  I think the Cadillac’d fill up fast.  I’m still thinking a Suburban’s the way to go.”

Back at the simulator my son’s crossing the grass, smashing into the tires protecting the barriers.  All in all, he’s convincing me I should increase my auto insurance – significantly – but he does finish with a decent time.

The line has grown even longer: A mixture of the young and the young at heart.

“You shoulda seen it,” he laughs.  “That little kid in front of me, his score was like twice as good as his dad’s. Probly ‘cause he’s so used to video games.”

“Yeah,” I note ruefully.  “And probly his dad is so used to reality.”

We head for the exit.

On the way out we pass KIA’s electric car.  It feels like we’re in that odd transition period, where even the most ‘diesel n’ dust’ motor heads accepts that there is no future for the industry without electrification.  Yet most manufacturers only dabble in the electric car realm.  They begrudgingly produce an overpriced hybrid of an existing model.  Or maybe they have a puny, all-electric, that barely fits yourself, let alone all your insecurities, and only gets you 237 miles down the highway before the battery suddenly dies; whereupon a Dodge pickup emerges from the smog, Hemi growling, and squashes you like an bug, its suspension barely noticing the slight thunk.   

Two years ago at the Auto Show, Toyota had an impressive looking, fuel cell car on display: The Mirai – Japanese for ‘the future.  The sprayed-on-black-clothing saleswoman, hands waving, brimming with millennial confidence, assured us this truly was the future.  

“This is a mature market in California, with a network of hydrogen dispensing stations, literally ‘gas stations’ already in place,” she laughes at her own joke.  “And I believe Massachusetts is creating a similar infrastructure.”

“Impressive,” I nod in agreement, but can’t hold back adding, “So now no need for obnoxious Masshole drivers to create any more noxious fumes!” 

She looks at me confused.

It all sounded great.  The Mirai had a 400 mile range; more than you’d get on tank of fossil fuels.  The only problem was the “similar infrastructure,” when transduced from California to Massachusetts, ended up as a single ‘gas station’ for the entire state, located just south of Boston, a mere 200 miles from the western, high mileage driving, side of the state.  Two years later, the future appears to be already consigned to the past. 

  Yet, walking through the acres of shiny, combustion engine cars at the 2020 Auto Show, the paltry display of electric cars, must surely be like the Gottlieb Daimler’s “Riding Carriage” – the first combustion engine car; which was literally just a horse carriage, with a tiny four stroke engine supplying the ‘horse power’ – would have been in the midst of top of the line steam vehicles at some fair in the late 1880s. 

 The steam barons, no doubt confident, plump, pink-jowled men, in bulging, expensive suits, would have laughed heartily at Daimler’s bizarre invention.  

“Come Franz, leave Herr Daimler’s childish toy alone.  Let us go toast our bright future with champagne,” one could imagine them saying.  

“No one will need a horse carriage, much less a horse-less carriage, when our steam engines run up and down every street, with the pleasant hiss and whistle of steam, and the beautiful smell of coal!”

Getting To The Truth

I’m sitting at a student intern desk in the Mayo County Council offices in Castlebar.  It’s August 1985, outside it’s cold, wet and windy; an alleged sighting of the sun down in Achill was investigated, and categorically disproven.  I’m keeping myself busy reading the newspaper, the headlines of which are frighteningly repetitive: Irish Steel and CIE (Irish Rail,) are yet again on the brink of bankruptcy; the IRA are threatening to kill someone, then before the newspaper ink is dry, the radio’s announced they’ve already done it; South Africa, under the apartheid government, is delving deeper into mayhem and violence; the Mayo football team – God help us! – have drawn an All Ireland semifinal, and there’s a photograph of fan holding banner that says; “Sam to Land at Knock” – even though that airport is months away from opening.  The only relief from this repetitiveness is a story questioning how two boys from Dublin, aged ten and thirteen, “could possibly have stowed away” on an Air India flight from London to New York, but writing off as the Irish-being-Irish, the fact that the same two young fellas waltzed onto the Aer Lingus, Dublin to London flight.  The importance to the County Council, the regional governmental body, of my consuming all this news is primarily in preventing me, a Civil Engineering student with modest (to be kind) exam results, from wreaking havoc on the vital infrastructure – roads, sewers, drains – of the great county of Mayo. 

I’d been at not-work now for a couple of weeks now.  The first day was by far the toughest, as I didn’t yet know the “System.”  Thus I sat at my desk, with a map book of the town-lands of Mayo – all three thousand, four hundred of these few hundred acre sized, geographical land divisions, peculiar to Ireland – the only thing for me to peruse.   Finally, around mid-afternoon, one of my office mates took pity on me, and let me read his, by then, thoroughly handled, crossword completed newspaper.  The next day, with concern for my mental health at the forefront, on the way to work I bought an Irish Times.  

Now, there’s a funny way we humans have of bunching together, no doubt a hangover from our tribal, if not herding, roots, based upon some distinguishing factor, but mostly upon our beliefs – be they real or imagined.  Ireland at this time was generally a homogenous, Catholic country, with a five percent Protestant minority, and virtually no immigrant population: Mayo, in this same timeframe, was overwhelmingly homogenous, with an even smaller Protestant minority.  The only break in our relentless homogeneity being three Indian fellas that showed up every Friday morning, selling shirts down in the Market Square – the “cheap shirt Pakis” as they were, confusingly, known.  In this environment of bleak homogeneity, in order to separate ourselves into manageable herds, we broke down along the lines of what newspaper we read.

My family was an Irish Press family, probably flowing off my maternal grandfather, who as a good Gael, cycled, every spring, through the obligatory wind and rain, from Leitrim to Dublin for the annual Congress of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), and took his daily dose of nationalism by reading De Valera’s newspaper.  Eamonn De Valera was the Irish nationalist leader of the early twentieth century with the keenest instincts for survival.  Using innovative financial maneuverings (that would make Wall Street smile today) he redeployed money that he had raised in 1920 to drive the mighty British Empire out of Ireland, to, a decade later, establish his own newspaper.  To give the Irish Press the unmistakable imprimatur as the dominant organ of Irish nationalism, De Valera had Margaret Pearse – the mother of Padraig Pearse; Ireland’s most famous nationalist hero, who had been summarily executed for his part in leading the 1916 Easter Rising – flip the switch, on September 5th, 1931, to start the first printing of the Irish Press.  By the 1980s the Press was maintaining a tersely informational tone on “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and otherwise reporting with great volubility on all things Irish; GAA sports, ploughing contests, Catholic pilgrimages.  

Competition for the Irish Press, came in the form of the Irish Independent.  This was a slightly older publication, that had, in its early days, taken some … let’s say … hard to back out of stances; such as throwing vehement support behind the Independent’s owner, as well as all business owners, in the infamous 1913 Dublin Lock Out which saw workers striking for such unreasonable demands as a twelve hour workday, down from the, then normal, seventeen hour work days; as well as the removal of paid workplace informants, who reported small, but finable transgressions by other employees.  Just a few years later, in 1916, the Independent bayed for the execution of the Easter Rising leaders, including Padraig Pearse … and De Valera, who narrowly escaped the firing squad.  Anyone picking up on the trend here?  

By the 1980s, the Independent had well established itself as the voice of the wealthy farming community – not a small constituency then – and the middle-classes repulsed by the excesses of violence in Northern Ireland.  It regularly tried to outgun (sorry, sorry, unfortunate metaphor, given the time period) the Press in the volubility of its coverage of all things Irish.

Somewhere else in the hazy political landscape of this era lay the Irish Times, a decidedly Anglo-Irish, pro-British, publication read primarily in the cities of Ireland by people who either were pro-British or fancied themselves well educated enough to be above the sniping (sorry, sorry!) with which the Press and Independent readers regularly engaged one another.  The problem for an entirely pissed-off-with-the-world, young man like myself was that the Times had clearly better journalism, with a broader world view (as in correspondents in locations other than London, Belfast, and the Vatican) and, more importantly, covered my favored sport, rugby, in depth.  

Many years before my brief stint with the County Council, I had one morning been sent down to a local newsagent to buy the Irish Times; which was publishing a series of exposés on the Gards’, the Irish police force, heavy handed tactics to combat IRA activity south of the border.  The newsagent – a woman who kept her finger on the pulse of everything happening in our town through her curt, but incisive, interrogations of every customer – looked aghast as I approached the counter with one of her only five Irish Times in my hand.

“The O’Farrells don’t read the Times,” she snapped.  “Run back there, and get yourself a Press.”

“No, today it’s the Times,” I counter-snapped.

“No, you can’t, there won’t be enough, there’s two doctors, two solicitors, and a dentist coming in for their Times, as they do every day.  There’ll be hell to pay if it’s not here for them!”

“I was told to buy this,” I dug in, with adolescent stubbornness.  “Are you refusing to sell it to me?”

“You can have it, ya brat, but I’m telling you, you won’t understand the half of it!”

With the newsprint-ice broken, procuring a copy of this fifty-percent inscrutable newspaper became increasingly less difficult: “The O’Farrells,” and eventually many other families, got added to the ever expanding list for whom the Irish Times was available for ready purchase.  By 1985, I could understand all of the news in the Times, and it was all, unfortunately, bad.

From about day three on of my non-work, I sat at my County Council desk, with the town-land map book covered first by the Irish Times, then by the Irish Press, then the Irish Independent.  As office mates, we had decided that little lasting harm could be done by our privately sharing with one another our newspapers – and thus our worlds.  Over that time, while carefully avoiding the wreaking of havoc on Mayo’s civil infrastructure, I read how Dire Straits had sold a million copies of their new LP in something called CD format?  The new American President, Reagan, and the new Soviet leader, Gorbachev, were planning another, time wasting, summit.  A few British scientists had discovered a hole in something called the ozone layer – so what?  Meanwhile, back in Ireland, there were statues moving in Ballinspittle, County Cork, with thousands coming to kneel pray-fully before them; Bob Geldof was still basking, languidly, in the success of Live Aid; traditionally vicious rioting occurring before, during and after the Orangemen’s parades all across Northern Ireland; where there were more bombings, more killings, more threats from everyone against everyone for everything – so, business as usual.  Thusly, we passed the wet, windy August days, with the afternoon’s closed out by each newspaper’s respective purchaser, scalp-scratchingly completing their paper’s crossword puzzle.

At some point the bureaucratic beast that was the Mayo County Council of the 1980s eventually woke to the fact that perhaps a strapping young fella should be doing more than getting paid to read three newspapers a day, and spend a few hours, generally unsuccessfully, completing the Time’s crossword.  For context, it’s worth noting that in this same timeframe Bord Na Mona (the Irish Peat Board: a semi-state company, charged with extracting value from Ireland’s peat bogs) took a group of its managers on a tour of the Soviet peat harvesting industry; upon which tour, they no doubt exchanged best business practices and drank excessive quantities of vodka.  Upon their return to the Emerald, Boggy, Isle, one member of the Irish team, responded to the question as to just how the Soviet Union functioned, with a snippy: “Well, it’s basically the Mayo County Council on a fucking enormous scale.”

