Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (27 page)

“Mmphm,” was Pat’s only reply, indicating that he’d neither the strength nor intellectual fortitude for articulate speech.

It was near to the end of July. The tiny white flowers called
cean-a-bahns
that had covered the bog in May were long gone, the sun seemed to stand overhead all day and the night, Casey could have sworn, was no longer than those found in the high summer of the Arctic.

Turf cutting was an old and honorable profession and, though most people cut and stored their own haul for the winter, those with the means would often have it done by others. And one could hardly blame them, for it was backbreaking work, with only the promise of a fragrant winter fire as reward.

After the first week, though, Casey’s back had ceased to complain and he’d begun to turn gypsy brown in the warm summer light. He’d even begun to enjoy some aspects of turf cutting. There was, after all, a certain tranquility and sense of comradeship to be had, one man working in unison with another out on the isolated bogs.

Casey and Pat paired up and took turns at being bar man and barrow man. Casey cut the bars, each a spadeful in depth and heaved the sod up onto the bank where Pat, as barrow man, loaded it into the barrow and took it off to higher and drier ground. At the end of the day, they would then build grogans, small stacks of turf that were made of four sods stood upright with one sod balanced across the top. There they were left for the sun to dry them. Closer to the end of the summer, when the turf had dried, they would bag it and transfer it off the bog where a tractor would take it down to the barn of the big house. They took smaller orders on the side, such as for Mr. Trotter, on whom they had bestowed the name ‘Old Misery’ early on in the season.

Pat seemed unfazed by the sheer physical strenuousness of the work and, other than having a propensity to sleep immediately upon sitting, showed no ill effects. As if, Casey had thought that first week, stifling a desire to smack his brother alongside the head with the pitchfork, as if the act of pouring stout and bicycling up to the Causeway on weekends was enough to keep him in fighting form.

If there was one immediately apparent benefit to such hard physical labor, it had to be that a man had neither the time nor energy to think or dream. Even if occasionally, unbidden, a certain green-eyed girl tended to slip into one’s nocturnal musings.

Casey trailed one hand over the side of the boat; even the water was warm at this late hour.

“Can I ask ye a question?” he said, half hoping that Pat was actually asleep.

“Since when do ye ask if ye can ask a question?”

“Well it’s only that it’s of a rather personal nature,” Casey cleared his throat wishing he’d not opened his mouth.

“That’s hardly stopped ye in the past.”

“Well it’s—I—have ye ever made love to a woman?”

A long silence issued forth from the opposite end of the boat. “Well I’m not a virgin if that’s what yer askin’,” was the dry reply just when Casey was getting desperate enough to change the subject.

“I’m not talkin’ about sex,” he said quietly, “I meant have ye ever
made love
to a woman?”

“I’ve tended to take Daddy’s advice in that area,” Pat said and propped his head up on an overturned basket. “Ye know, keep yer pants zippered when ye can, don’t sleep with a Catholic girl if ye can avoid it. Protestants are less guilty an’ more honest about sex and fer God’s sake,” Casey joined in on the well imprinted lesson, “don’t marry a girl just because ye’d the good fortune to get into her knickers.” They laughed, the sound of it echoing off into the night, spreading warm and happy over the mountains.

“Sound advice if not terribly romantic,” Pat said, tearing off small chunks of bread and scattering them over the surface of the water. “But to answer yer question, no I’ve not. Have you?”

“No. I’d sex before prison, but it came in the form of quantity, not quality.”

“So why are ye askin’ then?”

“It’s only, “ Casey sat up and flung a pebble into the still surface of the lake, watching the ripples undulate, spread and eventually shimmer into nothingness before answering, “I imagine it’ll be a great deal different, won’t it?”

“I imagine it will,” Pat replied softly, “if it’s the right girl an’ the right time.”

“An’ how do ye know that, if it’s the right time I mean?”

Pat shrugged, his shoulders rising up above his ears and tipping his cap over into the water. He watched it float for a moment and then retrieved it as it began to sink. “Ye’ll just know.”

Casey snorted, “That’s the answer people give when there is no bloody answer to be had.”

