The Best American Travel Writing 2012 (16 page)

He played soccer the night Paul died. Paul watched the game until halftime, left for something to eat, came back to pick his friend up. This young man, his feet still tapping the ground, eyes saucers of pain, tells me it doesn't go away, that sound. The sound of batons and metal pipes striking Paul and Paul screaming and then not screaming.

(The police say they have intelligence that my life is under threat.

I understand.

Don't use my name.

I'll use a letter. C.

Aye.

Take me back to that night.)

It's October 20, 2007. About 5:30
P.M.
A good evening. Good enough, like. Not hot, not cold. C and Paul don't have plans after the game. Just spinning about, like. Shooting the craic. Driving the back roads of their Northern Ireland village, Cullyhanna. They decide to stop at Paul's house and get on his computer and mess about. Bored with that, they drive around Cullyhanna again.

Then Anthony, a friend, rings Paul. Anthony says some bulls is coming to his father's fucking farm this evening. He needs help cleaning a pen.

C and Paul mess about for another five minutes. Then decide, Fuck this, we have to help Anthony. His farm is near Castleblayney, just over the border in the Irish Republic, the “Free State.” On the way, Paul has second thoughts. Take me home, he tells C. He can't be bothered. Fucking cows. C can't be bothered either. But it won't take long, C says. How long can it take?

(I thought it was funny that Anthony called Paul.

Why?

He would have called me, usually. I was closer to him. I thought to myself, He couldn't get through on my phone so that's why he called Paul.)

At the farm C and Paul park outside a shed where Anthony is to meet them. Still light out. Around ten to six, so it was. No one in sight. They stop, look around, pondering like.

A yellow lorry stands down a ways. Bright yellow. C walks toward it. He's almost reached it when a man wearing a black mask, black jacket, black jeans, and black boots jumps out at him, shouting
You fucking scumbag bastards!

C turns around, yells at Paul.

Go! Run, run, run!

Three more masked men come at C from his left. More are running out from behind hay bales. Another three, from other directions.

(At first I thought it was a joke, like.

A prank?

Yeah, quite a joke, Anthony, yeah, good on ye.)

C shoves one of them away, but there are too many to fight off. Other men are on top of Paul. They drag C and Paul into the shed, hitting them with iron bars. Shouting, You bastards!

Three or four men stay on top of C until someone comes over and drags him into a pen. He sees Anthony tied up next to another one of their mates, Connor. On their knees, faces against the wall. Someone kneels on C again. Shouting, Shut it, shut it, shut it!

C can hear them bashing Paul about. He hears the
whoomp, whoomp
against his friend's body, hears Paul screaming, Stop, stop, fuck, fuck, stop, stop!

Then he stops screaming.

(Just stopped, like. All of a sudden.)

But they keep hitting him. Two minutes more, at least. Then they stop. The air still. The men breathing hard through their masks.

(Did they say anything?

Now ye know who the bosses are here now. Shouting, like. Now ye know!)

 

I am staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Crossmaglen, a small town fifteen minutes' drive from Cullyhanna.

In 1969, at the start of the Troubles, the police barracks here was attacked by the IRA. In 1971, British Army soldiers killed a Crossmaglen man who they wrongly thought was armed. The killing drove many young Catholics to join the fight. The community became much more insular and suspicious of outsiders. A characteristic it retains to this day.

With my long beard and ponytail, I stand out. People ask one another, Who's the hairy man walking about Crossmaglen and Cullyhanna?

The name sticks.

Hey, Harry, a man shouts to me one day, what about ye?

You enjoying your stay, are you, Harry? another man says.

What about Obama, Harry? Cheeky bastard, wha? declares a third.

But when I bring up the subject of the Paul Quinn killing, the good humor disappears and we quickly find something else to discuss.

However, if, at the end of the day, I meet someone alone in a pub or on the road or leaning on a fence post and considering the hazy distance across the field before them, when the evening hour has slowed and hesitates between light and dark and what lurks beneath the surface rises more easily, then I find people willing to talk about Paul.

 

Paul was a cheeky lad, so he was, Harry.