In any case, the Politburo of this mini-Soviet Union saw fit to relocate me from my original non-work placement over to an office where there was actually some work to be done.  There I flourished, or at least was kept busy enough that the purchase of the daily newspaper was no longer necessary.  It turned out that I liked working, it was oddly rewarding to feel like one had accomplished something, no matter how small.  

One of my tasks at this new office was to create on a graphic map of Mayo’s roads that, by dint of the thickness of the line outlining the road, displayed how much traffic that road carried.  On this graphic, a less busy road, let’s say Geesala to Bunnahowen, would be a thickness of perhaps one or two millimeters; while a busier road, Westport to Castlebar, would be maybe fifteen millimeters.  The raw data for exactly how many millimeters to make each road was traffic counts completed a few months previously by paid contract workers.  These workers sat by the side of the road ticking off boxes on a form that denoted a vehicle travelling in either direction.  The only reason they didn’t use a tablet computer to do this, was that such devices were a couple of decades away from even getting invented.  Thus, clip-boarded forms, with tea copiously spilt from thermoses all over them, would do the job fine.

All was going well until I got to the traffic counts for what should have been one of the busiest roads in the county – the Castlebar to Dublin road.  There the contract employee had noted a staggeringly low count of ten cars across the whole day.  I checked with my supervisor, who just rolled his eyes and muttered something along the lines of; “thanks be to God, fellas like that usually feck off to England.”  

Lacking any further direction, I faithfully completed my task, with this one significant aberration on the graphic; where apparently many cars poured into Castlebar, but only a paltry few, ten to be exact, departed.  I left the graphic for my supervisor’s boss’ boss to comment on, if and when, he so chose.  We were, after all, big on bureaucracy.

Thereafter, things slowed down in the new office, and once again, I had to resort to bringing the Times to help pass the day.  Everyone seemed fine with that.  I’d read the paper, put it down when asked to do anything, and return to it when things slowed down again.  Others would occasionally bring their own paper or ask for a read of mine.  Then it got slower and I had days where I once again progressed all the way to crossword.  

One day, I’m sitting at my desk, scratching my scalp, working on the crossword, when my supervisor walks into the large shared office.

“Jaysus, you can’t be doing that!” he rushes over, a look of genuine concern on his face.

I scan for the room for what I shouldn’t be doing.

“That,” his index finger touches the black and white squares of the crossword, “is a recipe for disaster.  Come here, let me show you.  Bring that newspaper with you.”

We walk over to the photocopier.  He folds the Times such that the crossword fits on a letter sized page; hits the button; a prolonged flash of bright white moves along the folded newspaper.

“Now,” he says, a smile tugging his lips.  “Grab that sheet, and follow me.”

We return to my desk.  He carefully folds the newspaper, and puts it on the edge of the desk.

“You see,” he points his hands, palms up, toward the newspaper. “Ready for borrowing, if and when an otherwise overworked county council worker requires a quick catch-up of the day’s news.”

Then he carefully pushes aside the traffic-count paperwork mess still strewn across my desk, and places the photocopied crossword on the clear desktop in the middle of the mess.

“There you go now,” he nods sagaciously.  “They’ll all think you’re working, and if anyone approaches, you just slip it in under them traffic counts.”

I was in: I had the System fully decoded.

All progressed fine for a few days, with me working, reading, crosswording as dictated by the level of busyness in the office.  

Then one Wednesday, around three-ish, my supervisor sidles up to my desk; a distinctly uncomfortable look on his face; his eyes darting around the office.

“Eh, you’re eh, … wanted … eh, on the phone,” he nods toward the only phone in room; a massive, black, rotary dial device, with a handset so heavy, you could do curls with it.

“Me?” I start to get alarmed.  

It’s the subject for a whole other day, but in 1985 Ireland, phones were, due to the exorbitant costs charged to breath a word down a phone line, neither ubiquitous nor broadly used.  Thus someone actually knowing you were close enough to a phone, and then having the audacity to contact you on it, was a small bit scary.

“Yeah, it’s eh, … it’s the boss,” he raises his shoulders and eyebrows high.  “The big boss.”

He aims his index finger upward.

“Oh Jesus, is everything all right?”

“I dunno, you better answer him; he’s not a man that ever got used to waiting.”

“Yes sir, can I help you sir?” I start breathlessly into the phone, presuming obsequiousness was the best option in such a situation.

“So listen here, you’re the student fella right?” a cranky voice at the other end says.

“Yes sir.”

“Well, first of all, I saw that traffic volume graphic you did.  It’s not bad, fine, nearly good, except for the Castlebar Dublin Road.  For God’s sake man it’s illogical that a few hundred cars pour into the county town and never leave?  I mean, how could that happen?  Are they all above in Hoban’s carpark?”

“Eh, eh, … no sir, we just don’t have a good count for the … .”

“Well then just inter…pol…late young man.  Interpolate, I’m telling you.  That’s what this job is all about.  We get bad information piled upon bad information, and we have to somehow make it work.  Just thicken up the line so it looks sensible, and pay no heed to that bad traffic count.  The lad that done count that will head off to America someday, with nothing but a hole in his arse, and he’ll be back here twenty years later a millionaire, driving a bleddy Cadillac Corvette, and the rain pouring in on top of him.  But do you think our millionaire will put the roof down?  No way, because then we wouldn’t see his big stupid grin!  Anyways listen to me.”

He stops to take a breath.

I hold my breath, completely unsure of where this is going.

“While I have you on this instrument for converting acoustic energy into electric energy, let me ask you about a small unrelated matter.  In today’s Times’ crossword, twelve across is an annoyingly hard one.  The clue is: ‘The ‘something’ doctor, and it’s a seven letter word, is something, something, a three letter word and a four letter word, unable to complete the operation because … two letter word, five letter word.’  Now, what could that be at all, at all, at all?  ‘Tis a very strange clue.”

“Oh,” I finally take a breath, but now I’m unsure of whether this might be a trick to end my non-work career.   

“Well, I haven’t seen that,” I lie outrageously, having had a much smarter friend unravel that one for me at lunch.  “But just hearing it there for the first time, like, … well, I’m wondering if maybe it could be …, you know, just a wild guess like, but maybe the word is; notable.  You know n…o…t…a…b…l…e.”

“Let me see now,” the voice breathes out heavily into my ear.  “The ‘notable doctor was not … able to complete the operation because he had no …, good man, good man.  All right, that’ll be all now, get back to work.  And remember, interpolate!”

Public Charges

I’m standing in the auditorium of a Catholic girls’ school in Southie, just a few doors down from Triple O’s Lounge– Whitey Bulger’s, vacated, headquarters.   

It’s around 9:00AM, on a bitterly cold, March morning, in 1999.  

Outside the auditorium, grey-brown snow piles, littered with frozen in place broken furniture, beach chairs, milk crates, are holding fast for now, but are doomed to a watery demise by the inevitable tilt of our planet just a few degrees closer to the nearest star.  In the broader world, beyond Triple O’sand the nasty snow piles: Bill I-didn’t-have-sex-with-that-woman Clinton is just over his impeachment; Timothy McVeigh has just had his death sentence for the Oklahoma bombing confirmed by the Supreme Court; gazillions of dollars and Euros (just a toddler currency then!) are being spent on averting something called “Y2K;” and, unbelievably, it’s already the tenth birthday of the Global Climate Coalition, a “nonprofit” formed and, handsomely, funded by fossil-fuel and industrial mega-corporations, to keep politicians primed that climate science “is too uncertain to justify any action.”

 Meanwhile, inside the girls’ school auditorium, all around me, sitting in wheelchairs, slouching forward onto walkers, leaning heavily onto canes are a few hundred elderly Eastern Europeans drawn out this freezing morning by the threat of losing their right to access Federal aid aimed, primarily, at the elderly and infirmed. 

The tension in the room is palpable.  

Like the good rule followers we are, we’ve been waiting for almost an hour, with no one seemingly in charge.

A few feet away from me, but up on the stage, an elderly, tall, stooped man, in a dark winter coat, black wool cap, waves his arms rapidly and issues a string of indecipherably fast words, to clear a similarly elderly woman off the piano stool.  

He sits down and opens the piano lid with a dull thud.  

He flexes his long, boney fingers – I imagine I hear the knuckles crack – and starts playing.  

His fingers flow mellifluously over the black and white keys.

The music, one of Bach’s Partitas – an almost three hundred year old piece of music, and something familiar enough that even a Neantherdal like me knows it – is eerily calming in the voluminous, tension fraught room

 A few minutes into his piece, a door opens at the other end of the hall.  A mob of people crush, in the sluggish manner an elderly, infirmed mob crushes, toward the door to see if there’s any news.  

He keeps playing the piano.

The door bangs closed, with that familiar school door metallic rattle.  

A hushed murmur shimmers across the crowd as it parts, in its distinctively sluggish manner.  

A nun, nunnishly-plump, fifty-ish, dressed undercover in a dark blue skirt, purple cardigan, except she is wearing the black and white head-thingie, stalks across the auditorium, her hard soled shoes resounding off the parquet floor. 

The piano keeps our end of the hall energized.

The nun makes her way up onto the stage, her heels competing with the piano.

She touches the piano player lightly on his shoulder.  

He stops playing.

“APOLOGIES,” she says loudly, and takes a practiced pause, waiting for the murmuring to stop.  

“Apologies, we are running a little behind.  Quite frankly we’re overwhelmed with the turnout, but …, BUT, I can guarantee you that everyone will get to take their Citizenship Test today, … every … single … person.”

She looks slowly around the room.

“So please, please be patient with the sisters.  You may now proceed to the classrooms through THAT door,” she points to where she had entered.

The door rattles opens again, and the mob surges, sluggishly, toward the opening.

The sluggish-crush through that doorway sums up how human systems work: Bill, I’ve-a-small-problem-with-the-truth Clinton just happens to have a rightward tilt, to save his presidency, and is playing junior-Republican, labeling non-citizens as Public Charges and thereby denying them access to federally funded end of life healthcare.  Clinton’s rightward tilt causes a rush on citizenship applications by these octogenarian Eastern European immigrants.  They had been brought here by far-to-the-right Presidents Reagan and Bush – after already living hard lives in Eastern European countries – to show up the failures and inequities of communism.  This rush on applications has required that the INS subcontract the Citizenship Test to third parties – among them the Southie nuns who happen to run a school, that just happens to be next to James, where-are-you-now-Whitey, Bulger’s old headquarters. 

