Hours of Gladness (12 page)
Authors: Thomas Fleming
Look at them big pines. You'd never think I'm as old as them big pines, would you? I seen all of these big pines grow. All around here was cut down for charcoal.
Mick recognized Dan Dillet's field, overgrown now with blueberry bushes and scrub oaks, where Dan had made charcoal. The Hocken Lowlands near the creek, where rattlesnakes by the dozen gathered. Bony Hole, where a man named Bony used to water his horse.
I want volunteers for this job,
the colonel had said. Sergeant O'Day had been the first marine to step forward. Some people thought it sounded too hairy, but Mick thought Binh Nghai sounded a lot better than life at the firebase, with the colonel pulling chickenshit inspections
and Charlie firing mortars and rockets into your lap at all hours of the day and night. Binh Nghai meant you were on your own, without an officer within ten miles. It meant you could make your own rules, fight your own war.
the colonel had said. Sergeant O'Day had been the first marine to step forward. Some people thought it sounded too hairy, but Mick thought Binh Nghai sounded a lot better than life at the firebase, with the colonel pulling chickenshit inspections
and Charlie firing mortars and rockets into your lap at all hours of the day and night. Binh Nghai meant you were on your own, without an officer within ten miles. It meant you could make your own rules, fight your own war.
Wasn't that what the Corps wanted us to do? Mick asked Joe Turner in the silence of his mind. He looked across another creek at a red cedar that Pop Oxenford said he had planted.
I went to school there, by that red cedar.
I went to school there, by that red cedar.
On another day like this they had come to Binh Nghai. They had been dumped out of the truck before the fort, Sergeant O'Day, Corporal Lummis, and ten other marines to live and perhaps die with the five thousand people of this village on the Tra Bong River, near the coast of Quang Tri province.
The fort looked like something out of a movie of Arizona in Wild West days, with some Vietnamese touches. It had whitewashed brick walls and an inner courtyard. Beyond the outer walls was a moat. It had once been the home and headquarters of the French district chief. Inside they found twenty members of the South Vietnamese Popular Forces, who slept at the fort and only went into the village in daylight. The PFs were all marked men, and if they slept with their wives or girlfriends during the night, the VC murdered them. They had murdered one man in his parents' house the night before the marines arrived.
Mick and Joe hiked across the overgrown field where the town of Washington had once stood.
Jim Snow's was the last house. I was awful fond of his daughter Martha,
Pop Oxenford said.
Jim Snow's was the last house. I was awful fond of his daughter Martha,
Pop Oxenford said.
They had sauntered into the market square of Binh Nghai, looking the place over. There sat Trai by a plate of fish her father had caught the night before. At Mick's suggestion, their Boston aristocrat, Belknap, had bought the whole plate. Mick would never forget the way Trai had wrinkled her nose and laughed when he had pointed to Belknap and said, “His name's Rockefeller.”
No. The screen had gone dark; something was wrong
with the projector. There was Trai in the kitchen of that freezing trailer with the ugly black-and-blue bruise on her cheek, saying to him,
I know I deserve to suffer great beatings for my sins. But I am afraid of the difficulties that will arise for all of us. You must help us, Mick. For Suong's sake.
with the projector. There was Trai in the kitchen of that freezing trailer with the ugly black-and-blue bruise on her cheek, saying to him,
I know I deserve to suffer great beatings for my sins. But I am afraid of the difficulties that will arise for all of us. You must help us, Mick. For Suong's sake.
Suong? That wiseass kid? Mick had tried to be a sort of American father to him. He had taught him how to surf, he had taken him fishing on the bay and the ocean. Now Suong had Uncle Mick sized up for the dummy he was. Suong talked about going to Princeton as casually as some city big shot on vacation from Bucks County or Morristown.
The hell with Suong. Mick wanted to touch Trai's battered face with magical fingers, he wanted to pick her up and carry her to his car and drive into the Pines and disappear with her forever.
Jesus, Jesus. Fix the projector, quick. Otherwise he was going to lose everything, he was going to lose the Pines, Joe, the Corps, all the things that held him together. He was going back to Paradise Beach and dismember Father Hart. He was going to put the barrel of his .38 in Phac's mouth and say,
Swallow it.
