Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (21 page)

“Wouldn’t Daddy be impressed with how our vocabularies have expanded,” Casey said, spitting blood out of his mouth.

Pat gave a small choking sound.

“Christ, was that a laugh I heard? I’d thought yer sense of humor had abandoned ye entirely.”

“If it had,” Pat said pushing himself over onto his back, “ye’d be dead right now.”

“That,” Casey put a ginger finger to a vicious cut over his eyebrow, “I believe.”

Their teammates, having kept a safe distance, now hove into view.

“Are ye ladies done with yer nap then?”

“Aye,” Pat replied, “we’re finished here.”

“Are we?” Casey asked quietly.

“For now,” Pat replied in kind.

“Right then, next Sunday same time lads.”

There was a chorus of ayes and one by one, they slowly drifted off into the gathering dusk, towards the lights that were turning on here and there scattering darkness in their path.

Casey and Pat lay for a long time in the grass, joints beginning to reassert themselves, bruises throbbing and blood drying in itchy patches.

“I’m sorry, Pat,” Casey said simply, quietly.

“I know ye are,” Pat replied, “though ye make it damn hard to believe when ye pull stunts like ye did Friday night.”

“The speech was Devlin’s; I think he got carried off by his own grandiosity.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“D’ye think he’d be ashamed of me?”

Pat turned his head sideways and looked at his brother, “Devlin?”

“No.”

“Daddy?”

“Aye.”

“He loved ye Casey, he always forgave us our mistakes, he’d of forgiven this as well.”

“I did it for all the wrong reasons, I did it because I was angry at him an’ scared of havin’ to be the man. I can’t bring the last five years back Patrick but ye have to believe that if I could I would.”

“Then don’t go back.” Pat’s voice was barely above a whisper, as if he were afraid that if he said the words too loudly, his brother would be certain to refuse him.

“I’m not goin’ back in the way that ye think, Pat.”

“That’s what frightens me.”

They were both silent for awhile after that, knowing that if they proceeded down that path they’d end up in another fight and neither had the strength for it at present.

“I hope he has stars wherever he is,” Pat said, offering a simple truce.

“An’ a big damn telescope,” Casey added.

“It was an astronomer,” Pat sat up and put his arms around his drawn up knees, “that made me realize how angry I was at the two of ye.”

“How so?” Casey asked.

“When that man in California discovered quasars in ’63. I was so excited an’ I ran into the backyard where Daddy used to sit with his tea after dinner to tell him. I was standin’ in the alley before it hit me that it wasn’t my yard an’ there was no daddy to tell things to anymore.”

“An’ no brother.”

“No, no brother,” Pat agreed.

“Quasars, eh?” Casey chuckled, “Takes a damn object a billion light years away to get yer attention.”

“Daddy would have loved that. Think of it, out there as far as we can see are these ancient lights, light that has taken a billion an’ a half years to reach our eyes an’ we are witnessing the birth of the universe by looking so far back in time that our minds cannot even comprehend the vastness of it. When they were closer, can ye imagine, the sky must have seemed like it was on fire.”

“An’ not a soul here to witness it,” Casey reached across the small divide between him and his brother and took Pat’s hand, remembering how small it had once been, how it had been engulfed in his own as they crossed streets and walked to school. He felt the breadth of it and the strength and knew with a sadness that shook him to his core that he could no longer protect his brother. Not from life, not from love, not from himself.

“Are ye still my brother, Pat?” he asked and could not keep the tremble of doubt from his question.

There was a quiet that stretched far and deep before Pat’s words travelled back to him, soft and firm, “
Pari passu.”

Casey sighed, “Ye know I could never get my head around those Latin phrases the way Daddy an’ yerself  could.”

“Side by side, my brother, side by side.”

When at long last they felt the need to leave the damp, cold couch of ground and begin the long limping trip home Pat turned to Casey, eyes fathoms deep and said, “Brother or no, if ye break her heart, Casey I will kill ye.”

Casey nodded, “I think ye would at that. For now though can we just get home?”

“Aye, let’s go home,” Pat said and for one moment, it seemed very possible that they might both get there and find, for a time, some measure of peace.

“Is he dead?”

“No, he’s not dead but he’ll not be runnin’ round the ring again anytime soon, or I miss my guess.” The answer came from the mouth of Dannyboy Kilmorgan, a fighter of legendary reputation, who had almost thirty years previous gone out a winner and spent his time since running Belfast’s most popular gym. Sixty-five if he was a day and used to the inescapable brutality as well as the delicate finesse of his sport, still he’d never seen such precise and emotionless violence as he’d witnessed this day. And from such an unlikely source, though perhaps not so unlikely, he thought uneasily as he watched the source of the violence, still bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as if electrically charged, not a glimmer of sweat on the man after five ugly rounds.

Danny’s gym was famous for being neutral ground. If you came through his doors you came to box, you left your grudges, whether personal or political outside and if you were foolish enough not to you’d soon join them—outside on the pavement. Today, for the first time, Danny wished he’d turned a man away purely on appearance. For the Reverend Lucien Broughton sent a chill right to the marrow of Danny’s old, unromantic bones. Killer instinct was a term bandied about a lot in the gym and generally was meant as a compliment conferred upon a lad who had both the talent and the drive to go the distance. Today it had assumed a completely different meaning.