I’m here ‘cause I can.  After five years with a Green Card, you can apply for Citizenship, and I did.  And thus, with my own, not even pretending to be under control, trauma and anxiety about being abandoned by the herd, I launch into the mob of the aged, the crippled, the infirmed crowding the doorway. Employing, questionably legal, skills honed on the rugby fields of the West of Ireland, I’m plowing my way through the mob, when a rare moment of clarity dawns on me.  

I pull up short, turn, and walk to the back of the line, offering, but getting refused, to help a woman so doubled over in her wheelchair that it’s hard to see how she can see where she’s going.

I can wait.  

I can take this test next year or the year after, or any year for the next thirty, before access to these federal programs may even be required.

Slowly the mob works its way down the school’s corridors, with nuns waving us into classrooms.  I’m waived into classroom 328, where I take a seat, and pull out the four HB pencils I had, per the carefully detailed instructions, brought along for the test. 

At the head of the class stands an elderly nun; possibly in her seventies; same undercover clothes, black and white head-thingie; arms tight folded; on her gaunt, bristly face, a seasoned scowl. 

Two white-haired, seventy-something, men enter the room talking, laughing and start to take seats next to each other.

“No!” the nun’s voice is loud, sharp.

The whole classroom sits up in their seats.

One of the old guys freezes, half-sitting, half-standing, a pleasant smile on his face.

“You two can’t sit together,” she stalks over to them.  “The rules prohibit fraternizing during the examination.”

She waves the half-stander to the other side of the room.

The smile slumps off his face, as he’s waved over to the far row.

“Sit down, sit down,” the nun says, turning, rapping a ruler off the teacher’s desk to get our attention.  “The examination will begin as soon as everyone’s seated … and behaving.”

The room settles. 

She walks over to the door, her eyes never leaving her class, and closes it gently.

We wait.  

She paces over and back in front of the teacher’s desk; the seasoned scowl never leaving her face; her eyes never leaving her class.

We wait.

In the front row, a plump man, his flat cap sitting on top of a head of wild-bushy grey hair, raises his hand.

The nun stops pacing, stares at him.

“P-lease mad…dam, thee papers, p-lease,” he smile-nods, holding up his right hand, a pencil gripped tight-white between his fingers.

“I’ll …, the examination booklets will be distributed when I’m released to do so … and … have them available.”

We wait.

Twenty, long, silent, scratchy, minutes later another undercover nun enters with a stack of booklets and drops them on the teacher’s desk, nods knowingly and departs.

“I am now going to distribute the examination booklets,” the nun stops her pacing, and stands behind the teacher’s desk.  “They will be distributed face down.”

She scowl-glares at her students.

“You may not, I repeat, NOT!  Turn them over, until I give the order.”

She paces one full loop of the teacher’s desk, her scowl-glare never diminishing, then picks up the stack of booklets and starts to distribute them.

The desk in front of me is vacant.  She lays a booklet on the desktop, then immediately picks it up again.

Back at the teacher’s desk, she stands staring around; her fingertips brushing lightly against the desktop.  Her mouth opens, she’s about to issue the definitive order that will release her class to start the process of accessing benefits that will prevent end of life penury, when the classroom door bursts open.  

In bumbles a burly man, red jowled, eyes deep in their sockets, a shock of white hair, a blue anorak, torn under the sleeve.  His eyes furtively scan the desks.  He sees the empty one in front of me, and rushes for it, knocking a booklet on his way.

“Excuse me?” the nun snaps.  “Where do …. YOU … think you’re going?”

“The peuples say,” his wild eyes focus on her, bewildered.  

“Ladee in door,” he waves his left hand back in the direction of the corridor. “Go rhoom free … two … eight.”

“Then sit down, you’re disturbing everyone else.  The examination has already begun.”

A few booklets get flipped over.

“Wait!” she yells, the strain showing in her eyes.  “I didn’t say to start the examination.”

Heads wag slowly.

“You are only permitted to work on Module One of the examination.  After twenty minutes I will …  stop turning the pages,” she rushes over to a petite, incredibly wrinkled-faced, blue haired, woman, and snatches the exam booklet from her hands.

“You may only work one module at a time,” she scowl-glares at the shocked old woman for a few seconds, then turns back to the rest of the class, her face resolving to its regular scowl.  

“I …,” she raises her voice and waits until enough eyes are looking at her, “will tell you when you can move from module to module.”

She starts pacing and fast-talking.  

“You must, I repeat MUST, write your name and applicant number CLEARLY on the booklet’s cover.  Once you have completed a module, you may not return to it. You may not leave the room and reenter.  You may not talk or communicate in any way during the examination. You may not ask me questions.  I will not answer.”

She stops pacing, looks around for emphasis.  

“If you leave the room before the examination is complete, your booklet will be submitted as is, even if it is incomplete.”

She glares around the room, the blue-haired woman’s booklet still clutched in her hand.

“Does everyone understand me?”

No one makes a move.

She walks slowly to the blue-haired woman’s desk, hands her the booklet. Then, without looking at him, she drops a booklet on the burly, late arriver’s desk.  

Back at the head of the class, she rises slightly onto her toes, holds her wristwatch up to her face and clicks a button on the watch.

“You may now begin the US Citizenship Examination – Module One.”

There’s a loud rustle of papers, the scrape of chairs dragging in tight to desks.

I flip open the booklet, and within a few seconds realize this is a test of basic English skills, something that is not in any way challenging to an English speaker.

The burly man in the desk in front of me has not opened his booklet, and is looking around the room.

The nun increases her scowl intensity as she approaches him, her arms folded.

She stops a few feet away.

 “What’s the problem here?” she asks in a loud, clipped, whisper.

He holds up his left hand, and makes the universal writing-in-the-air sign for needing a pen.

“You are required to bring four, Hard Black pencils with you to the examination,” she says, dispensing with the whisper; heads rise at the disruption. “That is your responsibility as the examinee.”

He keeps up his symbolling.

I can’t see his face, but can tell by her scowl relaxing, that he doesn’t understand her, and she knows it.

“I’ll phone down to the office to see what can be done.”

She turns and walks up to the desk, picks up the phone, and dials a few digits.

I finish Module One in about three minutes – wracked with Catholic guilt for how easy it was for me, compared to the clearly evident struggling of those around me.

In front of me, the burly man looks around the room, cranes his neck toward the desk.

I take one of my HB pencils, reach forward and poke him lightly on the shoulder.

He turns, and takes the pencil with a bushy-eyebrowed, thank you nod.

At the desk the nun rummages loudly in a drawer.

She pulls out a stubby pencil; jams it into a mechanical pencil sharpener, and whirls the sharpener loudly – the noise raising a few heads, her head-thingie shaking. After a few attempts at this, she has a three-inch long pencil, with a point that could harpoon a salmon. She starts down the aisle towards my burly neighbor.

A few feet away from him, she stops, her scowl intensity rising sharply.  

“Is that a Hard Blaa… ,” she starts to say, but stops when every head in the room shoots up.  “Continue, please continue.”

She turns and walks back to the teacher’s desk, shaking her head slightly.

Fifteen, boring if you’re an English speaker, minutes later, there’s a loud handclap that brings everyone to attention.

“Module One of the US Citizenship Examination is now completed.  Pencils down!”

We work through the, by now customary, punitive ceremony of finishing one module, and moving onto the next.

“Module Two: Government, will now begin,” the nun eventually gets to say. “On the fifteenth minute of Module Two, I will administer the … Spelling Test.”

Intrepidly, we launch into Module Two, which asks questions like:

Who is the highest leader in the government of a state?

Complete the following: “The Mayor is the leader of the _ _ _ _ .”

On the fifteenth minute, the nun again issues a startlingly loud handclap.

“Pencils down.  Pencils down, right way.  I will now administer the Spelling Test by saying the word three times.”

I dutifully place my pencil in the pen scoop on my desktop.

“The word you need to spell is … mayor.  Mayor.  Mayor. I will not repeat it again.” 

I slowly write the five block capital letters in the workbook, and return the pencil to the desk.

In front of me the burly guy is scratching his scalp, with what was once my, but is definitely now his pencil.

The nun paces slowly around; her lips pursed, determinedly not saying the word “mayor.” 

My burly neighbor’s shoulders suddenly tighten, he pulls the pencil out of his scalp and starts to rifle back through the booklet.

I smile, realizing he’s remembered the word “mayor” was used in a question on those pages.

He finds it, and is carefully transcribing it, flicking from one page to the other, when the nun’s hand comes down hard on his booklet, knocking the pencil from his hand.

“It is prohibited to look back on previous work!” she shrieks.

Every head in the room shoots up; shoulders tighten; the wrinkled-faced woman grabs hold of her cane.

Shaken, the burly guy sits back in his chair, and raises his arms in the universal sign of surrender.

The nun grabs his booklet off the desk, and forcefully creases it open to the Spelling Test page.  

I can see he has written: M A Y O.

She places the booklet on his desk, and steps back, her eyes never leaving him.

He leans over, picks up the pencil off the floor, keeping his head angled so he never stops facing the nun.

The pencil is broken.  

He holds it up in front of his eye, shoulders subsiding.  I take another pencil off my desk, and hold it up in the air. 

She swoops in, whisks the pencil from my hand, and leans over my neighbor’s workbook.

I can hear the scratch of graphite on paper.  

The pencil drops on his desktop.

The nun stalks back to the teacher’s desk, fixing her head-thingie.

Transported

I’m on the steaming hot tarmac at the Hyannis bus station, watching the Boston bus disgorge.

The driver, a stubby, bald man, in a tired-green uniform, is stooped over, slinging bags out of the baggage hold.  A man in his mid twenties, in boat shoes, khakis, pink dress shirt, grabs his wheelie suitcase, and breezes past the driver, out into the bus drive lanes.

“Hey!” the driver squalls, jerking upright, his face tight with anger.

He’s yelled so loud that everyone in earshot, but the young man, turns and stares.  

Wincing, the driver sways his torso forward, placing his hand on his lower back.

 “You can’t go that way,” he yells even louder, taking a half step toward the drive lanes.  “That’s not allowed!”

The young man finally looks around, slows down, slightly, but doesn’t stop.

“Hey,” the driver positively screams now; his face flushing beet red; his eyes wild with anger.  

“Stop!  I said stop!”

The young man, already halfway across the bus lanes to the guardrail separating the buses from customer parking, breaks into a jog. 

“You could be killed!” bellows the driver, taking a few defeated steps toward the runner, half-heartedly throwing his hands up in the air.

The young man stops at the guardrail, glances back nervously.  He flings his wheelie over, and lumbers over himself, taking extra caution not to stain his khakis.  

In the parking lot, the doors of a silver-grey Camry pop open, and out steps an older couple.  They walk toward the young man, smiles beaming, arms outstretched.

“That illegal idiot coulda ben kilt!” the driver turns, glaring, still wild-eyed. 

He points his index finger up at the sky, and glare-scans the line of passengers waiting for the, penitential, pleasure of having him convey us to Boston.