Swallow it.
The Corps wouldn't want me to do that, would they, Joe?
Of course not, Joe said in his own silence. That's one thing we both understand, Mick. Marines don't cry.
“D
innseanchas,”
Dick O'Gorman said. “That's what the ancient Irish used to call it. The poetry of place. A man or woman carried in his head an amalgam of history, mythology, and folklore connecting every piece of the landscape to the past. It's how they gained control of the unseen forces that could cure or curse them.”
innseanchas,”
Dick O'Gorman said. “That's what the ancient Irish used to call it. The poetry of place. A man or woman carried in his head an amalgam of history, mythology, and folklore connecting every piece of the landscape to the past. It's how they gained control of the unseen forces that could cure or curse them.”
“You know so much,” Barbara O'Day sighed.
“Tell us the one about the Belfast Express again,” said Sunny Dan Monahan.
O'Gorman sliced into his porterhouse. “You tell it, Billy,” he said.
“The blether blows up the Belfast Express and goes to confession,” Billy said. “He blirts it and the collar tells him to recite ten Marys and do the stations.”
“Oh, hoh hoh, do you get it, Mick?” gasped Sunny Dan, the loose skin on his neck bouncing up and down like the crop of a turkey. “Do the stations.”
“I get it,” Mick said, shoveling in the steak and potatoes.
“What's wrong with you?” Barbara O'Day said. “It's a joke.”
“I know.”
Mick chomped his last piece of steak, downed his coffee, and put on his jacket. “Gotta go to work.”
“You don't go to work till midnight,” his mother said. “Unless you call what you'll be doing between now and midnight work.”
“Investigation,” Mick said. “I'm investigating a mystery.”
“What would that be?”
“Who put the chowder in Mrs. Murphy's overalls,” Mick said.
“Ho ho ho,” said Sunny Dan. “That's pretty good, Mick. The chowder in Mrs. Murphy's overalls. Do you get it Barbara?”
“I get it. But her name isn't Murphy,” Barbara O'Day said.
Mick laughed and vanished into the night. Billy Kilroy glowered after him. Billy badly wanted to investigate somebody's overalls and he was getting no help from Mick. The dislike between the two of them had been instant and mutual. O'Gorman was beginning to worry about it.
Billy thought the whole deal was a right haun, as they say in Belfast when describing a mess, and Mick was the worst part of it. “What the fook are we dooin' livin' with a bloody B-Special?” Billy had demanded, when he awoke the day after his shooting contest at the Golden Shamrock, hungover and furious at his defeat.
A B-Special was a Belfast cop. It had taken O'Gorman another hour to convince the sod that Mick was not going to blow his whistle on them.
The whole deal was no great pleasure so far for Dick O'Gorman, he thought as Barbara O'Day served them big pieces of apple pie for dessert. But that could change soon enough.
“By God, did you make this too?” he crooned. “I'm
goin' to take you home with me, Barbara Kathleen.”
goin' to take you home with me, Barbara Kathleen.”
They were first-naming it now. She still blushed like a schoolgirl when he looked at her, but it was a delicate come-hither pink now. Although she had to be over fifty, Barbara O'Day looked no more than thirty-five. She had kept her figure, and her red hair was still as fine and glossy as it must have been at eighteen. What was wrong with the American Irish, letting a flower like this woman go unplucked?
“When I was your age, I didn't pay no attention to Ireland,” Sunny Dan said. “I should've, but we was up to our eyeballs in our own politics, you know? Were any of your relatives in the Easter Rising?”
“My father, God save his soul, stood with De Valera at the bridge,” O'Gorman said.
“You don't say.”
Barbara's eyes never left him as he recounted the wholly imaginary exploits of the O'Gormans in the Easter Rising of 1916. He almost gagged, praising Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins and others who ended up betraying the IRA and the Republic and setting up the vile capitalist state in southern Ireland that made up its deficits peddling Irish sweepstakes tickets in America until the Yanks started lotteries of their own.
