The Troubles (24 page)

     My retort bares the breadth of my burden. “That’s the fuckin’ point mate! Me bro is dead!” Gerry sighs spiritless, the strain of war and lack of fortune perhaps is wearing the man thin.

     “That’s why ya’ve got to go with him to King’s Cross Railway Station, Alastar. Ya can protect him like I know ya would have liked to watch Quinn’s arse.’’

     “What would ya have me do this time Gerry?”

     “Tis nothin’ new to a soldier like ya.” He gestures to fifteen or more explosive devices that are lined in a militant row in the back of the grimy shaded room.  “I’ll be honest mate. He’s a kid from the streets no-one will be there to mourn.”

     “So is that it then… ya covered yer bases proper.’’

     “If ya ain’t willin’ to go with the boy, will ya go to Euston Station?’’

     “Nay, as ya know Gerry, I’ve got me a wife at home and…” I hesitate to announce her pregnancy within such untrustworthy company.

     “Ya won’t be caught if that ‘tis what has gotten ya in a fix.”

     “How the fuck would ya know?’’

     “Let’s just say bollix crazy, Judith Ward, will fall for any of our swords.”  Gerry is sordidly referring to a middle aged women that has been assisting the IRA for years.  It is common knowledge she is unstable and has further deteriorated into derangement.

     “So if I get this straight, I’m to be a babysitter.”

     “Nay, ya won’t see Judith if ya choose to follow our instructions for Euston Station.”

     My hands are clenched in a ball of nerves hidden from view under the façade of Gerry’s desk and moment’s pass as I digest the callousness that his frankness has just affirmed. I can no longer accept tasks from this kind of cruel managing for to conform and concede would assert I condone cold-bloodedness as a casualty of war. Why did I cement myself within such a cause and now most importantly how can I fracture from this group quietly with the least amount of reverberation. My words assume my thoughts with clarity but as soon as I open my mouth a compulsion to explode supersedes.

     “I will not be a part of any of yer schemes any more Gerry! Ya are a mighty bad man and I pray to God that these two attacks fail and do so in yer name. Is fear rith maith na drochsheasamh.”

     He surprisingly does not respond angrily but with sarcasm and a dark hooded threat.  “I thought that might be yer answer. I never thought ya were that daft. Get him out of me sight!” The man closest to Gerry Adams rises with a deliberate intimidating undertaking. ‘’By the way Son. There is nowhere in Ireland anyone one of us is safe.’’ I stand and turn quickly for I will not allow myself to be embarrassed further.  As I reach the door frame, I feel a kick of excruciating force to the center of my back with the momentum sending me barreling to my knees, tearing the skin off of both my knees through torn blue jeans.  ‘Ya be daft to turn around and trounce ‘em’, Kiera’s voice comes through clear like a beacon guiding my ship to shore. The door behind me slams shut and I am left standing on the stoop of the busy street with an amalgam of confronting emotions swirling like a wicked hurricane within myself, but I take a deep breath and find the calm eye of the storm.

    Rain is pouring down like a burst dam; gone are the individual droplets as relentless cascading sheets throng the paved streets forming streams as the sewers are overwhelmed. I have to squint my eyes into slits and pull my jacket over my slicked black hair. I am leaving Derry once and for all, as there is no place for me here and if I am to be honest, there never was; there was just displaced sorrow and grief that had manifested into a turbulent fever. What a fool I have been!

              Not one to dwell in perpetual guilt, I pace quickly in the downpour to the train station to wait sheathed by the train station’s canopy, anticipating my return to Belfast where Kiera and my gestating child are awaiting. My ribcage along my spine smarts and I am sodden with my clothing hanging like weighted rags upon my prune-wrinkled skin, but for the first time since Quinn’s murder, even in the behest of falling in love, I feel calm.

     The fire that compulsively licked my brain, giving my courtship a continuously brazen, masculine impulse, feels quelled and tepid as though the rain has quenched the flames and I am left with wet coals sizzling and protesting against the dominance of the elements. My hand in taking Protestant life did not resolve the anger and revenge I had become acquainted with. Every person I killed was not my brother’s murderer, but I had somehow slid into becoming the dreaded antagonist the slithering men at my back sought me to be. What were the laurels of constructive protest in bombing King’s Cross by the hand of an innocent boy on his spring of manhood? With my freshly gained insight there were none to be seen.