Good with his dukes. Wouldn't back down, don't you know. Not one to be pushed about, our Paul Quinn. He took a lot but didn't like someone with no authority telling him what to do. That was his downfall, aye.

Cullyhanna is naught but a church, a pub, and a convenience store. Everyone knew Paul. Everyone knows everybody. There's so-and-so's son. People look at their neighbor now and wonder, Was ye part of them that done him? People look at themselves and think, What could I have done to stop it?

Them boys who done Paul, they lured Anthony and that other boyo, Connor, to that shed by promising them some work. They broke Connor's ankle, so they done. Anthony cracked, then, made the call.

What would any of us have done had we been him?

Everyone keeps an eye on our Father Cullen. They tell the Quinn family, Father Cullen's talking to so-and-so. Maybe they done it. Maybe they're asking forgiveness. Father Cullen says our humanity has sunk to a new level.

What they done to him you wouldn't do to a dog. Beating him like that. Pipes and bats with nails in them. Breaking every bone in his body below the neck, so they done. The word got around. Young man battered to death. Just twenty-one. The savagery of it.

Sinn Féin says no Republicans were involved. Ludicrous. They know that if another crowd did that to a Catholic boyo, the IRA would have stepped in and dealt with them, ceasefire or no ceasefire. But the IRA hasn't stepped in. No Sinn Féin counselor came to the Quinn house to pay their respects to a Catholic family that lost a son to murderers. Very strange. Normally they arrive quick like, if for no other reason than to get their picture taken for the newspapers.

Maybe they didn't mean to kill him. Maybe they meant to leave him in a wheelchair to look out a window for the rest of his wee life. A message to other young people born after the Troubles. Look at Paul Quinn and remember: respect the IRA. Whatever they planned, they beat our Paul to death, so they done.

There were good men in the IRA when the struggle was going on. It's the bad men that remain. They want to keep control. Like dogs killing sheep. Bolder and bolder. If they hadn't a killed Paul, they'd a killed others.

Kids today, the Troubles are forgotten history. It's something they read in a book. They don't remember it. Some asshole says he used to be somebody in the IRA, who the fuck are they, wha? Kids used to think, When we grow up we'll be one of the boys. But the new generation says, No we won't. Fuck the IRA.

It's created a void, so it has.

 

Paul was born in 1986 and raised on a farm in Cullyhanna, in County Armagh. By the 1990s the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA had grown to about forty members. Thomas “Slab” Murphy, an alleged member of the IRA's Army Council, has been the organization's Armagh commander since the 1970s, according to British security personnel.

The South Armagh Brigade has not confined itself to paramilitary activities. Irish and British authorities accuse it of smuggling millions of dollars' worth of gasoline and diesel north across the Irish border every year. As much as 50 percent of the vehicle fuel used in Northern Ireland has been estimated to have been obtained in this way. Gas is cheaper in Ireland proper.

Paul's parents, Stephen and Breege, were never involved with the IRA, they tell me. They would stop and listen to news reports about a pub bombing or attacks on the RUC and then get on with their day. Paul never called Breege mum. Just Breege. That was his way. He'd call and ask about dinner and pretend to be somebody else. Make up an accent, like. Every night before going to bed, he would shout
Au revoir.

French for goodbye, you know, Breege explains.

He had a jolly way. He would always buy a chocolate and a drink and put change in the charity box in town. He'd help old folks carry their bags, so he would.

When Breege stood by the sink he'd come behind her and lift her up. He was just full of life and was all the time smiling. Even when she gave out a scolding, he'd smile.

He loved to hear drinking stories about his father. He would come home and tell Stephen what he'd heard and watch his face turn red. He enjoyed listening to old men talk to other old men. All those stories and the laughter. It never was serious talk.

He liked having his potatoes peeled for him.

Mommy's boyo, Breege says.

Paul worked on farms. He also drove lorries for smugglers. Sometimes he came home and the house filled with the smell of diesel.

