The Bloomsday Dead (29 page)

Kids out playing football, older folks sitting in deck chairs, chatting. It was a break in the rain, and in Northern Ireland you used those breaks when you could get them.

The people were Protestants. I knew this not because they were physically unlike or dressed differently from Catholics—indeed, anyone who says that he can tell a Catholic Irishman from a Protestant Irishman by looking at him is a liar, since a third of all marriages in Ulster are across the sectarian divide. Nah, I knew it because the curbstones had been painted red, white, and blue, there were murals of King Billy at the ends of the street, there was a painted memorial for the battle of the Somme on the side of a house, and the flags flying in this neighborhood were the Scottish saltaire, Old Glory, the Union Jack, the Ulster flag, and the Israeli Star of David. If there were Catholics on this street, they kept bloody quiet about it.

I knocked on the door of number six.

A kid answered. About ten, freckles, brown hair, patched sweater, cheeky looking.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Slider.”

“He’s away,” the kid said.

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who does know?”

“Ma.”

“Is she home?”

“She’ll be back in five minutes. Down the shops. Do you want to wait inside?”

“Well, are you sure that would be ok?”

“Aye. It’s fine.”

I followed the kid inside the council house.

A broken light and a narrow hall filled with a death-trap assortment of toys: skateboards, roller skates, cricket balls. The kid opened a door to the left and I followed him into the living room. Boards on the floor, bare walls, and some kind of grotesque papier-mâché statue in the middle of the room. Another kid, a little younger than the first, adding more wet paper to the statue.

“What in the name of God is that?” I asked.

“It’s the fucking pope, what do you think?” the first kid said.

I looked again. The Holy Father’s head was lying on some old plywood and empty vodka boxes. It was still crude, with black-marker facial hair and possessing only a hastily drawn lopsided grin, instead of the full black-toothed variety that would frighten even the youngest children. Just over six feet high and draped in a white sheet, it looked more like a Klansman than the leader of the Catholic Church.

“Do you not think it’s any good?” the younger kid asked.

“What are your names?” I asked the first.

“I’m Steven, he’s Monkey,” the first kid said.

“You’re telling me that that’s supposed to be the pope?” I asked Steven, looking at my watch.

“Aye, it is.”

“What’s it for?”

“Are you not from around here?” Steven asked.

And then I remembered. Of course. The Twelfth of July was coming up. The anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, when Protestant King William defeated Catholic King James, a victory celebrated every year by burning the pope in effigy.

The kid looked at me for an answer.

“No, I’m not from around here.”

I lit a cigarette and sat down on a ripped leather sofa. The kids demanded a share and so I lit a couple more.

“Well, what you think of the pope?” Steven asked, smoking expertly.

What I thought was that that was the whole problem with Protestant ideology in Northern Ireland. They had gotten it all wrong—the way to really preserve a culture was to celebrate and nurture the memory of a glorious defeat, not a famous victory. That’s why Gallipoli, Gettysburg, the Field of Blackbirds, the Alamo became the foundation myths for the Kiwis, the American South, Serbs, and Texas. Every year the Shi’a celebrate a massacre and, of course, Christianity is founded upon an execution.

“The pope doesn’t have a beard,” I said.

“See,” Steven told Monkey, shaking his head dramatically and dropping the ash from his cigarette onto the bare floor.

“What exactly are you saying, wee lad?” Monkey said.

“I told ya,” Steven said with satisfaction.

Monkey’s face went through a spasm.

“I did not,” Steven replied indignantly.

“Did so,” Monkey said, clenching his fists.

“Not.”

They had both forgotten I was there. They were about to come to blows and even if they didn’t, they were giving me a bloody headache.

“Ok, lads, give it a rest. Steven, here’s a fiver, away you go and find your ma for me,” I said.

The kid took the note and sprinted out into the street. The other wean looked at me suspiciously, puffed on his cigarette, and went back to his work.

“Are you from America?” he asked after a while.

“Aye, now I am,” I said.

“What’s it like out there?” he asked wistfully.

“Exactly like the movies,” I said.

The kid nodded. Just as he had suspected.

“I saw that Beyoncé Knowles the other day at the supermarket. Boy, is she a hottie,” I said.

“You saw Beyoncé at the supermarket? What was she buying?” the kid asked.

“She was with Madonna and J.Lo; there was a special on Rice Krispies, they all had their trolleys loaded up.”

“Beyoncé was getting Rice Krispies?” he asked, impressed.

“Uh-huh.”

But before I could build an entire cathedral of lies, the living room door opened and a breathless Steven brought in a plump fifty-year-old woman wearing a Yankees cap, a bright yellow dress with green hoops, and sand-covered Wellington boots. She had the circumspect dark eyes of a sleekit old cow, so I knew I’d have to go careful. Monkey had stubbed his fag in the ashtray, but the woman immediately began sniffing the air. She grabbed Monkey by the ear.

“Aow,” he said.

“Have you been smoking, young man?” she asked him.

“Nope.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, twisting the ear a little more off the vertical.