He would be telling the same lies to Irish organizations in New Jersey, from the Ancient Order of Hibernians to the Sons of the Shillelagh. None of the Irish-Americans had the foggiest notion of the knotted, pitted hatreds that divided modern Ireland. It was necessary to pretend to love the pseudo-republic of the south in order to stir their sympathy and loosen their wallets on behalf of the persecuted Catholics of the north.
“Dick's done a lot more up in Belfast than those Easter heroes did in Dublin. He told me about it,” Barbara said.
“In confidence, in confidence, Barbara Kathleen,” he said. “The one thing I want them to say when they lay me in the grave is, he never hawked himself as a hero. There's
too many others, such as Billy here, who've done far braver things.”
too many others, such as Billy here, who've done far braver things.”
Amazing, he thought, when you tell the truth, it can be stated with such conviction. Barbara of course did not believe a word of it. Jesus had the right idea when he forbade those he cured to tell anyone. Naturally they told everyone they met. In the crooked interior of the human heart, everything runs backward.
Upstairs after dinner, Billy Kilroy grabbed O'Gorman's arm. “You start fookin' her and I'm gonna put it in me book.”
“Your book? That's news indeed. I didn't think you could write your name, much less write a book.”
“I got orders to watch you close.”
“What do you know? I've got orders to watch you. I guess they don't trust either of us.”
“How long we gawn to hang around this fookin' place? Where's the fookin' weapons?”
“There's certain arrangements that have to be made. I'm going to a meeting with the police chief to see about them, tonight.”
“I'm gawn along.”
“Only if you promise to keep your stupid mouth shut.”
“I'm gawn to make sure you don't start singin' the Ballymena anthem.”
The
Ballymena anthem
was Belfast slang for “What's in it for me?”
Ballymena anthem
was Belfast slang for “What's in it for me?”
“My God, take your bottle away and you're a regular ate-the-bolts,” O'Gorman snarled.
An ate-the-bolts was a workaholic, the last thing in the world Kilroy was in danger of becoming.
Billy drew his Zastava autopistol, a small, extremely powerful gun made in Yugoslavia. “You can blether all you want, this has the last word. Remember that.”
“I can use one of them too,” O'Gorman said.
On this note of sweet harmony, they sallied into the night to the home of the chief of police, William O'Toole.
He greeted them with a glass of whiskey in his handânot a good sign. “Come on in, we got the joint to ourselves. Mrs. Bigmouth is off runnin' the Rosary Society.”
He greeted them with a glass of whiskey in his handânot a good sign. “Come on in, we got the joint to ourselves. Mrs. Bigmouth is off runnin' the Rosary Society.”
In the living room, Desmond McBride was already ensconced, grinning like a tourist poster as usual. They were a pair of contrasts. McBride was all light and air, the original smiling Irishman. O'Toole spoke and moved like a man carrying a thousand-pound weight on his back.
“Where's Leo and lovely Melody?” O'Gorman always liked to keep track of everyone in an operation.
Desmond McBride looked troubled. “Leo's stomach is bothering him.”
“They don't want to have anything to do with the Mob,” O'Toole said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “They wanna pretend they didn't find out organized crime was involved until it was too late.”
“It's nice to hear someone in America has a worse political smell than the IRA,” O'Gorman said.
“Here's the deal, from the Mob side,” O'Toole said. “They're ready to put up a million and a half for the cocaine if the stuff's any good. But they wanna look at it first. They don't trust these Cubans. They don't trust anybody period.”
“Fair enough,” O'Gorman said, letting O'Toole fill half his glass with Irish whiskey.
“What the fook is this?” Billy said as O'Toole started to serve him. “I dawn't drink that piss. It's made by the fookin' Prods.”
O'Gorman explained to their host that Billy was objecting to the label on the bottle. Bushmills was made in the north of Ireland. “I don't give a shit where it's made, it's the best,” O'Toole said. “You want Scotch?”
“Bourbon,” Billy said.
Back to business. “If the dope's okay, we run the dough out to the Cubans and get the guns and whatever else is in the shipment. Des here says the
Enterprise
can handle the load. We go up the Mullica into the Pines, and your guys meet us with the trucks to take the hardware up to Boston.”