A half hour earlier, I had entered the, so-overly-air-conditioned-you-need-a-sweatshirt, Hyannis Transportation Center, with the usual cocktail of low grade, travel anxiety, and excitement at superior eavesdropping opportunities, racing around my mind.  The HTC, as the signs call it, is a newish building, where utilitarian, high ceilinged, clean bathroomed anonymity, has displaced the gritty, stinking-of-sweat-and-piss, distinctiveness of old bus stations.  

I leaned into the ticket window to pay my, shockingly affordable, $20 fare to Boston.  

Inside the window a slight-shouldered man, with aviator glasses, unevenly applied layers of makeup, and enormous, silver, hoop earrings, adjusts the clear plastic tiara propped on his thick mop of hair. 

“That’ll be twen’y bucks,” he says in a gravelly voice, his blue-bony fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard.  “The bus’ll be at 6 – Gate 6.”

A printer’s tuck-tuck-tuck starts up somewhere inside the window.  

“Watch the silly-screen for changes,” he flicks his right-thumb toward the large, but already stuffed with travellers, waiting area.

Slowly he hands me the ticket.  

“The bus company don’t make no announcements,” he breathes in, raising his plucked eyebrows.

I take the only seat available, at the end of a long wooden bench.  On the floor at the other end of the bench, sit-lies a couple, probably late teens, early twenties; their bodies about as enmeshed as can allowed in a public place before someone needs to call the cops, … or the fire department.

“Hey babe,” the young man says, too loud, shifting himself suddenly.  “You’re crushing my nuts.”

A few heads turn.  

He raises his eyes to stare them down.

I force my eyes down to the tiled floor.

“I gotta pee anyway,” the young woman says, untangling herself, standing upright. “Having one-a them spritzers aint the best idea, when you gotta get on a bus.”

She’s pretty, younger than him, probably only seventeen, eighteen; dyed-black hair; remnants of acne dotting her forehead.  She slopes off in her baggy jeans, oversized, flannel shirt, with one button too many open; head and shoulders down; face obscured by hair.

The young man grunt-yawns, rises to standing, glaring victoriously at the social-jury on the benches.  

He’s got that square-jawed, blond look, coulda-shoulda-woulda been a surfer, but isn’t.  His eyes are old already, or stoned, … or old and stoned.

Satisfied that his dominance glare has worked, he looks down, taps the front and back pockets of his baggy jeans.

“What the fuck?  Did I leave my phone in the shitter?”

“No,” another guy, in black combat boots, camouflage-fatigues, black muscle shirt, sitting by himself at the far end of my bench, speaks up pointedly, soberly. “You gave it to the slut when the cops started hassling Josh.”

“Don’t call her that!” he snaps angrily, shaking his head.  “Did I do that?  Really?  Was I that fucked up?  And I gotta go ta Falmouth, get that bit… .”

He falls silent, his eyes darkening.

Along the benches eyes flicker toward his silence, and then away – fast.

“I’m goin’ ta Falmouth too,” a heavyset woman, late twenties, maybe thirty, says. She’s leaning up against the window wall; greasy hair, pudgy face; she fully fills out a pink and grey, sweat-suit.

Her eyes flicker up from her phone, to stare at the young man.

“Oh yeah?” the darkness lifts off the young man’s face.  “I got two baby-moms in Falmouth.  But fucking Brittany, she’s making me all kinds of shit.  She’s looking for cash; I don’t got none. But at least,” his eyes soften, like he’s practicing his lines, “if I tell how things are.  I aint worked in … fuck, three months.  I got issues. The, the … the thingam… you know that the judge makes you go see, … the social worker. She says I got issues. And she knows, she’s one a them … LI, … LI.  I forget what you call them.”

“A Long Island social worker?” the muscle shirt guy snaps, without looking up from his phone.

“Fuck you, it aint that.  It’s something else, more important.”

 “Oh yeah,” the young woman says.  “I got a little one too.  At home in Falmouth, my mom’s taking care of her, or my aunt is this morning, I think. I had-a come down here for a stoopid job interview, so social don’t shut me off.  Like I’m gonna work in Hyannis, and live in Falmouth.  Why don’t they move the job to Falmouth?  Heh?”

“Yeah, let me show you my kids,” the young man says, his eyes drifting off as he starts to pat his pockets again.

He spins around so suddenly that he stumbles toward the bench.  

The bodies on the bench tighten, with audible, fast in-breaths.  One older woman, with immaculately coiffed grey-blue hair, stands; grabs the handle of her maroon wheelie bag and clicks away to the other side of the crowded room.

“Hey, where the hell she’d go?” the young man asks, still turning around, but slowly now.

Fully drawn in, I lean forward, but the muscle shirt guy, at the other end of the bench, is intently playing a game on his phone.

The young man walks over to the door, sticks his head outside, warm air flooding in.

I catch a few other people on the benches staring.

The young man keeps his head hanging out in the heat for a few minutes, long enough for the overly cold waiting room to become almost bearable.

“Hey babe,” the girlfriend yells from across the waiting area.  “You ok?”

“Oh, there you are!” he answers, pulling his head in, beaming a smile.  “I thought you’d walked the fuck out on me – again.”

Twenty minutes later, out of the burning cold of the waiting room and into the burning heat of the tarmac, I’m inching slowly toward the still enraged bus driver. I await my turn at what starts to feel like a rite of passage to get on the bus: Especially creative insults from the driver.

“What the hell d’ya want me to do with this thing?  Strap it to the roof?” he snaps at the African American mother in front of me who pushes an oversized stroller toward him.  

“It’s bigger than the god-damned bus!”

“The lady-guy inside said it’s awright, when and she tooks my fawhty bucks,” she snaps, hitching her child higher up on her hip. 

Half the little girl’s hand stuck inside her mouth.

“Why I gotta pays for her?” she rapidly puckers and un-puckers her lips. “She aint taking no seat, she sitting on me, … de whole time.”

“Talk to the company mam, talk the company,” the driver shakes his head. “How we gonna get this thing on.” 

“Here,” I offer, my tendency for conflict avoidance joining forces with my travel anxiety.  “I think you just click that button with your fo … .”

“Don’t touch it,” the driver yells, interposing his stubby torso, with surprising agility, between me and the stroller.  “This baby … thing is now in the custody of the bus company.”

He glares at me with unregulated anger; a sheen of sweat on his balding forehead; a bluish vein straining through his tanned skin. 

“And only I, … as their employee, the driver of this bus,” he stabs the air with his index finger, “can touch it now.”

He continues to glare.

I step back beside my bag.

He huffs and he puffs, and eventually he collapses the stroller, and jams it into the hold.

“Well, the luggage hold’s full now,” he says loudly.  “Why don’t everyone just take their luggage on board with them.”

Dutifully, I turn to go to the door.

“Not you,” he yells, taking two fast steps and grabbing the handle of my bag. “Or you.”

He catches the eye of some other, terror stricken, passenger.

“Hang on, hang on, just hang on, would ya.  I can get some more on – may…be.  Stop, stop, everyone stop!”

He turns and glares at me.

“Don’t put nothing in that hold,” he wags his finger viciously in my face.

He stalks around to the bus door, and inserts himself into the line of passengers.

“No one boards the bus without getting their ticket checked!” he yells.

Several passengers’ shoulders tighten, their faces wincing.  

He steps onto the bus; the sound of his unintelligible yells spilling out onto the tarmac.  

Then he’s back on the tarmac, his face red and clouded, impatient-angrily waving everyone away from the bus’ door.  

Four passengers, stunned into angry sheepishness, emerge from the bus.  He closes the bus door with a loud pneumatic hiss. 

Then he walks slowly along the line of passengers to the luggage hold.

“Ok, sir,” he says, with mocking calmness.  “And just how may I help you?”

Tentatively, I hand him my bag.

He takes a half step away from the bus.

My chest tightens in confusion.

Then, resetting his feet, he swings back toward the bus, slinging my bag into the hold with a loud thud.

“Now, there you go, … sir.” 

Enough Killing Joe

I’m pretend relaxed, sitting on a filthy sofa in the LOW-LOW insuranceoffice at a strip mall on Route 1.  I lean back on the brown, dried out, pleather sofa, that’s been stained and deformed by hundreds, if not thousands, of customers ensnared by the same trap.  

I ventured in when, driving home from work, I saw the LOW-LOWbanner hanging across their storefront, and wondered if I could get a better car insurance rate.  Having just turned thirty, and recently signed a mortgage – the first intrusions of adulthood into my heretofore blissfully clueless life – managing costs had suddenly become important. 

The high-stacked-bleached-blond receptionist, stilettos in front me the thirty feet down the storefront into the dimly lit back office.  The salesman, a pudgy faced, thick-glassed man, of about my own age, eases back in his chair, and holds up his index finger as the universal signal of ‘wait, I’m much too busy for you.’  But, just as I’m turning to leave, he half stands out of his seat, and still jabbering on the phone, but now with a smarmy salesman smile, waves me onto the distressed sofa.

His office is too small for the sofa, but his closely studied Acme Strong Arm Life Insurance Sales Manualcalls for creating a faux-cozy environment to facilitate the tricky consideration of how many more years the mark … eh, I mean the customer is willing to bet they will live.

A few minutes of unavoidably eavesdropped mumbo-jumbo sounding business talk, ends with the surprisingly emotional admission: “So, a new cylinder head gasket is the only to get that piece of shit back on the road again, heh?  Ok, but then you’re covering the goddam oil change!”  

He slams down the phone, stands up, buttons his Caldor suit jacket over an ample, I-like-big-lunches paunch, and leans forward, holding out his hand, still sweaty from the phone.

“Hi, I’m Mike Nowell, CPI, AII – I only say them letters to let you know I’m not just some guy stuck at the back of an insurance office,” he says, completely devoid of irony. 

“Hello, yes, I’m Joe, Joe O’Fa… .”

He turns holds up the wait-index-finger, takes one big step and leans out the doorway.

“Phyllis, hold my calls,” he yells down the office, and pulls the tinny door closed behind him.

“Now,” he rubs his hands together. “Tell me about yourself Tom, or, Joe right, Joe.  Tell me about yourself,” again flashing the smarmy salesman smile.

“Well, eh, I live in…” I start, but again the wait-index-finger shoots up.

“It’s actually your parents I need to know about, how long they lived, what, if they are deceased, was the cause of death.  You know, that kind of insurance stuff.  Not that you’re not an interesting guy,” he sorta half grimaces, “but that’s the sort of info these big insurance companies need to know.”

Confused, but still with the hope of getting a better monthly car insurance rate, I’m muddling along when, he leaps right for the jugular.

“So …,” he holds up the wait-index-finger.  “Just what age did you say your father first had heart disease, … early forties?” he raises his eyebrows interrogatively, like we’ve just made a major discovery.  “That’s only around the corner, really.” 