Pat sat up, propping his elbows on his knees, fists cupped beneath his chin.

“If ye have somethin’ to ask Paddyboy, ask it.”

“Why do ye presume I’ve a question to ask?”

“I’ve known ye since ye were born, slept in the same damn bed for years, watched ye when ye were sad an’ when ye were happy. I know when ye’ve a question yer not certain ye should ask.”

“How was it for ye in prison? I mean did anyone try—no,” Pat shook his head, “I shouldn’t be askin’ ye these things.”

“Why not?” Casey asked, flicking a match against the side of the boat and putting it to the end of a cigarette.

“Because I can’t know what it was like for ye in there an’ what ye may have had to do just to survive. It’s maybe somethin’ ye’ll not want to talk of.”

“I managed fine in prison, no one raped me, Pat. They did everything else that came to mind, but no one raped me.”

Pat let out a long breath of pent-up air. “It’s been botherin’ me, ye know. What might have been done to ye an’ I knew there were many things ye could bear but some that ye couldn’t. It used to keep me awake at night, wonderin’ if ye could sleep comfortable or if ye always had to have one eye open. If ye could do anything without fear on yer back.”

“Fear,” Casey said softly, staring out over the water away from Pat, “is yer best friend in prison an’ it’s only a damn fool who ever forgets that. I forgot once an’ then I never forgot again.”

He picked a flat stone from a small hoard he kept in his pocket, a leftover habit from childhood, and flung it in one sharp, hard movement. They watched it skip across the water, arcing and diving. Hanging in the air and catching silver light against its wet body, it seemed almost a living thing, something that might cry out to the night and the wind and the sky if it but had the choice. It sank on the downsweep of the fifth arc, the air currents closing over its silent descent and leaving no remark upon the dark water.

“I’m alright, Patrick,” Casey said and took up the milk bottle again, cleansing it with several long-throated swallows.

“Ye don’t have to protect me, Casey. I’m not yer tongue-tied little brother anymore ye know.”

“I know,” Casey nodded at a point just past his brother’s shoulder. “It looks like ye’ve got a bite on yer line.”

Pat gave his line a mild glance and then turned to the side, the rod, consisting of fishing line knotted around a stout but pliable wand of willow was bent in half, and the boat was beginning to drag slightly under the effort.

Pat shifted his weight over to the other side and taking the rod halfway up, pulled hard against it. It gave an inch above the water, encountered resistance from below and sank back again.

“Got Moby Dick on the line, do ye?”

“Something like,” Pat grunted, shifting his body further round still and trying to brace his feet against the lip of the boat, levered his upper body against the pull of the rod. “Ye could do something other than sit there,” he said through gritted teeth.

“We’ll sink with the two of us in the one end,” Casey said sensibly.

Pat muttered something decidedly filthy under his breath and hauled back on the line until his body was nearly parallel to the water and only inches above it. Casey, seeing that, with or without his help, they were likely to capsize, decided that he’d best go down trying. He shimmied his body out full-length, balanced across the seats on his stomach and put the strength of one large hand to the assistance of his brother.

“We’ll have to try in unison,” Pat grunted, taking a second to draw breath.

“Right,” Casey grunted back and then they counted to three and strained, heaved and cursed and felt sweat begin to bead on their faces. All to no avail.

The rod, bowed over in a high and tight arch, was at the limit of its give.

“One more try an’ then we cut it loose?” Casey suggested, not wanting to even guess what might be giving such a monumental struggle on the other end of the line.

Pat made an affirmative noise. Casey nudged himself over until he was on his side, affording his arms more leverage. Pat counted out, “One, two, three,” and they gave an almighty heave. At the very limits of the pull, the line gave all at once heaving the boat over at a harsh tip and sending the boys and other various contents out in a cascade of rushing, hissing air.

Plastered and spluttering they came up in time to witness the boat being pulled at an alarming clip across the frothing water.

“Christ on earth, what sort of fish can that be?”

“I don’t,” Pat replied, spitting out water, “think we should be askin’ God.”

“What about the boat?” Casey asked as Pat looked toward shore.