Smuggling was always a way of life, Stephen says. When I was a wee thing, my father smuggled, and his father, and his father before him. Where there's a border, there's smuggling. Only way to make a living. Is it criminal? Then you'd have to call everyone a criminal. Everyone.

Stephen was fixing a wall with some other fellows the day Paul died. Looking at it more than fixing it, truth be told, Stephen says. Paul came home in a car belonging to a friend and stayed long enough to make a bacon sandwich. After he ate, he said he was going to pick someone up. Siphoned some diesel from a petrol tank near the driveway, maybe a gallon, and then drove off. Stephen watched him go and never saw him alive again.

Breege saw Paul for the last time the night before. She came home from an evening with friends and he was in the kitchen eating cereal. She said goodnight and went to bed.

Au revoir,
Paul said.

 

Jim McAllister meets me at McNamee's Bakery, a few blocks away from my bed-and-breakfast.

Jim helped start the Quinn Support Group, a loosely knit organization of Cullyhanna and Crossmaglen families intent on maintaining pressure on the authorities to find Paul's killers. Jim and Stephen Quinn have known each other since the early 1960s, when they were both about sixteen or so. They met in a pub, something like that, Jim says.

As a young fellow, Jim had Republican feelings. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin candidate in 1982. But over the years he drifted away from the party, and he finally left it in 1996. He saw Sinn Féin becoming everything it had once despised—leaning away from its core beliefs to get votes.

A few years ago a schoolgirl asked him, When was Bobby Sands shot? Bobby Sands died in the hunger strikes, Jim explained. He wasn't shot. That's when he knew his day was past. He remembered his grandparents talking about the 1916 uprising like it was clear in their minds, but it was history to Jim, just as Jim and Bobby Sands were history to that girl. It's all relative. It depends what side of the years you're on, aye.

When Paul died, a friend rang him, Jim says. A young man been battered to death. He didn't know his name. Just that he was a Quinn. The county is full of Quinns. A moment later another man called and told him who it was.

The next morning he drove to the Quinn house. About twenty people were already there, and more were coming. When somebody dies in these parts, families gather around from all over to pay their respects. That's how we deal with death here, he says. They all talked about what happened. Not a wee beating, they agreed.

Paul had a reputation, of course. He fought. As a Sinn Féin counselor, Jim had dealt with antisocial behavior: boyos breaking windows, stealing, making a ruckus. That kind of thing. Years back some young lads, sixteen, seventeen years old, were in a gang called Hard Core. They'd assemble, drink beer, get loud. People were afraid. Jim asked to speak with them. Five or six lads showed up at his office one night. He told them they were scaring people. Those five or six boyos never came to notice again.

Two other lads, however, didn't meet with Jim. They continued to cause problems, and when he caught up with them they were made to wear placards:
I'M A THIEF
, something like that. Made to stand in a public place where everyone saw them. They never did anything after that. They became good men, so they did. Better to wear a placard than to be taken to a shed and killed, aye.

If it was smugglers who killed Paul, why would they want to bring attention to themselves? Jim says. Smugglers don't kill. If they have a problem with someone, they either hit them in their wallet, ignore them, or set them up to be caught by the police. They don't fight. No one has named specific smugglers as suspects. No one's come forward to accuse smugglers except for Sinn Féin.

Why's that, you think? Jim asks.

 

Paul would get involved in pub brawls, his father tells me, but he never talked about it. Nothing to tell. As far as he was concerned, once the fight was over, it was finished.

One time, however, he had a fight with Tomas McCabe. Tomas was the son of Frank McCabe, who police allege is an IRA man. Young McCabe would often get into rows with the other fellows. He lived in a political home and felt entitled to rule the roost, so he did, Stephen said.

The fight happened in Newry, a forty-minute drive from Cullyhanna. A car driven by Tomas blocked Paul's car outside a disco. They both got out, and Paul landed a punch. He wouldn't be bullied. A second boyo, one of Tomas's friends, told Paul he would see him shot.

Later that evening, Eileen McCabe, Tomas's mother, stopped outside a chippy where Paul was ordering food. Clad in only a nightgown, she threatened Paul with a hammer. You'll be found in a black bag, she told him.