He holds up the palms of both hands to keep me stopped.

“And your mother, that must have been so hard,” he shakes his head, “so young, so young.  I mean relatively speaking, not as young as you are now, but not a million years away neither.”

He stops, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, while he’s taking a breath.

“See an occurrence like that could leave the missus, and maybe by then you’d have a couple of little ones running around … .”  

His thick eyebrows shoot up, as he lets that hang in the air for a few seconds, before his face starts to deform into a frown that seems to ask: Could you possibly not be thinking about stuff like this?  Or, … or God forbid, you couldn’t actually … could you?  You could not be thinking at all, could you? Really?  With a wife, and now a mortgage – remember pal, the bank that owns your house – and maybe a few kids on the way, and you don’t even think about stuff like this?  

With me rattled into silence, he quickly moves into the business of just how many, or as he phrases it, “how limited a number of years there might be before there’s the possibility of big payout to your missus, … and the future little Joes.” 

By then, he has me numbed by repeatedly trawling through scenarios that inevitably end up with me abandoning my family, through the vehicle of death, in their time of greatest need.

“Let me tell you a story,” he sighs loudly; definitively tapping the stack of the papers I’ve just signed on the glass coffee table.  “Just two, … no three,” he holds up the index finger, “weeks ago, I had to go a good friend’s, well, a good friend of my parents’ wake. And I’m moving along the line, and the widow, … Mrs. … Jones, she was sitting, you know she’s quite elderly,” he cups both palms to somehow emphasize her elderliness, “so she’s sitting on the sofa in the funeral home.  And when it comes to my turn in the grieving line, she stands up and gave me a big hug, and says; ‘thank you Mike, thank you for protecting my family at this difficult time.’”  

He stares off into nowhere; his lips in a rueful half-smile; his eyes a little moist.

“You know, that’s kinda why I chose this business.”

He purses his lips, but quickly releases them.

“Anyway,” his eyes flash back to me. “We’ve killed Joe enough.  Onto the missus.” 

An hour later, shaken to the core of my soon-to-expire being, I leave with two stacks of carbon copy paperwork that predict the optimal time for economically beneficial deaths in my family.

“Remember to mail me those voided checks,” he yells across the parking lot at me, raising his arm high in a salute-wave.  “My boss is gonna be pissed at the low rate you got outta me.  But remember, that awesome protection for your family doesn’t kick in until the first payment.”

Three days, two bottles of wine, and a case of beer, later, I walk into the office of a regular insurance salesman, and walk out with sensible, affordable coverage and minor optimism around life expectancy.   

For twenty years I get by without ever forcefully thinking about my mortality. 

Then divorce.  

Suddenly, we’re sitting in the mediator’s office postulating upon my mortality.  

The mediator’s questions, raised in a far more reasonable manner than done by “Mike Nowell, CPI, AII, not just the guy at the back of an insurance office,” lead to a similar conclusion: A new life insurance policy is required.

“You fill,” Valentina, the life insurance company nurse, says in the punitively directive way that only a Russian can. 

She’s a short, squat woman, who must be at least seventy, makeup caked on her face, costume jewelry earrings, bracelets and necklaces, but no rings on her thickened arthritic fingers.

“No toy-let water,” she wags a thick index finger at me.  “Lab tell toy-let water.”

“I, … I never, … I wouldn’t …,” I meekly take the urine sample cup, still not attuned to her directness.

We’re standing the kitchen of my shitty little divorce apartment, where she’s already weighed, measured, blood pressured and temperatured me, with a record number of tsk-tsks and judgmental sighs. 

“You vash hands,” she sighs, and flops down onto a kitchen chair.  “I no vant sick too.”

I stare at her saggy-craggy face.  The ruby red lipstick strays well beyond her lips, and forms cracked heaps at the edges of her mouth.  Large, complicated earrings drag down her earlobes.

“Go,” she waves her arthritic hand impatiently toward the bathroom.  “I have old-old man to wisit in Bri-town.”

I comply, wondering whether the old-old man is buying insurance?  A relative?  A date?

When I return, anxious to get rid of the freakily warm urine sample cup, she’s leaning over a blue manila folder on the kitchen table, a stack of forms at the ready.

Without looking up, she points at the stovetop for me to leave the urine sample there.  I stall momentarily; considering the implications of that should I ever decide to cook.  

She waves her hand quickly.  

“Come, come: Old man vaiting.” 

I obediently sit.

“I ask,” she stares at me with her glassy eyes, holding a black Bic pen at the ready. “You tell.”

I nod as she stares hard at me

“You father; he live or he die?”

“Dead.”

“How old?”

“Eighty four.”

“How?”
            “Heart attack.”

She shakes her head, and looks up to consider me.

“You mother; she live or she die?”

“Dead.”

“How old?”

“Fifty one”

“Five … one,” she tsk-tsks, stops writing, looks up at me.

“How?”

“Brain hemorrhage, well ultimately it was a heart attack … .”

Her glassy eyes stare at me.  She turns the leaf of paper with my basic information.

“Is wery bad,” she shakes her head, tsk-tsking.  “You are sure?”

“Eh, … well, it’s eh, … I mean I’ve told other insurance companies this.”

“Wery good. Is so,” she gets back to writing, but sneaks a glance up at me under her penciled-on eyebrows.

We muddle on through the rest of the interrogation, my sense of wellbeing plummeting to historic lows.

Finally finished, and sliding the blue manila folder into the front pocket of her wheelie bag, she turns and stares at me.

“Vhy?”

“Why what?” 

“Now.  Life ensur-ance, vhy now?”

“Oh, it’s a divorce thing. I need to have it so that if I was to … know you, if … anyway, so the kids’ college costs are covered, and stuff.”

“Ahhh,” she nods knowingly, casting me a sympathetic look.

“But you don’t think the stuff with, you know … my parents, … my mother being just a couple years older …, you know, the insurance company, they won’t deny. Would they?”

She stops, sits down heavily again. Pulls the blue folder from the wheelie’s front pocket; carefully opens it.  

Slowly, her thick fingers turn each leaf.

I feel a drop of sweat run down my chest.

“No prob-lum,” she says, looking up, her face tightly distorting into what I assume is a smile.  

“Fifteen years poll-icee, come-pany no vorry.  Fall down stair, throw-pical dis-ease, accident – come-pany vorry alvays.  But fifteen years, no prob-lum.  After … .”

“Excellent!” the word gushes out of me, with a shoulder slumping sense of relief at one big divorce task completed.

“After,” she holds up a thick index finger.  

“After,” she repeats, but then turns her glassy eyes away. 

“Prob-lum.”

Who Rescued Who?

I’m plodding down Adams Street with Ginger, a short-legged, long-bodied dog, sauntering alongside.  Her neck strains for a hydrant, tautening the leash.  

I halt, let her sniff.  

Confused at being allowed to stop, her head turns and she peers up at me with those eyes that seem positively human – yet, today, show no comprehension of her fate. 

As it happens, I’m having a difficult time with my own, allegedly human, eyes: The inside of my sunglasses are drenched with tears.  

The day before, sometime around 6:00AM, our ten year old son, whom we had adopted a year previously, rolled over in his sleep, and laid his head on Ginger’s, only three years old, but already destroyed by arthritis, hip.  Reflexively, she launched at the object causing pain, and bit his face – half an inch under his right eye.  

Three hours later, with fourteen stitches, placed by an elderly plastic surgeon wearing jeweler’s glasses held together by masking tape, and he’s on his way home to recover, physically anyway.

“Can I not see Ginger,” he says tentatively, in the car.  “I mean, I’m not mad with her, I know she didn’t mean to do it, … but still, can I not see her?”

Ginger spends that day closed into our bedroom; that night also.  The next morning, when again, he’d “prefer not to see her,” it’s patently clear that this little boy, for whom we’d gotten this dog to help replace the soul-figures of dogs from his past life, could no longer deal with a best friend who relied on her teeth to solve problems.

“Probably two or, … three-ish, … maybe it’s the fourth time she’s bitten, a person that is,” I half-lie to the vet over the phone, glossing over the numerous slashing fights she’s gotten into with other dogs.  “Yeah, yeah, fourteen stitches, … under the eye.”

He haws and hems through a bunch of veterinary psycho-babble, finally breaking free to say: “A dog like that can’t be around humans, something worse might happen. It should be brought in, …, and eh, … put to sleep.”

As a pup, Ginger travelled fourteen hundred miles from Arkansas to Boston in the back of a ‘rescue animal transporter’ – an eighteen wheeler, with an air conditioned trailer jammed with dog crates, and reeking of dog urine. Expectantly waiting for her was a different, as in not us, family, who would keep her for a year or so; presumably until those teeth got to work.  

This small-ish industry of moving dogs from the laissez-faire southern states to the way-too-uptight northeastern US, is another instance of the clash between the two greatest forces in American life – guns and money.  The southern states still have a large number of humans who disappear into the woods with guns and dogs to slaughter whatever moves in the underbrush.  As a result of this, enshrined in the constitution, ‘recreational activity,’ southern hunters are vehemently, or at least manipulated into being vehemently, pro-gun and anti-spaying.  As a block, they have successfully stopped the passing of spaying laws.  

In the northeast, with our propensity to deliberately confuse, while looking down our noses at everyone else, spaying is referred to as “fixing.” As in, the vet saying, “for $600, without the hospital charges, I could fix that dog for you;” which translates to; it’ll cost $1,200 to completely break that dog’s only remaining purpose in life – to pass along its DNA.  Down south, it reportedly costs on average $300 to get a dog spayed – which, even with flights and a hotel, works out cheaper than getting your dog “fixed” in Boston – but for a litter of pups, that adds up to a lot of money.  All these “unplanned” pups, who can’t be fed and cared for, get turned loose.  Dog Rescue Leagues gather up these starving pups, spay them en masse, give them a full veterinary work over, and ship them up Interstate 95 to careless-middleclass, northeastern families; who then repay the rescue leagues for their costs, and spoil the dogs outrageously.   

Ginger’s paperwork, from the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission, indicated that she was a mix breed: Labrador Retriever and Corgi.  This odd mix prompted one wag, pun intended, to posit the following two possible scenarios:

“Did I ever tell you, pitiful excuses for royal canines, the story about …,” the alpha male Corgi speaks up, silencing the kennel, as he breaths out a deep, accomplished sigh, “about that time I fucked a Lab?”

He focuses his gaze to ensure everydog is paying attention.  

“Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe, but I did. ‘Cause of the height diff …, anyway, we had to do human-style: You know that disgusting way, where she lies on her back?”  

His lips flap, as he shakes his head rapidly from side to side.  

“It’s so demeaning, all those teeth, and that tongue flailing around!”