He’d been very doubtful at the Reverend’s appearance, thought the man was too small and finely built, very little muscle was apparent under his phosphorescent white skin, his bones as delicate as those of a young girl. Appearances had never been quite so deceiving. He’d put Gillybear Reese in the ring with him, so called because of his girth and sweet-natured face. Gilly’d wear him out and only rough him up enough to make him realize boxing was perhaps not his natural vocation. After the first round, Gilly was exhausted and had received two uppercuts to his jaw that had knocked him to the canvas. At the end of the second round he’d a great deal of blood to rinse out along with the spit. By the third round Gilly was no longer playing but could not manage to get around the Reverend’s light-bodied dance. Lucien was fast, accurate and had a steely-eyed strength behind his blows that was deadly. By the fourth round, fighters were drifting away from their exercises and own sparring matches to witness the massacre. The fifth round was a travesty that Danny had been grateful to see end. Gilly, who possessed the unassailable head of a mule, was out cold on the canvas and the Reverend Broughton was still high and tight on his feet.

Lucien took in the glares and furtive angry glances he received with a cool smile. “A man,” he said as he climbed nimbly from the ring, “should be prepared to fight if he gets in the ring. I am prepared.” Danny had been tempted to put the gloves on then and there and teach the Reverend a thing or two, but had refrained. He was happy to see the back end of the man when he re-emerged from the locker room, impeccable in white linen and gray flannel and took his leave of them.

Later when it was determined Gilly had sustained no permanent damage and Danny had retired to his office to sort out his bookwork, his co-manager Tiny Brown, a wee dark nut of a man, had entered waving a sheaf of paper.

“Did ye see this? The nerve of the bastard after knockin’ Gilly cold.”

“Did I see what?” Danny took the sheaf of papers and felt a ball of ice begin to form in his intestines as he looked them over.

“He’s runnin’ for this district? That’s crazy, the like of him won’t get elected here, nine tenths of the neighborhood is Catholic.”

“Aye, but who’s to run against ‘im?” Tiny asked practically.

Danny pursed scarred lips and frowned down at the flawless picture of the Reverend in front of him, underlined in bold letters by the improbable tag line, “A Vote For Lucien Broughton is a vote for your conscience.”

“He’ll win by default,” Tiny said craftily.

“Quit hintin’ about Tiny, just say it, someone is goin’ to have to go an’ give the boy on the hill a talkin’ to.”

“Aye,” Tiny agreed, a small smile adding to the numberless creases in his face.

“An’ I suppose,” Dannyboy Kilmorgan, never one to turn from a fight, sighed from the depths of his flattened knuckles, “it’ll be me makin’ the trip up.”

“I suppose ‘twill,” Tiny said with satisfaction.

“A Mr. Kilmorgan in the kitchen to see ye,” Maggie said to Jamie, one rainy afternoon later, with a face on her a prune would have had difficulty imitating.

Jamie, knowing Dannyboy wouldn’t leave the confines of the comfortable kitchen, the only room in the house he claimed where he didn’t feel like he ought to be bowing and scraping, followed Maggie’s stiff back down the hall and into the warm kitchen fragrant with the smell of lemon poppyseed cake baking in the oven and a pot of Earl Grey steeping on the sideboard.

“His Grace Lord Kirkpatrick will see ye now, Mr. Kilmorgan,” Maggie said with sweet hostility.

“Mr. Kilmorgan?” Jamie lifted his eyebrows at Dannyboy, no stranger to the kitchen of the Kirkpatrick home over the last twenty-two years.

“Aye, she gave up  callin’ me Dannyboy when I asked fer salt on my food last Christmas.”

Maggie did not even deign to look over her shoulder, though the carrots she was slicing got an audible and protracted thumping from the knife.

“Seasoning is an insult to the chef’s abilities,” Jamie said, trying not to laugh.

“D’ye suppose a man might have hope of a wee slice of that cake,” Dannyboy said in a wheedling tone, winking at Jamie.

“That would depend,” Maggie said, knife continuing its vigorous dance, “on precisely where ye’d like it.”

“I always did say that’d be yer cookin’ that would get me to bed in the end,” Dannyboy said.

“Ye’ve high aspirations in this life for such a battered old specimen,” Maggie retorted, spilling the abused carrots into a simmering pot of broth on the ancient Aga.

Dannyboy eyed Maggie’s squat stature and ample backside appreciatively, “A mite more wide than high, I daresay.”

“Dream on old man,” Maggie said equably and then as Jamie shook with suppressed laughter, “an’ if either of ye laugh ye’ll feel the sharp side of this knife along with yer cake.”

“There’s somethin’ I’ve come to discuss with ye,” Dannyboy, never one to waste nor mince words, came directly to the point, shoving a piece of paper across the table at Jamie, who looked it over with no change of expression and handed it back.

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

Dannyboy sighed; this was exactly the reaction he’d been fearing. How far he could push any advantage he might have from this point was debatable. Not very far he’d guess from the obstinacy, refined as it might be by the boy’s practiced concealment that had settled quickly on Jamie’s face.

“D’ye know what it will mean to the people in that neighborhood?”

“Why,” Jamie asked revealing a small frustration, “does everyone seem determined to act as though he and I are the only options in this game?”

“Because if ye were thinkin’ clearly, ye’d see that ye are.”

“Dannyboy come on, it’s a strong community with solid political ties. Can you honestly tell me there isn’t a Nationalist candidate who could stand against this man?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Danny insisted stubbornly, “I’ve a feelin’ that if this man wants to win he will, regardless of the tactics he’ll have to use to pull the vote his way. Christ, boy this is Ulster, ye know the candidates are rarely the result of a fair vote.”

“If you’re so certain of that why come to me?”