“I haven’t, honest.”

“You better not. Stunts your growth and you’re not shooting up as it is, so you’re not.”

That was a low blow and both boys knew it. They winced. I stood.

“Mrs. McFerrin, I was smoking, the boys weren’t smoking, it was me.”

She looked at the three cigarette ends in the ashtray and eyed me suspiciously.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about some business. . . .” I began.

“Business, is it? Well, sit down, I’ll go to the kitchen and make some tea.”

“I don’t have time for tea. I’m in a rush to make a flight,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. Her face scrunched up impressively. She looked for a moment like an accordion that had fallen from the cargo hold of a 747.

“No tea, no business,” she said coldly.

I had clearly insulted her by declining her hospitality, and that in Ireland was a huge mistake.

“I would love a cup of tea, if you don’t mind,” I said. She went into the kitchen and I heard the kettle boiling. I looked at my watch. I really had no time for this shit, but I couldn’t beat the information out of her, not in front of her weans. The two kids went back to their pope.

“Maybe he needs a belt or something,” Monkey said as he looked at the effigy anew.

“You ever see the pope wear a belt?”

“What about those ropy belts that monks wear around their cas-socks?”

“Around their what?” Steven asked, and both boys cracked them-selves up laughing. I didn’t see the funny side of anything right now.

“Mrs. McFerrin, I have to get going,” I shouted into the kitchen, straining to keep calm.

She came back in with a teapot and a selection of chocolate biscuits. She poured some tea and I took a biscuit.

“Well,” she said finally in a whisper. “How much poteen do you want?”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You’re here to buy poteen, aren’t you?”

“No, no, I’m not, I’m looking for Slider, my business is with him.”

“Slider? I wouldn’t have a clue where he is. I haven’t seen him for two days,” she said.

My heart sank.

“It’s really important. Slider and I go way back, but you see the thing is, Mrs. McFerrin . . . um, I’ll tell you what it is, I was just at the Ulster Hall there, Dr. McCoy from the States was in town doing a revival, and the thing is, I’ve been born again, but now I’m going back to Beverly Hills. I work over there. And I want to clear all my debts now that I’ve seen the light. You see, I owe Slider a thousand pounds, and I want to pay him before I go.”

It was a crazy story, but this was a crazy house.

Greed lit up the fat lady’s face.

“Well, son, that’s a wonderful thing, you finding the Lord Jesus and everything. But I just don’t know where he is or where he’s been,” she said.

“Doesn’t he live here?”

“Not the last wee while; oh, but you know who might know, wee Dinger,” she said.

“Who’s Dinger?”

“He’s my youngest; he’s a wee bit, a wee bit, you know, special, that way . . . but Slider looks out for him. Takes him on trips and stuff. He’s been taking him somewhere all this week, just for the run in the car. So Dinger might know.”

“Where’s Dinger now?” I asked.

“Where he always is. On the beach,” Steven said.

“Whereabouts?”

“He’ll be the only one out there.”

“Well, it’s been great talking to you, thank you very much, Mrs.—”

“Houl on a minute, big fella, I get a finder’s fee, don’t I? I told you where Slider is, or at least someone who knows where he is, so that’s five percent. That’s fifty quid,” she demanded. I didn’t want her to kick up a fuss. I give her five tens. She smiled and put it in her pocket. I hope it chokes ya, I said to myself, and went outside to look for the youngest member of the clan.

The tide was out and the sand was wet and freezing. Seaweed on the dunes. A few beached starfish and transparent jellyfish. You could see most of Belfast Lough spread in a big U-shaped curve, and from here in Bangor it was only about twenty miles across the water to Scotland. Tonight with the setting sun illuminating the hills in Galloway it seemed much closer.

Dinger was alone on the beach, gathering shells. I walked over from the seawall.

“Good shells?” I asked.

He dropped the collection with contempt and stomped away from me. He was in bare feet and jeans and a sweater too big for him. He had black hair and big eyes. He was about nine. He didn’t look “special” or any more special than his brothers or his hatchet-faced ma. When he was far enough away from me, he began singing. He drew something in the sand with a piece of driftwood. He looked behind him to see if I had gone yet, and then he picked up a length of seaweed and popped some of the float pods on the strands. They went snap and briny water came out of them, trundling down his fingers onto his sweater. Some of the weeds were covered with diesel and were slimy and difficult for him to pull up.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked.

“You’ll have to clean your shoes before you go in the house,” he began, and then ran from me again.

Jesus, this was going to be more difficult than I thought. I had trouble catching him with all my injuries and my fake foot.

Dinger stopped abruptly and sat down next to a dead seagull, its wings covered in what looked like a thick glue and its head completely black. Tankers occasionally came down this way on their journey to Belfast, so it was possible there had been a small slick or an illegal dumping.

“It’s dead,” Dinger said to me.

“Yeah, I see that, it’s very sad. You’re Dinger, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Everything dies,” Dinger said. He regarded the seagull for a moment. He picked it up by the wing and offered it to me.