The alternate situation in the Labrador kennel would run something like:

“Hey, calm down, I was just experimenting, seriously guys,” the black Lab gushes, his wet-pink tongue dangling from the side of his mouth.  “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m a weirdo.” 

He looks around at the blank faces, who just want to get back to rough-housing.

“I mean little dogs have a whole different outlook on the world; mostly they’re just looking up big dogs’ asses.  Anyway, to me it was something I felt I had to experience.”

He tries to look intellectual, but can’t, ‘cause he got that Lab goofy face. 

“But, I’ll be honest with you guys, it was pretty much the end of my hips.  After that, I never made it onto another human bed again.”

For sure Ginger had Lab genes in her, and maybe, just maybe, those frighteningly powerful jaws of hers could be tied back to the dogs Flemish weavers brought with them to western England in the 1100s.  Dogs that would later be selectively bred into canines fit for a queen. Or maybe, just maybe, those jaws could have come from a whole different breed, an American breed, whose powerful jaws, combined by predictable human mishandling, ended up making this dog the one we most fear.

“A Lab-Corgi mix,” again, I half-ish lie over the phone to vet.

“Yeah, I guess you can never tell,” he sighs heavily, genuinely exasperated that a dog has to go.  “Maybe she was abused as a pup, and eh, … got into the habit of biting?”

She for sure had “got in a habit of biting.”  After the first, unknown, family returned her to a shelter, we had her for less than a year, and in that time it could not be said her teeth were entirely restful. 

It started as a fact-finding trip to a dog shelter, but Ginger’s eyes, the way there appeared to be a human trapped in a dog’s head, irrevocably drew you in.  She was a deeply affectionate dog, loved to cuddle and got so attached to certain humans that she seemed to have affection-super-powers: When a car pulled up outside, she somehow knew if it was one of her humans, and would scratch at the door, yelping with joy.

Her first bite was a few months after she moved in: A young man is walking his dog past our house; our front door gets opened to retrieve the mail; out darts Ginger to protect our territory; when all the snarling, scratching and biting is done, the young man has a puncture wound on his thigh; wound cleaned, apologies accepted, a new front door policy put in place, and we think we’re good.

A few months later, at Castle Island, a popular seafront park from which colonial Americans summarily sank the ships of pirates and press-gangers, a roller-blader swishes past, just a smidge too close: Ginger gets his hand. The roller-blader, from Dublin as luck would have it, is fine, his wrist protector took the impact, but he does offer some ominous advice: “I’d watch that mutt, I would, she’s gotta mowth on hur, she does.”

To some humans Ginger couldn’t be a cuter dog.  Walking down the street one day, a woman in her twenties pulls her Jeep Wrangler over, a small bit erratically, and ignoring the Massholes stuck in traffic behind her, laying heavy on their horns, she quizzes me on Ginger’s breed, mix type, and the general availability of such “totally scrumptious dogs.”  

I start to bore her with the whole rebel dog transportation to the northeastern states phenomena, but she’s not listening.

“I’m getting one!” she belts out the Jeep window, screeching back into the even angrier, horn blowing traffic.  

Another time, while walking past a bus stop, the driver, a large, effusive African American woman, yells out the door:

“Hi doggy!  Ain’t you the cutest thing I ever did see on fouh legs.”

“Move the bus!” a barely-containing-his-anger, elderly white male voice yells from inside the bus.

“He is too cute.”

“She,” I reflexively – type A – correct her.

“Oh my Gawd, even better: A sistah!”

“Move the god…dam bus!” 

The Labrador genes twisted into the Corgi body was the root cause of the pain. She got a Lab’s torso and a Corgi’s legs.  Her hips and shoulders paid the price, with arthritis diagnosed when she was a little over two years old, only a few months after she moved in with us.  From thereon, I was slipping Tylenol into her food and giving her massages every day, trying to ease her pain, and trying harder to ignore the growls, … and occasional bites.

“Five is it?” the vet looks up at me from filling out his paperwork. “I mean one … or two is plenty, but if you want to list all five.”

“I just don’t want my son to think it’s his fault,” I hesitate, fumbling the question. “Why don’t we say, three, the two I just told you and me.” 

“So not your son at all?”

“Yes,” I answer, happy with my lies.

He finishes his paperwork, drops the clipboard on the stainless steel exam table.

“I’ll take her down the back room,” he says, taking the leash from my hand. “That’s where we’ll …, and eh, you better wait here.”

Ginger looks up at me with those human eyes.  The tears start again.  She walks, tail slow wagging, down the corridor with the vet.

I prop myself up against the stainless-steel table.  Garishly colored posters for medications that kill intestinal bugs, rendered at thousands of times their actual size, cover the wall; a devotedly filthy computer sits on a small stainless-steel shelf in the corner; next to it, a half empty container of dog treats.

I’m staring at the now never-needed-by-me jar of treats, when the door shoots open, startling me.  

 “And eh, I totally forgot this point, but … you see, ‘cause it was a bite, or three bites actually, as we, … well you established, then I, eh, … need to either hold the dog for three more days to see if she develops rabies, state regulations, and eh, or we could, … just do it today, right now, you know, put her out of her pain,” he holds up both hands, “and eh, not have her locked up for three days, with all the precautions, no human contact, and eh, ….”

He stops talking, out of breath.

I stare at him, waiting for the ‘but.’

“But, if we do it today, and eh, we’d …, you know, because of rabies, … we can’t do the exam for three more days, and eh, so, you know, we’d need to freeze it, you know.  Freeze it, so we can test it in three days.”

He stares at me, clearly distraught.

“Freeze it?” I ask, the room starting to move.

“Her head. Afterwards.  We’ll have to cut off her head.”  

Stupid Guy Thing

I’m standing in the home goods aisle of an Ace Hardware, my hands propped on my hips, as I consider this important purchase.  In a display of anxious-faux-maturity, I’ve gone so far as to get the ‘sales associate’ from the register to join the deliberations.  He’s a pudgy faced, scraggly-bearded man in his twenties, or thirties, … or maybe even early forties, in matching-ish, navy blue sweatpants and sweatshirt; the former forced down, and the latter forced up by his considerable girth, to expose the waistband of his Tommy Hilfiger underwear, and his fish-belly-white, hairy, bulging stomach. 

Amongst all the useful, or dangerous, or usefully-dangerous, objects available on the shelves of Ace Hardware, the ‘sales associate’ and I are spending a few moments, of debatably, quality time staring at irons: Not the sort of irons members of Trumpity’s inner circle now wear while commuting from their prison homes for further plea bargaining; nor the kind used while golfing, or scaring away Canadian geese; but clothes irons, the kind used for the occasional de-creasing of shirts, pants, or even a handkerchief, a seriously neglected, usefully-dangerous piece of drapery – but that’s a topic for another day. 

“Now, is this a good iron?” I hear own voice ask, as I point at a black and silver object sitting innocently on the shelf. 

My consciousness is acutely aware that, I am not only in the wrong place to purchase an iron, but this is the wrong human, in the wrong place, to seek advice from on the general topic of iron purchasing.

“Dunno.  Never ironed nuthin’,” the ‘sales associate’ throws out, with incautious honesty.

At this point in my life, I have enough faux-maturity to admit that I have a nasty hardware habit.  Mostly this plays out in Ace or TrueValue stores, smaller, local, preferably older businesses, where undiagnosed-depressives like myself can blend in with the undiagnosed-depressive ‘sales associates.’  I linger in the aisles for way too long, while innocent members of the general hardware-needing public dart in to get a key cut, pick up a tube of I’ll-probably-never-open-this-but-it’s-good-to-have-around caulk, or buy an odd-sized bolt to fix that unfixable kitchen cabinet door.  I also suffer from a minor related condition, which requires that I spend too much time in Home Depot’s power tool aisle, or can be seen contemplating their fleet of lawnmowers for a little longer than the average male-lawn-mower-contemplater. 

Thus I spend way too much of my, ever diminishing, time on this planet shuffling slowly along narrow, dusty hardware aisles; hand weighing tools (tool quality being directly proportional to tool weight) that I will never need; reading instructions for repair kits that I will never use; and wondering how household items like irons and kettles, and bathroom and kitchen cleaners, and, for mercy’s sake, sewing materials, ever got onto beloved shelves that once carried such true “hardware” as insanely flammable solvents, exploding wet batteries, and rat poison that paralyzed rodents at a whiff. 

As with most things in ones make up, this particular prob…., thing is a product of my childhood.

Almost fifty years ago, while holidaying at my grandmother’s house in a tiny village in Leitrim, my four-year-younger sister and I would get dispatched around eleven-ish in the morning, a fifty pence piece clutched in my responsible-older-brother, sweaty palm, to buy sliced ham for lunch.

“Don’t pay for fatty ham.  The ham they’re selling now, ‘tis a sin against God!” my grandmother would rail, uselessly; for we never got to see the purchased ham until she unpacked it on the kitchen counter under her discriminating eye. 

The reason for this obfuscated food purchase was that the ham was bought in the local hardware shop: From behind an enormous stack of red-oxide gates, glistening shovels, pickaxes, and sledgehammers, coils of barbed wire, and bales of raw-wood fence posts, we could hardly make out the slicer buried behind the counter, surrounded by boxes of skull-and-cross-boned emblazoned rat killer. 

Every pre-lunch time I stood there, the sweaty fifty pence piece in one hand, my five-year-old sister’s hand in the other, peering through true hardware at the rhythmical lean-in, lean-out, slicing of the shop owner, a man of few, but pleasant, words, who gained near-saintly status for donating a kidney to his brother, a priest, and thus from whom we regularly, and laconically, purchased rat poison, weed killer and ham.

Such retail transactions only grew more confusing to my nine-year-old mind when we went “shopping abroad in Drumshanbo” – the nearest town.  For these trips “abroad,” we scrubbed our faces, and dressed up in our Sunday best: Blue shirt, grey jumper, blue pants for me; flowery, pink dress and stockings for my sister; Granny in a long dark coat, with a feathery hat, staunchly fastened to her hair by several long pins, that, should the need arise, could also be employed as an assassin’s weapon.  There one particular Saturday afternoon, we journeyed first to the drycleaners to drop off a winter coat, that, with the benefit of faulty memory and a little knowledge, would seem to have been heavy and long enough for comfortable service in the Siege of Leningrad.  It’s worth noting that dry cleaning, in a climate where it seemingly rained three hundred and seventy days a year, was a process as inscrutably close to alchemy as we, in the West of Ireland, would ever come.  Thus, while, literally, dropping off the siege-worthy coat, the alchemist herself, taking a deep drag on her cigarette, leans over the counter, and through her mustached lip, whispers to granny a lead on to-die-for sponge cakes that were being sold out of … you guessed it, … the local hardware shop. 

Down Church Street we click-click-clacked to the sound of the stolid heels of granny’s shoes, on a fervent hunt for “the best kind of sponge cakes, light but heavy too, … if you know what I mean.”