                                My stomach lurches with excitement and my heart pounds forcefully as in haste my weather bitten fingers fumble with the brass key to the home I now have come to own through marriage. The carved metal preens out of my grasp and clangs onto the steps my muddy boots have soiled. As I pick up the key I feel a tenuous cold shiver run down my spine competing with a rivulet of rainwater. By intuition I dare not turn my head abruptly but through my bended legs casually peer to see a man but a hundred yards away wearing garments darkened by the downpour. Though my vision is capsized on this stormy day, I recognize him as one of Cathal Goulding’s henchmen that Lanary and I had encountered in Dublin. I make haste with gathering the key and with stressed accuracy plunge the corrugated brass in the lock and then whistle relief through clenched teeth as I make my way through the threshold locking the door behind me. Thrusting my weighted rucksack to the linoleum flooring anterior to the mudroom, my eyes briefly scan the soiled floor with an amused curiosity. Perhaps my wife is too advanced in her condition to contain the brunt of the household’s many chores. I take this as a note to become more domesticated.

       Kiera’s tidiness has always been apparent, but we have not been wed long therefore in my absence she might have abnegated her chores. I look through the condensate glass of the front door, rubbing my hand perpendicular to get a proper view to notice the man from Dublin has vanished like an apparition. With that nagging fear removed I strut into the home. “Kiera I’m home early.” My voice reverberates off of the unfurnished walls, still in a state of flux as Kiera had been preemptively relocating at the dawn of our relationship. Marriage, pregnancy had all taken precedence over the urgency of moving. “Where are ya? Are ya in bed?” I bound up the staircase taking two steps at a time in my flight. The bedroom door rests ajar and I decide to surprise my sleeping lover by taking off my already sweat stained shirt and undershirt. There is a petite figure lying completely obscured by rolls of colorful patchwork quilt but to my astonishment there is a bottle of whiskey placed on the bedside table and I pace quickly on my way over to it.

                            “What the fuck is this Kiera?”  My voice holds a note of anger perhaps too aggressive for a pregnant woman to hear, but for all my father put me through with alcohol, I couldn’t give a damn at this point. The figure in bed stirs and I hear a groan as I pull the coverlet down intrusively yet only a mess of black hair and slightly sallow olive skin presents itself. “Ena?”  I stammer and turn away, my face hot with embarrassment.

     “Alastar?” Ena croaks my name through parched lips. Still with my back to the imposter in my bed, I implore, “Where is Kiera, Ena?” Again she groans.

    “Me head bloody smarts! Would ya be so kind as to get me a cup of tea?”

     “A cup of tea? Do ya think I came down the Lagan in a bubble?” It is bad enough she is careened, hung-over in my marital bed but now she wants me to relieve her self-induced symptoms. I think not! “Where is me wife? Is she all right? Is the baby…’’

     “Aye she is! I fear to tell ya this Alastar. Kiera is gone and I’m not to tell ya where and with whom.’’

              “Yer what?’’  Tears spill from her already painfully blistered eyes as she clasps her hands over her face with her shoulders quaking from the weight of her emotional burden.

     “I’m so sorry Alastar.  She’s me best mate and now with Ma and Pa dead she’s all I’ve got. I vowed to her I would keep me promise.”

     I scrutinize my wife’s friend in her barely dressed bedraggled state, defeat and remorse imbedded into every one of the young woman’s molecules.  “Just tell me one thing, I beg of ya!” She quizzically regards me intent in defusing her plight.

      “Aye, Mister Taggart, ya’ve been a good mate to me and better husband to me friend.”

    My mind rapidly spins as puzzle pieces align and a sense of realization takes hold. “Did Lanary Sloan take her?”

CHAPTER 45: Sin sin, nil aon sceal eile agam (That’s all, I don’t have another story)

    Kiera Taggart… I hold fast to Lanary Sloan like my life depends on it, his hands crushing mine and as my feet stumble in an effort to keep up, my mind is also floundering with conflicting emotions and thoughts of treachery. “Please slow down.” My lungs draw in cold air that burns from the pace of my bodies’ effort.