Enterprise
can handle the load. We go up the Mullica into the Pines, and your guys meet us with the trucks to take the hardware up to Boston.”
“Couldn't be smoother,” O'Gorman said.
“Yeah, except for some details. Joey Zaccaro's godfather don't go for foolin' around with drugs. So this thing's got to be airtight, understand? Joey told me to tell you that before we meet him.”
“Unless his godfather vacations in Ireland, which I doubt, he has little to worry him,” O'Gorman said.
“You're gonna be movin' around the state. You're gonna meet a lot of people while you're passin' the basket.”
“Hey, that's good stoof,” Billy said, holding out his glass for more bourbon. “I drunk it in Sofia. I thought theirs was cow piss, but that's good stoof.”
“Sofia?” Desmond McBride said. “Bulgaria? Didn't those fellows shoot the pope?”
“Yah, but the fooker they put on the job couldn't hit a van if he was sittin' in the driver's seat,” Billy said. “He only plugged the Polock in the belly. You gotta go for the head. That's the ony sure ticket.”
“You see how brutalized lads become in the north,” O'Gorman said. “How ready they are to endorse random violence.”
He was trying to get McBride's mind off Sofia. O'Toole looked at O'Gorman with incredulity plain on his face. He knew what the IRA did with guns. He did not care if they used one to shoot the pope. He was a desperate man. Exactly why, O'Gorman did not know. He could smell desperation in a man. It always made him dangerous.
“There's some more details. I ain't doin' this for dear old Ireland, like Des here. He's got plenty of dough from his goddamn fish. I want two hundred grand off the top of the take. Do I get it?”
The Ballymena anthem. “Sure,” O'Gorman said. The actual price of the Cubans' weaponry was a million. The rest was to be used to finance the legal defense of several IRA gunrunners whom the FBI had recently arrested. But the weapons took precedence over all other considerationsâand
without O'Toole's cooperation they could never bring them ashore.
without O'Toole's cooperation they could never bring them ashore.
Billy Kilroy did not approve O'Gorman's concession to O'Toole. “What the fook kinda patriotism is that?” he snorted.
“It ain't patriotism, it's business. I gave up on patriotism a long time ago,” O'Toole said. “Do I get the two hundred grand? If I don't, you might as well go back to Ireland tomorrow.”
“I said it was okay,” O'Gorman replied.
“What about this shrimp?” O'Toole glared contemptuously at Billy Kilroy. Was the basic division of the world between the large men and the small men? Could Marx have been wrong? O'Gorman wondered.
“He's not in charge of this operation.”
O'Toole held out his hand. “We got a deal. Only one thing left to figure out. Who's gonna crew the
Enterprise?
The regular crew's mostly clam diggers.”
Enterprise?
The regular crew's mostly clam diggers.”
“Mostly what?” O'Gorman asked, totally confused.
“Local men. Not Irish,” McBride said. He thought for a moment. “I'd say our best bet would be that Vietnamese, Phac. He doesn't know enough English to figure out what's going on. And Mick. I've always had Mick in mind.”
“Have you talked to him about it?” O'Toole asked, contempt still thick in his voice. O'Gorman sensed that Mick shared the police chief's opinion of McBride.
“No,” McBride said.
“I'll handle it,” O'Toole said. “He'll do it for me.”
“Are you sure?” O'Gorman asked, remembering Mick calling Billy Kilroy a communist.
“I own Mick. It'll be okay,” O'Toole said.
“I just thoughtâhe seems a bit troubled. Is it because of his parents' marriage?”
“Mick's okay,” O'Toole insisted. “He's better off with no father than with that weasel of a numbers runner. I'm as much his father as anybody.”
“And we'll have you at the helm, Des?” O'Gorman said.
“You bet we will,” O'Toole said with relish.
McBride looked as if he might get sick on the rug. “Yes.”
A horn beeped twice outside. “There's Zaccaro,” O'Toole said. “Come on.”
They put on their coats and followed him out to McBride's car. This time Billy had no difficulty finding the bar in the seatback. “Hey, this is livin',” Billy said, pouring himself another glass of bourbon. Chief O'Toole helped himself to a lot of Irish. O'Gorman decided to keep his head clear and declined another drink.
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