We enter the hardware shop, to the sound of a doorbell tinkling.  It’s an old fashioned shop, filled glinting-dangerous farm tools, towering stacks of white plastic 10-10-20 fertilizer bags, the obligatory shelves of cross-boned weed and rat killer, all in behind a high counter, requiring retrieval by strong armed staff.   Leaning on her bare, muscled forearms, is what, in today’s anonymizing vernacular, I could refer to as the ‘sales associate,’ but back then in the West of Ireland was simply known as the ‘woman of the house: A stocky, short-grey-haired woman with deep set, slanted eyes, set in flat cheeks. 

The last tinkles of the bell fade.  Granny stands on one side of the shop, with the ‘woman of the house’ on the other.  They stare silently across the room at one another, barely containing their mutual distrust. 

We children, in our crinkly Sunday best, are clearly interlopers in her world of sharp tools, poison and flammables, and thus we try to occupy as few of the black and white tiles on the floor. 

But somehow over those few moments of staring, the Leitrim women silently commune; eyebrows rising and falling, slight, sideward head nods imparting even more knowledge.

“A … a sponge … is it, you’re looking for?” the ‘woman of the house’ finally breaks and engages in verbal communication; compensating for resorting to mere words by forcing her thick eyebrows to their crescendo.

“Yes,” Granny clips, “a large sponge, with strawberr … .”

“And cream?” ‘the woman of house’ cuts her off.  “She does a lovely fresh

whipped cream.”

“Yes, yes, of course, cream.”

“She whips it herself – pursonally!”

Granny nods in contented satisfaction, a thin smile forming on her lips.  For her,

consuming sponge cake without cream, freshly whipped to within an inch of its lactic-life, lay somewhere along the Catholic sin continuum of venial-trending-to-mortal.

            Granny’s name was scribbled, incautiously, on the side of a brown bag, a fifty percent deposit paid in coins snapped heavily onto the counter.  A week later, we returned to pick up a ten-inch sponge cake, with a filling of sugary smelling strawberries, and mercilessly whipped cream.

With Jeff Bezos single handedly turning retail on its head, the lines of just where you go to purchase the objects allegedly necessary for life are growing blurrier by the day.  Now a Neanderthal like myself can go accessory shopping at the pharmacy on the corner.  I actually buy all my belts in Walgreens: “3 for $10.”  High quality plastic belts, manufactured, just for me, in Vietnam.  They last about one month and then crack or delaminate so badly, that even I’m ashamed to be seen in them: Onto the next $3.33 belt!   In Home Depot, I buy eight pairs of gloves for $10, and over the course of a winter, lose them one-by-each, until in April, all I have is one mismatched pair.   I’ve gone into hardware stores for a can of paint, and come out the, proud-ish, owner of a new sweatshirt, a tee shirt, one time even a high-vis work jacket.

Once upon a simpler time – which was actually infinitely more punishing than today’s crazy world, but now, wrapped in the faulty memories and emotions of childhood, seems to have been a great time altogether – the hardware shop was a symbol of solidity and purpose in life.  Things broke at home, or on the farm, and men, or boys, were dispatched to cavernous hardware shops, which smelt faintly of saw dust, metal and carcinogenic chemicals.  In the mazelike aisles, undiagnosed-depressives – which BTW passed as “that just life” in the simpler time – but ultimately helpful, store men got you exactly-what-was-needed.  Their eyes lit up momentarily, when the exactly-what-was-needed is located.  What’s more is, when you got back with exactly exactly-what-was-needed, those there knew what to do with it, and fixed the problem.

Now we are permanently lost in hyper-space, with various Mr-Fix-It’s just an email-text-PM away, and thus humans have developed a confused relationship with the hardware shop.  Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon, was onto this twenty years ago.  In one of his cartoons, he has Dilbert explain how for enjoyment, he spends his time walking around hardware stores.

“Oh yeah,” the smart-bitter, high-stacked-hair, woman cartoon character responds.  “I am aware of this condition, it’s called the Stupid Guy Thing.”

A few years ago, hot out of a divorce, and rebuilding my home-life one barely-used appliance at a time, I visited the local TrueValue Hardware with my nine year-old daughter to purchase a hair dryer.

“Really?” she says on the drive over, trying, and failing, to get her mind around my retail strategy.  “That’s where you buy a hair dryer?  In a hardware store?  I would’ve thought you got them in … .”

She’s momentarily silenced by the realization that she’s never thought this thought before, and there may, in fact, not be a truly logical place to buy a hair dryer:  In which case, my advice is, as always, head to the hardware store.

“Hair dryers we have,” Skye, the permanently stoned, film school dropout, working the TrueValue register tells us. 

He nods way too fast, distorting his scraggly-goateed-face as he tries to remember where appliances are located.

“Yeeaahh, we gotta a couple of sweeeeet dryers in … aisle … four, …, no five,” his legs tightening, he rises off his stool, and claps his hands together with theatrical gusto. “Four it is, … or five.  You can’t miss ‘em.”

            In aisle seven, amongst the kettles, hand held food mixers, and coffee grinders we search, in vain, for a hair dryer.

            “See, I told you,” my daughter crows, folding her arms tight, setting her face into a pre-adolescent this-is-sooo-ridiculous look.

            “Well,” I sigh, my gaze already wandering around to more usefully-dangerous shelves. “Let’s get this food mixer thing, we don’t have one of those either

            “No,” she hisses in an urgent whisper. “The guy will think we’re weird.”

            “No, no, let’s just get it, what’ll Skye give a damn.”

            At the register, there is damn giving.

            “Heh man, you know that … eh,” Skye now appears even more stoned than when we entered. 

            His stool grates across the bare concrete floor as he stands up.  Holding the box carefully in both hands, he closely examines the food mixer images.

I feel nine-year old eyes burning into the side of my head.

            “No,” he says aloud, but to no one.

            He shakes his head a lot. 

“You know that, eh,” he’s still examining the box, “that this part…tic…ular home appliance can…not,” his stoner eyes look up from the box, stare at me, then briefly at my daughter, then right back to me.

“Or, at least, … should not …,” he angles his head imploringly at me, “be used as a hair dryer.”

The Oracle of Artane

I’m in a taxi heading to Dublin airport. We’re barely crawling along through Monday morning rush hour traffic: The problem exacerbated by the built-in-the-1700s-for-carriages-not-cars streets of Dublin’s Georgian quarter.  

The taxi driver, thickset, balding, tight-white-recent haircut, an Artane BeaumontFCpennant swing-dangling from the rearview mirror, raises his hand up to his mouth in a fake smoking gesture, and shifts forward to stretch his back. 

Our eyes meet in the rear mirror, as we’re both caught sizing each other up. 

“Mayo?  So, youse are from Mayo!” he arches his back further, baggy eyes tightening in a faux grimace.  “Jaysus, what’s a Mayo-man duin’ above in Dublin gowin’ to Boston?  Sure, you shud be balow in Shannon.”

He slaps his palm off the steering wheel; eyes finally back on the road.

“Dey need you down dere.  Let me tell you dat.  Dey need you mores den we do.”

He purses his lips, sighs audibly, and gives his head a why-can’t-mere-mortals-know-as-much-as-I-do, slow shake to the right, … and then to the left.

 “Dey haven’t a clue, God-forgave-me, not a clue.  But do ya see dem now,” he grabs his Costa coffee cup from the holder, and waves it at the beige-bricked, four storey, Georgian townhouses lining the street. 

“Dem Georg-ee-anne houses.  Sure dey’re all jealous of dem ohver in Londin.  Yeah, jealous as hell dey are. ‘Cause see, our Georg-ee-an houses do have all deir i-ronwork, but ohver beyond.” 

He nods his head expansively to the right, encompassing the entire island of Great Britain. 

“Dey don’t have nunna dat no more.  See, dey boiled dowen deirs for bullets to go fighting Hitlar.”

He nods slow-long for emphasis.

“Oh yeah, dey’re dead jealous awright of us here in Dublin.”

“It’s very nice,” I agree, gazing out at the gingerbread metalwork on the windows, and then without prior thought, I ask: “I wonder now if that would have been made here in Ireland, or did they bring in from England.”

“Oh, Jaaaysuusss no-no-no,” he reflexes, back arching, broad shoulders tightening up to his ears.  “Coarse it’d be made in Dublin.  Shure we had de finest of i-ronworks balow, … balow … in … .”

He falls silent, but disguises the lack of memorable Dublin “i-ronworks” by busying himself with light-finger-tip touches on the smartphone mounted on his dash. 

We nudge along, with air travel anxiety inducing lack of urgency, through the section of Dublin built during the era of the first three kings George. In the mid-1700s Dublin had its short-lived heyday as a colonial center of power and economic might, during which wealthy colonialists built cut-stone and brick, row-house-mansions, with large windows wrapped in distinctive wrought “i-ron.” A lot of history, economic and otherwise, got jammed in since George III pulled the economic plug on Dublin in 1801, but now, in the twenty-teens, Dublin is back as a fully paid-up member of the global economy. 

 “Well do you see dat now?” the taxi driver barks with startling energy.

“See dat van,” his finger stabs at the windscreen.  “Now he’s messin’ dis whole ting up.  See if he wasn’t so wide, we’d be able ta get aroun’ him.  But no, mister wide-van, probly a cultie – no offence loike, Mr. Mayo, but dey haven’t a clue how ta drive in Dublin, not a clue – has to take up two lanes.  And so here we is stuck behind ‘im, looking up his arse, an’ God-forgave-me, it’s not as if it ‘twas the Spice Girls bendin’ oveh in front of us, now is it?”

He falls silent, his head shaking barely perceptibly.

“Well I suppose it’d be hard to limit the width of a van, just for Dublin streets,” the gods of travel anxiety force the words out of my mouth, “I mean, the manufacturers wouldn’t mak …,” but I stymie them before a debate breaks out on the likelihood of taxi driver impatience forcing international van specification changes.

“Oh yeah, and sure what wud dey say if I was to go inta de Corpo, and tell dem to cut dowen dem trees dere,” he gestures with the Costa cup at three beautiful sycamore trees, wedged into the concrete footpath.  “Take away a bunch of dat footpath, sure no one walks anymore. An’ den let me drive in dere.  No bicycles allowed neither.”

He circles his head slowly a few times.  

“Ah, sure dey’d go crazy,” he sighs.  “Dey’d say twas jus’ de ramblins’ of a mad taxi-man.  But I’m telling ya, dat’s what ‘tis coming to, if an’ we don’t want no more traffic jams.  Because de truth dey don’t wanta hear is dat de traffic is all from dem guverment workers driving in to deir free parking spaces.  Yeah, up from the country, living out beyond,” he tosses his head wide to the far left, covering the entire western suburbs of Dublin, “and drivin’ in here to deir free parking.  With de lunch in de bag,” he sneers, “wouldn’t even buy a sangwich, miserable fu… .”