     “He’ll come looking for ya. We’ve got to get ya as far away from yer parent’s murderer as soon as possible.” I look back over my shoulder at the canopy of intertwined vines and thickets of briar tenting the winding, pebbled trail that Lanary’s Fiat has parked in.  He has hastily covered the alerting red carriage in downed holly and fading brown rowan branches. I shiver from the dampness as I trail the looming figure that is madly dashing into the highland forest before us.  We careen noisily around a blind bend in the trail and before us posed in a preternaturally eminent stance, is a stoic, red deer buck with branch-like antlers hinged to the sky like invisible threads to the heavens. His spirited, proud eyes are the sunlit brown of amber brook water as they regard us as imposters and yet they are gentle and inquisitive. His majestic hide is made of velveteen a shade lighter than his eyes and his white tuft of a tail twitches energetically. The sentient creature paws his powerful, though delicate hoof on the forest floor and lowers his head in what appears to be a gesture of recognition and submission. An image vaults before me and as I stare at Lanary and the beast before him, the vision conjures a memory. I had fainted in the cemetery and as I had lost lucidity, when the darkness had overshadowed the light, I had envisioned an effigy of Lanary as Cernnusos the God of Virility, animals, the forest and the underworld.  He was our proud antlered God, born at the winter solstice only to wed the Goddess of Beltane and to die at the end of summer’s solstice and continue the cycle of reincarnation, rebirth and death whilst alternating with the Goddess of the Moon ruling over all life and death.  I remember that as I had lain on my back overcome by shock and grief, Lanary had appeared before me in a mirage, casually undressed and naked, with an ornament of gnarled, wooden antlers atop his silvered brow.

                 The vision has significance somehow as I watch the buck staring at us for a frozen moment and then finally after a nod of Lanary’s head, the woodland creature turns and bounds with what looks like one athletic leap into the cover of trees to disappear within an instant. The majestic spell is broken and I regain my wits under the weight of my rucksack, which has become unmanageable on my knotted shoulders.

              “What a mighty creature, aye, Lanary?” My tongue feels parched and I ache with an exhausted thirst.  “Can I have yer canteen once more?” My vision stutters slightly as the cylindrical silver object seems to inexplicably appear in my gloved palm. I look to Lanary who is now vacillating like the furthest stars in our galaxy flicker as their own suns and moons rotate around them allowing our earthly eyes to catch the twinkling of their passing of light through our turbulent atmosphere. My hand feels numb and I rebuke it as though it is not conjoined to my arm and torso and raising the container of liquid to my lips with sudden, unforeseen weakness, I gulp the cold water as the liquid floods like a tidal wave, choking me with such a bitter taste and causing me to spit it out with distaste.

              “What’s wrong with me, Lanary? Is it the pregnancy?” My hand begins to feel like a pincushion and as my eyes resume focus my exposed wrist appears strangely tinged with blue. I try to protect my stomach but both arms fall limp, suddenly paralyzed. The bridge of my nose tingles as though I have been planted with a punch between my eyes. Panic begins to surge through me as I try to calm myself and take a step to Lanary, but my legs deceive me as my gait is reminiscent of a whiskey-fueled escapade.

              “Did ya put whiskey in the water?” The words appear clear in my mind but come out as an inebriated warble. Lanary continues to stare ahead as though he is waiting and annoyed at ailing presence. My disturbing sensations transform into agony, as the lanky man in the black trench coat seems to procrastinate any concern or care. Finally his lips move from a downturned despondency as though I am repulsive in my desperation to a tactile verbalization. 

              “Don’t fight it Kiera!”

              “Me baby!” I croak out the plea as tears are dripping coldly down my numb, throbbing cheeks and the last lucid thought I have is how stupid I was to have given intoxicated Ena implicit direction she was not to betray my trust to Alastar.  She now, is my lifeline and the only person who knows who I am with and where I am.

     I cling to my collection of memories of Alastar; combatively brazen, sexually forward, and loyal to some, though his rebuke of his father did not go unnoticed to me. He was illusive with the intent behind his IRA involvement and the volatile tempering of his spirit cannot solely be based upon the murder of his brother whom he regarded as his own son. My retention of anecdotal accounts had been so utterly tarnished by the sin I cannot bear to name, that I had run blindly into the arms of a waiting devil and no doubt he had been lurking in the light with no visible deceptions for us to question, yet every murky deed he had been witness and instigator of.  My intense need and singular focus had been to Alastar and his to I, both obliviously indiscreet as our mentor had stalked his prey like a cougar biding time as it trailed gazelles, to await their fatigue.  I have weakened from his falsehoods and have fallen easily into the hunter’s lair.