“Ye intend to chase it down?” Pat asked and didn’t wait for an answer before launching forward toward land.

Casey cast one last glance over his shoulder at the swiftly disappearing boat and decided some things were fated to be lost. He set out for shore close on his brother’s kicking heels.

In any event, they needn’t have worried about catching the boat, for it caught them. Unawares. Casey, looking up in an effort to gauge the distance to the shore, sensed it behind him and turned, getting a glimpse of blinding white and a hard blow to his shoulder as the boat shot past like a large and unwieldy arrow headed straight up the path of his brother’s back.

He yelled but the speed of the thing was such that it was upon Pat before he’d even closed his throat around the sound. He swam towards the boat, arms slicing the water with a burning speed, closing his mind to the thought of what brute force must lay below.

He stopped by the boat, which was now ominously still, no sign of Pat anywhere. He dove under the water near the prow, thinking Pat had been knocked unconscious. He couldn’t see a damned thing; the darkness was palpable and heavy in his face, coming down with the weight of a stone on his lungs. He sensed movement in front of him and pushed toward it. In seconds he was enveloped in a churn of water. Whether it was made by man or beast he could not tell. Trying to infuse calm down the length of his arms, he groped in the inky blackness. Something of a sliminess, heretofore unknown to his experience, slid like a bolt through his hands. There was only a sense of great size and a revulsion that made him want to fly in the opposite direction as swiftly as possible.

He pushed up, gulped air and dove again trying to calculate how long his brother had been without air. When did brain damage begin? After four minutes and before twenty? There was less frenzy in the water now and the thought of why that might be panicked him. He located the side of the boat, sought with numbing fingers the line and, after what seemed very long minutes, found it. It was strung tight and he followed its length down through the water, down and further still down and found Pat at the end of it.

He hung motionless in the water, frighteningly still. Casey found his chest, put a forearm under Pat’s arms and pushed for heaven. They stopped just short of it. He could feel the water lighten, knew they were only inches from where oxygen diffused its particles and could give them resurrection.

He dove, got under his brother’s body and shoved upwards hoping to give Pat a split second even of air. But something pulled with greater force in the opposite direction. Something that sought darkness with a craving equal to his for light. He grabbed for Pat’s ankle, found his knife and lungs aching pushed himself away from the light. He felt down Pat’s right leg, which was, now that he felt it, straining unnaturally for a man who was unconscious.

The line was wrapped hard, biting into Pat’s ankle and then feeding down sharply into the water. Casey slashed at it, the pressure of the water taking the force from the knife’s blade. Short of gravity, it needed slack to loop itself in but Casey pulling on the line couldn’t supply any.
‘Please God, please, please, please,’
he chanted furiously in his mind.

He knew he’d have to pause soon for a breath, but that Pat could hardly spare another second without a breath of his own. He sawed at the line again and felt it snap just as something whooshed past him and broke the surface.

He reached up to grab his brother and his fingers met cold, black water and nothing else. He scissored his legs and shot above the surface, gasping for air and looking frantically about at the same time. Pat was nowhere to be found. He dove again and again and again, clawing the water with increasing desperation. He found nothing. He tried for some last shred of calm and abandoned the idea swiftly. This panic was purely instinctual, born of dread and certainty, that at some point, he’d been bound to do this, to fail his brother in the ultimate and most final of ways.

Breaking the surface, he could feel a weighted numbness settling into his limbs and knew he didn’t have much more time himself before the water would claim him as well. Tipping his head back and dragging a cutting breath into his lungs, he saw above him, clearly delineated in the night sky, the blue-white fire of Vega. Vega of Lyra, the star of high and eternal summer. It had been his father’s star.
‘Sometimes it will be all ye have an’ it will have to be enough’.

“Oh God, Daddy no not like this, not now,” he cried with what power was left in his bruised throat. His voice fled into the night, dissipating quickly on the warm air. There was no way it could have reached to heaven, but perhaps an unbeliever’s voice never could. Perhaps all the prayers by those less than pure in faith and heart merely sank under the weight of their own disbelief.

He would try one last time and if he could not save his brother, he would not bother to save himself. Some mistakes a man can only live with once.