He shakes his head rapidly.

“Ah, it all starts at de top!” he almost yells.

I tighten at the gusto of his new onslaught.

“Sure look at Leinster House, where dat clueless guverment sits on deir big arses doin’ nuthin’.  Look at any time dey’re over dere with de telly-vision cameras, and de yard in front of it fulled up with cars.  Jammed-packed in dey is – like Jaffa cakes!  And dat’s de Tee-shuck’s job, to get dat cleared.  Sure even Trump wouldn’t let dem be parkin’ on de White House lawn.” 

“If he could figure out how to make money on it he would,” I reflexively throw out.

“I sup-pose.  But so long as he lets us keep our Gooo-gles an’ our Facebooks we won’t be saying nuthin’ abou’ him now.  Sure dey’re de lifeblood of de Irish economy.  Ya see, back in de day, in de 1970s loike, de government den was smart enough to see dat de manufactorying wasn’t on anymore.  I mean de pint was gone out of it.  Manufactor … making stuff was going to be only for d’Indians goin’ forwards.  So, smart enough, Charlie an’ de boys says, we need-a be gettin’ de young wans ready for de Facebooks of de future.  Loike, Irish Steel, dere you go, feck off, we can’t do dat no more.  No pint.  De Indians do sorta work now.”

He stops his onslaught to take a deep breath.  I consider, then decline, offering corrective input.

“But do ya see up de Nort den.  Well, first of all dey were all too busy killin’ wanother, but meanwhile dey stuck with de manufacturing: Harlan’ n Wolff, an’ tires, an’ all dat kinda stuff, ya know.  Sure, where are dey now?”

“Well,” unable to help myself, I counter with some facts.  “Didn’t Dublin get a bridge over the Liffey that was made by Harland and Wolff – a footbridge.”

“Don’t mind that load-a-bollix.  Sure, a lad could lay a bit a scaffoldin’ flat, an’ a few planks, an’ ya’d have a better bridge den wat dem Corpo dopes paid a few million for.  Dey haven’t got a clue.  Dat’s what a mate of mine said.  And he done buildings in London, down de docklands loike – reeaall big ones. Dat’s what he said: ‘An overly,’ or was it, ‘overtly, simplistic structure,’ he calls it.  But after a few jars, he’ll tell you how it’s really just a bit of scaffolding.  But the pint is that de manufactorying is all goin’ beyond to China an’ India an’ Viet-naaam. Sure dey’re trilled to have it, an’ we’re trilled to have all dem Gooo-gliebook jobs here.”

“And they pay well I’m sure,” I lay up a clear shot on goal for him.

 “Ohhh yeah. Dem ‘millennyuppies do get a nice brown envelop of a Friday, let me tell you dat.  And it’s not down de boozer dey go for a few jars.  Oh no.  It’s into a wh-ine bar, tippling dem shar-doh-nays or the cabra … cabra-yoursel-on, at a tenner a glass.  I don’t like giving Tommy down in Waxy’s €4.50 for a jar, but let me tell ya, de sister’s eldest wan, Aoife.  Now, she’s working within in Facebook, or for a company dat does all de actual work for Facebook – ya know loike dat sorta way, couldn’t survive without ‘em.”

He takes a sip of coffee.

“Anyways, of a Friday night, Aoife’d tink nothin’ of slapping down a tenner for a smallish pool of wh-ine in de bottom of a big glass dat …, dat, … God-forgave-me, looks like somethin’ Brown’s cows watered off.  Do you know what I mean loike.  It’s madness, madness, ever-tings different now.  I mean back in de day, de lads’d be comin’ into Waxy’s from Tayto, an’ dey’d be looing for pints, not shaggin’ wh-ine.  But ‘tis all changed times now.  All dem days is long gone.  Dey haven’t got a clue now.”

“Indeed it is,” I consider the truth of what he said, and the difficulty for us all to deal with the rapidity of change. 

We inch our way across a bridge.  

On the other, newer-wider streeted, side of the river, we break free for a moment until we’re halted again by a traffic light.

A silver street car trundles across the huge intersection in front of us.

“Does the train there, the Luas, does that help with traffic,” the gods of travel anxiety get the better of me.

“Oh yeah, dats a great job, but don’t ya see, ya need around a hund-erd thousan’ people getting’ on dem trams every day to make it pay for itself.  An’ de guverment now, anudder ting dat’s changed: Right, dey’re not smart ‘nough now ta be able ta rob de Euro-pee-ons de way Charlie an’ de boys used-ta. Ya, not a clue do dey have.  And sure anyways, ‘twas de farmers tore de arse outta dat stealin’.  So now dere’s no more robbin’, roight, an’ we have pay for stuff.”

He throws up both hands off the steering wheel in exasperation at this opportunity lost.  

“An’ to pay for a tram you need a solid hund-erd thousan’ steppin’ on and steppin’ off every day.”

“Makes sense,” I encourage.

“An’ do ya see now Cork and Limerick and Galway, dey’re all market towens, … well cities sort off.”

He purses his lips and shakes his head.  

“But dey don’t have no hund-erd thousan’ a day to keep de tram busy enough to pay for itself.  And sure in dem market towen… cities ya need yer car anyway.  I mean if some farmer comes in from Cahir-sigh-veen, or wan on dem weird name places, in to Cork to go to de … bank, let’s say, or de …”

He waves the coffee cup lightly to unlock inspiration.

“The doctor,” I offer.

“Exactly! De don’t have no ‘ospital on de farm, now do dey?” he raises the wax cup in triumph.  “So he’s headin’ into de ‘ospital ta get his spa-leen checked out.  De farmin’s very hard on de body, ya know: De have dis country broke with dem getting’ sick and dyin’, but dats for another day.  So de farmer’s coming in from Ballygobackwards, but he’s got to take de car.  I mean, dere’s no tray-ens to get ‘im in to Cork from Ballygo…,” he shakes his head in disgust, “an’ den no trams to get ‘im around inside-a Cork.”

He holds up both hands to make his point. 

“And what’s more without de hund-erd thousan’, dis lot of a guverment won’t be buildin’ none for ‘im neither.  Sure dey haven’t got a clue.”

He takes a long, triumphant drink of coffee.

The light changes. 

Reflexively, he accelerates, cup still at his lips.

He coughs violently as the coffee goes down the wrong pipe.

We travel in omniscient, traffic-lurching silence for a few minutes, broken only by his occasional splutter-coughs.

“But de big ting now is dem,” he storms back from the Costa-attempted-censorship, pointing his right elbow at a low slung factory building.  

“Da ya see dat buildin’ dere.” 

We’re further out of the city now, in an industrial area; silver metallic, windowless, one storey buildings abound.  

“Dats Gooo-gle for you now.  That’s where dey do all de cloud transactions.”

He nods a few times.

“See if some lad oveh America way commits a crime, on de computer loike.  Den de judge in Texas sends over an affy-david saying, you know, we need dis-and-dis-and-dis.  An’ de boys inside dere get it for ‘im.  An’ den off de online crook goes to de Riker’s Islan’.  ‘Tis dat simple, ‘cause dem lads do have a clue.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that complication,” I say, raising my eyebrows in genuine admiration at his knowledge.  “So, where the transaction is actually executed is where the crime is committed.  That would get tricky legally, wouldn’t it?  I suppose that’s why they like Ireland, we’re probably in all the treaties through the EU.”

“Kinda, dey might like dat part, but let me tell you wat dey luv. Wat dey totally luv is, our ten percent corporate taxes.  Oh yeah, it’s all about de money, oh ya,” he nods sagaciously.

We both stare at the metal building; travel anxiety making me will him to look forwards.  

“But wat dey do loike too, is dat we’re all a small bit sane here.  Loike in Ireland dere won’t be no one coming up wid a bazooka, to blow up de processing centers.  Ya know wat I mean loike, what dey’d be doing in Waco, or dem places. In America too dere could be an irt-quake, or wildfires, or mudslides.  Sure dere’s none of that carry on here.  De only mudslides we have would be at a wedding, when you can’t stomach no more Guinness, but de young wans wants ya to keep drinkin’.”

I lean forward, and search-stare around the taxi to determine if this whole journey is a candid camera episode.

“Yeah, and de do luv de weather here.  Not de rain, no on luvs rain.  But it’s not goin’ to be no forty degrees here, and you trying to keep dem com-pewters cue-ell.  No, we’re good at de old fourteen to sixteen degree weather, an so you see,” he goes with the elbow again at the factory buildings, “do you see dat?”

I look again, but see nothing more than the boxy industrial building, with shiny helical exhaust vent stacks running up the side.

“Dem tings is for taking de air in, nice cue-ell Irish air to keep the com-pewters happy, buyin’ and sellin’; sellin’ and buyin’.  And no sign of yer man wid de bazooka, or a machine gun.  Sure, as crazy as de Irish are, we won’t be selling guns at boot sales now will we, like dey do over yonder.”

He nods quickly, but deeply, left, rising out of his seat, in what I can only suppose is to encompass the lower forty-eight, or at least Texas.

We turn into the airport, and immediately traffic gets busier, crowding in around us.  A bulk cement tanker, starts to take a turn, changes its mind, and swerves back in front of us.

“Oho, watch out, we have a live one ‘ere.  Hasn’t got a clue, not a clue.  See he’s probly trying to get to where dey’re rebuilding de runway, way de other side of de hair-port.”

We drive slowly, a solid thirty yards behind the cement tanker.

“He’s roight banjaxed now, sure he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t hit de bridge.”

We stay back, but the tanker passes comfortably under the parking garage footbridge.

We make it to the Departures drop off.

“Dere you go now, let me get yer bags for youse,” he says, with newfound, lighthearted mirth, yanking the hand break.  

I get out on his side.  Just-unloaded-taxis whip past us racing to their next fare at Arrivals.

“Watch yourself dere now,” he guides me along his taxi to the rear. “A lot dem east Euro-pee-ons is drivin’ taxis dese days.  Dey’d drive roight true ya, haven’t got a clue, not a clue.”

We make it safely to the back of the taxi; I start to unload the bags.

“Do ya see dat now,” he points his index finger at a sky-blue Dublin-Belfast express bus.  “Do ya see dat; twenty … two-times-a-day. See it?”

Above the DUBLIN-BELFAST –italicized for speed – the writing on the side of the bus says “22 TIMES PER DAY.”

I nod.

 “See, dat’ll all be gone whit Brexit.”

 I nod again.

“Sure, I never even get to tell ya all about Brexit!”

“Next time,” I say, passing him the fare, which interests him not at all.

 I start to cross through the crazy traffic.

“Sure dat May wan,” I hear him yell above the traffic-buzz, “she couldn’t neg-osh-eeate her way outta de women’s jax in Waxy’s.  Hasn’t got a clue!”